Fasting for Mental Clarity, Energy, and Hormone Balance with Dr. Mindy Pelz

So many women have written off like, oh, your cycle is just a terrible thing.

This is what I'm trying to demystify. It is not a terrible thing. Our hormones are our superpower, and if you learn how to work your lifestyle to match them, you will witness your body in a new way.

Mindy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait for this conversation. So thank you for having me.

Yes, I'm so excited too. And we just. We literally just got stopped by my podcast producer and said, stop talking about all the good stuff before the podcast starts because already I feel like, number one, you're so easy to talk to. Learned that very quickly.

Yeah. Thank you.

You walked in.

Thank you.

And number two, I know that you are just a wealth of knowledge and I can't wait to for people to hear this podcast because I shared with you that a lot of the audience is entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs or big dreamers, and it is about the person who's going to carry those dreams out. It's about the vehicle that we carry these dreams out in.

Yeah.

And you actually shared a quote with me right away that I really loved. Would you share that?

Yeah, it was a quote that actually a friend said, which was the trauma of a CEO becomes the. The capacity block or another way, or the ceiling of the company. And I think you could say the health of the CEO becomes the ceiling of the company. So it's either way, but it's working on yourself first and business follows. Yeah, absolutely.

And just that's going to be where, if you think about. In business, if your business is stuck, you can kind of start to look at yourself. What part of me is this?

Yeah, I think that's the first place to look when your business is stuck is go within. When I was in clinical practice, that was always. Whenever there was a growth moment that was blocked that we couldn't break through, I would always say, okay, what is inside me that needs to change in order for my practice to change? So it's an inside out way of looking at life, and I just resonate with that so deeply.

Yeah. Do you think other people were looking at that?

That's a great question. I mean, it's really interesting having a. Now I've closed my practice because we do everything online now and we have a team of around 30 people. And because what we do is educating women on health. Most of my team is female, and there is an expectation, a gentle expectation of what I Call live it to lead it. If we're going to live, if we're going to lead this type of lifestyle, then we need to live this type of lifestyle. And everybody seems congruent with that. But as you know, as a boss, I can't tell you what to eat, I can't tell you how to take care of your health. But I think, as I've noticed, my staff is the ones that have fully embraced what we're teaching, have the most vibrancy, they have the best stamina, their mental clarity is great. So I think they figure it out for them themselves.

So you wrote a book that you are kind of on a never ending tour right now. People just keep wanting to talk about it.

They do.

So you launched, but everyone's like, no, you're coming on my show, you're doing this, you're doing that, because it's a hot topic. So your book Fast Like a Girl and you've also written another book, but this one, this one was this last year. And you take into account women's hormones, menstrual cycles, all of the things that weren't originally thought about when we learned fasting. Yep, I had fasted and still do once in a while. I probably am doing it more like you're teaching, but I fasted for about seven years and I loved it, still actually love it, but want to learn more about it, which is why I feel like you're in my atmospheres. I'm like, oh, I want to learn more about how to do it where I feel a little better. So tell me about why this book, like, what was inspired by this book.

Well, so originally everybody always says, well, how did you figure out how to time hormones and fasting? It was because I was my first patient. I at, I'm 54 now and at about 43, all my hacks for health like went away. So I am, I was a competitive tennis player in my younger years. I loved working out. I've always eaten really well. I detox, did everything right. Yeah. And at 43, my health just started to unravel and. And yet I was doing everything right.

Oh, man.

So, like, I didn't get why it was unraveling. And so that's when about that time fasting started to come to the surface. And Jason Fung wrote a book called the Obesity Code. And he was, he really gets a lot of credit for bringing this to the mainstream world. And in the obesity Code, he was the first ones to say weight loss is not about calorie in calorie out. Weight loss is a hormonal issue, and the hormone you want to balance is insulin. So he started this huge fasting movement of people that I call o matters. One meal a day, people. Everybody just started eating one meal a day, leaving all this time for fasting. And they lost a ton of weight. So as he was over there teaching that I was discovering the principles for my own perimenopausal body, I started teaching how to fast in a cyclical way. I was doing it for hormones in my patient, with my patients, in my clinic. And one day somebody said to me, you know, you should probably teach this on for, you know, for the world. How about you do a YouTube channel? And I was like, okay, I guess. I guess I could do that. And so I put a couple of videos up about fasting and the benefits of fasting and the benefits of fasting for Women on my YouTube channel. And one day, one of those videos took off. Wow. And it went viral. And my channel just. Just grew. And it was all with women who said, I loved fasting, but my. I lost my hair. I love fasting, but I lost my cycle. I loved fasting, but I'm really anxious and depressed now. Even though I'm the weight, I want to be like, the stories from women just poured on to our channel, and I just started listening and tweaking and trying to understand how a woman was supposed to fast. And here we are. I mean, there's 63 million views on that channel now. And so many women gave me so much feedback. And we perfected, you know, as a group of. Of humans, I give them a lot of credit. We perfected a formula for women and fasting that works.

Oh, my God. So tell me what that looked like when you were. Because you said you were the guinea pig. You were the first person.

I was the first guinea pig.

What were you first noticing because you had started fasting?

Yeah.

What were some of the things that you first started noticing about it that didn't, like, weren't necessarily working for you?

Yeah. So when I learned how to fast, what I was noticing at 43. Let's start. There was weight gain for no particular reason, because my hormones were shifting. And we can talk a little bit about why that was. Then when I started to fast, I lost weight. My mental clarity, energy, everything felt great. But then I lost my cycle. So at, like, 45, I lost my cycle. Wow. And I thought, okay, am I going to menopause? But if you look at hormones, you want to have your hormones as a woman, as long as you possibly can. Because estrogen is very protective to our brain, to our cardiovascular system. So if you're going into menopause at 45, not a great situation. The average age to go into menopause is 52. So I went to a friend, and I was like, wow, do I love fasting. But my gosh, like, I lost my cycle. And it was actually a male friend, and he said to me, you need to step out of fasting. And so that's when I started to really look at the nuance of, oh, there's a time for a woman to fast and a time for a woman not to fast.

Okay.

And when I applied that rhythm to my own life, my cycle came back, and I. I just went into postmenopause now at. At 54, finally in postmenopause. So it was really learning that a woman's body needs it sometimes and sometimes not.

Okay, so what's the idea? Let's back up. For anyone who doesn't understand why fasting is beneficial, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. So this is the best way I can explain it.

Okay.

Everybody always says, my metabolism. Oh, I did this. It sped up my metabolism. Or I can't tell you the number of times people would come into my clinic and go, I think my metabolism has slowed down. So, so here's the deal. We. We actually have two metabolisms. One that gets triggered when we eat, and one that gets triggered when we don't eat. And we, as humans, this is for both men and women, we are meant to switch in and out of these two metabolisms. So whenever we're talking about food, we're talking about what I call the sugar burner metabolism. Okay. So you eat food, it turns into glucose. Glucose goes into the cell, stimulates the mitochondria of the cell, and the mitochondria makes something called ATP, which is energy. But the mitochondria also needs other fuel sources, and one of those is a ketone. So the second metabolism is your fat burning system, metabolic system. And this you can only trigger in the absence of food. And you have to go at least 8 hours, 12 is best. And we can talk about all the different times to be able to get over into the fat burner system.

Wow.

When you metabolically switch over into the fat burner system, what happens is the liver senses the decrease in glucose and it starts to make a ketone. And how it makes that ketone is by burning fat. So it finds the fat in your body burns. It makes this ketone that ketone goes into your cell and supercharges you. So the sugar burner system, fat burner system, you are meant to metabolically switch in and out of these two systems. If you are never making a ketone, you've never in your life made a ketone, you are depriving your cells of half of their fuel source. The brain also needs. Half of its fuel source is ketones. So if you never metabolically switch into this fasted state, never making a ketone, you are depriving your brain of half of its fuel source.

Wow.

And the beautiful part, if you're in a. If you're looking for weight loss is that when you switch in and out and you give your body glucose and you give it ketones, the only way you can make ketones is by burning fat.

Okay, so in the window you had mentioned, you said it needs at least 12 hours. What's the optimal window? And how did you set it up? Like, how have you found for people? Has been like, the most, maybe, I don't know, for lack of a better term, like realistic or doable.

Yeah. So I laid out in the book six different length fasts, and they were all based off of research that I saw and then off of seeing what worked for women. So the first one is a typical intermittent fasting. And it's when you're. When you go without food, anywhere from 12 to 16 hours, your body switches over and it starts to make these ketones. 17 hours without food, the body starts to sense those cells, go, hmm, food's not coming in. I think what we need to do is get rid of anything inside this cell that's no longer working. So the cell literally detoxes itself. It's called autophagy. At 24 hours, the whole gut resets itself. You get intestinal stem cells that kick in 36 hours. The research shows that the body really goes after that stubborn weight that you can't let go of. We'll do that. At 36 hours, 48 hours of fasting, the whole dopamine system gets rebooted. And 72 hours, anything in your immune system that's not working goes away and new, specifically, white blood cells will be restored.

Wow. So we were chatting before this because I was just sharing, like, I did a long fast at one period just to kind of prove it to myself. And I had heard some great things that really inspired me.

Yeah.

When you're doing those longer fasts or who do you recommend those longer fasts for? And we did talk about there's Like a history to fasting.

Oh, yeah.

Like a long way back, Beginning of time. Can we share, can you share a little bit about that?

Yeah. I was thinking, yeah. There was this man named Jesus.

Jesus kind of. Jesus was a trendsetter like everyone. He had no idea.

Yes. And he went long periods without.

So popular in la.

He's super popular in la. He's kind of well known. And he fasted a bunch. Oh my God. Too good. Every religion has fasting in it. And what's really interesting and actually is at the core of like a bit of a dilemma for me and teaching fasting is, is I understand that a lot of people want to use it as a weight loss tool. And I always say if you want to use it as a weight loss tool, go ahead and come to the fasting party to lose weight. But I'm going to ask that you stay at the party to learn about all the other things that fasting can do. And one of them is this deep spiritual insight. You talked about the seven day fast you went on. When you go that long without food, the insight, the inspiration, the downloads are insane.

Insane.

Yeah.

I had no idea that was gonna. Someone had told me a little bit about theirs. So I think I was so curious about unlocking that potential. So I, I didn't understand though, how clear things would be.

Yep.

And the amount of energy I actually experienced, don't get me wrong, there were some, there were some dips, but for the most part it was almost as if I understood. Well, I 100% understood that energy doesn't necessarily only come from food.

Yeah.

Because there is an outer source that I was getting fueled by. That was. It blew my mind.

Yeah. The first time I learned fasting, I. Every January I would pull all my patients together and I would say, okay, here's what we're going to do for the new year. This is how we're going to set our intention with our health. And they would bring family and guests. So there was. I had just discovered fasting and I thought, okay, I've been teaching nutrition to my patients, now I need to tell them to not eat. How the heck am I going to prove to them outside of the research that they're not going to pass out? So I said, okay, well, why don't I go on a really long fast and give the presentation in a fasted state? So I did it. On the fifth day of a water fast, I presented to a couple hundred people in this church and I basically said, showed them all the science and you could see the look on everybody's face was like a little dubious. And then I just revealed I have not eaten in five days.

Wow.

And people were convinced. And I think you do not know until you go into it the amount of mental clarity and energy that you will get. And that's a ketone. When you make ketones. I think of ketones. You know the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper?

Love that movie.

You know how he takes the pill and he can like speak all those lines? That's a ketone. It supercharges you and your mental clarity, your energy. I mean, everything about you becomes more vibrant. And you would think in the absence of food, that would be the opposite. And it's not.

That's so interesting. So have you done. I think I want to know more about the. Do you know about the history of.

Fasting in which, in, in like the spiritual. I know every religion has had it, but. And I know they do it as a devotional. What's interesting is actually Ramadan. There's. I, I, when I first started looking at studies and studies on women, the ones that I found the most on were from, for. From Ramadan. Wow. Yeah. Because they've been doing it. Yeah. Every year they do it.

Yeah. That is really crazy. And I, I think the seven day thing, what it did for me is understand why they did do that in religion.

Yeah.

Is because you do hear things like you, you know, we talk a lot about just, you know, intuition and listening to yourself and your soul or whatever that means to you. But truly I understood that food can sometimes be a block. Like you can block yourself if you're not eating well and you know, doing the things that is not great for your body. But that's so interesting that your body literally has a reward system for not eating right. Like, like, please give me a rest.

Yeah. The best way to understand it is we're a hybrid car, we operate off glucose and we operate off ketones. Hybrid car works off electricity and off of gas. So if you're not accessing both fuel sources, you're actually not using your body to its full potential. And then outside of that, where I've come to learn how to use fasting from a mental health spiritual standpoint is anytime I have a problem I can't, I can't work out, I throw a couple day fast at it. And every single time the answer gets revealed to me. So, you know, Jesus was onto something.

He really, really was. He so was. And I just want to mention I did a seven day fast just once. Like that was something for me. It was a challenge. One of my friends had done it and gave me like just told me something amazing had happened for them. So if we're going to do that, if we want to do what you had just mentioned, is it like a one day fast? Is it a two day fast? And how is that structured?

Yeah, I think it, you gotta think of these longer fasts as like a marathon. If you're gonna train for a marathon, you wouldn't just slap on some shoes and go run 20 miles.

Right.

You would do like two and then you might do 10 and you would slowly build up. I believe fasting should be the same way. And that's why I wanted to put these six different length fasts out for women to give them choices. And so I think you should if you start with 13 hours, so see how you do try it consecutive days as you get comfortable with that. Then maybe one day a week, you stretch it to 17 hours. It'll be uncomfortable and that's okay because in the discomfort is where the body repairs itself. So if you're willing to hang in there through the discomfort. And you probably had this in your seven day fast.

Yes, definitely.

Like moments where you're like, I don't know if I can do this. So many moments and then something switches you over and all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, I'm not hungry.

It would just take over.

Yeah. And that's because the other fuel source, the ketones kick in.

Yeah.

So you practice with the longer fasts. I find by the time you can get to 24 hours pretty comfortably, you could effortlessly do a three day water fast. But we've now, I mean we've now taken millions of people that I've never met through three day water fast. We just did with my publisher in January we did 100,000 people in one week coming together, which talk about spiritual, you know, bring 100,000 people together for one benefit.

Wow.

And that was their health was the way we looked at it. But you could bring it together. I mean it would be interesting to bring a bunch of entrepreneurs together. You could do, of course churches do that. You can lead people successfully through these three day water fasts. And, and knock on wood, we have not had one situation where somebody has had to go the emergency room or any. Because the body was meant to fast.

Wow. I can't imagine just the like the insights and conversations and probably even crazy friendships that came out of doing something because that is, that's kind of a big moment for A lot of us, we've never, ever, many of us have not ever been taught that not eating is good for you.

That's right.

Like I grew up in the 80s, like all they wanted us to do was eat, you know.

Right, yeah. Or eat more and your, your metabolism will be faster. Yes.

Eat more.

Yeah.

I went through the whole like six meals, eight meals. I was in the fitness industry for a while and should I be eating eight meals? I mean, I was exhausted just eating little meals all the time.

So it's funny because I, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the six meal a day thing and I can't, I, I, I can't find any research that can show me that each time you eat you speed up your metabolism. If anything, you should look at your 24 hours as I have an eating window and I have a fasting window and all of your food should be eaten in a certain time period and you're leaving longer time periods for not eating. And when you look at the research on that, like the greatest study ever done or one of the greatest, there's so many good ones was done on 16, 8. So that's 16 hours of fasting, 8 hour eating window. And basically what they found was that you could eat whatever you wanted. You could eat the worst western standard, horrible inflammatory, high sugar diet. And as long as you ate that in eight hours, leaving 16 hours for rest, for fasting, you were metabolically immune from high blood pressure, from gaining weight, from cholesterol going up, from inflammation going up because you gave your body 16 hours of rest.

I mean, I can attest to that because I went from, you know, being in the fitness industry for a long time, like meticulously really watching my food and then getting to a place where my life got busier. I, you know, my job got busier, traveling became more, and that became something that was really challenging to like eat in these certain windows and get healthy food all the time. And so that's when I started dabbling in intermittent fasting. And I just noticed I was able to stay the same like with eating things that I actually like, enjoyed a little more. There was a lot more wiggle room to what I was doing and my energy went way up. That was huge for me. I noticed that I just had all of this energy in the afternoon that I wasn't having. I was that girl that three o' clock was like, I just, oh my God. I was like, I can't go on, I just want to sleep. So tell me about someone who's Curious about it right now. How do we. You let us know about the time frames. But how do we set that up as women? Like with our cycles and with hormones, how do we know what to watch for? What can we tweak? How do we ease into.

Yeah, it's, it's. And this is such a good question. And this is where women kept tripping on themselves as they were practicing fasting. So here's the best way to understand this. Men work off a 24 hour hormonal cycle, so every 15 minutes or so they get testosterone and then it like pulls them. I know. You know? Have you ever heard I was on Diary, the CEO, I was on Stephen Bartlett podcast. And he's like, what? And I'm like, yeah. You know what we say about you?

You gotten it four times.

Yeah. I'm like, he. I'm like, you know what we say about you goes. You say stuff about us. I'm like, yes. We say, if you, if you don't like what your male mate likes, just ask him in another 15 minutes because you might get a different answer because testosterone might be at a little different spot. That's so good.

Yeah, thank you for that tip.

There's my marital tip for you.

Thank you so much.

Yes. Yeah. So he. So men really are simple. They make testosterone. Testosterone goes up into the brain and converts to estrogen. And they get this every 15 minutes or so. It's a 24 hour cycle. We are not that simple. So we operate off of three hormones, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. And it's built off a monthly cycle. And estrogen loves when you fast. So whenever estrogen's coming in, go ahead and fast, which is day one of your cycle all the way through day ten. Estrogen's gonna peak at ovulation. That whole front half of your cycle. Go ahead and fast. It's an amazing time. In fact, one of the things I think I'm the most proud of is when I look at my Amazon reviews, how many women got pregnant using the strategies that I talked about in the book? Because they cleaned up estrogen. So all of a sudden their estrogen system was so much more balanced, they went into ovulation and had a better ovulation.

Wow.

Super cool.

So the beginning of your period is a good time to fast.

That's right. Okay.

I would have thought opposite. Just because your cravings are up. So what happens around that?

Okay, I'm going to tell you because this is what I want every woman to know. Then during ovulation, you get the most amount of testosterone. So the other thing to know, as women, we only get testosterone, this strange little five day period called ovulation.

Wow.

The rest of the month we have very, very low levels of testosterone. Hmm. So another tip for the men listening who are in relationships with a woman, she's got a four to five day period when testosterone goes up and then it's gone. So the. But once we come out of ovulation and we go into the back half of our cycle, the hormone progesterone is what's going to show up and peak. Progesterone has to peak for the uterine lining to shed. Progesterone wants glucose to be higher. Progesterone does not want you to fast. And you know how we know this? What do we crave before our periods?

I mean, I crave sugar, carbs.

Every woman I have not. I mean, surely there's some women out there, but almost every woman I talk to says, I crave sugar, I crave carbs, I crave chocolate. Of course. Because progesterone needs glucose to be higher. Every woman I've ever put a continuous glucose monitor on, when we get to that part of their cycle, they're like, I'm not doing anything different and my glucose is going higher.

Interesting.

I'm like, yeah. Because progesterone think of it like a chemistry experiment. Progesterone needs more glucose to be able to make her appearance. That's what she is made out of is glucose. So what was happening in the fasting world is all, in the keto world it was the same thing. All these women were going into this low carb, low sugar experience the week before their periods. And that's how the, and athletes, we hear of athletes losing their cycle all the time because they're not minding the rules of progesterone. And so that's the worst time to fast, it's the worst time to push your workouts, it's the worst time to stay up all night. Cuz progesterone wants glucose to be high and cortisol to be low. When you don't honor that, the week before your period, when your period starts, you have cramps, you have cravings, you are irritable. So that whole thing about us feeling horrible when our period starts happened because we didn't take care of what progesterone needed the week before.

Wow, she's a diva.

She's a total diva. Give me what I mean, they're both divas.

Yeah, totally. Okay, so how do we set up the week before. Give me that rundown one more time. Cause my mind is blown right now. Give me the week before. And then how do we set up the week of our period to feel better?

So around day 20, progesterone's gonna come roaring in. Okay, so you need to eat more carbs. Okay, let's start with that one.

Yep.

This is not a box of pizza and a tub of ice cream. Bummer. This is, I'm just kidding. Sorry.

I'm trying to get that out of you.

Yeah, this is, this is nature's carbs. So the, this is your squashes. Butternut squash is one of my favorite. Yeah, yeah. Sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are progesterone's best friend potatoes. Tropical fruits, Mangoes, papayas, bananas. Some of the higher glycemic fruits. Al. Always, greens are always good, but things that you typically, if you go low carb, will avoid. So whatever nature provides that can give you more carbs like that, that, so you want to bring your carbs up, but do it with nature's carbs. Don't, don't do it with refined carbohydrates. It's because I, I, that is another whole story that we can talk about later. Then you don't want cortisol to go up.

Okay.

So that means if you are fasting, if you are pushing a workout, if you are pushing your work schedule, if cortisone, cortisol goes high, progesterone's out. So I'll give an example. One of the biggest things I've seen in putting this book out is that so many 20 and 30 year olds have lost their cycle right now. Yeah, it's a big problem. The other thing I want to. My new passion and is coming out in my next book that I really want to get across to women is that when you bleed, you detox. You are de. And I, and I just, I have a team of researchers now that pull all this information together. And I got a study last week that there are four chemicals that women are detoxing that are in our blood or actual menstrual blood, plastics, phthalates, forever chemicals and pesticides. Wow. Yeah, wow. So when you're not bleeding, you're not detoxing.

Wow.

So you need to chill out. I called it the nurture phase. We got to just cut back our intensity a little bit the week before our period. So that might be with, with your workout. Maybe you move to yoga or Pilates or you go for a hike. That might be, you just say no on your Social calendar to just, hey, I'm going to sit home this Friday night and I'm just going to watch tv. That might be that you decide you're going to take your workload and bring it down by a third during that time. How, whatever it is for you, maybe you're going to meditate a little bit more. Maybe you're just going to slow down. Um, I've heard some women say that they just, that week, they just walk, they move a little slower, they give themselves a little more grace. Um, just life intensity needs to come down that week. So cortisol isn't peaking, because the minute cortisol's peaking, progesterone's done. Wow. So if you bring your glucose up in a positive way and you mind cortisol when your period starts, it should be a very smooth experience.

So when you're talking about the bringing in more of nature's carbs, is that like any time throughout the week? Is that like just have it at every meal?

Is that.

Have it at one meal?

Yeah.

I mean, or just however you feel?

Yeah, I think it's however you feel. Now remember, the cool thing about nature's carbs is it has fiber. So fiber slows down all that glucose coming in. So this is why I don't want you doing a box of pizza. Because if you're doing a box of pizza, it has no fiber and all that glucose coming in. If your cells can't take this, the. The flood of glucose, it will store extra glucose and fat.

Okay?

So, and this is a really important thing that I'm trying to free women of. All fat is. Is excess. It is excess glucose. It is excess cortisol. It is excess hormones. Your body didn't know what to do with that excess. So instead of putting it in your organs and killing you, it decided to put it around your belly, it put it on the back of your arms, on your booty and your boobs, because it. That's a safer place for your survival. So when we eat carbs that have fiber in them, it helps to just make that influx of glucose a little bit easier. Because usually the message I get from a lot of women is, well, if I eat a lot of carbs a week before my period, I'm going to gain weight. So eat smart carbs.

Okay? And then during that time where you're not fasting, like that's a normal.

You're.

When you say fasting, that window is the 8 or, I'm sorry, the 12 to 16 hours without food. But that week before, we're not really. We're kind of just doing.

Okay, you can go back to your six meals a day. Okay.

So you're really just doing that during your menstrual cycle.

You're doing it or. Yeah. Day one through, like, day 20, you can fast during ovulation. I recommend a little shorter fast just because you have all these hormones in you. But in the book, I gave them all names and I gave a graph, and I show it all there.

So you guys have to get the book.

If you want to see it, it could be helpful.

Yeah, it will be very helpful.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, if you want to make it, like, as simple as possible, I would just say don't fast the week before your period.

Okay, Got it. Okay, so tell me about. Tell me about mood. A little bit related to this. Like, what have you noticed most with women and mood? And what'd you notice for yourself?

Yeah. So, you know, this is a really interesting part. Since I was just telling Lisa this when I was over at her house. I was saying, you know, I thought I wrote a fasting book, but what I realized is I actually wrote a women's empowerment book because so many women didn't understand how their hormones related to their moods and to their behaviors and their cravings and their sleep cycles. And so one thing that I think when we talk about mood that we should understand is whenever estrogen is showing up, which is the front half of our cycle, she brings with her dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate, bdnf, oxytocin.

She knows how to party.

She is. She's the diva. Yeah. In fact, I'm writing a book called Eat Like a Girl right now. And, yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be a really fun book. And I did a whole thing on perimenopause in there, and I was like, she's the diva's gone. Like. And with her, like, give her friends, like, everybody give her an encore. Like, she's out. And with it goes her friends, which is why perimenopausal women, menopausal women, are depressed and they can't think is because the estrogen brought with her all those neurotransmitters.

Yeah.

So when you learn to cater to what estrogen wants with food and fasting and you can do it with other life strategies, then she shows up and she brings all these friends with her and front half of the cycle, you should feel great. Back half of the cycle. Now we're, like, in progesterone's territory. And progesterone brings gaba, and gaba is the calming neurotransmitter. So if you don't give progesterone what she needs, you're gonna be irritable. So when we are like, I'm PMSing. Ah, that's because the code. The. You could interpret that as, I didn't take care of progesterone. I didn't sit my butt down on the couch, I didn't give her the nature's carbs, I didn't do what she wanted, and so now there, she didn't get her moment, and I'm irritable. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

So.

So mood throughout. If. If we just take care of that. Let's talk about, like, mood throughout the month. Is there a way to keep that more stable throughout the entire month?

Yeah. So I think the natural moves mood is day one through day 10. You should, as, you know, usually the first two days every. You know, all women are a little bit, like, not sure how I'm feeling. But there is a general sense of relief when our periods start y. But the first 10 days, it should be an uplifting time. You should start to feel brighter, a little bit happier because of all those neurotransmitters. During ovulation, testosterone isn't just libido. Testosterone's motivation and drive. So you should feel a little more motivated. And you have estrogen at her peak. When estrogen peaks, we have access to both sides of our brain, right and left brain. This is really good for entrepreneurs to know, is that you've got testosterone for motivation and drive. You've got estrogen that's giving you all these neurotransmitters and allowing you to have access to both sides of your brain. And you have a little bit of progesterone. I think every company should take all the ovulating women and put them in one room.

Seriously?

Yeah.

A think tank.

A think tank of ovulating women. I'm waiting for somebody. Do that, please, and tell me how it goes. That is our glory moment. That is when we are absolutely our best, and we should be that way now. Not everybody's that way at ovulation. And that's because they're not learning how to live with this cycle or how to live their lifestyle according to their hormones. But that's how we should feel.

Yeah. Wow. I mean, I think some people are listening probably, like, mind blown that you can even take advantage of these things. And that there's a lot of power in yours. I mean, so many women have written off, like, oh, your cycle's just a terrible thing.

This is what I'm trying to demystify. It is not a terrible thing. Our hormones are our superpower. And if you learn how to work your lifestyle to match them, you will witness your body in a new way.

Wow.

And the fact that, you know, there's so many interesting reasons why, you know, birth control being a big one that has. And I don't have a good solution for birth control. I've been searching and searching. I think it's not in the female body. It's probably in the male body because we're so sophisticated, our hormonal system, but we've just manipulated our. Our. Our menstrual cycle through birth control, through stress, through pushing ourselves, so we're out of natural rhythm. So when you hear this, you're like, what? I don't feel like that. Right. So. But that's how you're supposed to feel. So one of. One of my favorite moments and throughout this whole journey that I've been on, whatever you want to call it, this book journey.

Yeah. Never ending.

Never ending book tour. That started before the book tour was. I got to work with Leann, the. The country. Well, she's not. I shouldn't call her that. She would not be happy to necessarily hear that.

But, you know, the amazing artist, the.

Amazing Grammy Award winning artist, she's so much more than country. When we first started working together, she would go into ovulation and she would tell me, I feel so bitey. And I was like, God, that you shouldn't feel bitey. You must be missing something. So we really worked with her lifestyle during that ovulation window because. And once we. I knew we nailed it. When she started going through ovulation and telling me that she felt great. Wow. Like, she. She's like, I don't feel bitey now. So if you're not feeling that way at ovulation, I really, really, really recommend that you take a look at those three hormones and what they need. And, And. And if you cater to their needs, you will notice ovulation is much better. Right before our period, when progesterone's coming in, we're meant to chill out a bit. We're meant to slow down. So, I mean, how many of us have been like, I can't work out during that week. I just don't feel like it.

Yeah.

But we push ourselves anyways. Totally. So you're supposed to Be a little bit softer, a little bit more inner. You're supposed to be not as excited to go do everything the week before your cycle. That is how you were designed to be.

And if we're going and doing that and pushing, pushing, we're almost like erasing what's. Because we're raising our cortisol and we're causing a problem. So the thing that maybe we're attached to, like, oh, but maybe I'm gonna gain weight if I don't work out as hard. That's, you know, this many days out of every single month, you add that, like, people who are really in that, like, frame of mind.

Yep.

We're probably not doing any good, basically.

That's right.

Yeah.

Again, like you were saying, your mind is blown. I think this is such an important conversation for all women to have because when we have hormonal imbalances, we have chronic disease, and so. And we have autoimmune. I mean, the autoimmune conditions, 80% of them happen to women. So we've got to bring our lifestyle back in balance with our hormones. And so it's is a little bit of a moment of like, wait a second, that's not how I feel. Well, let's roll up our sleeves and have the conversation as a collective group of women as to what we should be doing at these different parts of our cycle. Because we are not meant to live the same way, do the same exercise, the same diet, the same approach all month long.

So you had mentioned something I don't want to skip over. You were talking about motivation. I think probably people listening to this podcast are like, tell me more about that motivation piece and what this does for motivation.

Yeah, well, so our motivation hormone is testosterone. And if you have a cycle, she comes in day 10 to day 15, and she ramps up your motivation. Whether it's your motivation to have a baby or your motivation to get a job or start a new project, she's there to really get you to move forward. So menopausal women, which we haven't. We should probably touch a little bit on that. If we stay in a stressed state, we start to lose testosterone. Which is why a lot of women who are either type A or live a high stress life and they're going through menopause, their libido goes. Because testosterone goes. So testosterone is. You gotta cater to her. There's no food or fast, I can tell you that will ramp up testosterone. Um, so testosterone does not, like cortisol to be too high, like progesterone. So usually it's a stress related thing. When women are, have really low testosterone, that's a stress situation.

How do you feel about, there's so much conversation around hormone therapy. How do you feel about that? Does that go along with intermittent fasting? Do you think it's a good thing, a bad thing?

I, I'm really excited the conversation's being had. I can tell you as a 54 year old postmenopausal woman, like that was an extreme sport. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That menopause thing, it's a thing.

Wow.

But what I've, my experience has been is you could put a hormone replacement therapy patch on and your life changes. I put one on and I'm going to kill somebody. Somebody else does a testosterone pellet in their booty and they're like, oh my God, all I want to do is work out and have sex with my husband. Somebody else puts it in and now they want to kill somebody. So there, there is a bio individuality situation here. When we go into hormone replacement, you have to work with somebody who's going to help you nail which one of these hormones is perfect for you and, and what combination. So that's the first thing I would say. Second thing, it doesn't give you a free pass from a good lifestyle. You still have to think about the quality of your food. You have to think about fasting really helps menopausal women. You have to think about pulsing in hard workouts and soft workouts. Like you can't just slap a patch on and hope menopause is going to be good. It's not that easy. Yeah, sorry. Okay.

No, I love that conversation though because it's like working with somebody. You can't just go put pellets in your butt.

Right. That's right. And like be like, oh my God, I'm getting a bunch of muscles. Yes. I wish it was that. I wish that, man.

Maybe one day. Okay, so I want to talk about sleep because sleep is obviously one of the most important things ever. So when you first start intermittent fasting, does it affect your sleep? Do you feel it right away? Tell me about that.

Yeah. Intermittent fasting, meaning 13 to 15 hours, shouldn't affect sleep. It should actually enhance sleep.

Enhance sleep.

So the longer fast, like did you sleep well on your sleep?

Some nights I slept like a rock and other nights I was like, oh, I'm actually done sleeping at 4am yeah.

So I have a theory on that part. On the longer fast, anything three days or more, when you go into those state, you sleep like four hours, five hours?

Yeah, totally.

So I went to go look for the research on that. I couldn't find anything. But my, My, my gut feeling is that when you're fasting, you are in a healing state. When you sleep, you are in a healing state.

Yeah.

So if you're healing during the day, you don't need as much healing at night. That's the only reason I can think. You woke up four hours in and all.

Honesty, I was waking up rested.

Yes. Yeah.

So it's probably because our bodies aren't, you know, digesting food all night. Or you. You probably don't need all of the sleep that's required. Potentially. This is all theory, but that's what it felt like.

Yeah. I really believe that that's for the longer fasts. There's a lot of other things about sleep we could dive into, and one of them is, I think what fasting has done for a lot of people is it leaves them with the question of, wait a second. If, if I was meant to fast, what other things am I meant to do that I don't do in this modern world?

Wow, that's such a good question.

Right. So other things we're not meant to do is we're not meant to eat in the dark. So that's one. When. When. When it's dark out, melatonin comes in. And when melatonin comes in, you're more insulin resistant. So you're meant actually to eat in the light.

We're during light hours. During.

During light hours. Which is fine during the summer, not as great in the winter.

Right.

You're also not meant to be in all these blue light.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, yeah. When I can't sleep. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna text you, Lori, and be like, excuse me.

Thanks for all the blue light.

Yeah. So, yeah, red light at night, it's really important. Red light at night. We have in our living room where all of our bulbs turn to red light.

You can.

They're easy to get. So, yeah, get. Bring that red light in at night so that you don't get all the blue light. You also need, like, the room to be cold that you're sleeping in. You gotta get your temperature down at least 3 degrees. And that dip in temperature tells the body, hey, it's time to go to bed.

What's the ideal temperature for you?

Are you talking about, like, I'm doing.

This because my husband is always like, we don't need it this cold. And I'm like, we do.

How old are you?

I'm 43.

Oh, yeah.

You're.

You're. Just tell him. Tell him. Get ready. It's good. Tell him it's going colder.

I'm like, it's getting colder.

It's getting colder. Get ready. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, if my room goes down. Well, for starters, have you tried a mattress pad that cools the bed?

I did. I'll have to do it again. I had a chili pad for a while, but it broke twice.

So I was like, yeah, mine did, too. Yeah. There are a lot of different ones out there. And that's the. That was. The only problem is it does tend to break, but if you're going to chill the room. Ooh. Mine goes down into the 60s.

Yeah. Okay. I'm like, 67.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I. At 65 and below. I think 63 is about my favorite.

You like really cold? Okay. Yeah, great.

I'm Postmenopausal.

Yeah.

I'm 54, so you could. You could decide.

But, yeah, you need to create some inventions for cooling. Like, I want cooling socks like that, actually, you keep in the freezer, and then you put them on at night because my feet get so hot anyway.

Oh, that's a great idea. Or like, a cooling cap.

Cooling cap, yes. You need a cooling line. Okay.

I just. I just tell my husband, put a sweatshirt on.

Like, seriously? Yeah.

And we actually spent. When I was in the thick of perimenopause, I actually. Actually spent a year in a separate bedroom. And it was like a refrigerator.

Yeah, that's great.

It was like. And I was so happy in there because it was so cold.

Huh. I know. I still like my blankets. That's the problem as well. It has to be freezing. And I like my blankets. Okay, what did we not mention that we should know about? I mean, there's probably a million things, but what do you feel like maybe.

We didn't cover about fasting, about intermittent fasting? Oh, you know, I think some of the common hurdles that people get is. Or say to me is, I'm not meant to fast. Okay. So this is a really tough one for people to hear. I've gotten a bit of flack on it on. On some larger podcasts, and I'm going to continue to say it.

Okay.

Every single person, every body is meant to fast, just like everybody is meant to sleep. But not everybody can sleep, just like not everybody can fast. So one of my big pet peeves is that people say, well, I'm not supposed to fast. And when you dive into that, you learn that they actually did not do well. Going 10, 12 hours because they were hangry, irritable, dizzy. That is a sign that you are moving towards metabolic inflexibility. And you're going to want to work on your food. You're going to start to work on some baby fasts because you will see as you start to fast more that you actually can fast.

When you say metabolic inflexibility, what does that mean? Does that mean we're actually training our systems to never be able to go without?

Yeah. You're not switching into that fat burner state. You're staying stuck in a sugar burner state.

So we actually want. It's almost like the more we feel we can't fast, the more it's important for our bodies to fast.

Yeah. One of my favorite podcasts I did on my podcast was with a cancer expert. And you know, cancer is a dysfunctional mitochondria of the cells. And I asked her, well, how can we tell if our mitochondria aren't working right? Like, what would be the first sign? And she said, the first sign your mitochondria aren't working well is the inability to not go without food. If you are that. And I was this person, I was the one who took snacks with me everywhere. I was the one that was like, you didn't. I can't eat. If you don't feed me in the next hour, I'm gonna kill you. I was that person. So I know what it's like to feel like you can't go without food. The more you practice it, the easier it gets. And that's the such the cool thing about fasting. I don't know any diet or fitness program on the planet that gets easier with time. Fasting gets easier with time because as you train your cells, you know how to do it better. So I think that's the big one. I really want people to practice. Practice it. You will blow your mind and you will. And the other thing is, you probably had this with the seven day fast. You actually, you said this. There's so much pride. Did you not feel like a badass?

I. I literally felt. I mean, for a whole week probably after, I was like, I can literally do anything. Because that felt it was such a clear how many choices you have to make in these micro moments all day long to break a pattern. Because I kept on. The craziest part about that is I kept on walking into my pantry and I wouldn't even realize I was there.

Yeah.

And I'd be like, yeah, oh, my God, I didn't even know. I got up and walked into my pantry. It was so patterned to, like, go eat food that you just notice so much that I think in order to get through it, you do. You become a different person in such a short window of time that, yeah, I really felt like you can do anything.

My mom, and bless her heart, it's not any. It's not. It's just what she knew how to do.

Yeah.

But if you had a bad day, you sat down and you ate a meal, totally same.

I grew up that way.

Yeah. So you. Not only did you have a bad day, not only did you get food, but you got mom's love. So there was a lot of love and food attached to, you know, is a very nurturing experience for me. So when I first started learning fasting, I was like, oh, my God, I don't feel good, but I don't have this resource to make myself feel good. And that's when I identified. Wow. I don't just eat food for the. For food. I eat food for emotional, you know, well being. And it was like a mirror to be able to see that. And I think there's something really cool about that. It's like you get to see your relationship to food in a new light.

Yeah, you really do.

It's really cool. So there's that experience and then there's the download experience we talked about. But I think the thing that I love the most after watching so many people do this is there's this. When you get done with a longer fast, there is nobody who gets the credit. Nobody gets the credit but you.

True.

If I go on a diet, I could be like, oh, that diet was amazing. Whoever thought that diet up was great. If I have a trainer and she pushes me really hard at the gym and I get good results, I could be like, thank God for my trainer. When you stop eating and you fast and you experience that, nobody gets the credit but you. That's super cool.

Yeah.

So cool.

Well, I have loved this whole conversation.

Thank you.

I could continue talking to you. I can't wait for your next book as well.

Yeah. Thank you.

But for right now, fast like a girl. And you also have your podcast, the Resetter podcast. You also have Resetter Academy, correct?

Yeah. So we have. We have Resetter podcast where I bring on interesting people to talk to. My academy is for people who want to practice all of this. And so it's a lowcost membership group where we. I've got a team of people. We do every other month. We do a 15 day fasting experience together. That's not fasting for 15 days, but we play with a different length and different food things. Cool. We work out together on Saturday mornings. Yeah, it's a really cool community of women, so.

Well, I'm so grateful for you. Where can we go to get the book and all of that? Where's the best spot?

Well, here we are a year later. Wherever you can go, bookstores, Amazon is obviously a great place, so whatever is convenient for you. Yeah, that's probably, probably the best place. If you want to learn more about fasting, my YouTube channel, I put out five new videos a week. Wow.

You go?

Yeah, it's a big part of what I'm doing. So a lot of nuance about how to fast and when to fast and all kinds of things on my YouTube channel. So that's a good resource too. Okay.

Amazing. You're amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. We're so grateful for you tuning in and until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.