What Is Your Opinion on Intermittent Fasting For Women?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
A JJ Virgin podcast episode (Ask the Health Expert) centered on a listener question about intermittent fasting for women. The episode mixes sponsor ad reads (home decor, laundry sheets, apparel, finance app, beer) with an interview featuring Cynthia Thurlow, an intermittent-fasting expert. Thurlow emphasizes bio-individuality: fasting may be inappropriate during pregnancy, breastfeeding, high stress, or overtraining, but many cycling women can fast several days per week and postmenopausal women often tolerate daily fasting. She also notes much existing research has focused on lab animals, men, and postmenopausal/obese women rather than cycling women.
Questions this episode answers
August 23, 2021.
Over 8 million views.
Chapters
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Opinion on intermittent fasting for women?
This is jj Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition.
Expert, and fitness hall of famer.
I've been on a lifelong quest for.
Answers to the toughest health questions, and.
Now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.
SJ explores health from Instagram, Asks, what's your opinion on intermittent fasting for women? Haven't women been left out of the scientific studies? Hey, it's jj and I've got intermittent fasting expert Cynthia Thurlow with me now. Her TEDx talk on intermittent fasting. It's been viewed over 8 million times. So yes, she's a bit of an expert on this subject. In fact, she's my go to expert on this subject. She loves to travel and she's a voracious reader. She reads four to five books at once. Plus, like me, she's a total boy mom. She's got two human ones, although she's got two canine ones too. I've got Daisy Girl. You know, she'll be right back to answer this question, so stay with us.
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Well, this is kind of an area where I feel like I really excel and I truly believe that being a woman creates an opportunity for us to have an adaptive advantage in terms of cycling, you know, getting our periods every month up until menopause. And so when people ask me if intermittent fasting is a great option for women, it's always with the caveat of bio individuality rules. Meaning that for each one of us at different times in our lives, it may not be the best strategy. And I'll give some examples. When a woman is breastfeeding or when she's pregnant, or if something's someone is under an inordinate amount of stress, that would not be a time I would recommend intermittent fasting. But if you're sleeping well, your stress is under control, you're not over exercising. It's certainly something that most cycling women can do several days a week and women that have transitioned into menopause can do on a daily basis. In fact, I always say that is when we get back a biological advantage and we don't have to worry about the impact of fasting on our hormones per se. We know based on the research that's out there right now that the bulk of it has been done on lab animals, men and obese menopausal women. And I believe that there's truly always a fear about doing scientific research on women because of their menstrual cycles. It just adds another layer of complexity. So it is my hope that in the future there will be more research done on cycling women so that we can see the net impact. I know there are definitely people that have to be more conscientious about when they are fasting using that as a strategy. But in terms of existing research, most of it has been done on the areas I've already touched on. So lab animals, men and postmenopausal women.
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