How to ACTUALLY Lose Belly Fat (Based on Science) | Dr. Mindy Pelz

Key Takeaway

Start with a fasting window you can sustain: delay breakfast by one hour, hold it for three to four days, then extend it another hour once it feels easy. This gradual approach can help you reach a 13- to 15-hour overnight fast without forcing an extreme reset. Pair it with an earlier final meal when possible, prioritizing protein and minimally processed foods so your energy, cravings, and blood sugar feel steadier.

Episode Overview

Dr. Mindy Pelz and Jay Shetty discuss fasting, belly fat, blood-sugar regulation, protein, dietary fats, cravings, and the influence of stress and processed foods on metabolic health. Pelz emphasizes adapting nutrition to personal goals, lifestyle, and—particularly for women—body rhythms rather than relying on rigid calorie or protein targets.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to ACTUALLY Lose Belly Fat (Based on Science) | Dr. Mindy Pelz from On Purpose. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

What is the worst mistake someone can make while fasting that will make them gain weight? Okay, this is really great because there's not a ones sentence answer. So, the biggest mistake for starters is doing the same fast the same way every single day over and over and over again. Wow. We were meant to vary men and women were meant to vary our fasts. And here's the way you look at it is that the human body will adapt to what we call a hormetic stress. A little tiny stressor that puts it into a forced adaptation.

So you go without food, all of a sudden you're like, your body's like, "Wait a second, no food's coming in. We're going to need to go find that food that we stored years ago." And so it will go to the fat storage and burn that fat. If you do that same style of fasting, maybe it's one meal a day over and over and over again, the body gets really smart and it's like, "Wait, no food's coming in. I only get a little bit of food every single day.

I'm going to slow my metabolism down." So, the biggest mistake that people make is that they've got to vary their fasts. Vary the length. You don't fast every day. It's what we call feast famine cycling and it's how the human body was designed to be. If you go back and you think about the hunter gatherers like they came out of the cave and sometimes they had a meal left over from a kill they made the night before. Sometimes they had a lot of food and then sometimes they had no food.

So our body is used to that feast famine cycling because that's how we were primally designed. So I want to point that out. Second thing, the way that I see this is that every day you have a fasting window and you have an eating window. And your eating window, you get to vary. And it should vary for most people based off your lifestyle. So, let's use the example of the soccer mom. Um, because that was sort of a big part of my practice was all these I call them the mama bears.

And what we found is that they want the most important meal for them was dinner with the family. So they needed to skip breakfast and start their eating window somewhere around 12 1:00 so that they could finish that eating window at 7 8:00. So Monday through Friday they would make their eating window in the afternoon evening. But then on the weekends, like a lot of families want to have brunch on Sunday or maybe they'll go to the farmers market or or maybe they'll go out to breakfast on Saturday morning.

So then they would move their eating window up in earlier in the day. So I think you should base it off your lifestyle and then of course base it off of women should base it off their cycle which is what Fast Like a Girl was about. Yeah. So I'm someone who loves systems and routines. So I end up eating I'm a three meals per day kind of person. I have to eat three meals a day. My body reacts in whether it's cramps or fatigue or whatever if I don't.

So I generally end up eating three meals a day pretty much at the same time every day. Is that bad? Am I doing that wrong? Well, I mean it dep I always say it depends on your intention. So what's your intention for your health? My intention right now is to gain strength and muscle as I've been training and trying to eat enough protein as someone who follows a plant-based diet. And then you are doing when you're working out in the morning. Yes. In the morning. Yeah.

So for you because you're trying to up muscle, you're gonna want to make sure that you eat before your workout and you're going to want to make sure you eat after your workout. I'm not doing the before. Yeah. Yeah. So then what will end up h So you go in fueled, you're breaking that muscle down while you're working out and then you're refueling afterwards. That would be like the perfect way to stack protein. But then where does the fasting window fit in? So the fasting window would probably be more towards the end of the day.

And one of the things that I just try to make this simple for everybody is the best thing you can do is always eat in the light. The minute we start eating in the dark, like at the end of the day, we've got melatonin coming into our body. And melatonin causes us to be more insulin resistant. So if you were working out at 9 in the morning, I'd want you to have a meal, maybe a small little protein shake at 8. You do your workout, then you follow it up with a recovery meal.

Yeah, I would do. Yeah, I would. Just enough to kind of fuel you. Yeah. You wouldn't need a huge amount. And then 5 6:00 at night, depending on the time of year, you shut it down. And then now if you're done eating at 6, you would go, you know, 6 to 6 all the way till 8. That's a 14-hour fast every day. And that's pretty good. And then what a lot of people do because of that night snacking, what a lot of people decide is, you know what, I'd rather delay my breakfast so that I can eat a little bit later because I maybe sit down with a bowl of popcorn and watch movie at night and so they'll they'll make their first meal noon.

But this is the whole point of what I'm trying to teach is all of this is customizable. So you but you should customize it to your intention and your goals and your lifestyle. And and if you can do it that way, it's a health habit that becomes effortless over time as opposed to what we typically do, which is I'm gonna get healthy. I'm going to get fit. I'm going I'll just discipline myself into this new body I want, right? And then after a while, we lose the discipline and we boomerang back into our old habits.

Yeah. How do you how do you train someone to not eat for a period of time? Because I think we've talked about fasting, but actually it's really hard when someone has to do it. How how do you how does someone train themselves to do that? Yeah. So, you start by pushing your breakfast back. That's what I typically do. You can push your dinner up if you want, but most people I start with breakfast. So, I tell people push your breakfast back an hour. Most people will say, "Well, can I have my coffee?" Yes, you can have your coffee, but but not your creamer.

Like if you're putting like some kind of uh sugar creamer in there or you're putting oat milk or almond milk in there, those tend to spike your blood sugar a little bit too high. So cow's dairy, goats dairy does a little bit better. So you just make sure or black. Have your coffee black. Push your your breakfast back an hour. It's going to be uncomfortable. That's the first thing is like this is that moment you're gonna be like why did I listen to J Shett's podcast where that crazy lady came on and told me to push my breakfast back an hour.

Now all I want to do is yell and scream because I'm angry. I'm hangry. But if they say if they stay with that the next day and then the next day by the third or fourth day that hour is going to feel like nothing. So when it starts to get easy, now you're going to push it back another hour. So now you're two hours back and then maybe a couple you go a couple days with that and then you're going to push it back another hour.

And everybody that I've done with this within two weeks, they are effortlessly fasting somewhere between 13 to 15 hours. You're just taking all that food and you're just compressing it into an eating window. But you're gently moving your body into that place. You're not I've had people just out of nowhere go on three-day water fasts, but it that's a lot more suffering involved if you do it that way. Definitely. Yeah. Well, you've already given me something. I'm going to start having that bite to eat before my workouts now.

I think that will make a huge difference for me for sure. No, I love that. The second thing that everyone asked about, which was the big one, which is what is the fastest, most effective way for people to lose their belly fat? Everybody wants to know about belly fat. Everyone Everyone's obsessed with belly fat. Everybody is obsessed with belly fat. Okay, I want to start with this understanding. What causes your body to gain weight? And that's a better question to ask yourself than how do I get this weight off?

Because you need to know the mechanism. Here's what the body does is whenever there is excess excess glucose, excess hormones, excess toxins, the body is so well designed that it knows I can't put all these e this excess around your heart and lungs. I probably shouldn't put this around your liver. I'm not going to go over here and put it around your spleen. I'm going to store it somewhere that will keep you alive. So, it stores it first around your belly. No way. So, it this is the thing that I'm like trying to free women from is then you look in the mirror and you're like, "Wait a second.

I'm I hate that belly fat." And you shame yourself. if you guilt your way into the next diet when your body, if it could talk to you, was like, "Okay, listen. You just had a lot of extra stuff you've been giving me." And I didn't know where to put it. So, I started in your belly, then I put it in your booty, then I put it around your face and the back of your arms. And for women, sometimes it goes in the chest. And I'm putting it there to save your life.

So, I think the first step to losing menopausal belly fat is is getting in alignment with the body. And great answer. and thank the body for what it's doing because it's trying to save you. Great answer. Yeah. So now we at that understanding we go okay well belly in general can we know cortisol so we are a cortisol saturated world right now and so we got to do something to help with cortisol. Well there are there are things to help with cortisol other than you know uh becoming a monk.

There are other things you can do other than sitting somewhere and just meditating like easy things. A stressful event hits you, the worst thing you can do is sit. Get up and move. Cortisol was meant to make you move. It's it's that hormone that gives you up get up and go because you're running from a tiger. So if you're sitting at your desk, boss walks in is like, "Hey, I need this by the end of the day." And you're like, "There's no way I can get it." And you're all upset.

The worst thing you can do is stay sea seated. go move your body. So, constantly walking will help bring that cortisol down. Getting out in nature more, bringing cortisol down. Hanging out with positive people so that you're not in an environment where negative people are throwing cortisol bombs at you all day long where your thinking starts to become one that's intrinsic that you're starting to like think everything is a threat and you're not safe and cortisol is high. That all relates to belly fat. This is why I'm like going into the detail on this because people want the quick fix, but I with the belly fat, the first thing I want people to ask themselves is what is the stress level of my life and how can I bring that stress level down and how can I start to work with cortisol?

Walking being the biggest one, hanging out in nature and then getting your body in the right environments. Then you can look at toxins. So we started this conversation before we recorded about toxicity. We live in the most toxic time in human history. Women are putting over 200 toxic carcinogenic [snorts] chemicals on their skin every single day. The brilliant body is like, I don't know what to do with all this, so I'm going to put it around your belly and your chest. And again, then we look in the mirror and we're mad at ourselves because we weren't disciplined enough.

So go and look at your toxic load. What toxic chemicals are constantly coming into your body? Start looking into different detoxes because we got to bring your toxic load down. What are the most common places that people are putting toxins into their body? Well, skin is is a big one. Um food is horrible. I put a whole thing in in Eat Like a Girl and I was so depressed after I wrote it all about obesogens. So, obesogens are chemicals that are in our food. So, uh BPA plastics are what our food are wrapped around.

That that's an obesogen. Um pesticides are an obesogen. I the there's a long list in the book like artificial colorings and flavorings, BHT, BHA, all of these synthetic ingredients. What they do, and this is the part that I'm like want to scream from the rooftops, is what they do is they literally those chemicals go into stem cells and they reprogram those stem cells to actually make fat cells. And one of the places we're seeing this is in the UK right now because kids have low have lots of stem cells and as we get older we have less.

And so what we're seeing is that the stem cells that were supposed to make bone are now making fat. And so kids are becoming their height is smaller and shorter than ever before. And they're bigger and bigger than ever before. So these chemicals are totally changing our fat distribution. And the belly fat is one of them. So what you put on your body and what you're putting in your mouth start there. Yeah. That's It's so terrifying. It's terrifying. It's terrifying because it feels like everything you turn over these days, every pack is labeled with a million different things.

And if you're not conscious and aware and checking, pretty much everything you pick up is going to have one of those things in it. That's right. And and the best thing you can do is eat food without a label. Like go to your farmers market, get, you know, healthy fruits and vegetables. If you eat meat, you know, know who your butcher is and like know where that meat came from. Make sure it wasn't packed with chemicals. Like I think we used to think it was like woo woo and people who ate organic were hippies.

And I would say at this particular moment in in history, you should know an ingredient label. You should know those chemicals that are going into your food because they are reprogramming your body. And one of the things they're reprogramming are stem cells to make these these o, you know, fat cells. And you're double downing on dieting and you're double downing on uh working out and you don't even realize that it's actually this chemical load that has completely reprogrammed your body and so they're conscious of it.

Oh yeah. Oh well, so the chemicals are are are there for two reasons in food. One is shelf life. So, you know, much easier for these food companies to make sure that their food, if it sits on a shelf, is going to last a very long time. The second one is that they are hijacking your taste buds. So, that you're addicted to it. Let me give you an example. years ago in the LA Times. This was like 15 years ago. This three spread page spread comes out in the LA Times like huge about what it was Lays specifically potato chips.

What they were doing, what the the company was looking at was what kind of chemicals can we spray on the potato chip so that it hits all the dopamine receptor sites in the brain. But we got to keep that that that chip light enough that when it hits the bo the stomach, it doesn't stim trigger a reaction in the brain to kill hunger. So it needs to be light. It has to be salty. It has to hit the have a little bit of sweetness in it so it can hit those dopamine sites, but we can't let the person fill up on it.

So think about that. How many people open a bag of potato chips and eat? It does just that. It does that. You can't just eat one. You're like, the whole bag's gone. And then the next thing you know, you're like, I I need more food. And that is what all this western processed food is doing is it's hijacking our taste buds. So now we don't even have control over our taste buds. A lot of people when they're in that position, something they do is people count calories.

Do they matter? So this question comes up all the time, so I'm so happy that you asked it. Um because based off of research, yes, calories matter. But based off of human behavior, calories don't matter. So this is why in Eat Like a Girl, I have a statement that blood sugar matters, calories don't. I had a patient a couple years ago that was plant-based and um not wanting to change plant-based. I was in honor of her choice. But when we put a CGM on her, she had about 10 spikes of these really high spikes of glucose every single day.

And I asked her, I was like, "How do you like what do your moods follow these spikes?" And she's like, "Yeah, I'm like up, I'm down. I'm hungry, and then I'm not hungry. Like I feel like I'm on a roller coaster all day long." So what I did is we worked with, "Okay, how about if we add a little bit of fat? How about if we add a little bit of fiber? What if we take some of these things like oat milk and let's sort of switch oat milk or we or maybe if you love your oat milk, let's make sure it's really clean oat milk and let's add a little MCT oil in your coffee.

And we started to change how a meal was put together and she went down to about four spikes a day. She didn't and she didn't change really anything she ate. She changed the way that she put a meal together and then the blood sugar changed and then her moods changed and then her weight changed because we because I taught her blood sugar. That doesn't happen with calories. How many spikes a day is okay? I don't know if there's an average spike amount, but let's let's say that when you get a glucose spike, the most important thing is that it comes down to its pre glucose amount, pre-meal amount, within 90 minutes.

So textbook is two hours, but I like to say if we can do like an hour and a half where you have a blood sugar spike and with an hour and a half your blood sugar is right back where it was before you ate that meal that you're pretty insulin sensitive. If it's taking more than two hours for your body to be able to integrate that glucose now we may have a little bit metabolically resistant insulin resistant body. So it's your recovery from the meal that matters more than anything else.

Interesting. Oh, right. Okay. So 90 minutes is what we should be aiming for. I that's my personal standard cl like what most doctors will say is two hours, but I I like it to be a little quicker than that. Got it. So that's what we should be measuring. That's what we should be looking at. And then the other thing is one of the greatest studies done on fasting is 168 and Sachin Panda was the leader of that and that study and what he found is that if you ate all your food in an 8-hour eating window leaving 16 hours for rest and recovery that you basically became metabolically imu immune from the harsh metabolic consequences of a processed diet.

So what that meant was I can take all the bad food and I can put an eight hour eating window and if I get my give my body 16 hours to rest, then the metabolic system rebooted itself and was able to continue forward without seeing insulin go up and hemoglobin A1C go up and inflammatory markers like CRP go up. So when I look at the spikes, I want to see the recovery of the spike and then I want to see that part of the day there's you're just not eating anything that there's no spikes, right?

Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. One of the things that I find fascinating that you talk about in Eat Like a Girl is you talk about eating for your microbes, not your taste buds. And I find this to be the constant kind of challenge that people in my life have when I'm talking about healthy eating or healthy habits. When it comes to food, we generally eat for our taste buds or eat for our emotions. Yes.

Talk to me before we talk about eating for your microbes, talk to me about how our patterns of our taste buds have changed over time because I feel again we're not aware of the root of where this started. Yeah. And this is a the reason I put that as a real foundational rule is again I'm trying to free women and help women have a better relationship with food. And there's so many women that just find like let's use carbohydrates or sugar or alcohol. They'll say, "I just crave it.

I can't I can't unc crave it. I just it's like the tub of ice cream just calls me." Well, if you actually look, there can be microbes and there can be fungus that lives in your gut that is doing the calling. So, those are the ones that are sending a signal to the brain, feed me. So, we have trillions of bacteria in our gut and they all want to stay alive. And so, they send signals to the brain and they tell the brain, feed me this, don't feed me that, so that it can stay alive.

And then on top of that, we add this dopamine response we're getting from the chemical food. We we are actually not really in control of our food choices when you look through that lens. And if you mix that with fasting, the greatest study that I love, one of the greatest that was done on fasting was the every other day diet. And what a a researcher did is she took a group of people that were metabolically challenged, had food addiction and had cardiovascular challenges and said, "You can eat anything you want one day and then the next day you don't eat.

And the next day eat whatever you want, next day don't eat." And what she found was that and you they had to do it over a course of a year. By the end of the year, everybody's metabolic markers improved. Everybody lost weight, which is what she thought would happen. But what surprised her was that everybody's choice of food, what they were craving, changed. So when I look at those people struggling with like, I can't get over my cravings, we've got to change your microbiome and we've got to put you in some fasted states so we can have you can start to have a different experience with these cravings.

So, one of the things that we do when you're looking at these microbes that are controlling your taste buds is let's just start tacking on some, you know, fasting windows every day where you just give the microbes a break and they will start to die off and and the longer you fast, the more they die off and your food choices will change, which is what happened in that study. Like I've had so many over the years people like I could never fast and I'm always like oh actually sit with me for a hot moment because there hasn't been a person that I haven't been able to train to fast.

You just trained your body to eat. And you could look at the same thing with the food you're eating when you're like I can't I can't overcome my sugar addiction. No, you should rephrase that and you should say I've trained my body to crave sugar. I would like to train it to crave something different. And you and that's your what you did is you found a what we would call a multi- therapeutic approach. A lot of different things came into play so that you could literally train your body to crave something different.

There's another thing that you brought up which you talk about protein being the hero macro ingredient. Yeah. And right now I feel like protein is like the hot everywhere. It's having its moment for sure. I wanted to ask you about, you know, no one seems to be getting the amount of protein that everyone says you should be getting. So, how much protein should we be getting and how do we actually get there? Well, to me, the protein is very much like when we were counting carbs or when we were counting calories, like they're fun to do in a in a moment and then nobody sustains it over time.

So, I I'm in alignment with everybody what everybody's saying, which is one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. Like I think that's a good measurement for you to look at. I've heard some people even say you need, you know, two grams of protein for every pound of body weight if you're trying to to to grow muscle. So I think in theory that's great. And then we have things like make sure you have 30 grams of protein per meal so that you can open up amino acid receptor sites to to grow muscle.

I think that's all great. Now let's talk let's talk to the woman in the Midwest. Let's talk to the single mom in the Midwest that's working two jobs and she's like, "I'm just trying to stay afloat and now you want me to count how many grams of protein I eat every day so that I can be optimally healthy." This is why I put in there what I want her to know is just know protein is the hero macronutrient. It has amino acids in it and amino acids are going to make you hormones and neurotransmitters.

So, at every single meal, I want you to look at the protein source first and how do you get as much protein in that meal and then build the carbohydrates around it and build the the vegetables and everything around it. Don't skimp on the protein. Every meal has to have a protein. that is a more doable like language and for a woman who is or and man who is like so busy because again I don't know if people are successfully counting this day in and day out unless they're really making it a priority.

Yeah. I don't my appetite wouldn't even allow me to eat that much protein. Like I I struggle with two things. One is I don't think I can eat that much protein. I've tried and second of all it's heavy on my gut. It's hard on my gut. like that much protein just my but my gut can't process it. So, how do how do you work on those two things? Um, this actually came up in another interview and I and I explained that this February of this year, I decided to try the protein theory and I was working out with a trainer.

I was lifting heavy weights. I'm 50 55 as of today. Um, I was 54 at the time. I'm postmenopausal and I was like, "Okay, let me experiment with this protein thing." In January, I was still with the trainer. I was still tacking on my fasting window and I was really doing what I talk about in the book where I would have keto days and I would have hormone feasting days, but I wasn't as focused on protein. In January, I lost weight and I built muscle. In February, I'm same thing.

I just upped my protein to one gram per pound of body weight. By the end of February, I had put on more fat than if I had been doing none of that. And I was like, "This isn't working for me. This is too much protein for my body." And I and I went back to just protein with every meal. Mindy, stop trying to get it to a certain amount. That was my experience. Now, other people will say, "Oh, I've built so much muscle with it. Amazing." But I talk about this in the book that we have to go back to N of one.

N of one means you can hear us talk about protein and now your job is to figure out if it works for you. Didn't work. So it was hard for you. It sounds like was hard for me. It's been hard right now. I've been trying to I've been practicing with it for like three months maybe. Yeah. Experimenting. So it it was hard for me whereas other people are like this works perfectly for me which is great. So, I just think protein with every meal. We have to prioritize protein and then you've got to find what pattern of the amount is going to be best for you.

Mhm. Yeah. The point is to remember it's the hero ingredient. That's right. And and that and and then build around it. That's right. And and don't worry if you're not getting 30 grams per meal or 40 grams or even depending on your body weight, 50 60 grams per meal. It's a lot. We've been talking a lot about belly fat and fat in general. When does fat make you fat? That's a great question. Okay, so toxic fat makes you fat. What is a toxic fat? So, our canola oils, our cotton seed, corn oils, soybean oils, partially hydrogenated oils, vegetable oils, uh highly processed sunflower and safflower oils.

Those are the biggies. Those are toxins. So, let's go back to what what what is fat? Fat is a storage place for things your body doesn't know what to do with those oils. Your body doesn't know what to do with. So, it's putting it around your belly. It's putting it in fat. So, stop giving it to your body because when you give it to your body, the the body's so smart. It's like, I'm just going to go store it over here. If I come over and I do now avocado oil, olive oil, olive oil is like the hero oil, um even some MCT oil or even some of the the nut oils like um walnut oil or seed some of some seed oils like sesame seed oil, your body knows what to do with that.

It knows how to integrate that. It doesn't cause cellular inflammation. And so it'll kill hunger. It's going to help nourish your brain. It's going to stabilize your blood sugar. It's you need these oils to make hormones. So, totally different beasts. One makes you fat and and the other one actually will make you healthy and can actually help you lose weight because it kills hunger. When we're also talking about our fat intake, is there a time of day that's better for us to be eating fat versus others or is it something that needs to be spread out across the day?

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

So, I didn't want my blood sugar to spike at 1 or two and then show up in your chair and have brain fog and and be unable to focus and my energy low. So, I made sure I had extra fat on my breakfast and extra protein so that my my glucose stayed very steady. So, I like fat when you are not trying to you're really trying to minimize a glucose spike. So, performance is what I just explained. Or um I don't want to be hungry in two more hours.

I should use some fat. or I don't want to crave that chocolate at 10:00 at night, so I should have some more fat with my dinner because all of that stabilizes blood sugar and then those cravings and those brain fog and that lack of energy doesn't show up. That's that's really helpful because I think again it comes to if we have the time and energy to be that mindful with what we can plan. Yeah. But especially when it comes to big events, big moments, big meetings, big high performance moments in our life, it seems like that's that's something good to be mindful at those times.

Oh yeah. Yeah. This is why I love olive oil. Just start drizzling it on on your meal and you will be shocked at how it kills hunger and you'll be shocked at how you're not hungry for hours afterwards and your brain power is completely online and focused. It's it's the easiest thing to add. Yeah. Me and my wife were joking about how often what happens is you end up eating smaller meals, but then you end up eating junk afterwards. Yeah. Right. And and that happens so often because we're like, "Oh, no.

I want to be mindful of my portion size or whatever it is, and then at 10 p.m. you want a dessert." But the idea of sprinkling something simple as olive oil onto your meals. Yeah. To help curb a craving later on. And then, you know, olive oils are high in polyphenols, and polyphenols feed the good microbes. So when you're drizzling olive oil on your meal, you're stabilizing blood sugar and you're feeding the good microbes. So those good microbes are going to keep giving you signals to to crave good food.

So it it really is multiffactorial. Um but let's go back just so we don't confuse people. Let's go back to the calorie in calorie out because some people are like, "Wait a second. If I put too much olive oil on top of my food, that's a lot of calories." But I'm back at does the calorie in, calorie out, is it working for you? I'm more interested in you feeding your body through the lens of metabolic health so that your blood sugar can be stable. I'm interested in food being a performance enhancer for you.

And I care a lot about your microbes because not only do they control your cravings, but they control your immune system, your neurotransmitters. Like they are the thing that is driving your health if you actually look into it. So, olive oil, you drizzled it on your meal and like magic happened in your body. It seems that what we need to do is simple, but it's so hard. Yeah. Because of our wiring, because of society's expectations because of our maybe our own pressure on ourselves. Yeah. What what gave you the permission to just say, you know what, I'm I'm I'm gonna unsubscribe from all of this and I'm gonna find a way.

What was that for you? Because I feel people are really looking for that breakthrough. And you said it's not motivation, it's momentum. But it's almost like how do you give that stone or that rock a push down the hill so that it gains momentum? The best door in is fasting. This is why I started with fast like a girl. Like that is the quickest. If you want an a totally different experience with your body, learn how to create an eating window and a fasting window. And I remember what with weight loss, one of the things that blew me away is once I started teaching women how to fast, maybe two weeks would go by and I didn't see them and they'd walk into my clinic and it looked like a fat coat had been taken off of them in two weeks.

And I was like, "Oh my god." Like fasting got you that in two weeks. So I think this is why I'm a I'm like the evangelist for fasting. Is there anyone who should never fast or shouldn't fast? It's a great question. Um I always say uh if you're pregnant or nursing, it's a no. That's not your tool. So, um and I write about that in both books. Uh if you have a eating disorder, you need to be working with somebody who al who can work alongside you.

Um because there's little tricks that you can do to to line yourself up for that. Um, certain cancers don't do well with fasting and certain cancers do incredibly well with fasting. So, going to a specialist that knows that. Outside of that, everybody else fasts can fast. The one you I just want to point out, the person I didn't didn't point out who couldn't fast is the diabetic. Mhm. This is the one that shocks everybody is the type 1 and type two diabetic when done right and done with doctor supervision actually does really well with fasting.

Interesting. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That is surprising, right? You wouldn't expect that. No. Yeah. It's it's hard to know. And I think that's why so much of this is also being able to listen to our bodies and not our minds. Cuz I think so much of our food habits are driven by our minds, not our bodies. I we mentally crave something, emotionally crave something. Yeah. I'm like this amount of protein just doesn't feel right. On that I just want to point out because again I'm always going to be the um the voice of women's empowerment.

What I'm discovering in women is we are massly massively disconnected from our bodies. Yeah. So, we look at Instagram, we look at magazines, and we're like, I want to look a certain way. So, then I will manipulate my body to look that way. We are we are not clued into the rhythms and cycles of our body. And often you could end up looking that way, but because the internal setup isn't right, like we often think it's also, oh, I don't have self-worth or self-esteem, but it's completely chemical.

That's right. Right. Like, it's just a hormonal imbalance. It's not even it's not this mental idea that oh I don't believe in myself or I don't love myself. It's like well of course if I've been shifting my body and diet and everything to look this certain way it could be that my hormones and nutrients and everything are so imbalanced that I can't sustain a healthy mood. Yeah. Something I've deeply thought about is that when we look at the woman who's size two or the woman who's a size four or size zero, like we look at that, we say that's what I'm supposed to look like because the magazines, Instagram, everybody says I should look like that.

But actually, if you look at what estrogen does to the to the female body is it makes us it's what I call a little more padded. It gives us a little more of a of a cushion of fat on us. And that might be what's normal for us. We just have this skewed view based off of what we're seeing on social media that we're supposed to look that way. But if have you ever stopped like for the women listening and asked yourself, is that the healthy way?

I mean, one of the things that came out of Fast Like a Girl that really disturbed me and motivated me to write Eat Like a Girl was how many 20 year olds and 30-year-olds don't have a menstrual cycle. And they don't have a menstrual cycle because they've been manipulating their diet. Their diet's too low calorie. Their weight is too low because they're trying to look a certain way that the culture says this is beautiful and when you're beautiful, you're worthy. But actually, is it possible that the female body is meant to have more fat on it and and trying to be the skinniest version of you is actually making you sick and destroying your hormones and and I think it would be really interesting if we had better conversations around that.

So, what do they do in that scenario when they've ended up creating that situation with themselves? Well, the first thing is we're back at the calories is let's make sure you're eating enough calories for the thyroid. You have to have 1,200 calories a day consistently. So, if you're eating 900 800 calories a day, you're you're causing thyroid challenges and that could be a hyperactive thyroid that could be I mean, so you're you could end up with a faster metabolism which would eventually lead to a a hypothyroid situation.

So, let's get the calorie in that person who's in deprivation. Let's that would be the one spot I would say. Let's make sure we're above 1,200. So, that would be the first thing. The second thing is I think it's really interesting. I don't even for you and men in general is like when we eat and we're hungry, do we ask ourselves like am I hungry or am I bored? Am I hungry or am I sad? Am I hungry or do I need energy? Like make sure we're seeing that the food and the emotional response like we're pulling those apart.

Um so I think I think that's a really important one because people eat and don't eat for a lot of different reasons. And then that leads to the last thing with this person who might be a little bit thin is I think for a lot of women it's control. like if I can control my body a certain way then you know my life will be in control and as you know control is an illusion and maybe there's something else you can control. This is why I like the continuous glucose monitor.

Control your blood sugar and then you'll that'll lead you down the path of health. Control your symptoms after you eat. Control the amount of sleep you get. Like there's other things to control, but if you're trying to control your weight, you're raising cortisol and you're leading yourself into this dysfunctional relationship with your body. Talking about, you know, giving making people feel empowered for people who don't have access to expensive technology and want to know their muscle fat percentage, body fat percentage, etc. Like how how do they get that information in a way that's affordable and accessible?

because it seems that so much of that data and that insight you need to be empowered is expensive. Yeah. So, you know, all the wearables are really exciting right now, the CGMs and all that, the continuous glucose monitors, really exciting, but they are expensive. So, in the book, I put a list of of symptoms you would experience if you nailed your your meal, if you got your meal right, if your lifestyle was working for you. This is are some of the symptoms. And I'll I'll I'll share with you some of them.

After you eat a meal, you should be energized. You shouldn't be sleepy. If you're sleepy, we got to go back and look at the makeup of that meal. After a meal, you should have better brain clarity. You should feel uplifted. It should it should be like something that puts you into a per enhanced performance state. You also, it's not normal to be hungry every 2 to three hours. So, those things become really important. The other piece is that you should be able to control your cravings.

You should be able to be like, "Hey, I like I'll give use me as an example. I used to have a sugar addiction, too." And um I had a moment where when in the height of my sugar addiction where if I looked at a piece of sugar, I couldn't control myself. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, I know I'm not supposed to eat that, but I'm going to eat it anyways. Once I started doing fasting and eating, doing fasting and eating windows, like that craving went away.

So I now have a better relationship to food. I don't feel like I'm eating food because I can't control myself. So there are symptoms we can look at. And all the biometric wearables, they're great, but I want to help the woman in in in the South, you know, that's working two jobs. I um the story I tell a lot is that in during the pandemic, I had a high school principal in South Carolina reach out to me. She was watching my YouTube channel and she said, "My high school teachers are about to come back to school and they're super scared about their immune system and and COVID and so can you give us some ideas on how we can keep our immune system high?" Well, I come from a family of teachers and I was like, "Oh, yeah.

Can I give back to the teachers and teach them? This is really exciting. So, I pop on this call with about a hundred teachers at this high school and I go into all you should take this supplement, you should eat this oil and you should do all these things and I get to the end of of the presentation. And it was all done on Zoom. And this really brave man raises his hand and he's like, "Um, I hear what you're saying, but if I'm at the supermarket and I'm looking at nut butters, the the nut butter with the right oil in it is $8 more than the one with the wrong oil.

I don't I don't have that $8." And then another woman raised her hand and said, "I'm up at 4 in the morning and I drive to to get my classroom set up at 5. I don't take a lunch break and by 3:34 I'm driving home exhausted." And the only place I want to go is through the drive-thru at fast food. Okay? We will never ever get our country healthy until we help those people because they're on a limited income and they are trying to be healthy but everything in front of them is leading them towards chronic disease.

This is why fasting became my tool because everybody can afford it and everybody even the busiest person can do it and people it works for the majority of people and then they have that momentum. So that's what you know the fast food lady just okay so let's eat your fast food in a compressed eating window the nut butter guy it was like okay well maybe nut butter isn't your go-to like let's figure out how you can look at maybe some getting some oils from food that you're getting upping your omega-3 and other oils like we just found lateral changes

Go deeper

• All On Purpose episode guides