The Mel Robbins Podcast - Never Fast the Week Before Your Period! The Shocking Science About Intermittent Fasting & Women’s Health

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

In this episode, researcher, respected expert on intermittent fasting, and bestselling author of Fast Like A Girl, Dr. Mindy Pelz, is here to explain fasting—and, in particular, how it impacts women’s hormone health. Men and women’s hormones are different, and because of that, women MUST fast differently than men. Dr. Mindy is the first person who explained this to me, and this is why I wanted to have her on. I had no idea that fasting would screw up my estrogen and progesterone. Why? Because I first learned about fasting from a male. When I tried intermittent fasting, I wasn’t seeing the health benefits that everyone talks about. Now I know why. You’ve seen fasting advice trending on TikTok and in health articles; even your friends are talking about it (just like mine), and after this episode you will know exactly what fasting is, why you might want to do it, and what every woman needs to know to get started. I want you to get the right information from a respected female expert in this field. Everyone needs to hear this.  This conversation is loaded with research and resources, and as always, extensive show notes are available on melrobbins.com. You can find them for this episode here. (www.melrobbins.com/podcasts/episode-103) Today, Dr. Mindy Pelz reveals: The scientific protocols you need so you can fast the right way.How to fast with your 28- to 30-day cycle for hormonal, physical, and mental health (and what to do if you’ve lost your cycle, like me).The hormone science about how the female body operates (no one talks about this).How to manage PMS and why intermittent fasting may help.The research that explains why fasting tanks your progesteroneHow this relates to you if you are in menopause and have an irregular cycle.What the 30-day reset is, and its powerful ability to transform your health.How to incorporate fasting into your life (and never miss a good meal with your family and friends).Why coffee doesn’t break a fast, but a frappuccino does.3 hacks to get started with a fast that will make your fasts more successful.The 6 fasting windows and their unique and extraordinary health benefits. We are going to focus on the step-by-step guide for women, what to do, and why this matters, but we do cover fasting protocols and how-to advice that both genders need to know. I learned so much from Dr. Mindy, and as with all episodes, this is a free resource where you get to learn straight from somebody who has literally written the book on this topic.  I would definitely send this to absolutely anyone that needs to hear it. Xo, Mel  IMPORTANT: This podcast discusses fasting, and its advice may not be suitable for anyone with an eating disorder. If you have an existing health condition, are pregnant or nursing, or are taking medication, always consult your healthcare practitioner before going for prolonged periods without eating. In this episode: 1:30: What exactly IS fasting and what is the purpose? (Hint: It’s NOT a diet trend.)5:45: What does fasting look like for a PhD who studies fasting?7:15: What’s okay to include during your fasting window?8:15: 3 simple hacks to help you get started with fasting.13:00: Who is fasting NOT for?16:10 Here’s how you may feel when you first try fasting.17:50: Women need to fast differently than men.18:45: How your hormones are impacted by intermittent fasting.25:00: Why most women were not successful when fasting was first introduced.30:15: How do you figure out your menstrual cycle if you use an IUD?34:20: Menopausal women can use the moon for what?38:50: 4 steps to determine which of the 6 types of fasting works best for you.42:00: How to make intermittent fasting more flexible.45:00: Limit these 3 foods when you’re fasting.47:50: 4 ways to break a fast. Want more resources? Go to my podcast page at melrobbins.com/podcast. Disclaimer 

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here welcome to this extraordinary masterclass and step-by-step guide into the science and the application of intermittent fasting into your life as a tool for healing and for improving your health. Now, we're about to jump in to the step-by-step part and how you get started. And we're going to also talk about the different protocols for fasting, for men and women,

and why this is extremely critical that you understand and follow. But for the sake of bringing everybody into the tent and so that we're all starting on the same page. If this is the first episode that you're listening to, with me and Dr. Mindy Pellets about intermittent fasting, I want you to keep on listening. And I want to let you know that when you're done with this step-by-step guide on how to start and the protocols to follow and what you can expect, there is another resource for

you. The episode just before this one is an in-depth analysis into the 101 of intermittent fasting and all the science and research. And so let me just summarize a few key takeaways so that we're all starting with the exact same information. Number one, intermittent fasting is a health protocol whereby you focus on periods of time where you're eating and periods of time where you are not eating. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to use periods of time where you are not eating to help you switch between the two different energy sources in your body. We learned all about this in part one from Dr. Mindy. You have an energy source that is all about sugar and calories and energy that happens when you eat, and then you have a second energy

source that only turns on after an eight-hour period of not eating anything. And Dr. Mindy calls that your fat-burning energy source. And so what we learned is that you are designed to switch between these two cycles, kind of like how you have cycles of sleeping and cycles of being awake. You have a circadian rhythm cycle. If you're a woman, you have a menstrual cycle. The human body runs on cycles and rhythms. And your eating is no different.

Fasting is a way for you to be very intentional. Not about what you eat, and that's why this is not a diet. Diet's focus on what you eat. and that's why this is not a diet. Diet's focus on what you eat. Fasting is a protocol that focuses on when you're eating, for maximum health benefit. And so we covered all of that in the first master class. We also talked about the six different types of fasting. And just so you know, the six different types are just a matter of how long you are fasting for. And the different health benefits and reasons why people fast for different periods of time. In this episode,

we're going to focus on the first type of fasting, which is what you've probably heard of, intermittent fasting, which is when you intentionally do not eat for between 12 and 16 hours. And just so that we're using the same kind of language, that means if you were to stop eating at 9 o'clock at night and then sleep through the night, sometime between 9 a.m. and noon is when you would have the first thing to eat. Because that means that from 9 p.m. until 9 a.m. you have been fasting for 12 hours. And when you fast for a minimum of 12 hours, you unlock really incredible health

benefits. And so that's all you need to know. You now know everything that you need in order to step into the step by step guide. And so here's what we're going to cover. Dr. Mindy is back. Office hours are open people. She is here to grab your hand and help you implement a fasting protocol two day. And here's what we're going to cover. We're going to cover the four questions that you need to ask yourself to determine what type of fasting you want to do and why you're going to do it. Second, we're going to do a quick start guide.

How do you get started? Like, seriously, how do you actually get started? And when should you start this? We're going to talk about what you can expect when you try this for the first time, day one, day two, day three. We're going to talk about what you can expect to experience in terms of results, and then most importantly, we are going to dive deep, deep, deep, deep into the difference between fasting with men and fasting with women,

because there is a profound difference. And this is not being talked about enough, okay? And so it's critical that you listen to the difference and we're gonna unpack that today and you're gonna learn a lot. And this stuff is so freaking cool. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is an incredible expert about fasting and the benefits. So Dr. Mindy,

welcome back. Let's get started. So first, let's start with you. How do you fast, Dr. Mindy? Yeah. So I have gotten to a point where I love fasting so much, I have to really make sure that I eat. But I like skipping breakfast, that's my jam. So I get up in the morning and I drink a cup of coffee, I have a full fat cream in my coffee, and I'll probably eat my first meal around noon or one o'clock. Okay. You know, like you, family is incredibly important to me,

so we usually eat dinner as a family, you know, seven or eight o'clock at night. You can build this around your family's desires too. So I sit down with my family, we eat dinner, we're done at eight, my first meal will be noon or one. Now outside of that, and we can talk about hormones, if we want to go down that path, but if I feel like I'm off yesterday,

I was like, I had been in Hawaii, I hadn't really been eating the way I wanted to eat, and I'm like, I need to go into a longer fast. So I dipped in to 18, 19 hours. So I'll use it as a tool, depending on what my body needs. And then once to two times a year, I'll do a three-day water fast. And I do that to get rid of the cells that are not serving me, to slow down aging, to increase

themselves. So, it's like a cellular cleansing that I do. So when you're in the period of the cycle where you are not eating, you're in the fasting period, water is okay. Water is okay. What else is okay? Yeah, it's a great question. Mineral water is okay, as long as it doesn't have a sweetener. Nutri-sweet is not okay because Nutri-sweet can spike insulin. So just point on there. Coffee's okay, tea's okay. Anything that won't spike your

blood sugar, black tea. Sometimes I'll go have a black tea, iced tea, that is yummy. Green tea, all of that is fine. It just, you can't have a sweetener in it. Gotcha. What about like bone broth? Because I see people like sipping broth during fasting cycles. Yeah, it because it has protein in it, it changes the healing response. So it's great to break a fast with, but it's not the type of fasting that I'm talking about. The type of fasting I'm talking about has your blood sugar staying low, bone broth can increase your blood sugar. Do you have any hacks, any shortcuts, any things that you want rapid fire for the person listening?

If you're going to take on intermittent fasting, which why on earth would you not after everything we've discussed? One of the hacks in the shortcuts to really get started in a fast, successful, and supportive way when you're doing it for yourself for the first time? Let me give you three hacks that are simple. And I also wanna go back to what you said before because I want women specifically

that are listening to this. When things are confusing to us, when things are confusing to us, especially when they come to healthcare, we tend to reject them. I'm gonna ask you not to do that. I'm gonna ask you to become curious about them. What we are discussing here is natural rhythms of your body and nobody's taught it to you.

So I would love to come back and make sure that we don't lose women in this conversation because we need to embrace our natural rhythms. So I'll put that there. First hack, the easiest way to get into this is to start looking at your 24 hour period as when are you going to eat and when are you not going to eat? What's your stop time at night and what's your start time in the morning? Figure that out. Second, we brought up the coffee.

A hack for the coffee that is amazing is putting a little bit of MCT oil in your coffee. Let me tell you why. Why. Let me tell you why. Why? Let me tell you why. It moves you quicker into fat burning and helps you make ketones and turns off the hunger hormone. So if you're wanting to fast a little longer

and you're struggling, put a little bit of MCT oil, it's what we've seen has worked for millions of people. It's MCT oil specifically, has the ability to turn off the hunger hormone, put it in your coffee in the morning. What the hell is MCT oil? It's one aspect of coconut oil that has this therapeutic benefit that turns off hunger. Okay. It's just nature-mated. It's a part of coconut oil. has this therapeutic benefit that turns off hunger.

It's just nature made it. It's a part of coconut oil. How much? Cause I once tried this with a bunch of dudes. And I think they poured, like, I don't know how much, but we went on a hike and let me tell you something. And she already knows one about to tell you guys, within about a hundred yards after about 45 minutes of drinking

what turned out to probably be like a loose shot of MCT oil in my coffee. It doubled me over with cramps and I had raging diarrhea almost instantly because it gave me too much. I don't know if it was like a joke, but how much we talk in here, Doc. Yeah, oh my God, it's so good. I'm so happy you said that because that does happen. Half a teaspoon to a teaspoon, you don't need very much.

Okay, and can I put my full, fat, creamer, no sweetener in with it? Yes, you can. Okay, got it. All right, so that's hack number two, everybody. Yeah, so that's hack number two. Okay, hack it. Alright, so that's hack number two everybody. Yeah, so that's hack number two. Okay, hack number three. If you don't feel good in this fasting window, which I just want to call out that in the beginning,

it will be a little uncomfortable. And that's okay because the body will figure out how to respond. So in that discomfort, maybe it's a little bit of like, your brain's not quite coming back online, try a little sea salt,'s a little bit of like, hmm, your brain's not quite coming back online, try a little sea salt. Just a little bit of sea salt, like you can, you can put it in your coffee if you want it, and you're going to ask me the amount, I'm sure, a pinch, a pinch of sea salt. We have found that even the nutrients that you can find in a high quality sea salt, like a Himalayan sea salt or something that's a really good one, it can have magnesium, it can have a little bit of potassium, a little bit of sodium, and it makes you feel better in the fasting

window. There are a lot of products out there you can do it with, but all you got to do is go to the grocery store and find some sea salt. Well, I am addicted to element that LM, LNMT stuff. I love them, the response of this podcast, I drink it every day, and I'm assuming that's not breaking the fasting protocol. No, we're big fans of element too.

And we, our community is obsessed with element because a pack of element in your water, in your fasting window, is a game changer for how you feel in the fasting window. And one thing I'd like to do before we jump into a little bit more of the protocol, of the options with this, of how to get started, of you can expect is who is fasting an option for? And who would you say shouldn't consider it or at least need to get a sign off from a medical doctor before they do? Yeah. Thank you for asking this question because I really want to make sure that people are very safe with how they use this tool.

What might shock people is that for pre-diabetes, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, it's incredible for. But I highly encourage you to bring your doctor on this journey with you. I can't tell you the number of doctors that have flooded my YouTube channel. I leave the science there so they can understand it so that they can be in collaboration with their patients. So to answer the who is it not for, I think that's the most important thing to say. It is not for the woman who's pregnant. This is not your tool if you're pregnant. If you're nursing as I go through the different healing mechanisms that happen, you need to keep your fast very low because fasting can start to create a detox reaction. And all the toxins that your detoxing will go into your breast milk will go into, which will go into your baby. So we want to keep

fast under 15 hours for nursing women. And then the third one that comes up a lot is people who have any kind of eating disorders or food challenges that would be triggered by going into this fasted state. Great, thank you for that. Can you walk us through the first time you fast, how shitty you might feel, like what do you expect and how long you need to stick with it in

Order to move through that phase. Yeah great because I can't wait to learn how shitty I'm gonna feel when I try this not just kidding I'm just kidding, but we're gonna take a quick pause here a word from our sponsors We love our sponsors because they allow us to bring you this world-class groundbreaking love our sponsors because they allow us to bring you this world-class groundbreaking information at zero cost to you. And of course that's perfect because fast and zero cost as well. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back, I'm Mel Robbins and you and I are back with Dr. Mindy Peltz.

She is the fasting, phanom and she is now Robbins and you and I are back with Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is the fasting phenom and she is now about to tell you and me what we can expect on our first day of fasting. Are we hungry? Are we bitchy? Are we bloated? What's happening? What do you want us to know, Dr. Mindy? I think it's important because if you hear this, you get all excited, you come out of the gates, you try it, and then you don't feel good, you're going to reject it. Let's use a sprained ankle as an example. When you sprain an ankle, it doesn't feel good, but the body's healing. When you have a fever, it doesn't feel good good but the body's healing. So the first time you put yourself

in this fat burning healing state, everybody will feel something different. Some people will feel not so great, but the good news is the not so great usually only lasts the first couple of times. And what is not so great? What are you referring to? Is you going to be like headache, moody? And what is not so great? What are you referring to? Is you going to be like headache, moody? Yeah, you can be a little moody. Moody, brain fog, some people, we'll notice even we've seen people have rashes. The body pushes out, that's extreme, but the body will push out the bad stuff.

Some people might get a little bit of constipation, some people will get a little bit of diarrhea. The body is getting rid of whatever is not serving it. So it is a little bit of diarrhea. The body is getting rid of whatever's not serving it. So it is a little bit of a detox. So as that comes out, you might have some feelings of like, yeah, I'm not feeling great yet. I'm not buying this thing yet. But here's what happens is the body is building you stronger. So honor that that's a temporary symptom.

As your body moves into this healing state and it's usually only last anywhere from a day to three days, most people, I would say 50% of the people don't even notice that. Women need a different fasting protocol than men. Why? So this is the heart of why I do what I do. When the fasting craze came out, So this is the heart of why I do what I do.

When the fasting craze came out, everybody got excited about it and then women started to see they were losing their periods, their hair was falling out, their anxiety levels were going up and some of them started gaining weight. And so what happened was the media grabbed that and said, hey, intermittent fasting is not okay for women. So I dove into the research because all those women poured on to my YouTube channel. And I examined the needs of two different hormones, estrogen and progesterone. Okay. So women follow what I call a hormonal hierarchy.

And the hierarchy looks something like this. At the bottom are sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Those hormones are strongly influenced by insulin. When insulin goes up, we can throw our sex hormones off. Insulin is strongly affected by cortisol. So when our stress goes up, we become more insulin resistant. But above cortisol is the best hormone on the planet, which is oxytocin. When you get more oxytocin, and the only way you can get oxytocin

is through connection to other people. When you get oxytocin, you bring cortisol down. When you bring cortisol down, you become more insulin sensitive. When you become more insulin sensitive, when you become more insulin sensitive, now you're gonna balance your sex hormones. And that is how a female body operates when we look at it in a hierarchy system.

Second thing I wanna say is that men have one hormone. It's called testosterone. And testosterone for a man works off a 24 hour day light cycle, men get testosterone pulsing in every 15 minutes around that. Testosterone then goes up into the brain and converts to estrogen for a man. So a man can fast. Testosterone loves when a man. So a man can fast, testosterone loves when a man fast and a man can fast pretty regularly and not mess up that hormonal cycle. Women, we operate off a 28 day to 30 day cycle and our hormones pulse in in days. Estrogen comes in the first 10, testosterone comes in in the middle and progesterone comes in at the end. So we have to fast according to this cycling of these

hormones. It's a different rhythm, it's a monthly rhythm, not a daily rhythm. Estrogen loves when you fast. So if you, for the menopausal woman who is losing estrogen, you will die when you see how effective this is for bringing estrogen up to a more age-appropriate level. You're never getting your 25-year-old estrogen back, but your 55-year-old age appropriate estrogen will thank you for building a fasting lifestyle. Progesterone actually doesn't want you to fast. If your blood sugar goes down too much or you raise cortisol too much, you will tank progesterone and check this out.

We all know this, we just didn't have words for it. What do we crave when we had a cycle? What do we crave the week before our periods? Oh my God, everything. Ice cream, alcohol, pizza, pasta, cream, alcohol, pizza, pasta, pretzels with pimento cheese dip. Am I getting too personal here? Help me out nachos. I crave frickin' anything. Exactly. Because progesterone is asking you to bring your glucose up. So we crave, I'm going to cycling women right now, we craved carbs before our period,

not because we were undisciplined. We craved carbs before our period because we needed glucose to be higher and that internal mechanism inside our body increased the craving of carbohydrates so that we had enough resources to make progesterone. Wow.

And so what does the intermittent fasting protocol do for a woman who is in her menstrual cycle? So in a 28 to 30 day cycle, every woman's different. I wanna point that out. We all cycle differently, but have different lengths. The first 10 days is when estrogen's building. We know this as the follicular phase. In fast like a girl I call it, the power phase,

which means that you can power up on any, all of your workouts, your fast, anything you want to power yourself up on. About day 10 or 11, we move into ovulation. This would be the second phase. And in this phase, I called it the manifestation phase because we can manifest whatever, you can manifest it baby, but you also have estrogen at our peak. You have testosterone at its peak,

and you have a little bit of progesterone. So it makes us very mentally sharp. It makes us beautiful, our hair curly, our skin look great. And we have motivation and drive because of testosterone. Then we come out of ovulation, our hormones dip. We have a five day window. I call it, you can go back to powering up on all your lifestyle tools.

But the week before our period starts around day 20. I call it the nurture phase because you're supposed to nurture yourself that week. You need to bring glucose up, you need to bring, and you need to rest and bring cortisol down. That's the hormonal rhythm that women follow in a 28 to 30 day period. And once a woman bleeds, we go back to estrogen building, you can go back to fasting, you can go back to working out incredibly hard, every all the rhythms change according to the rhythms of those hormones. So if

when women were got a hold of the fasting praise and they just fasted all month long, they started to tank progesterone. Okay. And progesterone only comes in the week before our period. That's her debut. Okay. She comes in that week before and says, Hey, everybody, we got a shut cortisol down and we got an increased glucose. So as women started to pick up fasting, they were ignoring that. They were muscling like we often do.

We're muscling through this new and I'm going to put in air quotes, diet because we thought of it as a diet. And the more months we did that, the more the last progesterone we had. Is that why women in the beginning were losing hair and why they were having all this negative side effect from intermittent fasting That's right So progesterone is the hormone that will also shed the uterine lining. Okay so We weren't making enough progesterone so

The lining wasn't shedding so we started to notice a lot of women noticed spotting and things like that. Anxiety went up because progesterone is the hormone that calms us. So, and our hair started following out because over time, we were starting to restrict calories more and more and more, and so it's throwing the thigh right off. Okay, so let me just see if I can bottom line this.

When intermittent fasting was first introduced, like so many things, the dudes were talking about it and they were only talking about it as it relates to men and weightlifting and that kind of thing and carps cycling. We've heard all this shit and no one took into account women's hormone health. And just like women have not been included in medical studies because of our hormone health, this is yet another example of where women have been left out of the conversation

and where the science has been applied to everybody without consideration of how it actually impacts a woman during her cycle. And what here, here to say, is that intermittent fasting is an enormously important protocol for all women. And women have to handle it and introduce this protocol differently because of our hormone cycle, period full stop. And so how do you do this as a woman? Because after I heard you talk about intermittent

fasting, once we started talking about the research, I'm like, freaking, I'm in. I am not going to eat after nine o'clock. This woman is not putting shit in her mouth until noon. Like, I am down. I'm doing the 90 days. This seems like aick in brainer based on body function and health. Like I am in and sold. When you then went hair loss, this, that hormone cycling, I'm like, oh shit, this is complicated. I don't know if I can do this and I don't want to lose my hair. So how do we simplify this in terms of how an intermittent fasting protocol should be introduced by women in their lives.

How do you want to handle this? Yeah, let's make it super simple. Please. Okay, don't fast the week before your period if you're a cycling woman. Just don't fast the week before your period. You can do all the other fast. Now, in the book and fast like a girl, I give you lots of options. I gave you a whole fasting cycle. But for this conversation, just don't fast the week before your period.

Wow. Okay. And so you just go back to normal eating? Like just eating whenever you want. Yeah. Eating when you got to eat breakfast, if you chose to take breakfast out, eat whenever you want and bring up your carb load, but I'm gonna ask you to not do it in a box of pizza or a tub of ice cream. Let's do it in some, you know, what I call nature's carbs. Let's do it in fruit and potatoes and sweet potatoes and vegetables, tons of vegetables, tropical fruits, bananas. Those are great for progesterone. Chocolate. Those are great for progesterone.

Chocolate, chocolate's amazing for progesterone. You know what's interesting? As I wonder if this is why so many of us just bounce with our weight. Like I've got this question from Jody because we've got a bazillion questions from listeners when we told everybody we were going to tackle fasting and we were going to spend a lot of time talking about women and hormones and protocols for women. Jody writes in, how do I change the fact that I get down to my goal weight and then all of a sudden I gain it back.

I'm constantly up and down and beating myself up and I'm not sure if restriction of sugar and flour is the only way. I don't know if the real ticket is something else for lasting change. I'm super healthy and then all of a sudden I need a whole pizza or I eat a batch of cookies. And next thing you know, the same 10 pounds comes on and off. And then worse, how do I feel about myself when I'm in this cycle? I just need a formula that will work. And what I'm wondering is this is probably what you see with women who either are just trying everything under the sun. I'm going to try the peptides and I'm going to try this thing.

I'm going to do whole 30 and I'm going to do that thing and I'm not producing, but none of it's working. Or they try fasting, but then they're bouncing all over the place because of our hormone cycle. And so what you're saying is start with intermittent fasting and then pay attention to the week before your period starts and give yourself grace and eat nature's carbs and then the day you get your period you go back to your intermittent fasting protocols. That correct. You got it. You got it. That's exactly correct. What do you do if you're on the IUD? So, you know, my daughters are on the IUD

and with a lot of the IUDs, you don't get a period. So how do you figure out when that part of your cycle is? Yeah, yeah. I have the same issue with my daughter. You know, here's what I'm gonna say. And this is the best gauge that we have. and I don't want to confuse people. Okay But I but this is what we've been using is if you have no sense of when your period is coming Use the moon cycle. What does that mean?

Use the way that the moon waxes and wanes Okay, but like you break it down for me. Because is this also what we met women in parimenopause who have really weird cycles and those of us that are like, I'll buy with the period. Okay, so everybody listening, if you either don't have a cycle

or you're on birth control that compromises your cycle, or you're a peri, or you are menopause, full-monte. You're going to follow the fucking moon. So when, what shape is the moon in Dr. Mindy when I'm doing the interminute fasting protocol. So the first thing I want to point out is it's not a coincidence that the moon has a cycle that's 28 to 30 days. And we have a cycle that's 28 to 30 days.

Because we're magical bitches. That's why. Yeah. You exactly. You have totally nailed that one. Because we're magical bitches. That's why Exactly You have totally nailed that one exactly Like so let's just acknowledge that okay First day of your period yeah when you start bleeding would be the first day of the new moon. Okay Abulation would be the full man, which is when we're wickedly powerful. Yes, ma'am.

In fact, I keep saying let's just put all the ovulating women in one room and they can solve all the world's problems. As long as we're intermittent fasting. So if you're going to start the intermittent fasting protocol for maximum health and healing benefit, regardless of where you are with your period or not getting one, you're going to start with the new moon, which is that super thin sliver of a where the hell is the moon moon, okay? And that's going to be the beginning of your interminute fasting protocol. And you are going to stop fasting protocol while the moon is near its full moon phase. Is that

what we're doing? So, let's just make it simple. Let's say intermittent fasting. You're going to fast 12 to 15 hours. Okay. Day one, starting the new moon, until about day 21. Perfect. And then at 21, you switch out and you stop fasting for a week. And then the minute the new moon comes in, you start fasting again. That's fantastic. And so that's very clear. And I want to underscore why this matters. This matters because women are very different, physiologically, hormone, chemically, like

all of it, for men. The system operates differently. And you also have to be responsible for the fact that we run in a network of hormones that are different than people who are born male. And so I want you to understand this seven-day window where you're not going to be following a fasting protocol is because of your metabolic health and your hormone health. And that's why we're being very specific about this. Now I want to ask one more very specific question

for those of us in menopause who no longer are going through a cycle. Is our 30 days, 21 days on, seven days off? You can just take that 30 day reset and match it to the moon. Great. And you will start to see your cycle come back on unless you're a menopausal woman. So there's apps, let's start there. Okay.

Just pick up an app and just find the new moon. It's not that hard to find on that. Okay, just Google new moon this month. Yeah, I can tell you the app I use is called Moonly. Moonly, okay. Moonly. And look at where the new moon is. Okay.

That would be day one of your cycle. Okay. And in my book, in Fast Like a Girl, I have a 30-day fasting reset. Got it. You're gonna follow your menstrual cycle if you have a regular period. That's right.

If you are not sure, because of birth control or other reasons when your period is happening. You're going to follow a 30-day protocol. We will link to resources with all the show notes. You can find them at melrobbins.com slash podcast. You're going to follow a 30-day protocol and you're going to begin day one on the day of the new moon.

For simplicity, say yes. Okay. All right, great. That's amazing. I am so excited by this conversation, and we got to hit pause real quick, so we can hear a word from our sponsors. They are bringing this content to you at zero cost.

So let's take a listen, but don't you dare go anywhere, because we will be right back with more of this master class on intermittent fasting when we return. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I am here with Dr. Mindy. She's a renowned expert on the science of intermittent fasting. And we are unpacking everything that you need to know. And what I love most, Dr. Mindy, is how simple you are making this. Okay, so you have an example with a story of a woman named Bridget who followed this protocol.

Could you share that story with us? Yeah, so what was interesting about Bridget's story is that she did what most of us do. We exercise more and we eat less to lose weight. And she's what I call a rushing woman. She was CEO, like had a very, very busy lifestyle. Tons of family was engaged in her family, engaged in work, and all of her tools that she was using to keep her weight where she wanted to be were failing her.

So she found, right? Sounds familiar. So she found fasting. And she started to fast. And in the first moment that she found intermittent fasting, it was like a miracle. Like her brain came back online, she started to drop weight. And she could, was all of a sudden like, wow, I'm super charged for this rushing woman lifestyle.

But she didn't know to cycle it. So 30 to 60 days into this miraculous lifestyle, the opposite started happening. She started gaining weight. She started losing her period completely. Everything we've been talking about. So she was a patient that I figured out. She was one of the women I figured out like,

oh, there's a rhythm here. I need to find Bridget's rhythm. And so in finding Bridget's rhythm, I found every other woman's rhythm, which is this idea that you've got to step out of fasting because of this hormone progesterone. And once we found her rhythm, it was her tool that you got to step out of fasting because of this hormone progesterone. And once we found her rhythm, it was her tool

to do everything she wanted at her age. Can we just say fuck you progesterone? Can we just say that right now? Have to complicate things for us. You have four steps to determine which of the six fasting protocols is the right one for you. What are they? Yeah, I call it building a fasting lifestyle.

So the first step is, what are you trying to do? You know, this is what keeps coming up in this conversation. The one size fits all protocols that we give, whether it's diet or medication or whatever, it works better for a man than it works for a woman. It doesn't work for humans in general. We need to find our own personal path. But you might, let's use you as an example, Mal, maybe you decide, hey, I need to repair my gut.

So I need to make sure that I get trained myself to get into that 24 hour fast. Whereas somebody else might say, God, my weight is so stuck, I got to throw some 36 hour fast. So make sure you won't know what you're doing. Second, or what you want to do. Second thing is you got to cycle your fasts. We already talked about that. Yes. The third thing, you got to cycle your food. So we haven't talked much about that. Yes. The third thing, you got to cycle your food. So we haven't talked much about that. Fast, psychic girl goes way into how you look at different food. And then the fourth is, let's stop doing health on our own.

Let's do it in a community. So you know, women thrive on oxytocin. We're getting oxytocin right now, talking to each other. And as oxytocin goes up, it calms cortisol. When cortisol goes down, you become more insulin sensitive. And when insulin gets regulated, now all your hormones regulate. So oxytocin for a woman is a powerful hormone.

So when she goes into a fasting lifestyle and does it on her own, she misses that oxytocin moment. When she does it in community, she actually amplifies oxytocin. How do you do that? How do you do it in a community? Yeah. Well, we did for years and we still do it,

something called a fast training week. On my YouTube channel where I would just take five days and I would just lead the whole world through these different weeks. So that's still there. We do three-day water fasts all the time in community, grab fasts like a girl, and do a book club with a group of women.

Do it together with a group of women. One thing I do with my girlfriends is we do challenges all the time together. It's like, hey, for the next 30 days, I'm gonna do this. And then they're in on it. And now we're doing it together in a community. I love that, I love that. I love the idea of doing it with someone else

because whenever I've taken on a health challenge, just having a body that I'm texting with is critical. And I love that you're explaining that there's a scientific research pact, health benefit to all these reasons. I wanna ask you a question from Becky, who DMed us, and said, you know, I'm studying this fasting info, this super helpful.

I wanna know good, bad, or different if there is one of your fasting plans that I can do that's a little bit more flexible. Let me explain it this way. Take your eating window and move it wherever you want. Like if you want to eat with your family dinner at seven o'clock at night and be done by eight. If your eating window is eight hours, then your eating window opens at noon and you start eating from noon to eight. See, this is why this is so great because she is asking a question that shows how we've all been trained to calorie restrict and to focus on the what we're eating.

And she's like, I'd just like to know if I'm fasting, is there a day a week I could have my comfort food for lunch and what you're saying is, if you adjust the window, yes, because you know that you're playing with a cycle of on and off. And so just figure out when you're going to stop eating the night before, so that the window opens up, right around lunchtime. figure out when you're going to stop eating the night before so that the window opens up right around lunchtime. Maybe you'd want to, you're going to a great brunch on Sunday morning and the brunch starts at 10 o'clock. Don't deprive yourself.

That's when you're eating window opened. So at 10 you start and by 6 you're done. Just move that eating window around to match your lifestyle. That's why people are sticking with this type of lifestyle because you can match it to the other parts of your lifestyle that are important. Does a fasting cycle for women, does it reduce the muscle? Do these things work together because I want to be clear, I want to make sure people understand that they got to do what works for them, but this isn't necessarily conflicting advice. Exactly. So I, a thousand percent agree that muscle and protein are incredibly important and we need to prioritize them. So when you're fasting, in the fasting window,

you're going to break protein down. It's not a bad thing. Okay. Your body's getting rid of stored sugar in that muscle, so it breaks it down. When you start to eat, now you need to up your protein. You need to make sure that you get enough protein so that you have enough of an amino acid. Those are the nutrients and protein that build muscle. enough of an amino acid, those are the nutrients and protein that build muscle. So, where this falls apart is if you start to fast and then you open your eating window and you forget to include protein in your diet. You didn't give the

fuel source to the muscles that it needed. So, make sure when you eat, eat. This is a big thing. It's like eat good quality food. If you want more muscle, you got to eat more protein. Got it. Love it. We did not dive deep into the extensive amount of research that you do have about the kinds of food that you're eating and the impact it can have on a fasting protocol as a lifestyle. I want to give one little tip though to everybody because you say that there are three foods that from a fasting perspective. If you focus on simply limiting these three foods that it's going to help the fasting protocol of when you're eating and when you're not, a lot. So what are those three foods?

Yeah. The first one is good oils, not bad oils. Okay. So good oils are avocado oil. They're olive oil. They're sesame seed oil. They're You know, there's a lot of great ones walnut oil. Yeah, what are the bad ones? Yeah, let's give me the dogs The bad ones are canola oil. Oh cotton seed oil corn oil partially hydrogenated oils You know, safflower, sunflower oils, and they're everywhere. They're everywhere. Why are they bad?

They cause your cells to inflame, to swell. They cause your cells to swell. And when your cells are swollen, your brain swollen, your joints are swollen, your belly swollen, and your cells are not able to pull in nutrients and hormones. So let's just get those foods out. Let's change the ones. Delayed.

Okay. Gone. Okay. Second one, we've already talked about it. Nature's carbs, not man-made carbs. The breads, the cakes, the cookies, the pastas. Can we limit those? Can we get those out of the diet?

Even if they're organic, even if they're gluten-free, they should still be fairly minimal. And can we bring fruits and vegetables and potatoes, even like wild rice, quinoa? Let's bring those back into the diet and make those the highlight. Great. And the final one. The last one are toxins. So this is your neutrasweets, your splendas that a lot of people go on diets with. This is your artificial colorings.

This is the night trites that we put in. Anything that has been made by humans is going to destroy cellular health. Basically, this is how I think about it, Dr. Mennie. If I look at an ingredient list on a package and I either can't pronounce it or it doesn't look like something that I would see on a label at a farmer's market, probably not that great for you.

Yeah. And best yet, buy something without a label. Well, you know what, my mom always said, my mom said, if you just stick to the perimeter of a grocery store, you know, you go fruits and vegetables and to the deli and to the dairy and typically to the bakery, yeah, good. So now that we know the three foods that we need to avoid, can we talk about the ways in which you break a fast? I know you say there are four ways that you can do it when you're doing it

for the first time, but can you walk us through how you do that? So the first thing to break a fast with, that's really easy as broth. This can be vegetable broth, it can be bone broth. Broth is a good entry back into food. The second thing that I encourage people to break a fast with is

actually fat. So fat will stabilize the blood sugar so that you don't boomerang back into eating a ton of food. So make sure you eat a good fat. My personal favorite is an avocado. I usually break my fast often with an avocado. With that fat, I also encourage that people look at a probiotic rich meal. This is like a sour crowd, this can be a key for something that has good bacteria in it to replenish your microbiome. Once you've done that, where you've done the broth, you've done the fat, you've added some probiotics in, then bring protein back in.

And make sure that you're eating enough protein to start to build muscle. So those are the biggest considerations is making sure that you take care of your digestion, you take care of your blood sugar, you take care of your microbes, and you take care of your digestion, you take care of your blood sugar, you take care of your microbes, and you take care of your muscles. That's what all of those foods will do. We've covered a ton, and so there's a couple things I want to say. Number one, we are absolutely going to have you back, because I'm super curious about everything that you want to say about eating and specifically eating for women's health and how that impacts your natural healing and health systems in your body. Second, I know we're going to get a good Jillian.

That's a technical term question. And so I am inviting you listening. Go to MelRobins.com slash podcast. You're going to find a form. I would love if you have follow up questions. I would love to bring Dr. Mindy back. And I mean it because I feel like there are so few female doctors getting the airtime that they deserve. female doctors getting the air time that they deserve and the information that you are sharing with patients, getting to a broader audience in a simple, tactical, applicable way, that I want to make her expertise available to you listening more, so that we can really make sure that this zero cost profoundly researched and documented tool that you have within your body is

being used by you for maximum health and healing benefit because you deserve that in your life. Dr. Mindy, you are freaking awesome. I have loved every second of this. I am now through my fasting window too, so I am going to go faceplant a salad with some steak on top. I love you. I can't wait to have you back, Dr. Mindy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for explaining all this to us and giving us the gift of healing and health at zero cost. You frickin' rock. Thank you, Mel.

And thank you for supporting women and for supporting a free health tool like this. I mean, again, this is where we're stronger together. When we unite our missions, our passions, we teach, we do it from a loving place, everybody wins. Thousand percent. Thank you. You're welcome. Can't wait to have you back. Okay.

That was so cool. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to hear your questions to have her back. Most importantly, thank you for spending the time. And the reason why I'm thanking you is because I'm thanking you on behalf of your future self. What you just learned is a zero cost tool that helps you unlock the extraordinary power of your body to heal itself. It helps you tap into decades and decades of research that you can benefit from and

the thing that I love the most, you don't have to add anything. We're going to simplify it. You're just going to watch when you eat. And then you're going to watch these amazing results happen and you deserve that. Alrighty, I love you. I believe in you and I believe in your ability to take control

of your health, take control of when you eat, and to take control of your life. I control of when you eat, and to take control of your life. I'll talk to you in a few days. Okay, you ready? Here we go. How did it or when did it or why did it or good? Okay, try and aim. I'm trying. Is that a new sentence? Hold on a second. Let me just see

Okay That's a jumpsy. Oh great. We're done. Oh my God! Well done, too! More, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyer's right and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely

for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Stitcher.