Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Fast Like a Girl: Introduction

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Welcome to Episode 1 of Season 4! A special treat for you: get a sneak peek of Dr. Mindy's latest book, Fast Like a Girl. To order the book, please go to fastlikeagirl.com. Please see our medical disclaimer.

Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward on your mental and physical health. So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. 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. Enjoy. Hey, resetters. I have a really fun

surprise tip for you. We are unleashing the intro to Fast Like a Girl, but audiobook for you all to enjoy early. And I hope in this intro that you're going to see the heart and soul behind this book, I will give you a little bit of a behind the scenes when you write a book. The intro is really the heart of an author. It is why I wrote the book. It's my prayer for the world. It's my desire of what I hope the book will do for your life. And it's really, for me as an author, one of the most rewarding chapters to write. And a lot of time and effort goes into the intro. When you dive into a book, there's a lot of the mechanics and the how-to and fast like a girl hopefully has more how-toes for you than you ever dream possible. But the intro is really my heart and my soul. And I hope that

when you listen to this intro, you really see that. And when I read the book in the studio, you know, I really put myself in the place of my prayer and my desire for the world. And I know that there is so much possibility that fasting like a girl can do to end chronic disease for women. And so I hope as you listen to this intro, you feel my love for you, you feel my desire for the world, and that every aspect of this book changes your life in a positive way. So from the bottom of my heart, here's the intro to Fast Like a Girl. And as always, I'm so grateful for all your support and for those of you who are sending Fast Like a Girl out into the world and into your communities, we truly are more powerful

together. Introduction. We have never been more in need of a new paradigm for health. In the past few decades, chronic conditions like Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, infertility, cardiovascular disease, autoimmunity, mood disorders, and even chronic pain have skyrocketed. What might be the most disheartening about this surge is that many of these diagnoses are happening to women. Yet women are still being given a one-size-fits-all solution that rarely takes into account their hormonal needs, leaving them feeling unheard, out of answers, and most of all, still sick.

I know this scenario all too well because I was one of these women. At 19 years old, I was overcome by unrelenting fatigue, a fatigue that made it impossible to do even the simplest daily life tasks. At an age when most of us are thinking about what career, to step into? I was struggling to find the energy to even get out of bed. Searching for answers, I found myself sitting in the office of one of the top medical doctors in the world who diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition for which there was no known cure. He told me it would take years for me to heal from such a debilitating

condition, and then instructed me to drop out a school, hop on to trial medications, and hope that my body would heal. At the time, I was a scholarship athlete with coaches breathing down my neck to get back out on the tennis court. I didn't have time to wait. We all have moments we look back on and realize that in an instant our life was changed forever. That day I sat in the doctor's office was one of those moments. Like the millions of women who received dismal prognoses from their doctors, I listened in disbelief. Yet a voice inside me kept telling me there was another way.

How could my body be breaking down at 20 years old? If the best chronic fatigue doctor couldn't help me, how was I going to find a way out? That dark moment taught me one important lesson that I've carried forward into my practice today. When your health falls apart, you need just one person to believe in you and give you hope. Luckily for me on that day, that person was my mom. Frustrated with this doctor's advice, she immediately drove me from that doctor's office to a holistic medical doctor. It was 1989, and at that time, finding a medical doctor with a more natural approach was almost impossible.

His first recommendation, change my diet. He explained to me how all foods are not created equal. Some foods build up your health, and others deplete you. I had been eating the ones that depleted me. He immediately put me on a diet that looked very much like today's wildly popular ketogenic diet. Within three weeks of adhering to his diet recommendations, I could feel something in my body shift dramatically. Not only was my energy coming back, but my brain had more clarity, I started dropping weight effortlessly, and the depressive haze I had been walking around in for months disappeared overnight.

I literally felt like someone had given me a miracle cure, yet all I did was change what I was eating. Why did my body respond so well to these diet changes? What healing power did I ignite with just changing up my food choices? And why did these two doctors have such dramatically different opinions about my path back to health? I was in awe of how quickly my body responded to the new diet changes. It sparked an unquenchable desire to learn what else my body was capable of achieving through the power of food. Yet it also left me wondering how many people are given similar grim prognoses who never get taught the effect food has on our body's ability to heal.

This experience ignited a desire in me to help others see the influence something as simple as food can have on their health. Since then, I have studied and tested almost every popular diet fad that has emerged. You name the diet trend, I've tested it. I have also spent the past 25 years in the health trenches with thousands of patients, helping them discover how important, what they eat and when they eat can be to their health. What all this research taught me is that now, more than ever, humans are suffering at the hands of poor food choices. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published that 60% of Americans have one chronic disease, 40% have two or more, and 90% of the trillions of dollars we spend on health care goes to treating

these chronic conditions. Why are we so sick? What has changed in the past 30 years that has us on a collision course with chronic disease? When you look at the root cause of many chronic diseases, you see a common thread. That common thread is poor. poor metabolic health. Poor metabolic health, often known as metabolic syndrome, is getting a lot of press these days and with good reason. The term metabolic health is often used to refer to a person's ability to properly regulate their blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol without the use of medications.

not only does poor metabolic health lead to chronic disease, but it also compromises your immune system. Perhaps the most startling part of having poor metabolic health is that as a culture, we have normalized this condition. Many of the hallmark signs that tell us a person's metabolic health is diminishing are often given a label by doctors as aging, genetic, or unavoidable. The signs someone is struggling with their metabolic health are clear. High levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, or an increasing waste circumference are all telling you that your metabolism is struggling. A classic sign of a failing metabolism that is rarely addressed is a person's inability to go without food. This is referred to as hypoglycemia, but your brilliant body has a reserve system that should

activate in the absence of food to give you energy, mental clarity, and tied you over until you can get to your next meal. If you are struggling to go more than four hours without food, it is time for a metabolic tuna. In 2018, a study emerged from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill declaring that only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. And it's not just Americans. More than 800 million people worldwide currently live with obesity. According to the British Medical Journal,

in many countries, obesity is now killing more people than smoking. What might be the most disturbing is that the fastest growing sector of the population living with obesity is children. Childhood obesity is predicted to increase by 60% in the coming decade, reaching 250 million by 2030. The medical costs with this rise in obesity, are expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2025. Respected medical journals like The Lancet are even declaring that due to the strong correlation of metabolic disease to worse COVID-19 outcomes, metabolic health needs to be our number one focus globally in the post-pandemic era. Yet our current efforts to prevent and treat

metabolic challenges like obesity are glaringly inadequate. Our approach to this growing problem needs to change. Poor metabolic health is not just a number on the scale or an elevated lab finding. It is a person in crisis. Each health crisis doesn't just affect that individual. It impacts that person's family, our communities, and as the pandemic has talked, has taught us the world at large. We are all in this metabolic mess together. As dismal as our current metabolic situation may be, there is a clear path out. It's a path that doesn't take time and won't cost any money. It's backed by science and can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime. That tool is

fasting. Although the art of fasting is not a new health concept, in recent years, people have discovered that fasting is the quickest path back to better health. In my quest to help patients improve their health through nutrition, I stumbled upon multiple studies proving the efficacy of fasting. I became so enamored with what the science was saying about how our bodies heal in a fasted state, that I incorporated it into every one of my patient's treatment plans. The results were astounding. I had never seen the body heal so quickly just by tweaking something as simple as when a person eats. This left me wondering, if fasting was so powerful for my patients, could this be a tool that everyone could use? Throughout my 25 years in practice,

I've consistently seen that two of the biggest hurdles people come up against when trying to get well are time and money. Fasting takes care of both. I became so obsessed with this re-emerging ancient healing tool and the results I was witnessing that I decided to teach the science, of fasting on my YouTube channel. I quickly discovered that many people, especially women, were also thirsty to learn how to fast effectively. Three years and 900 videos later, I have been on the front lines witnessing a burgeoning health trend that has patients and doctors alike clamoring to learn more.

In the years since I have been teaching fasting, hundreds of thousands of healing stories have been shared on my channel. What has been clear is that people are falling in love with the results they experience when they fast. As you will soon discover, the studies on fasting are impressive as well. Respected scientific journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, cell metabolism, nature, and the British Medical Journal consistently published new evidence proving why fasting works so well. These papers show how fasting helps with every aspect of metabolic health, from weight loss and high blood pressure to insulin resistance, inflammation, and lowering cholesterol. We also have scientific evidence that fasting repairs our gut microbiome, improves neurodegenerative

diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's, reboots a struggling immune system, and can power up happiness neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA. While the scientific evidence is clear that fasting heals, there still exists one huge blind spot. A one-size-fits-all approach to fasting doesn't work, especially for women. As exciting as it is that more people are incorporating intermittent fasting into their lifestyle, three critical questions have emerged that are not being addressed. The first is, how long should someone fast? Intermittent fasting is typically thought of as going 13 to 15 hours without food.

Yet many follow the research that's been done on 16-8 fasting, 16 hours of fasting, alternating with eight eating. Meanwhile, one of the most famous fasting studies revealed that a three-day water fast can kill pre-cancerous cells and reboot your whole immune system. As these scientific articles became more mainstream and fasting becomes more popular, a lot of opinions are being tossed around on how long a person should fast. This makes it incredibly confusing for many to determine how long they should fast. fast, if they should fast every day, and whether they are even fasting correctly. As you learn to thrive in a fasted state, it's tempting to go longer. But is longer better? Often, there are no clear answers. The second question is, what foods are best paired with fasting? Many have fallen so in love with fasting, they forget that food heals too. Yet it's the rhythm of moving in and out of feasting

and fasting that creates the greatest metabolic change. Fasting experts have been focusing primarily on the healing that happens within the fasting window, leaving fasters in the dark as to the healing importance of food when they do eat. This is a challenge since many people are still eating a Western standard diet that is packed with chemicals, sugar, and inflammatory fats. As contradictory as this may sound, food should not be left out of the fasting conversation. When you pair the right foods with fasting, miracles happen, especially for women. This brings me to the third and most important question that needs answering. Do women need to fast different than men?

This is a pivotal question because women are highly influenced by the monthly and menopausal swings of hormones. The intricacies of our sex hormones, estrogen, progestrone, and testosterone, require that we pay closer attention to spikes in cortisol and insulin that can happen with an increase in stress, exercise, food, and yes, even fasting. When we use fasting to flip our metabolic switch, we need to do it in sync with our hormones. Although men are hormonally driven as well, their hormones are not as sensitive to these spikes. For a woman to realize the full health benefits of fasting, she needs to know when and how to flip her metabolic switch in accordance with her

hormonal cycles. Yet, like in many aspects of health care, women are often left out of the conversation. Multiple fasting books are teaching a one-size-fits-all approach to fasting, leaving women with more questions than answers. Podcasts, social media posts, and blogs discuss the need for women to fast differently, but very few are teaching women how to fast differently. This presents a huge challenge. If a woman decides to jump into a fasting lifestyle and doesn't time that fast or menstrual cycle, adverse symptoms may appear such as hair loss, rashes, anxiety, missed menstrual cycles, thyroid problems, and trouble sleeping. These are all symptoms that can be avoided when a woman learns how to fast for her unique body.

Done properly, fasting can resolve so many conditions. women are struggling with. The same goes for menopausal women who may no longer have a cycle, but still have hormonal needs. We need to address what their fasting lifestyle should look like. The list of women looking for fasting answers to their hormonal conditions is long. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, women using IUDs with very little evidence of a menstrual cycle, and the hundreds of thousands of women who are struggling with infertility, these are all women who need to adjust a fast to their specific needs. And they need resources to guide them.

In an effort to help, I started teaching the intricacies of fasting and how to time a fasting lifestyle to hormonal needs on my YouTube channel. I mapped out six different fasting styles, ranging in length from 13. to 72 hours, and two different food programs, what I call ketobiotic foods and hormone-feasting foods, that can be timed to a woman's menstrual cycle. I also created a tool called the fasting cycle that lets a woman choose the right fasting length and food style to correlate with her menstrual cycle. And for women both with and without a cycle, like menopausal women or women on birth control,

with minimal flow, I created a step-by-step 30-day fasting reset that varies their fasting lengths and food choices to balance their hormones while improving their metabolic fitness. If there's anything that these women have taught me, it's that once a woman knows how to build a fasting lifestyle around her cycle, she becomes unstoppable. It's these women who have inspired me to write this book. In these chapters, you will find the proven strategies, condition-specific protocols, hacks that make fasting easier, and tools that I have used to help hundreds of thousands of women just like you thrive with a fasting lifestyle.

I've split the book into three parts, starting with the science behind fasting and metabolic switching. Knowing the why behind fasting is key for your success. In part one, I also guide you through a brief lesson on how your hormones work. This is a lesson you should have been given at age 13, and I'm excited to give it to you now. Marrying the science of fasting to the magic of your hormones is pivotal for your fasting success. In part two, I dive into food principles that will never let you go metabolically astray again. Nutrition can be complicated.

it, I want to simplify it for you. In this part, I also introduce you to the two eating styles, ketobiotic and hormone feasting, that you will match to your fasts. You will also learn how to use the fasting cycle to sync your different length fast to your menstrual cycle. Finally, in part three, you will learn how to customize fasting to your life, including using a 30-day fasting reset, specific protocols you can use if you're trying to overcome a condition and hacks that will make fasting easier. One of my favorite concepts to teach how to break a fast is outlined in this section as well. No matter where you might be in your fasting journey, I know you will find resources here that will help you move the needle with your health. Just like my mom was that beacon of hope for me years ago,

I want this book to be your guiding light as you learn to use fasting and take back control of your health. This book will teach you exactly how to do that. Women have been underserved by the medical community for too long, and I'm excited to share with you the promise fasting provides for each one of us. 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.