ATHE_Transcript_Ep 595_Dr. Mindy Pelz
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can, and that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 To synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.
In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out.
We are talking about women’s [00:01:00] hormones, fasting, and menopause. I’m so excited about this one because I’ve been wanting to really dig into how we look at building muscle and then. Fasting because they are in opposition. So how do we put them together? Because there’s benefits to fasting and intermittent fasting that really help with this deep cellular detox and cleaning out.
And there’s of course, amazing benefits to building muscle. And so how do we put them together in a way to have the best health ever? And so I was sniffing around and I went, I know who can. Talk about this and it is Dr. Mindy Pelz. Dr. Mindy just came out with a fabulous book, by the way, Fast Like a Girl.
Who doesn’t love that name? And what she’s done is she’s put together a free course. So when you buy the book, you get that, which I’m going to put at jjvirgin.com/DrMindy. And tell you a little bit about Dr. Mindy. And I’m also going to tell you, you want to check out our YouTube channel. So I’ll put that in the show notes.
Super fun. So, Dr. Mindy is [00:02:00] a renowned holistic health expert and one of the leading voices in educating women about their body. And she’s really, like, that is what she’s really focused on, like, getting this out into the conversation, which we talk about a lot today. She’s empowered hundreds of thousands of people around the world, harnessed their body’s own healing abilities through detoxing, stress management, and lifestyle changes.
And she has got a bunch of high profile clients, including Leanne Rimes, Danica Patrick, Kate Graham. And Kate Graham is also the co host of their podcast, Women United. She’s also worked with Jesse Itzler and Olympic athletes and Academy Award winning actors and Silicon Valley CEOs. And all helping them supercharge their health and using the power of fasting.
So YouTube channel, honestly, like I love her YouTube channel. She’s had over 26 million views. She’s got three bestselling books along with the Fast Like a Girl. She also has the Menopause Reset, the Reset Factor, and the Reset Kitchen. [00:03:00] And she has the Resetter Podcast. Are you getting a theme here? She’s been all over the media as well.
So she has been on Extra TV, The Doctors, Daily Mail TV, Well and Good, Real Simple, House Lines, She Finds, Parade, Muscle and Fitness, Intermittent Fasting Magazine, whole bunch of stuff. And she is now living in Northern California, San Jose. And again, you are going to want to check out her book, Fast Like a Girl, and you’ll get a free course when you get it.
So, all of that information I’ll put at jjvirgin.com/DrMindy, and I will be right back with Dr. Mindy Pelz herself. Stay with me.
Welcome, Dr. Mindy Pelz. I can’t tell you, I’ve literally been counting the days for this interview. I’m so excited.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Oh my gosh, thank you. I love having this conversation. I probably had it, you know, it feels like a thousand times since the book came out and I never tire of it. So, I’m really excited to just be bringing this to you and your audience.
JJ Virgin: I sought you out because [00:04:00] I have been really kind of trying to put this whole thing together. And I know you are the one to do this because of course, this show is well beyond 40. As women, what we need to focus on to age well, which one of the key things we need to do is make sure we hold on to our better yet build our muscle.
And then we also want to be, you know, triggering autophagy and clearing things out. Fasting can be a great tool, but also can be at odds of building muscle. I was listening to another podcast you did. I’m not stalking you too much, just a little. My whole philosophy is diets are tools. Use them correctly, right?
That’s what they are in, in the perfect world. And maybe you’ve thought of it cause I was like. We need a word for diets and we need a word for how we’re eating because they’re, they’re different things. But that’s what I would really like to explore today for the woman. And this is well beyond 40. So it’s really women in their fifties, sixties.
Some might still be cycling. A lot of them have gone through menopause, but I think we have both. What we don’t have is the person who’s 30 having their totally regular [00:05:00] period. Right. It’s either they’re in the chaotic time or they’re now into the calm sailing. They’re in one of those two. And that’s what I want to really look at is how you use this tool in those two groups to get great results, but also.
Not to damage the muscle tissue that we so desperately need to hang on to.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, it’s such a brilliant discussion. And I think a lot of us, you know, that are well over 40 definitely have asked this question of ourselves. And here’s what I’m going to say is there’s two major principles that we need to be aware of.
First, after 40, I call it as your ovaries go into retirement and they decide they’re out. What they’re going to do is pass the sex hormone baton over to your adrenal glands. So if you are a rushing woman, type a You know, not a taking moments to pause and bring in your mindfulness tools. Your adrenals are going to be completely taxed and in their desire to keep up with your stress levels, they’re going to pull from your [00:06:00] muscle reserve and start to break your muscle down.
So what I saw in my clinic so much was so many women that were like, I’m working out the same, I’m doing the same thing, but I can’t build muscle and I’m losing muscle even though I’m trying so hard. So before we even get into autophagy and mTOR and fasting, I do want to bring forward this idea that We have to think about stress because everything I’m about to tell you will not work.
If you are a rushing woman, stressed out, your muscle will continue to break down because that’s what the adrenals demand. You know,
JJ Virgin: it’s just too bad. And I guess HRV is probably our closest thing because I’d say the biggest shift I’ve made since the pandemic, I got into Joe Dispenza during the pandemic.
And it was fantastic. What a difference. I was like, where have you been all my life? But I think once you start to get again, like well beyond 40, like you can no longer play around your, your margin for error is shot. So self care becomes [00:07:00] super critical. And I think that’s a very important part you just brought up because we’ve got to be in an anabolic state to build muscle.
That’s right. So how are you helping people? Because I think that most challenging thing with stress is it’s kind of this thing out there. It’s amorphous. You know, it’s like you can step on a scale, a bio impedance scale, and see your fat free mass and your fat mass. You can do a tape measure. You can go to the gym and see what you can lift, but like, you know, your nervous system, right?
I always say you have to train your nervous system, but what are you using to help people identify if this is an issue for them?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Here’s the best identification is. Can you just sit and relax? Like, can you just sit and be? Now, I will tell you a lot of women can’t like, can you just slow down, slow the mind down?
You know, sit on in your backyard and just chill out. Recently I went to Hawaii for two weeks as a gift to myself after launching this book into the world. And honestly, the stress of launching a book, I was sitting [00:08:00] in a beautiful Airbnb looking straight out at the ocean and every single voice inside my head was get up, go do something.
Why are you sitting here? And so I had to make myself sit there in order to start to do what I call practice parasympathetic. So when we get over 40, practicing parasympathetic, being able to dip in and out of a stress moment and then a relaxation moment is pivotal. So if you can’t do that, There’s your work right there.
I think HRV is a good measurement. It’s the closest measurement we have, but it’s as simple as, are you able to relax? And that means relax without a glass of wine. I’m glad you clarified that because
JJ Virgin: that definitely was when I made a big decision. I was like, I’m no longer going to use wine as my parasympathy, it’s not working. And I will say, I do see the limitations with HRV. It’s, I think what you just said was such a great point is what can you do? To just sit and be, which I find to be one of the [00:09:00] most difficult things on the planet, I must admit.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: It’s crazy. That’s why we have to start this discussion. I mean, one of the people that I’ve been working with over the last year has been Leanne Rimes.
She hit 40 and what we had to really do is teach her how to go out into the world, do her concerts, and then come home and relax your shit. And that was hard. That took six months. For her to just start to do it, but after she practiced it, now it’s getting easier and easier, and we all have to practice that.
JJ Virgin: Part of it that I’ve really had to work on, and I don’t think I’m a unicorn here, Is not feeling guilty, right? Right. I mean, because, you know, you’re a mom, you’re a wife, you’re a breadwinner, and like, you just are always doing something. And all of a sudden you’re going, you know what, like you just have to chill.
Like I literally had to gamify my self care and going, you need to get three points a day. So it can be red light or sauna or cold plunger. Something’s happening here and literally doing it that way. Because for the gym, I think for a lot of [00:10:00] us. You know, more ambitious people. The gym’s like, okay, you’re doing something.
Yes. Right. Yes. Versus, you know, it feels so gosh, going and getting in a hot Epsom salts bath does feels like you’re not doing anything.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Or like it’s torture, which sounds so funny. Right. I just want to like, I love calling out the things we’re all thinking, but nobody wants to talk about. Like who would think like a bath would be torturous, but just observe your brain, you know, just sit and is your brain saying, okay, I’ve been in long enough.
Maybe I need a loofa while I’m in here. Did I get the right amount of Epsom salts? Like you’re just in a bath and you’re just relaxing. If you can’t do that with trying to over achieve the bath, you’ve got some work to do.
JJ Virgin: That is hilarious. All right. So that’s the underlying theme is make sure. That you are.
And again, it’s what I’ve really looked at here is training your nervous system, just like you train your muscles. And so what are those things that you need to do and put some of that into your life [00:11:00] daily and it’s not something you feel guilty about. It’s absolutely required.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: That’s right. So which leads me to the next point, which was the original question was, what do we need to do?
How do we do this with fasting? So, if you take that concept that the human body and the female body is even more built for this, the menopausal body is even more built for this, which is we need to dip in and out of opposing states. So what we just talked about was dipping into sympathetic and then going into parasympathetic.
So when we come to fasting, we need to do the same with autophagy and mTOR. And we’re going to start with you don’t have a cycle. By the way, all my post menopausal followers will be like, finally you started with that because we always start with the cycling woman. But if we look at not having a cycle, You can fast, you can do different length fasts, and fast like a girl, I map out six different lengths.
But, when you go back into food, you’ve got to eat. And primarily, the [00:12:00] macro you want to focus on is protein. I am a big fan of the one to one and a half grams of protein for every pound of body weight you want to be. So, to your point when we started this, If you’re eating one meal a day, you’re not going to get 130 grams of protein.
In fact, over 90 grams of protein, the research shows it turns to glucose. So it’s not even worth it. So you’re going to need, if you do a one meal a day, you do it maybe one day a week. Maybe you do it twice, but you don’t do it every day. And then the other days you’re going to need to bring in more protein and make sure you’re getting a gram for every pound of body weight.
And the research also shows that it’s actually more helpful to do what they call protein cycling, where every couple hours you’re getting another 30 grams, and then a couple hours later you get another 30 grams. That is the best way to stimulate mTOR. So if we compare that food idea to your [00:13:00] point that food is a healing tool with the different length fasts, and we put those two together in what I call a fasting lifestyle, now you’ve customized something for your menopausal body.
JJ Virgin: So just for someone new tuning in who hasn’t heard about mTOR or autophagy, let’s just define that. Why do we wanna stimulate mTOR? And I also would love to kind of hit into that place because you know, there’s also this weird fear of it too. Yeah. And then also, why do we want that 30 gram perfect little, like 30 grams or more?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Great. So the first one, atrophagy, the best way to think of it is, In the absence of food, which means your blood sugar has been stable for a significant period of time or it’s been declining. Usually for autophagy, it takes about, you know, 15, 16, some research says 17 hours where that blood is going down, the blood sugar is going down.
The intelligence of the body says, Hey, I don’t think any food’s [00:14:00] coming in. We better clean up. And so it turns within itself and it gets rid of anything within the cell. You have trillions of cells that’s not working. So some people call it like a detox and it is a bit of a detox, but it’s really like a cleaning of the house, kind of like a Roomba for your cell that just goes around and like cleans everything up.
So. It’s a great state to be if you want to undo the toxins you might have done on a vacation, or maybe as you’re learning this information, you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve been eating poorly for years and years and years. You want to dip into autophagy because it’ll clean up the cell and make it better.
But then if you want to grow a cell, you’ve got to dip into mTOR and mTOR will grow, will create cellular growth. It will grow muscle, it will grow hormones, it will grow, you know, neurotransmitters. It is definitely the expansion phase. You cannot stimulate mTOR in a fasted state. So to your point, how we [00:15:00] started this is like, this is the challenge we’re seeing with so many women, especially as they go through perimenopause and menopause.
Is they realize as estrogen goes down, they’re gaining weight and they’re like, what’s going on? So they love fasting because it keeps their weight down, but then they’d start losing muscle because they’re not dipping into mTOR. mTOR’s growth. Autophagy is detox if we took it as simple as those principles could be.
JJ Virgin: And you mentioned 30 grams. I want people to hear this because I think I read recently that the average woman was getting something like 40 to 65 grams of protein and more like 15 to 20 at a meal. And I want them to understand. What happens at that 30 grams plus? Why is that critical?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: So you will spark an amino acid receptor site inside your muscle that will tell them, initiate mTOR specifically in the muscle.
So it is the trigger to tell the muscle to grow stronger. Now, if you’re concerned about I’m going to gain weight if I start eating [00:16:00] 130 grams a day, I want you to remember that the more muscle you have, the more insulin receptor sites you have. So you actually are building a more insulin sensitive body when you pulse in these 30 grams instead of dribble it in.
But you have to trigger, there has to be a sensor that triggers and it happens around 30 grams of protein.
JJ Virgin: I had to go to the doctor a few days ago, and sure enough, it’s like, okay, get on the scale. I like, when are we going to stop having scales? Why are we still looking at scale weight and not looking at what that weight is made up of?
You know, it’s again, seeing a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while, who’d been doing one meal a day and looking at the shift in her body composition, which was really obvious to see, right? Because she’s been just controlling her weight through one meal a day, losing muscle, but she’s not on a body composition scale.
So she can’t see what’s going on there.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yes, the healthcare system is like a [00:17:00] dinosaur. You know, they’re still throwing BMI out there as like the make or break for everything. But I think our generation over 40, the fifties and six year olds, you know, we were taught like muscles bad. And we’re taught, like, the number on the scale matters.
And I think there’s, the younger generation is starting to do it a little differently. So, you know, if you are caught into that, I just would ask you to pause for a moment and realize that there are better measurements, like a continuous glucose monitor. That’s going to tell you a lot more about if you’re going to gain weight or lose weight or what you’re going to look like.
Even an aura ring or a whoop or some kind of measurement of your HRV in sleep. That’s a better measurement of what is actually going to determine your body composition. So I think we just have to get up to speed with the new times.
JJ Virgin: In graduate school, I’m an exercise physiologist. Now I feel like my time has [00:18:00] come, Mindy. Like I feel like finally. And in graduate school, everyone was doing cardio research. And I was like, I’m doing muscular strength. And I was the one out with clients. Cause everyone was like, you have to get them to lose weight.
Don’t build muscle. And I’m like, that is ridiculous. Like if we build muscle, we will change their interest rate. Like we change everything. So I feel like finally we’re starting to get this message. Okay. So we dealt with the menopausal woman. So the woman who’s gone through menopause then sounds like the perfect thing for her.
Would be to cycle in either a shortened, now are you saying more like a six hour window or a one meal a day, one to two days a week?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: For the postmenopausal woman, we could put it into a weekly amount because she doesn’t have a cycle to track. So. Four days a week, you might intermittent fast, and maybe that’s 13 hours.
Once you open up your eating window, you’re gonna protein cycle. So that would be like one of the greatest studies on fasting for women [00:19:00] was done on 13 hours showing that women who went through traditional breast cancer treatment had a 64% less recurrence of breast cancer. If all she did was fast 13 hours a day.
JJ Virgin: Here’s what’s so crazy to me. I hear fasting 13 hours a day, and I’m amazed that we have to call that fasting. Right. Because I know when I was growing up, that’s just, you stopped eating after dinner and then you ate breakfast like an hour or so after you woke up. So you fasted somewhere in the 12 to 14 hour rate.
That’s just what you did. I just heard something that Dr. Sachin Panda was talking about, that the average American is eating 15 hours a day. I’m like, what are they doing?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: And, you know, part of that is our food system has us addicted. And, you know, in my youth, I was like, Let’s overcome the food system. And I’m now like, okay, we’re not overcoming the food system.
So we need another tool. And the food system’s just getting stronger. They’re manipulating our taste buds. There’s so much wrong going on there, but [00:20:00] we can actually dip into fasting to start to change something, you know, is easy to change. It sounds horrible to the person who’s hungry all day, but if you want to stop being hungry all day, start to compress your eating window and start leaving a longer period for fasting.
And that hunger starts to dramatically shift.
JJ Virgin: Well, so what’s your recommendation? Let’s stay with this 13 hours. So your typical recommendation then for those four days or so, how much time before bedtime do you want them to stop eating? Wake up and when do you want them to eat? Like what’s your typical.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: So for the menopausal postmenopausal woman, you want to break your fast with protein. So you’re going to get that 30 grams. That doesn’t mean you can’t put a bunch of protein on a salad. You can do something like that. Then a couple of hours later, maybe you have a hard boiled egg or a couple of hard boiled eggs.
Couple hours later, you have some turkey jerky, you know, you’re just pulsing in protein every couple of hours in that eating window. Now, we want to make sure your muscle shows that you’re not just gaining weight because there’s no evidence of [00:21:00] that. So we still want to keep you lean, which means as soon as it starts to get dark out, melatonin is coming in and melatonin makes us more insulin resistant.
So I like eat your dinner at sunset or before the sun goes down and definitely two to three hours before you go to bed. Cause then as the menopausal woman, you’re going to go into sleep and you’re going to get a lot better sleep. So that’s on those four days. That’s how I like to look at it. And you’re pretty much eating.
Protein and vegetables. It’s a great way. I mean, that’s what I do most days. That’s why I have it in a weekly amount, four days a week.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. And then, so what happens the other three days?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: So this is interesting because the other two days, when we look at it from a hormonal level, those four days, what you’re catering to beyond just muscle is you’re trying to balance estrogen.
So, remember there’s good estrogens and bad estrogen, and as we raise estrogen through our diet, which is the leafy green vegetables, keeping glucose and insulin down, you’re going to see more of that [00:22:00] good estrogen rise. We’re not only preventing things like cancer, but we’re also making sure that we are getting enough estrogen for our brains, for Alzheimer’s, dementia, all that.
So that’s those four days. The other two days, you’re catering to progesterone. And, you know, if you’re 50, 60 years old, I mean, even after 40, progesterone’s never coming back. Like, she’s just on her slow decline. And progesterone is what calms us, it’s what helps us sleep. So on those two days, if you don’t want to fast, like I’m speaking to the newer, faster here, like if you don’t want to fast, maybe go 10 hours, you know, maybe have breakfast that day.
You could still protein cycle that day, but I want more carbs, I want to add in more carbs on those days. And here’s one of the reasons we can’t villainize carbs. is because the thyroid requires it. And 50 percent of women going through menopause are going to have a thyroid problem. So another reason why women can’t do one meal a day over and over and over again, because you can’t get the [00:23:00] calories up.
You can’t get the protein up. So I call them hormone feasting foods. This doesn’t mean you start to eat a tub of ice cream and a box of pizza. This means you go into nature’s carbs, like your squashes, your potatoes, your tropical fruit, your citrus fruits. But what you’re doing on those two days is you’re bringing progesterone up and then one day a week, you can do your one meal a day.
That’s where I want you to stretch your fast so you get all the benefits of a deeper autophagy. One part of autophagy that we haven’t talked about is that it is an opportunity to get rid of those aging cells, those senescent cells. So if you can get one day a week over that 17 hour mark, you get rid of those cells that either are going to build disease or going to speed up aging.
So it’s what I call a 4 2 1. 4 2 1,
JJ Virgin: that’s easy enough to follow. So it’s really 14 10. And that last one doesn’t necessarily have to be one meal. It could be within a five hour, it sounds like.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Exactly. You just want to stretch it. You know, you [00:24:00] want to, you want to hit that hormetic stressor moment. Where it is a little uncomfortable because the body is going to start to repair in that discomfort.
You don’t have to hang out there long, maybe an hour, two hours, but you can do it. You know, you just want to push it a little bit. It was
JJ Virgin: interesting. I was at Expo West and I was talking to Dr. Jeff Bland and Dr. Joel Kahn and Joel said, you know, the way we have to think of autophagy is hunger equals younger.
Think back cause now you’ve been around not quite as long as me, but you’ve heard all this silly stuff. And. Remember back when we were not allowed to get hungry? Remember when the nutritionist was like, don’t let yourself get hungry. I’m like, why? What will happen? You know, and we were supposed to graze every couple hours because we were eating so many carbs, we were starving and no protein or fat.
And I think that that has just carried forward that, oh, don’t let yourself get hungry. As if some very dangerous thing’s going to happen if we’re hungry. Of course, now with all this ultra processed food. We’re not actually hungry. We’re just triggered by the food, but I [00:25:00] think it’s important that you just said is like, learn what hunger feels like, what real homeostatic hunger feels like.
Cause I think most of us haven’t felt it in a long, long time. Drink some water,
Dr. Mindy Pelz: right? Here’s something I’ve seen because we’ve just watched so many people fast is if you want to understand your relationship to food. Get yourself a little hungry because in that, the brain starts squawking at you. My mom taught me like that, eat all day long or you’re going to pass out.
So when I learned fasting, it was like, okay, what’s my tool right now? Am I going to pass out? And I had to actually watch myself and see, no, actually I thrive. After a while, the hunger goes away. But then I also had to find other state changers. So, food at its core has become a state changer. It is not a nourishment tool like you and I would like to see it.
So, when you start to fast, when you get to that difficult place, you have a lot of other great state changers. Go listen to some music, go for a walk, call a friend. [00:26:00] There’s so many other things you can do and what I’ve watched is as you can do that, you start to change your relationship to food. Food doesn’t become your emotional support situation anymore.
Now you have the opportunity to look at food as a healing tool. Yeah,
JJ Virgin: that’s huge. Okay. So are we ready to shift over to these women still in the storm?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, let’s go to perimenopausal women. And you know, I just want to give them all a big hug. Yeah, it will get better. I swear it’s so much better on the other side.
JJ Virgin: Just wait.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: So one of the books I wrote before Fast Like a Girl is called The Menopause Reset and it’s about to come back out. We revised it and it’s coming back out on Amazon in a few months. But my goal with that book is I kept it really short, I kept it to the point, I gave women five things they needed to change, and I really hoped that women at 40 would pick that up and go, Oh, my lifestyle needs to change now.
And I think that’s for the perimenopausal woman, if you want to lessen the storm, [00:27:00] you have to realize that the diet you did at 25 is not going to work at 45. And same thing with exercise, the same thing that kept you thin and happy for so many years, you got to change it. And largely because your ovaries are going into retirement.
I mean, they’re going to take 10 to 15 years to slowly exit out. And so that’s where we want to start to make some changes. So first thing. If you’re not tracking your cycle, track your cycle. And that alone cracks me up. And this was what happened to me is at 43, I started tracking my cycle for the first time.
And I wasn’t trying to get pregnant. You know, I wasn’t managing PMS. I was just trying to understand how to cater to these different hormones. When you start tracking your cycle, what you need to know is the front half of your cycle, day one, and I’m just going to say all the way till about the follicular phase, all the way till about day 16 or 7, you know, [00:28:00] 16, let’s just throw it out there, you’re catering to estrogen.
And what estrogen wants you to know is keep glucose down and keep me insulin sensitive. And if you don’t, then I’m going to go out of whack. You’re going to get all the problems of estrogen dominance. So for the perimenopausal woman, you can go into a little longer fast. I would encourage you, and even the postmenopausal woman can experiment with like some 36 hour fast and some 48 hour fast, even Valter Longo’s immune reset at 72 hours.
You can pulse those in every once in a while to clean up and get some health vibrating through you. But do it when estrogen is coming in day one, all the way through day 16. You can also push your workouts. You know, if you really want to go in big and strong at the gym, do it in that front half of your cycle.
And then to our point with the post menopausal women, make sure you are always breaking your [00:29:00] fast with protein, like always. So that is kind of a golden rule after 40. The back half of our cycle. So 17 until the day you bleed. is going to be more carbs, less stress. What I always say is that if cortisol goes high, progesterone is going to go shy.
And if progesterone is gone, you’re going to start spotting. Your anxiety is going to go through the roof. You’re going to have trouble sleeping. So the back half of your cycle, you’re going to bring your carb level up. And you’re going to shorten your fast. If you’re new to fasting, don’t start fasting, then wait to the front half of the cycle.
So when
JJ Virgin: you talk about the fasting on the front end of the cycle, what kind of fasting are you talking about? And I know in the book, so fasting like a girl, super excited about this, that you have these six different types of fast. What specifically during the one through 16, can they do whatever they want during that?
Are there very specific ones
Dr. Mindy Pelz: or? Well, the way I mapped it out in the book is, I love what you said this earlier, that you had to gamify [00:30:00] your mindfulness tools. I like to gamify everything. The first time I started to study hormones, I’m like, Oh my God, this is like another language. So I gave them fun names.
So the first 10 days of the cycle, I call the power phase. You can do all six of the fasts that I map out in that book. If you want to throw a three day water fast in, great time to do it would be like day six. So you’re hormonally primed to do that. If you want to start fasting, that would be a great time.
When we move into ovulation, and this is something I wish my younger self had known, my ovulating self, is that we have this five day period where estrogen’s at her peak, testosterone’s at her peak, and we’ve got a little bit of progesterone. We are hormonally locked and loaded to take on the world. So because of that, progesterone’s there.
We don’t want to raise cortisol too much. So I like to keep fasts about 15 hours or less. I don’t like to see women go over 15 hours during ovulation. Now [00:31:00] you also have to look at your food options during the You’ve got to break those hormones down and it’s the gut and the liver that are going to help you do that.
So this is a great time to lean into more of the leafy greens, but you can leave it, lean into more of the fibrary foods. You can go back into your squashes. I don’t think keto is great at this time. I call it hormone feasting foods. I think you’re better off doing more of a little bit higher carbohydrate so we can really address those three hormones, but also work on the liver and the gut.
Great time to give up alcohol too. I’ve decided that if we’re going to tell women to give up alcohol at any point, give it up during this time. Then when we get out of ovulation, we have another power phase. There’s about four days, days 17 to 19. You can go back into a longer fast. You can go back into keto.
And then about day 19, 20, progesterone’s coming in and she just wants you to chill out. And every single woman [00:32:00] I’ve talked to says, oh my God, is that why I’ve craved carbs the week before my period? Is that why all I want to do is sit on the couch? Is that why I crave chocolate? Is that why I want everybody to go away and everybody’s makes me irritable?
Yes. That is progesterone coming in in her glory. And she is saying. Hey, you need to nurture me and take care of me, which is why I called it the nurture phase in the book. Early
JJ Virgin: on, I think I was in my mid thirties and we had a crazy nutty doctor in Palm Desert who thought everyone needed to be on progesterone and thyroid, like it was his, his whole technique, thyroid and progesterone.
Anyway, so he put me on progesterone because he said it would help my skin because I was breaking out. Within two weeks, I gained 12 pounds. I was sitting crying. I wanted chocolate chip cookies. I was like, dude, this ain’t working.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: You know, that’s the thing about like HRT, bio identicals, you know, there’s a path for everybody if they go down that, but there’s not a one size fits [00:33:00] all.
JJ Virgin: No, oh my gosh. I mean, it was given to guys. I was doing some nutrition for these guys. I was like going, why are you crying? What is going on with you? You know, why are you so sensitive? Yeah. Now it’s a whole different story with all those bio identicals. Boy, does it make a difference when your hormones actually do drop.
Holy smokes. So I know that we’re going to share how everyone can get the free course too, because your book is out now, Fasting Like a Girl, and you put together a free course. So when people grab the book, they will be able to get that. And I’m going to put all that information along with all your cool stuff because you do so much great stuff on YouTube.
Thank you. You have amazing videos on YouTube. You will want to check these out. So you’ve got YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, so we’ll put all of that into the show notes as well. And I’m going to put that in the obvious jjvirgin.com/DrMindy and that’s M I N D Y. Any last parting thoughts that we didn’t cover about this that you would like to make sure that we get out?
Dr. Mindy Pelz: You know, in the deepest part of my heart, what [00:34:00] I’m trying to do with this information is crack this conversation open so that all of us can start to talk about this through a new lens and look at our menstrual cycle or our lack of menstrual cycle as our superpower. So as you learn this, if you walk away from this and you’re like, Oh my gosh, how did I not know this?
Just know, this is a conversation women haven’t had, so please keep the conversation going. Talk to other women about it because we need to, at this moment in time, to rally around each other and help each other understand our hormonal selves. And once we understand our hormonal selves, we can turn around and teach the men in our lives.
We can speak the language of hormones. I was on a podcast interview this morning on my podcast, and the guest said, I just want you to know I’m on day two. And I was like, amazing. That’s how we all should be talking. So I walk into a speech and if the room’s too hot, I’m like, I’m a menopausal woman. We need to own this, not villainize it.
So that would be my point. [00:35:00] Think how much easier it would be for the men in our lives.
JJ Virgin: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Amazing. It would be so much easier. They would appreciate it for sure. Yes, they would.
JJ Virgin: Holy smokes. Yes. Oh my gosh. So much good stuff. So again, fasting like a girl. I love that title so much. And you’ll be able to grab the book, get your free course, go to jjvirgin.com/DrMindy. And Dr. Mindy, I know you’ve been crazy doing so many interviews. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I so appreciate you. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy Pelz: Thank you, JJ. This was a delight.
JJ Virgin: Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great.
And more importantly, that you’re built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. And my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don’t miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.[00:36:00]

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