Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Fasting, Hormones & Menopause: Why Women Need A Different Approach To Men with Dr Mindy Pelz #342

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

CAUTION: This podcast discusses fasting, and its advice may not be suitable for anyone with an eating disorder. If you have an existing health condition or are taking medication, always consult your healthcare practitioner before going for prolonged periods without eating. Today’s podcast could transform the lives of many women – but it’s a conversation that is just as relevant for men. My guest is Dr Mindy Pelz, a nutrition expert, an author and a pioneer on the subject of women’s health, hormones and fasting. Fasting itself is a topic we’ve spoken about before on this podcast, but when we talk about fasting and health in general, we often presume that men and women are going to respond in the same way. As Mindy explains, men and women are fundamentally different biologically and hormonally, which means they may need to adopt different approaches. Mindy’s new book Fast Like A Girl explains that distinction and goes on to provide the protocols women can use, so fasting works in their favour. It’s billed as a women’s guide to using fasting to burn fat, boost energy and balance hormones. But I’d argue that it gives us a whole lot more than that. Mindy sets out the key hormonal differences between men and women. With men governed primarily by testosterone, released at regular intervals and doses throughout the day. Women are led by a symphony of oestrogen, testosterone and progesterone in amounts that vary across an average 28-day menstrual cycle.   Mindy talks us through what exactly is going on hormonally during the four phases of a woman’s cycle and how this makes women feel physically, cognitively and emotionally. She explains how women can tailor everything from their working habits to their workouts, their social life to their diet, to better match their hormone profile at each stage of the cycle - this approach can help women feel more in control. We discuss the benefits for conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), infertility and irregular cycles. We also discuss the different stages of women’s lives – reproductive, perimenopausal and post-menopausal – and how different types and lengths of fasting can be optimised in each stage. This is not just an empowering listen for women, it is for all of us – partners, brothers, fathers, sons, and friends. I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.boncharge.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/342 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

We have to pause at this moment in human history and ask ourselves how we're taking care of women's health around menopause. We have a cultural acceptance of women's suffering. And what we're doing as women is that we're internalizing that. We're creating more guilt, more shame because we're not thriving in this patriarchal healthcare system. And we have to stop trying to do everything from how we eat to how we work out to the medications we take at the same as men, because we are massively different and we've been taught to do it the way that we teach men. And that is what needs to stop in order for us to thrive. men and that is what needs to stop in order for us to thrive. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better,

Live More. Today's podcast, I think, could transform the lives of many women, but it's a conversation that is just as relevant for men. My guest is Dr. Mindy Peltz, a nutrition expert, an author, and a pioneer on the subject of women's health, hormones, and fasting. Now, right at the top, I think it's really important for me to say that this episode does talk about fasting and going for periods of time without food. This, of course, may not be relevant for everyone. Specifically, if you are suffering from an eating disorder or you are recovering from one, please do exercise some caution before proceeding. Now, fasting is a topic that we've spoken about on many occasions on this podcast, as it can have many potential benefits for our health and longevity.

But when we talk about fasting and health in general, we often presume that men and women are going to respond in exactly the same way. But as Mindy will shortly explain, men and women are fundamentally different biologically and hormonally, which means that they may need to adopt different approaches. Mindy's brand new book, Fast Like a Girl, which really is a fantastic read, explains the key distinctions between men and women and goes on to provide specific strategies that women can use so that fasting works in their favor. It's built as a woman's guide to using fasting to burn fat, boost energy, and balance hormones, but I'd argue that it gives us all a whole lot more than

that. In our conversation, Mindy sets out the key hormonal differences between men and women. Men are governed primarily by testosterone, released at regular intervals and doses throughout the day. Women, on the other hand, are led by a symphony of estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone in amounts that vary across an average 28-day menstrual cycle. Mindy talks us through what exactly is going on hormonally during the four phases of their cycle and how this makes women feel physically, cognitively, and emotionally. She then explains how women can tailor everything from their working habits to their workouts, their social life to their diet, to better match their hormonal profile at each stage of their

cycle. And we discuss how this approach can help any woman feel more in control, but also the potential benefits for things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, and irregular cycles. We also discuss the different stages of women's lives, reproductive, perimenopausal, and postmenopausal, and how different types and lengths of fasting can be optimized at every stage. But this conversation to me is not just about health. The fact that women's confidence, motivation, cognition and energy levels will rise and dip throughout the month, I think has major implications for the workplace and society in general. We are living in a world where half the population are experiencing this vital hormonal flux.

And it's a world that is largely set up and managed by men who simply don't understand it. This really, I think, is a quite brilliant episode. As I keep saying, this is not just an empowering lesson for women. It is for all of us. Partners, brothers, fathers, sons and friends. Not only is Mindy full of expertise and knowledge, she is also someone with a beautiful enthusiasm, passion, and inner drive. I really enjoyed chatting to her. I hope you enjoyed listening. And now, my conversation with Dr. Mindy Peltz.

Why do women need a different approach to fasting than men? Yeah, it's the perfect place to start. So the easiest way that I can explain this is we've got to look at the different profiles of our sex hormones. So let's start with men. Men, you are almost 100% run by testosterone. You, in a 24-hour period, you're getting testosterone every 15 minutes. And that testosterone is going to go up into the brain and convert into estrogen. So all you need to do when you look at your hormonal profile and work on your hormones is drive one particular sex hormone. And luckily, testosterone loves when you fast.

1,300% increase in testosterone if you fast for 13 hours, 2,000% increase in testosterone for men if they fast for 13 hours, 2000% increase in testosterone for men if they fast for 24 hours. Women, we are not just running off of one hormone. We are running off of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And when we look at the personalities of these sex hormones, what we can see is that estrogen loves when we fast. So anytime we want to bring estrogen up, low carb, more fasting, keeping ourselves insulin sensitive is going to be amazing. But progesterone is completely the opposite way. In fact, the week before a woman's cycle, she actually becomes more insulin resistant because we need glucose to be higher so that we can make progesterone. And so we should not be fasting the week before

our cycle. This is not the time to go low carb because we need that glucose to be higher. Yeah, so much to pick up on there. And I have to say, Mindy, one of the reasons I wanted to invite you onto the show was because this is a topic. This is a hot topic that women are asking about. Fasting is growing in popularity at the moment, and there appears to be this one-size-fits-all approach. So that's certainly how it's getting applied out there. And from studying your work, it's very clear, as you just described, that men and women are fundamentally different. Now, you mentioned men run off one hormone, primarily testosterone. And I'm drawn to the one meal a day approach that many men like to do. And about a year ago, I spoke to this amazing

cardiologist, Dr. Pradeep Jamnadasadas on this podcast. He uses fasting with his patients, has done for many years. And someone on my team got so inspired by that. He has gone to one meal a day and he is thriving, right? He's been thriving for a year, but this is a guy. And I know from your work that you don't think for most women that one meal a day is the right approach, do you? No, for many reasons, it's not the right approach. So for starters, going back to the thought that progesterone needs glucose to be higher, if you're in one meal a day, you're spending a large part of that day with glucose either dropping or at least staying

the same, depending on where your insulin sensitivity levels are. So one meal a day is not enough to be able to keep glucose high for progesterone. Second thing, and I think this one's really, really important, and I didn't write about it deep enough in the book, so I'd love to chat with you about it here, which is when it comes to thyroid health and women are more affected by thyroid problems than men. In fact, many experts believe that women after about 45, as they go through menopause, lose 50% of their thyroid hormone. So the thyroid needs calories to be higher. So when we're consistently doing one meal a day for women, it's really hard to get calories up. This is probably the only time you'll hear me talk about calories, but it's

really hard to get our calories up to the level that supports proper thyroid function when we're just eating one meal a day. So there's a lot of nuance in that particular question, which is what's happening to the female body when she's doing one meal a day over and over and over again. It's damaging her from a hormonal level that she may not be aware of. Yeah, really, really interesting. And, you know, my intention with this conversation is that it's going to be really, really practical for people so that women at the end of this know, oh, for me at my age, depending on where I am in my cycle, this is possibly what I should be doing to optimize my health. We've discussed some of the differences between men and women. Of course, there's plenty more. But before we get into the cycle and how things change

throughout the menstrual cycle, I wonder if you could top line explain why should a woman consider fasting in the first place? Oh, that's a great question. So, and the answer is really dependent upon her age as well. So I'm going to start with women over 40. Let's start with that because a lot of this conversation, you're going to see me break down women into three phases. We have our fertility years where we have a pretty regular cycle. We have the perimenopausal years where everything is really up and down and all around, and we'd have no predictability in our cycle. And then we have our postmenopausal years. So when we look at women over 40, what happens is as the ovaries start to make a slow decline, they're not producing as many sex hormones. We are going to see estrogen do this

wild ride where she'll be high one day, low the next. And it's in that up and down of this estrogen decline or this estrogen rollercoaster is what I look at it like, we become more insulin resistant. So the way I look at this is when estrogen starts to slowly fade away, we need to do everything we can to keep her age appropriate levels high and fasting and estrogen go hand in hand. The more you fast, the more you cycle fasting the way I teach, the more you're going to keep your age-appropriate estrogen at its highest level possible. Now, with women that are in their fertility years, we can look at things like PCOS, the number one hormonal problem for women. That is an insulin-resistant issue. And there is no better tool in your biohacking toolbox than to use fasting to help make yourself insulin sensitive. So whether you're struggling to get

pregnant, you have PCOS, we want to bring fasting in to be able to let estrogen do her thing, depending on where you are on your life cycle. Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for that. Before we go too much further, I wanted to highlight something you write in your book. The new book, Fast Like a Girl is fabulous. It really is. It's so practical for women. I really think every woman who reads it is going to understand themselves better. And actually, themselves better. And actually, as a guy reading it, you know, all men have women in their life on some level, whether it's a girlfriend, a wife, a work colleague, a mother, a daughter. So actually, although it appears from the outside that the work is designed for women, I think it's just as relevant for men as well. So I wanted to share that. But in the book, you say, you believe that fasting is for everyone. We were designed to fast. Now, what if you could just expand upon that? And at the same time, you also point out in the book

that there are some specific reasons why you may not wish to fast, including, of course, eating disorders. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go to the first part of the question. And I think this is for both men and women. We've got to go back to this concept and it's been slowly emerging in, in, in the health space, but we've got to go back to this concept of how was the human body designed? You know, we are in an evolutionary mismatch right now. The amount of physical, emotional, and chemical stressors that the modern world is presenting to us has us really off course with how our original design was built to be. And when we look at the primal years, what we know back in the caveman days is that we had to depend on another fuel source to be able to go hunt for food.

Let me explain myself. When we came out of the cave, we didn't have a refrigerator. We didn't have DoorDash. We didn't have any way to get food. So we had to go and hunt for food. And in that hunting of food, our body switched over into a different energy system. It switched over into the ketogenic energy system, or as I refer to it in the book, the fat burning system. And in that system, the body burned fat to make ketones as a fuel source so that we could go hunt. So now let's fast forward to today. What we know that's happening today is that it doesn't matter what

diet you go on, we are not accessing this secondary fuel source. We're only operating from the sugar burner fuel source. And so we are missing out on all the healing that happens when we switch over into this primal fat burning system. So a really good example in the book I talk about, there is a thrifty gene hypothesis. They believe that the humans that evolved from those primal days had a genetic profile that allowed them to switch into this ketogenic energy system and go without food for long periods of time. And that genetic profile is still in most humans today. So if we are eating all day long, we're literally going against our genetic design. We're working against our genes, not with our genes. So it's really about going back to the body thrives in a fasted

state because it can access this other energy system that you can't access by manipulating your food. You've got to let your blood sugar come down enough so that your body's forced to switch over into that system. Yeah. And that's the same for men and women, right? That's the kind of top line overview we are designed to fast. We're designed to have periods of time where we're not consuming foods. And I know from some of the research Professor Sachin Panda at the Salk Institute has done, he has shown that a huge percentage of people in the Western world are eating food over 15 hours in every 24-hour period. This is a modern phenomenon, isn't it? It's not something that we would have done 100, 200 years ago. But now many of us are sort of, as you say,

we're working against our genetic evolutionary heritage. It's such a good point. And the best way to look at this is it's like sleep. Nobody's going to say sleep is not right for the human body. We know that when you sleep, there's a whole bunch of healing mechanisms that happen in that time period, which is why sleep is making a comeback. And so many people are talking about sleep because it heals. Well, guess what? You were also designed to go without food. And when you're not tapping into that experience for your body, it's like skimping on sleep. You're missing out on all these healing effects that can really support you metabolically.

And I also want to point out that what we're seeing is in a time where the food source is so toxic. I mean, especially here in America, our food source is ridiculous and now it's permeated everywhere. We've got to have some way to overcome the metabolic damage that poor food is doing. And what the research is showing, like something like a 16-8 diet, is it's showing that when you go 16 hours without food, you become metabolically immune from the damage of a Western high fat, high sugar processed diet. Your insulin does not raise. Your glucose has a chance to balance out. Hemoglobin A1C is better. Your CRP inflammation goes down. You can literally, and I don't recommend this, but you could eat toxic food for eight hours and fast for 16, and your body would be able to repair itself from the damage that that food source is doing

in the eight-hour period that you're eating. Yeah, very, very powerful. So we are designed to fast. And you're saying that in the current toxic modern food environment, which frankly, most of us, most people listening to this podcast or watching on YouTube right now are going to be facing that wherever they are. What we're saying is even if we don't change our food intake, and I know that's not what you recommend, but even if we don't, a period of fasting is going to have profound benefits on our body. We're definitely going to talk about those benefits throughout this conversation. Just let's finish off that point then. Yes, we're designed to fast, but in the modern world, because of a variety of issues, there are a few groups where you advise a

bit of caution, I believe. And I wonder if you could just at the top of this conversation, just explain what those groups are. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you. I'm glad we're highlighting this at the beginning of this conversation, because you'll see in the book, I put all the different scenarios that we have seen across all of our platforms of people fasting. And there's some groups that really need to take caution. So the first is if you have an eating disorder of any kind, First is if you have an eating disorder of any kind. My stance on that is you really want to bring your therapist, your doctor into that fasting experience with you. I have seen fasting change people's relationship to food.

It's a really, because you really go within and start to understand why you're using food because we don't just use food for hunger. But that is if you have challenges with any kind of eating disorder, you've got to involve your doctor or don't fast because I don't want it to trigger anything in a bad pattern that will take you down a bad path. Pregnant women, this is not your tool. This is not your tool. Fasting is not your tool. You need to start to work on things like your microbiome, work on other things, but fasting is not your tool. And then women that are nursing, I recommend that you keep your fast under 15 hours because after 15 hours, as I'm sure we'll go into,

you can stimulate something called autophagy. And autophagy is where the cells start to repair themselves. And a lot of times they'll push toxins out and those toxins will go right into your breast milk and go right into your baby. So those are the three, like I really caution. Now, what I want to point out is a lot of people will be like, well, what about diabetics? I think it's been proven, you know, Jason Fung really has shown us that this is an incredible tool for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics. You need to be coached through it. Yeah. Thank you. Very, very thorough. Super, super useful. And the eating disorder conversation, I think, is very subtle and nuanced

because there is this sort of feeling now that it's not relevant at all for people with eating disorders. Yet, as you have pointed out, and I've seen in a lot of the videos you make on YouTube, and I've read a lot of the comments in preparation for our conversation today, there are people who have suffered from eating disorders who have found, as you're saying, fasting when done in a mindful way, when done in a responsible way, potentially when being coached through it with help, can actually be a part of the solution. As you say, not for everyone, but we can't just throw it out necessarily. But I would add that note of caution as well. If you are suffering from an eating disorder, if you're struggling with it, if you're recovering, do speak to someone

before you just jump in. Okay, now the bit I'm really excited about, there's so much, right? Because you've got different length fast, you've got different age groups. But I think a good place to go now is walk me through the menstrual cycle and the different phases. I love the name you give to these phases in your book. They're very evocative, the phrases, sorry, the names, very evocative. But I think it really helps us understand that your body is in a very different state. And the goal of the body is very different at different parts of your cycle. And therefore, the inputs you have to give it, whether that be stress or movement or food or fasting have to be very different. So let's go through that methodically.

Yeah. And it's such a great conversation and we'll go through it and I'll teach it for fasting and for food and we'll slip in some things about exercise into the cycle as well. But here's the crazy thing that I've learned in sharing these concepts with the world is we are hormone illiterate, including women. We don't even know when our hormones are coming and going. We just know our cycle starts one time a month and our moods change around that. So I'm really, as we go through the cycle, you know, what I'm hoping to bring back to women is an understanding to your point that we do have different hormones coming in, which is going to change our behaviors. It's going to change our moods. It's going to change our cravings. It's

going to change our energy levels. We are not hormonally the same every day of the month. So with that in mind, let's run, let's go through the cycle. So day one, and this is the other thing I've learned. When I say day one, not every woman knows what day one is. It's crazy. I'm like, this is what we should have been taught at 13. So day one is the day you start your period, the day you need to use some feminine care products. It's not when you spot the couple of days before, it's literally when your flow starts. And from day one to day 10, you are building estrogen. So day one, all your sex hormones will be very, very low. And over the next 10 days, your body's going to start to make estrogen. So we already briefly talked on this, but the general lifestyle requirements for estrogen is be insulin sensitive. So keep glucose low. If you are keeping

glucose high during that time, you may find that you're going to mess your cycle up or you're going to mess ovulation up because estrogen needs a certain environment and that environment is glucose low. The other thing that estrogen really is wonderful at is estrogen is very cortisol forgiving. So you can run a marathon, you can do a three-day water fast, you could have a high stress time at work, and you're not going to really mess estrogen up too much. You'll see as I go in the back half, that is not the case for progesterone. So I call this phase the power phase to your point.

All the hormonal languaging is very complicated. And I wrote this so that we can empower women. And so I'm like, we got to take follicular luteal out of the picture and really explain you can power up on your lifestyle to improve estrogen. That's why I named it that. Yeah. Love that. I love that. A couple of things to clarify. We've mentioned insulin a few times in this conversation, insulin resistance, insulin sensitive. Now, I think many listeners to my podcast will be familiar with those terms, but I'm always conscious that not everyone will. So could you just briefly explain what insulin is and what's the difference between sensitive and resistance to insulin?

Yeah, thank you. It's a really good point. And funny, the editor and I spent a long time really distilling down what insulin resistance meant in the book. It was a funny conversation. So there is a definite lack of knowledge on what that is. And here's what, what the way I look at it is insulin is your glucose storing hormone. So it think of it as what will push glucose into your cells so that your cells can use glucose for energy. The mitochondria need, need glucose to be able to do what they, the magic that they do. And insulin is the thing that opens that up and allows the glucose to come into the cell. When we are insulin resistant, we have kept glucose too high for too long. And that has

required the pancreas to keep making insulin and keep making insulin. And that flooding of both glucose and insulin into the cell makes that cell insulin resistant. The greatest analogy for those of you that have kids that I like is when you keep asking your kids to do something over and over and over again, and they don't do it, it's like they become deaf to your requests because you've asked so much. And so it's the same thing. The cells are like, whoa, all this insulin has been coming at me. I don't know what to do with it anymore. Insulin sensitive is the opposite of that. Insulin sensitive is the cells are very open. They can take glucose in. Insulin can do the job that it

was meant to do. So it's really at this cellular level that we see the difference between resistance or sensitive. And we all want to be insulin sensitive. Yeah, great explanation. And I think another way for people to think about that is, you know, type 2 diabetes is almost that end stage condition of insulin resistance. There's other conditions as well, but that's kind of when your insulin basically just doesn't work very well anymore. So your blood sugar, your blood glucose starts to rise. What I find interesting as I read your book, Mindy, and you explain the various phases of the cycle, and I think people will, I hope, find this eye-opening, is that your state, whether you're insulin sensitive or insulin resistant, is not a static thing. It actually changes throughout, let's say, a 28-day

cycle. I'm aware not everyone has a regular 28-day cycle, but let's assume they do for the purpose of actually explaining the cycle. I think that's going to be a revelation for some people that, oh, this changes throughout the cycle. And then, Mindy, I was thinking about this about an hour ago, as I was thinking about where I'm going to go in this conversation with Mindy. I thought, as a doctor, we don't really think, apart from some specific tests that are done around female hormones that we may have to specify what day of the cycle it's on, I'm thinking, well, if I'm testing a lady's blood sugar

or looking into their insulin or insulin resistance, well, that's going to be different depending on where they are in the cycle. I think the implications for that, for the medical system, are profound. Huge, right? You totally got it. I'm listening to you and I want to cheer up because this is the paradigm I'm trying to shift. Of course, I want to get fasting into women's hands because there has been a lot of media attention that women shouldn't fast.

But what we need to understand about women is that we are hormonally different on every day, which doesn't just affect the release of an egg or not a release of an egg. It affects exactly what you just said. So when we walk into our doctor's office and they do a blood panel, what day of our cycle we are on really, really matters. So, you know, and it's not just insulin, like our cholesterol raises in the front half of our cycle. So if you get a high cholesterol reading, does your doctor ask you what part of the

cycle are you on? We're going to become more insulin resistant in the back half of our cycle. So if you have a blood test done a week before your period and your doctor says your hemoglobin A1C is high, your insulin's high, your glucose is high, but maybe that's what it was supposed to be at that point in your cycle. That's the nuance of the conversation that we've got to have around women's health. Yeah. And I want to just highlight that point. Your work for me goes beyond fasting because the implications, and we'll talk about this later on in the conversation, I think are actually quite profound with respect to how we

set ourselves up as a society, not just as a medical system, as a society. I think there are some really profound implications. But going back to the cycle for a second. So day one to 10, day one is first day of the period. That's the power phase, right? And you're saying that women are insulin sensitive, generally speaking for those 10 days, and they can tolerate more stress. So you said if they want to run a marathon, that's the time to do it. Okay, brilliant. And we'll bring in fasting into this a bit later, but that's the first 10 days. What is the next phase of the cycle? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show.

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office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Yeah, so the next phase is ovulation and I decided to name it the manifestation phase because we tend to think of ovulation as just, oh, I don't want to get pregnant or I do want to get pregnant. But what I want to highlight

is that during this time, estrogen has now made her peak. So she's the highest she will be during your whole 28, 30 day period, depending on how long your cycle is. So estrogen's at her highest. Now, this is the part that is crazy that not enough people know,

is testosterone comes roaring in during this manifestation phase. It is the only part of a woman's cycle where she gets this massive dose of testosterone. You know, let's think of why the body would do that. It would do that because it needs to bring libido up because you're ovulating. And whether we want to be, you know, acknowledge it or not, our bodies are built for reproduction. So it brings testosterone up to bring libido up. So we've got estrogen at its highest, we've got testosterone at its highest,

and we have a little bit of progesterone that really makes an appearance during this time. Three major sex hormones all in their glory. We become really, we can, we become great verbal processors. We're super motivated. We've got testosterone. So it's a great time to start like a project and, or start any kind of workout plan. And we've got a little bit of progesterone that keeps us calm. This is our hormonal superpower time. And so we need to shift our lifestyle according to that as well. It sounds to me from what you're saying that both phases leading up to ovulation are sort of doing phases for women. It's just from the way you're describing it, it's we can do stuff, you know, get going, get motivated, start new things, take on high stress.

And I'm guessing that it's not quite the same in the second half, is it? No, that is so well said. Think of the first half of your cycle as the doer. You know, this is where we can conquer so much. But then when we go into the back half of our cycle, we need to think of that as recovery. That's the time that we slow ourselves down, which is why when we get to the last phase, I called it the nurture phase, because we really need to nurture ourselves first and really slow the pace of everything down. And when you start to see that you have these conversations with women, women tell you that. They're like, yeah,

man, the closer I get to my period, the more I just want to sit on the couch and eat a box of pizza and a tub of ice cream. I don't want to do anything. And my response to that is yes, because that's how hormonally you were designed. Recovery in the back half, power up in the front half. I guess that wider problem is that, and there'll be many theories as to why this is, but of course, males in general have been, in inverted commas, kind of in charge and making the rules and doing the scientific research for a long time now. And if you think about the way society is structured, it's kind's kind of you know very day-to-day is the same right we don't recognize that Friday is going to be different from Monday I guess we

have a seven-day cycle but we don't have a 28-day cycle yeah we don't right so therefore it's hard not to make the case that women, as a general rule, are sort of, you know, the way a woman's body works is in some ways in opposition to how society has set itself up. Would you agree with that? Oh my gosh, it's so well said. Yes. And you can look at that on every single level. So let's even break it down to when we create a workout plan. Why do we not create a 28-day workout cycle for a woman? Why is everybody on a seven-day cycle to that? When we look at our capacity for our workload, Spain last year came out with a three-day menstrual leave for women, no questions asked. Women could take three days

every month for a menstrual leave. It's actually quite brilliant, although it should probably be done the week before her period. But women need more times for recovery and rest and to slow everything down. Yet we live in a very patriarchal society that is very black and white. Our healthcare system is very, you know, you've got this marker, so this is the medication you want to take. We haven't brought lifestyle into the health conversation. And once we do, we see that that linear approach doesn't work for women. We need to bring, what I've been saying is, we need to bring the feminine back into healthcare and bring the masculine part of the healthcare system that works so well, that black and white, and match it to the ebbs and flows that women are going through,

not only in the cycle, but in life and the journey through menopause as well. And once we acknowledge that, now we are honoring a woman in the truest sense of what her health really requires. Yeah, beautifully said. And what's interesting for me as I reflect on that is that a lot of medical schools now, I know in the UK, I know in America, and I was in the Middle East recently talking at a book festival. And even there, it's more than 50% of the students now at medical schools are women, you know, and conventionally, you know, 20, 30 years ago, it would have definitely been more men. So actually, as more and more women, you know, flood the healthcare system, more women than men are becoming doctors with work like yours that helps them understand. Because

here's the problem. Women can go into medical school, but it's still being taught by a system that was designed maybe by men from a different era. So if the knowledge doesn't get to them, it's going to be hard for them to change it. And that's why I have been so excited to talk to you and why I think your book is mandatory reading for women, because it really helps them understand themselves better, whether they want to fast or not. Okay. I still think there's value in reading. So let's go back again. I know I keep reiterating this, but I really want to make it clear. Day 1 to 10, power phase. Day 10 to 15, roughly, is that ovulation phase, the manifestation phase. You say testosterone comes in there. I wonder if we could just pause on that because

a lot of people think that testosterone is a male hormone. You've just explained that for five days in the female cycle, testosterone comes in. Could you just help us understand why? I know you've touched on it, but just to make that point really clearly about testosterone. Yeah, it's such a good point because we do think of testosterone as a male hormone, but let's talk about the three things that testosterone does for us. Not only is it libido, but it's motivation and it's drive. So we want to keep testosterone coming in for women. It's just going to come in in that five-day period. It's not coming in every 15 minutes like it does for men. So in that moment, we want to use all the testosterone we have. Testosterone is going

to help us build muscle. So one of the conversations I've been having is why are we not, why are women not doing the heavier lifting of weights during this manifestation phase? She has all this testosterone, use it to build muscle, use it to start a project. You know, it's often see in the menopausal journey, we see women that all of a sudden become less motivated to start projects, less motivated to go and work out. And that part really needs to be highlighted because we can really keep an eye on testosterone through certain fasts, through foods, through behaviors, so that we can have all of testosterone's glory to be able to support the female body. So after day 15, what happens? Yeah. So after day 15, we have another descent of hormones. So you're going to go back into a low hormone phase. And so I call it the second power phase because really the way that this

concept that we're talking about is the fasting cycle, the way I came up with it was that I was watching all the people do one meal a day and all the women having adverse effects and all the people that want to do three-day water fasts. And so the power phases, the day one through day 10, and then day 16 to day 19, this is when your hormones are the lowest. And so if you want to go into a three-day water fast, you want to do your one meal a day, that's a great time to do it. But during the manifestation, it's not so great. Keep your fast around 15 hours. You don't want to create a lot of detox effect during that time. And you

don't want to be in keto during that manifestation phase as well. And I, and I spoke of that in the book, but when you come out of that manifestation phase in the second power phase, let's go back to low carb. Let's go back to the keto diet. If that's what excites you, let's go back to some longer fast because we have a hormonal opportunity at that moment to do it. And once we start to hit day 20, that opportunity is now gone and we need to completely switch again. Is one way to look at these power phases that women are able to tolerate a variety of different stressors at that time, whatever that stressor is, because fasting can be a stressor on the body, right? But it sounds like what you're saying is

in that, you know, days one to 10, but also then days, what, 15 or 16 to 19, those two power phases there where you can tolerate stress in whatever form that comes. And then I can't help but think of societal implications. And let's say a woman did have a regular cycle, which again, I know that's not the case for everyone. And I know your approach and fasting can help renormalize them sometimes as well. We'll definitely get to that. But it makes me think, let's say a Google calendar, for example. If a woman knows with a fair degree of high predictability when they're going to be in those phases, they could almost plan their calendar accordingly. Exactly.

You got it. You got it. That is like, you got it. That's the concept. I want to take this book and help women understand that and then take it one step further. And I'll tell you, you know, she wrote the forward, Leanne Rimes. I've been working with her for the last year. And we've had many conversations about how do we plan your touring schedule around your cycle? How do we look at your cycle as a tool to understand when you can go out into the world and do all the type A activities that makes you this amazing performer?

And when do we need to get you back home so that you can nurture yourself and reboot yourself so that you're not tanking your hormones? But what a lot of women are doing is just the same thing powering through. I'm a woman. See me roar roar i can do it all month long and i want to sort of point out actually hormonally you're not designed to do it all month long we've got it easy as men don't we really yes yes you do thank you for acknowledging that yeah i mean I mean, it's hard not to come to that conclusion when you think of that, because we just don't need to think about that in the same way. And again, I want to highlight, I think this conversation is as relevant for men as it is for women, because we also need to understand the women in our lives and how they could be going through these changes

at various times. I'm also, I've got to be honest, my daughter's currently 10 and I'm thinking as she gets a bit older into teenage years and things start to change and things start to happen, I want to teach her this stuff, right? I want her to know this from a young age that rather than having to have issues in her 30s and 40s and then have to get your book and learn, it's like, well, why not learn, you know, that kind of hormonal symphony and how it changes throughout the month, you know, right from the get go. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Oh my gosh. Again, I just, I appreciate so deeply that you read the book and you extrapolated it into our culture and you really looked at it from a bigger perspective, because that is what I keep saying that I'm hoping this book is going to crack open a societal conversation that we need to have. And on that particular concept, what think about this from your from a father to a daughter's perspective. And I've talked to many dads about this from a father to a daughter's perspective. And I've talked to many dads about this. When we look at the behaviors of a teenager, so all of a sudden your daughter, let's say she hits 13, her cycle starts, her behaviors start to change. What you're gonna see is she's gonna be much more inner

the week before her period. She's gonna wanna, she's not gonna be communicative with you. Teenagers in general are not communicative, but the week before her period. She's not going to be communicative with you. Teenagers in general are not communicative, but the week before her period, she's going to be really wanting to withdraw. She's not even going to understand herself. So if you have a conflict that you've got to resolve with her or a tough conversation, let's say she's 16 and all of a sudden you got to talk to her about her grades or something that she's doing. Don't do it the week before her period. You're going to get a wall that's not going to allow

her to communicate. But if you knew when she ovulated, if you knew when all those hormonal hormones are coming in, when estrogen's at her peak, we become more verbally outward. We're much more extroverted. With with testosterone there we're more motivated to resolve a conflict that when we get into the nuance of hormones we start seeing wow how we communicate to women really or when we communicate with to women really matters yeah man this goes beyond father daughters doesn't it this goes well, all kinds of relationships, frankly. So let me bring it back from societal implications, back to the menstrual cycle, because I want to get to fasting and how it changes throughout the phases. So we're currently up to day 20. So we've had power phase one, manifestation phase, power stage two, then what

happens right at the end of the cycle? Yeah. And so this is really a whole different part of our cycle and progesterone's coming in. And I spoke of this before, but progesterone, this is the time that your body's naturally more insulin resistant. And if we stop and just think about that one piece for a moment, why would the brilliant body make you more insulin resistant the week before your period? It's because you need more glucose to be in your bloodstream so that you can make progesterone. This is the most important nuance to this conversation because we have seen massive blankets of media information out there saying women shouldn't do keto, women shouldn't fast. Yes. If we really boil that down, we shouldn't do those two things in this part of

our cycle. As you've heard, we can do it well in other parts, but this is the part we've got to keep glucose high. Now, if you talk to any woman, you know, she will tell you that, yeah, the week before my period, I just want to sit on the couch and just eat a bunch of carbs and eat some chocolate. Okay, let's break that down. That's not an undisciplined behavior. That is your body saying, raise glucose so I can make progesterone. Why do we want chocolate? Chocolate has magnesium in it. Why do we want chocolate? Chocolate has magnesium in it. So you need magnesium to be able to make progesterone. So the body is doing exactly what it wants you to do,

but we sit around and bitch about it. We sit around and villainize it. I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm irritable. All I want to eat is carbs. Okay, now let's do this in a healthy way. So I call it the nurture phase because we need to nurture ourselves during that

time. We need to know to say no, we need to slow down, we need to eat smart carbs. There's a whole mechanism that needs to change that week before our period. Yeah. And I think just hearing that can really help so many people let go of guilt and shame and, oh, I can't stick to this diet. I can't do this. You know, why am I craving this? Just that simple reframe is like, no, no, this is my amazing, powerful, hormonally driven body that's wanting this. And I know in the book, you talk about food choices and why, sure, you're craving pizza and ice cream, and you explain why that's probably not the best choice. You can get more natural, real food carbs to kind of nourish progesterone at that time and have a health-promoting effect. I think it's a really beautiful reframe for people. So we've got these separate phases. I think I read in the book, or maybe I saw in one of your YouTube videos that whilst I've explained

that in the power phase my understanding is that women can tolerate stress I think you were explaining how in that in that nurture phase right at the end of the cycle that last seven days or maybe even 10 days the stress can't be tolerated as well there. Is that right? And do they need to change not only fasting, but even workout patterns and exercise? Yeah. So this is where the mismatch, the evolutionary mismatch is really showing up for women because we're now in a culture where women are in the workforce. Women are doing, you know, balancing work career with a family. You know, we, we have, we are able to do so much in this time of, of, of human evolution, but the problem is our hormones were not meant to push. Our hormones were not meant to have a

lot of stress that week before. And we're seeing that when what's been so fascinating to me in getting out into the world to promote this book, how many women are missing a cycle, young women that don't have a cycle or are spotting or having a very light cycle. And that's because we're pushing through this phase. This is the nurture phase. This is, That's because we're pushing through this phase. This is the nurture phase. This is, we become stress intolerant. And so we do need to slow things down. But then to your point earlier,

how do we do that when the culture doesn't understand this, when society doesn't understand this? We tend to think of ourselves as lazy. We tend to go, I don't know. I just don't feel like doing things right now. So we guilt and we shame ourselves. But if we could reframe that and say, oh, I need to love myself this week. I need to do up my self-care behavior. I need to say no to more things during this week and nurture myself. That's where we're going to start to bring back this balance of hormones for women.

Yeah, I love that. And as I was thinking there, because I have a few patients in mind, and I just thought, well, with that knowledge, let's take movement and working out as an example, right? You could quite easily think, you know, okay, with that knowledge for the first 10 days of my cycle, I'm going to be pushing hard. Maybe I'll be going running. I'll be doing HIIT workouts. Maybe day 10 to 15, because testosterone is high and I can build muscle, I just go to the gym or I lift weights for those five days. And then maybe in the final week of my cycle, I forget about the gym. I forget about weights, and I practice yoga every night after work. I put on a YouTube video and I do 15 minutes of yoga. That's actually something that I just came up with at the top of my head, but actually it feels like a very simple but practical way

that people can immediately implement that knowledge into their lives. Yeah. Yeah. And I hope if there's any personal trainers that are listening to this, like you nailed it. Instead of putting women on this weekly cycle of working out, we should put women on their menstrual cycle. Are they 28 days, 30 days, 32? I mean, every woman's different, but the easiest way to understand this is that when estrogen is coming in, those power phases, when those power phases show up, yeah, push the workout, do the HIIT training, do the plyometrics, do really go into a deeper acceleration with your fitness. Your hormones can handle it. When testosterone comes in, could we take that five days and maybe one day you lift really, really heavy weights for your biceps and triceps. And the next day you do really heavy weights and really push your glutes and your hamstrings and your quads.

And then the next day you do abs. Like take five days and really power up your strength because you've got testosterone that will help you build muscle. But then to your point, when we move into that nurture phase in the back half, that's where yoga, pilates, go for a hike, go for a walk. That's your recovery time of all things. Can we bring that fitness aggression or that enthusiasm might be a little bit better? Can we bring it down to a more softer level so the female body can recover? Yeah, wonderful. Really absolutely love that. So many practical implications for people. Now, let's get back to fasting. I'd love to understand how

you have these six lengths of fasts, which all have different benefits. So what do you think? Is that a good place to start? Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's a great place to start because this was a concept when we built the book out that really got a lot of attention between me and the editors. And there's a lot of belief, like, why would you, aren't we just intermittent fasting? Should I just do 15 hours? Should I just do 16 hours? dive into the science, what you see is that once you've switched over into your fat burning system using the tool of something like intermittent fasting, the longer you stay there, the more healing happens. So in the book, I lay out six different lengths fasts, and this is the general

overview of them. At somewhere between 12 to 16 hours, you're going to switch into the fat burning system. So you will start to make ketones. Now what's interesting about ketones that I really want to point out is as ketones go up, it also triggers the production of a key neurotransmitter called GABA. And GABA is what calms us. So a lot of people believe when they get into that fasted state, they're going to be really anxious. They're going to be really hangry. But actually the opposite happens because once you make ketones, you become, you get GABA. So you become calm and ketones will, will shut off the hunger hormone. So you stop becoming hungry. And all of that happens around 12 to 16 hours.

becoming hungry. And all of that happens around 12 to 16 hours. We also have some evidence that inflammation markers come down. We know testosterone for men go up. We see a little bit for women going up. And we know growth hormone starts to kick in between 12 to 16 hours. So that's the base phase, isn't it? What you call intermittent fasting. It's a fast of somewhere between 12 and 16 hours. And let's just define fast. What does that mean? It means no food, presumably, but what about drinks? Yeah. So it means that your blood sugar is not rising, that it needs to start to decline. It needs to decrease to be able to signal that you go over into that fat burning state. So when you are fasting, if you drink something that raises your blood sugar, now you've pulled yourself out of the fasted state. So, you know, there are a lot of people

do coffee in their, in their fasting window for many people that works. And we can talk, you know, about all the nuance around coffee and drinks. Some people have asked me like, well, can I do like a diet soda? And we know that NutraSweet can actually spike insulin. So that's not a good choice. So we really need to be able to keep our blood sugar in this downward momentum to be able to switch over. So like a black coffee wouldn't tend to raise people's blood sugar, whereas, you know, I don't know, what is it? Mocha, Frappuccino type, modern, sugar-filled, chemical-filled. It's still coffee, but actually because of what's with the coffee, that's going to take you

out of that zone. So black tea would probably be okay as well, but milk and tea. Okay. So this is where the nuance really comes in and it's an individual thing. So what controls our blood sugar levels is our microbiome. And we all have a different microbiome profile. So it's hard for me to say, I can pretty much say off the experience that I've seen that 99% of the people who drink black coffee or black tea, they're not going to have a raise, their glucose will not go up and they will continue to go towards that fat burning system. But once we put cream in there, for some, a full fat cream will actually accelerate the decline and the decrease of their glucose, moving them even closer into that fat burning state and keeping them in a

fasted state. But somebody else with a microbiome profile that's vastly different, they put cream in their coffee and now their blood sugar goes up. So in the book, I give a blood sugar test that you need to do to see if these drinks that you're leaning into in your fasting window are actually supporting you in a fasted state because there's a lot of bio-individuality in that moment. Are you, on a slight aside here, I am aware there's a cost implication of these devices. What is your thoughts on CGM's continuous glucose monitors? I personally have found them to be an incredible tool for patients, for myself, to help teach you how your body responds to something. I think they can be overdone. I think people can use them without full context and get health anxiety around them. But I have to

say, I've very rarely in medicine seen something that can change behavior so well, so quickly. I'd love to know your perspective on that. Yeah, there is no tool out there that will change your relationship to food like a CGM. I think everybody should put it on it. And I'll tell you what I do. I do, when I'm working with women one-on-one to get their hormones back on track, the first thing we do is we take the scale away.

We get this, because the scale is not giving you any indication as to the metabolic health of your body. That number because the scale is not giving you any indication as to the metabolic health of your body. That number on the scale will not tell you that. But then we put a CGM on and then I have them test everything. Eat your favorite foods. Just go ahead and eat for, you know, those CGMs usually last about two weeks. Just eat the way you normally eat and let's see what your food behaviors are doing to your blood sugar levels. Now it becomes intrinsic because they get to see, oh my gosh, you know, and it can be healthy things. The first time I did this, I had cauliflower chips, you know, thinking it was

grain free. It spiked my blood sugar higher than a potato chip. Yeah. I agree. And I don't want to go completely down the rabbit hole of CGMs, but I've written five books now. The first four, I covered food in detail in each one. I know what a healthy diet is. I've been using food as medicine with patients for years. I was like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that this healthy food was doing this to me. And it really has changed my food behavior for the better. And I can feel stable blood sugar, more energy, more stable mood on the back of it. So I am a fan in a way that I'm not a fan of all health trackers. Certainly, I don't think they should all be widespreadly used as they are. But I do think CGMs have a particularly unique place. Back to fasting. So you have these six length of fasts, right? Length one is that 12 to 16 hour one. Length two is what you call the

autophagy fast, 17 hours plus. What's going on there? Yeah. So autophagy around 17 hours, on that? Yeah. So autophagy around 17 hours, look at your body will start to go into this state of autophagy and it's like a dimmer switch. It starts at 17 hours and there's based off science at peaks at 72 hours. So you're just starting this new state. And here's what the state is. Your body was so well-designed that at 17 hours of that blood sugar dropping, it starts to go, okay, I get it. No food's coming in. I need to become stronger. And the intelligence will turn within the cell and it'll look around at the cell and

it'll say, what inside this cell is not working for the survival of this human that we're in? So it's going to start to look at bacteria and viruses and push those out of the cell. It's going to repair mitochondria. You're going to see things like endoplasmic reticulum and all the working parts within the cell start to become stronger and the body repairs itself. The second thing that happens at 17 hours is some cells are incredibly damaged. Some cells are going to become cancer cells. Some of them are rogue cells. Some are aging cells. We call those senescent cells. And so the intelligent body, if it decides a cell is

going to slow down the survival of a human, it will actually kill that cell and get rid of it. And we call that apoptosis. And all of that happens without a detox supplement, without any kind of special strategy. You just go 17 hours without food and the body figures out what cells it needs to repair and what cells it needs to get rid of. Yeah, it's just incredible. And I hope we get time later on in this conversation to go through all the varied benefits of fasting. But you just touched on a few there, like you've already mentioned type 2 diabetes, reduced weight. I know you write about improved immune system function. You just mentioned cancer cells there

and how there is research now showing how fasting set periods can have an impact on your risk of cancer and all kinds of things. So there is a case for us all to consider some form of fasting in our life, whatever that might be, however it might fit our lifestyle. So I just wanted to highlight that, that gut health, right? Gut health is something you also talk about. And I think that's the third level of fast. That's a 24 hour fast you say is very, very good for your gut. Yeah. Yeah. So the research on that one was done out of MIT and it showed that at 24 hours, there is a reboot of intestinal stem cells. So we have to stop and think, why does the body do this?

So at 24 hours, it's a long enough period for the body to go, okay, food is not coming in. So I need to be prepared for that moment that food comes in. I need to make sure that when food comes in, we are utilizing food to its best, our best advantage. So what it will do in these intestinal stem cells is we have this thin mucosal lining on the inner part side of our gut. It starts to repair that. So anybody with a leaky gut, a 24-hour fast is an incredible tool for you.

Anybody with SIBO, what we know is that what also will happen in that moment is that bacteria that no longer serves us, the bad bacteria in our gut, we will get rid of that. So with SIBO, with any kind of gut dysbiosis, now we're seeing the bad go away and we're creating an environment where that good can really flourish. And then the last thing on that, and this one's really interesting. I'm not sure if you've ever talked to Dr. Emrin Mayer, but he wrote the gut immune. He's wrote several books on gut health, but I interviewed him on my podcast to talk about gut immune health.

And he talks about the idea that when our bacteria are clumped together inside our guts, that we cannot absorb the food and turn it in, pull the B vitamins out and all the nutrients that we need to pull out of our food, that we actually need our microbes to be more evenly spaced on the inside of our gut linings for nutrition to be able to be broken down. So at 24 hours, we see a relocation of these microbes where they stop clumping together and they start to spread out. So think about that, the implication of that. One day, let's say one day a week, maybe one day a month, you go 24 hours without food. That has a better chance at repairing your gut than all the probiotics in the world, all the enzymes in

the world. Once I clued into this, I literally stopped giving supplements that supported gut health to my patients because I found a 24-hour fast was way more powerful. Yeah. I mean, it's so powerful. A couple of things there. You mentioned SIBO. For people who don't know, that's an abbreviation, S-I-B-O, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And that can show up with symptoms such as bloating, constipation, just that kind of generalized discomfort often after eating. It's very, very common. So I can see how fasting would do that. Incidentally, Mindy, I don't know if you've found this, when people practice just a basic form of time-restricted eating, right? Let's say that would fit into your sort of phase one fast,

whether it's 12 hours of eating, 12 hours of not, or 10 hours of eating and 14 hours of not. The amount of people who report back, my irritable bowel syndrome symptoms were better. My constipation was better. My bloating, right? So it all highlights the point you made right at the start of the conversation that we are designed and built to have periods of time without food.

But the modern world has made it so that many of us simply don't do it anymore, right? So I think that was really great to understand that. Let's go through four, five, and six, the fat burner fast, the dopamine fast, I found really interesting, and the immune reset fast. Let's just briefly go through them because I really want to get to the cycle

and how these different lengths should be applied by women at different times. Yeah, so I'll go through them quickly, but they also, they really, there's some incredible healing that happens at 36, 48 and 72. So 36, I call it the fat burner reset. You know, so many, what I saw is that as I was teaching these concepts on YouTube, there were a lot of like people showing up saying, okay, I'm doing a 24 hour fast. I'm doing all the things you're saying that I should do, but I'm not losing weight. And what I realized is that they needed to go into some longer fasts. And at 36 hours, there's some great research showing us that over a 30 day period, that if people did 36 hours of fasting followed by 12 hours of eating, and then 36 hours of fasting, 12 hours of eating, repeating that

cycle for 30 days, that not only did they lose more weight than people who just did like one meal a day, but that they actually lost the weight in belly fat. Now think about that for a moment, because everybody, you know, wants to lose belly fat. Obviously that's a big motivator, but that's visceral fat. That's the fat that kills you. So use dipping into a 36 hour fast. You can really start to turn. And one of the things that it does, it'll turn white fat into brown fat so that it's a lot more, it's easier for your body to burn. So that's why I called it the fat burner reset. At 48 hours, what we see is your whole dopamine system gets rebooted. So the whole process in which we utilize dopamine is reset, but that's not the most

impressive part. We actually started to see D2 receptor sites, dopamine receptor sites, more receptor sites start to be produced and open up so that when you come out of that fast, you actually are able to enjoy the simple dopamine rushes of life. And so that happens at 48. And then 72 is the immune reset that Valter Longo brought us, which is rebooting your whole white blood cell and your whole immune system. Yeah, just I have to go back to that 48-hour fast because I think there's a really interesting point there for me, right? The whole dopamine system starts to reboot. And you mentioned earlier on, and I've spoken about this on the podcast before, that we don't

just eat when we're hungry, right? We eat our emotions. We eat often to fill a hole in our hearts, not a hole in our stomach. And you beautifully write in the book how when we're eating, a lot of the time we're choosing foods that give us a dopamine rush, right? You also mentioned eating disorders. Yes, we need to exercise caution. But I wonder if one of the reasons that people who have had a troubled relationship with food, why fasting, if done responsibly in the right way with support, I wonder if one of the reasons it works so well is because it does reset dopamine and reset someone's entire relationship with food in the first place. Yeah. So think of dopamine resistance a little bit

like insulin resistance. The mechanisms are not completely similar, but the concept is analogous. So what we know about people who are obese, people who have food addiction issues, is that when they're eating, they are not getting the same dopamine response as they used to. And they're not getting the same dopamine response as let's say somebody who doesn't have a food addiction. So I quote a study in the book was done on obese individuals, and they found that it took more food in order for that person who was obese to be able to have pleasure from that food. So when we talk about food addiction, a lot of it is we got to keep eating because we're not getting that same dopamine high. Now you throw in a 48-hour fast

and all of a sudden we've got a situation where we've reset that system and you take somebody who's struggled with food addiction, somebody who's trying to reverse obesity, you give them a meal and now they're getting enjoyment out of it. Now they're like, whoa, this, I actually love this. And they're not needing, they're not craving more and more and more. Yeah. So, so, so powerful. Now let's go back to the cycle, right? We've got the phases, which you've, you know, beautifully explained for people. Now, now that we understand that there are different lengths of fasts, how do we superimpose those fasting lengths on the different phases of the menstrual cycle? Yeah, so this, this is pretty straightforward. And you know, if it, people listening,

if you're, this is brand new hormonal language, I'm a visual learner. So I put a lot of graphs in the, in the book, but you also can just Google a woman's menstrual cycle. And when you see it over a 30 day period, what I, the, the general principle is when hormones are high, so manifestation phase, nurture phase, we need to change our fasting behavior. When hormones are low, we can really fast as long as we want. We can do all six of those fasts. So with that in mind, let's go through what I call the fasting cycle. The first power phase, you can throw a three-day water fast in.

In fact, if you have PCOS, I encourage you to try a three-day water fast and watch your body start to become insulin sensitive again and watch the symptoms of PCOS go away. If you are struggling to get pregnant, we've seen this so many times in our community and in my clinic where all of a sudden if your issue is insulin resistance and estrogen imbalances, and that's contributing to infertility, throw in some of those longer fasts in that first power phase and in the power phase that happens after you ovulate. So those six fasts all fit in there. And I really want to encourage people to try to up your fasting game as you start to learn

this tool and go into the longer fast for healing during that time. So during the manifestation phase, now this one's really interesting because we have all these hormones at their peak. And one of the things we know about hormonal rises and decline, we see this a lot in menopause, is when hormones come up and then they decline very quickly. Like what happens around that ovulation period is oftentimes toxins are released from our stored tissue. So heavy metals, plastics, glyphosate, phthalates, all the toxins that are in our world. So because we know when hormones are up, we're going to get a little bit of a

detox effect. I strongly recommend if your toxic load is high, you're not going to want to do more than like a 15, 16 hour fast during manifestation phase, or you're going to see some detox reactions. This is where women start saying, oh, I'm gaining weight fasting. I've got brain fog when I'm fasting. I'm struggling to get into ketosis when I'm fasting. A lot of that could be a toxic dump. So I really encourage women to keep those fasts under 16 hours. Stay with an intermittent fast during that time. Yeah. So let's just recap a little bit. First phase, power phase, let's just recap a little bit. First phase, power phase, day zero, well, day one to day 10, we've already said that's a phase where women can tolerate a degree of stress. You're saying in that phase, fast as long as you want, like within reason, right? You can do any length of those

fast because you can manage it then. Okay. But then when you go to sort of day 10 to 15, then. Okay. But then when you go to sort of day 10 to 15, the manifestation phase, the ovulation phase, when testosterone is rising, you're saying, just be cautious then, don't go above 15 or 16 hours, and maybe even a little bit less potentially at that time. Now, you also mentioned, Mindy, detoxification. If your toxin load is high. Now, I think there's going to be some people listening who have no idea what that means. And I want to bring in there something you also said. I think it was in your book. Your favorite phase is the manifestation phase. And you say the focus then switches from producing hormones to metabolizing hormones. And I think just explaining that around detoxification, I think those two things might fit quite nicely for people there.

Yes. Yeah. And thank you for bringing that up because this is another part of the hormone conversation that we're not culturally having, which is taking a hormone doesn't mean your body knows how to use those cells are not always using that hormone. And we see this a lot with thyroid medication, where a woman will go on a thyroid medication, but she still doesn't feel different. And that's because all hormones have to be metabolized. A better way to look at metabolize is that all hormones have to be broken down into a usable formula that the cells can actually put into action. So where does that breakdown happen?

It happens in the liver and it happens in the gut. So when we look at the manifestation phase during this ovulation period, we've got all these hormones really, really high. We've got estrogen and testosterone at their peak. The focus needs to now switch from producing hormones to breaking those hormones down. So liver, there's a lot of foods that will support the liver. I think this is a great time to lean into the bitter foods, the radicchios, the lemons, the ginger, the arugula. I think this is a great time to avoid alcohol or anything that

would put a stress on the liver because you need your liver to break down all of these hormones. We also have to look at gut health. So I talk in the book about the three Ps, which is polyphenol, probiotic, and prebiotic foods. Can we bring more of those fermented foods in? Can we bring more nuts and seeds in? Can we bring more of the green leafy vegetables in? If we support the liver and the gut during that time and use food as our hormonal tool to be able to break these hormones down, now we're going to really take our hormonal balance to the next level. balance to the next level. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where

I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health. And together, we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour.

I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision-making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things,

it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want

to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Yeah, it's brilliant. And in the book, you do talk about alongside fasting, the foods that will support whatever you're doing with the fasting. Even if you're not fasting, the foods that will support various phases of the cycle, which again is why I think this book is going to be useful for any woman because just what you said there, right? Days 10 to 15, you need your liver working for you, right? So you don't want to be putting in alcohol then because you're just going to make it harder to detoxify the hormones, you know, clear those

hormones out of your body. I do think that's something that a lot of people, even within mainstream medicine, don't quite understand that there's hormones and then the hormones need to be processed and removed out of the body. And that gets done through the liver, through the guts and, you know, the regularity of your bowel movements, you know, what you're putting in. You talk about cruciferous vegetables and all these other types of foods that you mentioned can really support detoxifying those hormones. You also write about how if we don't detoxify those hormones well and they stick around, there's an impact, isn't there? Yes. And such a great piece of the conversation that needs to be highlighted, which is you have all these

hormones come in. And if you are not supporting the liver, if you are not getting enough vegetables, vegetables are key for that. There's a whole set of bacteria in your gut called the estrobilome, and it breaks down estrogen. These microbes break down estrogen. So how do we feed them? How do we support them so they can break estrogen down? And that's through a lot of green leafy vegetables. It's through those three P's categories that I talked about. If you are not supporting them during this key time, then that estrogen is going to be stored. And where it gets stored is in anywhere that there is fat. So it's going to go into the breast tissue

and it can start to throw, the big place it goes is the breast tissue. It can start to make you accumulate more fat. Your body will put it on belly fat. It'll put around fat around your hips and your glutes that you're trying to so actively perhaps get rid of. So that is why it's like in that phase, we have to switch our focus to, okay, I made them now. I spent the first 10 days trying to support an environment that allowed these hormones to do what they need to do. But now I'm in this phase of my cycle

where I need to support how to break them down, not only to be able to use them, but to prevent some of these hormonal cancers that we're seeing so popular in women. Yeah, this is not just so you feel good in the moment. It has other implications as well. Okay, so the woman's ovulated, right? We're at day 15, assuming there's a regular cycle. Then we move into the second power phase. What should we be thinking of then when we're thinking

about fasting and also our diet, I guess? The two things fit alongside each other, don't they? Yeah. So when you come out of that phase around day 15, 16, you can go back into some of the longer fasts. So you're going to have a four day window where if you want to throw in a 24 hour fast, you want to do the 48 hour dopamine fast, you can throw it in there. And because hormones are low, you can go back to a more low carb style of eating if that's what the way that you eat. more low carb style of eating if that's what the way that you eat. So it's, it's another dip and moment in the cycle where we can power up on these tools. We can also, you can push your workouts. You can go ramp up your social calendar. You can, you know, do a higher workload during that time because the hormones are, are low. So you can go back into any of these longer fasts to use them for their healing effect.

Yeah. That these three phases of the cycle, one, two, and three, and it goes one, two, back to one again. That's right. And then you hit three. And this again, I think, of course, it's a very important phase. It's that one week or so, or maybe 10 days at the end of the cycle. It's that period of time before the

periods where we've already said the body wants carbs. You're trying to support progesterone. I think you've already said at that time, you want to nourish yourself. We were talking about maybe doing more yoga and relaxation type activities at that period of time. What should we be doing then regarding fasting then? And I guess food intake, we've already touched on a little bit, but maybe just talk about that particular part of the cycle. Yeah. So there's a lot to discuss on this part of the cycle when it comes to our lifestyle. When it comes to fasting, if you're new to fasting, when it comes to fasting, if you're new to fasting, I strongly encourage you to not fast that week because what you don't want to do is raise cortisol. Once cortisol goes high, progesterone becomes shy. She is not going to make her debut. And you need progesterone to peak

in order for the uterine lining to shed. So women who have a spot before their period, uterine lining to shed. So women who have a spot before their period, women that have heavy periods, a lot of times that's because we're not minding progesterone. She is not in her, you know, able to be produced. So if you're not, if you haven't fasted, then really be careful and don't fast during that time. Now, the second part of that question that I get asked a lot is with women who are like, but I rock fasting. I can do three-day water fast, no problem. I'm metabolically flexible. I would say still, keep it under 13 hours. This is not, you know, if you're concerned about like a lot of women say, I'm going to gain weight during that time. I promise you, you won't if you follow the pattern that we've just walked you through. So we want to look at minimal fasting to no fasting. And then on the food front, I talk in the book of something called hormone feasting foods. And when it comes

to progesterone, she wants you to eat certain foods. So we already talked about chocolate. I'm not saying don't eat chocolate, just eat good chocolate. Make sure it's clean. Make sure it's not packed with sugar. Use that magnesium. Use your sweet tooth during that time to your advantage. When you're craving carbs, go to the potatoes, the sweet potatoes, go to the squashes, go to things like quinoa, the citrus fruits, tropical fruits. I map them all out in the book. This is what progesterone wants you to feed her. So we've got to change the diet. We've got to cut the fasting out and you will see like, it's crazy. I don't know if you saw this on my

YouTube channel, but the number of women that are like, I followed this protocol and especially did what she said before the week before my period. And my cycle was totally became, got back in sync. Yeah. Oh yeah. I've seen those comments and I want to get to that because there's, there's so many different scenarios for women. I want to talk about ages under 35, I want to talk about 35 to 50, above 50, post-menopausal, if we have time. I mean, you are such a fountain of knowledge and the book has got it all in anyway. But I think even just that simplistic take home that at the start of your cycle, you can tolerate high stress, long fasts. The end of your cycle, you need low stress, no fasting potentially potentially nourishing yourself, even that,

right? If, if that's all anyone takes away from this conversation, I think that can have profound implications for women and their partners and the men in their life, just to even know that simple fact. Yes. Yes. And, and you know, if you're listening and you're like, wait, this is really confusing. Actually, when you break it down even more, it can be as simple as you just said. Some people, Mindy, I think will have heard those lengths of fasts and gone, wait a minute. The basic one is 12 to 16 hours. I need to eat every few hours. I can barely fast for 12 hours, let alone the 17 plus one, the 24, 36,

right? So for that woman who's listening now, who goes, I can't do any of this. What are you talking about? What would you say to them? Yeah. I'm so happy you asked me this question because one of the concepts around metabolic health that we are not discussing enough is that if you struggle to go without food, you are in the beginning stages of mitochondrial dysfunction. You are in the beginning stages of diabetes if that's in your genetic profile. So we have to look at our hangry person the hypoglycemic person the person that can't go without food that that is a warning sign yeah i so what we have done is we tend to say oh it's just me i can't do that like i can't tell you how many friends personal friends of mine are like i

love what you're doing mindy i. I just can't fast. And I come back to, if you have to eat all day and you don't, and you struggle to go eight hours without food, that is your body saying, warning, warning, we are in a mitochondrial mess and we need to clean things up. So in the book, I talk about something called a pre-reset where I show how you can take a two week period and you can clean up your food and you can slowly like back your way in to this fasting lifestyle. It doesn't have to be where you're going to suffer your way in. Your body wants to fast. So the more you train it to do it, it gets easier and easier and easier. So please stay open as we're having this conversation because the fact that you've

got to eat all day is onto itself a warning sign that fasting can really help you clean up. Yeah, completely agree. Very, very important to pay attention and not just medicate that with more foods because you're just kicking the problem down the road. It's better to address it and go, let me see what I can do now to make sure I can go 8, 10, 12 hours. Because through an evolutionary lens, if we couldn't go more than 8 hours without foods, we wouldn't be here, right? Man or woman. foods, we wouldn't be here, right? Man or woman. So there is something not quite working with your metabolic system that potentially can be repaired. Certainly in my experience, in most cases, it can be repaired if we start small and build up slowly. I want to get to some particular ages now,

because I know there's women of all different ages who listen to this show. And I think the approach they may need to take might be quite different. So I know for you, something quite key happened in your 40s, where you were trying to get into the shape of your life, you were trying to be fit, healthy, but the things that you were doing in the past that did work suddenly no longer were working. And I know from friends, from patients, from the public, many women in their 40s feel this. Oh my God, why am I putting weight on now? Why am I seemingly not able to cope like I used to? Now, this can be the perimenopausal phase, can't it? And for someone, for a lady who's in that phase, how might they apply the principles that you've talked about so far? Can we get specific to people in that phase, perhaps? Yeah, absolutely. So here's another highlight that I think women need to know,

is that at 40s, your ovaries are going into retirement. and it's going to take about 10 to 15 years. And over this time, your sex hormones start to decline. And one of those major sex hormones, as we've talked about is estrogen. So as estrogen goes down, you become more insulin resistant. I really want you to women to own this because you're not all of a sudden becoming more in, you know, undisciplined at 43. There's not a reason why other than a hormonal reason, usually that you're starting to gain weight. The diet that you used at 35 to keep your weight and where you want it is not going to work for you at 45 because you're losing estrogen, making you more insulin resistant. So that is really important because there's so much guilt, so much shame that happens to women as they go through the menopausal

experience. So with that in mind, this becomes, fasting becomes this imperative tool for perimenopausal women to start to use because we can make ourselves insulin sensitive, again, through the concepts we've been talking about. The second thing that I want to highlight for the woman going through perimenopause and even into the menopausal years is that as we lose estrogen, we also are losing a lot of our cognitive ability. We have the most amount of estrogen receptor sites in our prefrontal cortex. So as we lose our ability for memory and to hold on to new information, to keep our focus, our mood disorders that are appearing during this time, that is because estrogen has gone to its ultimate low and it's a whole new experience for the menopausal brain.

But we can use ketones as a way to substitute and power up what the brain needs as it learns to recalibrate to this loss of estrogen. So that perimenopausal time from about 40 to the early 50s, this is where fasting has to be a mandatory go-to tool to support women through that process i mean just so much gold you've just said mindy just one thing i wanted to highlight there just so women don't feel guilt is that let's think about it through the lens of type 2 diabetes right so let's say you're well and fully insulin sensitive. You can get away with a certain diet because you're insulin sensitive. Let's say you're very, very insulin resistant, as Mindy, you've already explained

what that means early on in this conversation. I think we all understand that then with type 2 diabetes, the same diet that worked 10,15 years ago when we were insulin sensitive, is no longer going to be the right diet for us as our hormones have changed, as the way our body signals have changed. And you're effectively saying, forget a disease state, just in the natural process of women getting older, in their 40s, ovaries, as you say, starting to shut down for retirement. Of course, with different women, it will happen at different times. Your signals are changing. Your hormones are changing. You are becoming insulin resistant. So of course, the diet that worked for you in your 30s may no longer work for you in your 40s.

There's nothing wrong with you, right? A lot of women get frustrated with the weight gain, but I think through that lens, it's like, well, yeah, maybe I need to change my diet. Maybe, for example, a lower carb diet may be brilliant in my 40s. Maybe I didn't need it in my 30s, but I now need it in my 40s. That's right. That's right. And I just, I love your heart because this is the burden we need to take off of women. There is so much guilt and shame around our, our relationship with food. And what we're seeing in the forties is there's these dramatic body shifts and I, and I've experienced it myself. I'm 53 and I've just gone through that whole process and you don't

understand yourself. You're like, I've been, you know, for me, it was, I love to work out. I was doing a lot of paleo. I was, you know, really, and then I'd moved into the ketogenic diet. I had found fasting. I was like trying to play with all these tools because I felt like somebody hijacked my body. Like I was not able to use those old tools anymore. I needed a new set of tools and I need to learn how to cycle them like I teach in the book. But what happens, you know, I don't know if you've seen this statistic, 45 to 55 is the most common decade for women to commit suicide.

Now, why is that? There is a hormonal decline that is changing our brains and our bodies, and we are not understanding ourselves. And we as a society are not talking about this hormonal shift. So the 45-year-old woman is depressed. She's not sleeping. She's gaining weight. She's having all these new health challenges, but she's throwing the old strategies at them

that are no longer working, not realizing that something in her lifestyle has to shift. Yeah. And not only that, the medical profession, and I've been part of it for over two decades now, we're just not trained that well on the things that you're talking about. So if a woman does go, you know what, I need some help here, often they'll end up with a healthcare professional, maybe a doctor, maybe someone else. And maybe, you know, I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus here, right? I do think medical professionals are trying their best, but I just imagine 20 years ago, I wouldn't have known what to do for that woman. I genuinely, like I would have done my training and passed my exams,

but 20 years ago, I just would not have known. And therefore that woman then goes out thinking, oh, well, the doctors can't help me. Or a common one, which you will have heard, I've heard a million times is my doctor tried to put me on an antidepressant. That's right. I mean, that's the common one. And at that point, women feel unheard. They feel unseen. They've lost faith

in the medical profession, quite understandably. And so this is really, really important. That suicide statistic was startling when I heard that. And it's one of the reasons I think we need to take this super, super seriously. Okay, so we've covered the sort of 35 plus, in your 40s, the perimenopausal period of time. What about postmenopause? Because after the periods have stopped, I know you've said before that after menopause, fasting gets easier. And I think you've also said that the postmenopausal group of women are the group that needs fasting the most. So I wonder if you could explain that for us, please. Yeah, it's such a good point. So what has surprised me in educating the world on these concepts is how many women go through

menopause and symptoms stick. So I've seen women that are 10 years into their post-menopausal journey, and they still can't get rid of the weight that they accumulated during the process. They still have hot flashes. They're still struggling with mood changes. And so it fascinates me that even though they don't have a cycle anymore, those issues are still lingering around. And the reason for that is they didn't change their lifestyle when they went through the process. So they can

change it now. They can use what we're talking about as a tool to make sure that their age appropriate hormones are at the highest level possible. Now, I'm not talking about bringing your estrogen or progesterone levels back to your 25 year old self. That's not what we're talking about. But when we are 55 and 65, we need to make sure that we keep estrogen and progesterone at her peak and even testosterone. that we keep estrogen and progesterone at her peak and even testosterone. Otherwise, we start to slip into more of these categories of dementia and Alzheimer's, especially if there's a genetic profile for that. So when we start to use fasting, especially the longer fast, we can clean up that estrogen system for a postmenopausal woman.

That's going to make her hot flashes going to go away. That's going to make sure that she starts to lose weight. And that's going to make sure that she cognitively stays at her best. But then she also needs to know to step out of fasting to mind progesterone. So we can have her go into maybe one day a week because she's not following necessarily a monthly cycle. She could follow a weekly cycle and one day a week, two days a week. She doesn't fast. She brings her carbs up. She leans into the hormone feasting foods so that she can bring progesterone up so she can stop being anxious so that she can sleep a lot better. So we still have to mind these hormones at that phase, but we don't have a monthly cycle to look at it from.

Yeah, that's a really good point because we spent a lot of time in this conversation talking about this 28, 30-day type cycle. But of course, postmenopausally, that doesn't apply anymore. But I still think what you've been talking about, as you've just mentioned, is highly relevant for this postmenopausal group. I know you've got a variety of different techniques for postmenopausal women. One, I think was the 5-1-1. What's the 5-1-1? Yeah. Yep. So 5-1-1 is where five days a week, she does her favorite length fast. So let's say it's like 15 hours, 16 hours. And in that time, I really recommend she does more of a low carb style of eating.

My version of keto is something I call ketobiotic. I actually bring the carb level up a little bit more than most keto diets because I think that's more appropriate for women. And I encourage women to lean into more of the nature's carbs, the leafy greens to be able to help. So those five days a week, she would do maybe a 15 hour fast with the ketobiotic diet. One day a week, I want her to stretch her fast.

In fact, I would encourage her to try to get to that 24 hours so she can create some gut repair to break down the estrogen that she needs for her brain. And then one day a week, she steps out of fasting. She does more hormone feasting foods. And she looks at how does she bring progesterone up? So that's a typical 5-1-1 for the postmenopausal woman. I love that. So instead of thinking 28, 30-day cycle, think more about a seven-day pattern. What about younger women? Because in this sort of under 35 age group, let's say,

and maybe the under 40 age group where women are, you know, maybe they've got a regular cycle, but many women don't. So what about women who have taken birth control and then come off birth control pills? I mean, that can be all kind of hormonal havoc going on there. I know we've mentioned the cycle, so people can, of course, follow the principles that we've already outlined if they do have a cycle. Anything for younger women to pay attention to in particular? And what about those younger women who don't have regular cycles? How might they approach your work?

Yeah. And again, this has shocked me how many women don't have a cycle. So the first thing I want to point out about our cycles is we tend to look at them as something that we don't want to deal with. It's like, oh, I'm going to feel this way. It's a hassle. But what I want to say is when we shed blood, it is a version of a detox. So we need that menstrual cycle. It is how your body is removing toxins from your system. It is a beautiful mechanism that has been born into us that we should cherish. The fact that younger women are not having regular cycles should be of great concern to all of us. So now having said that, we can start to bring back a healthy cycle by following what we've

been talking about. And in the book, I call it the fasting cycle. We actually have an app now where you can go in and you can put your day of your cycle in and track your symptoms. And it'll tell you the best foods and fasting length. And we even go into nutrients that you can use. So that's, that's available for women, but you can either choose your own length fast. You can choose your own food styles, according to how I teach it in the book, or I did put a 30 day fasting reset in there where

you just map it to your cycle and it'll start to balance out those hormones. But if you look at the majority of women that are 25, they're high stress. A lot of them are eating the wrong foods and every single month they're working against their hormones. And so all of a sudden now we're seeing a rise in infertility. We're seeing a rise in PCOS. And all at the root of these hormonal challenges is a woman not living in flow with her hormones. And that is what we can change to dramatically change the needle on those type of situations occurring. So let's say for a 28-year-old young lady who is not on the pill, a lot of people I don't even realize when they're taking the pill, they're not really having periods. Yes, there's blood and it's happening at a certain time,

but actually that is artificially stimulated through the pill. It's not a natural period. So for women who are not on birth control pills and they don't have their period, they just don't know when it's going to come. Some of them are not having it at all. Obviously, extreme weight loss will do that, but let's say they're not super low weight. Could they just follow your 30-day cycle? And if they don't know where they are, they don't know where day one is, they don't know where day 10 is, they're just like, okay, well, why don't I just start? Would simply starting and living in accordance with day one to 10 power, day 10 to 15 manifestation and changing the fasts, changing the stress, changing the exercise, changing the inputs

to the body, is that going to help them? And is it going to help them bring their periods back? That's exactly what it's going to do. And this actually shocked me because I came up with this concept, the fasting cycle that we've been talking about. And I started to use it on myself in my perimenopausal years. And then I started to use it on my patients. And then I expanded it out to the social media audience that was following my teachings.

And what really surprised me was how many women within 30 to 90 days could bring their cycles back into sync just by following what we're talking about. And beyond that, the other surprising effect, and I, you know, this is just me observing, you know, millions of women by now who have gone through the fasting cycle, is that when women were infertile, that because they don't have a regular cycle, that's a problem if you're trying to get pregnant. So what we started to see was that fertility went up and within 90 days, a lot of women that have spent years trying to get pregnant all of a sudden became pregnant. So to your point, it's that simple. If you are not seeing a regular cycle, just go to that fasting reset and do day one through day 30. If you do that for 90 days,

you will sync yourself back up. That is what we're seeing. Yeah. I just, I really want people to take heed of that. If there's someone, a man or a woman listening, and you have a daughter at that age who's struggling, please send them this conversation. Send them Mindy's book, send them Mindy's YouTube channel. If you've got a friend, share this with them, because I can't emphasize enough, Mindy, how much your work has touched me, because as I've already mentioned, I think the implications go far beyond improving that individual woman's health. Yeah, sure. Great. Improve that woman's health. But what does that mean? Well, who are the women in society? What are they doing? They're usually the nurturing ones. They're the ones who are looking after people. They're often the caregivers. They're the mothers.

They're the grandmothers, right? They're the people who carry babies, which is how the population keeps going. If you look at it through that level, helping women to feel better, to have more energy, to have more vibrancy, to have better memory, cognition, better gut health, the implications are huge. They're huge. They're huge. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I, I, we have to pause at this moment in human history and ask ourselves how we're taking care of women's health. There was an article that went out in the New York times a couple of weeks ago around menopause and how we have a cultural acceptance of women's suffering. And what we're doing as women is that we're internalizing that. We're creating more guilt,

more shame because we're not thriving in this patriarchal healthcare system. And when we look at what women need from a healthcare system is we need to bring in all the nuance of what we're talking about. We need to bring in self-love. We need to bring in doctors that have compassion for us. We need to understand ourselves and where these hormones are coming in and out. And we have to stop trying to do everything from how we eat to how we work out to the medications we take at the same as men, because we are massively different and we have been taught to do it the way that we teach men. And that is what needs to stop in order for us to thrive. Yeah. I mean, this conversation is all we're going to change.

It's all we're going to change how I approach things in my own personal life, not only professional life, but personal life. I can see how it would make me more aware, let's say with my own wife, for example, how I can be more supportive potentially at different times. You know, I'd like to think of myself as quite enlightened and progressive, but I'm learning things from your work that I wasn't that aware of, which now that I am, I can make changes. So on a personal level, I want to thank you for that. Thank you. What do you think people get wrong about fasting? Oh, well, here's the number one thing. They think it's a fad diet. It is not a fad diet. It is a healing state you put your body into. Your body was designed to fast. So if you're not fasting, it's not like, oh,

I'm not choosing to do that fad diet. You're actually taking this massive healing mechanism out of your healing picture, your health picture. So we have to stop looking at it like a diet and look at it as a therapeutic healing state that every single moment you dip into it, your body is actually starting to build more health and instead of more disease. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think if you just look at cultures around the world as well, you know, most cultures have had fasting built in within them for thousands of years. So this modern idea that, you know, fasting is dangerous. It's, you know, I get and we've caveated it several times throughout the conversation, but fasting is not dangerous for

humans. Healthy, vibrant humans, it's definitely not dangerous for. How many people around the world follow the Islamic faith? How many of those people fast for one month every single year? Yes, there's some nuances to that fast. It's just incredible, you know. And actually, I mentioned I was at a book festival recently in the Middle East, and I was chatting to this wonderful lady called Sally, who lives out there. And she said a couple of things which really resonated with me. One was she was really looking forward to Ramadan. She was saying, I'm really excited. And she said, Rangan, you don't know how good a sip of water can taste until you fasted. And I just thought, wow, it's something we take for granted every day. You know, I, I, yeah, I get it. I get it. And

especially if you're in a hot country, what must that be like? That first sip must be like an elixir from heaven, right? When you, when you first taste that. And there's other things she said to me, which were really quite profound, but this wider point for me, Mindy, and I, towards the end of our conversation, I wonder what your view on this is. I think in Western society, a lot of the time we, you know, we say, what are the benefits? Come on, tell me about insulin, growth hormone. Tell me about cancer risk, immune system function, gut health. Okay, these things are important. But my feeling from experiencing myself and talking to people is that a lot of the real benefits from fasting are actually psychological.

It goes beyond what's happening in the body. It teaches us that, oh, we can go without food. We're not going to crumble and disintegrate into ash. We are capable, resilient humans who can tolerate discomfort. I mean, what is your view on that? You know, physical benefits, psychological benefits. How do you see those two things? Yeah. Oh, there's so much to say on that topic. You know, when you go into these fasted states and it gets difficult, what I want you to remember is that your body thrives with small doses of difficult situations. We call that a hormetic stress. And if you keep the body in comfort, whether it's temperature comfort or food comfort or just life comfort, you are actually breaking the body down in a bad way.

You are aging yourself. You are building disease. We have to have moments of micro discomfort. So when we use, like I always say to people, once they've mastered a 15 hour fast, I'm like, great, now let's try 17. And when it gets in this place of discomfort, you have an opportunity in that moment to learn a new skill. For example, often we go to food as a dopamine rush. But what happens at 17 hours when you're hungry, your brain is bored, and you're like, I need food, but I can't eat it right now. What's going to end up happening is you're going to have a whole new set of tools that are going to be revealed to you on other ways to stimulate dopamine, like maybe turning on music, maybe going for a walk, like something is going to appear

that you were not able to see because you never put yourself in that discomfort to be able to get the brain to search for it. And then the second thing I want to say on this, and this is how that every religion has used fasting as a spiritual tool. You become very, very clear. And the thoughts, you're thinking a lot less thoughts than when you're thinking when you eat. So I've even used a three-day water fast as a tool to help me through difficult times. The example I always use is with my 23-year-old daughter was going through a really tough time in college. And I was scared as her mother, and I couldn't figure out how to help her. So I went into a three-day water fast, and I got the message that it's going to work out. It's all going to be okay. Just relax. And within a week after that, I started to see some dramatic shifts that moved

her in the right direction. But that insight, I don't think I would have ever received if I had been eating all day. I needed to go into that quiet space to be able to hear that message. Yeah. I think this is a hugely underestimated benefit of fasting. I don't think we realize, all of us, how much we medicate our emotions with food in a food abundant society. You know, I've said this, I think in a previous conversation, fasting is self-imposed scarcity. Yes. And I think there's an incredible power and wisdom we get from doing that. You mentioned cultures. It's interesting. I put around to see my mother this morning, who's in her early 80s. And I said, mum, you know, fasting, how did you approach this? And she reminded me that after me

and my brother were born, I've got an older brother, she would fast two days a week. She said every Monday and Friday, I wouldn't eat all day. she would fast two days a week. She said every Monday and Friday, I wouldn't eat all day. I'd have a very small dinner Monday and Friday. It was for her a symbol. It was a symbolic thing that she did for the health of her children, right? So again, whether people want to believe in that or not, there was this kind of deeper cultural tradition, bit of wisdom that, yeah, made, I guess, her feel as though she was doing something for my health and my brother's health, even though she was the one doing it, but also she was gaining benefits as well. And I think if you talk to people from

different cultures, they'll all have many different examples like that of how they're doing that. Mindy, for someone who is listening, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. Just to finish off, for people who feel inspired by what you've said and think, okay, I've been skeptical about fasting and never thought it was for me, but I think I'm going to give it a go. Have you got any final words of inspirational wisdom to share with them? Yeah. Here's what I would really say is I hope that after this conversation, you are at least your interest has been piqued. And what I want you to know is look at it like you would run a marathon. You don't just run out and try to do, you know, 26 miles as we do it over

here, that you really have to train yourself to get to that place. So as you embark upon fasting, understand there's a lifestyle. And I have a whole chapter on what a fasting lifestyle looks like in the book, but it's a training process and difficult moments are going to happen. That's okay. We talked about that. That's where the physical and spiritual and mental growth are going to happen, that's okay. We talked about that. That's where the physical and spiritual and mental growth is going to happen. So be playful, be curious about this tool and know that the more you exercise your fasted states, the easier it gets. I don't know any diet that gets easier with time. It actually does the opposite. So don't be discouraged if in the beginning it's tough.

Your body's adapting and then you're going to see all these benefits that we're talking about. So that would be my final thought. Yeah, brilliant words. And let's not forget, fasting is completely free.

Totally free. It's completely free charge. Guys, do check out Fast Like a Girl. It is absolutely brilliant. jam-packed full of information. Mindy, you're doing incredible work. I love your energy. I love your passion. Keep it up. And that's coming on the show. Oh, thank you. This was actually one of the best conversations I've had on fasting. So thank you for the detail of your question, because as you can see, I want to get this out to the world.

I really, that it is a free tool. We can't make health be this expensive thing that only people who have money can access. Fasting changes that whole game. So I appreciate being here and I'll definitely come back for a part two. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation i honestly thought that that was a really special and important episode so please do take a moment right now if you can to stop and share this episode with your friends and family i honestly believe that the more people who are aware of the content within this episode, the better. And of course, do pick up a copy of Mindy's brand new book, Fast Like a Girl.

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