Dr. Mindy Pelz: Menopause is a Rite of Passage, Not a Disease — Fasting, Hormones & Reinventing Yourself After 50

13:04Dr. Mindy Pelz:So we bring the right and left hemisphere to every single decision that we make. The right hemisphere is our emotional way we connect and it's our creative center. The left hemisphere is logic. So as delightful as it sounds that we use both hemispheres, what happens is it means that we are constantly checking in with other people to make sure the relationship is okay. Like, you know, when we're menstruating, will give you an answer, but we're also going to make sure, is that okay for you? And if you actually look at the way so many women, oh my gosh, you probably see this. So many women are like, oh, I'm so sorry.

13:44Dr. Mindy Pelz:I'm sorry. Like, because we have this relationship brain that is always thinking about other people. And that is what goes away at menopause. That relational brain drops and women have more of what we call a lateralized, independent individual brain, where we can go into our creative and our emotional and stay there and not have to go into the logical. And we can go into the logical and stay there and not have to go into the emotional. A little more like a man brain because your guy's brain is a lot more, you go to one hemisphere and then the other hemisphere. So I looked at that and I was like, wait, that's like a get-out-of-jail-free card for women.

14:25Darin Olien:And it's perfect. Right? It's like, okay, I mean, I had some stuff with my mom this year in a good way, like seeing my birth and kind of going through all that and the recapitulation of so much that I never saw before of how badass my mom was.

14:44Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's beautiful. How old is she?

14:46Darin Olien:She's 83.

14:47Dr. Mindy Pelz:Oh, yeah.

14:48Darin Olien:Holding together, I mean, not to go off on this, but just to make this point. You know, I was premature, so it was chaos. I almost died. My brother was born. He was two. My dad was a raging alcoholic, losing jobs. Wow. And they were just, and my mom held all of that together. Yeah. And to the point where she had, quote, unquote, no needs. So in a certain sense, that arc of like that is what the female is geared for to go like, hey, man.

15:23Dr. Mindy Pelz:So well said.

15:23Darin Olien:Right? And it was like blaringly obvious to a point where I had the great opportunity to have that conversation with my mom and acknowledge her for it because I'm like – because I was just asking her questions. Like, holy shit, I almost died. I came home. What was that like? And then I kept asking her. I'm like, holy shit. Wow. The chaos that you were able to do. But then from what you're describing, the shift in like, okay, I don't need to do that anymore.

15:51Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right. And here's the thing. And it's so beautiful. And I hope she probably loved hearing you tell her that you saw what was going down. Yeah. I mean, I hope it landed. Yeah. It's such a beautiful story.

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17:44Dr. Mindy Pelz:Here's what happens is when the brain changes, what we're discovering is a lot of women don't know how to focus on themselves. Right. Because the culture has said. Culture is not at all. Yeah. So I brought into the book Carol Gilligan's work. And Carol Gilligan's work, she's a feminist psychologist who's still – she's in her 80s and she's still a professor at NYU. And she wrote a book called In a Different Voice. And she studied girls in the 1980s, which was me. And basically she found that there was this time period between 9 and 13 where a girl's brain changed. So at 9, she would ask a boy and a girl a question, and they would give you clear answers.

18:25Dr. Mindy Pelz:Like, what do you want to eat? And the boy would say, I want this. The girl would say, I want this. At 11, same question. Boy would say, I want this. And the girl would hesitate for a moment, but then she would tell you what she wanted. By the time those hormones came in and estrogen kicked in, now the boy still tells you what he wants. But the girl says, I don't know. What are you going to eat? Right. Like, right? Like, observe how many times. We have a strongly female staff. And I all the time say, they'll say, it's whatever you want to do. And I'm like, no. I want to know what you think should happen here.

19:03Dr. Mindy Pelz:But as women, we're not trained in that. So then all of a sudden our brain changes. And we're like, your mom's a great example. And we've, for our whole life, we've never asked ourselves what we want. And that's why I think the women are killing themselves during this time. I think this is where the divorces happen because all of a sudden women wake up and they're like, wait a second, I don't want to live with you anymore. I don't want to do these things for you anymore. So if we could name that moment, we could save lives, we could save marriages if that's, I mean, I'm not trying to keep everybody married.

19:35Dr. Mindy Pelz:But like that is what needs to be discussed in the menopause is that it is a woman like waking up and like going into a place of independence. But she's not equipped because the culture never asked her what she wanted. And that's what I'm trying to change with this book.

19:52Darin Olien:Well, it's so interesting because there's chemical and biological and time periods and all of that stuff. So like, you know, when the girl is moving into the estrogen and then all of a sudden that that is changing the way she's viewing herself in the world. And then now with the menopause shift, if you don't have a basket to hold that, then you're just fighting against you. You have a cascade of shift biologically and chemically. Yeah. But then you have no place and no one's talking about it. Like that's why this feels like, I mean, again, I'm not going through this, so it's not like my number one subject matter.

20:37But hearing it the way you've presented it feels like you're putting your finger on something that feels like a duh.

20:48Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah, thank you. It feels very, very necessary to understand this massive shift of half of the freaking population.

20:57Darin Olien:Right. I mean, not to say that everyone's a menopause app, but understanding the cycle.

21:02Dr. Mindy Pelz:It's a huge amount of people and women, yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because men are important in this conversation. And when Fast Like a Girl came out into the world, do you know that one of the things that shocked me the most is the number of men that reached out to us and thanked us for helping understand just the hormonal cycle of their wives or women in their lives. The number one thing I'm getting right now as I present the information in this book is women are saying, how do I talk to my husband? I don't know how to get him to understand what's happening to me, which is why we did this appendix to men, because I wanted to show like, hey, men, and I actually in the appendix speak directly to men.

21:43Dr. Mindy Pelz:So it's not written to the woman, it's written to the man. But everybody, it's really important that we start to have a positive conversation around menopause because it's almost like, and I go back, your mom, again, your mom's story has really touched me because it's almost like we go back and your mom served the family in a beautiful way. And a lot of women are doing that and working at the same time. And when you go into those post-reproductive years, it's a little bit like we need to sort of say thank you. Your service to the culture has been amazing, and now we need you to spend time on you.

22:20Dr. Mindy Pelz:And part of the reason we need you to spend time on you is because we need your wisdom and your leadership. I mean, Desmond Tutu, one of my favorite quotes from him was that if we want peace in the world, we need to let women lead. Right. Yeah. So, but, but what, so put that next to this idea that you've got a 50 year old who's like, I don't want to show you a wrinkle because you're going to think that I'm irrelevant. Right. And then you've got great leaders saying, let women lead. Right. How are we going to find the leaders if we don't train these women to stand firmly on their, on their feet and speak their truth when they get through the menopausal experience.

23:03Darin Olien:Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, and you see these, I mean, Jane Goodall pops in my head, right? Did you ever meet her? I never did. I'm bummed that I never did. But the leadership she brought was so powerful. And instead of it being an anomaly, right? Yeah. Because who didn't love her?

23:26Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah.

23:26Darin Olien:Right. And she stood in her space and owned it. And think about her life. She kicked ass and did a lot of stuff. It's a great example. But now she's in this proverbial wisdom mode of her life. And everyone's like, yep, I want to meet her. I want to hear what she has to say. And my God, if that can not be just this one or two people as a great example, Can it be just the community, the family? Like, how do you see, like, just curious. I don't know if there's an answer, but as that woman who's going through right now, I want to get into, like, the physical side of things, the nutritional side of things, the support that they can have.

24:17Darin Olien:But in terms of their family, you know, And stepping into that role when the kids are like, they're off to college. I have so many friends that their kids are gone. And now the new identity is there. So how can that culture in the family unit, what's some of the biggest, aside from maybe what you just said in the past?

24:42Dr. Mindy Pelz:Like support her? Yeah. Like how does the family unit support her? Well, so there's two folds. And that's a great question. There's two fold answers to that. One, she has to understand what's going on with her. So that's why the book became so necessary. It's like, I feel like I wanted women to understand this isn't just a moment we bitch and moan and make funny posts on socials about how irritable we are. And this isn't a moment to, you know, this isn't, I know you and I will align on this one, but I'm getting a little exhausted with the hormone replacement therapy conversation, although it's beneficial.

25:19Darin Olien:Both sides.

25:19Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah, although it can be really beneficial, what the message is to women right now is that you are suffering because you didn't get the right doctor or the right hormone replacement therapy.

25:31Darin Olien:And you're broken.

25:32Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yes.

25:32Darin Olien:Yeah.

25:33Dr. Mindy Pelz:And we don't, so here's the thing that I'm so excited, I can't wait for women to grab this book, is what if the rage, the menopausal rage is because you're finally done wrapping yourself up in a pretty bow just so everybody can say you're beautiful or you're amazing. What if the depression is because you built a life that no longer fits you and you don't want to be in it? What if the insomnia is your nervous system saying there's more, there's more, or maybe your nervous system saying it's time to rest. So we, the first thing is for the woman to start to look at what works and what doesn't work for me anymore.

26:12Dr. Mindy Pelz:And in the family unit, I can tell you that then it becomes a moment to have a compassionate conversation. So the example that I give a lot is that during the pandemic, I was going into my like deep, deep perimenopausal years. And I was, my daughter had gone off to college. My son and husband were at home. And I don't know if it was living with two men, but the house kept getting messier and messier. My son loves to cook. He actually is now a professional chef, which is great. But I would wake up in the morning and the kitchen would be a mess. The 38-year-old, the 42-year-old version of me would have been like, no problem.

26:52Dr. Mindy Pelz:But the 52, the 50-year-old version was like, no. And so instead of going crazy, and blaming them, I sat them down. And this is what I said. Because of the changes, hormonal changes going on in me, there is so much chaos going up in my brain. And so when I walk into a messy house, it just flares up that chaos. So can we come together and figure out how we can make the house more peaceful so that I can start to calm my brain? Wow. That was a really cool discussion to have with my husband and my son, and they understood, and we worked together as a team. That would be a positive way to do this, as opposed to, I'm living in a family unit I can't take anymore, now I'm going to kill myself, or I'm living in a marriage I can't handle anymore, it's his fault I'm going to leave.

27:42Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right.

27:42Darin Olien:Well, at the same time, you've come from a place where you've taken care of everything, you held it all together, and then I would imagine then going through this cascade, so many women are trying to go, something wrong with me, and then you're trying to continue to do the same things. Yes, yeah. And that's a prescription for disaster.

28:04Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right, right.

28:04Darin Olien:And so this cascade of emotion and chemical and biological shift, he's swimming against the stream trying to kind of, you coming home and then, okay, it's messy. Let me just do the same thing that I've always been doing. Now you're going against even more so what you're actually being and feeling.

28:28Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

28:29Darin Olien:So the fact that you sat them down, that's a very proactive thing rather than just arguing and yelling and they don't know what's going on. And if you don't know what's going on, then it's just chaos.

28:42Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right. Yeah. That was the perfect description is like you've got two people in a household that don't understand that one person is changing. Like literally her brain is rewiring for independence. So like one of the, I always tell this story that two of my best friends, when they went through this process, their marriages started to crumble and they asked their husbands to like understand what was going on. And these guys were just way out of it. And they were like, no, I like the old version of you. Right. And so those marriages fell apart. But there needs to be, I feel like on every, there needs to be permission for the woman to take care of herself.

29:21Dr. Mindy Pelz:There needs to be an understanding that something new is happening. So maybe there needs to be a new version of these relationships. And again, I think that's the benefit of writing books like this is we get to open up that conversation. And then now everybody can step into it and figure out how that works for them.

29:38Darin Olien:Yeah, and reinvent it. It's a massive reinvention period. And it's supported in the research and your research and the understanding that this is an opportunity rather than something's wrong or broken.

29:54Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

29:55Darin Olien:So going into it from a chemical, biological, what are some things that women, if they're kind of coming, and I want to get back to like is it happening earlier? Is there endocrine disruption? I want to get into that part of it too because I think we both know the answer to that.

30:13Dr. Mindy Pelz:But endocrine disruption is a whole three hour podcast. But let's go there.

30:18Darin Olien:But there is definitely aspects of that. But so so what are some things now that that women, if they're in their late 30s and their early 40s and there's some kind of disturbance in the force, what are some things that they can start doing that are going to help them in some of these transitions? And maybe they're not even aware of it yet. Right. But maybe there's some foundational things. And then we can get into when people are actually in menopause.

30:47Dr. Mindy Pelz:You know what's been interesting is that a lot of the podcasts I've gone on to promote this book are podcasts where the audience is the women are in their 30s. Because women in their 30s are asking the question that you just asked. What can I do to make that ride smoother? Right. Which is amazing. So here's the first thing that every single woman approaching 40 in their early 40s should be looking at one blood work number that will change your whole experience. And that's hemoglobin A1c.

31:15Darin Olien:Oh, nice.

31:16Dr. Mindy Pelz:If your metabolic health is a mess, your hormones are going on a crazy ride. So if I could make, like, stop the menopause experience for so many women, I would say every 40-year-old needs to get a blood test, and we need to make sure that her A1C is close to 5. Like 5, 5.2, but not higher than 5.2.

31:41Darin Olien:And what is that actually showing for them?

31:43Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah. So two things. Your hemoglobin A1C shows how well your cells are able to take in glucose. So this is really interesting. because it'll tie to the endocrine disruptors and all of that. When we eat, all of a sudden our blood sugar goes up and our pancreas registers that increase in blood sugar and it makes insulin. Insulin finds the glucose cells and it pushes it into the cell so that the glucose can get activated. When estrogen goes down, that system goes offline. So if you're already in a metabolic mess, What happens is as estrogen goes down, you become more insulin resistant without a change in exercise, without a change in diet.

32:31Darin Olien:That says so much. Right? Right? And think about all those women who are just beating themselves up in the gym.

32:42Dr. Mindy Pelz:Exactly. Right? So which is interesting. So, oh, my God, I love where your brain went with this.

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34:46Dr. Mindy Pelz:There's something I've written in all my books called The Hormonal Hierarchy. And I wish every woman will like tattoo it on her if the ink wasn't so toxic. I know who I'm talking to. My toxic brain and your toxic brain can match. But at the bottom of the hierarchy are sex hormones, progesterone, estrone, and testosterone. What controls those three sex hormones more than anything is insulin. So PCOS is the most common hormonal problem for women, and that's an insulin resistance problem.

35:18Darin Olien:So already there, if they have PCOS, there's a train wreck.

35:23Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right. If you've got insulin resistance, PCOS, you're metabolically overweight, those kind of things, let's clean that up because if you clean up that and become insulin sensitive, then those sex hormones will balance. But here's the crazy thing, and this is the woman who goes and works out all the time, is that above insulin is cortisol. So if you keep driving cortisol into your system because you're like… Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Or I'm not losing weight, so I better work out twice as hard. Or I better diet twice as much. Or what we saw in our, it's like I better fast even more.

36:01Dr. Mindy Pelz:You're just increasing cortisol. And when you increase cortisol, now you make yourself more insulin resistant and you throw these sex hormones off. And then the last part of this is the very top of it that's so beautiful is oxytocin, which is why we have to stay connected as a human species. And we have to love these women going through this process because if she has oxytocin, that calms cortisol down. If you calm cortisol, now you can be insulin sensitive and now you can balance those sex hormones. Wow. Wow.

36:34Darin Olien:It's so interesting representation of the shift. Right. Because I go back to your story. So like you have a story, you have a conversation with your family. They now understand you. And now there's a closeness rather than a separation. That's right. Right? So now a community, now you're understanding each other. Now there's at least a better representation of oxytocin because you're heard and seen. That's right. It's so perfect.

37:05Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right. But yet if we are off culturally and we could. That's it.

37:11Darin Olien:Then it just, we've created something that we're just trying to shove everything into. Yeah. It just makes no sense.

37:20Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right. We are off culturally. I love that statement. And, you know, menopause, we didn't talk about it like as little as three, four years ago. Right. And now everybody's talking about it. But the challenge is we went from a cultural hush to cultural chaos. Right. And one of the things I'm hoping to see is this evolution of like, this is a rite of passage that you're going through. Let us all gather around you and support you so that we can see who you become on the other side of it. We get to witness this transformation. One of the mystics, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, that I researched, she calls menopause the life-death-life cycle.

38:01Dr. Mindy Pelz:You had a life, and you get to die off the parts of that life that no longer fit to birth a new life. And we all win in that.

38:09Darin Olien:Yeah. Yeah. So that's the that's the cool understanding. Yeah. But it's also it's it's the the the setup is if if women are already challenged. Yeah. That it's it's it's a reflection of society. It's reflection of what it's been pushed at them or in them, whatever it is. and then probably that chaotic side of this conversation and the menopause thing is because it is a it is not set up correctly yeah right so you have and you have these insulin sensitivities you have this PCOS you have metabolic issues well so now when you're seeing menopause you're seeing

38:53Dr. Mindy Pelz:it at a not only you not understanding it as an individual and as a family unit and as cultural

39:01Darin Olien:and then it's exacerbated because biologically, chemically, nutritionally... That's right.

39:09Dr. Mindy Pelz:Which is why like hemoglobin A1c, let's just fix that. What happens to the female body as she goes through menopause, and this doesn't matter if you're like 70 or 80, you've still got this issue. Without estrogen, your body and brain doesn't know how to use glucose as well. So let's look at the messaging around dementia and Alzheimer's. So many women are so scared of dementia and Alzheimer's. And the HRT conversation right now is like, get on the patch or you're going to get dementia and Alzheimer's. But Alzheimer's is called diabetes type 3. It's when the brain can't use all the glucose you gave it.

39:51Dr. Mindy Pelz:And one out of three women get Alzheimer's because without estrogen, your brain can't use glucose. So your ultra-processed diet, hopefully none of your listeners are listening to that, but that needs to get thrown away because that now is building a brain that can no longer function well. But we do have another fuel source other than glucose that can hit the brain in a perfect way, and that's a ketone, which is why you'll see in the book, like I'm doubling down on for brain health fasting for women. I get asked all the time, should postmenopausal women or even perimenopausal women fast? And somehow out in the zeitgeist right now, there's this message that the answer is no.

40:32Dr. Mindy Pelz:But I can take the most brain foggy 48-year-old that's depressed, can't focus, just totally exhausted, and I can teach her to fast. And within days, her brain comes back online. And I'm not talking like three-day water fast. I'm talking like an intermittent fast 15-hour window. teach her how to clean her diet up, get her some ketones, and all of a sudden, boop, she's back.

40:58Darin Olien:Yeah, because it's not, again, so many of the studies are men-based, number one. So then, therefore, if you look at the studies, then you're like, oh, yeah, well, it's probably stressful for the women, but it's not understanding it. And also fasting can be perceived as so extreme.

41:17Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

41:18Darin Olien:Right? So it becomes this dude doing a three-day water fast and going, oh, I can't do that. But it doesn't have to be that. No, it doesn't. Just giving little breaks. And so generally speaking, these windows of fasting are generally good for, I mean, we don't want to prescribe anything for any individual necessarily. But the fasting window is huge for menopause. Oh, it's huge.

41:46Dr. Mindy Pelz:And you get so in the fasting world, this is the way we look at a 24-hour cycle is that there's a fasting window and there's an eating window. So if I stop eating at 6 o 'clock at night and then I don't eat again until 10 or 11 the next morning, I've done 17 hours of fasting, which most people can do. So in that 17 hours, I've been giving my brain ketones. So I'm giving it the fuel source it needs. And ketones are neuroprotective. They bring all these neurotransmitters like GABA that calms us. They help prevent the neurons from being damaged by free radicals and toxins. So now for 16, 17 hours, this woman has gotten ketones.

42:32Dr. Mindy Pelz:When she goes to open up her eating window, you know, women are tired of counting. Counting calories, counting the scale, counting macros. So in this book, one of the things I did is I'm like, here are the foods you don't eat. Here are the foods you do eat. End of story. So easy. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Stop counting and just eat real food.

42:52Darin Olien:Right. Here's the window. Eat these real foods and your body knows what to do.

42:56Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

42:56Darin Olien:And it's more sensitive.

42:58Dr. Mindy Pelz:It's more sensitive. But here's what women do, which is so sad, is menopausal belly weight. That is a topic that is like on my YouTube channel. That's all they want to hear. I'm like, I've done like so many videos on this for you all. That's all they want to hear. Because that's what really hits women. And one of the things that we know is when you put yourself in these fasting windows, and it doesn't even have to be every day, that you are forcing your body to go find the excess it stored years ago. So it will burn that menopausal belly weight. It doesn't know how to use glucose. So instead of putting glucose around your heart and lungs and around your liver, that would cause inflammation, it put it around your belly.

43:41Dr. Mindy Pelz:And it's not as efficient. I do think we become more stress sensitive as we move through this process. And so cortisol, your body doesn't know what to do with cortisol. Cortisol was the hormone that was meant to make you run from a tiger and move. But women are so stressed, especially during this whole period, they're not moving, their motivation is down, they're gaining weight, they're, you know, they're starting to fall into apathy. And so all of that is what's cortisol, glucose, insulin, toxins, endocrine disruptors. That is what menopausal belly weight is. But what women do is that we look in the mirror and we think it's our fault.

44:24Dr. Mindy Pelz:We go, how did I gain so much weight? Ah, yeah, I wasn't as clean. I didn't work out as much. If we don't understand our, oh, I'm never good at diets. My mom was always overweight. I guess I'm going to be overweight. Like we run all that messaging. Yeah.

44:39Darin Olien:The rumination. Yeah. Further supports the whole, I mean, the human flaws, we like look at ourselves and, but, but this is, you know, knowledge is power. That's right. Certainly when you're talking about something that no one's talking about, like it's, it's important to understand your biology as it's shifting. Cause I love, I love there's so much support, both what's going on, but also this reinvention side of it, right? This who am I now? So cool. Because that's the rite of passage. Yeah, right. Let's touch on society as it sits now. Talk about some of these things that are, girls are moving into puberty, way too young, nine years old, 10 years old.

45:32Darin Olien:So true. And we can clearly we can talk for days about the fatal conveniences of it and all of those things. But what for you in looking at this and are women moving into premenopause and menopause earlier?

45:50Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah. So I started is such a good question because I started 10 years ago to answer this question of what's the purpose of menopause. And at that time, we were saying to women, early 40s, you're going to start to go into this experience. And now what they're saying is at 35, you're going into this. Jesus, 35. Yeah. Now, just that alone has me suspicious because I do say, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do think there's a big pharma agenda going on here. And actually my OB, who's in her 70s, when I got on a call with her one day, she's like, well, are you seeing the big pharma agenda that's out there?

46:30Dr. Mindy Pelz:And I was like, excuse me? She goes, oh, yeah, the big pharma playbook. I see it all the time. And I go, okay, what is it? And she said it's where they put fear into people that they're going to get X, Y, and Z problem. And then all of a sudden they put a celebrity. They put a author, a doctor author. They put somebody out there as the spokesperson that says, you don't have to worry about that fear. I have the solution.

46:56Darin Olien:We have an answer. Yeah.

46:57Dr. Mindy Pelz:So that's what's happening in menopause right now is that we went from nobody talking to it to everybody being scared of it to where we sit right here in this moment is you just have to get HRT and you'll be okay. But hormone replacement is an exogenous hormone. anything you try to duplicate that the body makes, you try to duplicate that in a pill or a cream, it's not the same. It's not a match. And the North American Menopause Society, who is like the trusted society right now, says that women who have high blood pressure, women that are obese, women with metabolic syndrome and high hemoglobin A1c, you might want to talk to your doctor before you get on a history of cancer before you get on this stuff.

47:48Dr. Mindy Pelz:So yes, it can be amazing. It can be amazing. And we can't, we shouldn't just be outsourcing health, always outsourcing it and outsourcing it. When do we take responsibility for our own health?

48:02Darin Olien:Yeah. And, and, and, you know, it's, it's jumping 2 ,500 steps, right? It's, that's the playbook. It's like, don't worry about that in the fine print is you're broken and we have a solution for you. And if you don't understand what you're doing or you don't make those lifestyle changes, and then you, again, no one wants to do that. I don't know why.

48:28Dr. Mindy Pelz:I don't know why because it's so rewarding.

48:31Darin Olien:Of course.

48:31Dr. Mindy Pelz:And it gives you confidence. I was talking to a friend this morning about Ozempic. And I was saying we have a really interesting moment in history where if a woman will stay on the women goes on Ozempic and loses weight, she might not tell you she's on Ozempic. She might feel a little shameful. She's happy she lost weight. But not every woman's boldly like, I lost weight because I was on Ozempic. There is some shame involved. If I teach that same woman a fasting lifestyle and she loses weight, she's got bravado. She's like, oh, my God, I did this thing. I didn't even know I knew how I could do it.

49:06Dr. Mindy Pelz:And my body lost weight for the first time. Both lost weight. One became empowered. The other is feeling shameful. Like that's the damage we do when we keep outsourcing and outsourcing and outsourcing our health to everyone else.

49:22Darin Olien:Yeah, because what's going to happen? If you have weight loss and if you're quote unquote feeling better, however you got there, people are going to ask you, what are you doing? Yeah. Right? And if you go, I'm using GLP-1s and all this stuff, or I'm like, hey, I've learned that I'm in a period of my life and I got these tests and now I've made some lifestyle changes. It's a completely different thing. And again, I think it goes against the whole, what you're talking about, the initiation into this wisdom archetype that is necessary and needed in society.

50:01Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

50:01Darin Olien:But in one respect, if there is a freaking conspiracy, it is we don't want people strong and in their power, men or women.

50:11Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah, but especially our women.

50:12Darin Olien:Yeah.

50:13Dr. Mindy Pelz:We don't like our women angry as a culture. And we don't, in general, I mean, just look at how many times we've tried to get a female president. And, like, we don't want women in power. I've been really watching Michelle Obama right now. And I always tell people this is not a political discussion. This is just a woman who's done some phenomenal things. And two things I'm watching her. She's in her early 60s. The first is she stopped doing all the dutiful things. So all of a sudden, she wasn't going to all the traditional events an ex-first lady would go to with her husband. And do you know what?

50:49Dr. Mindy Pelz:The press got worried because they were like, she's leaving him.

50:53Darin Olien:Right. They make up all these stories.

50:55Dr. Mindy Pelz:She's like, Barack and Michelle are getting divorced. And so Michelle went on a podcast and was like, can't I just be a grown ass woman? That was literally her words. That is just making decisions for myself now. Does making decisions for myself have to be a sign I'm leaving my husband? Second thing I saw recently is she keeps saying to people who are like, you should run for president. And I love this is a postmenopausal brain. She's like, stop telling me that you all are not ready for a female president. Like that's the certainty. But I think the larger picture here of what we're talking about is that women have been adapting themselves so much to meet the demands of this culture.

51:40Dr. Mindy Pelz:And let's at least change that with this menopause conversation and be like, you're about to go into this place of leadership. You're about to think your own thoughts. you're about to be in a place where you can stand up for yourself better than ever before go do that like that should be the focus yeah i'm curious like um with you like because you've been

52:04Darin Olien:you've been cranking books you've been having your own practice yeah you've been kicking ass for a long time so like as things are shifting for you how has that been personally how are you finding this transitional period?

52:21Dr. Mindy Pelz:It's a really good question. Um, what, you know, I share in the book that I had like a total, I can't do life anymore moment. And, um, you know, the, the prepotence of that was the LA fires and, um, just being there that morning and literally looking out my window and seeing my whole hill on fire, seeing my neighbor's house catch on fire. Um, not sure what to do, but grab a few things. And driving down my canyon, I hit sunset where it was just bumper to bumper traffic with embers everywhere and people going panicked. And that experience was like my nervous system just went no more. And I had body anxiety for months after that.

53:07Dr. Mindy Pelz:And so what I did is actually remove myself and go live on my own. Wow. Family and everything. You're just like, I'm out. I'm like, I'm out. I also was writing this book and I'm like, I need to go somewhere where I don't have to adapt to anybody anymore. So we actually took all my YouTube videos, all my podcast, and we just started repurposing them. And I hunkered down in Santa Cruz for four months and wrote this book and healed. I went to yoga, acupuncture, chiro, get my IVs. I was just trying. But what happened was my nervous system finally said, I can't do this anymore. We got to start over.

53:47Dr. Mindy Pelz:And so I think for a lot of women that happens. Maybe it's a divorce. Maybe it's a loss of a job. But there's a moment somewhere in our late 40s, early 50s where we're like, no more. I can't do it.

54:01Darin Olien:Okay, everybody. Are you ready to upgrade your operating system? I know I am. I'm always game to do that. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That's what we're doing over at Super Life Patreon. This isn't just behind-the-scenes membership. It's a global experiment in conscious living that I am connected to, committed with, in every cell of my body. Each week, you'll get exclusive access to deeper podcast conversations, extended interviews, voice notes from the road of me personally, personal reflections, behind-the-scenes footage, community wellness challenges, and even surprise drop-ins that I no longer do on social media because I don't really dig it anymore.

54:53Darin Olien:We're talking decentralized healing, reclaiming sovereignty, ancient wisdom meets future tech, any tribe of people with you walking the path. If you love this podcast, the Patreon is where we go deeper, get more real, and reclaim our power together. Join us at Patreon.com forward slash Darren Olean. That's Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com forward slash Darren Olean, D-A-R-I-N-O-L-I-E-N. Join the movement, support the mission. Let's rise together.

55:33Dr. Mindy Pelz:So one of the things I do now is like I finally said, I can work two days a week. like fine put me put me in work and doing videos and doing all this two days a week but I need the rest of it the time for me wow now I've never said that before so we actually rebuilt our whole business around the fact that I could only produce two days a week wow which has been amazing wow so and then I started doing things like my therapist said to me Mindy what do you want to do and I sat there and I was like nobody's ever asked me that wow like nobody's asked me what I want to do I haven't even asked myself that question right so I started and a lot of women resonate with that I started every moment of the day like do I want to do that or am I doing that to make somebody else happy what time do I want to eat dinner I don't want to eat dinner eight o 'clock at night I want to eat dinner in the light because I know that's better for our hormonal system like I questioned everything I did it was the most empowering thing I've ever done how's your

56:41Darin Olien:family responded yeah right it's a good question um you know my daughter was out of the house so

56:47Dr. Mindy Pelz:she kind of didn't witness this my sweet 23 year old son right I went to him when I was at the really breaking and I and I think this is an important thing for a parent to do I was like I'm not doing well. And I'm going to just go ahead and take some time to myself. And I will get myself well, but I'm not doing great. And he's so cute. He says to me, you know what you need, mom? I was like, what do I need? And he goes, you need a reset. Because he knows we use that in our brand a lot. And I was like, yes, I do need a reset. So that was interesting. But it was my husband that took the most, I don't want to say convincing, but we had to have new discussions.

57:30Dr. Mindy Pelz:And one of the discussions we have, have been having that I recommend everybody does is we identified that our marriage had three different times to it. And we call marriage 1.0 before we had kids. And then we call the time with kids marriage 2.0. And then we're now calling this marriage 3.0 without children. And so we literally will sit and I'll say, yeah, marriage 3.0, I don't want to do that anymore.

57:58Darin Olien:To have identified very distinct, which is powerful because then it puts it in a context you can have a different type of conversation.

58:06Dr. Mindy Pelz:So instead of him thinking I was leaving, it was I'm healing myself so I can come back to the marriage, but then we need to talk about how the marriage can support me. And so, and both of us, but I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, Julie Gottman, I don't know if you've ever studied her work, but she has a great statement that where women get, why divorce often happens is because women say yes to all the things they want to say no to. And so the resentment builds. So I started using resentment as my litmus test. And so I will tell him, like, I want to say yes to you, but if I say yes to you, I'm going to feel resentful about that, whatever the topic is.

58:54Dr. Mindy Pelz:So a new language, new marriage, new way of looking at that. And that has been so pivotal. And we're in the process of it.

59:02Darin Olien:Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's none of these things are easy. Life isn't easy. But if you're not understanding certain things and if you're not willing to have, you know, call it radically honest.

59:19Dr. Mindy Pelz:Difficult.

59:20Darin Olien:And, you know, and you're saying both personally and professionally and in the book, this time is to ask those important questions. What do I want?

59:31Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah.

59:32Darin Olien:You know?

59:32Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah. And we kind of have a blame culture, don't we? Like especially right now because our leaders are exhibiting that. And so it's really sad.

59:42Darin Olien:Algorithms and water. It's just crazy.

59:44Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah, like let's talk about the algorithms. Really interesting. This is something we've spent some time. My YouTube channel has always been my passion project. I love bringing these videos forward. But now I've got to think about the algorithm. So am I serving people or am I serving the algorithm? And we have examples of leaders that are just blaming everybody else. And how is that going to trickle down into the thought process of the society? We start blaming everybody. and I've spent so much time with women in this transition and it's easier to blame somebody else.

1:00:18Darin Olien:So easy.

1:00:19Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah.

1:00:20Darin Olien:Yeah. And that's the, God, that's the human experience. It's just so, I mean, even, you know, thinking about the fire, it's even in that stuff, it's easy to offload because it's in the one respect culturally literally, there's an easy victim place. Yeah. And it's everywhere.

1:00:48Dr. Mindy Pelz:And there's always somebody to blame.

1:00:50Darin Olien:Always somebody. Yeah. And then actually nothing happens other than resentment, pain. Yeah. You don't resolve anything. It builds up. Yeah. Like all of that stuff.

1:01:04Dr. Mindy Pelz:You know what's interesting? One of my favorite parts of writing this book is I took Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, and I took the steps and I decided, could I map that to neuroscience?

1:01:15Darin Olien:Oh, wow.

1:01:16Dr. Mindy Pelz:If each one of the steps he lays out, what is happening to the brain? And one of the things that I found is one of the greatest ways to improve neuroplasticity is by meeting an obstacle, hanging in the obstacle, and finding a new path out. We call it resilience. And here we have a culture that women are worried that their memory is going. But if you could stay in that difficult moment of the transformation, you will find new paths. Like my husband and I, you know, I'm giving you the highlight reel now. But if you and I were having this conversation a year ago, it would have been really different.

1:01:56Darin Olien:Right. Yeah, because you're right in the middle of it.

1:01:59Dr. Mindy Pelz:Right. But we stayed in the difficulty and we found a new solution. And then that ends up creating these new neurons in our brain. And I think we are a comfort culture and all we want to do is stay comfortable. But what's so cool about this rewiring that's happening to women's brains is that if you hang in there, you have all the people pleasing neurons are going away. That was what Lisa taught us. Like all those neurons that kept you addicted to everybody else's, you know, likes and dislikes of you, those all go away. And you get these new neurons that are forming. I call them baby neurons. They're like sitting up in your head waiting to be trained on how to think.

1:02:40Dr. Mindy Pelz:And when we decide we're going to change, we're going to drop behaviors, we're going to become a new person, resilience is required. and you're going to find that you grow new neurons in a much quicker way, which helps you with memory and helps you prevent dementia and Alzheimer's.

1:02:58Darin Olien:It's a physical thing too. Like not always going around obstacles. Right. Especially as it relates to relationships.

1:03:07Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right.

1:03:08Darin Olien:Right? It's, you know, those situations whether there's people working for you or friends, you're like, God, I've got to have this conversation. Oh, yeah. You know, you're like, ugh. And your brain wants to come up with a million reasons to not do it or go around it. But there is no way other than the way through it.

1:03:29Dr. Mindy Pelz:And if you could take the knowledge of neuroplasticity in that moment and say, I don't want to do this. It's so uncomfortable. But you know what it's going to do is grow me new neurons. Because now if I do this, I have a remembrance of a difficult moment. and when the next difficult moment comes up, I'll have the neurons that will remind me I got through it. But if we bypass that, then the brain never knows that it can do hard things. And it'll always revert back to the comfort level that so many people are addicted to.

1:04:03Darin Olien:Yeah, and it's never easy, but you have that history of going, hey, it's not that bad. So I'm just going to... Take a deep breath and sit and move into that. And it's powerful. And it's, you know, then it's, you know, you don't look for it, but in a certain respect, it's beneficial and you feel it.

1:04:28Dr. Mindy Pelz:So in that context, think about it through the messaging for women right now with menopause, is that the messaging is you are suffering because we forgot to tell you you needed hormone replacement therapy. again it works really well for a lot of people but don't let your desire to stop suffering make it that you miss the opportunity to reinvent yourself don't fall asleep to that moment because that's this brain rewiring that's happening is fertile ground for the best version of you to come shining through and if you get too comfortable you might not be so inclined to go to that next best version of you.

1:05:13Darin Olien:Who do you see yourself being now in this other? What are some of the things that are popping up that are, you're starting to see this, this Phoenix rising for you?

1:05:24Dr. Mindy Pelz:It's a really good question. So, well, I can, I can tell it through the example of what I call taking back my little girl. So, you know, age like a girl was really a brand name, but it also turned out to be a perfect name for this book. And I grew up in Malibu and I grew up in, I don't, do you know Sunset Mesa? Yeah. Beautiful neighborhood in the seventies where packed with kids, we were riding skateboards and, and, and it was like a big community of people that would just, the kids would play on the street. And God, there was so much I learned there. And I used to, I was a tomboy and I used to play like when I was nine years old, I would play baseball with like 14 year old boys, which is a big difference when you're in that age.

1:06:12Dr. Mindy Pelz:And I'll never forget one day, a friend of mine who was a father of a family I was close to said, Hey Mindy, I'm going to go out surfing. Do you want me to teach you how to surf? And I was like, yeah, I want to learn how to surf. So we went out to Topanga, we go out there to surf and sitting in the lineup is a boy from my class. And the boy looks at me and he goes, Mindy, what are you doing out here girls don't surf wow and that was the beginning of where i started to betray myself and i was like i came in out of the water i was like no no girls don't surf wow and then i started to look at other athletic activities i'm like girls don't do that girls don't do this because it's 1970s right and so i started to shy away from this whole playful sort of confident little girl that I was.

1:07:01Dr. Mindy Pelz:And I started, I remember going to my mom, who was like a 50s beauty queen. And I remember saying to her, what do I need to wear? Who do I need to be to be more liked by boys? Wow. So I just got a hold of that in the last couple of years. So after the fires kicked me out at the Palisades, I went to Santa Cruz and a friend of mine one day said to me, She's 52. She goes, you want to come surfing with me? And I was like, yes. And so I started surfing. I've been surfing every day since July.

1:07:37Darin Olien:Amazing.

1:07:38Dr. Mindy Pelz:And I go out with my friend and we giggle like two little girls out there and just surf. For two hours every day, I'm surfing. I'm putting that above work. And I'm like, finally, I'm going back to play. That's what this looks like to me. I turned 56 in October, and the house we moved into has a very steep driveway. And I turned to my husband when I looked at the driveway, and I was like, on my 56th birthday, I'm going to get a big wheel, and I'm going to go down this driveway. Right? You know it. You know it. Of course. And, like, spin out. And it was so funny because he was like, honey, you're not going to fit on a big wheel.

1:08:19Dr. Mindy Pelz:You're going to need a helmet. And I was like, stop.

1:08:22Darin Olien:Right.

1:08:22Dr. Mindy Pelz:I went to Amazon. I ordered a big wheel on my 56th birthday. I literally went as fast. He videoed it. Went as fast as I could. I spun out just like I did when I was a kid. And I was so happy. So where I sit now is taking back the parts of me that the culture said was not acceptable. Wow. That's not fun.

1:08:49Darin Olien:That is awesome. and that surfing thing when we can take that moment and start collapsing ourselves and to the recapitulation of reclaiming all of that

1:09:06Dr. Mindy Pelz:I had a moment yesterday do you surf? it was out in Malibu?

1:09:12Darin Olien:yeah

1:09:13Dr. Mindy Pelz:I was at Gabby and Laird's house oh it was an adventure?

1:09:18Darin Olien:Yeah, that was a total.

1:09:19Dr. Mindy Pelz:And getting up there is an adventure, the whole thing. I didn't know I was going to run into Laird. And I was telling Gabby about what I've learned about the neurochemical upside of surfing. And we get out of the podcast and she says, hey, Laird, you got to hear what Mindy learned about surfing.

1:09:37Darin Olien:Laird's probably like, OK, tell me what you learned about surfing.

1:09:41Dr. Mindy Pelz:Exactly. I'm like, shh, shh. Your husband's like a legend. He is a legend. And I'm now going to teach him the neurochemical upside of surfing. He was so lovely. And I tell him about how I had figured out, like, you know, the dopamine and all the neurochemicals you get from surfing. And I said to him, you know, I suck at it. I suck at it. And here's what he said to me. Don't tell yourself that. You don't suck at it. You can always be better at something. And then he went on to tell me, what surfers think? because surfers think that they're writing a board and that they're experts of writing a board, but really surfers are wave readers.

1:10:22Dr. Mindy Pelz:And I left and I thought, well, now there's a full circle moment in my hometown where in the seventh grade, a boy told me girls don't surf. The 56-year-old version of me comes back and gets surfing tips from the legend of surfing himself. It was like, right? I was like, now there's a full circle moment.

1:10:45Darin Olien:Yeah, and it wouldn't have been full circle if you didn't have that experience and then reclaim that.

1:10:51Dr. Mindy Pelz:That's right. But so many, I mean, I think this could apply to men. So many of us lose the play. We become dutiful. Women are so good at being dutiful like your mom. And what I love about this brain change that's happening in menopause is it actually is rewiring you to take yourself back.

1:11:11Darin Olien:Totally.

1:11:11Dr. Mindy Pelz:And that is so cool.

1:11:12Darin Olien:God, that's great. oh it's so good and I don't even realize I bought my mom a house next to my brother 10 years ago and she just loves just being out yeah out in the country just a it's a beautiful thing and and god if more women can get the benefit of what you put together here and and at the end of the day, there's a lot of great information, but what you've applied to yourself of having joy and, and including your family in to this wisdom, fun loving person again, that's, that's the best.

1:12:00Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah. And it feels when you sit in your own self authentically, there is no better feeling than that.

1:12:07Darin Olien:Amen.

1:12:08Dr. Mindy Pelz:It's just like so like I'm so proud of myself. Yeah.

1:12:12Darin Olien:It's just like a relief.

1:12:14Dr. Mindy Pelz:And you don't have to pretend to be anybody anymore. It's freedom.

1:12:19Darin Olien:And that's a message anyone at any time can take in.

1:12:23Dr. Mindy Pelz:Agreed.

1:12:24Darin Olien:Thank you so much for the wisdom that you're put into this book and also the wisdom that you're being for other women.

1:12:32Dr. Mindy Pelz:Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate that. Appreciate you. Thank you. Nice.

1:12:36Darin Olien:Thank you.