Dr Mindy Pelz: How WOMEN Can Heal Their Body, Burn Fat & Have Better SEX!

Oh, it's such a good question. One I've never been asked before, and here I'm going to make a really bold statement that I don't think a lot of women will love, but it's part of living in a female body is that I think the biggest challenge I'm seeing and why we have all these hormonal problems is that just women need more rest and recovery.

So when women are in alignment with their hormones, they are unstoppable.

Bingo.

So men should fast differently than women.

Yeah, so this is actually really interesting.

How many women were coming to you saying that this doesn't work?

Hundreds of thousands.

Really?

I was the first one. My hormones were completely tanked. Literally, I was like almost in menopause at 45 and my cycle came back.

How do we look and feel younger? How do we burn the fat that we really don't want in our bodies faster? And how do we have the best sex of our lives through fasting?

Okay, let me start with a principle. I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. Mindy in the house. So good to see you.

Thank you. So great to be here.

You are an incredible fasting expert teaching people how to burn fat, balance hormones, and live better lives. And my first question is, We're gonna set you up. How do we look and feel younger? How do we burn the fat that we really don't want on our bodies faster? And how do we have the best sex of our lives through fasting?

Oh, wow. We're gonna put all those together. Okay, let me start with a principle, and then I'm gonna answer each one individually.

Perfect.

So here's the principle. We have two energy systems. one where we create energy when we eat, and one energy system that kicks in when we're not eating.

Okay.

Okay. This is where every diet has ever failed. This is where aging starts to speed up. This is where you get your libido wrong, is because every conversation around nutrition has only been around what we should eat. And what fasting is doing is I'm now, and me plus many other experts, are coming to the masses saying, Why don't we talk about when we eat? So when your blood sugar starts to come down, usually around 8 hours, 8-10 hours without food, you switch over into what we call the ketogenic energy system. It's also, I like to call it the fat burning system, because it's there that your body burns fat for energy. We're like a hybrid car. And so you switch over, you start burning fat for energy, you make something called a ketone, ketone goes up into the brain, it shuts off hunger, it amps up GABA so you get a lot calmer, and it gives you incredible mental clarity and insane energy. If you never go 8 to 10 hours without eating, you will never tap into this system. And so you never get that limitless feeling that we're all getting from fasting. And so if all you're doing is working with the one energy system, you are absolutely accelerating the aging process.

Really?

And every diet's gonna fail you because what ends up happening is you're only focused on food and that's why we're hopping from diet to diet to diet, you know, this is great, then this is great, then this is great. So you could eat all the right.

Foods, but if you're eating it too frequently, you're still gonna gain weight.

You could potentially still gain weight.

If you're not taking at least eight hours of rest, if you're just constantly eating every hour, right? Or every few hours constantly eating, you could gain a lot of fat.

Yeah.

So think of it like exercise. What would happen if you just kept working out and working out and working out? Every day was like a hard workout, a hard workout. There's no recovery. It's the same thing with fasting. You're giving your body a chance to recover and the longer you let it recover, the more healing switches turn on. And that's why it slows down aging. That and you're burning fat in the process. It's the recovery that matters.

Wow. So if you're. But when I go a long time without eating, I feel really hungry.

Yeah.

And sometimes I feel sluggish or tired at the same time. So when is it that we get this unlimited feeling or this burst of extra energy? When does that happen after extending the window of not eating?

Yeah.

So the first thing is it's a training process. So it's just like, you know, if you're gonna run a marathon, you don't just throw on some shoes and go 13 miles. You're gonna feel pretty bad.

I did that before. And I got the flu right afterwards. I ran a marathon without training. Well, maybe it was like three weeks of three miles at a time training. But it really wasn't training. And I was sick for days and I couldn't walk and I had the flu and it was just like miserable. I finished it, but my body said that was a big mistake. That's right.

Yeah.

And I paid the price later. Yeah.

And that's the same thing that happens with fasting, is that people go, oh, fasting is not for me. It didn't work for me. okay, well, I could say that, you know, that about a training that I didn't properly train for. So what we've got to do is start to slowly work people into this fasted state. And usually I tell people, you want to get pretty much to, like, 12 hours in the beginning. Can you go 12 hours every day? And then you might suffer a little bit, but check this out. In the suffering, your body's healing. So you're. It's called a hormetic stress. You're pushing your body just with enough stress that you're forcing it to repair itself. It's the same thing you do every time you go into the gym. You're stressing your body so the body repairs itself and makes itself stronger. So when you go into this fasted state around 12 hours, the body's repairing. Now, what I tell people is if you're suffering at 12, switch back to food and then go again next day, maybe go another 12, another 13 maybe. And then when that gets easy, you start compressing your eating window more and more, leaving longer time for fasting. So you just didn't train yourself.

Right. And is it better to fast in the morning or at night? Because some people wake up and they want to eat right away, but they say, I can skip dinner.

Yeah.

And some people say, well, you gotta skip breakfast and then you can eat a little later.

Yeah.

Is it, have you seen the data on skipping breakfast versus skipping dinner and the benefits for fasting?

Yeah. This is Hugely debated in the fasting world.

Really?

Yeah.

So I'm just gonna give an easy principle that everybody can grab onto. Eat when it's light out. When it's light out, you don't have melatonin in your system. The minute it goes dark, we get melatonin because we're trying to prepare for sleep. So when melatonin goes up, you're more insulin resistant. So the meal you eat at 8 o'clock at night is gonna be stored more as fat than if you have it at five in the afternoon.

Why is it so comforting to eat at night though?

I know.

It just is like, late night snack, you know, extra bowl of cereal for some reason.

You trained yourself.

I trained myself, right?

Yeah.

So when I eat when it's dark, what is happening to my body?

When you're eating when it's dark, you have a little bit of a hormonal dilemma going on because when it's dark, the body's preparing for sleep. And so if we're eating, then two things can happen. You're more insulin resistant, like I mentioned, but then your digestive system's shutting down because you're going into what we call a parasympathetic relaxed state. So if you go to bed with a full belly and that food is not going to be digested as well.

Really?

And so, I mean, there's a whole issue, a bunch of gut problems that can happen. You can, that food can ferment at night, which now starts to create more like you know, we can go down the path of Candida and fungus and that it's undigested food. Whereas if you eat at five, go for a walk afterwards, like you're using that glucose, your body has the ability to digest. So yeah, night eating's not good.

So what did you say? The digestion shuts down at night, is that what it does?

It just slows down.

It slows down.

It slows down.

So when you're asleep, let's say you have a meal or a snack, or even a few almonds or something, an hour before you go to bed.

Yeah.

Let's say you've eaten something. It could be ice cream, something healthy, something not healthy. And within an hour you're eating it, then you go to bed. What is happening to the digestion during that process of sleep versus if you were awake at noon and you had that food?

Yeah. So when you're asleep, the body is repairing. So the food is definitely not breaking down as easily at night. So again, it's sitting there, it's not being digested as efficiently. So from a digestion standpoint, better digestion at noon than you're going to have at 9:00. Now, you said something about what if you had a handful of nuts? What if you had, like, I think what you eat matters.

Okay.

So if I'll tell you something that I will often eat right before I go to bed is just, or at night if I'm craving it, is just a piece of really dark chocolate. One or two pieces, It helps that craving that you get. It doesn't spike my blood sugar because it's really dark chocolate. It's not a lot for the digestive system to work on. It's more like the big meals that we're talking about. Gotcha. That's gonna be a problem.

Something tiny and healthy is not that bad. That's right. But if you have a big meal an hour before bed, it's probably not going to digest. You're not getting the maximum nutrients out of that.

Yeah, yeah, the digestion. You're not gonna get as many nutrients and You're going to create a real change in the microbiome. You're going to see more of that Candida show up that's going to give you sugar cravings.

And it's not going to help you.

Burn fat at night either.

No, no, no.

Don't we burn the most fat when we're sleeping?

Yes.

Really? Yes. Why is that?

Yeah.

Well, think about what the body is doing when it sleeps. It's getting rid of anything that doesn't serve it. So there's some really interesting research on, like, 11 o'clock, certain organs repair. I know at two in the morning, the liver repairs, the adrenals repair, like your body goes through this massive like reboot. And so sleep is really important for that. Now this is something really interesting that I've thought a lot about and I wish we could reframe this. What is fat? So fat, all it is, is your body had to put excess somewhere. So it put excess glucose, it put excess hormones, it put excess toxins. So it stored it somewhere else so that it didn't store it in your organs, your internal organs. And when it stores it, if it stored it in your internal organs, your life would be shortened. So the body's so brilliant, it stores it somewhere else. But we do have fat in our internal organs, right? We do have visceral fat. Yeah, we do have visceral fat. And we don't want that. That's the worst. Yeah, that's the worst.

Yeah.

That's the body potentially had maxed out the other stores.

Really?

Yeah, it went inward.

Do we store fat first internally in our organs, then excessively on the outside, or is it outside first and inward?

Yeah, it's such a good question. So the three patterns are: first, when glucose goes up, it will be stored in the cells. So to me, fat is a largely stored glucose. So it goes to the cells. When the cells are swimming and they can't take all that glucose in, then it's going to start to go to the muscles because it's so brilliant. The body's like, Hey, I'm going to go pour in glucose because if we ever need to run from a tiger, I need to have those powered up and ready to go for your survival. Then if the muscles are saturated, it goes to the liver. And then usually at that point it's also stored in as fat. So it has a system of where it wants to store it based off of your survival because that's the number one priority of the body is to survive.

Right.

So what would you say is the difference between how men should be thinking about burning fat versus how women should be thinking about burning fat, unwanted fat?

Yeah. Oh, it's such a good question. And one I've never been asked before, and here I'm going to make a really bold statement that I don't think a lot of women will love, but it's part of living in a female body is that a little bit of, we're meant to have a little bit of fat.

Oh, don't say that.

I know, right? Like a little bit. I'm not saying like, but we're not meant to be skin and bones. We're meant to have a little bit of extra fat. It's part of the female body. And because here's what's interesting. Both men and women have, the body has one major thing it's focused on, which is survival. But women have too. We have reproduction. So our bodies always, it doesn't wanna be, think about when we're too thin, we bring calories down too much, our cycles stop.

Right.

So we need a little bit more padding to make the reproductive system work. Men don't need that.

And if a cycle stops for a woman, is that a bad thing?

Oh, it's a horrible thing.

Why is that bad?

Yeah, and thank you for asking that. I will say that one of the biggest ahas I've had from this book going out in the world is how many 20 and 30 year olds don't have a cycle.

Really?

So this is what women need to know. Your cycle is a detox. You are shedding the inner lining of your uterus and you are getting rid of what is not serving you. So it's not just a troublesome situation you have to deal with. Your body is getting rid of hormones, it's getting rid of toxins, it's how we detox.

Recycling.

Yeah.

It's kind of like a fast.

It's like a fast.

Really? So a cycle is detoxing and getting rid of toxic things in the female body.

That's right.

And it happens once a month, right? Every 28-30 days roughly.

28 to 32. No woman has the exact same, I mean, every woman's different, but 28 to 32.

Does it usually go in the same time for most women or when does it line up and why do you hear that some women and families or friends say, oh, our cycles are aligned. Does it have anything to do with astrology or the moon? Does it have to do with what you're eating, how you're sleeping, your environment, your mood cycles, your age? How does it all work?

It's kind of all of it.

Really?

So here's something that I think women really need to know that is, again, different than men. And that's that our bodies are always adapting to our environment.

Women's are.

Women's are.

So.

If we're restrictive too much with our calories, this is why I taught fast like a girl, when to fast and when not to fast. If we're too extreme with our exercise, if we're too extreme with our stress levels, whatever environment we're putting in, our hormones are like navigating that and adapting to that.

And your cycle will change based on that.

Your cycle will change based off of that.

Really?

I'll give you a great example. I had a friend who had, at the time she had two kids and was trying to get pregnant with a third. And she was struggling to get pregnant with a third. And she waited a year to go to this reproductive specialist who had her fill out mounds of paperwork. She goes, after a year of waiting, she sits down with this guy and he says, I'll tell you how you need to get pregnant. you need to stop doing so much.

Wow.

You need to stop stressing so much. And she was so upset, she left. And she's like, I waited a year, I filled out all that paperwork, and then she was like, and that's what he told me? And she goes, and then I decided to try it. And within a month she was pregnant.

Really? Why do you hear this a lot from, you know, women who say they can't get pregnant, and then you hear stories of, well, they were too much in control or they were stressing too much. And the moment you let go and surrendered, then they got pregnant. Why do we hear that so frequently?

Yeah, so if you think about it, if reproduction is a top priority for a female body, if you're under so much stress, the body is like, it's not safe to house a baby.

Interesting.

The body's always doing the right thing at the right time. So if it's not able to have a baby, the first thing you have to ask is, for the female is, does my body feel safe? And sometimes, you'll love this because you're such a mindset expert. I was gonna call you a guru. Your mindset guru. If you are thinking toxic thoughts, if you are constantly under, like not dealing with traumas in your life, if stress is really high, the body is always feeling like it's under threat. Your hormones will go massively out of balance.

Yeah.

So your hormones are connected to the way you think also?

Absolutely.

Do you think if a woman is subconsciously knows that they're in a relationship with the wrong person? They married the wrong person or they're trying to have kids with some man that subconsciously they know they're not supposed to. Do you think that their cycle will be off or they won't get pregnant because they think that way?

I think it's very possible.

Really?

There's some interesting studies. I wanna go back to the- 'Cause I don't feel safe.

Yeah.

Wow. You have to feel safe for your hormones to be balanced. That's why fasting didn't work for women to do all the time, because people, the body was like, Too stressful. It's too stressful. But cycling fasting works for women because you're using the principles of fasting to heal and you're using the principles of food to nourish yourself so the body feels safe and you do that in accordance with your hormones. and your cycle, and the body's like, I'm safe, I can release weight.

I want you to talk about cycling and fasting in a moment, but I think I just cut you off from something you were going to say.

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about, I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to talk about one study about birth control. That was really interesting. So we cycle together, women do, because as crazy as it sounds, we smell each other.

Really?

Yeah. So there's a scent that we give off and it changes our cycle. That's how powerful a woman's body is and how it will adapt to the environment it is in. So when you smell another woman who.

Has, it'll know when the cycle is happening and it'll sync up your hormones with theirs. Yes, but it's when you're in families.

And work and when you're constantly with that person. It's constantly. It's not like you go out into the world. It's not like you see your girlfriend.

Once a month and, oh, we're gonna sync up right now.

Because they're called pheromones.

Pheromones.

Isn't that crazy? That's fascinating.

Okay, second interesting study. What is the reason behind that, you know, pairing of cycles within families or communities? Is there a safety thing when you're both in the cycle at the same time?

Is it... That's a great question. I always go back to our primal caveman days. I'm like, why did they... Because that's where you can really see, why did we do that?

I guess men back in the day used to spread their seed a lot.

Maybe that was it.

There was a lot of, who knows? To multiple women at once. It's true. I mean, in tribal days it was like, okay, the man with the most money or the doctor or the whatever, the person with the most resources was able to kind of spread their seed to as many people as possible.

Yeah.

For survival.

Yeah, it's possible. I think there's something I wrote in both my books called the Hormonal Hierarchy. And it works in women because our hormones are more complicated. And the hierarchy looks like this.

Wait, you guys aren't simple?

We're not. Are you just speaking that out right now? We're not. It's so funny, so many men say to me like, you said it.

I didn't say it. I hear you.

And this is why I love conversations like this. Let's just, yes, we're not simple. and our moods constantly change.

Well, I think you can be simple when you understand a lot of this stuff as opposed to feeling like, I don't know how to understand. Why is, why am I feeling this way? Why are you feeling more stressed this time?

Yeah.

When we have awareness and we have an understanding of our, our body as a man, as our body, our hormones or different environment, things like that, we feel more at peace. It doesn't mean it's going to give us 100% peace, but we're going to feel like, okay, I have a sense of understanding around it.

That's right.

I think when women get understanding around their bodies, their cycles, their hormones, like why they're gaining weight and why they're losing weight and all these different things, when they are aware of it, they don't feel as bad or shameful or anxious or stressed about it.

Yes.

Right?

Yes, that's perfect.

But at least you have awareness.

You nailed it. And this is why I'm trying to open this conversation up so we can all talk about it. If you look at what we've done historically in our culture, is women don't, we don't want to talk about our periods, we don't want to talk about menopause, we don't talk about it. It's like a shameful thing that we have to hide. And that's now changing, which is really great. But if we can bring it to the surface and talk about it, men and women can understand each other, women can understand each other better. So it's so important that we bring it to the light. So, but here's what I want to go back to this fair.

I've got off so many different tangents.

I know, but you've got me thinking and excited. So here's what I think happens is in this hormonal hierarchy, in order for your sex hormones to be balanced, you have to be insulin sensitive. You have to have that system right, which is why I think Fast Like a Girl is so many women are getting their cycles back, they're getting pregnant for the first time because I help them see how to do that. Interesting. But what's in charge of insulin is cortisol. So like we talked about, well, okay, if cortisol is high, you become more insulin resistant and you have a harder time balancing sex hormones.

Cortisol is stress.

Cortisol is stress.

And is stress based on food stress, lack of sleep stress, environment stress, relationship stress, all of it?

All of it. Fasting raises cortisol.

Right.

Exercise raises cortisol, which is why we have to do it differently as women.

Interesting.

But at the top of that all is oxytocin. And this is why I think perhaps we smell each other and would cycle together. because women are meant to be in community. Because when oxytocin and we're connecting with each other, then cortisol goes down. This is why you should always let your gal go out on ladies night, always. Because now she gets oxytocin, it brings cortisol down, she's more relaxed. And then when she's more relaxed, now all the dieting and exercise that she wants to do is gonna work. And when that regulates insulin, now we can balance her hormones.

Wow.

So we're just humans in general, but women are geared towards connection.

And so what about, you know, so you mentioned cycling fasting or fasting while cycling, how do we know, how does a woman know when to fast and how frequently to fast based on their cycle?

So in Fast Like a Girl, I created something called the Fasting Cycle for women. And basically I walk through the whole menstrual cycle I'll give you the basic principles of it. Break it down for me. Yeah, and showed women, this is when you fast, this is when you don't fast.

And then I timed it to six different level fasts. Give me the 101 of a menstrual cycle. Okay, this is gonna be great. When does it start?

Or what happens the day it starts versus when it ends? Okay, great. And then you gotta go home tonight. And be like, this is what I learned.

Yeah.

And let me know how you tell Martha. Yeah, because it's really interesting. If more men understood this, I think you'd understand the women in your life more. Day one through day 10. Day one is the day you start to a woman bleeds. A lot of women don't realize that that's day one. So you have to use feminine care products. It's day one. So your hormones actually come crashing down at that point. And for the next 10 days, you're gonna specifically build a hormone called estrogen. Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. So keeping your carb load down, keeping fasting longer, exercising more, really, those first 10 days, a woman can do it then.

That's when you can fast and exercise more.

Yeah, yeah.

Day one through 10.

Day one through 10. And that's where keto works. That's where, you know, the whole low carb situation worked really well in those first 10 days. The other unique thing about estrogen is when cortisol shows up, She doesn't care as much. She's a little tolerant of cortisol. The other interesting thing for you to know with anybody who's got a woman in their life, those first 10 days when estrogen builds, estrogen, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, stimulates dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, BDNF, acetylcholine, glutamate. So she's going to be happy, focused, more outgoing, want to socialize more.

Really? The first 10 days.

Give her a couple days after she starts to bleed, but as she gets closer to day 10.

Because usually when it starts, you hear people say a little more moody, right?

I think that's because we don't mind the back half of our cycle.

Really?

So when I go all the way through, I'll explain that.

Okay, yes. Because Martha, my fiancee, she really doesn't get moody. She doesn't get cramping. It's really rare if she feels pain or feels, She might for like a couple hours be like, I just want like to cut a little bit more or something like that. But I don't know, maybe that's she.

Might be doing this right though. We're not meant to have PMS is because we're going against our natural rhythm.

Really?

Yeah.

Bad menopause symptoms also going against natural rhythms.

How many women do you think percentage wise have, you know, intense PMS?

Oh. I would say the majority of them.

Really?

But think about it. Women exercise the same all month long. Women eat the same all month long. Women don't think about, oh, progesterone's coming in. I maybe need to slow down my life a little bit right now. We don't talk like that until this moment in time. And this is what, again, another thing I'm trying to open up this conversation. So we have been trying to diet and exercise and live life very much like a man.

Right, especially in like the coastal cities you see, you know, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you see women going to the gym five, six days a week or getting up early and intense yoga, hot yoga every single morning. It's like you gotta get it in and you gotta work hard. And it sounds like yes, for a period of the month, but not the entire month.

Exactly.

Or for part of the week, but not the end every day.

Exactly.

That's what I'm hearing you say.

Yes.

Got it.

And that is, so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. But we, our hormones pulse in and out in a 28 to 32 day period. You all have one hormone. You have testosterone.

That's it.

That's it.

How many hormones do women have?

We have, well, sex hormones. Let's think. So we have three, but you also have estrogen, but you make testosterone, it goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. So the conversion happens in the brain. So all you have to think about is make more testosterone and you get it every 15-ish minutes.

Every 15 minutes?

Yeah, just pulses in.

Really?

Hormones are always pulsing. So they pulse in every 15 minutes and then it goes away. Then it pulses in and then it goes away.

Naturally.

Yeah, your highest in the morning, testosterone's highest in the morning.

Women- that's why men usually have, you know, extra sex drive in the morning.

That's exactly why men are, have a higher sex drive in the morning. Right, right. And it's a good time to work out. Is it the best time to work out, you think? Yeah, because you have all that testosterone. Energy, right?

Yep.

And muscle building.

So it's better to work out for muscle building and fat loss in the morning for men than it is at night, would you say?

Clinically, now, I want to be, because I've done this. Everyone's different, yeah. Yeah, I've done this enough time and I know the men will be like.

I work out at midnight and I burn fat and I get a six.

Pack and they're like, okay, well.

Yeah.

Right.

If you look at the rules of hormones for a man, well, all of us, it's better to work out in the morning because the other thing we both get is spikes of cortisol in the morning. And if you use cortisol by working out, you won't store it as fat.

Right.

We both metabolize it.

You feel relaxed, you feel more calm, you get more dopamine probably from the process of working out, I'm assuming.

That's right. But if you use testosterone for you all, When testosterone comes in, if you're lifting weights, you're gonna help build that muscle more. We only get testosterone, check this out, we only get testosterone a big surge of it day 11 to day 15.

You don't get it for 10 days? Yeah.

Really? It comes in in a big surge right in ovulation. So it's a great time for a woman to build muscle. It's, you're gonna notice her libido's gonna go up. Right, she's gonna wanna have sex during that. She's gonna wanna have sex more then. that one is like mind blowing, right? How many men and women are a mismatch? And again, this is purely obviously a heterosexual moment. But how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched right? But yet do we understand that women get that surge of testosterone in that five day period?

That's interesting. How do you time that up though? It's like, okay, day one, she's, and got her period, she started bleeding, right? And then you think, okay, 11 days from now. Let me put a mental note or put it in my calendar. Okay, this is gonna be the day, right?

Yeah.

That doesn't sound so sexy though, when you think about it. Let me mark this on my calendar and really be aware of when she's.

Gonna be available at the best time. Well, so here's what you can do is, I mean, I'm not saying don't have sex the rest of the time. I'm just saying you got a shot.

A big shot at that point.

Like, so just be aware of that. Sure, sure.

The woman may be more aroused. That's right. She might have more desire. Naturally.

And she can't even control it.

She can't, I mean, well, the body is surging with the hormones, right? Yes, yeah.

I mean, I guess you can mentally.

Block it, but the body is naturally more turned on.

The body is naturally more turned on. Okay.

I mean, yes, you can control anything, but I'm just saying the body, you.

Can'T block the hormones. I was thinking of like all these, this visual of like all these women.

Jumping on men, ah, ripping their clothes off.

That's right, it's not like that.

I can't control it.

It's not like that, yes.

But the body, unless you, I guess, medically or put some medication, you can't block these hormones, that's what you're saying.

That's right. Well, I mean, there are situations like birth control pill has blocking it.

That's blocking it.

Yeah, as well.

You're taking a medication to block.

It's changed it. It's synthetically directing it.

And when a woman has been on birth control for multiple decades, what challenges might come up in their bodies with their hormones?

Well, this is a major issue for women, especially the younger women, is because it takes a couple of years for the pattern of the brain and the ovaries to get to know each other. So if we come in with birth control a year after a woman started her period, there's never an internal innate sense of the body. And then we keep women on birth control until menopause and we take her off a menopause and now she has a serious hormonal issue that because she never learned that pattern. Wow. So that's one. Second one is horrible for the microbiome. It decimates the microbiome. And you need your microbiome to make serotonin, you need it for immune system, you need your microbiome to break down estrogen.

So when you take that pill, it's like a daily pill for like, what, 10, 12 days or something?

Yeah, it's on a pill.

It's like half the month.

You take it for two weeks?

Yeah, you have a cycle according to them. When you take it, you take it daily for like two weeks or whatever it is. What is in that pill and what is it doing to your gut microbiome?

Yeah.

And what is it doing to your brain?

Yeah.

Well, so it's controlling hormones for you. So you're adding in hormones into your body. So it's doing the controlling instead of the body and naturally doing it. Is that good? My opinion is no, but we have to really think about what the alternative is. We don't have any, and here's a question for you. I asked my 21-year-old son this recently. It's what has become standard for women to be the ones in charge of birth control. And when you look at the birth control pill, It is exogenously from the outside controlling our hormones, which is setting us up for a whole bunch of hormonal problems. There's some new research where they're looking at a pill for a man. That would change the semen.

The sperm, right?

The change sperm. Now would you take it?

I wouldn't take it.

Why wouldn't you take it?

Why would I want to block my body's natural way of being?

Then the same as goes for women.

Yeah, I'm not saying women should take it.

I know, but that's the, that is...

Well, and I also, I wouldn't take it unless they were like, listen, there are zero side effects. And right when you got off of it, you would be perfectly back to where your body was in sync. And your sperm would be just as optimized or healthy or powerful, whatever it is. And there wouldn't be, you know, you wouldn't hurt your sperm later. Then I'd be like, okay, well if there's decades of research and this is proven and babies are still okay afterwards, then I'd be like, oh, maybe. I don't know if I was 20 or something, but it's not something I would take right now.

So that's what's happening to women.

Really?

Is that we have manipulated our hormones and this is why women's health is in a really disastrous place right now. So I totally hear what you're saying and I would agree. Like, yeah, your logic is right, but we've been doing this to women forever.

Why? I mean, this is probably a whole nother subject, but why is birth control such a normal thing if it's so bad for women's bodies?

Yeah.

Why do we do it? It's because the alternative is nobody wants to have a child.

Young or old?

A young child.

Yeah. And we- what's more painful, hurting your body for decades and maybe a lifetime? You know, having a child young, I get it's a big risk and there's a lot of pain and pressure that could come to that, along with a lot of beauty and wonder and magic as well.

But at what price- Somewhere along the line, we decided that the woman was in charge of the birth control process. And we didn't think, and I will, I will say this with as much kindness as I can.

Yes. And I'm not here to judge people. Yeah, no, me either. My sisters were both on birth control for a long time. That's one of the reasons why I asked because one of my sisters was on birth control, I think, for two decades.

Yeah.

And she couldn't get pregnant. Right. And it was devastating for like four or five years. She was trying and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up. She was just like in tears for months. Yep. Sad that she wasn't able to have a child.

Yep.

And there were some other complications. I can't remember the terminology of things, of something she had, but it wasn't in her cards anymore. And she was in her late 30s and she was devastated. And then she got off of birth control and just said, okay, well I guess I'm not gonna be a mom. And then four or five years later, she was able to have a child. It kind of magically happened. And now she's got an amazing one and a half year old. so it's a beautiful thing now, but it was really scary and painful for many, many years. And, you know, it's sad to see. And it affected her hormones and different things.

Yeah.

It took time for the body to re-regulate.

That's it exactly. I mean, you just painted the picture that so many women are struggling with. And so when we come in with an outside source to manipulate our hormones, when we get off of that outside source, We don't have a natural rhythm. And that's honestly one of the things that I'm seeing with Fast Like A Girl when I go and read my reviews and see how people are responding to it is I just gave a lifestyle that allowed women to get back into routine with their hormones. So it's awesome she has it now. It took her four to five years. But what I'm hoping is that we can use lifestyle as a way to give that rhythm back.

Right.

And you said between day 11 and 15, that's when there's a surge of testosterone for women in their cycle. What happens after day? that's when they can be working out harder. That's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more.

Well, so day one through day 10, you can do the hard workouts. Day 11 to day 15, you get the most amount of testosterone you'll ever get. You have the most amount of estrogen you'll ever have and a little bit of progesterone. So let's talk about that period because it's a really cool period. So testosterone is libido and motivation and drive. Estrogen, she's gonna wanna talk to you. She wants to have a ca- so if you wanna have sex with her, you better talk to her first. Because during that time, she's got estrogen, she wants to verbally process with you.

So her brain- Especially late at night. When you just wanna sleep.

Yeah.

Her brain is on fire. And then she's got progesterone, so she's a little bit calm. So that is, I called it in the book, the Manifestation Phase. because I was like, oh, we are super, are superpowers. Like we put on our hormonal superpower cape and we could manifest a baby, we can manifest a raise, we can manifest some new project at work because all our hormones show up then.

So for those four days, is it just you're sharper, you're more focused, you're more energized, you're clear, you're like goal oriented during those days. You know what you want to create.

That's how we should be. So women listening that are like, I don't feel like that. I'm going to ask you to look at, are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones?

Okay.

So let's go to your fiance, who is like, this is kind of, you know, her period and menstrual cycles, easy. She's probably, if she looked at it, is living in accordance with her hormones.

She is. She's doing amazing. She's got great family relationships, great friendships, she's got a meaningful work that she loves. Eats very well, you know, very clean. She rests well. She's positive and joyful. She has an attitude of just gratitude and giving and thoughtfulness and accepting. She doesn't hold on to grudges. She has a calm mind in the sense that it's not a rigid mind. She lets go of things.

That's amazing.

She creates boundaries and lets go of things. She forgives people. so she doesn't have a lot of stress and tightness internally. I think that allows her to flow and not be in pain or have PMS or be like cramping a lot or off cycles.

You nailed it. I mean, you just gave the formula for oxytocin.

Really?

So she gets a lot of oxytocin is what I just heard.

All day.

Yeah.

So it's balancing everything else out.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's day 11 to 15.

Yeah, day 10, day 11 through 15 is that ovulation manifestation period. Lifestyle wise, this is something interesting that I've been really deep into thinking is if women have the most amount of testosterone then why don't we use that to build muscle? So maybe you've had him on your show. Do you know Tony Horton?

I know Tony. I don't know him that well, but I haven't had him on yet. Yeah.

You should bring him on. He's a funny guy.

Yes.

So he and I created a program together last year, a fitness program called PowerSync 60. And we took his genius of putting workout programs together with my knowledge of hormones. And so it's out there. in the world, you can find that.

Very cool.

But I brought it to him. I'm like, why don't you have a monthly calendar for women's workouts? Why do we have a weekly calendar? And so we put a lot of weight lifting in during that time. That's the time you wanna live heavy weights for women so that you can build more muscle.

That's interesting. Okay, so after day 15, then what?

Okay, so then after day 15, and then also fasting during that manifestation, keep it low. You don't want it really high. You've got, you know, eat more like foods that support good gut health. Be mindful of your liver, maybe chill out on the alcohol a little bit so you can break all those hormones. Yeah.

Okay.

Then you come out of ovulation and all the hormones crash again. So it's kind of like this is, you'll notice it in our attitude, we have like we're up, we're down, we're up, we're down because that's how our hormones go. So when the hormones go low, you can fast more. So that's a time where you could go into some longer fasts. You can do harder workouts like day 11 to day 19. I'm sorry, day 15, 16 to day 19.

You can fast longer. So you can go, what, 10 to 12 hour fasts or... Well, longer is like 16.

36, 48.

48 hour fasts. Okay, so during those days you can go longer.

You can go longer. Yep.

You can go two days without it. Wow.

Yep.

And what do you consider a fest?

Anything that doesn't raise your blood sugar.

So... What can you consume?

Yeah, so water, mineral water, tea, coffee. You can do MCT oil if you want to do butter in your coffee, that works.

Yeah.

You just need to make sure it doesn't raise your blood sugar.

Okay.

But so there's actually apple cider vinegar, water, if you want... Do electrolytes. You can do electrolytes, yeah. It just can't have a sugar or a sweetener of any kind. You can have salt, like element. Salt is really—Elemente is amazing. You can do that during a fast. Yes. Yes. Do you know that Elemente was actually created for fasters? Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. So the idea was to— I love it. I do, too. The idea was to put it in water when fasters so that they're getting those magnesium, sodium, and potassium so the body can fast better.

Interesting. So you can do a few packs of that a day.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. So that's day 16 to 19.

And then day 20 hits and everything-.

At the end of the cycle.

Yeah.

So day 20 hits and progesterone appears. Okay. So progesterone is the outlier. She does not like stress. So you shouldn't be fasting. You shouldn't be pushing your workouts. You should slow your social calendar down if you can. You should slow down your workouts. That's more yoga, Pilates, hiking, make that your recovery time. That's not a time to push extreme anything. In the book I call it the nurture phase because I want women to nurture themselves. But if we go back to the libido topic, it also can be a great time if you want to connect with the women in your life during that time. Foot rubs, kind comments, shoulder rubs, like, Be gentle, be gentle with us, and you will get a better version of us.

Right.

I mean, if you do that every day with a woman, you'll probably get a better version of it.

That week is the one that really matters.

If you talk kindly, if you rub it back every day, it's probably gonna be a better day. And so what is, okay, so this is a 20-day cycle.

Yeah.

Menstrual cycle for women.

Well, and then you do that until she bleeds, until she's 10 or 12.

More days, or eight days later. until she bleeds, then it starts all over again.

It starts all over again. So the women that are having really heavy PMS, the women, a lot of menopausal women that get a lot of clotting when they start to bleed, they have really bad periods. It was the week before they didn't mind.

Really? Yeah.

So that's, if you, if you bring, and, oh, here's the other thing about progesterone. You have to bring glucose up. So this is why almost every woman I talk to and I know there's a few outliers out there because I'll get that question, but we crave carbs, we crave chocolate. We don't wanna sit on the couch, we're not as outgoing, but we've taught ourselves to push through that time. So there's a reason you crave carbs. You gotta bring that glucose up so that you have enough fuel source for progesterone to be made.

So what are the key steps then during that 10 day period, or I guess really during the whole cycle, to optimize your lifestyle for hormones. Yeah.

Well, it would be in the front half of it. Let's make it as simple as possible. The front half of your cycle, all the extremes that you want to do.

Okay.

Whatever it is. Work, working out, dieting, fasting typically does better in the back half of your cycle. There needs to be more nurturing and more recovery.

It's interesting because you would think as a man that when your woman starts her period, that's when you would want to take it easy on her. Or like make sure she relaxes and chills out. That's what I would think. Like, okay, she's on her period, she's probably gonna be moody or whatever. That might be the way of thinking. But what I'm hearing you say is like, that's the time to push things, like more than normal. That's the time to like get organized, work out, you know, fast. and to be more in the drive phase versus the nurture phase.

The nurture happens before.

Right before it.

Right before it.

So like- Days or period starts, like let's get into action.

Well, the first two days, you give us a couple days.

Okay, I'm just trying to get clear here. Trying to get clear here.

Like the first two days, remember the, we went from progesterone really building, a little bit of estrogen comes in, and then our uterine lining sheds.

Okay.

So the first two days, we're detoxing. Detoxing. Yeah, those are kind of magical days. We have access to both sides of our brain. So we may still feel a little more inner. Okay. But on day three, we start coming outward more, and that's when we can push it more.

So good to know. So the day the menstrual cycle starts, when she starts bleeding, wait a couple of days until you get things into action is what you're saying. That's right.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right, this is good. This is very helpful, I think. I mean, what else should men know or women know about their cycle?

I think the biggest challenge I'm seeing and why we have all these hormonal problems is that just women need more rest and recovery. And it's a really hard concept because...

How do you tell a woman that in the modern world today to say, women, you need more rest and recovery. You shouldn't be pushing as hard. You shouldn't be as driven. in certain days of the month. And that's not what your body wants.

Yeah.

It's hard for, I would think that it's hard for a modern woman who is very independent, who makes their own money, who's got a great job, who is in control of their life.

Yeah.

Maybe a little too much.

Yeah.

For their home owners liking. It's probably hard for them to hear that.

Yeah, it is. And I am one of those women, just so we're clear, like I'm not Here, like, like, proselytizing a Puritan lifestyle. I'm here saying that what we did to keep up with the patriarchal world, which to me just means the power to be at the table with men and be there where we deserve to be, is we forgot that we do need more rest and recovery. So we get to choose where that is. So let me give you a couple examples. That week before your cycle for women, Maybe you don't, if you have a lot at work, then don't tack on a whole new workout and really stress yourself working out. And don't tack on a fast, don't tack on rigid diet routines. There needs to be something that's nurturing you during that time.

Don't go out every night of the week.

That's right. And if you do that, then you can come into the front half of your cycle and you're going to be, you're working with your hormones, so you actually will be more powerful. I mean, and again, let's just, if we look at hormones, we have three hormones and these three hormones are making all kinds of neurotransmitters in our body. So on a neurochemical level, we're a little more superior. Just saying.

Okay. If you are in alignment with those hormones.

That's right. But we've never been in alignment with it. Wow.

Or maybe we have in the past, right?

But- maybe primal days.

Right, exactly. So when women are in alignment with their hormones, they are unstoppable.

Bingo.

But when they're out of alignment, they're just hurting themselves.

Absolutely. A thousand percent.

Wow. This is fascinating.

Right? So, but we do everything very similar in lifestyle to men. And we need to realize that we are living in a different body. So I don't know. A lot of people don't want to hear that though. They don't want to hear that. So like you could do, it could be as simple as the week before your period, get to sleep a little bit earlier. Yeah. You know, do more yoga and then go to work and kick butt at work. But maybe if there's a big project that you're about, that you have control over, could you start it at the.

Front half of your cycle, not at the back half. Just goes back to know thyself. That's right. Know thyself, study yourself, understand how your body your mind, everything works. Be a student of yourself and your health, for sure.

That's right.

So there's three hormones that women have, right? And there's one that men have.

Well, one, you have two because you have estrogen, too. It just is made in the brain.

Gotcha. The main one that's being generated is testosterone. And the three for women are progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone.

Okay.

So what I'm hearing you say is that men should fast differently than women.

Yeah.

And men, can we fast daily? Is there a time where we should stop fasting? Yes. Can we do intermittent fasting every day for years? Should we take a break day, you know, weekend? What should we be doing?

Yeah. So again, let's go back to our primal friends and let's think about them. So you can fast, you don't have anything to cycle it to. You can, you do really well with fasting and you just have to have moments where you're feasting too. so let's go. The man comes out of the cave in the primal days, he goes hunting for food, he's now clicked over, maybe it takes a long time to find a make a kill, so he's clicked over into that ketogenic energy system, he finally makes a kill, comes back home, brings it to the cave and cooks it up and feasts. So if men stay in a fasted state all the time without stepping out and eating.