How to Fast for Fat Loss, Hormones, and Better Sex | Dr. Mindy Pelz

20:17Lewis Howes:Really? Yeah. So, your hormones are connected to the way you think also. Absolutely. Do you think if a woman is subconsciously knows that they're in a relationship with the wrong person? They married the wrong person or they're trying to have kids with some man that subconsciously they know they're not supposed to. Do you think that their cycle will be off or they won't get pregnant because they think that way? I think it's very possible. Really? There's some interesting studies. I want to go back to the - Because I don't feel safe. Yeah. Wow. You have to feel safe for your hormones to be balanced.

20:50That's why fasting didn't work for women to do all the time. Because people, the body was like - Too stressful. Too stressful. But cycling fasting works for women because you're using the principles of fasting to heal, and you're using the principles of food to nourish yourself so the body feels safe. And you do that in accordance with your hormones and your cycle. And the body's like, I'm safe. I can release weight.

21:15Lewis Howes:I want you to talk about cycling and fasting in a moment, but I think I just cut you off from something you were going to say. So I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second, because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to talk about one study about birth control that was really interesting. So we cycle together. Women do, because as crazy as it sounds, we smell each other. Really? Yeah. So there's a set that we give off and it changes our cycle. That's how powerful a woman's body is and how it will adapt to the environment it is in. So when you smell another woman who has, it'll know when the cycle is happening and it'll sync up your hormones with theirs?

21:56Lewis Howes:Yes. But it's when you're like in families and work environment. When you're constantly with that person. Yes. It's constantly. It's not like you go out into the world. It's not like you see your girlfriend once a month and, oh, we're going to sync up right now. Interesting. They're called pheromones. Pheromones. Isn't that crazy? That's fascinating. Okay, second interesting study. What is the reason behind that pairing of cycles within families or communities? Is there a safety thing when you're both in a cycle at the same time? That's a great question. I always go back to our primal caveman days.

22:29I'm like, why did they... Because that's where you can really see why did we do that?

22:32Lewis Howes:I guess men back in the day used to spread their seed a lot. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was it. There was a lot of... Who knows? To multiple women at once. Yeah. It's true. I mean, in tribal days, it was like, okay, the man with the most money or the doctor or the whatever, the person with the most resources is able to kind of spread their seed to as many people as possible for survival. Yeah. It's possible. I think there's something I wrote in both my books called the hormonal hierarchy. And it works in women because our hormones are more complicated. And the hierarchy looks like this. Wait, you guys aren't simple?

23:15We're not.

23:16Lewis Howes:Okay. Are you just thinking that out right now? We're not. It's so funny. So many men say to me, like, you said it. I didn't say it. I didn't say it. And this is why I love conversations like this. Let's just, yes, we're not simple. And our moods constantly change. Well, I think you can be simple when you understand a lot of this stuff, as opposed to feeling like, I don't know how to understand. Why am I feeling this way? Why are you feeling more stressed this time? When we have awareness and we have an understanding of our body, as a man, as our body, our hormones, or a different environment, things like that, we feel more at peace.

23:51Lewis Howes:It doesn't mean it's going to give us 100 % peace, but we're going to feel like, okay, I have a sense of understanding around it. That's right. I think when women get understanding around their bodies, their cycles, their hormones, like why they're getting weight and why they're losing weight and all these different things, when they're aware of it, they don't feel, they don't have to feel as bad or shameful or anxious or stressed about it. Yes. Right? Yes. That's exactly right. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but at least you have awareness. That's, you nailed it. And this is why I'm trying to open this conversation up so we can all talk about it.

24:22If you look at what we've done historically in our culture is women don't, we don't want to talk about our periods, we don't want to talk about menopause, we don't talk about it. It's like a shameful thing that we have to hide. And that's now changing, which is really great. But if we can bring it to the surface and talk about it, men and women can understand each other, women can understand each other better. So it's so important that we bring it to the light. But here's what I want to go back to this pheromone idea. I've gone off so many different tangents. I know, but you've got me thinking and excited.

24:52So here's what I think happens is in this hormonal hierarchy, in order for your sex hormones to be balanced, you have to be insulin sensitive. You have to have that system right, which is why I think Fast Like a Girl is so many women are getting their cycles back. They're getting pregnant for the first time because I help them see how to do that. But what's in charge of insulin is cortisol. So, like we talked about, well, okay, if cortisol is high, you become more insulin resistant and you have a harder time balancing sex hormones.

25:23Lewis Howes:And cortisol is stress. Cortisol is stress. And is stress based on food stress, lack of sleep stress, environment stress, relationship stress, all of it? All of it. Fasting raises cortisol. Right. Exercise raises cortisol, which is why we have to do it differently as women. Interesting. But at the top of that, all is oxytocin. And this is why I think perhaps we would smell each other and would cycle together. Because women are meant to be in community. Because when oxytocin and we're connecting with each other, then cortisol goes down. This is why you should always let your gal go out on ladies night.

26:02Always. easy. Because now she gets oxytocin, it brings cortisol down, she's more relaxed. And then when she's more relaxed now, all the dieting and exercise that she wants to do is going to work. And when that regulates insulin, now we can balance her hormones. So we're just humans in general, but women are geared towards connection.

26:23Lewis Howes:And so what about, so you mentioned cycling, fasting or fasting while cycling, how do we know, how does a woman know when to fast and how frequently to fast based on their cycle? So in Fast Like a Girl, I created something called the fasting cycle for women. And basically I walk through the whole menstrual cycle. I'll give you the basic principles of it. Break it down for me. Yeah. And, and showed women, this is when you fast is when you don't fast. And then I timed it to six different level fasts. Give me the one-on-one of a menstrual cycle. Okay, this is going to be great. When does it start?

26:58Lewis Howes:Yeah. Or what happens the day it starts versus when it ends? Yeah. Okay, great. And then you got to go home tonight. This is what I learned. Yeah, and let me know how useful this is. Yeah, because it's really interesting. If more men understood this, I think you'd understand the women in your life more. Okay, day one through day 10. Day one is the day you start to... A woman bleeds. A lot of women don't realize that that's day one. So you have to use feminine care products. It's day one. So your hormones actually come crashing down at that point. And for the next 10 days, you're going to specifically build a hormone called estrogen.

27:36Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. So keeping your carb load down, keeping fasting longer, exercising more.

27:46Lewis Howes:Really? Those first 10 days, a woman can do it then. That's when you can fast and exercise more. Yeah. Yeah. Day one through 10. Day one through 10, and that's where keto works. That's where the whole low carb situation worked really well in those first 10 days. The other unique thing about estrogen is when cortisol shows up, she doesn't care as much. She's a little tolerant of cortisol. The other interesting thing for you to know, and anybody who's got a woman in their life, those first 10 days when estrogen builds, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, stimulates dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, BDNF, acetylcholine, glutamate.

28:29So she's going to be happy, focused, more outgoing, want to socialize more.

28:34Lewis Howes:Really? In the first 10 days? Yeah. Give her a couple of days after she starts to bleed, but as she gets closer to day 10. Because usually when it starts, you hear people say a little more moody, right? Yeah. I think that's because we don't mind the back half of our cycle. Really? So when I go all the way through, I'll explain that. Okay, Because Martha, my fiance, she really doesn't get moody. She doesn't get cramping. It's really rare if she feels pain or feels... She might for a couple hours be like, I just want to cut a little more or something like that, but... I don't know. Maybe that's...

29:08Lewis Howes:She's got good hormones. She might be doing this right though. We're not meant to have... PMS is because we're going against our natural rhythm. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Bad menopause symptoms also going against natural rhythms. How many women do you think percentage-wise have intense PMS? Oh, I would say the majority of them. Really? But think about it. Women exercise the same all month long. Women eat the same all month long. Women don't think about, oh, progesterone's coming in. I maybe need to slow down my life a little bit right now. We don't talk like that until this moment in time. And this is what, again, another thing I'm trying to open up this conversation.

29:48So we have been trying to diet and exercise and live life very much like a man. Right.

29:54Lewis Howes:Especially in the coastal cities, you see, you know, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you see women going to the gym five, six days a week or getting up early and intense yoga, hot yoga every single morning. It's like, you got to get it in and you got to work hard. And it sounds like yes, for a period of the month, but not the entire month. Exactly. Or for part of the week, but not every day. Exactly. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yes. Got it. And that is so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. But our hormones pulse in and out in a 28 to 32 day period.

30:31You all have one hormone. You have testosterone.

30:34Lewis Howes:That's it. That's it. How many hormones do women have? We have, well, sex hormones. Let's like, so we have three, but you also have estrogen, but you make testosterone. It goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. So the conversion happens in the brain. So all you have to think about is make more testosterone and you get it every 15-ish minutes. Every 15 minutes? Yeah. Just pulses in. Really? Hormones are always pulsing. So they pulse in every 15 minutes and then it goes away and then it pulses in and then it goes away. Naturally. Yeah. Yeah. You're highest in the morning. Testosterone's highest in the morning.

31:09Women -

31:10Lewis Howes:That's why men usually have extra sex drive in the morning, right? That's exactly why men have a higher sex drive in the morning. Right, right. And it's a good time to work out. Is it the best time to work out, you think? Yeah, because you have all that testosterone. Energy, right? Yeah, and muscle building. So it's better to work out for muscle building and fat loss in the morning for men than it is at night, would you say? Clinically. Now, I want to be... Everyone's different. Yeah, I've done this enough time and I know the men will be like... I work out at midnight and I burn fat and I got a six pack.

31:43Lewis Howes:Right. If you look at the rules of hormones for a man... Well, all of us, it's better to work out in the morning because the other thing we both get is spikes of cortisol in the morning. And if you use cortisol by working out, you won't store it as fat. Right. For both men and women. You feel relaxed. You feel more calm. You get more dopamine probably from the process of working out, I'm assuming. That's right. But if you use testosterone for you all, when testosterone comes in, if you're lifting weights, you're going to help build that muscle more. We only get testosterone. Check this out. We only get testosterone, a big surge of it, day 11 to day 15.

32:22Lewis Howes:You don't get it for 10 days? Yeah. Really? It comes in in a big surge right in ovulation. So it's a great time for a woman to build muscle. You're going to notice her libido is going to go up during that time. She's going to want to have sex during that. She's going to want to have sex more then. That one is like mind blowing, right? How many men and women are a mismatch? And again, this is purely obviously a heterosexual moment. But how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched right? Right. But yet, do we understand that women get that surge of testosterone in that five-day period?

32:59Lewis Howes:That's interesting. How do you time that up though? It's like, okay, day one, she's got her period. She started bleeding, right? And then you think, okay, 11 days from now, let me put a mental note or put it in my calendar. Okay, this is going to be the day, right? That doesn't sound so like sexy though. And when you think about it, let me like mark this on my calendar and really be aware of when she's going to be available at the best time. Well, so here's what you can do is, I mean, I'm not saying don't have sex the rest of the month. I'm just saying you got a shot, a big shot at that point.

33:32Like, so just be aware of that. Sure, sure.

33:34Lewis Howes:The woman may be more aroused. That's right. She might have more desire. Naturally. Yeah. And she can't even control it. She can't. I mean, well, the body is surging with the hormones, right? Sure, yes. I mean, I guess you can mentally block it, but the body is naturally more turned on. The body is naturally more turned on. Okay. Yes, you can control anything, but I'm just saying the body, you can't block the hormone. I was thinking of all these, this visual of all these women. Jumping on men, ripping their clothes off. That's right. It's not like that. I can't control it. It's not like that. Yes.

34:10Lewis Howes:But the body, unless you, I guess, medically or put some medication, you can't block these hormones, the way you're saying. That's right. Well, I mean, there are situations like birth control pill has - That's blocking it. Yeah, has manipulated it. And you're taking a medication to block. It's changed it. It's synthetically directing it.

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35:54Lewis Howes:Visit strayer.edu to learn more. No-cost Gen Eds provided by Strayer University affiliate Sophia Learning. Eligibility rules apply. Connect with Strayer University for details. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Shev and has many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street North in Arlington, Virginia. And when a woman has been on birth control for multiple decades, what challenges might come up in their bodies with their hormones? Well, this is a big, a major issue for women, especially the younger women, is because it takes a couple of years for the pattern of the brain and the ovaries to get to know each other.

36:41So if we come in with birth control a year after a woman started her period, there's never an internal, innate sense of the body. And then we keep women on birth control until menopause and we take her off of menopause. And now she has a serious hormonal issue because she never learned that pattern. Wow. So that's one. Second one is horrible for the microbiome. It decimates the microbiome. And you need your microbiome to make serotonin. You need it for immune system. You need your microbiome to break down estrogen.

37:11Lewis Howes:So when you take that pill, and it's like a daily pill for like, what, 10, 12 days or something? Yeah. It's on a month. It's like half the month. You take it for two weeks? Yeah. You have a cycle according to them. When you take it, you take it daily for like two weeks or whatever it is. What is in that pill and what is it doing to your gut microbiome? Yeah. And what it's doing to your brain. Yeah. Well, so it's controlling hormones for you. So you're adding in hormones into your body. So it's doing the controlling instead of the body and naturally doing it. Is that good? My opinion is no, but we have to really think about what the alternative is.

37:50We don't have any... And here's a question for you. I asked my 21-year-old son this recently. Um, it's, it, it's what has become standard for women to be the ones in charge of birth control. Um, and when you look at the birth control pill, it is, it is an exogenously from the outside controlling our hormones, which is setting us up for a whole bunch of hormonal problems. There's some new research where they're looking for a, looking at a pill for a man that would

38:20Lewis Howes:change, change the semen, the sperm, right? They change sperm. Huh. Now, would you take it? I wouldn't take it. Why wouldn't you take it? Why would I want to block my body's natural way of being? Then the same as goes for women. Yeah, I'm not saying women should take it. I know, but that's the... that is... And I also... I wouldn't take it unless they were like, listen, there are zero side effects. And right when you got off of it, you would be perfectly back to where your body was in sink and your sperm would be just as optimized or healthy or powerful, whatever it is, and there wouldn't be, you know, you wouldn't hurt your sperm later.

39:01Lewis Howes:Yeah. Then I'd be like, okay, well, if there's decades of research and this is proven and babies are still okay afterwards, you know, then I'd be like, oh, maybe. I don't know if I was 20 or something, but it's not something I would take right now. So that's what's happening to women. Really? Is that we have manipulated our hormones and this is why women's health is in a really disastrous place right now. So I totally hear what you're saying and I would agree like, yeah, your logic is right, but we've been doing this to women forever. Why... I mean, this is probably a whole other subject, but why is birth control such a normal thing if it's so bad for women's bodies?

39:45Yeah. Why do we do it? It's because the alternative is nobody wants to have a child.

39:52Lewis Howes:Young. A young child. Yeah. And... What's more painful? Hurting your body for decades and maybe a lifetime. Having a child young, I get it's a big risk and there's a lot of pain and pressure that could come to that along with a lot of beauty and wonder and magic as well, but at what price? Somewhere along the line, we decided that the woman was in charge of the birth control process and we didn't think... And I will say this with as much kindness as I can. Yes. And I'm not here to judge people. Yeah, no, me neither. My sisters were both on birth control for a long time. That's one of the reasons why I asked because one of my sisters was on birth control, I I think for two decades.

40:32Lewis Howes:And she couldn't get pregnant. Right. And it was devastating. For like four or five years, she was trying and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up. She was just like in tears for months. Sad that she wasn't able to have a child. And there were some other complications. I can't remember the terminology of things. It was something she had. But it wasn't in her cards anymore. And she was in her late 30s and she was devastated. And then she got off of birth control and just said, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to be a mom. And then four or five years later, she was able to have a child.

41:08Lewis Howes:It kind of magically happened. And now she's got an amazing one and a half year old son. So it's a beautiful thing now, but it was really scary and painful for many, many years. And it's sad to see. And it affected her hormones and different things. It took time for the body to re-regulate. That's it, exactly. I mean, you just painted the picture that so many women are struggling with. And so, when we come in with an outside source to manipulate our hormones, when we get off of that outside source, we don't have a natural rhythm. And that's honestly one of the things that I'm seeing with Fast Psycho Girl when I go and read my reviews and see how people are responding to it, is I just gave a lifestyle that allowed women to get back into routine with their hormones.

41:57Right. So it's awesome. She has it now. It took her four to five years. But what I'm hoping is that we can use lifestyle as a way to give that rhythm back.

42:06Lewis Howes:Right. And you said between day 11 and 15, that's when there's a surge of testosterone for women in their cycle. What happens after day? And that's when they can be working out harder. that's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more well so day one through day 10 you can do the hard workouts um day 11 to day 15 you get the most amount of testosterone you'll ever get you have the most amount of estrogen you'll ever have and a little bit of progesterone so let's talk about that period because it's a really cool period so testosterone is libido and motivation and drive estrogen is she's gonna want to talk to you she wants to have a car so if you if you if you want to have sex with her you better talk to her first because she's during that time she's got estrogen she wants to verbally process with you um so her brain especially late at night when you just want to sleep yeah her brain is like on fire and then she's got progesterone so she's a little bit calm so that is i call it i called it in the book the manifestation phase because i was like oh we are super our superpowers like we put on our hormonal superpower cape and we could manifest a baby we can manifest a raise we can manifest some new project at work because all our hormones show up then so for those four days is it just you're sharper you're more focused you're more energized you're clear you're like goal oriented during those days you know what you want to create that's how we should be so women listening that are like i don't feel like that i'm going to ask you to look at are you are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones.

43:40Lewis Howes:Okay. So, let's go to your fiance, who is like, this is kind of, you know, her period and menstrual cycle is easy. She's probably, if she looked at it, is living in accordance with her hormones. She is. She is. Yeah. She's doing amazing. Yeah. She's got great family relationships, great friendships. She's got a meaningful work that she loves. She eats very well, you know, very clean. She rests well. she's... And she's positive and joyful. She has an attitude of just gratitude and giving and thoughtfulness and accepting. She doesn't hold on to grudges. She has a calm mind in the sense that it's not a rigid mind.

44:23Lewis Howes:She lets go of things. That's amazing. She creates boundaries and lets go of things. She forgives people, so she doesn't have a lot of stress and tightness internally. I think that allows her to flow and not be in pain or have PMS or be like cramping a lot or off cycles. You nailed it. I mean, you just gave the formula for oxytocin. Really? So she gets a lot of oxytocin is what I just heard. All day. Yeah. So it's balancing everything else out. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So that's day 11 to 15. Yeah. Day 10, day 11 through 15 is that ovulation manifestation period. Lifestyle wise, this is something interesting that I've been really deep into thinking is if women have the most amount of testosterone, then why don't we use that to build muscle?

45:12So maybe you've had him on your show. Do you know Tony Horton?

45:15Lewis Howes:I know Tony. I don't know him that well, but I haven't had him on yet. Yeah. You should bring him on. He's a funny guy. Yes. So he and I created a program together last year, a fitness program called PowerSync 60. Oh. And we took his genius of like putting workout programs together with my knowledge of hormones. And so it's out there in the world. You can find that. Very cool. But I brought it to him. I'm like, why don't you have a monthly calendar for women's workouts? Why do we have a weekly calendar? And so we put a lot of weightlifting in during that time. That's the time you want to live heavy weights for women so that you can build more muscle.

45:51Lewis Howes:That's interesting. Okay. So after day 15, then what? Okay. So then after day 15, and then also fasting during that manifestation, keep it low. You don't want it really high. You've got, you know, eat more like foods that support good gut health. Be mindful of your liver. Maybe chill out on the alcohol a little bit so you can break all those hormones down. Then you come out of ovulation and all the hormones crash again. So it's kind of like this is, you'll notice it in our attitude. We have like, we're up, we're down, we're up, we're down because that's how our hormones go. So when the hormones go low, you can fast more.

46:28So that's a time where you can go into some longer fasts you can do harder workouts like day 11 to day 19. i'm sorry day day 15 16 to day 19.

46:40Lewis Howes:you can fast longer so you can go what 10 to 12 hour fasts or well longer is like 16 36 48 48 hour fast okay so during those days you can go longer you can go longer yeah you can go two days without that without you wow yep and what do you consider a fast uh anything that doesn't raise your blood sugar so what can you consume yeah so water mineral water uh teas coffee uh you can do mct oil if you want to do butter in your coffee that works yeah you just need to make sure it doesn't raise your blood sugar okay but so there's actually apple cider vinegar water if you want do electrolytes you can do electrolytes yeah it just can't have a sugar or a sweetener of any kind of salt like element salt is really Element tea is amazing.

47:26Lewis Howes:You can do that during a fast. Yeah. Yes. Do you know that element tea was actually created for fasters? Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. I love it. I do too. The idea was to put it in water when fasters so that they're getting those magnesium, sodium, and potassium so the body can fast better. Interesting. So you can do a few packs of that a day. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. So that's day 16 to 19. Yeah. And then day 20 hits and everything changes. Is that the end of the cycle? Yeah. So day 20 hits and progesterone appears. Okay. So progesterone is the outlier. She does not like stress. So you shouldn't be fasting.

48:05You shouldn't be pushing your workouts. You should slow your social calendar down if you can. You should slow down your workouts. That's more yoga, Pilates, hiking. Make that your recovery time. That's not a time to push extreme anything. In the book I call it the nurture phase because I want women to nurture themselves. But if we go back to the libido topic, it also can be a great time if you want to connect with the women in your life during that time, foot rubs, kind comments, shoulder rubs, like gentle. Be gentle with us and you will get a better version of us.

48:46Lewis Howes:Right. I mean if you do that every day with a woman you'll probably get a better version of us. Yeah, probably. The week is the one that really matters. If you talk kindly, if you rub it back every day, it's probably going to be a better day. And so what is, okay, so this is a 20-day cycle, menstrual cycle for women. Well, and then you do that until she bleeds, until she starts. So then it's 10 or 12 more days or eight days later until she bleeds. Then it starts all over again. It starts all over again. So the women that are having really heavy PMS, the women, a lot of menopausal women that get a lot of clotting when they start to bleed.

49:19they have really bad periods it was the week before they didn't mind really yeah so that's if you if you bring and oh here's the other thing about progesterone you have to bring glucose up so this is why almost every woman i talk to um and i know there's a few outliers out there because i'll get that question um but we crave carbs we crave chocolate we don't want to we we want to sit on the couch we're not as like outgoing we don't and but we've taught ourselves to push through that time. So there's a reason you crave carbs. You've got to bring that glucose up so that you have enough fuel source for progesterone to be made.

50:00Lewis Howes:So what are the key steps then during that 10-day period, or I guess really during the whole cycle, to optimize your lifestyle for hormones? Yeah. Well, it would be in the front half of it. Let's make it as simple as possible. The front half of your cycle, all the extremes that you want to do. Whatever it is, work, working out, dieting, fasting typically does better. In the back half of your cycle, there needs to be more nurturing and more recovery. It's interesting because you would think as a man that when your woman starts her period, that's when you would want to take it easy on her or like make sure she relaxes and chills out.

50:41Lewis Howes:That's what I would think. Like, okay, she's on her period. She's probably going to be moody or whatever. That might be the way of thinking. But what I'm hearing you say is like, that's the time to push things like more than normal. That's the time to like get organized, work out, you know, fast and to be more in the drive phase versus the nurture phase. The nurture happens before. Right before it. Right before it. So like - Days or period starts, like let's get into action. Well, the first two days, give us a couple of days. Okay, I'm just trying to get clear here. Trying to get clear here. Like the first two days, remember, we went from progesterone really building, a little bit of estrogen comes in, and then our uterine lining sheds.

51:23Lewis Howes:Okay, okay. So the first two days, we're detoxing. Yeah, and those are kind of magical days. Like we have access to both sides of our brain. So we may still feel a little more inner. But on day three, we start coming outward more, and that's when we can push it more. So good to know. So the day the menstrual cycle starts, when she starts bleeding, wait a couple of days until you get things into action is what you're saying. That's right. Okay. Yeah.

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52:37Lewis Howes:Visit Strayer.edu to learn more. No-cost Gen Eds provided by Strayer University affiliate Sophia Learning. Eligibility rules apply. Connect with Strayer University for details. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Shev and has many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street North in Arlington, Virginia. This is good. This is very helpful, I think. I mean, what else should men know or women know about their cycle? I think the biggest challenge I'm seeing and why we have all these hormonal problems is that just women need more rest and recovery. And it's a really hard concept because...

53:20Lewis Howes:How do you tell a woman that in the modern world today to say, women, you need more rest and recovery. You shouldn't be pushing as hard. You shouldn't be as driven in certain days of the month. And that's not what your body wants. Yeah. It's hard for, I would think that it's hard for a modern woman who is very independent, who makes their own money, who's got a great job, who is in control of their life. Maybe a little too much for their homeowner's liking. It's probably hard for them to hear that. Yeah, it is. And I am one of those women, just so we're clear. Like, I'm not here, like, prophetizing a Puritan lifestyle.

53:58I'm here saying that what we did to keep up with the patriarchal world, which to me just means the power to be at the table with men and be there where we deserve to be, is we forgot that we do need more rest and recovery. So we get to choose where that is. So let me give you a couple examples. that week before your cycle for women, maybe you don't, if you have a lot at work, then don't tack on a whole bunch, a new workout and really stress yourself working out. And don't tack on a fast. Don't tack on like rigid diet routines. There needs to be something that's nurturing you during that time.

54:37Lewis Howes:Don't go out every night of the week. That's right. And if you do that, then you can come into the front half of your cycle and you're going to be, you're working with your hormones so you actually will be more powerful i mean and again let's just if we look at hormones we have three hormones and these three hormones are are making all kinds of neurotransmitters in our body so on a neurochemical level we're a little more superior just saying okay if you are in alignment with those hormones that's right but we've never been in alignment with it. Wow. Well, maybe we have in the past, right? Maybe primal days.

55:15Lewis Howes:Right, exactly. So, when women are in alignment with their hormones, they are unstoppable. Bingo. But when they're out of alignment, they're just hurting themselves. Absolutely. A thousand percent. Wow. This is fascinating. Right? So, but we do everything very similar in lifestyle to men and we need to realize that we are living in a different body. A lot of people don't want to hear that, though. They don't want to hear that. It could be as simple as the week before your period. Get to sleep a little bit earlier. Do more yoga, and then go to work and kick butt at work. But maybe if there's a big project that you have control over, could you start it at the front half of your cycle, not at the back half?

56:02Lewis Howes:It just goes back to know thyself. That's right. Know thyself, study yourself, understand how your body, your mind, everything works. Be a student of yourself and your health for sure. That's right. So there's three hormones that women have, right? And there's one that men have. Well, one, you have two, because you have estrogen too. It just is made in the brain. Gotcha. The main one that's being generated is testosterone. And the three for women are? Progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. And testosterone, okay. So what I'm hearing you say is that men should fast differently than women. Yeah.

56:37Lewis Howes:And men, can we fast daily? Is there a time where we should stop fasting? Yes. Can we do intermittent fasting every day for years? Should we take a break, you know, weekend? What should we be doing? Yeah. So again, let's go back to our primal friends and let's think about them. So you can fast. You don't have anything to cycle it to. You can do really well with fasting and you just have to have moments where you're feasting too. So let's go. The man comes out of the cave in the primal days. He goes hunting for food. He's now clicked over. Maybe it takes a long time to make a kill. So he's clicked over into that ketogenic energy system.

57:18He finally makes a kill, comes back home, brings it to the cave and cooks it up and feasts. So if men stay in a fasted state all the time without stepping out and eating, eventually it'll catch up with you. So women, we just have to do that according to our hormones. Because if we go back to our primal friends, it was around right before we got our period that we were probably sequestered off. We don't have documentation of this, but hypothetically we were probably sequestered off. And we're more in a nurture phase. So we weren't out doing the kill.

57:55Lewis Howes:Right. When you were bleeding, you weren't like going off work on the first few days. That's right. But probably once like the days leading up to our bleed, then we would bleed. And then we probably went and perhaps joined the pack to go make a kill. We're like so primal. That's fascinating. Yeah. Now, I wanted to go back to the women having these superpowers and having this kind of manifesting masters when you're in alignment with your hormones. What do men and women need to do for their brains to be wired for abundance hormonally? How can we wire our hormones to be connected to our brains to see the world differently?

58:38Lewis Howes:Yes. To make better decisions and to attract opportunities, abundance, and good things into our life better? Oh, I love this question. That was so good. Well, let's start with women. For starters, we do exactly what we've been talking about. We have to know how to live a lifestyle that is in accordance with our hormones. And do you have key tenets of this lifestyle? Do you have like... Yeah. It would be fasting, food, working out, sleep, and probably socializing. I'm going to put socializing and work. Those six things, if you could time them and know how to do them with your hormones, you are absolutely increasing your ability to attract more abundance in your life.

59:28Lewis Howes:And these six things kind of create your environment. That's right. Everything within your environment of your day-to-day life. Yeah. If those things are in alignment with healthy habits and healthy living and healthy choices, I'm assuming you're going to feel better. That's right. But if one of them or a few of them are off or all of them are off, your hormones are probably going to be off too. That's right. Right. So what's the consequence of your hormones being off? We can talk about PCOS, weight gain, menopausal symptoms. I mean, there's a lot. PMDD is a new concept that's just being talked about.

1:00:02What is that? Really bad premenstrual symptoms. Okay. So all of that that we have fancy names for, I equate to we're just living out of accordance with our hormones. So when you're physically suffering, you're not a money magnet for sure. But if we look at what happens to women when they go through menopause, we start to lose one hormone or component of estrogen called estradiol. When we lose that, we lose all those neurotransmitters that I talked about. And we react to stress a lot more acutely. Our ability to hold on to information becomes more difficult because we lose BDNF because we lost estradiol.

1:00:44So, again, that's why the menopause reset. I talk about perimenopause and postmenopause because there's another level of lifestyle that needs to come in there to accommodate all of the loss of neurochemicals. I mean, it's really like it's intricate.

1:00:59Lewis Howes:Yes. But once you understand it, like, again, a woman becomes unstoppable. Does that make sense? That's powerful, yeah. Right? And what's the best way that a man or woman can clean up their insulin system? Fasting. Fasting. Fasting. That's why it's taken over the world. I know. What's the downside to fasting? If you do it too much, for women, it changes to our hormones. So that's why I wrote the whole book. So it's almost like women need to be very mindful when they start fasting. How and when? Yeah. for how long and they need to test it a little bit more. Yeah. It sounds like. Yeah. Don't just jump in and try to do it like men would try.

1:01:43Yeah.

1:01:44Lewis Howes:Because there's certain apps that might just say, okay, just go for 20 hours a day or 16 hours a day and just do it every day and rank yourself amongst your peers and try to compete. Yeah. And that's probably not the way that women should be thinking about it, right? That's right. Nobody should be competing in fast and many. Right, right. Exactly. Even men. But there's the gamification of apps that are like, okay, your score is up. Keep going and go a little longer. Yeah. So, you know, it's like that whole gamification can be tricky psychologically for people. Yes. So, for women, I'm hearing you're fasting, but be very mindful and test it and track it.

1:02:16Yes. Track it, test it, experiment. I mean, the fast like a girl has become the manual for women, so it's all in there. You can go to my YouTube. I have a bunch of things there. And I'm just saying that because we just consolidated it in one location. Yes. Yep. But then I say this all the time, then test it like you said. Test it for you.

1:02:39Lewis Howes:Test it. Test it. See if it works. You might find you can fast a little longer during ovulation than my recommendation. If it works, then great. But the problem was is that we didn't have this conversation when fasting took over the world. So all these people started to lose weight and women started to lose hair, they started to lose cycles, their thyroids crashed because they weren't given the formula and now they have the formula. That's kind of scary, right? When fasting kind of took over really in the last four to five years, I would say it's got more popularized, right? And how many women were coming to you saying that this doesn't work?

1:03:16Hundreds of thousands. Really? So this is actually really interesting. So I was the first one. So I found out about fasting, loved it, It started, and I was about 44 years old at the time. I'm 54 now. And I was like, okay, this is great. And all of a sudden I started dropping weight. My moods improved. Like every perimenopausal symptom I had went away. And then I started to notice like anxiety crept up. I started going into menopause at 45. And I was like, this doesn't seem right. The later I go at like the average age for a woman going into menopause is like 52. So I ran a Dutch hormone test on myself.

1:03:57And my hormones were completely tanked because I was fasting too much.

1:04:01Lewis Howes:Wow. What were you doing at that time? For how long? Oh, I was doing like one meal a day. I was doing three-day water fasts a couple times a year, like three, four, five times a year. I felt so good. And that's the problem. You do feel so good. That first year, because your body's getting rid of all the dead fat cells and the toxic cells. You're flushing it out, right? Yeah. But then your hormones weren't feeling good. Right. When did you start to feel the negative symptoms of fasting? It was about a year of doing all that. A year in. Yeah. Your body was like, all right, this is too much. Yeah.

1:04:32So then I broke the menstrual cycle down and I was like, okay, wait, wait, progesterone doesn't do well with cortisol. Wait, progesterone needs glucose up. Okay, I got to change that. And then I went to the ovulation part of my cycle and I was like, wait, I should be focusing more on my gut and my liver. How can I support those with food? And I started to change that. And then literally I was like almost in menopause at 45 and my cycle came back.

1:04:57Lewis Howes:You were almost in menopause at 45, so you just weren't having your period anymore. It was gone. It was gone. For how long? It was about three or four months. Okay. So you were like, I'm feeling good. My body is looking good, but something's off. Yeah. And anxiety was through the roof. I couldn't sit on the couch and relax anymore because progesterone makes GABA. And so what I did is I killed progesterone. And then progesterone is what allows that uterine lining to shed. I wasn't making the neurotransmitter to calm me. So anxiety was showing up for the first time in my life. But I loved the weight I was.

1:05:36Lewis Howes:Yeah, you were like, I look great. I feel strong. That's right. Interesting. So when did it start to come back? Like when did the cycle come back and you realized you started testing different things? It was within 90 days. Wow. And then I got really excited about it and I was like, well, let me test it on my patients. So we started testing it on the patients that were hormonal hot messes, and they all started coming back within 90 days. They're like, oh my gosh, all that stuff you had been giving me supplements for, they're all balanced now. Then I was like, okay, let me test it on women that are struggling with pregnancy.

1:06:06That one blew me away. So I had a couple of staff members that were struggling to get pregnant, and I was like, I think this might be the cure or the thing that will help you. I don't know. Let's try it.

1:06:18Lewis Howes:Fasting or taking it off fasting? The fasting like a girl. So knowing how to go in and out at the right time. All of them got pregnant within a month. Wow. And you go to my YouTube videos, you go to my reviews on Amazon. I mean, we've been able to reproduce this over and over again. So that... And then I started teaching it on YouTube. That's cool. And you have a channel. I really looked at YouTube, my YouTube community as like an incubator. So I would say, hey, you all go, this is what I think is working. This is years ago. Go try it. And then millions of women all over the world flooded our channel and just started saying like, hey, this is working.

1:06:56So we just took inventory of what was working and not working. And that's why I think Fast Like a Girl is resonating. That's amazing. We tested it all.

1:07:04Lewis Howes:That's so cool. It's really cool. It's really fun. What do you think is the hardest thing about getting our hormones in alignment and healthier? Well, the first is understanding it. So this is why... Even if we have all this information, because a lot of us understand, eat less, eat better things and we'll feel better. But we eat poorly, we eat sugar, we overeat, we overconsume. You know, we're influenced by marketing, by abundance of it, whatever it might be. Lack of motivation, whatever it might be, we're influenced. We're out at parties, you know, whatever it is. It's the modern world.

1:08:10Lewis Howes:of motivation? Is it our environment? Is it our family's habits that have passed down to us that now we're just in routine from what they've done? Is it our friends? Is it just we have too much access to devices that are marketing to us these things and causing stress? Is it everything? It's all of that. I mean, this is why I say we're at a mismatch with the modern world. But if we just take, this is why I want to simplify it because it would be easy to listen to everything you just said and think, well, I'm screwed then. Like, okay, that's impossible. And I'm saying that it's not impossible and you should take steps.

1:08:53So let's start with the food step. The processed food is made to make you addicted to it. So how do we change that alone? Okay, well, if I can get you to fast, I actually can get you to start to feel better without food. And your microbiome will change and your food choices will change. If we start there, we start to clean up the hormonal system. Because the food industry is working to keep you addicted to food.

1:09:22Lewis Howes:Yes. So they have no incentive for you to not be addicted to their food. To fast. There's no incentive. There's no incentive to fast. They don't make any money. That's right. But if I can get you to fast, I can change your microbiome, I can get you feeling good there, you're going to make better food choices. And there's tons of research. My favorite story that I tell all the time right now is a man came to me. He was 300 pounds. And he said, I really need your help. And I said, okay, tell me what's going on. He said, I need to lose weight. I said, okay, why? He said, I need to stay alive for my family.

1:09:56I was like, I'm in. How can I help you? I said, what's your biggest hurdle? He goes, I'm food addicted. I can't, I eat, I drink 12 sodas a day. I can't get off the buffalo wings. I can't get off the fast food. Well, those, those are making you addicted. They want you to be addicted. So I took his addicted food and I just started to have him eat it within a certain period. First month I had got him where he was only eating that horrible food within like a 10, 12 hour period. The rest was fasting. First month drinking 12 sodas, eating buffalo wings. He lost 13 pounds.

1:10:28Lewis Howes:Just by eating it within a window. Just by compressing it into one window. Second month, I said to him, can you just do the soda outside the house? Just don't bring the soda inside the house. Stay with this eating window. I think he was doing an eating window of eight hours by that time. So he's going 16 hours of fasting. He lost nine pounds. Next month, I still haven't taken much away from him. I had him add protein in. He started to add protein in. He lost 15 pounds. We did this routine. And then I got him into some longer fasts. We got him like it was it was just a process. He I just saw him for the first time.

1:11:03He's down one hundred and seventy five pounds.

1:11:06Lewis Howes:Wow. That's incredible. We started with when he ate, not what he ate. It's it's I didn't recognize him. It blew me away when I saw him. I was like crying. We were both crying. And all we did is change when he ate. And that was the door in to change everything else. Wow. Does he still eat certain unhealthy foods or is he now like, OK, I know the value. of these nutritional foods, and I'm going to eat more of these and less of the bad foods. So he still eats... He's still... Every once in a while... The majority of his diet is really good now. Yeah. 80%, 90%. 80%, 90%. Because he started craving different foods.

1:11:41Lewis Howes:Your taste buds change. You're Michael Byrne. You're craving different things. They want healthier things. That's right. But what we came up with the help... There was a team of us that started rallying around him like an exercise specialist and a life coach and everything. and the life coach came up with this idea of like, okay, if you're going to go off your diet, just don't do it two days in a row. You can do it one, but then the next day you have to clean it up. Just two turns into five. That's right. You know, two just like, well, let me just roll into this the next day. I thought that was a really good, I was like, that's a really good rule.

1:12:13Just don't do it two days in a row.

1:12:15Lewis Howes:That's really good. Dr. Mindy, I have so many more questions I want to ask you, but we've got to wrap things up here in a minute. So I've got a couple of final ones. Um, if you guys are fascinated by this, uh, listening on audio or YouTube and you want another episode with Dr. Mindy to go in deeper, cause I didn't even ask most of my questions, then leave a yes below for another episode or part two type in yes, or another episode in the comments and share your biggest takeaway as well. Uh, in this episode so far, what has shocked you or what has helped you, or what's the thing you've underlined the most from this conversation?

1:12:50Lewis Howes:Leave that in a comment below. So your book fast, like a girl, uh, sold over 400 ,000 copies in the first year so far is helping so many women get healthier, you know, lose, lose the right times, types of weight, balance their hormones, um, you know, look younger, feel better, all these different things. And so I want people to get your book fast, like a girl, a woman's guide to using the healing power of fasting to burn fat, boost energy and balance hormones. make sure you get this for a friend get it as a gift for a woman in your life uh they will thank you and send them a link to this episode as well you also have the menopause reset get rid of your symptoms and feel like your younger self again so make sure you guys check out this you've got a few other books on your website your youtube channel has at the time of posting this we'll probably have a million subscribers by now thank you're posting five days a week great content so people can search over on your YouTube channel and on your podcast to get a lot more information on this.

1:13:52Lewis Howes:We barely scratched the surface. I'm fascinated. This is inspiring stuff. Is there anything else we can send people to to support you two today before the final couple of questions? Oh, you're so sweet. Yeah. I mean, again, play with the principles. So YouTube's my passion project. I pour my time and soul into that. So go there, get the books and leave Leave comments on my YouTube and what you want to know more about, because I do have a team there that's scouring that. So I think that's probably the best place to go. That's exciting. Very cool. And the YouTube link is... What's the link there?

1:14:28It's just my name, Dr. Mindy Pels.

1:14:30Lewis Howes:Dr. Mindy Pels over on YouTube. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's the last day on earth for you, many years away. You get to live as long as you want, but it's the last day. And you get to create and experience all the things you want to in this life for the rest of your life. But for whatever reason on this last day, you've got to take all of your work with you, your books, this conversation, all your YouTube videos, they all go with you when you pass away. But you get to leave behind one final message and this is all we would have of yours.

1:15:08Lewis Howes:and this final message is your three truths, the three lessons you would leave behind. And we wouldn't have access to anything else. What would those three truths be for you? Well, the first one goes for both men and women, but I really want women to hear this. You are more powerful than you've been taught. Your body is a freaking miracle. It can heal. It can adapt. It knows what it's doing. Trust it. That would be the first one. My second truth would be people matter. Who you surround yourself with, who you connect with. Don't isolate yourself. Don't surround yourself with people that bring you down.

1:15:52People matter. Hormonally, they matter. And then my third one would be be a lifelong learner. Just keep learning. Stay curious. Stay curious. We live in a world where we want to cancel everybody out because they don't think like us. But the people that don't think like us actually can help us deepen our thoughts. So stay curious to all information.

1:16:15Lewis Howes:Oh, those are great truths. Dr. Mindy, I want to acknowledge you for a moment because you've been doing this work for over 25 years, but it really hasn't been until the last year after 25 years where all this stuff has taken off into the world in a bigger way. Yeah. So I want to acknowledge you for dedicating most of your life to this work, to helping women and men, but doing it where, you know, maybe you're only working with your local community for many of those years. Yeah. And it wasn't being spread to the masses and it wasn't selling hundreds of thousands of copies of your book, but you showed up daily to learn, to try new things and to serve people.

1:16:57Lewis Howes:And that has made a big impact on the world by your commitment and dedication. So I really acknowledge you for your lifelong service to healing and health. It's really powerful and it's helping a lot of people right now. So I'm grateful we got to connect and I hope we get to do this again. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I'd love to come back and thank you. I appreciate your kind words. And like we started off, I've been a fan of your podcast for years. I appreciate it. I really feel like conversations like this can really impact people's lives if you just sit with the information and see what resonates.

1:17:33Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

1:17:35Lewis Howes:Of course. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Trusting yourself. trusting your own inner guidance. There you go, Dr. Moody. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

1:18:13Lewis Howes:Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I wanna remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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