Unleash Powerful Health Hacks for Better Living

Mindy Pelz, DC

So I’ve got three key strategies that I recommend to make intermittent fasting easier. So let’s break these down first. If you’re new to fasting, don’t pull the bandaid off quickly. I really believe that if you’ve been living in the sugar burner energy system your whole life, the hardest way to start fasting is just to jump in and do it. Now I have found men can do it a little, that style a little bit easier than women because we’re more hormone-hormonally sensitive. So if you have a friend and he’s a man and he just started intermittent fasting, he lost 20 pounds. He’s probably more hormonally simple. Another way to say that then all women were much more complex when it comes to our hormones. So I like this approach. When you start intermittent fasting, make sure you’re backing your way into this. And what that looks like is you just start to push your breakfast back an hour, and get a little uncomfortable there. Once it gets easy, then push it back another hour. And then once that’s easy, push it back another hour. Before you know it, you’ll be 13 to 15 hours. It may take you three weeks, four weeks to do that. Totally fine. There were no awards won for the fastest person to implement a fasting lifestyle. So being slow and methodical about it and your body will respond very, in a very positive way. So make sure that you’re pushing that breakfast back and you’re slowly stepping in. 

The other really tricky on this particular topic is that I want to make sure you’re not leaning into the processed Standard American diet junk food when you are eating, make sure you’re taking out those refined carbohydrates. They will make intermittent fasting so much easier and the bad oils as well. Okay. The second step on how do you make intermittent fasting easier and I love this one, is that you’re going to drink your way into ketosis. Okay. What does that mean? So for starters, one of the biggest challenges we have when we come to fasting is this the mind chatter. So I recommend that you walk around with water bottles, coffee cups, tea, like in the beginning when you’re not eating and the mind is going, What are you doing? What are you doing? Why did you decide to do this? Pick up some water, pick it up, lean into an extra cup of coffee. Maybe the second cup is decaf. Maybe lean into some tea. Now there are some drinks that I really like that will make fasting easier so let me share a couple of them. For starters, this is a new product I’ve been using for the last several months, and I love it. So it has Monk fruit in it. So I’m finding for me it doesn’t spike my blood sugar as high as like a drink that would have coconut sugar or regular sugar. So you can try organified red juice or green juice. The other trick that I really like is LMNT mineral packets. I’ve been opening these up and just putting them in whatever I’m drinking. I put it in my coffee, put it in my water bottle, and sometimes just a different taste has my brain sort of thinking that I’m eating. But it also is giving me minerals and you need to be mineral-rich in order to succeed at fasting and the majority of you are mineral depleted because our soils are depleted. So I personally like the raspberry salt or the citrus salt. Put those in a cup if it’s 10:00 in the morning and you’re trying to go an hour later. Try tricking the brain a little bit with a little flavor in your water. 

Okay. Other hacks that I’ve done and that we really love but don’t have a sample of it here is putting MCT oil in your coffee. This is really important because it moves you much quicker over to the fat burner energy system. So MCT oil is incredible to get your body making ketones and making ketones quicker. So once you start to make ketones, ketones will go up into the brain and they will turn off the hunger hormone. So now let’s give you the big picture. You pull, you’re pulling refined carbohydrates out. You’re slowly pushing your breakfast back an hour and then you’re drinking your cup of coffee with some MCT oil in it. My personal favorite MCT oil is called C8 by Bulletproof, we’ll put the link in the companion guide, and you’re putting that in your in your coffee in the morning. Make sure your coffee is organic and mold-free. We also have links to the right coffee in. This is not about going to Starbucks and putting C8 MCT oil. This is about making sure it’s toxic free coffee and that’s in the companion guide as well. And sometimes when I, when I first started fasting, I was like gripping that cup of coffee. I was like, “Oh my God, let me get another one”. And I would then I was trying tea, and in the beginning, all of that is really important because you’re training your body to operate from this fat-burning system. So drink your way into ketosis. You’re not eating your way into ketosis when you’re starting to intermittent fast, but you’re drinking your way into ketosis. 

Okay, third step, you got to boost oxytocin. So if you haven’t heard me say this before, oxytocin controls cortisol. Cortisol controls insulin. Insulin controls your sex hormones. So when you come to fasting, you’re trying to have an impact on insulin. If you’re struggling to impact insulin and your blood sugar, you’re going to need to manage cortisol. Well, let’s put this into action. A lot of you guys come to fasting and you’re like stressed because you’re not getting into ketosis. You’re stressed because you’re hungry and you’re just spiking that cortisol. And as cortisol goes up, it’s really hard to manage insulin. And if you can’t manage insulin, you can’t manage glucose and we can’t manage glucose, you’re not getting into the ketosis. 

So we’ve got to have some hacks for helping cortisol when those stress hormones come in. And how you can do that is by getting boosts of oxytocin. Oxytocin controls, all of that. Okay. How do you get boost of oxytocin? Well, let’s say it’s 10:00 in the morning. You’re trying to go longer with your fast, you’re irritable, you’re hungry. Go find one person that you love. If they’re local to you in the same room, go give them a hug so you can get some oxytocin to bring cortisol down. If they’re not local to you, pick up the phone and tell them that you love them. Find somebody you can say go into a state of gratitude. If none of that’s possible and you’re completely irritated by everybody. Go find an animal. Is it a cat or a dog and just pet an animal? If that doesn’t work and you’re like, I don’t like animals. I don’t like people, you can start by hugging yourself. So just give myself a big hug that alone will stroke your own skin and just soothe yourself. That alone will help to boost oxytocin. So look for oxytocin hacks so that you can bring cortisol down, so you can make fasting a lot easier. And as always, don’t give up on yourself. You’re born in a miracle and fasting will prove that to you. So enjoy the ride.