The Fastest Way To Lose Belly Fat (THIS Is The Best Kept Weight Loss Secret) | Dr. Mindy Pelz

Dr. Mindy Pelz 0:00 What causes your body to gain weight? Your body, if it could talk to you, was like, "You just had a lot of extra stuff you've been giving me, and I didn't know where to put it, so I started in your belly, and I'm putting it there to save your life."

Jay Shetty 0:12 Women's health expert, podcast host. Dr. Mindy Pelz. What is the worst mistake someone can make while fasting that will make them gain weight?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 0:20 Doing the same fast the same way every single day. This is the part that I wanna scream from the rooftop.

Jay Shetty 0:30 We're thrilled to announce that we've reached three million subscribers. We're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on any of our new releases. We're dedicated to bringing you the content you love. Our team carefully analyzes what resonates most with you to bring on board the best experts and storytellers to help you improve your life. Some of your favorite topics are sleep science, weight loss, physical fitness, navigating breakups, habit-building, and understanding toxic relationships. Upcoming episodes include one of the biggest names in health and science, world-renowned relationship therapist, and your favorite manifestation expert is back to drop new findings. Hit Subscribe to not miss any of these episodes. If you think of someone who would love this episode, send it to them to make their day. The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1:27 Jay Shetty.

Speaker 1:28 Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty 1:29 The one, the only Jay Shetty. [laughs] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is going to help us do just that from the inside out. Dr. Mindy Pelz is a women's health expert, podcast host, and bestselling author of Fast Like a Girl, The Menopause Reset, and her new book, Eat Like a Girl. With a mission to empower women by helping them understand their bodies, Dr. Pelz has become a leading voice in the fields of hormones, fasting, and healthy living. Dr. Mindy's work provides invaluable guidance for women navigating the complexities of hormones, metabolic health, and nutrition. Please welcome to On Purpose, Dr. Mindy Pelz. Mindy, it's great to see you.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:17 Yeah, thank you.

Jay Shetty 2:17 And, uh, thank you for being here.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:19 Oh, I'm excited. I'm super happy to be here and have this conversation with you.

Jay Shetty 2:23 I just wanna point out how amazing you are, because you're actually here on your birthday-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:27 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 2:27 ... which shows how much you value and deeply believe in the work you're doing-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:31 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:31 ... to be spending your birthday with us. So I feel even more-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:34 Yeah. Thank you

Jay Shetty 2:34 ... lucky and grateful to be with you.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 2:35 Yeah. You know, I'm sure it's like your work. You know? It is, it just oozes out of me, so it's not like I w- I had to sacrifice to be here on my birthday. It was more of a joy to be here, so thank you for having me on my birthday.

Jay Shetty 2:48 I love it. Well, let's get right into it. I wanted to start off with a big question. When, when we knew you were coming on the show, we asked our audience for things that they would love to learn from you, things they'd love to know about you, and one of the biggest ones that came up

Jay Shetty 2:59 is, what is the worst mistake someone can make while fasting that will make them gain weight?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 3:05 Ooh.

Jay Shetty 3:05 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 3:06 This, this was the biggest question?

Jay Shetty 3:08 Yes.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 3:08 Okay, this is really great because there's not a one-sentence answer. So the biggest mistake, for starters, is doing the same fast the same way every single day over and over and over again.

Jay Shetty 3:22 Wow.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 3:22 We were meant to vary, men and women were meant to vary our fasts. And here's the way you look at it, is that the human body will adapt to what we call a hormetic stress, a little tiny stressor that puts it into a forced adaptation. So you go without food. All of a sudden you're like, your body's like, "Wait a second. W- no food's coming in. We're gonna need to go find that food that we stored years ago," and so it will go to the fat storage and burn that fat. If you do that same style of fasting, maybe it's one meal a day, over and over and over again, the body gets really smart, and it's like, "Wait. No food's coming in. I only get a little bit of food every single day. I'm gonna slow my metabolism down." So the biggest mistake that people make is that they've got to vary their fast. Vary the length. You don't fast every day. It's what we call feast-famine cycling, and it's how the human body was designed to be.

Jay Shetty 4:25 I was not expecting that answer-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 4:27 Excellent

Jay Shetty 4:27 ... because I feel [laughs] I feel like everything we're ever told is like, "Here's the hours. Here's what it is. Do it five days in a row. Maybe you can take a couple of days off a week or a month or whatever it may

Jay Shetty 4:38 be." How do you know, then, how to structure it to give yourself some sort of system to follow-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 4:44 Yeah

Jay Shetty 4:44 ... so that you're not just- I guess completely out of sync as well.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 4:48 Yeah. So first I wanna say is if it makes logical sense if you go back and you think about the hunter gatherers. Like, they came out of the cave, and sometimes they had a meal left over from a kill they made the night before. Sometimes they had a lot of food, and then sometimes they had no food. So our body is used to that feast famine cycling because that's how we were primally designed, so I wanna point that out. Second thing, the way that I see this is that every day you have a fasting window and you have an eating window. And your eating window, you get to vary, and it should vary for most people based off your lifestyle. So let's use the example of the soccer mom, um, because that was sort of a big part of my practice, was all these, I call them the mama bears. And what we found is that they want... The most important meal for them was dinner with the family. So they needed to skip breakfast and start their eating window somewhere around 12:00, 1:00 so that they could finish that eating window at 7:00, 8:00. So Monday through Friday, they would make their eating window in the afternoon, evening. But then on the weekends, like a lot of families wanna have brunch on Sunday, or maybe they'll go to the farmer's market, or, or maybe they'll go out to breakfast on Saturday morning. So then they would move their eating window up in earlier in the day.

Jay Shetty 6:12 Right.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:12 So I think you should base it off your lifestyle, and then of course, base it off of, women should base it off their cycle-

Jay Shetty 6:18 Sure

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:18 ... which is what Fast Like a Girl is about.

Jay Shetty 6:20 Yeah. So I'm someone who loves

Jay Shetty 6:22 systems and routines.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:23 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:23 So I end up eating... I'm a three meals per day kind of person. I have to eat three meals a day.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:29 My body reacts in, whether it's cramps or fatigue or whatever, if I don't.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:34 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:34 So if I try and m- miss breakfast or have a late breakfast, I'm feeling that.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:38 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:39 Um, if I'm skipping a meal in the middle of the day, I'm, I'm feeling that. Like, my body wants it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:44 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:44 So I generally end up eating three meals a day pretty much at the same time every day.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 6:48 Is that bad? Am I doing that wrong?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:50 Well, I mean, it depe- I always say it depends on your intention.

Jay Shetty 6:52 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 6:52 So what's your intention for your health?

Jay Shetty 6:54 My intention right now is to gain strength and muscle as I've been training and trying to eat enough protein as someone who follows a plant-based diet.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 7:02 And then you are doing... When are you working out, in the morning?

Jay Shetty 7:05 Yes, in the morning.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 7:05 Yeah. So for you, 'cause you're trying to up muscle, you're gonna wanna make sure that you eat before your workout, and you're gonna wanna make sure you eat after your workout.

Jay Shetty 7:14 I'm not doing the before.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 7:15 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 7:16 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 7:16 So then what will end up ha- So you go in fueled, you're breaking that muscle down while you're working out, and then you're refueling afterwards. That would be, like, the perfect way to stack protein. But then w- where does the fasting window fit in? So the fasting window would probably be more towards the end of the day. And one of the things that I l- just try to make this simple for everybody is the best thing you can do is always eat in the light. The minute we start eating in the dark, like at the end of the day, we've got melatonin coming into our body, and melatonin causes us to be more insulin resistant. So if you are working out at 9:00 in the morning, I'd want you to have a meal, maybe a s- small little protein shake at 8:00. You do your workout. Then you follow it up with a recovery meal.

Jay Shetty 8:02 So that's enough.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:02 Yeah, I would do-

Jay Shetty 8:03 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:03 ... yeah, I would... Just enough to kind of fuel you. Yeah, you wouldn't n- need a huge amount. And then 5:00, 6:00 at night, depending on the time of year, you shut it down.

Jay Shetty 8:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:13 And then now if you're done eating at 6:00, you would go, you know, 6:00 to 6:00 all the way till 8:00. That's a 14-hour fast every day, and that's pretty good.

Jay Shetty 8:23 Yeah. So that's pretty much what I do fasting-wise. I stop eating at, like, 6:30.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:27 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:27 We always have an early dinner.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:28 But I guess, yeah, that means no, no, none of those late night snacks.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:32 That's the challenge.

Jay Shetty 8:32 That if, if I end up being out till late, if I have to.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:35 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:36 Gotta stop those late night snacks.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:37 Yeah, that's the challenge.

Jay Shetty 8:38 Eat in the light.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 8:39 Yeah. So eat in the light, and then what a lot of people do because of that night snacking, what a lot of people decide is, "You know what? I'd rather delay my breakfast so that I can eat a little bit later," 'cause I maybe sit down with a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie at night, and so they'll, they'll make their first meal noon. But this is the whole point of what I'm trying to teach, is all of this is customizable. So you... But you should customize it to your intention and your goals and your lifestyle. And, and if you d- can do it that way, it's a health habit that becomes effortless over time, as opposed to what we typically do, which is, "I'm gonna get healthy. I'm gonna get fit. I'm gonna... I'll just discipline myself into this new body I want."

Jay Shetty 9:20 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:21 Right? And then after a while, we lose the discipline, and we boomerang back into our old habits.

Jay Shetty 9:25 Yeah. Well, you've already given me something. I'm gonna start having that bite to eat before my workouts now.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:30 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 9:30 I think that'll make a huge difference for me-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:32 Yeah

Jay Shetty 9:32 ... for sure. No, I love that. The second thing that everyone asked about, which was the big one, which is

Jay Shetty 9:37 what is the fastest, most effective way for people to lose their belly fat?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:41 Everybody wants to know about belly fat.

Jay Shetty 9:42 It's the big one. Everyone, everyone's-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:44 Yeah, it's-

Jay Shetty 9:44 ... obsessed with belly fat.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 9:45 Everybody is obsessed with belly fat. Okay, I wanna start with this understanding. What causes your body to gain weight? And that's a better question to ask yourself than, "How do I get this weight off?" Because you need to know the mechanism. Here's what the body does, is whenever there is excess, excess glucose, excess hormones, excess toxins, the body is so well designed that it knows I can't put all these e- this excess around your heart and lungs. I probably shouldn't put this around your liver. I'm not going to go over here and put it around your spleen. I'm gonna store it somewhere that will keep you alive. So it stores it first around your belly.

Jay Shetty 10:30 No way.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 10:30 So it, this is the thing that I'm, like, trying to free women from, is then you look in the mirror, and you're like, "Wait a second. I'm... I hate that belly fat." And you shame yourself. You g- guilt your way into the next diet, when your body, if it could talk to you, was like, "Okay, listen. You just had a lot of extra stuff you've been giving me, and I didn't know where to put it, so I started in your belly. Then I put it in your booty. Then I put it around your face and the back of your arms," and for women, sometimes it goes in the chest, "and I'm putting it there to save your life." So I think the first step to losing menopausal belly fat is igno- is getting in alignment with the body and thank-

Jay Shetty 11:10 That's a great answer

Dr. Mindy Pelz 11:11 ... and thank the body for what it's doing because it's trying to save you.

Jay Shetty 11:14 Great answer, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 11:15 So now we have that understanding. We go, okay, well, belly in general can... We know cortisol, so we are a cortisol saturated world right now, and so we gotta do something to help with cortisol. Well, there are s- there are things to help with cortisol other than, you know, uh, becoming a monk.

Jay Shetty 11:34 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 11:35 There are other things you can do other than sitting somewhere and just meditating. Like e- easy things, a stressful event hi- hits you, the worst thing you can do is sit. Get up and move. Cortisol was meant to make you move. It's, it's that hormone that gives you up- get up and go 'cause you're s- running from a tiger. So if you're sitting at your desk, boss walks in, is like, "Hey, I need this by the end of the day," and you're like, "There's no way I can get it," and you're all upset, the worst thing you can do is stay s- seated. Go move your body. So constantly walking will help bring that cortisol down. Getting out in nature more, bringing cortisol down. Hanging out with positive people so that you're not in an environment where negative people are throwing cortisol bombs at you all day long, where your thinking starts to become one that's intrinsic, that you're starting to, like, think everything is a threat and you're not safe and cortisol is high. That all relates to belly fat. This is why I'm, like, going into the detail on this because-

Jay Shetty 12:36 Please do, yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 12:36 ... people want the quick fix. But I w- with the belly fat, the first thing I want people to ask themselves i- is what is the stress level of my life, and how can I bring that stress level down, and how can I start to work with cortisol, walking being the biggest one, hanging out in nature, and then getting ar- your body in the right environments. Then you can look at toxins. So we started this conversation before we recorded about toxicity. We live in the most toxic time in human history. Women are putting over 200 toxic carcinogenic chemicals on their skin every single day. The brilliant body is like, "I don't know what to do with all this, so I'm gonna put it around your belly and your chest." And again, then we look in the mirror and we're mad at ourselves 'cause we weren't disciplined enough. So go and look at your toxic load. What toxic chemicals are constantly coming into your body? Start looking into different detoxes because we gotta bring your toxic load

Dr. Mindy Pelz 13:42 down. I really believe if you wanna be healthy, you don't need motivation, you need momentum. I can't overcome my sugar addiction. No, you should rephrase that and you should say, "I've trained my body to crave sugar." And you're double downing on dieting, and you're double downing on, uh, working out, and you don't even realize that it's actually this chemical load that has completely reprogrammed your body.

Jay Shetty 14:07 What are the most common places that people are putting toxins into their body?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 14:12 Well, skin is, is a big one. Um, food is horrible. I put a whole thing in, in Eat Like a Girl, and I was so depressed after I wrote it all about obesogens. So obesogens are chemicals that are in our food. So, uh, BPA plastics are what our food are wrapped around. Th- that's an obesogen. Um, pesticides are an obesogen. I, the wh- there's a long list in the book. Like, artificial colorings and flavorings, BHT, BHA, all of these synthetic ingredients, what they do, and this is the part that I'm, like, wanna scream from the rooftops, is what they do is they literally, those chemicals go into stem cells and they reprogram those stem cells to actually make fat cells. And one of the places we're seeing this is in the UK right now because kids have l- low am- have lots of stem cells, and as we get older, we have less. And so what we're seeing is that the stem cells that were supposed to make bone are now making fat. And so kids are become- their height is smaller and shorter than ever before, and they're bigger and bigger than ever before. So these chemicals are totally-

Jay Shetty 15:28 It's crazy

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:28 ... changing our fat distribution, and the belly fat is one of them. So what you put on your body and what you're putting in your mouth, start there.

Jay Shetty 15:38 Mm. Yeah, that's, it's so terrifying.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:41 It's terrifying.

Jay Shetty 15:42 It's terrifying because it feels like everything you turn over these days, every pack is labeled-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:48 Yeah

Jay Shetty 15:48 ... with a million different things.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 15:51 And if you're not conscious and aware and-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:53 Yeah

Jay Shetty 15:53 ... checking, pretty much everything you pick up is going to have one of those things in it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:57 That's right.

Jay Shetty 15:57 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 15:57 And, and the best thing you can do is eat food without a label.

Jay Shetty 16:01 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 16:02 Like, go to your farmer's market, get, you know, healthy fruits and vegetables. If you eat meat, you know, know who your butcher i- is, and, like, know where that meat came from. Make sure it wasn't packed with chemicals. Like, I think we used to think it was, like, woo woo and people who ate organic were hippies, and I would say at this particular moment in, in history, you should know an ingredient label. You should know those chemicals that are going into your food because they are reprogramming your body, and one of the things they're reprogramming are stem cells to make these, these o- you know, fat cells. And you're double downing on dieting, and you're double downing on, uh, working out, and you don't even realize that it's actually this chemical load that has completely reprogrammed your body.

Jay Shetty 16:47 And so they're conscious of it?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 16:49 Oh, yeah. Oh, well, so the chemicals are, are, are there for two reasons in food. One is shelf life. So, you know, much easier for these food, uh, companies to make sure that their food, if it sits on a shelf, is gonna last a very long time. The second one is that they are hijacking your taste buds so that you're addicted to it. L- let me give you an example. Years ago in the LA Times, this was like 15 years ago, this three spread, page spread comes out in the LA Times, like huge, about what Lay- it was Lay's specifically potato chips, what they were doing, what the, the company was looking at, was what kind of chemicals can we spray on the potato chip so that it hits all the dopamine receptor sites in the brain, but we gotta keep that s- that, that chip light enough that when it hits the bu- the stomach, it doesn't stimu- uh, s- uh, trigger a reaction in the brain to kill hunger. So it needs to be light, it has to be salty, it has to hit the, have a little bit of sweetness in it so it can hit those dopamine

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:00 sites. But we can't let the person fill up on it. So think about that. How many people open a bag of potato chips and eat m-

Jay Shetty 18:07 It does just that

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:09 It does that. You can't just eat one. You're like, the whole bag's gone. And then the next thing you know, you're like, "I, I need more food." And that is what all this Western processed food is doing, is it's hijacking our taste buds. So now we don't even have control over our taste buds.

Jay Shetty 18:27 It's so hard when you know that you're being manipulated and programmed-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:30 Yeah

Jay Shetty 18:30 ... and it's been hardwired since such a young age-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:34 Yep

Jay Shetty 18:34 ... that the habit that we have of grabbing that bag of chips or the chocolate bar, or whatever else it may be-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:42 Yep

Jay Shetty 18:42 ... it feels like that is us.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:45 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 18:45 Almost like, "Oh, but that's who I am. I just, I just love that type of food," or-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:48 Right

Jay Shetty 18:49 ... "That's what I'm used to." And we're trying to go against this deep long-term conditioning it feels like.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:54 Yes. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 18:55 And so breaking that habit is a lot harder than it seems.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 18:58 Yeah, and, and again, I'm always looking at things through the slant of women's health because-

Jay Shetty 19:03 You do, yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 19:04 ... what I think women do is that when they don't know this information, is that they start to think they can't lose weight because there's something wrong with them. And they have no idea that the chemicals they've been eating in their diet food that was low fat and they bought because they wanted the, the lower sugar version actually had a chemical in it that reprogrammed stem cells to make fat cells and, and hijack their taste buds so that they're addicted to these foods over and over again. But the, but the woman doesn't know that. She's like, "Oh, God, I can never lose weight. It must be my p- my fault." She goes into the doctor's office. The doctor's

Dr. Mindy Pelz 19:43 like, "Your BMI is really high." And so now all of a sudden, he's, you know, the doctor's like, "You gotta lose weight," she doesn't know what to do, so she's like doubling down on, on eating less. She's doubling down on exercise. She's doubling down on shaming herself, and it w- she didn't realize that it was actually the food industry that changed her whole body, and she needs to unhook from that food system in order to get the result she wants.

Jay Shetty 20:08 A lot of people, when they're in that position, something they do is people count calories.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 20:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 20:13 Do they matter?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 20:14 So this question comes up all the time, so I'm so happy that you asked it, um, because y- based off of research, yes, calories matter. But based off of human behavior, calories don't matter. So this is why in Eat Like a Girl, I have a statement that blood sugar matters, calories don't. And the reason that I say that is that every single woman I sat with in my clinic, and every, all the feedback we're getting on our socials from women who are fasting, is that they don't know how many calories they eat in a day, and they don't know how many calories is their output in a day. So nobody can actually succeed at calories in, calories out. But I can take a, a CGM, and I can put it on the back of a woman's arm, and I can say, "Just eat." And then she can see real time what that blood sugar spikes, how many does she have over and over and over again. And from that visual, she can start to make better choices about her health that affects her, her blood sugar better, and so that she can start to keep her blood sugar low. I'll give you an example. I had a patient a couple years ago that was plant-based, and, um, not wanting to change plant-based, I was in honor of her choice, but when we put a CGM on her, she had about 10 spikes of these really high spikes of glucose every single day. And I asked her, I was like, "How do you... Like, what, do your moods follow these spikes?" And she's like, "Yeah. I'm like up, I'm down. I'm hungry, and then I'm not hungry. Like, I feel like I'm on a roller coaster all day long." So what I did is we worked with, okay, how about if we add a little bit of fat? How about if we add a little bit of fiber? What if we take some of these things like oat milk and let's sort of switch oat milk, or w- or maybe if you love your oat milk, let's make sure it's really clean oat milk and let's add a little MCT oil in your coffee. And we started to change how a meal was put together, and she went down to about four spikes a day. She didn't, and she didn't change really anything she ate. She changed the way that she put a meal together, and then the blood sugar changed, and then her moods changed, and then her weight changed because we, uh, 'cause I taught her blood sugar. That doesn't happen with calories.

Jay Shetty 22:34 How many spikes a day is okay?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 22:36 I don't know if there's an average spike amount, but let's, let's say that when you get a glucose spike, the most important thing is that it comes down to its pre-glucose amount, pre-meal amount within 90 minutes. So textbook is two hours, but I like to say if we can do, like, an hour and a half where you have a blood sugar spike, and within an hour and a half your blood sugar's right back where it was before you ate that meal, that you're pretty insulin sensitive. If it's taking more than two hours for your body to be able to integrate that glucose, now we may have a little bit metabolically resistant, insulin-resistant body. So it's your recovery from the meal that matters more than anything else.

Jay Shetty 23:23 Interesting.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 23:24 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 23:24 Oh, right. Okay. So 90 minutes is what we should be aiming for.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 23:27 I, that's my personal standard.

Jay Shetty 23:29 Right.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 23:29 Clin- like, what most doctors will say is two hours, but I, I like it to be a little quicker than that.

Jay Shetty 23:35 Got it. So that's what we should be measuring.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 23:36 Yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 23:37 That's what we should be looking at.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 23:38 And then the other thing is one of the greatest studies done on fasting is 16:8, and Satchin Panda was the leader of that in that study. And what he found is that if you ate all your food in an eight-hour eating window, leaving 16 hours for rest and recovery, that you basically became metabolically immu- immune from the harsh metabolic consequences of a processed diet. So what that meant was I can take all the bad food and I can put it in an eight-hour eating window, and if I get m- give my body 16 hours to rest, then the metabolic system rebooted itself and was able to continue forward without seeing insulin go up and hemoglobin A1C go up and inflammatory markers like CRP go up. So, uh, when I look at the spikes, I wanna see the recovery of the spike, and then I wanna see that part of the day there's, you're just not eating anything, that there's no spikes.

Jay Shetty 24:40 Right.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 24:40 Does that make sense?

Jay Shetty 24:40 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 24:42 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:42 That makes a lot of sense. One of the things that I found fascinating that you talk about in Eat Like a Girl is you talk about eating for your microbes, not your taste buds.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 24:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:51 And I find this to be the constant kind of challenge that people in my life have when I'm talking about healthy eating or healthy habits when it comes to food. We generally eat for our taste buds or eat for our emotions.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 25:04 Yes.

Jay Shetty 25:05 Talk to me, before we talk about eating for your microbes, talk to me about how our patterns of our taste buds have changed over time.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 25:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 25:13 Because I feel, again, we're not aware of the root of where this started.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 25:16 Yeah. And this is a... The reason I put that as a real foundational rule is, again, I'm s- trying to free women and help women have a better relationship with food. And there's so many women that c- just find out. Like, let's use carbohydrates or sugar or alcohol. They'll say, "I just crave it. I can't, I can't un-crave it. I just... It's like the tub of ice cream just calls me." Well, if you actually look, there can be microbes and there can be fungus

Dr. Mindy Pelz 25:45 that lives in your gut that is doing the calling. So those are the ones that are sending a signal to the brain, "Feed me." So we have trillions of bacteria in our gut, and they all wanna stay alive, and so they send signals to the brain and they tell the brain, "Feed me this, don't feed me that," so that it can stay alive. And then on top of that, we add this dopamine response we're getting from the chemical food. We, we are actually not really in control of our food choices when you look through that lens. So let's go to your friends, your friends who are like, "I h- I have no willpower" or, "I don't know how to get over my sugar addiction." Well, the first thing is make sure you're eating chemical-free. Get back to nature's food, 'cause nature didn't create food that made you addicted. So get off those processed foods, and then let's look at feeding your microbes. Let's give your microbes more food. Like, what I found in my clinic is people were eating the same foods over and over and over again, like the same 20 foods. And now when I opened it up, their whole food window, and said, "Hey, how about instead of iceberg lettuce every night, what if we try a spring mix with a little parsley and maybe some dandelion greens so we can support your liver?" Like, all of a sudden we just opened up the foods they were eating, and the microbes changed. And if you mix that with fasting, the greatest study that I love, one of the greatest that was done on fasting, was the every other day diet. And what a c- a researcher did is she took a group of people that were metabolically challenged, had food addiction, and had cardiovascular challenges, and said, "You can eat anything you want one day, and then the next day you don't eat. And the next day eat whatever you want, next day don't eat." And what she found was that... And then, and yet they had to do it over a course of a year. By the end of the year, everybody's metabolic markers improved. Everybody lost weight, which is what she thought would happen. But what surprised her was that everybody's choice of food, what they were craving, changed.

Jay Shetty 27:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 27:56 So when I look at those people struggling with, like, "I can't get over my cravings," we've gotta change your microbiome, and we've gotta put you in some fasted states so we can have, you can ha- start to have a different experience with these cravings. And, and it's, it's a combination of those things.

Jay Shetty 28:14 How do we detox the bacteria that's calling out for the-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 28:18 Yeah

Jay Shetty 28:18 ... sugar or calling out for the fats or carbs or whatever it is? How do we, how do we detox those? Because-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 28:24 You starve them out

Jay Shetty 28:25 Really? That's the only way?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 28:26 Yeah, you start starving them out.

Jay Shetty 28:28 Wow.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 28:28 Um, and that's why, I mean, I, I've spent a lot of time really asking myself, like, why did Fast Like a Girl connect with people? What was it that was in there? I mean, we have, across all the audio and the e-book and the hard copy, over 800,000 versions of Fast Like a Girl was purchased, and I think-

Jay Shetty 28:51 Congratulations.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 28:51 Yeah. Thank you. I think what happened is that people finally were able to take a break from food, and they saw the result, and they started to starve out the microbes, and they started to go after all these places that the body stored excess, and they started to see a result. And I really believe if you wanna be healthy, you don't need motivation. You need momentum.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:16 And once you have momentum, the motivation comes.

Jay Shetty 29:18 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:19 So one of the things that we do when you're looking at these microbes that are controlling your taste buds is let's just start tacking on some, you know, fasting windows every day, where you just give the microbes a break, and they will start to die off.

Jay Shetty 29:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:36 And w- and the longer you fast, the more they die off.

Jay Shetty 29:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:39 And your food choices will change, which is what happened in that study.

Jay Shetty 29:43 I've experienced that personally.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:45 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 29:45 I always talk about how my wife trained me off of sugar because when I met her, I was addicted for sure.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 29:50 I was that friend.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:51 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 29:52 Uh, and, and it's... I can empathize with it because I know how strong it was for me because I grew up-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 29:58 Yeah

Jay Shetty 29:58 ... eating four chocolate products a day.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:00 And now I'll have one dessert a week.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:03 Amazing.

Jay Shetty 30:04 And it's taken me... Or, like, one refined sugar product a week.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:08 And, uh, and then I'll only eat natural sugars, like fruits and things for-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:11 Yeah

Jay Shetty 30:11 ... for the rest of the week. And I think it's, it's been such a journey for me, but you're so right that it had to be starved.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:18 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:18 Had to be substituted, and then eventually, I... Eventually I started realizing how many other things were impacting my desire for sugar, i.e., it was a lack of workout. It was poor sleep.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:29 It was, uh, a lack of the right vitamins and supplements, which means my body had low energy, so it turned to what I thought gave me energy.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:37 And so you started realizing how interconnected all those things were-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:40 Exactly

Jay Shetty 30:40 ... rather than it actually being about my addiction to sugar.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:42 That's right.

Jay Shetty 30:43 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:43 That's right. When... Like, when people are like, I... Like, I've had so many, over the years, people be like, "I could never fast."

Jay Shetty 30:49 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:50 And I'm always like, "Oh, actually, sit with me for a hot moment."

Jay Shetty 30:53 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:53 "Because there hasn't been a person that I haven't been able to train to fast." You just trained your body to eat, and you could look at the same thing with the foods you're eating when you're like, "I can't, I can't overcome my sugar addiction." No, you should rephrase that, and you should say, "I've trained my body to crave sugar. I would like to train it to crave something different."

Jay Shetty 31:16 Yes.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 31:16 And you, and that's your, what you did, is you found out what we would call a multi-therapeutic approach. A lot of different things came into play so that you could literally train your body to crave something different. The worst thing you could do is have pasta with red sauce and no protein. Can we start looking at food as hormonal medicine? Food isn't just pleasure. Food isn't just, you know, energy. Food is actually feeding these hormones. Before you go to the weight loss drug, ask yourself, "Have I dialed in my lifestyle?"

Jay Shetty 31:50 There's another thing that you brought up, which you talk about protein being the hero macro ingredient.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 31:54 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 31:56 And right now, I feel like protein's, like, the hot-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 31:59 It's having its moment

Jay Shetty 32:00 ... talk. It's, like, everywhere.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 32:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 32:00 It's having its moment for sure. I wanted to ask you about, you know, no one seems to be getting the amount of protein that everyone says you should be getting. So how much protein should we be getting?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 32:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 32:10 And how do we actually get there?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 32:12 Well, to me, the protein is very much like when we were counting carbs or when we were counting calories. Like, they're fun to do in a, in a moment, and then nobody sustains it over time. So I, I'm in alignment with everybody, what everybody's saying, which is one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. Like, I think that's a good measurement for you to look at. Um, I've heard some people even say you need, you know, two grams of protein for every pound of body weight if you're trying to, to, to grow muscle. So I think in theory that's great, and then we have things like make sure you have 30 grams of

Dr. Mindy Pelz 32:47 protein per meal so that you can open up amino acid receptor sites to, to grow muscle. I think that's all great. Now let's talk-

Jay Shetty 32:55 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 32:55 Let's talk to the woman in the Midwest. Let's talk to the single mom in the Midwest that's working two jobs, and she's like, "I'm just trying to stay afloat."

Jay Shetty 33:06 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 33:06 "And now you want me to count how many grams of protein I eat every day so that I can be optimally hea- healthy?" This is why I put in there, what I want her to know is just know protein's the hero macronutrient. It has amino acids in it, and amino acids are gonna make you hormones and neurotransmitters. So at every single meal, I want you to look at the protein source first and how do you get as much protein in that meal and then build the carbohydrates around it and build the, the vegetables and everything around it. Don't skimp on the protein. Every meal has to have a protein. That is a more doable, like, language and for a woman who is, or and man, who is, like, so busy because, again, I don't know i- if people are successfully counting this day in and day out unless they're really making it a priority.

Jay Shetty 33:57 Yeah. I don't... My appetite wouldn't even allow me to eat that much protein.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:01 Like, I, I struggle with two things. One is I don't think I can eat that much protein. I've tried.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:06 And second of all, it- It's ha- heavy on my gut.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:09 Yes.

Jay Shetty 34:10 It's hard on my gut.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:10 Like, that much protein just, my bu- my gut can't process it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:14 So how do, how do you work out-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:15 Yeah

Jay Shetty 34:15 ... those two things?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 34:16 Um, this actually came up in another interview, and I, and I explained that this February of this year, I decided to try the protein theory, and I was working out with a trainer. I was lifting heavy weights. I'm 50, uh, 50, 55 as of today. Um, I was 54 at the time. I'm post-menopausal. And I was like, "Okay, let me experiment with this protein thing." In January, I was still with the trainer, I was still tacking on my fasting window, and I was really doing what I could talk about in the book, where I would have keto days and I would have hormone feasting days, but I wasn't as focused on protein. In January, I lost weight and I built muscle. In February, um, same thing, I just upped my protein to one gram per pound of body weight. By the end of February, I had put on more fat than if I had been doing none of that. And I was like, "This isn't working for me. This is too much protein for my body." And I, and I went back to-

Jay Shetty 35:17 Right

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:17 ... just protein with every meal, Mindy. Stop trying to get it to a certain amount. That was my experience.

Jay Shetty 35:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:23 Now, other people will say, "Oh, I've built so much muscle with it." Amazing. But I talk about this in the book, that we have to go back to N of 1. N of 1 means you can hear us talk about protein, and now your job is to figure out if it works for you.

Jay Shetty 35:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:39 Didn't work so... It was hard for you, it sounds like.

Jay Shetty 35:41 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:41 Was hard for me.

Jay Shetty 35:42 It's, it's been hard right now.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:43 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:43 I've been trying to, I mean, I've been p- practicing with it for, like, three months, maybe.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:46 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:46 Experimenting.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:48 So it, it was hard for me, whereas other people are like, "This works perfectly for me."

Jay Shetty 35:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:54 Which is great. So I just think protein with every meal, we have to prioritize protein, and then you've gotta find what pattern of the amount is gonna be best for you.

Jay Shetty 36:05 Mm-hmm. Yeah, the point is to remember it's the hero ingredient.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:08 That's right.

Jay Shetty 36:09 And, and, and, and then build around it.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:11 That's right.

Jay Shetty 36:11 And, and don't worry if you're not getting 30 grams per meal, or 40 grams, or even, depending on your body weight-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:16 That's right

Jay Shetty 36:17 ... 50, 60 grams per meal.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:18 That's right.

Jay Shetty 36:18 It's a lot.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:18 Do you remember the zone diet?

Jay Shetty 36:21 I do. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 36:22 Okay. So the, the, Barry Sears, this was back in, when, like, when I was in university, so this was back in the '90s. He was the first one to say, when you put a meal together, and he used pasta as an example. He was like, "The worst thing you could do is have pasta with red sauce and no protein, because that is all glucose, and you'll get this incredible glucose spike. But actually, if you put a meatball in there, and you drizzle some olive oil on it, now the co- the metabolic cost to you will be much less, and you will lose weight." And hi- his whole thing was like, "Stay in the zone. You gotta stay in the zone." So the protein conversation to me, I feel like needs to evolve to protein at every meal, and let's make sure we're putting it there with fat and some na- nature, some of nature's carbs and some fiber. And how you put that meal together has a bigger, is gonna have a bigger effect on you than just the protein amount.

Jay Shetty 37:19 Mm. Mm. Yeah. That's very helpful.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 37:21 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:22 That's very helpful, and, and I hope everyone who's listening and watching kind of, you know, eases up on it or, or finds a way that it works for you.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 37:28 Yeah. Well, yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:28 I think that's... Yeah, that's the point.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 37:30 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:30 When, when does... You know, I think we've been talking a lot about belly fat and fat in general. When does fat make you fat?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 37:37 That's a great question. Okay, so toxic fat makes you fat.

Jay Shetty 37:41 What is a toxic fat?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 37:42 So our canola oils, our cottonseed, corn oils, soybean oils, partially hydrogenated oils, vegetable oils, uh, highly processed sunflower and safflower oils. Those are the biggies. Those are toxins. So let's go back to what, what, what is fat? Fat is a storage place for things your body doesn't know what to do with. Those oils, your body doesn't know what to do with, so it's putting it around your belly. It's putting it in fat. So stop giving it to your body, because when you give it to your body, the, the body's so

Dr. Mindy Pelz 38:19 smart it's like, "I'm just gonna go store it over here." If I come over and I do now avocado oil, olive oil, olive oil is like the hero oil, um, even some MCT oil or even some of the, the nut oils like, um, walnut oil or seed, some, some seed oils like sesame seed oil, your body knows what to do with that. It knows how to integrate that. It doesn't cause cellular inflammation, and so it'll kill hunger. It's gonna help nourish your brain. It's gonna stabilize your blood sugar. It's... You need these oils to make hormones. So totally different beasts. One makes you fat, and, and the other one actually will make you healthy and can actually help you lose weight because it kills hunger.

Jay Shetty 39:04 Mm. When we're also talking about our fat intake, is there a time of day that's better for us to be eating fat versus others-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 39:11 Yeah

Jay Shetty 39:11 ... or is it something that needs to be spread out across the day?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 39:14 I think of fat as like a blood sugar break. So let's use today as an example. It's, like, what? 3:00 in the afternoon. And so I had my first meal. I, I worked out in the morning on an empty stomach. It was just where I decided to go today. I had some collagen powder in my coffee and a little bit of raw cream, and then I went out and worked out, and then I had my first meal around 11:00. And one of the things that I made sure I did is get a lot of protein and a lot of fat, because I knew I wasn't gonna eat again until tonight, and I was coming

Dr. Mindy Pelz 39:50 here for this podcast. So I didn't want my blood sugar to spike at 1:00 or 2:00-

Jay Shetty 39:54 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 39:55 ... and then show up in your chair-

Jay Shetty 39:56 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 39:56 ... and have brain fog and, and be unable to focus and my energy low. So I made sure I had extra fat on my breakfast and extra protein so that my c- my glucose stayed very steady. So I like fat when you are not trying to g- you're really trying to minimize a glucose spike.

Jay Shetty 40:20 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 40:20 So performance is what I just explained, or, um, I don't wanna be hungry in two more hours. I should use some fat. Or I don't wanna crave that chocolate at 10:00 at night, so I should have some more fat with my dinner, because all of that stabilizes blood sugar, and then those cravings and those brain fog and that lack of energy doesn't show up.

Jay Shetty 40:41 Mm. That's, that's really helpful because I think- Again, it comes to if we have the time and energy to be that mindful with what we can plan.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 40:50 Yeah

Jay Shetty 40:51 But especially when it comes to big events, big moments, big meetings, big high performance moments in our life, it seems like that's, that's something good to be mindful at those times.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:02 Oh, yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:02 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:03 That's why I love olive oil. Just start drizzling it on-

Jay Shetty 41:05 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:06 ... on your meal and you will be shocked at how it kills hunger, and you'll be shocked at how you're not hungry for hours afterwards and your brain power is completely online and focused. It's, it's the easiest thing to add.

Jay Shetty 41:20 Yeah. Me and my wife were joking about how often what ha- happens is you end up eating smaller meals, but then you end up eating junk afterwards.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:27 Yeah, right.

Jay Shetty 41:27 And, and that happens so often because we're like, "Oh no, I wanna be mindful of my portion size," or whatever [laughs] it is.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:33 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:33 And then at 10:00 PM you want a dessert. But the idea of sprinkling something as simple as olive oil onto your meals-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:39 Yeah

Jay Shetty 41:39 ... to help curb a craving later on.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:41 And then you know olive oils are high in polyphenols, and polyphenols feed the good microbes.

Jay Shetty 41:47 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:47 So when you're drizzling olive oil on your meal, you're stabilizing blood sugar and you're feeding the good microbes, so those good microbes are gonna keep giving you signals to, to crave good food.

Jay Shetty 41:59 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 41:59 So it, it really is multifactorial.

Jay Shetty 42:02 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 42:02 Um, but let's go back, just so we don't confuse people, let's go back to the calorie in, calorie out because some people are like, "Wait a second. If I put too much olive oil on top of my food, that's a lot of calories." But I'm back at does the calorie in, calorie out, is it working for you?

Jay Shetty 42:21 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 42:21 I'm more interested in you feeding your body through the lens of metabolic health so that your blood sugar can be stable. I'm interested in food being a performance enhancer for you, and I care a lot about your microbes because not only do they control your cravings, but they control your immune system, your neurotransmitters. Like, they are the thing that is driving your health if you actually look into it.

Jay Shetty 42:45 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 42:45 So olive oil, you drizzled it on your meal and, like, magic happened in your body.

Jay Shetty 42:52 Mm. In, in Eat Like a Girl, y- your new book, you talk about how we need to eat to make hormones-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 42:59 Yeah

Jay Shetty 42:59 ... especially for women. Walk me through the importance of that because I don't think I'd ever heard that before.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 43:03 Yeah. So this came kind of out of my frustration with women feeling like if I have low hormones, then I just need to take an exogenous form of hormone and put it into my body. And what I wanted women... I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just wanted to say, can we have a conversation first before you start to feel like the challenge with your female body is you don't have enough hormones? Can we look at your food behaviors and ask ourselves, are you getting enough nutrients in to

Dr. Mindy Pelz 43:38 be able to actually make hormones? So I look at it like if you were making bread. You have to have a certain amount of ingredients. You've gotta have flour. You probably have to have yeast. You have to have some baking soda. Like, there are certain ingredients that need to go into bread in order for it to rise and for it to be able to be bread. Same thing with hormones. And what I did in the book is I spent a lot of time researching, well, what are those nutrients that we need? And I came up with what I call the key 24. You need these 24 nutrients every single day to be able to even make a hormone. And when you look at those 24 ingredients, like nine of them are amino acids, which takes us back to protein. And you got proteins where you're getting amino acids from. And one of the major one is omega-3 fatty acids, which takes us back to olive oil. So if I'm a woman who is like, let's just talk about, I'm sure this is gonna come up because it keeps coming up, let's talk about the weight loss drugs.

Jay Shetty 44:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 44:44 Let's say I'm taking a shot that kills my hunger so I'm not eating very much and I'm losing weight, but if I'm not getting food in with enough nutrients into my body, I don't have enough of these vitamins and minerals and fatty acids and amino acids to make hormones. So down the road, something's gonna give from my lack of, uh, intention around a diverse meal. So that's why I put it in there, was like, can we start looking at food as hormonal medicine? Food isn't just pleasure. Food isn't just, you know, energy. Food is actually feeding these hormones, but you've gotta get a good variety of food in order to do that.

Jay Shetty 45:30 Is there any indication to women's health at age 20, 30, 40, 50, where different hormones and different foods are more of a priority in the different decades?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 45:41 Yeah. Well, in the younger years, I mean, again, what we're talking about is gold. And, um, Fast Like a Girl introduced something I call the fasting cycle, which is where the front half of your cycle you're going to keep your glucose low and then the back half of your cycle you wanna bring your glucose up. So and I showed that through the lens of fasting. In this book, I'm really, in Eat Like a Girl, I really want pe- women to see front half of your cycle, you're really catering to estrogen, and estrogen likes glucose to be low. So the keto

Dr. Mindy Pelz 46:14 diet, the low carb diets that you were on, they'll work in that front half of the cycle. Um, just again, keep diversifying your food choices. Whereas the back half of your cycle, progesterone's showing up and progesterone actually wants you to h- keep glucose higher. This is why every single woman craves carbohydrates. ... or chocolate or something sugary the week before her period because her body is so intelligent, it's like, "I need you to bring up glucose so I can make progesterone so that the uterine lining can shed and you can have a cycle." So for those women 20 and 30, this is the message they need to know. Front half of the cycle, lower carb, back half of the cycle, higher carb. That's as simple as I can make it. There's more detail in the book. Now let's go into perimenopause and menopause. Estrogen goes a- is going away, and when estrogen goes away, that woman becomes more insulin resistant. So I can't tell you how many women will tell me, "I haven't, I haven't done anything. I'm 43 years old. I haven't done anything different, and I am gaining weight." That's because you're losing estradiol, and estradiol kept you insulin sensitive. And so now you have to find other ways to keep yourself insulin sensitive, and fasting is one of the best ways that I know to keep yourself insulin sensitive. And then you're probably gonna need, again, as you move through perimenopause, you're gonna need a little lower carbohydrate diet mixed with splashes of a higher carbohydrate diet. So this is why in the book I'm like, "Here's your..." I call it ketobiotic, is when we wanna go lower carb but keep enough fiber in there, and then hormone feasting is when we wanna go higher carb so we can cater to progesterone. It sounds confusing-

Jay Shetty 48:08 No, no, not at all. Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 48:09 ... but it's, think of it like gas pedal, brake. Like, you know, there's a rhythm to a female body, so you're just gonna l- understand the rhythm of your hormones so you can match the foods and the fasts according to that.

Jay Shetty 48:23 What are our greatest un- misunderstandings of the female body, and, and in what decades are we so-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 48:31 Yeah

Jay Shetty 48:31 ... confused about or uneducated about that you'd like to point out?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 48:34 Oh, thank you for asking me that. The female body is highly complex. It is highly rhythmic, so it's constantly having, uh, uh, uh, ups and downs to it. If you look at our hormones, there is... We are meant to have moments of where we're in complete joy, and then there are moments y- we're crying, and there are moments that we- we're rushing to the gym and we're so excited to go work out, and then there's other mormo- moments that we can't get off the couch. And th- that's all because you live in a female body that is driven by

Dr. Mindy Pelz 49:08 different hormones. So the first thing I want women to know is you, your hor- your hormonal system makes you highly complex, and a male's body isn't that complex. This is the way I've been saying it, and I always say, like, you know, no offense to men, but, like, you guys are like a, a ukulele, and we're like a violin. Like, it's just we are a very s- our body is a very sophisticated instrument, and because of our sex hormones, we are... we require more rest and recovery. We re- we, we don't do as well with toxicity. Um, when we become insulin resistant, we start to become infertile, and we start to get things like PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and our menopause symptoms will be off the chart like crazy. So that doesn't happen so much to men. So we're just h- a more sophisticated body we're living in.

Jay Shetty 50:07 What are some of the things you would encourage people to be mindful of at different stages to spot those signs early and to respond? Because it seems like we, we don't really talk about the difference that clearly.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 50:18 We don't.

Jay Shetty 50:19 And we expect the same things-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 50:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 50:21 ... in the same eras or decades of life.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 50:23 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that we have to look at is that lifestyle impacts both men and women. But for women, really we've gotta dial in a lifestyle for women, um, that... Like, go to lifestyle first before you go to the antidepressant, before you go-

Jay Shetty 50:40 Mm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 50:40 ... to the hormone replacement, before you go to the weight loss drug. Ask yourself, "Have I dialed in my lifestyle?" And what that means is there needs to be a rhythm of where I'm maybe working out a lot and then I'm recovering. I'm maybe going low carb and then I'm, I'm f- I'm feasting on healthy foods. So we need to have a rhythmic lifestyle, and that's, that's like new conversation that's just coming up in, in the last couple of years.

Jay Shetty 51:08 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 51:08 Whereas men don't have to worry about that as much.

Jay Shetty 51:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 51:11 You guys are a lot more resilient. You have one hormone to think about, which is testosterone. You have... You operate off a 24-hour cycle. We oper off- operate off a 28-day cycle. So we're just a lot more complicated, but that's why lifestyle is so important for women, and this is like, this is like my rally cry. Like, oh my gosh, when we look at autoimmune problems, when we look at the menopause symptoms, like, please can we have a conversation about lifestyle as being the first line of treatment for women before we start medicating the, the shit out of us?

Jay Shetty 51:47 No, I love the rally cry, and I, and I think it's so important. I, I'm so glad that you're, you're sharing it so passionately here because I, I couldn't agree with you more. I've, I've heard so many women recently when I've been at events or listening to panels or... I've been hearing so many women talk about perimenopause, menopause and, and, and i- what I found so fascinating when I was listening was that- I was, obviously I was like, okay, I knew I had no clue.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 52:14 Right.

Jay Shetty 52:14 But a lot of the women in the audience were like, "Oh my gosh, we didn't know either-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 52:18 Right

Jay Shetty 52:18 ... what we were going through." And so I think there's such a need for it because there seems to be either misinformation or, to be honest, no information.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 52:25 That's right.

Jay Shetty 52:26 And so we're just turning towards pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 52:29 Right. So on that conversation, when I first started teaching this cycling of fasting and food on my YouTube channel, nobody talked about menopause. And then I started getting people pouring in and asking me, like, "Well, what, how do I do this for perimenopause and menopause?" At that time, I was like mid-40s, and so I just shared, "Hey, here's what I'm doing." I actually put it in a book. It's called

Dr. Mindy Pelz 52:52 The Menopause Reset. I was like, "Here are the lifestyle changes that I've made, and they've worked really well for me during perimenopause." Okay. Fast-forward to today. We've gone from a co- cultural hush around menopause, where we're like, "Oh, she's a little irritable. Let's not, let's not, like, poke the bear and get her all upset because she might be menopausal," but we don't wanna say that to her face, to cultural chaos, where women are like, finally, like, the conversation of menopause is emerging. And, and that part is amazing. Like, there's been a lot of authors, there's been a lot of influencers, there's a lot of people that are cracking that conversation open, which is so good. But what we have turned the conversation to now is you are suffering in the perimenopausal experience, and so you need to think about hormone replacement therapy. I'm not opposed to that, but every woman who goes on hormone replacement therapy has a different path to it, and that's because alongside hormone replacement, whether it's HRT direct or bioidenticals, needs to be a lifestyle change. And the diet you had at 35 doesn't work for you at 45.

Jay Shetty 54:12 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 54:12 And the stress load you were able to do or handle at 35, you're gonna need some breaks and some new tools at 45. So there's a lifestyle that I'm just still trying to bring in. Like, hello, the answers isn't, isn't in the patch. The answer's not in the pill. Those are o- those are good support systems, but let's make lifestyle the change that happens once you go into those perimenopausal years.

Jay Shetty 54:37 What would you say are the top three lifestyle changes that changed everything for you or were positive for you?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 54:42 Yeah. So in The Menopause Reset, I wrote five. Um, I started fasting. That was a big one. I started varying my foods, which is what I teach in Eat Like a Girl. I went har- low-carb, high-carb. I started feeding my microbes. So how do I support? 'Cause the microbes break down estrogen, so I wanted to be able to ex- increase the diversity of my microbes so they could break down estrogen, the l- the less estrogen I was getting. Um, I did a massive detox. I detoxed my whole house. Um, I started detoxing myself. Throughout my whole 40s, detox became my, my obsession. And then the last one is a, a something called the rushing woman syndrome, which

Dr. Mindy Pelz 55:22 was actually coined by a woman, uh, Dr. Libby Weaver, who showed biologically why women that are constantly in a state of stress end up having hormonal problems. So I started saying no to more things. Um, I'm a competitive athlete. I was a competitive tennis player in my early 20s, and I started learning how to do more yoga. I started learning how to walk more. I started getting out of that mentality of I've gotta push my body. And so I just started looking at how I could recover a little bit more, and those were the five I changed, and it was like gold.

Jay Shetty 55:59 It's so refreshing to hear that they're all interconnected as well-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:03 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:03 ... with Eat Like a Girl and, and Fast Like a Girl, and it seems that, it seems that what we need to do is simple, but it's so hard-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:11 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:11 ... because of our wiring-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:12 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:13 ... because of society's expectations-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:14 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:15 ... because of our, maybe our own pressure on ourselves.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 56:20 What, what gave you the permission to just say, "You know what? I'm, I'm, I'm gonna unsubscribe from all of this, and I'm gonna find a way"? What was that for you? Because I feel people are really looking for that breakthrough, and you said it's not motivation, it's momentum, but it's almost like how do you give that stone or that rock a push down the hill-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:38 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:38 ... so that it gains momentum?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:39 The best door in is fasting.

Jay Shetty 56:41 Hm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:41 This is why I started with Fast Like a Girl.

Jay Shetty 56:43 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 56:43 Like, that is the quickest... If you want an, a totally ex- different experience with your body, learn how to create an eating window and a fasting window. And it's interesting because my practice was built i- by what I call the mama bears. They were like these women who would bring their families to me and who would come in to learn about detox and hormones and food education and lifestyle. My clinic was built o- was like a lifestyle clinic, teaching people how to live a lifestyle to build health. And it was the mama bears that I got to experiment on. You know?

Jay Shetty 57:18 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:19 I put that in like, you know, a loving way.

Jay Shetty 57:21 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:21 I got to, to take these principles that I was studying and using on myself and try it on them.

Jay Shetty 57:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:27 And I remember w- with weight loss, one of the things that blew me away is once I started teaching women how to fast, maybe two weeks would go by and I didn't see them, and they'd walk into my clinic, and it looked like a fat coat had been taken off of them-

Jay Shetty 57:41 Wow

Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:42 ... in two weeks. And I was like, "Oh my God. Like, fasting got you that in two weeks?" So th- I think this is why I'm a, I'm like the evangelist for fasting.

Jay Shetty 57:54 [laughs] Is there anyone who should never fast or shouldn't fast?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:58 That's a great question. Um, I always say, uh, if you're pregnant or nursing It's a no, that's not your tool. So, um, and I write about that in both books. Uh, if you have a eating disorder, you need to be working with somebody who alo- who can work alongside you, um, because there's little tricks that you can do to, to line yourself up for that. Um, certain cancers don't do well with fasting, and certain cancers do incredibly well with fasting, so going to a specialist that knows that. Outside of that, everybody else fasts, can fast. The one y- I just wanna point out, the person I didn't, didn't point out who couldn't fast is the diabetic.

Jay Shetty 58:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 58:39 This is the one that shocks

Dr. Mindy Pelz 58:40 everybody, is the type one and type two diabetic, when done right and done with doctor supervision, actually does really well with fasting.

Jay Shetty 58:49 Interesting.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 58:50 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 58:50 Wow. Yeah, that is surprising.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 58:52 Right?

Jay Shetty 58:52 You wouldn't expect that.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 58:53 No.

Jay Shetty 58:54 There's a trend right now of women eating meatballs in order to lose weight. What's your take on that? Have you come across that?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:00 Is that all they're eating?

Jay Shetty 59:01 Well, at least a big, a, a big part of it, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:03 Yeah. Well, I mean, they're just trying to, to dose up protein. So what I would say is if you're gonna dose up protein, make sure it's a clean protein. So this-

Jay Shetty 59:13 What would you define as a clean protein?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:14 Yeah, like hormone-free, antibiotic, not pumped with antibiotics, not pumped with hormones. Um, grass-fed if you're going beef, and you really want grass-fed 'cause it has higher omega-3. So it needs to be a clean source of protein. I'm also a real fan for women specifically of fiber, 'cause fiber feeds those microbes that break hormones down. So if you're only going meat, you're missing out on the vegetables. F- we need more fiber. But from a metabolic standpoint, from blood sugar standpoint, meatballs, if you didn't have a lot of fillers and stuff in them, could be really good.

Jay Shetty 59:51 Yeah. Interesting.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:52 Are they losing weight? It's, it's meat bowls.

Jay Shetty 59:55 Yeah, that's why I said meat bowls.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:56 Oh, yeah.

Jay Shetty 59:56 Yeah, meat bowls, sorry, not bow-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 59:57 Oh. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 59:57 It's

Jay Shetty 59:58 my accent. It's my accent. Yeah, yeah, meat bowls, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:02 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:00:02 My accent, meat bowls.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:03 Okay, meat bowls.

Jay Shetty 1:00:04 Bowls, yeah. I mean-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:05 Like B-O-W-L-S.

Jay Shetty 1:00:06 Yeah, B-O-W-L-S.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:07 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:00:07 Sorry. It's my accent, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:08 No, no. Yeah, it's-

Jay Shetty 1:00:09 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:09 ... you say it better than-

Jay Shetty 1:00:10 Yeah. No, no, no.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:10 Oh, my God.

Jay Shetty 1:00:11 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:11 So, um, what, what kind of meat? Is it a variety of meat in there?

Jay Shetty 1:00:15 I believe so. I mean...

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:16 It's basically just, it's, so-

Jay Shetty 1:00:18 Helena knows more about it

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:19 ... it's these bowls that people are having that just, like, are ground beef essentially. Yeah. Like, good grass-fed ground beef- Great ... but it's, like, the main thing that they're- Yeah ... eating, like, lunch and dinner- Yeah ... and breakfast. Are they eating any fiber at all? Or they're just eating that? I think it's, like, very minimal, like, carb. Okay. Yeah. Okay, this is interesting, and let's dive into the mechanics on this. So protein stabilizes your blood sugar. So if I'm only eating a meat bowl all day long, then what ends up happening is I'm really not... Those blood sugar spikes we talked about, I'm not getting very man of- many of them.

Jay Shetty 1:00:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:53 So that's good. If you don't have a lot of blood sugar spikes, you're not asking your body to make-

Jay Shetty 1:00:58 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:00:58 ... a, a ton of insulin. So from a, from a metabolic standpoint, that is really fascinating.

Jay Shetty 1:01:03 Right.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:01:04 From a gut microbiome standpoint, and this, this is really controversial and I still stay by this [laughs] to this day, is the carnivore diet. The carnivore diet kinda had its moment, and then people were like, "This is crazy," and it went away. Well, what we saw in my community and in my clinic and in the research that I dove into is that when all you do is eat meat, you actually can stimulate a, a immune cell in your gut called your T regulatory cells, and your T regulatory cells make sure that your immune system isn't too low and your immune system isn't too high. So in my clinic, I would do something called carnivore fasting t- which would be like, like a therapeutic process for a patient who had an autoimmune condition. For, like, two to three weeks, they would just eat meat, and they would fast about 17 hours every day, and the rest of the time all they did is eat meat. And what I was trying to do is calm the immune system down and help them drop weight because their spi- they weren't spiking the, their glucose. It worked. It absolutely worked. But l- uh, especially for things like SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth-

Jay Shetty 1:02:20 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:20 ... like, it was phenomenal. And so you got the benefit of fasting, and you got the benefit of meat. It's just not something you sustain.

Jay Shetty 1:02:27 Right.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:28 I would do it two to three weeks to balance the immune system with my autoimmune patients, and then we would go back into fiber 'cause we need that fiber to be able to break those hormones down. So it became a therapeutic tool.

Jay Shetty 1:02:38 Interesting. Thank you so much.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:39 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:02:39 Yeah, it's, it's... I love what you do by actually explaining what is going on behind the scenes-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:44 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:02:44 ... because to me, that's the part which, A, makes it click, and then it's not just a hack.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:49 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:02:49 It's like, "Oh, I actually understand how my body's working and why it's doing what it's doing."

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:53 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:02:54 And therefore now, when I'm having that feeling or that experience or that craving-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:02:58 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:02:58 ... I can actually talk myself through it-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:00 That's right

Jay Shetty 1:03:00 ... if that makes sense. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:02 Yeah. I mean, so here's the... This is, like, like, another big pet peeve and rally cry-

Jay Shetty 1:03:06 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:06 ... for me, is that you should learn how to do health-

Jay Shetty 1:03:11 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:11 ... from your health professionals, whether it's your doctor, your fitness trainer, your, the, the, your favorite health influencer. But if we go into this place where we're like, "Eat this, don't eat that," but we don't know why, we're never empowered.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:25 You, a do-

Jay Shetty 1:03:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:26 T- doctor means to teach.

Jay Shetty 1:03:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:28 So w- you know, a rally cry to all the doctors out there, are you teaching your patients, or are you just prescribing your patient, to your patients?

Jay Shetty 1:03:35 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:35 You have to teach to them how the body works and why, if prescription's your path, why prescriptions work, why food works, uh, 'cause now you have an empowered human.

Jay Shetty 1:03:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:45 And big pharma's not gonna like us empowered, and big food doesn't like us empowered.

Jay Shetty 1:03:49 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:03:50 But that's what we should create, is empowered humans. The only way we can do that is by teaching people how their body works.

Jay Shetty 1:03:55 Yeah. For, for people who, talking about, you know, giving, making people feel empowered, for people who don't have access to expensive technology and want to know- ... their muscle fat percentage, body fat percentage, et cetera. Like, how, how do they get that information in a way that's-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:04:12 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:04:12 ... affordable and accessible? Because-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:04:14 It's true

Jay Shetty 1:04:14 ... it seems that so much of that data and that insight you need to be empowered-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:04:18 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:04:19 ... is expensive.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:04:20 Yeah. So, you know, all the wearables are really exciting right now, the CGMs and all that, the continuous glucose monitor is really exciting, but they are expensive. So in the book, I put a list of w- of symptoms you would experience if you nailed your d- your meal. If you got your meal right, if your

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:04:40 lifestyle was working for you, this is, are some of the symptoms, and I'll, I'll, I'll share with you some of them. After you eat a meal, y- you should be energized. You shouldn't be sleepy. If you're sleepy, we gotta go back and look at the makeup of that meal. After a meal, you should have better brain clarity. You should feel uplifted. It should, it should be like something that puts you into a perf- enhanced performance state. You also... It's not normal to be hungry every two to three hours. So those things become really important. The other piece is that you should be able to control your cravings. You should be able to be like, hey, I... Like, I'll give, use me as an example. I used to have a sugar addiction too, and, um, I had a moment where, when in the height of my sugar addiction, where if I looked at a piece of sugar, I couldn't control myself.

Jay Shetty 1:05:32 I remember that, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:05:33 Yeah. And it was like, I know I'm not supposed to eat that, but I'm gonna eat it anyways. Once I started doing fasting and eating, doing fasting and eating windows, like, that craving went away. So I now have a better relationship to food. I don't feel like I'm eating food because I can't control myself. So there are symptoms we can look at.

Jay Shetty 1:05:56 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:05:57 And all the biomet- metric wearables are great, but I wanna help the woman in, in, in the South, you know, that's working two jobs. I, um, the story I tell a lot is that in, during the pandemic, I had a high school principal in South Carolina reach out to me. She was watching my YouTube channel, and she said, "My high school teachers are about to come back to school, and they're super scared about their immune system and, and COVID. And so can you give us some ideas on how we can keep our immune system high?" Well, I come from a family of teachers, and I was like, oh, yeah, can I give back to the teachers and teach them? This is really exciting. So I pop on this call with about 100 teachers at this high school, and I go into, "Oh, you should take this supplement, you should eat this oil, and you should do all these things." And I get to the end of, of the presentation, it was all done on Zoom, and this really brave man raises his hand, and he's like, "Um, I hear what you're saying, but if I'm at the supermarket and I'm looking at nut butters, the n- the nut butter with the right oil in it is $8 more-"

Jay Shetty 1:07:10 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:07:10 ... "than the one with the wrong oil. I don't, I don't have that $8." And then another woman raised her hand and said, "I'm up at 4:00 in the morning, and I drive to, to get my classroom set up at 5:00. I don't take a lunch break, and by 3:30, 4:00, I'm driving home exhausted, and the only place I wanna go is through the drive-through at-"

Jay Shetty 1:07:32 Totally

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:07:32 ... fast food. Okay, we will never, ever get our country healthy until we help those people. Because they're on a limited e- income, and they are trying to be healthy, but, uh, everything in front of them is leading them towards chronic disease. This is why c- p- fasting became my tool, 'cause everybody can afford it, and everybody, even the busiest person, can do it, and people, it works for the majority of people. And then they have that momentum. So that's what... You know, the fast food lady, ju- okay, so let's eat your fast food in a compressed eating window. The nut butter guy, it was like, okay, well, maybe nut butter isn't your go-to. Like, let's figure out how you can look at maybe some, getting some oils from food that you're getting, upping your omega-3 and other oils. Like, we just found lateral changes.

Jay Shetty 1:08:24 Yeah. How do you, how do you train someone to not eat for a period of time? Because I think we've talked about fasting-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:08:31 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:08:31 ... but actually, it's really hard when someone has to do it. How, how do you, how does someone train themselves to do that?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:08:37 Yeah. So you start by pushing your breakfast back. That's what I typically do. You can push your dinner up if you want, but most people, I start with breakfast. So I tell people, push your breakfast back an hour. Most people will say, "Well, can I have my coffee?" Yes, you can have your coffee but, but not your creamer. Like, if you're putting, like, some kind of, uh, sugar creamer in there or you're putting oat milk or almond milk in there, those tend to spike your blood sugar a little bit too high. So cow's dairy, goat's dairy does a little bit better. So

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:09:09 yeah, just make su- or black. Have your coffee black. Push your, your, your breakfast back an hour. It's going to be uncomfortable. That's the first thing is, like, this is, that moment you're gonna be like, "Why did I listen to Jay Shetty's podcast where that crazy lady came on and told me to push my breakfast back an hour? Now all I wanna do is yell and scream because I'm angry. I'm hangry."

Jay Shetty 1:09:34 [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:09:35 But if they say, if they stay with that the next day and then the next day, by the third or fourth day, that hour is gonna feel like nothing.

Jay Shetty 1:09:44 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:09:44 So when it starts to get easy, now you're gonna push it back another hour.

Jay Shetty 1:09:47 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:09:48 So now you're two hours back. And then maybe a couple, you go a couple days with that, and then you're gonna push it back another hour. And everybody that I've done with this, within two weeks, they are effortlessly fasting somewhere between 13 to 15 hours.

Jay Shetty 1:10:03 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:10:03 You're just taking all that food, and you're just compressing it into an eating window. But you're gently moving your body into that place. You're not... I've had people just out of nowhere go on three-day water fasts, but it, that's a, a lot more suffering involved-

Jay Shetty 1:10:17 Yeah [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:10:18 ... if you do it that way.

Jay Shetty 1:10:18 Definitely, yeah. Is there anyone who should eat as soon as they wake up?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:10:22 There's a lot of theories on this. Um, like Satchin Panda, who is the premier, you know, researcher on circadian rhythm, he came on my podcast, and he likes that you wait an hour after you wake up if you're gonna try to get into the proper circadian rhythm, meaning your melatonin and your cortisol are, are being secreted at the right moment. So he would prefer that you would wait an hour. Dr. Stacy Sims, who is an expert and one of the leading experts in exercise and menopause, came on my podcast, and she strongly feels you need some kind of nutrients coming in the minute you wake up, the first half hour you wake up, to trigger the hypothalamus to start hormonal production. When I broke that down with her, she's also plant-based, when I broke that down with her, she said, "I put collagen powder in my coffee every morning and a splash of-"

Jay Shetty 1:11:20 Vegan collagen powder.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:21 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:11:21 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:22 Vegan p- co- yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:11:23 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:23 So she probably uses a vegan-

Jay Shetty 1:11:24 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:24 ... a vegan one or maybe a marine one. I didn't ask her-

Jay Shetty 1:11:27 Um

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:27 ... through the vegan lens if she d- if she did fish.

Jay Shetty 1:11:30 Yeah, right, right, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:31 Um, and then she does MCT oil, and then she does a plant-based cream. And she puts... She does, like, a loaded coffee, and that, on some mornings, that's her, how she triggers this hypothalamus.

Jay Shetty 1:11:44 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:45 So I tell you all that to say that here we have two leading experts. One says wait a half hour. The other one says you need some nutrients in very quickly. I think everybody's gotta be their own N of one.

Jay Shetty 1:11:55 Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:11:57 What works for you.

Jay Shetty 1:11:58 Yeah, it's, it's hard to know, and I think that's why so much of this is also being able to listen to our bodies and-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:02 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:12:02 ... not our minds 'cause-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:04 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:12:04 ... I think so much of our food habits are driven by our minds, not our bodies.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:12:07 I.e., we mentally crave something, emotionally crave something.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:12:10 Whereas when you actually listen to your body, kind of like what I was saying to you earlier, that when I'm listening to my body, I'm like, "This amount of protein just-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:16 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:12:16 ... doesn't feel right."

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:18 Yeah, and, and-

Jay Shetty 1:12:18 Right? Even if I'm trying

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:19 ... on that, I just wanna point out, because again, I'm always gonna be the, um, the voice of women's empowerment.

Jay Shetty 1:12:26 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:27 What I'm discovering in women is we are massly- massively disconnected from our bodies.

Jay Shetty 1:12:32 Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:33 So we look at Instagram, we look at m- magazines, and we're like, "I wanna look a certain way, so then I will manipulate my body to look that way." We are n- we are not

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:44 clued into the rhythms and cycles of our body, and that's so sad.

Jay Shetty 1:12:47 And often you could end up looking that way, but because the internal setup isn't right. Like, we often think it's also-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:54 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:12:54 ... "Oh, I don't have self-worth or self-esteem," but it's completely chemical.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:12:58 That's right.

Jay Shetty 1:12:59 Right? Like, it's just a hormonal imbalance. It's not even... It's not this mental idea that-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:13:04 That's right

Jay Shetty 1:13:05 ... "Oh, I don't believe in myself" or "I don't love myself."

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:13:07 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:13:07 It's like, well, of course, if I've been shifting my body and diet and everything to look this certain way, it could be that my hormones and nutrients and everything are so imbalanced that I can't sustain a healthy mood.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:13:19 Yeah. Y- y- something I've deeply thought about is that when we look at the woman who's size two or the woman who's a size four or a size zero, like, we look at that, we say, "That's what I'm supposed to look like," because the magazines, Instagram, everybody says I should look like that. But actually, if you look at what estrogen does to the, to the female body is it makes us, it's what I call, a little more padded. It gives us a little more of a, of a cushion of fat on us, and that might be what's normal for us. We just have this skewed view based off of what we're seeing on social media that we're supposed to look that way. But if y- have you ever stopped, like, for the women listening, and asked yourself, is that the healthy way? I mean, uh, one of the things that came out of Fast Like a Girl that really disturbed me and motivated me to write Eat Like a Girl was how many 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds don't have a menstrual cycle, and they don't have a menstrual cycle because they've been manipulating their diet. Their diet's too low calorie. Their weight is too low because they're trying to look a certain way that the culture says y- this is beautiful, and when you're beautiful, you're worthy. But actually, is it possible that the female body is meant to have more fat on it, and, and trying to be the skinniest version of you is actually making you, uh, sick and destroying your hormones? And, and I think it would be really interesting if we had better conversations around that.

Jay Shetty 1:14:51 So what do they do in that scenario when they've ended up creating that situation for themselves?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:14:57 Yeah. Well, the first thing is w- we're back at the calories, is let's make sure you're eating enough calories. For the thyroid, you have to have 1,200 calories a day consistently. So if you're eating 900, 800 calories a day, you're, you're causing, uh, thyroid challenges, and that could be a hyperactive thyroid. That could be... I mean, so you're, you could end up with a faster metabolism, which would eventually lead to a, a, a hypothyroid situation. So let's get the calorie in that person who's in deprivation. Let's... That would be the one spot I would say let's make sure we're above 1,200.

Jay Shetty 1:15:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:15:32 So that would be the first thing. The second thing is I think it's really interesting, I don't... Even for you and m- men in general is, like, when we eat and we're hungry, do we ask ourselves, like, "Am I hungry or am I bored?"

Jay Shetty 1:15:48 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:15:48 "Am I hungry or am I sad? Am I hungry or do I need energy?" Like, make sure we're seeing that the food and the emotional response, like, we're pulling those apart. Um, so I think, I think that's a really important one because people eat and don't eat for a lot of different reasons.

Jay Shetty 1:16:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:16:10 And then that leads to the last thing with this person who might be a little bit thin. ... is I think for a lot of women, it's control. Like, if I can control my body a certain way, then, you know, my life will be in control.

Jay Shetty 1:16:24 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:16:24 And as you know, control's an illusion, and maybe there's something else you can control. This is why I like the continuous glucose monitor. Control your blood sugar, and then you'll... that'll lead you down the path of health.

Jay Shetty 1:16:36 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:16:36 Control your symptoms after you eat. Control the amount of sleep you get. Like, there's other things to control, but if you're trying to control your weight, you're raising cortisol, and you're leading yourself into this dysfunctional relationship with your body.

Jay Shetty 1:16:51 Mm. So well said. How do, how do you manage fasting and, uh, working out? Like, how do you fit it in-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:16:57 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:16:57 ... and when should you be fasting and working out? Do they happen at the same time, or do they need to be, uh, stacked?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:17:03 Yeah, I, I, again, I'm gonna go back to what's your intention. Do you remember the, um, the book Body for Life?

Jay Shetty 1:17:09 I don't, no.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:17:10 Okay. That book came out when I was, again, when I was in college. No, it was af- so it must have come in l- in like the late '90s, early 2000s. And this, it was a fitness trainer, and he offered up a million dollars to the person who could lose the quickest weight, the most weight in the quickest period of time. And he had a whole formula, and the number one formula that he said is you never work out a- after you've eaten because his

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:17:37 whole theory was when you eat, you've brought glucose up, and then you go to work out, the body uses that glucose. Whereas if you work out when the glucose is not spiked, your body has to go find the glucose it stored years ago in fat, so it's actually going to burn fat more quickly. This is, this was how we worked out for years. I think it's... I, I taught people in my, women and men both, in my clinic all the time this strategy. It is an incredible way to lose weight. Here's the challenge, is that it can break down muscle.

Jay Shetty 1:18:10 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:18:10 And muscle right now is, like we said, is in vogue. It's the thing we're talking about. So when we are looking at do you fast a- and exercise in a fasted state, I think you have to ask yourself what your objective is. If you're trying to lose weight, yeah, I think it's a great idea, especially on the days, not your weightlifting days, but the days you're doing cardio, yeah, and yoga. In yoga... And we don't eat two y- two hours before a yoga session. Those are great times to go in in a fasted state. But when you're trying to build muscle on the days you're strength training, let's have a little protein before, and let's have some protein afterwards. So just different days, different workouts, different things you're trying to accomplish.

Jay Shetty 1:18:57 Great. Dr. Mindy Pelz, it's been such a joy talking to you today. You've given so much valuable insight. Uh, this is one of those episodes that I feel I'm gonna recommend to all my friends. [laughs]

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:09 Mm. Thank you.

Jay Shetty 1:19:09 Uh, I'm gonna be encouraging a lot of people to listen to it together, and I think everyone who's been listening and watching, I hope you pass it on to a friend. I hope you listen to it with a friend because I just think it's at the heart of so many of our issues today is how we eat, how we think about our bodies, how connected we are to our bodies, and I just love how structured, thoughtful, and methodical all your advice is. So-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:32 Thank you

Jay Shetty 1:19:33 ... thank you so much-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:33 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:19:33 ... for writing this incredible book and bringing so much value to our community.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:19:37 Uh, we end every On Purpose episode with a Final Five or a Fast Five.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:42 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:19:42 Uh, and no pun included.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:44 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:19:44 And, uh, and, uh, we'd love for you to answer each of these questions in one word to one sentence maximum.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:19:51 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:19:51 Okay. So Dr. Mindy Pelz, these are your Fast Five. The first question is what is the best health advice you've ever heard or received or given?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:01 Mm. Don't eat in the dark.

Jay Shetty 1:20:04 Mm.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:04 I love that one.

Jay Shetty 1:20:06 Mm. I love that.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:07 Only eat in the light. It, it balances almost every hormone.

Jay Shetty 1:20:11 I love that. Uh, second question, what is the worst health advice you've ever heard or received or given?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:17 Uh, low fat, low calorie foods are gonna help you lose weight.

Jay Shetty 1:20:22 Wait. Let's, let's dive into that a tiny bit. I think we covered it, but I just wanna make sure. For anyone who's choosing low fat, low calorie food, thinking they're gonna lose weight, what are they getting wrong?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:32 Uh, let's use, uh, a diet drink. It has aspartame in it. Aspartame is an obesogen, and it stimulates appetite. So you're, you chose the, the low sugar f- you know, I don't wanna use brand names, but you, you... the diet soda. You chose that, thinking it's gonna save y- help you lose weight. But actually, what it did is it's an obesogen that is making you gain weight and spiking your appetite.

Jay Shetty 1:20:56 Got it. Gosh.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:20:59 Crazy, right?

Jay Shetty 1:20:59 Just crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:02 It's like, like-

Jay Shetty 1:21:02 It's crazy

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:02 ... this is why, like, conversations like this need-

Jay Shetty 1:21:04 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:04 ... to be had-

Jay Shetty 1:21:05 Yeah

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:05 ... because there's people out there thinking they're doing it all wrong.

Jay Shetty 1:21:08 Totally. Totally. And you're doing all of that, and you're going, "Why?" And you're looking in the mirror, and you're so mad at yourself.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:13 Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:21:14 Uh-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:14 And then you turn on yourself.

Jay Shetty 1:21:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:16 Meanwhile, Big Food is doing it to you.

Jay Shetty 1:21:18 Yeah. Why are we not being protected?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:21 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:21:21 Like, why, why is it, why are we allowed to put obesogens into our body, and-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:26 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:21:26 ... why are we allowed to put all these toxins-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:27 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:21:27 ... plastics into our body?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:29 I think it's a really good question, and it starts with the FDA, um, the Food and Drug Administra- Administration. And I have some quotes in there in the Eat Like a Girl that are really important. And for starters, why do we have food and drugs in the same administration? We should have a food administration, [laughs] and we should have a drug-

Jay Shetty 1:21:48 Well said

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:21:48 ... and then in, within the FDA, there's a category of food called GRAS, generally recognized as safe, and what that means is that if they're gonna put a new food product, a synthetic food product into the food system, they're gonna assume- It's innocent until proven guilty

Jay Shetty 1:22:08 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:22:09 It takes a lot of money to prove that these ingredients are harmful and carcinogenic. One of the ones that I love to ca- to point out is partially hydrogenated oils. About 20 years ago, they identified that partially hydrogenated oils fell into this GRAS category, that it was generally recognized it's safe, but they hadn't really seen research telling them it wasn't safe. And then the research showed up, and the research said that these partially hydrogenated oils were actually contributing, a major contributor to heart disease and should be taken out of our food system. So what the FDA did is they say, "Okay, food industry or food companies, you have 20 years," it was like 20 to 25 years, "to get this carcinogenic, heart-challenged food out of our food system," and it was by 2025, which is next year, that will be out of our system. But why did they give them 20 years?

Jay Shetty 1:23:09 Mm-hmm

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:23:09 How many people died in those 20 years that when they f- discovered that this food was causing cardiovascular problems? That kind of bullshit goes on in the FDA all the time. They care about profits. They do not care about our health. End of story.

Jay Shetty 1:23:28 Mm-hmm. So, so worrying and so sad, and that's why we have to do it from the bottom up.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:23:33 That's why you have to be, you know, responsible. I, I always say, and I, I really want people to take this to their, to heart, where you sit with your health, if it's not what you like today and you're hearing this podcast and you're like, "Whoa, nobody told me all this," it, yes, your poor health, your trouble losing weight is not your fault. But now that you've heard this, it is your responsibility. Your health is your responsibility, and in this day and age, if you're doing nothing, you're not reading ingredient labels, you're not waking up to conversations like this, you, you are choosing chronic disease. I promise you. You are... The statistics are showing that if you're just eating with a blind eye, you are choosing chronic disease because the FDA cares more about making profits than your wellbeing.

Jay Shetty 1:24:26 Mm. Thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:24:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:24:28 Yeah. Uh, question number three, how would you define your current purpose?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:24:33 It's been the purpose I've had for a while, and it's to reconnect women to their bodies and fall in love with their bodies again. Um, I'll, I'll share a story on that one. I was running around my neighborhood a few years ago, and this little old lady, like 70-year-old lady with this cute little hat and a little... And she was walking her dog, and she had a cane. Um, I kept running past her, and on the third time I ran past her, she waved me down. And she said to me, "I bet it's amazing to live in your body." And it was like, to have a 70-year-old woman reflect that back to me made me realize that there's only one goal with, uh, health, specifically for both men and women, but especially for women, is I want women to love living in their bodies. I want women to have a really positive relationship with food. I want women to feel empowered when they go into their doctor's office so that they're not gaslit and told that they, you know, their BMI is so high, they better go get on some low-calorie foods. Like, I want women to understand what the b- gift they're living in and love it. That's my purpose.

Jay Shetty 1:25:42 Mm. I love that. Uh, question number four, you say in the book, "When women heal, the world heals." Why?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:25:50 Thank you for pointing that out. We're the nurturers. We're the community builders. We are the leaders of, of our family and their health. I mean, you know, it's very, even though we have a lot of men staying at home now, women in general are the ones that make the health decisions. And we are also the over-givers. When you take amazing care of us, we can turn around and take amazing care of you. So when women heal, then all of a sudden the family heals, and when the family heals, now the community heals, and when the community heals, then the state heals, and it, it just keeps going out. But if that woman is sick, now it's a house of cards. And actually, Marianne Williamson's a, a dear friend of mine, and she sent me a message and, with that quote, and she said, "This is what you're doing," and I was so grateful for that. And, uh, I, that's why I put it in the book. It's like we need to heal women now. We're half of the planet, and it i- we are sick, and we are struggling, and we are reaching out, and we need to heal women so that we can turn around and heal everyone else.

Jay Shetty 1:26:59 Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Uh, fifth and final question, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:27:07 Oh, eat real food. Re- eat real food, nature's food. Food without chemicals. That would, that would solve everything.

Jay Shetty 1:27:15 Without packaging.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:27:15 Without packaging. If everybody was forced to eat a potato versus a potato chip, things like that would be so much better, but eat real food. End of story.

Jay Shetty 1:27:26 I love it. The book is called Eat Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz. If you don't follow Dr. Mindy already, please subscribe to our podcast, follow her across social media, and of course, grab a copy of Eat Like a Girl. I could not recommend this book more. I promise you, there are so many great insights, tactics, tips inside of the book, and I really, really hope that you take charge and accountability of your own health after listening to this. Please send this episode to a friend. I know there's someone in your life who'll benefit massively from listening to Dr. Mindy Pelz's advice. And Dr. Mindy, thank you again, honestly, for coming on the show. I hope you'll become a friend of the show and come back soon-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:28:06 I would love to. Thank you

Jay Shetty 1:28:06 ... because I just feel there's so much value that you're giving to the world, and I'm grateful to, to have you be a part of our platform, so-

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:28:13 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:28:13 ... thank you so much.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:28:14 Yeah, and thank you. I mean, I should have probably started off and tell you, tell you, like I w- I listened to your podcast for years, and, and I love the way you show up and the guests you bring and the authentic voice you give us, uh, all, a, an opportunity to live in that authenticity. And, uh, it's just really enjoyable, so thank you.

Jay Shetty 1:28:32 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dr. Mindy Pelz 1:28:33 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:28:33 If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia, on how to slow down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health.

Speaker 1:28:50 Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition and health, and people are gonna be shocked to hear that 'cause I think most people think the exact opposite