0:00
One in three adults are completely overwhelmed with their stress loads.
0:07
Looking at it through that picture, fasting might not be the best tool for a
0:14
completely stressed out human. It doesn't mean fasting doesn't work. It
0:19
means that once again we need to think about if fasting is right for you. So,
0:26
in this video, I am going to walk you through five signals that your body will
0:32
give you to tell you if fasting is working or if fasting is not working. I
0:38
call them green lights and red lights. And I'm going to show you five action
0:45
steps you can do to either modify your fast, stopping your fast, or do more
0:51
fasting depending on where your stress loads are at and how your nervous system
0:57
is handling it. This is a video we've needed to do for you for a very long
1:02
time, and I can't wait to dive into this. So, here we go. Let's go.
1:12
First we have to say just like exercise fasting is a stressor. So there there's
1:19
that's not a secret. Hopefully you understand that it is a hormetic
1:23
stressor. Hormesis is a good stressor. This is how fasting works is that it
1:32
applies just a little bit of stress on the system that causes your body to grow
1:39
bigger and do better things. Just like exercise, when you go and exercise, if
1:45
you are lifting weights, you break muscle down and that muscle is under
1:51
stress, but it builds itself strong again. That's the same thing that's
1:57
happening with fasting. But it's if you think about it, it's when we're already
2:02
in a broken down overwhelmed state. If we put more fasting on top of that,
2:08
that's not a good system. The stress that we put ourselves in, whether we
2:14
fast, whether we exercise, whether we cold plunge or sauna, that is a signal,
2:22
but it's in the aftermath of that, in the recovery where the magic starts to
2:28
hit. So, think of it like your metabolic switch. Remember how I
2:33
taught you about the metabolic switch? You could when you eat, you're a sugar
2:37
burner. There's no stress there unless you're eating the wrong food like
2:41
ultrarocessed foods. But then when you switch over into fat burner, this is
2:46
called your metabolic stress. Ooh, now we're adding some stress to this. And I
2:51
think of it like a light switch turning on and turning off. And somewhere around
2:57
12 hours without food, you will come over into this fat burning place and
3:04
your body will start to go into this repair phase. Now, what's so incredible
3:10
about the human body is that it knows when it's over here that it needs to
3:15
give you another fuel source. So, it gives you ketones. And I've done a ton
3:20
on ketones. I'm such a fan on ketones, especially for brain health, especially
3:25
for post-menopausal women. So, I'm over here in a fat burning mode. I haven't
3:30
eaten in 12 hours. My body, my brilliant body makes ketones, and it does that so
3:37
it can supercharge the brain, but it does it so that it can preserve muscle.
3:44
So, those of you have heard, oh, fasting will break down muscle. Well, exercise
3:48
and lifting weights breaks down muscle. And the beautiful part of the way the
3:53
internal mechanisms are in our body is that the more ketones you make, the more
3:58
muscle preservation that you will will create. Now this metabolic switch, it is
4:06
not meant to be turned on or turned off all the time. If the metabolic switch is
4:12
turned off, meaning you do not go into a fat burning state, you have a tendency
4:18
to gain more weight if you're not eating the right foods.
4:22
If this metabolic switch is turned on all the time because you love fasting
4:28
and you've been fasting over and over and over again, you also can go into a
4:33
weight gaining place because the body is under so much stress. So why don't we
4:40
fast forever? Why don't we do one meal a day over and over again? Is because
4:44
these pathways, this glucose and insulin pathway, this autophagy and mTor
4:51
pathway, these all of the ways I've tried to explain it to you all over the
4:55
years, those pathways are meant to pulse. They are not meant to be on all
5:03
of the time. Just like we're not meant to have daylight all the time or
5:07
nighttime all the time. There is a rhythm here that we're meant to to look
5:12
at. So the question is never is fasting good or bad. it. The question is how
5:19
much time am I spending in the stress hormatic response and how much time am I
5:24
spending in the recovery part and how am I mapping that to the stress of my life.
5:31
This is where hopefully you've heard me talk about the end of one and how
5:35
important it is that we take videos like mine. We take or anybody's we take books
5:41
like Fast Like a Girl and we customize it for us and make it right for us.
5:46
Because the whole reason I wrote Fast Like a Girl, the whole reason was to
5:51
teach the pulsing of fasting. And I find it comical that people think I'm the
5:57
fasting queen and that I just want everybody to fast all the time. I wrote
6:02
a whole book on when to not fast. So let's let's come back to some sense of
6:08
reality here. Now you have a metabolic switch but you also have a nervous
6:14
system switch. One side of the equation for your nervous system is a
6:19
parasympathetic nervous system. It is your rest and digest nervous system and
6:25
it gets activated when we eat except when we eat ultrarocessed foods because
6:31
there are so many chemicals in there that stimulate us. But when you're
6:35
eating whole foods that in a good meal that you are in a hopefully in a
6:40
parasympathetic state and then when we fast we go into fight or flight. we go
6:47
into a little bit more of an adrenaline situation.
6:52
So, we have to map when we're looking at if fasting is right or wrong for you, we
6:58
also have to map where your nervous system is at. So, if your nervous system
7:03
is already locked over here in a fight orflight situation and you decide to do
7:09
a 24-hour fast or you decide to do a 36-hour fast or a three-day water fast,
7:15
that might not be appropriate for you because you were already in a fight
7:20
orflight state. I have a beautiful questionnaire I just created that I'm
7:24
using with my reset academy members and I want to pass it on to you and it's
7:29
called a nervous system reset and there is a questionnaire in there. You take
7:35
the questions, answer them, do the do there's a a scoring uh uh program there
7:41
and look and see where your nervous system is at because if you're
7:45
completely maxed out, fasting isn't your tool. Now I want to dive in to these f
7:51
these steps of how do you know physiologically
7:56
that you are meant to fast or you should maybe back away from fasting because
8:03
I've seen this over and over and over again where one woman can do an 18-hour
8:08
fast and she freaking rocks it and another woman does an 18-hour fast and
8:14
her hair falls out and she gains weight and she feels horrible.
8:19
Let's the same fast, different body, different nervous system. So, let's
8:25
start to walk through these signs of how you can tell where you're at. I do want
8:30
to say if you want the nervous system reset questionnaire I have, just put
8:35
nervous system reset in your comments because that is a great gauge that I
8:39
created to help you also see if you should be more in your sugar burner mode
8:44
or more in your fat burner mode. So, here is the first sign I want you to
8:50
look at, and it's sleep. Woo! Okay. Yep. We're going to go there. Are you ready?
8:56
So, your green light is that you fall asleep easily, and you wake up rested,
9:02
even on longer fast days. That's a sign that you've just like your metabolic
9:07
switch is working well, your nervous system switch is working well. I decide
9:11
to go into a 24-hour fast. I'd maybe do a three-day water fast, and I'm pretty
9:16
good. I sleep okay. I can tell you the first time I did a three-day water fast,
9:22
I probably shouldn't have done it at that moment. I was testing all these
9:25
tools out and one of the symptoms that I had was a pounding heart, like a heart
9:31
palpitations. Um, I now know that minerals can help
9:35
that. But if minerals don't help that and your heart is still pounding, it may
9:39
be because your nervous system can't take the load of going that long without
9:45
uh without eating. I also have heard from many of you that when you go into
9:50
these longer fasts, you can't sleep. And it doesn't happen to everybody, but it
9:54
does often happen to the people that were already maxed with their sleep
9:59
levels. And so, what they need to start to do is a little shorter fast. We'll
10:03
talk about that here in a moment. Now, a red flag with your sleep on your fasting
10:09
days that would say come out of the fast is if you're wired at bedtime, you can't
10:14
fall asleep. You're waking in the early hours and you can't get back to sleep.
10:19
And specifically, that day you really pushed your fast. Now, I'm going to
10:24
leave a um another video that I've done on why you wake up at 3:00 a.m. And for
10:29
some of you, it's because of cortisol. It's not and you were already in that
10:34
cortisol rich state. But I really want you to understand that if you are
10:39
fasting chronically and you're still waking up consistently at 3 in the
10:44
morning that we may need to just dial back on your spouse a little bit. So ask
10:50
yourself in this first question, this first sign is does your sleep get worse
10:55
on longer fasting days? Longer to me is something over 24 hours. And if it's yet
11:02
the answer is yes, then we need to dial back to shorter fasts.
11:08
Okay. Sign number two is your energy and your moods and especially in between
11:15
meals. A green light is that you have a metabolic switch that is working really
11:21
smoothly and you can go a significant period without food and your energy is
11:26
steady. It is clear. It is calm. Your hunger is quiet. That would tell you if
11:31
you're 16, 17 hours without food, that would that would tell you that you're
11:36
doing great, that you're that keep going. I've had some three-day water
11:40
fasts where I just felt great for three days straight. Some of you might have
11:45
that. That's a sign that my nervous system was ready for that fast. If you
11:52
start to fast and it you get to that 24 hours or you get over 24 hours and
11:57
you're shaky and you're anxious and you're irritable and you're foggy and
12:00
you're hangry and you have trembling hands um and you have a racing heart and
12:06
you're snapping at people, you have gone too far in the fast and you need to
12:11
start dialing it back. So adrenaline will send a signal to tell your brain
12:19
that it's doesn't have enough fuel. And so when adrenaline kicks in and you get
12:25
the racing heart and the shaking hands and you're irritable and your OCD brain,
12:30
that is a signal. Remember, we're a chemistry lab. So when that is a signal
12:35
telling you that no food is putting your body in a crisis state, not all of you
12:42
will get that with fasting, which is why this is not a video on on everybody stop
12:48
fasting. This is a video on how do we be the end of one of our fasting
12:53
experience. So, if you are crashing in between meals and your moods are
13:00
horrible, um, and it's time to start to go back to the lower fast and build some
13:06
base here. A 13-hour fast has great research on preventing a reoccurrence of
13:12
breast cancer. A 15-hour fast does amazing job for growth hormone and
13:18
getting you more um anti-aging. the growth hormone is an anti-aging tool and
13:24
helping you burn fat. A 17-hour fast is amazing for getting rid of those zombie
13:30
cells that speed up age aging and for getting rid of cancer cells. There's so
13:35
much magic that happens in those lower fasts. I wrote about all six of them, by
13:40
the way, here in my book. Um, but you might need to go back. It might not be
13:45
your body might not be ready for the longer fast, and that's okay. That's not
13:48
weakness. That's actually strength. That's showing you're showing your body,
13:53
hey, I trust you. I got you. I'm I'm listening to you. That is so important
13:58
to come back into a positive relationship with your body. Okay. Sign
14:03
number three. This was the heart of fast like a girl. This was the whole reason I
14:08
wrote this and it's your cycle and your hormonal rhythm. So when I first started
14:15
fasting and falling in love with the science of fasting, using it as a tool
14:19
with my patients, I noticed for my own self, I was in my mid-40s that my period
14:24
was starting to stop and that when I did get my period, the symptoms were
14:30
horrible and there was big I was like having really big heavy hemorrhaging
14:35
type periods. And at the time I thought it was pmenopause, but I had had
14:41
combined perry menopause with a lot of longer fasts. And so I was putting
14:48
myself too much in this sympathetic dominant state. And so I started playing
14:53
with, wait a second, maybe there are times of the menstrual cycle that we
14:58
should fast and there's times we shouldn't. And that's where I came up
15:02
with the fasting cycle. And this fasting cycle continues to be a resource that
15:08
over a million and a half people have bought this book and have used it. And
15:12
that you go look at my Amazon reviews. So many people's cycle has come back
15:17
because they discovered how to fast with a hormonal rhythm. I will give you three
15:23
really simple ways to look at your hormonal rhythm. If you are a woman who
15:28
is cycling, you're, you know, in your 30s, 20s, maybe in your teens, then you
15:34
want to fast according to the fasting cycle. If you are pmenopause
15:41
and your hair is falling out and you're spotting and you're irritable, you're
15:44
going to want to stay to shorter fasts, especially if you can really do it most
15:51
most of the cycle, but not the week before your period. And you're going to
15:54
want to stick to lower fasts. If you are a post-menopausal woman woman, you can
16:00
fast longer. Those ketones are really going to help you. So, especially with
16:05
brain. So, I it same woman just aging along in different hormonal rhythms. And
16:11
for my post-menopausal women, I have a whole chapter on fasting and ketones in
16:16
Age Like a Grill. Now, a green light with your hormonal rhythm would look
16:21
like, I'm fasting. I'm doing the fasting cycle. I still have a I still have a
16:26
cycle. The cycle is regular. It's predictable. My libido is fairly good.
16:32
And I don't have a lot of PMS. That would tell you whatever you're however
16:36
you're fasting right now, it's working. A red flag would be that you're still
16:42
cycling, but all of a sudden your cycle stretches out or it lightens or or you
16:47
start skipping it or your PMS is louder. Your sex drive is gone. Now, with
16:53
post-menopausal women, a green light is you have a stable mood, your
16:57
temperature, you're not getting hot flashes, you're not losing hair when
17:00
you're fast. Whereas a red flag for post-menopausal women would be, "Oh my
17:06
gosh, I've got more hot flashes. I have a racing heart. My hair is shedding,
17:12
clumps are coming out, and a low mood is starting to creep in." So, the brain
17:18
senses when no energy is coming in, and it protects you when it has gone a long
17:25
period of time without fuel by shutting down reproduction. So your cycle, your
17:33
libido, your hair, they are signs of fuel and how much fuel you're getting.
17:38
Are you getting the right amount of fuel? And if you start to look at those
17:43
as just indicator lights, just like we look at on our car, um we can start to
17:49
see if this fasting length is right or not right for us. So, when it comes to
17:57
hormones, cycling your fast, whether you're post-menopausal or you're in your
18:03
most fertile years in your 20s and 30s, we there are times to fast and there are
18:08
times to not fast. And understanding what's right for you is an art, which is
18:13
why I wrote a whole book on it. I even have a membership group called the Reset
18:17
Academy where women are in there learning how to make their own end of
18:21
one experience there. You can join us over there. just put reset academy and
18:24
we'll send you info on it. But more importantly, I just want to make sure
18:29
you understand you're rhythmic. You have a rhythm that and so we need to ri have
18:33
rhythm with our exercise. We need to have rhythm with our fasts. And one of
18:37
the things that has really crushed my heart is that there is a rhetoric out
18:42
there that menopausal women shouldn't fast. and they say that because their
18:47
hair falls out and all of a sudden as they're moving into their menopausal
18:51
years, they're having really bad symptoms, but that's not the case. The
18:55
case is that we need to learn how to pulse fasting in and out, in and out,
19:01
and match it to our hormones. Number four, I won't keep going on that one.
19:06
Uh, your muscle, your strength, and your shape will tell you if you are fasting
19:12
too much. And here's what it looks like. So the green light with fasting, I want
19:18
you all to hear this because I've done thousands of videos here on YouTube on
19:23
belly fat on uh weight gain. It is a very popular talk topic here on my
19:30
channel. When you are fasting correctly, you should lose weight. So a green light
19:38
is that you can drop weight when you fast. Just like the millions of people
19:42
that bought this book and lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds, we just did in
19:47
our reset academy, we did a two-week experience where we took 600 women
19:53
through different fasts, cycling in different fast foods, and the average
19:58
weight loss was 5.8 pounds in two weeks. That is healthy weight loss. You can
20:04
join us if you ever want to join us. just put burn fat like a girl in the
20:08
comments and my team will send you links for the next one. But more again, more
20:12
importantly, it was because I walked these women through a rhythmic
20:16
experience. Their food noise went down. They lost weight. That's a green light
20:21
because they were taught how to have how to use fasting to pulse in and out. A
20:27
red light is that the scale actually doesn't drop when you fast. You may
20:32
actually be going in the opposite direction and you may be breaking muscle
20:37
down. Ketones are supposed to preserve muscle. But it when we move from a
20:44
hormetic stressor into a chronic stress state, all of a
20:50
sudden muscle will break down. Your adrenal glands and your muscles use many
20:56
of the same amino acids to function normally. So when you are asking your
21:03
adrenal glands to constantly be on call, whether it's stress from your life,
21:08
stress from a longer fast, and it doesn't have the right nutrients to do
21:13
that, what it will do is break muscle down. It will grab nutrients like amino
21:18
acids from muscle to be able to support the adrenal glands. Now women over 40, a
21:25
lot of what you're doing as you go into pmenopause and into post-menopause is
21:31
your ovaries are asking your adrenal glands to work extra hard. So if you're
21:37
a red flag would be I can't lose weight and I'm losing muscle. That is not a
21:44
good scenario and you're going to want to dial your fasting back a little bit.
21:49
Um and again easy signal to look at. So another piece of this I want to point
21:56
out is the thyroid gland. And the interesting part about the thyroid
22:01
gland, another another topic that has fasting getting lots of criticism. I
22:08
have done multiple videos on here on the thyroid. And yes, T3 goes down. the
22:14
bioactive version of T3 goes down when you fast because the body goes into an
22:20
energy conservation state, but it doesn't. When you bring food back in,
22:26
especially that first meal, when you refeed in a really good way, what
22:31
happens is you restimulate the thyroid and all the thyroid hormones start to
22:36
come back into balance. It's like a reset. But if I'm a stressed out woman
22:42
who's like, I used to get great results with fasting. I'm just going to do more
22:47
of it. I need to do more of it. And you're not getting that great result.
22:51
And your hair is falling out and your heart is racing and you're not the scale
22:56
isn't budging. Then you are bringing those thyroid hormones. You're cold.
23:01
Your cold hands and feet. bringing those thyroid hormones down to to a level that
23:07
is not working for you. So again, this is why we pulse fasting. So cortisol, by
23:16
the way, that never comes down. Cortisol, when you're living in this too
23:21
much fasting state, can also suppress the immunity. So if you're fasting and
23:27
you're getting sick all the time, that's not great either. I've actually seen um
23:32
I've seen more people have an improved immune system from fasting. Not the
23:38
opposite, but if you're getting sick a lot, you may be in this this metabolic
23:42
breakdown moment. Now, before I go into the six things or the five things I want
23:47
you to do, I really can't emphasize enough. I do not want any of you walking
23:52
away from this video thinking fasting's the enemy or saying, "Ah, Dr. Mindy
23:57
changed her mind on fasting." There are little tweaks I have changed my mind on.
24:02
Not on all of fasting. I still think fasting is one of the greatest healing
24:06
tools that we have and it is free. But we have to start to learn the art of
24:13
cycling fasting, which is where I started with Fast Like a Girl back in
24:19
December of 2022 when this book came out. It was the only fasting book that
24:24
was teaching this cycling approach to female hormones. It is the dose of
24:30
fasting that's the medicine, not the poison. And the right dose is unique to
24:37
you. Your dose of fasting and my dose of fasting may be completely different.
24:44
Your dose of fasting and your husband's dose of fasting totally different. So
24:50
don't fall prey to people saying women shouldn't fast or po or menopausal women
24:55
shouldn't fast. They don't understand the power of pulsing fasting. Okay, here
25:02
are the five action steps I really want you to start to do. And these action
25:07
steps are from easiest to hardest. First, I'm a huge fan of putting
25:12
minerals having minerals when you fast. Let's just let's not put an extra load
25:17
on on your nervous system. When you lose minerals, now the nervous system is even
25:22
stressed about that. So, let's get some element tea. I'll put again links. You
25:27
can do these electrolyte packets. You can do the cans. There's all kinds of
25:31
brands. I also like bean minerals. Again, all the all the the products I
25:36
love with discount codes will be in the notes. But, let's put minerals in first
25:41
and see if the hair stops falling out. Let's see if the if the heart stops
25:45
racing and then you'll know was it my nervous system or was it minerals. So
25:52
that was number one. Okay, this is my favorite thing I want you to know so
25:57
bad. I keep doing videos on it. Please tell me if you're getting it, which is
26:02
breaking your fast matters. That first meal matters. It is the most important
26:10
meal that you have. So breaking it fast matters. I like doing it the GLP1 way,
26:17
which is let's make sure we have fiber, protein, fat, and then some carbs. But
26:24
you need that fiber to feed the microbes so they make GLP-1 hormone. You need the
26:29
the protein so you can re get the amino acids back in the muscles. You need fat
26:35
so you don't end up with a big glucose spike. And then you can put your your
26:39
carbs in there to get yourself some serotonin. So
26:44
break your fast like it matters, like your your life matters. Okay. Number
26:49
three is that you're going to match your fast to your hormones, your hormonal
26:55
state. So I have a whole book on it. You can It's called Fast Like a Girl if
27:00
you're new to me. Um, I wrote all about how do you fast your hormones. For my
27:06
post-menopausal friends, you can fast however you want. I like you more doing
27:12
like a weekly schedule like a 511 um or a 421. I put protocols in here. Um, I
27:19
really think that post-menopausal women do incredibly well with fasting. it's
27:24
easier and they get those those ketones so that they can start to fuel their
27:30
brain in a new way and they get the muscle preservation. So, um and again,
27:37
if you need more information, dive into the book so you can find yourself or
27:41
come join me in my academy. Okay. Number four, I want you to track one objective
27:48
signal for two weeks. Track your sleep. Track your HRV. Track your cycle. Track
27:54
your morning energy. Track your ability to go without food. Whatever it is,
28:00
track it. I've got a bunch of trackers. I can't reach it. In my fast like a girl
28:05
journal. Uh you can write it all down. That was what the Fast Like a Girl
28:09
journal was meant to do. Um so you can we'll put leave links for that. But
28:14
track something so you can see your progress and you can see if you need
28:18
less or more. Number five, if three of the signs I talked about are
28:24
red, run what I call a deliberate reset. Pull
28:30
back on fasting and start to rebuild your sugar burner system. I want you to
28:36
rebuild it with good protein. I want you to rebuild it with uh with fiber. I want
28:42
you to rebuild it with good fat. But more importantly, dial it back. If you
28:48
had three, you listen to those signs and you're like, "I'm not sleeping. It's
28:52
really hard for me to fast. My hair is falling out. I'm gaining weight." Dial
28:56
it back and start over by really getting that sugar burner system in place. I
29:04
have a book that I wrote called Eat Like a Girl where I have so many recipes in
29:09
here and lists of food. Come back to good eating and then go to fasting. Go
29:14
back to fasting. It is amazing how it works. Or again, come join us in burn
29:20
fat like a girl experience. Just put burn fat like a girl in the comments and
29:24
my team will send you a link. So what I want you to say when you're not getting
29:31
a good fasting result is I want you to ask yourself, is my body adapting or is
29:39
my body struggling? because we want your body to be adapting
29:45
to this metabolic switch, not struggling with it. Now, I know a lot of you have
29:49
friends that have been fasting, and if you have some or a spouse that's been
29:53
fasting, send them this video because this again might be one of the most
29:57
important videos I ever put out. And I want to make sure everybody is fasting
30:02
in accordance with their biology. I want to make sure everybody is safe. And I
30:06
want to make sure that you're getting the best of fasting, that it's not
30:10
tanking you into a chronically stressed state. If you've mixed your fasting up
30:15
and you've done the rhythm, put them, tell us your story so we can all learn
30:19
from it. But most importantly, don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on
30:23
fasting. It's just a few tweaks that is going to have you getting the results
30:27
again and making fasting feel effortless. As always, I hope that
30:31
helped.