Fast Like A Girl and Put Your Diagnosis Behind You

Mindy Pelz, DC

Love it. Let’s do it. I love it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

For my breast cancer patients, and every one of my patients, because no one comes to me because things are great. People come to me because things are way, way, off. Most of my patients have breast cancer. like, their horse is out of the barn. One of the first things that I have them do is read your book, Fast Like a Girl, and talk about getting them on a fasting routine. We start with the basics. I want to talk about why you wrote Fast Like a Girl. I want to talk about the benefits of fasting and why it was so important to you to get that message out there.

Mindy Pelz, DC

It’s such a great question, and make sure that I also highlight fasting and breast cancer and the studies on that, because it’s very profound.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

For sure.

Mindy Pelz, DC

So here’s an interesting lens through which to look at this conversation. I started to learn the science behind fasting, and I was using it with my patients and seeing results that I could not get with nutrition alone. That intrigued me. I started to learn more about what’s going on in the fasting state. At the time, I don’t know if you remember or are familiar with the Japanese scientist, Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi, he was the one who became famous for a term called autophagy. Autophagy is the concept that, when our cells don’t detect glucose going up or nutrients going up, they go into an accelerated healing state. I became enamored with this work, along with some other giants out there like Jason Fung and Sachin Patel. There are people out there who have profound teachings around Valter Longo around the concepts of fasting. So I started to apply them in my clinic, and then I saw such great results that I started to teach them online. so I specifically use YouTube. I brought my teachings to YouTube. I wanted to show people that you are more powerful than you’ve been taught. We’ve never been taught to go without food. Let me tell you what happens when you go out without food. All of a sudden, my YouTube channel just took off, and it overnight went from like 3000 subscribers to 50,000 subscribers in like 30 days. I started to see over that first year, when YouTube took off, that there were very clear differences in the way that women responded to fasting compared to men. The men would fast, and they would get all the benefits that we saw in the research. They’d lose weight. Their mental clarity went off. They were like superhumans.  But for the women, it wasn’t that clear. We didn’t lose weight as fast. A lot of women kept fasting longer, and all of a sudden their hair was falling out. Some women started gaining weight, and so I took these over several years and took millions of these stories from women. We started to see patterns and started to figure out: how we take an amazing tool like fasting and map it to a woman’s menstrual cycle. That’s where fast, like a girl was born, this was needed with the intermittent fasting craze. The way it is, there needs to be a woman’s way that we had. Then, in teaching that woman’s way, I realized, “Oh my gosh, everything in health needs to be a woman’s way.” We just don’t write, like, why have we not taught this? Why did it take until 2023 for us to have this conversation?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Even in the pharmaceutical industry, the vast majority of drugs are tested on men. So we end up taking these drugs, and we have no idea what the response is going to be in a woman. Because women and men are not the same on so many levels, and one of the biggest levels is that our livers don’t function easily, which is why men can tolerate small amounts of alcohol and women don’t.

Mindy Pelz, DC

That’s right. Yes. No. Well, on that topic, your liver breaks down estrogen. If you’re not drinking, you’re not breaking estrogen down for men. Men make testosterone in the outer cells of the testes, and it goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. Their liver doesn’t have much to do with estrogen production, whereas in women it has almost everything to do with it. It’s as simple as that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

And detoxification is not the same.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Which is why a man can, and we don’t. We’re getting studies now that chemicals like phthalates are destroying men’s testosterone levels. But phthalates are creating endocrine disruptors for women, and they are causing, as I’m sure you’ve learned, more cancer. It’s like the same substance, the same lifestyle—the same thing is affecting men and women dramatically differently. If we go to these places where we’re, this is okay for our health. But what we need to ask and be curious about is if it’s okay for a man and not for a woman. There are so many places in our healthcare and our lifestyle that we’re not asking that question.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, and there are indeed so many places where it is okay for a man and not okay for a woman. I’d like to dial down into the kinds of things that you saw. Why is it that men have such an easy time with fasting and they get these very regular, predictable results? Yes. then women are all over the place. This works for this one, but it doesn’t work for this one. This one got worse. But what’s happening to women, and how do we know? Do we know what to do?

Mindy Pelz, DC

So here’s the other part of the conversation that’s not being had: that men work off a 24-hour hormonal cycle. Women, whether they’re menopausal or not, work off a 28- to 30-day hormonal cycle. Let’s talk about what those differences are. The research shows that men get testosterone increases by 1300 percent when they go 15 hours without food. It can increase to 2,000% if a man goes 24 hours without food. Well, in his 24-hour cycle, he’s getting it every 15 minutes. He’s getting a pulse of testosterone all day long. Testosterone pulses in, and then it stops, and then testosterone pulses in, and then it stops. When he starts to fast, he cleans up that whole system. For women, we only get testosterone at one part of our cycle. We get it between day ten and day 15. It’s still around a bit, but not to the same degree. When it comes, testosterone comes in spades during ovulation, which we have to stop and think about. “Okay, well, why is that?” As much as we may not want to acknowledge it, the body is made for the female body to reproduce, and we can also chat about why that might be leading to more cases of breast cancer because we’re not addressing the fact that the female body is made to reproduce. Whether you’re going to reproduce or not, you need to live by that so that the testosterone surge comes in ovulation.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

To give you that drive.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

To give you that time to reproduce. I want to know what you mean by saying that if you’re not going to reproduce, you need to live by that. What does that mean?

Mindy Pelz, DC

We have to still honor the fact that we have these hormones. We operate off a 28–30 day cycle, and estrogen comes in in the first ten days. She’s an extrovert. She likes to be a go-getter. She’s Rosie, the Riveter. She’s like, I can fricking accomplish anything, which we are so capable of doing. Then we go into ovulation. We have estrogen peaks and the test drone shows up. This is where our motivation, our drive, and our libido kick in. It’s also where in the book I called it our manifestation phase because we’re highly creative at that time, and then we have a little bit of progesterone to calm us down so that we don’t complete that. I have a theory that we should calm down so that we can handle all the other two hormones that are showing up. then when you come out of ovulation the week before your period, somewhere around day 20, you are progesterone showing up, and progesterone just wants you to chill out. She goes shy when cortisol goes high. She wants you to raise glucose so that she can. She can’t make progesterone if you’re fasting. If you’re an Akito state, That week, you’ve got to lean into more of nature’s carbs. You’ve got to sit your bum down on the couch. You have to say no to more things. You have to put your work out to make it more mellow. When we look at what it looks like for a woman to live following their hormones, it’s our outgoing push-on through that is great in the front half of the cycle the week before our period. We need to rest and recover, and that’s not happening. Therefore, what’s happening is that women’s health is perishing. Everything from PCOS to breast cancer to menopausal symptoms is happening. Because what I just explained to you is that messages are not getting across to women.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Now, why do you think that’s the case? Why are we just talking about this now?

Mindy Pelz, DC

I know this is why I’m like, I’m not the brightest crayon in the box.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I’m just saying you’re one of the brightest crayons in the box.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I was, yes. I was raised by a very strong woman who told me, You’re a woman; your voice needs to be heard. So when you have an opinion, express it. I’m so grateful that my mom taught me that. Why I don’t think it’s been talked enough about today. I’m going to get it again. Take this with love. I want us to have an elevated conversation about the concept. I’m about to say we have been living in a patriarchal world, and the patriarchal world tells us to perform. If you want to be in the workroom, if you want to be sitting at the same table as men, then you need to perform at the same level that men need to perform. So we’ve been working hard to do that, and it’s given us great strides. You and I are both benefiting from all the women who have come before us and paved the way for us to sit at the table with men. But the female body needs to rest more than the male body. We need more softness. That’s part of our femininity. That’s part of what makes us so unique. I have this dream that the next version of us, the next to replace that, that we’re going to come out of this patriarchal world is a mixture of the patriarch and the matriarch. To me, the patriarch is just power. Anything that holds power over you and the matriarch is anything that nurtures you. Our goals drive the things we’re trying to achieve. They do have a little bit of power over us. We go into this girl mode, and that’s fine. I’m looking at me. I’m writing books. I’m on interviews all day long. Like, I’m a product of the patriarchy. But then I’m also learning how to nurture myself. I’m learning how to soften. That’s what my message to women is right now: I’m not telling you to slow down all the time. Let’s slow down some of the time so you can be that badass you were born to be for the rest of your cycle. That’s the message that needs to come out. But we’ve been trying to keep up. So in keeping up, we have thought of ourselves as many men, whether we realize it or not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. We pay the price. I spent 25 years as a surgeon, and I  more than anything else, lived like a man. That’s what was required of me to live like a man and to behave like a man because that was a completely male-dominated field. During my time as a surgeon, the other women in the art department came and went because it was not a natural fit. Yes. Just like they were saying. It’s not a natural fit.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I don’t know if you saw my interview on The Diary of the CEO last week, but it’s the largest podcast in Europe, and Steven Bartlett, who interviewed me, is an early 30-year-old very successful man. So we had this beautiful conversation where he wanted to understand a woman’s menstrual cycle. He wanted to understand how to support his wife or his girlfriend. What I discovered in that conversation, as I watched millions of people comment on it, is that it’s not a weakness for us to say we need to rest. I want women to know that it’s part of the strength that we can now bring to the world because we have a world that is so hyper-vigilant in production that we are killing ourselves, both men and women. So I believe right now it’s going to be the women that are going to stand up and say we need to do the pattern of life differently. You’re seeing this, like New Zealand is coming up with a four-day workweek like they are working on totally transforming the way that we work. But we’ve got to learn to soften and rest. That is not being highlighted enough. That’s our superpower. That’s what we can bring.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

And women can be productive and still respect their physiology and capabilities. So I don’t mean to say that women can’t be surgeons and women can’t be CEOs. They can’t, but they shouldn’t do it exactly like a man does it. We should embrace our uniqueness because we bring something to the table that men can never. We bring a unique perspective. We bring a unique skill set. It’s part of that softening that makes us better at some things than men.

Mindy Pelz, DC

That’s right. It sharpens us. It’s art. It’s how we can do what we want to do in this world. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We also see a different perspective. We see a broader perspective.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Our hormones make it that way if you think about it. Like estrogen, in the first couple of days of our period, you’re getting access to both sides of your brain as the hormone comes down, crashes down, and starts to bleed. There’s this, like, hand-off between progesterone and estrogen. In that handoff, you’re getting access to the first couple of days of your period on both sides of your brain. Men don’t get that. Men don’t get access to both hemispheres of the brain. That does give us a wider perspective. Estrogen makes us very outgoing, testosterone makes men very motivated and driven, and progesterone makes us very inner. We have this ability to go outward and inward and outward and inward in a monthly cycle. If we truly honor that, wow, that’s a hell of a superpower that we can start to nurture.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What you’re describing is that at different times of our menstrual cycle, we are living physiologically differently, and that includes eating and fasting, I’m assuming. Can you talk to us about what eating and fasting look like at different phases of the menstrual cycle?

Mindy Pelz, DC

One thing we’ve got to start looking at in our 24-hour day is that there’s a time to eat and there’s a time to fast. To get the healing benefits of fasting, you need to go for at least eight hours. Without food, you have to let that blood sugar come down. around 12 hours. We see women start to shift, or both people start to shift over into this fat-burning ketogenic state. This idea of eating all day long speeds up our metabolism. Metabolism is completely erroneous. We need to make sure that we’re clear that when we understand fasting, it means that we’re compressing our eating window, leaving longer for a fasting period. With that in mind, when you look at the cycle, days one through ten are when estrogen is building. Not only is estrogen cortisol tolerant, but you can stress yourself out in those first ten days and you’ll be just fine. But she also wants you to keep glucose and insulin down. Let’s go back to something you said in the beginning, which is PCOS. One of the biggest things about PCOS is that it’s insulin-resistant. If you’re a woman listening to this, I just want to ask you: on the first ten days of your period, are you bringing your carbohydrate load down? You can, if you like, go too fast. You can fast a little longer and fast like a girl. I mapped out six different light fasts. You can put them in during that time. Then we move into ovulation. We’ve got estrogen at her peak, testosterone at her peak, but a little bit of progesterone, so fast times are good. You can go about 15 to 17 hours; you don’t want to go longer than that. But your focus then becomes more food-oriented. You have all these hormones, so you’ve got to break down those hormones. Focus on your liver and your gut. This is where you want to stay away from alcohol. This is where you’re going to want to lean into more probiotic, prebiotic, and polyphenol foods, as well as more leafy green vegetables, because, during that five-day window, you are going to break down these hormones. Then we come out of ovulation from day 16 to day 19, and everything crashes again. I called it in the book A Power Phase. If you go back to keto, you can go back to hard exercise and go back to more fasting. You can throw a 24, 36-hour fast. It’s one of my favorites for losing weight. All of those work in that small little window, but it’s on day 20 around there that progesterone is going to start to build, and progesterone needs glucose to be higher. This doesn’t mean you sit on the couch and eat a box of pizza and a tub of ice cream. This means you eat more tropical fruits. That’s a lot of nutrients in there to make progesterone eat more chocolate. But this isn’t like a Hershey’s bar. This is like good-quality, dark chocolate. I look for something like 70% or above. You eat more sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, rice, and quinoa if you want to bring your natural carbs up during that time to help progesterone. You don’t fast, long, or fast because you don’t want to raise cortisol. Fasting is like exercise, even done in appropriate doses. It will spike cortisol, which is fine. the other times of the month, except the week before your period. Then, once you bleed, it starts all over again. In the book, I laid out two different styles of eating ketobiotics and hormone feasting and six different lengths of fasting. then I showed how to time that to what I just said.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I just want to stress that anything that anyone here is doing in the course of this talk is not medical advice. We are just educating you right now. But we couldn’t possibly cover all the immense nuggets of wisdom that are included in the book. Please, buy the book, read the book. I want to talk about what all of that means when women stop cycling.

Mindy Pelz, DC

What, is menopause? My menopausal woman. I just want to give you a big hug.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, we need it.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes, right. It’s time. It’s time to hug us.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We sure need it. We are that we are the forgotten population.  we. We. We need to remind everyone that we. We are here. We need as much help as anyone else.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Amen, sister. We need to be nurtured like you and have compassion placed upon us, just like you placed compassion upon the teenage girls when they first learned their cycle. We are losing our cycle now, and it’s the same intense experience. We just aren’t giving it enough credit. What I want women to know about age, and I wrote a whole book on it just because you just got relaunched. I call it Rebirth Today. I put this book out a couple of years ago during the pandemic, and we added a sleep chapter and put it out. It’s launched today. It’s called The Menopause Reset. In there, I talk about five different lifestyle changes that need to happen after 40. This is why 40 is so important. 40 is when your ovaries are going to retire. You only have so many eggs left. The brain and the ovaries have been communicating for many years together, and they now know it’s time to slowly wind down. But that winding down takes about ten years. This is not something that’s going to happen overnight. In those ten years, you are losing estrogen and you are losing progesterone. Now you don’t have to lose testosterone if you follow the five things that I recommend. But here’s what it looks like: When you lose estrogen, one day, you feel amazing. The next day, you feel horrible. I was in my mid-forties; one day I would have crazy curly hair. The next day was straight. One day it still sometimes happens to me, like I can feel like my skin feels so moist, and then the next day it’s totally dry. Estrogen keeps our hair curly. It keeps our new skin moist. It’s what gives us collagen. It helps us with mental clarity. So she goes on a bit of a wild ride in the forties and then eventually starts to plummet, where she will continue to decline for the rest of your life. That affects our memory. It affects dopamine and serotonin, the two neurotransmitters that she stimulates. It has a big effect on us. Then we’re also losing progesterone because estrogen was what was releasing the egg. Progesterone is what causes the uterine lining to shed. Progesterone kept us calm. 

Let’s just put that all together. I want women to understand themselves. After 40, what’s happening when these hormones go away? As you can’t think clearly, your estrogen loss also makes you more insulin-resistant. We start gaining weight. We get injured more, and we try to work out more. We get injured more because our estrogen makes collagen. So now you don’t have that. We’re not happy. It doesn’t matter what you do to us. We just don’t have estrogen to stimulate dopamine and serotonin. We’re not happy, we can’t calm ourselves, and we can’t hold on to information. That’s the menopausal process in its natural state. How do we support women through that? The first thing is that you make these five lifestyle changes, and again, the books are quick reads. You can devour it in a day. Do the lifestyle changes. Understand yourself, have compassion for yourself, and make sure that you are explaining to others how you’re feeling. It’s time for the menopausal women to get vocal, and believe me, I am leading the charge on this. I am working hard to open the door for all of us so that we can explain why we are suffering. That’s not a weakness. We need to be understood. So when we look at that, that’s what the menopausal woman’s going through; she also needs more rest. She also needs more recovery. She needs a lifestyle change. The diet and lifestyle you had at 35 won’t serve you at 45. I do believe this will be a big part of my next book. I believe that as women going through menopause, we have an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. You’re losing that nurturing part of you. You’re losing your neurochemical armor. I have to tell you, I’m in from the post-menopausal women I’ve seen and interacted with and your badassery is ready to be shown the new design of you. You’ve given everything to everybody in your life. Now’s the time to give to yourself. When those moments get difficult, get to know yourself, get curious, and find out what needs to be released. Because once you get on the other side of menopause, there’s this new version of you that can emerge if you take that time—that menopausal transition—as an opportunity to reinvent yourself.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I couldn’t agree more. Can you be a little more specific about what lifestyle changes you’re referring to in the postmenopausal population? Because I feel like most women just try to do what they were doing before harder.

Mindy Pelz, DC

That’s it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

And it fails miserably.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh, my God, that’s so well said. Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

How should we be thinking instead?

Mindy Pelz, DC

So, that you have to bring back your softness? If you have children, you had your softness in how you mothered them. I want you to think of menopause as you’re going to get to know the little toddler version of you. Go back and think about the five-year-old girl that’s in you. How would you nurture her? That’s the nurturing that you need to give yourself during menopause, which means a lot of things. It means to stop talking so harshly to yourself. Think about this five-year-old version of you. Would you have spoken to her the way that you speak to yourself when you look in the mirror? Our self-talk is important. We have to start doing what I call “rushing.” The five things are fasting, learning to vary your food, learning to address your microbiome, learning to minimize toxins, and learning to stop the rushing woman. The rushing woman is the one that I want to highlight because that’s what’s killing us: that we are not permitting ourselves to rest. And in that what’s happening is that our hormones are destroying and disease is prevailing. I believe, going back to what you and I talked about,  that if we taught every woman these five steps we would and cancers specifically hormonal cancers like breast cancer and ovarian cancer, if you look at the imbalance forces that happen with estrogen, which I know there’s lots of versions of breast cancer, but in the estrogen-driven cancers, progesterone is the hormone that keeps estrogen in check. The only way you can ensure you have enough age-appropriate progesterone is to slow down. Progesterone won’t show up if you are in a stressed lifestyle. There are so many ramifications for our health when we don’t rest. That’s what the Rushing Woman chapter was about.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. You also become cortisol dominant, which is a pro-inflammatory state.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

So what does the diet look like for a postmenopausal woman, and how does that differ from what and how you’re eating on a premenopausal plan?

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes. so the premenopausal, in fact, like a girl I show you how a time diet and everything to your cycle for the postmenopausal women, there are two options you have. You can do a weekly variation, and I’ve thrown some out there publicly. I talk about, and in the menopause reset, I throw out several weekly variations, but a good one for a stressed-out postmenopausal woman would be what I call a 4-2-1, like four days a week. You’re fasting and going lower carb two days a week; you’re not fasting and you are doing a higher carb diet, and one day a week you’re elongating your fast, like one meal a day, so that you can clean up the whole estrogen system. Four days might look like 15 hours of fasting. Two days is no fasting, and one day is a longer fast, like 24, and then you’re eating higher carbohydrate two days of the week, and the rest of them are lower carbohydrate days. That would be like you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

When you’re talking about higher carbs, you mean things like fruits, and yes. Rice and things. You’re not talking about chocolate chip cookies.

Mindy Pelz, DC

No, thank you. Nature’s carbs. because they need to have fiber in them. Thank you for saying that. About 150 net grams. If you’re measuring, see what 150 net grams gives you. Now, if you don’t want it for postmenopausal women, if they don’t want to do a weekly cycle, I’ve been talking a lot publicly about the lunar cycle for women, and we used to, if we did before we had all this blue light, be much more sensitive to the ebbs and flows of the moon. We do have some natural rhythm that we can reconnect with, which is the lunar cycle. I just want to point out that the lunar cycle lasts 28 to 30 days. If we ever think we’re not connected to nature, we just have to look at how the menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle have the same number of days in them.

So there are a lot of women who will use day one, the new moon, and postmenopausal women. They’ll look at that as day one of what their cycle would have been. Then they follow the protocol that I just explained.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Before we had calendars, the way that people kept time was by women. Their cycle was timed with the moon, and they knew that that was the new moon. In the Jewish religion, it was confirmed that a certain number of women had to enter their cycle. then the rabbi would confirm it, and then they would light a fire to signal the next town over there. This is the new moon.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh, my God. I did not know that. That is, here’s the thing. As I’ve been out there teaching the female body, all of a sudden you start going, Oh, my God, we fell asleep to so much of this.  I read a whole book about the matriarchal world that we had in our BC years and intuition, ceremony, and community; that was medicine; that was healing; and now we call the womb well.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

But we’ve got it, we’ve abandoned it for pharmaceutical sales and hospitalizations, and what has that gotten us? We women are materially less healthy. We’re not even as healthy as our mother’s generation was, let alone our grandmother’s generation. We have gone so far astray from healthy behaviors that we just walk around in this chronically inflamed state, and we’re continually looking around for the answers when the answers are in us. and following what we know to be historical, like clean living. We need to pile into those evolutionary cells. Even by the lunar cycle, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Mindy Pelz, DC

The new moon is on day one. It’s the same thing. It would be day one to day ten. You want to go keto lower carb, more fasting, and then you would move in like the full moon is about day 12-13 of the month. Then, when the full moon is around, you want to support your liver more, support your gut, less fasting, and bring your carbs back up. Then as you go into the waning moon, the like day 20 of the moon cycle, or, I’m sorry, day 16 of the moon cycle, you can do a little more fasting. But the week before the new moon, when the biggest waning time comes, we should be doing more carbs, less fasting, and less. We should work out less. We should do everything we can; that should be our recovery moment. then the new moon can be thought of as our blossoming moment.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Beautiful. I love that.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Crazy.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is crazy. Let’s talk specifically about breast cancer because there’s so much data on the benefits of fasting for breast cancer. Can you address some of those and also maybe talk about whether there are different stages in breast cancer and the breast cancer journey where there are different fasting techniques to employ?

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes. I’m glad you brought this back to breast cancer because the greatest study ever done on fasting for women was done on breast cancer, and every breast cancer survivor, everybody who is in the breast cancer process, and every woman who wants to prevent breast cancer needs to know this. It was done to thousands of women. It was an observational study. It showed that when women come out of traditional breast cancer treatment if they just implement a 13-hour fast every day and do that for 90 days, I will encourage you to keep doing it. What they were seeing was that they had a 64% lower reoccurrence of breast cancer. Now, you probably know the statistics on Tamoxifen and things like that, but I’m not sure that any medication can give you that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Those are not that good.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Right.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Like the best studies that we have around Tamoxifen, or maybe a 49% decrease. We’ve never gotten around 50. Most of them aren’t even that good. That is impressive. A 13-hour fast is not much.

Mindy Pelz, DC

It’s not hard. Everybody can do it. You’re using night, so stop eating at eight o’clock. You would go eight to that before, and then you would eat at nine in the morning. You stop putting anything in your mouth after eight, and you don’t put anything in your mouth until nine in the morning, and your cup of coffee, in the book, it talks about a way to look at coffee and measure it. But that comes on; everybody can do that. Every doctor who’s listening to this needs to teach us that. We can do that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

For sure. What do you think breaks the fast? What can people drink in a fasted state, and what can they not have in a fasted state?

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes, anything that brings your blood sugar up. If you’re going to do coffee, black is probably going to be best. Some people need to put a little MCT oil and a little fat in it to balance sugar. A little bit of cream sometimes works if you do dairy, but almond milk and oat milk do not work, so creamer or even stevia monk fruit sometimes doesn’t work because it raises your blood sugar.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You need to check to see how you’re reacting because some people will be okay with MCT, but some people won’t. What about what about cinnamon? Do you think cinnamon is going to raise blood sugar?

Mindy Pelz, DC

It should work. Here’s the trick. Here’s the challenge: It’s the microbes in your gut that determine what foods are going to be elevated or not. This is why, as women, it’s a whole set of bacteria. I know about it. But for the listeners, it’s called the estrobolom, and it’s a set of bacteria that break estrogen down. then there’s a set of bacteria that help you regulate blood sugar. We all have different bacterial profiles in our gut. That’s why, in both books, I explain how you test this. But when I look at cinnamon, I see that it’s a spice. Your microbes love spices. Yes. I’m guessing it would probably be. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I find that for most people, that is beneficial. I know we have limited time with you because you are such a busy lady. I want to ask you: is there anyone who can’t fast?

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes, thank you for asking that. If you have an eating disorder, you need to work with your therapist or your doctor. Please be mindful that if you are pregnant, fasting is not your tool. I do not recommend that pregnant women fast and then nursing women. You need to keep your fasts under 15 hours so that you’re not detoxifying. Your body can go into a detox state, and the longer you fast, the more that will get into your breastmilk, which goes into your baby, but outside of that, everybody else can fast, and the big elephant in the room that people will be asking is, Well, what about this cancer? Or what about diabetes or what? Yes, all of that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

All of the answers. Yes. It doesn’t have to be about weight loss because the benefits of fasting go far beyond weight loss.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Exactly.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I think that it helps with weight optimization, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t consume enough calories during your eating window to make up for that fast.

Mindy Pelz, DC

That’s right.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

This has been an awesome discussion. I hope that people can take away from it that there are ways to eat around your menstrual cycle to optimize your hormones because ultimately, this breast cancer journey is about hormonal balance. When you have an imbalance of hormones, that is a very pro-inflammatory condition that ultimately ends up in my office or someone else who works with women with breast cancer. It’s so important. This is an irreplaceable tool that people have. This is something that they are free to do and that they have control over. it’s amazing. Thank you for sharing all of this information. Make sure that everyone reads Fast Like A Girl.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Thank you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

And I’m out of focus, tell me the name of your other book again. I’m forgetting.

Mindy Pelz, DC

The Menopause Reset. They’re meant to be like a duo for women over 40. You’ll learn stuff from both of them. then the third book, which’s coming next year, will make it a trilogy.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We’ll have you back. Before that, I’m going to have you on my podcast so you can talk all about that book. Dr. Pelz, it was amazing to see where people find you. Talk to us about your YouTube channel.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh yes. My YouTube channel is where most people go because you can binge-watch my videos. It’s just Dr. Mindy Pelz there. Otherwise, go to my website, and you can find me everywhere. I’m all over the place now.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Awesome. It was great to see you today. Thank you so much.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I appreciate you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Keep talking. Keeping that loud voice that we all need to hear so much.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes. back at you. Same to you. We’re all in this together, so you keep shouting it out. Yes, the more of us do this, the more we’re going to change women’s health. I appreciate what you’re up to. Thank you for that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Thank you so much. This is Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.