Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Discovering Your Personalized Health Path - Fast Like a Girl Journal

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Join Dr. Mindy as she introduces the Fast Like a Girl Journal, a personalized tool for fasting experiences. Created in collaboration with therapeutic journaling expert Alex Elle., this journal empowers individuals to understand their body's healing potential during fasting. Structured into sections focusing on self-belief, introspection prompts, and a 60-day tracker, the journal also includes engaging activities like coloring sheets, gratitude prompts, and goal-setting strategies. Designed to promote holistic well-being, the Fast Like a Girl Journal aims to guide individuals on a transformative journey towards wellness and self-discovery. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep232 Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Okay, resetters, I've got another solo episode for you. And this one is a tool that I've created to help you customize your fasting lifestyle and really to help you understand your relationship to food, understand the healing that's going on while you fast. This is a really fun tool that I created last year and it's now available to you. And I'm really excited to walk you through it. So here we go. Are you ready? what the tool is is it's called the Fast Like a Girl Journal. A little side note, when a book does really well on Amazon, all of a sudden, some workbooks

will show up. And last year, so many workbooks that were not endorsed by me, many of them were created by AI, showed up all over Amazon. And unfortunately, some of you actually bought those workbooks and were disappointed in them. And so I love this idea of taking the information that I laid out in Fast Like a Girl and now having an experience with it. And so I love the workbook idea, but I wanted to make sure that we had one that was based off the principles I teach.

So we decided to go in to building you a journal. And for those of you that are journalers, you're probably like, woo, yeah. I've learned in writing a journal that we have some people that are like journal obsessed. And I think that's amazing. I would not necessarily fall in that category. But I have heard from so many people that have shared with me that journals and writing down their experience while their fasting is really helpful. Now, the other unique thing before I go into the journal and how to use it and why you're

going to find some real healing within these pages. is that a good friend of mine, her name is Alex L, she teaches people how to use journaling for their therapeutic healing. And when Fast Like a Girl first came out, she reached out to me and she's like, you really need to do a journal because my experience as I've been fasting has been that I'm really changing my relationship to food without my body having to deal with the digestion of fasting, I'm actually now able to have more insight in how I use food. And that's where a journal would be great. So when I decided to collaborate on this journal, I went to Alex.

And I'm like, you already know what it's like to build a fasting lifestyle. Help me make this journal the best fasting journal we possibly can. And so she did. So this is a collaboration project with her. If you don't follow Alex L. I highly recommend you follow her on Instagram. If you haven't read her books, my favorite one is the one she most recently put out a few years back, which is called How We Heal, and you will see that she is a fan of using journaling for the healing process.

So with that in mind, what I want to do is I want to break the journal down. And there's a couple different ways that you could use this podcast. One is you could just listen. I promise I will be teaching the different principles of fasting lifestyle throughout this podcast. some of you are really working to overturn your food addictions. And if that's you, please listen through because I had you in mind when I wrote this journal. Some of you are discovering that you are starting to get some real spiritual and mental insight when you are in a fasted state and you need some more, I call them prompts and ways to dive deeper into the incredible clarity that fasting brings you.

And so some of you are going to actually use this journal in the fasted state to really have a deeper understanding of this intimate relationship you are creating with your body as you were building a fasting lifestyle. And you may have some ahas that you are going to discover throughout the different sections of this journal. And then some of you, if you're like me and you have a bit of an ADD brain, you need something to do during your fasting windows. and so I have a whole activity section at the back of the book that I'll go through that I'm super proud of. And by the way, this journal is available now on Amazon or in bookstores so you can order it. If you have it and you want to follow along or you order it and then you want to come back to this podcast and follow along with it, that's great as well. For those of you that are watching this on YouTube, you can see what the cover looks like. it's a beautiful coral color with the Fast Like a Girl logo on the front.

Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So I started with the first part is called the foundation. And just so we're, you all are sort of clear on my mindset when I go to write, you know, I really have you in mind. I'm really writing to you all. And so many of you have been so gracious at like putting in where your struggles are. And one of the things that I've noticed amongst

women in general is that a lot of us really struggled to believe in our bodies and especially to believe in the healing power of our bodies. Yet we begin to fast and all of a sudden we have this new relationship of the power of our body within. And then sometimes we're in the middle of a fast and we start doubting. We're like, my brain is foggy, my heart is racing, I'm hungry. Does my body really know what to do? And so because there is this inconsistency in us really feeling the power of our own body, the first part of this book, I have a letter from me to you all, so please read it.

I wrote it with my heart wide open. If you and I were sitting in a room together, this is what I would want you to know. And then I have a part of the part one called You Are Your Best Healer, which is absolutely something that I strongly feel that we need to start looking at we have a doctor within. We are our own best doctors. We have spent way too many years giving the power away to doctors

who have gas lit us, who have given us, prescriptions instead of lifestyle tools. We have walked into too many doctor's offices and felt unheard, unrecognized. And so if that's you, I have to tell you, you are your best doctor. So I really wanted you to get to know that doctor within, which is why I have a whole page for you, a whole couple pages on you are your best healer. Then I also wanted to put in some of the fasting questions, answers to a lot of the fasting questions, like what breaks a fast? And what do I do if I feel X, Y, and Z in a fasting window. So I have some of my fasting FACUs in there. And then what is it, how do you

read the healing responses that your body is giving you? Because symptoms in a fasting state are just messages from the body, but how do you interpret them? So the first part of this whole journal is exactly that. It's let's line you up with believing in your body. Let's understand this healer within. Let's understand the symptoms it's giving it. And those of you who have, been like, I've been asking these questions and I'm still not getting answers. I put a whole FAQ section in here. So that's how the part one starts. Now, I also, if you're like me, I like a cliff notes version of something. So fast like a girl had a lot of explanation of the six different length fast, but I wanted to just boil down these six different length fast. So if you

ever had like a moment where you're like, I don't know, should I fast 17 hours? Should I fast 20 hours? how would I make that decision? What I did in the first section is I have like, here's why you would do a 36-hour fast. Here's why you would do 48 hours. Here's why you would want to lean into a three-day water fast. What is a gut reset fast? Like, how would you use that? So I boiled it down into very into bullet points and into simple short paragraphs so you can choose the fasting lifestyle that works for you. Okay. So that's all part one. That's just part one. Part two. Part two is where Alex's genius came in, and she and I worked diligently on what are some questions we can ask ourselves in our fasted state to get to know our body better. Now, I want to talk about the way our body talks to us. I have over the last several podcasts, I've been really trying to explain this concept that your body holds information. So if you listened to the podcast I did with Dr. Sarah Godfried or the podcast interview I did with my breath worker, Kate Horstman, you will hear that I'm a big fan of this idea that the body keeps the

score. And if you don't know that book, I highly recommend you get it. It was one of the first books that really pierced the culture that explained that our traumas are within and that the body holds on to traumas. So when we try to fix any traumatic situation, we try to fix it from the mind, but really we should be fixing it from the body. And what you'll hear Kate and I discuss, what, you know, Sarah and I discuss is that fasting is one way to hear what your body is speaking to you. So when you're in the fasted state, what I did is I broke these questions and these prompts into several categories. I broke them into like what mentally needs to improve. in your life. Like, how do you become more grounded? What in your life do you need more clarity on?

What in your, what in your health do you need to be focused on? So these prompts have, let's see how many questions. We have 50 questions per prompt. And each morning, I have a tracking system. So that's in part two is a tracking system where you will take a question from one of these sections and you will journal on it. So you will write down the question. Maybe the question is, what does my body need from my lifestyle right now? And you'll write it down and then you just write like a journal. You just answer it. And let your body speak to you. So the questions have been broken down into what do you mentally need, what do you emotionally need, what do you spiritually need, and what do you physically need? So I put it into categories. So you get to choose. My goal or my hope with this journal is that you will

wake up and in the morning and you will be like in a fasted state and you will go to your 60 day tracker and you will pull one of these questions out and you will journal on it. And you get to choose. Do you want to go down a spiritual journaling path today? Do you want to go down emotional? Do you want to go down what you physically need. But in that fasted state, there is wisdom. And what motivated me to do this journal more than anything was I don't want you to lose the fact that your body is speaking to you. And you, if you just quiet your mind and you sit in a location where you're journaling and you're asking these questions, your body will tell you what you need. Now, a lot of you are data hounds. And I love this. And a lot of you are really trying to understand what length

fast works for you. Some of you are trying to understand how to break your fast. So in the 60-day tracker section, not only do I have the prompts and you can journal on the answers to those, but opposite that page, I have a fasting tracking sheet. This actually was born out of something I've used with my own personal clients. So when I go to customize a client's fasting lifestyle, I track a lot. I track glucose. I track how many blood sugar spikes they have in a day. I look at how quickly the blood sugar comes down. I track their HRV and their sleep, their total sleep and their deep sleep and their REM sleep. I track symptoms like bloatedness and breast tenderness and constipation. Like I have a whole tracker system so that we can start to see patterns. And I think this is the beautiful thing about

the longer you stick with a fasting lifestyle, the more these patterns will be revealed to you. And so I wanted to create prompts for you to see the patterns. So let me just give you something, an example of what you'll see in this fast tracking in the 60 day tracker. You're going to see the reflection questions that you'll be journaling on. And then you're going to see little boxes. And the little boxes have things like, what kind of fast are you doing today? And is it longer than the day before? So you can use that prompt to either remind yourself of what you're doing today or what you did yesterday, but it starts to help you see because you'll go back. Or if you do this over 60 days, you'll start to see your favorite length fast. You'll be like,

whoa, I did a lot of 17 hour fast or, oh my gosh, I haven't done. done a 24-hour fast in a long time because you'll be using this tracking system for 60 days, so it's enough to see that pattern. Then underneath that, I have a way of, or I have a little box that for those of you that track ketones, I want you to look at your ketone levels when you wake up. And the reason that that's important is because that tells you how your fasting lifestyle work for you the day before. So if you're trying to stay in a ketogenic state, it's great to look at your ketones when you first wake up. I also have a section, those of you that have CGMs or you're using a keto mojo,

where you're going to record your blood sugar values. So you're going to look at what your blood sugar is like when you wake up, your blood sugar midday, and your blood sugar before you go to sleep. And the reason that I like to look at ketones and blood sugar is it's a way, remember, blood sugar tells you how you're doing within your eating window and ketones. Tones tell you how you're doing within your fasting window. So they're like data-driven points that tell us how the sugar burner system's doing and how the fat burner system's doing. And when you track them over several days, you'll start to see the changes. Okay. Then I put in there, how do you track your moods

when you're fast? And the reason that this is important is that when you first fast, some people will notice that their moods may not be great. But over time, you may start to see your moods improve. So why I wanted that there, and I give you options, you could put, you're angry, you're sad, you're neutral, you're happy, or you're overjoyed, is that I want you to start to look at the length of your fast and your moods, because every one of us is going to have a different fasting length. And so I want you to be able to see, again, what's the right? fasting length for you. So we're looking at your ketones and your blood sugar and we're looking at your mids. Then I also, for those of you that are cycling, I have a tracker in there where you can

track what day of your cycle you are on. I also, those of you that are very active, I have a section on talk about the activity that you did and how was that, was it better? This is where I really want you to focus in on, was it better to eat before you worked out? What did you? What did you, when you got done working out, what foods did you break it with? These all matter when you're looking at patterns around your fasting lifestyle. And then we look at sleep, how many hours sleep you have, those of you that might have a tracking system, you can put in there like, did you get a lot of deep sleep? Did you not? So you can start to see where too much fasting may be affecting your sleep, where certain length fast can improve your sleep. That's what I'm hoping those prompts will

show you. And then I have two more sections within the tracking system. where you can look at your energy levels and you can look at what you broke your fast with. So again, remember, the purpose of a journal is to have self-reflection. So I tried to think of the things that if you and I were sitting down and we were customizing a fasting lifestyle,

what questions would I ask you to be able to help you customize the best fasting lifestyle for you? And that's what I put on this tracker system. Now, I do want to point out that if you're lost at all, with your fasting lifestyle. I am doing, it's a solo episode like this one. I have available that I did a whole hour to my reset academy people where I talked about everything you need to know about

customizing a personal fasting lifestyle. So that episode mixed with this episode mixed with the journal is really going to help you take this to the next level. And one of my value systems is that I'm not here just to give you information to entertain you or to make myself feel better. I am here to give you information to change your life. And I am so proud to say that between the journal and this episode and the other episode, I feel like you have some really, really solid tools to be able to customize this for yourself. And they're time efficient. I have some amazing tools on my YouTube channel, but there's 1,500 videos over there. So I've synthesized this fasting lifestyle path into these two Resetter Podcasts and the journal to make it easier for you. Okay. Now, after you've done,

and I'm hoping you'll do the 60-day tracker, like commit to it for 60 days so you can see the patterns, you can get to know the questions will help you see this a little deeper. And then my favorite part of the whole journal is the back end. So I have created activity pages. And the activity pages are multiple, there's a multiple things. For starters, there's some coloring pages. I got into adult coloring pages about a year ago. And I went into the neuroscience of it. I was like, why when I color a page, like when I was a kid, do I feel calm? And sure enough, coloring is one of those, and just, you know, you either free flow, but you'll see that I've got motivational affirmations on these coloring pages. But it's one of those ways that we move out of our amygdala and into our prefrontal cortex.

It calms the thinking mind. Now, the amygdala is the part of the brain that's always trying to keep you safe. And when you are in longer fast, especially, that amygdala may be screaming at you. It may be like, why are you doing this? The amygdala really can squawk at you. you. And so if that's you and you find in a fasted state, you don't like the mindset that you develop. Try coloring. It's really calming and it puts you in that prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that shows you hope and possibility. And it sues you. So I'm hoping

you'll use the coloring pages. There's one, let's see, one, two, three, four. four different coloring pages in here with affirmations and my designer designed them. And so I hope you enjoy it. And that helps you there. Okay, but I didn't stop there. Then I go into some real key parts of these activities pages. One is a page I call I matter. And you'll see that I really am hoping, especially those of you when you go into these longer fast, that you really get clear on why you matter. Because if you don't put yourself as a priority, if you don't have a sense of your worthiness, when you go into these fasted states, you might start second guessing yourself. So I want you to hear your inner voice. I want you to commit to

your worthiness. And so the I matter page is about putting down short little statements that will help you understand why you matter. And you might put on there like, I matter because I'm a kind human. I think that's one of the greatest reasons to matter. And I bring kindness to every conversation that I have. You might put, I matter because I'm in charge of three little humans that I need to make sure I stay healthy for. I matter because my thoughts are important to the world. There's a lot of different reasons you matter, but I really want you to emphasize that. Then I, on the next page, I have something called My Circle of Support. This one's really important, and this I learned from a patient of mine who was going through a cancer diagnosis and was really trying to be. And was really

trying to assess who in her life she wanted to keep close and who was a negative influence that was affecting her healing that she wanted to keep far away. So I gave at different levels, level one through level four, and in the circle support, you can color it too. But I also want you to put in there in level one, who's in your front row? Who's cheering you on? I did a whole podcast interview with my friend, Dr. Karen Gordon, about the middle chair people that cheer you on and want to see that you're well. That would all go in the level one. People that are like they bring you joy, but you don't, sometimes you don't completely feel like they have your back. They would be level two.

And then level three and level four would be people that you intentionally need to be around less, that they derail you from your health habits. And they can make you feel bad about yourself. So I explain how to use each one of these. And I even put level one is front row cheerleaders. Level two is the inspirers, the mentors. is level three is friends with boundaries and level four are the naysayers. And it's just a reminder when you, and you might do that one in pencil because those people move around and they change, but it's a good opportunity to look at that. Okay, then the next thing I put is a whole beautiful

page on what you're grateful for. And it's in a picture of a sunflower. And I love it because sunflowers are my favorite. And so you get to write down all the things you're grateful for. I personally spend 20 minutes every morning listening to music and going through just an analysis of everything I'm grateful for in my life. I think there's a great prompt to do in the morning. After you've done your tracking sheet, go to, I'm grateful. You might put a couple of things every morning in there and it can change over time. Okay, then the next page is health goal page, which is how do you pick, how do you set health goals and create a strategy around achieving those health goals? So I put in here everything from the top health goals you have, people who are

going to support you in achieving those health goals, daily actions you're going to take, rewards you're going to give yourself, information you need to help you hit those health goals, how you're going to feel when you hit the health goal, and in supportive environments you're going to put yourself in. So if you're trying to lose weight or you have a big health goal, put it right in the center of this activity page, and then over time, fill in the other pieces because the other pieces are important. If you go in there and you're like, well, I don't know, daily actions. Okay, well, that's, you need to work on what your daily actions on. Or if you're like, reward myself after I hit a goal, if that's not a strategy you do, you need to reward yourself

when you hit a goal. Or people who support me, I hadn't really, you know, we tend to be like, I want to lose 20 pounds. Okay, well, who's going to support you and helping you achieve that goal? We all need human connection. So I mapped out all the little things you might not think about when it comes to achieving a health goal. And again, you can color these that are beautiful. And then I didn't stop there. Again, the activity pages are my favorite. I put a whole thing on kind things.

I hope you say to yourself when you look in the mirror. I put a whole activity page on what makes you beautiful. And this is why this page, I really wanted you to get people out of thinking that beauty has to be a number that you see on the scale or it has to be a certain, pants size that you are. There are so many different ways we are beautiful, and I really wanted to highlight that. And then the last part of the activity page I put in there is like, what do I, what do I love about my body? We're so conditioned to think what we hate about our body. I want you to start thinking about what you love about your body. And so there are prompts there and coloring

pages that you can lean into. And then we have some charts like, well, how do you break a fast? How do you break a longer fast? How do you break a shorter fast? And then I have a bunch of bonus gifts for you. So hopefully you can see I'm really proud of this journal. It's like if I could, you know, sit next to you and help you take the principles I taught in Fast Like a Girl and customize it to you, this is what I have done. This is the closest thing I can get to sitting right next to you. And I'm really proud of it. I'm really excited for you to get it. And I think I'm the most excited about what you're going to discover about you in this process. I have seen people with eating disorders use a fasting lifestyle to overturn eating disorders. I've seen people who are now using

fasting lifestyles for performance states really understand how to use a fasting lifestyle to enhance mental and physical performance. I've seen people go into the spiritual side of fasting and really discover some huge insights. Authors use this a lot for creativity. I write a lot in a fasted state. So this is a juicy one. There's a lot within these pages that will expand how you feel about yourself and make sure that you're on the right track of your fasting lifestyle.

So I hope it helps. As always, if the journal resonates with you, reviews matter. I would love a review, both here on the Resetter podcast, but also wherever you bought your book from so that others can see how helpful it was for you if it was. And so we can really dig together collectively start to overturn the chronic disease situation we're in. Fasting lifestyles are free. And we need a tool that everybody can lean into to point them in the right direction at this critical time in human history where chronic diseases are becoming the norm. And we've got over 50% at least here in America of people with one chronic disease, 40% with two or more.

That's horrific. And a fasting lifestyle is our way out of that. And this journal is going to deepen your understanding of you, your relationship to food, and how you can save yourself. So as always, I hope that helps. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health. to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with

your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.