Transcript: Fasting, Hormones, and the Signal of Safety

Full transcript with clickable timestamps linking back to the source video.

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Have you heard of olive oil fasting? Two tablespoons of olive oil every day for 30 days is shown to break down visceral fat. That olive oil really helps burn that belly fat. Unfortunately, men are going to lose it a lot quicker. Dr. Mindy Pelz is a best-selling author, fasting and functional medicine expert. In this episode, she breaks down the simple steps to lose belly fat for good. People are losing belly weight when they fast because it's converting that hard to burn fat into something that's a little bit easier to burn. Carnivore fasting is fascinating to me. Five days [music] of carnivore fasting helped them lose more weight than even a 3-day water fast. Look at your tongue when you're fasting. If it's white, if it's yellow, I've seen black tongues, that's [music] fungus dying off. If you want to lose weight, do not eat in the dark. [music] I'm guessing you clicked on this episode because you want to melt stubborn belly fat, especially the fat that sits around your organs. As a health researcher, I've spent years digging into the clinical data to find out why traditional diets fail, and that research led me straight to one person. There is a simple fasting trick that you can target visceral fat specifically without even exercising. My guest today is Dr. Mindy Pelz. She's a New York Times best-selling author, and she has helped millions of people reclaim their metabolic health. Today, we're breaking down six fasting methods, three of which you can actually eat something. The bizarre armpit test to see if your body is ready to detox, and the number one habit to double your fat burn. And if you're tired of all the noise online, and you just want the science-backed truth of how to finally heal your body, make sure that you hit the subscribe button and join our community of truth

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seekers. So, Dr. Pelz, my first question is somebody's coming to this episode, maybe they're male or female, and they really want to burn belly fat. They've tried everything. Do you think their body is broken? Uh absolutely not. And let me tell you why, because I think extra weight fat needs a rebrand because we look in the mirror, we see extra belly weight, and we start to think it's our problem. Like, oh, I didn't stick stick to the diet. I didn't go to the gym. And we start to go into ourselves and say, this is a problem with me. But if you actually understand the way the human body is made, the what your body is doing, if it could talk to you, is it saying, "Hey, I have a little extra here. I have extra glucose. I have extra uh hormones. I have extra toxins. And I don't know what to do with it. So, instead of putting it around your heart, and your lungs, your liver, your your vital organs, I'm going to put it around your belly to save your life." It is an inherent mechanism within our body that we take this excess, and the body stores it in a safe spot. That is 180 ° opposite from being broken. That is actually being brilliant. And if you can learn how to read that and go, oh, okay, what extra have I given it? Have I given it too many toxins? Do I Maybe I've given it too many hormones. You know, there's a lot of synthetic estrogen in beauty products, and even in some of the ultra-processed foods. Have I given it What have I given it that it doesn't know what to do with instead of looking in the mirror and going, I I'm I messed up again. I think it's a very um sensitive topic that people almost think I've done something wrong because I've got the belly fat. Why is this not melting away? I'm doing all the right things. And I

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know for you that you say that you hate people counting calories, macros, counting anything. If somebody's watching this and they're doing that, what do you want them to know? As women, we have been measuring ourselves non-stop, probably since the day we were became teenagers. So, we measure our skin on the scale. We are obsessed with what size clothes we're going to have. We And then we get we are trained to count calories. And then all of a sudden it was, "Well, the calories are not we don't count calories anymore. We should count macros. We should be counting protein." And it's it holds this rigidness it within our own brain that if we're not counting something, then how will we know if we're going to gain weight or not gain weight? And so, what I'm obsessed with is helping women to connect to their bodies. Come back to this place where your body sends you hunger signals. Your body will actually tell you when it needs food and it doesn't need food. So, we have brought so much of our head to the diet game and we forgot to leave our own body out of it. bring it into the picture. Like your body will tell you when it needs something or when it doesn't, but that is an art. We need to learn how to teach women how to get back in touch with their bodies. So, you mentioned women, but if somebody's a man, they're thinking, "Dr. Pelz, you're mentioning women. Is this strategy that we're going to talk about to lose belly fat going to work for men and women?" Uh yeah, and um I I'm going to say this really carefully for both men and women that are listening. Unfortunately, men are going to lose it a lot quicker. Men are going to men are And and so it's so frustrating because men and women lose weight very different. Now, my specialty and what I've become obsessed with is understanding the female body.

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Um and a large part of that is because hormonally we're so complex. And men hormonally are very simple. And weight loss is a hormone issue. So, we have to look at hormones as like players of a symphony. You have to have all the different instruments playing at the same time in order for you for the music to be sound beautiful. Well, for women we have like, you know, a 100 piece symphony and men have like a four or five piece symphony. So, we it's it's just more com - more complex for women. So, I say this with love. If men are listening and couples are doing this together, it's like, okay, we just need to be aware that what we recommend could fit for both men and women and men are going to get a nee - they're going to get it's going to be easier for them. They're going to lose weight faster. Well, that bloody sucks. But, if women can be more consistent But, [laughter] if women can be a more consistent and we're going to talk about practical tools for men and women because I want this to be open cuz my audience is half men, half women. Um but, you do have a new book Age Like a Girl which talks about menopause. Um I'm 42. I didn't know that menopause starts from plus. I was like, oh my god. But, let's understand the science of how belly fat starts that people can understand the practical tools that we're going to talk about. How does the insulin drive belly fat? Well, so the first thing that we have to realize is that when we start to lose estrogen through the menopause experience whole like that that transition time and it's for 10 to 15 years. So, from let's just say from 35 to 55, every single woman, as estrogen goes down, is going to start to become more insulin resistant. And so, the food you ate at at 30 is

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that didn't cause you to gain weight is actually going to cause you to gain weight more weight at 45 and 50. And that is incredibly frustrating because you're just going along, you're just eating, and the next thing you know, you're gaining weight. Why does it go around the belly? Well, that has a lot to do with estrogen. you know, made sure that weight was evenly distributed around the body. And when all of a sudden estrogen goes down, there is this redistribution of where fat goes, and it goes to the belly. But, it's still the same issue. It's still an insulin resistant issue. So, we can't really like target one area. That's I think that's really important but for people to know. It's not like I can just give you like take, you know, there is some really interesting science on like 2 Tbsp of olive oil every day for 30 days um is shown to break down visceral fat. And visceral the belly fat is more visceral fat. But, so there there are hacks like that. But, in general, as we go into those perimenopausal years, what we need to know is we need to know that we that we're going to be more insulin resistant. So, carbs are going to hit us harder. Ultra-processed food's going to hit us harder. Alcohol's going to hit us harder. Like, things are going to cause us to gain weight in ways that they never had before. So, if that's for women, so women as we age, we're going to get more belly fat because our insulin resistant levels are going to increase. Anything that we do is probably not going to work. Is that the same for men though? Because why do they get a belly as they age? Well, it's a different hormonal mechanism. So, um you know, men don't their Well, for starters, you have to understand men don't have estrogen made in the body. Estrogen is made in the brain. So, they make testosterone. Testosterone goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen up there.

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So, the belly weight is that men get I mean, that's really toxins. It's synthetic like a lot of synthetic estrogens. Like if um like beer, let's just use beer as an example. Beer can bloat the belly and then um it can and then it actually creates a um they call it a aromatase in men, where they can actually create estrogen in the body and where it shouldn't be. Male body doesn't necessarily know what to do with estrogen, so it stores it around the belly. So, it's it's a sign that there you are having too many toxins. It's really because uh men don't typically store glucose there. Got it. Okay. And then we spoke about insulin relating to belly fat, but you also mentioned that elevated cortisol can also drive belly fat. How does that work? So, it's the same thing. Think of your body like a storage like like a storage pantry. And so, what happens is it can store different things in different areas. So, around the belly is where we're going to get more of these toxins and hormones that the body doesn't know what to do with. Cortisol is the hormone that is meant to make you move. So, when cortisol comes in, what it's supposed to do is you're supposed to go, "Oh my god, I'm stressed. I need to run away from the tiger." And so, you're supposed to move and get get away from the stressor. But let's just say like right now we're sitting here. What if something all of the sudden there's a stressor like a fire or something like that? If we don't move with cortisol, it's going to get stored cuz it's the it's needs to be used and if it's not used, it will be stored. It makes sense. Is that why you recommend for people to exercise in the morning when your cortisol is high,

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elevated, to get you up? Yeah, I mean my recommendation is that we understand our rhythm. We need to know like our our hormonal rhythms and what happens in the morning is melatonin as soon as you see sunlight melatonin starts to go down and all of a sudden um you'll start to become more insulin sensitive again and then about an hour after you wake up, cortisol kicks in. So let's run a scenario. I wake up, I'm just sort of gently going into my day and then I maybe have a cup of coffee and now cortisol is rising and I get in the car, I drive to work, I'm sitting in the car, I go to work and now I'm at work sitting. I'm not moving and using that cortisol. So if you are going to work out, work out in the morning, work out within the first hour when you wake up. Work out after your cup of coffee when you're spiking cortisol levels. Because if you can even go for a walk, if you can even just move with it, you will end up making sure that that you don't store it, but you use it. So you know, if you're looking in the mirror and you're seeing this extra belly fat, this is what I like to do is like let's create a checklist here. So okay, am I moving when I'm stressed? That needs to be on the checklist. Um what toxins can't my body get rid of? That needs to be on the checklist. Um, am I eating too high of an ultra-processed food diet or am I eating too many carbs cuz my body doesn't know and I'm in perimenopause, I'm over 40. Then I need to start to eat lower, um, sugared food, like lower carbohydrate foods. So, it's it's we need to stop villainizing belly fat. We need to start understanding it. And I think that's where my I get sad

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because we we hate ourselves for it. And we have to stop doing that. It's a message from our brilliant body telling us what we should be focused on. And, um, cortisol needs needs you to move. And if you don't move, it will store it around your belly. That's not a flaw of you. You just didn't understand how to use cortisol. I think people are wanting to know the hacks and the tips to get rid of belly fat. Take this, drink half a cup of this. But if you understand how the body works, which you just mentioned, the cortisol, the insulin, we are hormone-based. We are not calorie-based. Let's now go into the practical tips to burn the belly fat. What type of fat are we trying to burn? Because there's different types of fat, white fat and brown fat. One is unhealthy, one is healthy for you. What is the difference? White fat is like a hard fat and it's not easy It doesn't burn easily. So, you actually want to break it into brown fat. Brown fat has a little more mitochondria in it. It can be energized a little bit more with all our biohacks that we know. And so, you need mechanisms that can turn white fat into brown fat. So, some of those have been like cold plunges. We know that cold you get in a cold plunge and a couple of minutes in a cold plunge can actually start to take that white fat and start to move it into brown fat to be burned for you burn up for energy. Fasting can do the same thing. This is why people are losing belly weight when they fast is because it's converting that hard stubborn hard to burn fat into something that's a little bit easier to burn. And so whereas we have a tendency just to think like oh we just you just should burn fat. Some fat needs to be converted into a burnable fat. That's why I asked the question because

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people need to understand what are they actually burning when they're trying to burn fat. You know we really want to focus on on the visceral fat the white fat that we want to try to convert to the brown fat. So you're fasting expert. You have done this for a long time helped so many people thousands upon thousands of people lose their belly fat and really fix their health. Do you think that breakfast is the most important meal of the day for most people? Uh this is a loaded question. So um okay. It no I don't and some people like breakfast and some people hate breakfast and so um uh this is a big thing that has come up so much in my work is people want to like say oh you're not supposed to eat breakfast. That's what Dr. Mindy teaches. You're not supposed to eat breakfast and then you get other experts they're like wait you have to eat breakfast because it ignites a hor your hormonal cycle for the day. So I want to this is a great time to clear this up because I'm what three and a half years in from Fast Like a Girl coming out into the world and this has been probably the most debated question that I get. And here's how I want everybody to think about this. You have an eating window and you have a fasting window. And you get to decide how long and when both of those are. So, for me, I'm not a I'm not hungry in the morning. So, when I get up, I have a cup of coffee and maybe maybe around 11: 00, maybe around 12: 00, I might actually at that point go and and eat breakfast cuz that's my natural cycle. And then maybe at 11: 00, I eat something. I open up my eating window. And now I have to decide when I'm going to close my eating window at night. So,

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let's say I finish dinner at 7: 00. Last thing goes in my mouth at 7: 00. I've now done a um what? Eight eight-hour eating window. That would be your classic fast of 16 hours fasting and 8 hours eating. So, you know, that is a that's that's a great fast. Now, some people like to work out in the morning and they like and they're hungry in the morning. If that's you, then go ahead and wake up, have your maybe you start your meal at 6: 00 in the morning. Then, you're going to have to decide that you might need to make your eating window stop at 3: 00 or at 2: 00. So, you can make that eating window go wherever you want it to go. So, breakfast is definitely not the most important meal of the day. That was a slogan that was created by Kellogg's back in the 1970s for their Corn Flakes cereal. It's not the most important meal of the day. It's a cereal slogan. So, but some of you love breakfast, so have breakfast. And and then just maybe you shut dinner down a little bit earlier. And many of us don't like breakfast. I don't function well with breakfast. And so I'm okay pushing it back. Very much makes sense. I I now also want to talk about what to have in the fast that you don't break the fast. Many people have these questions about what's going to break my fast. A lot of people also have questions of, "Dr. Mindy, what is the best fasting window if I just want to lose weight and burn the visceral fat?" So if you want to lose weight, the best window advice, let's just say it that way, that I can give you is do not eat in the dark. Don't eat when it's dark out. Whenever it's dark out, your body has

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made more melatonin. And melatonin makes you insulin resistant. So the way I learned this from um Dr. Sachin Panda, who's one of the premier scientists on circadian rhythm. And I love the way he says this. He says, "When melatonin comes in to make you sleepy, it makes your pancreas sleepy, too. It makes the whole system start to shut down." And so if you can just if you really want to lose weight, we just did this in my Reset Academy. We did we do every couple of months we do something called a fat burner reset, where we we try different techniques. And I was explaining to the group that if you want to lose more weight, for the next 2 weeks only eat in the light. And see how what happens, how much [clears throat] weight you how much more weight you will lose. So so the best window for weight loss and and belly fat would be just make sure you don't eat in the dark. Let's turn our attention to the best fasting method if somebody wants to boost their ketones and also get into autophagy. What What's the best fasting method? Yeah, so in Fast Like a Girl, I mapped out six different level fasts, and um you will get autophagy from the research I did, autophagy kicks in it starts around 17 hours. So, you need to be fasting, you know, at least at 17 hours to start to to trigger autophagy, which for people who don't know what that is, it's an internal cellular mechanism where the body says, "Wait, we don't we haven't had any nutrients come in. We haven't had any glucose come in. We're going to need to clean this cell up and make this cell better." So, the longer you go, the more autophagy you're going to stimulate. So, it starts at 17 hours, and then it

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peaks at 72 hours. So, if you want that cellular healing, you want that part of your body to actually, like, kick in that detox mechanism to kick in, you need to go somewhere between 17 and 72 hours. Now, ketones are different. So, and people ask me this all the time, and it gets gets confusing, so let's make it clear. Ketones are what happens when your body senses that glucose has stayed down, and so it needs to give the body a different b - a fuel source, so it starts burning fat to create a ketone. what will happen is after, you know, usually ketones for most Well, the science says ketones will kick in somewhere between 12 and 15 hours without food. Not everybody will get ketones at 12 to 15 hours without food. So, you might have to go 17 hours. Some people might have to go 24 hours to be able to get those ketones. So, how at what hour you will make ketones is a personal thing. The science says 12 to 15 hours you've you're intermittent fasting, the body is metabolically shifted, it's now over in fat burning mode, it should be making ketones. But I I'm pretty sure that I I'm have I'm probably seen more people fast on this planet. Maybe Jason Fung, who's also a great fasting expert, probably seen as many people fast as I have. And when you make ketones is is unique to you. It is a very personal thing. Um if you came to me and you said, um" When you know, I want to stimulate autophagy and I want to make I want to

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make ketones, what would be sort of the best um length fast?" I would tell you the sweet spot's going to be somewhere between 24 and 36 hours. Most people will find a rhythm with getting ketones, find a rhythm with stimulating autophagy in there. But what I want to make sure because I'm always protective, especially of women and how we talk to ourselves, if you start to do 24-hour fast, you start to do 36-hour fasts, and you're not getting ketones, that's not a problem with you. There's there's something inside your body that is trying to work itself out in order to make those ketones. So, keep fasting and the ketones will come quicker. As we've discussed so far, to achieve optimal health and lower your insulin levels, we need to prioritize what we eat and when we eat. But while we talk a lot about physical health, what's happening inside, your mental health, is just as important. And I know so many of us are struggling with stresses like finances, family, and the pressure of work. We often think, "I can handle this myself." But over time, those small stresses build up into burnout. And that's exactly what happened to me less than a year ago. You see, I thought I was sailing through life. I was traveling, posting this health podcast, and launching products for you all. But beneath the surface, I wasn't sleeping, and I felt an intense sense of overwhelm trying to keep everything perfect. And then, my dad passed away suddenly, and the weight of that grief broke everything. And during that time, the one thing that truly helped me survive was seeking therapy, which is why I'm so proud to have BetterHelp as a sponsor of today's episode. Now, my therapist gave me a level of understanding I've never experienced before. There was no judgment, just a safe space to share my grief and get the practical tools to navigate it. Beyond just managing my schedule, they helped me navigate the

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mental fog of loss. And we worked through cognitive reframing, where I learned to distinguish between the things that I could control and the things that I couldn't control, allowing me to let go of the guilt I felt over my father's passing. They also taught me grounding techniques for when the overwhelm felt physical, and helped me ask the hard question, "What is the worst thing that would happen if I'm not perfect today?" This didn't just help me manage my life, it gave me the permission to actually grieve my dad without losing myself. Now, if you're like me and dealing with something heavy, you don't have to go through anything alone, because BetterHelp is always with you. And the great thing about BetterHelp is that they make therapy accessible wherever you are, whether you're online or through the app. Now, here's how it works. You just take a brief quiz and get matched with a licensed therapist quickly. And if If match isn't right, you can switch therapists at any time for any reason at no extra cost and it's backed by real-world experience because 82% of clients recommend their therapist. So, if you need support from a licensed therapist like I did, click the link in the description or just go to betterhelp. com / primalpodcast to get 10% off your first month because no one should have to go through life's hardest moments alone and Better Help is here with you. Many people when they want to drop their insulin, they also want to burn the belly fat. They they tend to track ketones and if they register low ketones, they feel really bad about themselves. But Exactly. where that's what you were saying and then and you'd probably say the same thing which is try not to track your ketones. Try to track the way that your body is feeling through a fast and if you're fasting every day and then we we'll talk about varying the fast which will I will speak about. It's more about how you're feeling as opposed to mathematics. But I just want people to understand the fasting methods that just start this like 16 hours for weight loss. Um if you want to, you know, get

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that autophagy like maybe from 17 hours. You also talk about the power of a 36-hour fast which you just mentioned. So, I want to make this clear that people shouldn't just jump into this, but I just want to understand the power of a 36-hour fast. If somebody wants to do that, what benefits are they going to get? Yeah, so the 36-hour fast was one that I I really researched for my patients because of many of the things we're talking about here which is some people you can give them a 16-hour fast and they they do it every day and they drop weight and they're like, "This is a miracle." And some people, I have a very good friend who she's like, "Mindy, I don't think fasting works for me. I'm not dropping weight." And I said, "How long are you fasting?" And she goes, "I I fast about 16 17 hours every single day. And I'm like, okay, well, keep going. Do it. Let's try it every day for 30 days, except for the week during her period, we which is what Fast Like a Girl was all about. And so, um and she's like, it's after a month, she's not 1 lb. She didn't lose 1 lb. And so, she gave up on fasting. And she was like, it it doesn't work for me. And so, then I hadn't seen her for a while, and um I maybe 6 months, and one day she shows up at my house, and I'm like, oh my god, you just lost so much weight. What happened? And she goes, I did the 36-hour fast. I had to go 36 hours. So, she's like, I did it two to three weeks in a row, and then I could go back to the 16-hour fast, and I was starting to lose weight quicker. So, in Fast Like a Girl, I map out the 36-hour fast. Is this beautiful fast to really nudge your body what you're telling your body after 36 hours without food, you're telling your body, hey, you stored glucose somewhere. Go find it. Go find

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where you stored glucose. You're sending a a message to your body, you have enough to survive on here. So, go find that and burn it. But, at you might need to go into that longer fast to be able to get that message through to the body. Okay, so we spoke about what could happen with belly fat, but also the power of the 36-hour fast is also for the heart and the liver, so your organs. Can it help your organs as well if you do this 36-hour fast? I think the most fasting is helping your organs. So, let's let's do this. I think this will be really helpful because I map this out in Fast Like a Girl, and I think it's I I people to see that there's like a healing response here. So, 12 to 15 hours you have metabolically switched over into um into hopefully a fat-burning place. Your body is like, "Wait, we didn't really get enough glucose hasn't come in. So, I think I need to go ahead and start to um look for where I stored glucose." And that's where you'll start to see some some ketone production. We also have some really cool evidence that it between 12 and 15 16 hours in that little range, your body starts to make growth hormone. And growth hormone is like the fountain of youth hormone, and we don't make enough growth hormone after 30 our growth hormone starts to go down, which is why we age a little faster. So there's this real interesting metabolic and hormonal shift that's happening between 12 and 15 hours in that range. 17 hours your body's like, "Okay, wait. Glucose hasn't come in, nutrients haven't come in. We need to make sure that if there's any cell going on in here, if it's a weak link cuz now it's clicked into survival, if it's a weak link cell, we need to fix that cell. We need to get it

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energizing this body because this body hasn't had food in 17 hours. So, our body we have 72 trillion cells in our body, our body will actually stimulate autophagy at 17 hours. And it So, now you've got growth hormone, you've got ketones, you've got autophagy. Okay, at 24 hours your gut will say, "Um oh my god, um we haven't had food in 24 hours. We need to make sure when we get food, we're ready to grab the nutrients out of the food that comes down." And so, it will start to get rid of all the microbes in the gut that that are are not good. And And sometimes there's fungus like candida. And sometimes people have really bad gut dysbiosis where there's they have more bad bacteria than good bacteria. At 24 hours, the gut completely starts to repair itself. Um you also get stem cells. The research shows that at 24 hours, your brilliant body will start to upregulate stem cells. And it will start to repair the inner lining of that gut. In my clinical practice, I had so many supplements to help my patients with gut repair. And the minute I discovered the power of the 24-hour fast, I literally stopped all my supplement sales for gut. I was like, "You You I And I was just honest with my patients. I was like, "We can fix your gut by putting you once a week on a 24-hour fast. And then let's break your fast with with an And I have a whole strategy around what to break it with. Like fermented foods and bone broth and things that will nourish the gut." So, that happens at 24. At 36, now your body's like, "Wait a second. It's been a long time. We really need to go and find all that extra glucose that we have stored." And so, this is where you will start to see more of the belly fat gets

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burned. You'll start to see that the And when belly fat gets burned to answer uh one of your questions a a moment ago, that's visceral fat. So, as it's burning your belly fat, it's also burning your the fat around your liver. It's burning the fat around the other organs. So, it's starting to break that visceral fat down so that it can burn it for energy because it's in survival now. You've gone 36 hours without food. And so, your body's going, "We need to clean this system up so we can be stronger. 48 hours, your body reboots your whole dopamine system. So, it starts to actually create This was the most interesting research that I found. It starts to create new dopamine receptor sites, and so that you are motivated to go find food. But, what we discovered in our um community is when people are doing 48-hour fasts, that they actually started to see long after the fast, they started to see their mental health improve. And the And they started to see their addiction to um food change. Because the whole dopamine system got rebooted, got reinvigorated, and so it worked better for them now. So, they like weird things like if they went 48 hours without food, um and they had they would start to notice like a week later that like little things made them happy again. Like, they could look out at a sunset, and they could be like oh they could it could touch them different because they were so dopamine saturated. And when you went 48 hours without food, it rebooted this whole system. Now, their dopamine system worked better, which is amazing. And then 72 hours, the the whole immune system repairs itself,

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and you start to get this massive influx of stem cells, and stem cells will go anywhere in the body and start to heal part the parts of the body. The The story that I always say tell is that I had a pulled Achilles tendon, which if you've ever had an Achilles tendon an injury, it's not a fun injury. It's not one that you want. And I tried everything to heal it. Nothing would heal it. So, I was like, "Okay, I need some stem cells." So, I put myself into a 3-day water fast and on the third day um I could start to feel a little buzz in my Achilles tendon. And so, I was like, "Okay, why don't I stay in the fast?" So, I stayed in it 5 days. On the fifth day, so I now had 2 days of stem cells going cuz at 72, you trigger the stem cells. And so, all of the sudden, it was going to my whole body and um on the fifth day, the pain went away and it I'm not joking. That was about 10 years ago. The pain has never come back again. So, when we look for longevity, you you have to This was This is why fasting is so brilliant is that you are putting yourself in a what we call a hormetic stress state. You are putting yourself in a little bit of good stress. Stress can be good. And you're tapping the edge of your body's repair system cuz your body's always going to try to keep you alive. And so, when you go The longer you go without food, the more these mechanisms kick in to make you a stronger, healthier body. Dr. Mindy, I've got to be doing these 36-hour fast. You know, like I fast If we talk about fasting, I just do the normal eating window of 8 hours a day, fasting for 16 hours usually. God, I should try the 36-hour fast, but

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I want to ask the next question, which is there is foods that you can eat to enhance autophagy without doing fasting, this water-only fasting. So, I want to talk about that and then we can talk about if somebody wants to do water-only fasting, what they can have during the fast and then in their eating window. So, the first question is foods to eat to boost autophagy. So, you so it's kind of like a fasting mimicking diet. You mentioned earlier that 2 Tbsp of olive oil can burn visceral fat. Have you heard of olive oil fasting? You know, there's a lot of new like there's sardine fasting, there's olive oil fasting. So there's a couple concepts I want to pull out from that question. So, first, to stimulate autophagy, olive oil is not going to do that. Um the What's going to is stimulate autophagy best is actually coffee. This is why so many fasters are like I mean you I'm I'm here like gripping my my cup of coffee. Um and this is why so many fasters have coffee in the morning. It's part of the stimulating autophagy experience. Um the olive oil, I just did a video on this for my YouTube. Um and I found it really fascinating that olive oil, 2 Tbsp a day, actually they saw more 2 Tbsp a day for 30 days, and they saw that uh belly fat reduced significantly compared to a group that tried to lose weight without doing the olive oil. And so, the the theory that they have is that that olive oil really helped burn that belly fat. Okay. How does that work? Let's Let's just break that down. We have an omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid balance that's really important that we look at. When I eat an

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ultra-processed food diet, remember belly fat, belly fat is toxins. Ultra-processed foods have synthetic ingredients that our body doesn't know what to do with, so it puts it around the belly. So, those synthetic ingredients are high in omega-6 oils, bad inflammatory omega-6 oils. So, your omega-6 is higher than your omega-3. So, you should have a one to one ratio, where you are have one molecule of omega-6 to one molecule of omega-3. When you eat an ultra-processed food diet, what they say is you have a ratio of 20 to one. So, you have 20 times more omega-6 fats in your body than omega-3s. And your body is storing those fats in your belly. Now, if you start to come in and you take all of oil, or you do sardines, you are raising your omega-3s, and you are correcting that fatty acid balance. And when you correct that fatty acid balance, the body stops storing those toxic oils in your belly, and it starts to balance the ratio out, which ignites the body, telling the body burn fat where you stored these omega-6 toxic oils. So, they're great for I mean, this is why I think these sardine fasts are are so popular. I think this is why everybody's turning towards omega olive oils because both of those are so high in omega-3s that it's taking that 20 to one ratio, and it's bringing it back into balance. And when the body's in back in balance, it doesn't store fat at all, anywhere. Do you think that if somebody wants to

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burn belly fat, if they just tried two extra tablespoons of the olive oil as a starting point, try to eat healthy, is that better than maybe just jumping into a fast? Yeah, for sure. You if if you find fasting difficult, um it could be a good entry point. It will stabilize your blood sugar cuz, you know, if you it'll make sure that you're not on these blood sugar ups and downs, and it will um start to correct this balance. Now, I love fasting for weight loss. I'm not that I'm so I'm hesitant to say that will be your cure-all. But, some of you might do that, and you might get a great result, and some of you are going to be like, "Well, that didn't work." So, you know, make sure you maybe do you could do a month of 2 Tbsp of olive oil. You could get off your start to get off your ultra-processed foods, and then after 30 days, you could start compressing your eating window, and so that your intermittent fasting like, you know, 13-14 hours. I think the good thing about you is that you explain things in a way that makes sense. So, people can understand like, "I've got this tool, How about we do it like this to get the best result?" So, whether it's olive oil or fatty fish, you can use that to increase your omega-3s, while also trying to condense your eating window over time. Um you also mentioned carnivore fasting. Some people are carnivore keto for life. I'm kind of ketogenic. Um carnivore fasting, somebody wants to do that for a month or so, is that good to burn visceral fat? Okay, so carnivore fasting is fascinating to me, um because carnivore fasting stimulates a mechanism that regular fasting can't stimulate, and eating plants can't stimulate. So, let's break this down. Carnivore fasting is only eating meat. So, you can eat all

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kinds of meat. Some people say you can have dairy. Some people say, "No, don't have dairy." Some people say have eggs. Some people say, "Don't have eggs, so there's lots of layers to it. But the way we do carnivore fasting is I just say you can eat meat, you can um have eggs, and you can have grass-fed dairy. Um and those are sort of what we look at. When you don't bring plants into your body, plants have toxins on them. Uh um Steven Gundry brought this to our attention. They have oxalates and lectins in there, and some guts will have an immune response to those plant toxins. And it could start off as you would just get bloated after you eat plants. It could morph into plants actually make you vegetables make you gain weight because of these toxins. And some people with autoimmune problems, actually your body will start attacking your gut and will start to create this dysbiosis in the gut when that oxalate and lectin comes into our body. This was Steven Gundry's work, which was, you know, really revolutionary for us to see. When somebody's gut is so so off because of antibiotics, women and birth control pill throws the gut off, um stress, poor eating, this this whole ecosystem inside the gut gets completely um uh whacked out, and it's not thriving, and so it's your your body just starts to hold onto weight, it holds onto inflammation, your body's attacking itself with autoimmune and autoimmune situation. There's many variables to this. I take a 5-day period, and all I do is

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eat meat. I I not bring plant toxins in. What happens in the gut is a near miracle. There's nothing for the gut to fight against. There's nothing for the gut to attack. So, all the sudden inflammation comes down. So, people feel like their belly is a little bit flatter. All the sudden we will we started to see when I just put people on eating meat, we started to see that their joints felt better. They they didn't feel as as stiff. We started to see their skin change because there wasn't they weren't having this inflammatory response. And so, and then the most the biggest miracle that I saw was that anybody with an autoimmune condition, their symptom of autoimmunity went down. And so, when I dove into the science to look at this, what I saw was that the car - carnivore diet actually stimulates T regulatory cells in the gut. And T regulatory cells balance the immune system out. So, I started to see, oh my gosh, if I took my patients who had an autoimmune situation, and I put them on meat only, we did 5 days, uh I mean I we did a variety we did five, we did seven, we did 14. I had some I had one woman who had really severe um SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, that I put her on the carnivore diet for 90 days, um and she did so well. She did like her she never felt better because there was no there meat isn't offensive to the gut. The gut's not There's nothing in meat for the gut to attack, and the the T regulatory cells balanced her whole immune system. So, then I was like, well, what if there's there's two cellular processes? There's autophagy, which is where the body breaks down the bad,

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body breaks down the bad, and there's mTOR, where the body builds muscle, and and can build good and can build hormones. And so, I came up with this concept of carnivore fasting, where we could take 17 hours of fasting and stimulate autophagy, and we could follow that with eating meat only meat, and do that and now and we can stimulate mTOR, we could bring inflammation down, we could regulate the immune system. And when I put those two principles together, it was a near miracle. And um I will tell you that that was we do fast training weeks all the time on my YouTube channel. It's a free we still do them and we practice different fasts. And and uh people started reporting, thousands of people, that 5 days of carnivore fasting helped them lose more weight and keep that weight off than even a 3-day water fast. So, because there was something miraculous going on in the body because you were stimulating autophagy and stimulating mTOR. So, it's a real it's it's a healing tool. It's a it's we can pull it out. I'm not telling everybody like I hope people don't just like run hear this and be like, "Oh my god, I got to go to your I got to go do carnivore fasting." But, here's how you can use it. If you have an autoimmune problem, yeah, try it for a couple of days. It's boring as as hell. Like it's not eat it's not fun. bad. I eat meat and eggs and a seafood every single day. I actually really love carnivore because it's so simple. And if somebody has a gut issue, I've had low thyroid, so it's just really super super simple. My audience loves carnivore and keto and low carb. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Great. OKAY, BECAUSE I ALWAYS SAY IT'S GOING to be boring. Yeah, like don't try to be like

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thinking, "Oh, are they hating it?" No, they probably like it, so don't worry. Now, as we've discussed so far, achieving true health is about more than just what you eat. It's also what you absorb. You see, we focus a lot on food, but we forget the environmental toxins that can destroy your gut function and disrupt your hormones every single day. And these include your everyday products that I'm sure you're using, toothpaste, body wash, and even your shampoo. Now, most conventional brands are loaded with ingredients like parabens, phthalates, and even fluoride. And these chemicals soak through your skin and your gums, interfering with your insulin levels and your metabolic health, even when you're doing every single thing right. And that's why we crafted the Primal Tallow Balm and Soaps and our new shampoo bars. Now, everything we make is chemical-free, crafted from 100% grass-fed, grass-finished tallow. It naturally contains vitamins A, D, E, and K2. And the great thing is, there's no preservatives, there's no fake fragrances. There is just stuff that your body actually recognizes. And I've been using this unscented soap myself every single day. It's incredibly gentle and it doesn't strip your skin's natural skin barrier. And if you're in the US, great news, our store is now open, which means faster shipping and better prices. And for the next 7 days, you can get up to 30% off our new shampoo bars and body wash. Just head to the primaltallow. com / shampoo or use code shampoo at checkout. I've also linked them in the description. So, we spoke about the power of a 36-hour fast, water-only fasting to really reboot your body. We spoke about sardine fasting. We spoke about olive oils, like adding 2 Tbsp of olive oil, and carnivore fasting. So, moving back to the 36-hour fast or just water-only fasting, what do people have to have in their fast to not break it and get the best benefits? The research that I've been quoting for years and I put in the book that you just those people just had water. They just had water. And you know, there wasn't they weren't having

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coffee, they weren't having olive oil. So, I always say if you want to replicate the science, you just have water. But, what I'm trying to get the world to do is to adopt a fasting lifestyle. And a fasting lifestyle says, I'm going to vary my fast and for women I have them varying it to their hormones. I'm going to sometimes do carnivore, sometimes I'll do keto, sometimes maybe I'll do more plants. So, I'm going to vary my food. Um I'm and I'm I'm going to create a rhythm with food and fasting that is effortless and I can do it forever. So, I'm going to give you an answer that is going to help you always be able to use fasting as a tool. Whenever we are looking to implement something on a regular basis into our health habits, if it feels easy, it will we or if we get a good result with it, we are likely to stick to it. People just doing water is great. They can maybe do it once. They might be able to do it twice, but they're not going to be able to stick with it over time. So, this is where I was like, here is what you can eat or you can drink or you can eat. There are some things you can eat. Um to keep yourself in the state of fat burning and get the ketones, um get the the autophagy and get all the mech - the healing mechanisms that I'm talking about. Okay, so let's create this list. Um black coffee. Absolutely. Black coffee is going to make it clean. We don't want it to be like Starbucks chemical coffee. Like let's get organic clean coffee. Stimulates autophagy isn't going to pull people most people out of a fast. Okay.

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Now I want to add some cream to that. Um okay. This is where we it starts to become individual. I don't know. Um for me, I know if I add cream because I've tested on glucose monitors, I've tested on ketone readers, I have a rhythm with fasting that works for me. Um if I add cream, it actually keeps me in a fasted state better than if I don't put cream into it. Some people, cuz I've seen so many people's blood sugar over the years, they put cream in it, it pulls them out of a fast. It spikes their blood sugar. So, you're going to need to use a CGM to know if cream is going to work for you, but I can tell you black coffee's probably going to be okay. Now let's say we want to put some MCT oil in it. I highly recommend that because MCT oil has research showing that it will help your body burn more fat and and it will cut hunger down and it will help you make more ketones. So, yeah, go ahead and put some MCT oil in it. Okay. The other thing that we discovered is that some people when they go into the fasted state, some women their hair was falling out. Um some people were getting heart palpitations. And so we started to see that a lot of people are eating foods from conventional farms. And those conventional farms don't have good mineral dense soils. So, I started to see a trend where people were going into a fasted state already mineral depleted. And so their hair would fall out when they would fast, their heart would they would start to get heart palpitations, which is kind of scary. Um and if I let them have minerals in the fasted state, all of those symptoms stopped.

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So we came up with those salts and and there's all different kinds. Uh LMNT is one of them where you put uh sodium, potassium, and magnesium salts in water. Many companies have these salts that are flavored and the flavored will work. And you could put that in water in a fasted state and it's only going to help your fast and that's that's amazing. So we started to implement some of that. Then we had some I found some research on something called a fasted snack. And this is very analogous to the fast mimicking diet. And the fasted snack said that as long as you kept calories under about 400 calories in the day and you kept protein under 20 g because protein over 20 g is going to take you out of autophagy and you eat something that's like a pure fat bomb you will stay in the ketogenic fat burning system. So this is when I put out Eat Like a Girl, we did a whole cookbook that helps fasters and I have a whole section on fasted snacks and fasted snack recipes that match that study. I'll give you an example of one of the greatest fasted snacks you can have um is olives. Olives are just pure fat, no protein. They you you could and uh the fast mimicking diet did this with olives. So, you could have olives in the middle of a fast and for most people that will keep you fasting even longer. So, those are kind of the best ways I can say it and then you know, and then now you have choices. So, now if I'm going to go to a 24-hour fast, I can go, "Okay, well, what am I going to do if I get hungry? Oh, I could

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go have some olives." Okay, what am I going to do if all of a sudden I feel kind of woozy? Oh, I can have some mineral salts in water. Um, what if I want to do a 3-day water fast, but I don't want to go get off my coffee? I Okay, then just have black coffee it every morning so you don't have to go through that. It It stimulates autophagy. So, what I tried to do is give options and and some helpful tips so people didn't feel like, "Well, that was great. I did a 3-day water fast. I felt amazing, but I'll never do that again." So, now we have options. Is that helpful? I would say that it's very intimidating to think like I'm not going to eat for 3 days, especially if you're not used to it. Somebody watching this could be thinking, "What are you guys talking about? This is bloody easy." But for some people it can be quite difficult to even just contemplate getting there to that fasting uh state. So, I would say that those options are really great, especially the olives. I didn't know. So, if it's 20 no more than 20 g of protein, um, somebody would have to calculate how many olives that actually is so that you don't increase that protein, but I don't think olives have any protein. They don't? Go No, they're pure fat. Okay, I could probably have butter during a fast and that should be okay, right? Um, I've When when I was in clinical practice and somebody came in and they're like, "I'm not feeling good and I'm on day two of a water fast." I had them take uh ghee. Just a scoop of ghee or a scoop of nut butter, just the to put stabilize the blood sugar a little bit and it worked so well. And the fasted snack research is really interesting because what they did is they took two groups of people and they said, "Okay, this group is only going to fast 13 hours." And then the the second group is going to fast 13 hours um at but at or it's going to fast uh 16 hours but at the 13-hour mark they are going to have a fasted snack. So, they measured these people for 30

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days and the the this is where I'm like we need to be having great conversations like this so you can understand because at the end of 30 days the group who at 13 hours had the fasted snack and went 3 more hours fasting they lost more weight most of their weight was lost around their belly. We're back at evening out the omega-3 omega-6 balance. They their blood pressure went down, their cholesterol, all their cardiometabolic markers improved more than the group who just at 13 hours stopped fasting. So, when I saw that research, I was like" Okay, we need to start looking at little tools like olives and nut butters and yes, have some butter. If you want to just have some butter and keep going because you're going to keep healing on a deep level. It's really quite brilliant." Love it. Giving all these people some possible tools to take control of their health um when other doctors can't. Like you're a good doctor to help people but other doctors maybe not so much. I want to talk about gender differences. Dr. Mindy, you say that women are like a violin and men are like a kazoo. What I think I I think I've upset a few men. Um okay. So, you know, like like a violin is hard to play. Now, I don't play the violin. It needs a lot of tuning. It's a very sophisticated instrument. That's how our body is. And this is something that like specially right now, especially in this moment right now, like we need to help women understand how brilliantly we are designed. We are so our nervous systems are built to be sensitive. Our hormones are meant to give us a wide array of emotions. Our our body is the fact that we can grow a we can create life, we can grow a human

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inside of us. That makes us really sophisticated. And we we need to start to tend to our body in that way. We we are built with more bells and whistles than men. Now, I say the kazoo because literally it's not I watched so many couples fast together. And the man just drops weight and he's like, "Well, look at that. That was so amazing." It's cuz you have one note to play. A kazoo is only one note. You blow into it and you get a note. There's not multiple notes to play. A a violin can play all kinds of notes. So, you need very different tools. And one of the things that I've that has happened to women is we try to diet like a man diets, we try to exercise like a man exercise exercises, we try to bio hack like a man. And and what I really want to bring forward with Fast Like a Girl is we need to tend to this incredibly sophisticated, hormonally sophisticated body that we were so blessed to be given. So, yeah, think of it like a violin. You wouldn't just pick up a violin and start plucking the strings. You need to know how to play it. Whereas a kazoo you can just pick it up and blow into it and it gives you a note. What is the number one mistake that you see that people make when it comes to fasting, which is going to accelerate their belly fat? Oh, probably if we're looking at it through belly fat, um probably you fast for 15 hours, you're like, "Woohoo! I did it." And then you go and eat ultra-processed foods. Let's keep coming back to this omega-6, omega-3 balance. We have to keep coming back to this. If you are eating canola oil, vegetable oil, um safflower oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated

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oils, get to know your oils. Because, if you are eating those, you're now putting the omega-3, omega-6 balance, you're throwing it off. And so, you're going to collect you're going to get more more belly weight. So, always keep that one-to - one ratio in mind. Get enough like wild salmon, get enough grass-fed beef, get enough grass-fed dairy, um get your olive oil. Don't go to your ultra-processed foods, or you're going to feel like you never make any progress. Mhm. I think it's very important to understand how to become a fat burner, especially when you eat something, which I will talk about. I just want to ask a question around detox protocols, because you say that you can do all these fasting and everything, but if your body is not detoxed, and you can look at your armpit to have it to have a test. What is that test? Um well, so we call it it is your arm a a pit or a puff? And, um like it's supposed to be it's literally it's called an armpit. It's supposed to be a pit. So, you know, I think it's important to understand that if it's puffy, that is stagnant lymph. And and it's a portal in and out of the breast, right? And the breast is all fat tissue. So, what I when we were what there was a couple things I looked at when we were doing large group fasting in my clinic, but one of them was I would start to have women as they were fasting look to see if they had a pit or a puff. And sometimes the deeper they got into the fast, the more they had a puff. And so, we would have them loofah or take a um like salt like like a salt scrub and start to to do salt scrubs there. Um and so, that was helpful to me able to move all that cuz the body's going to detox as it

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fast. So, we need to get it moving out of it out of you. We call it opening up your detox pathways. Um the other really helpful thing is look at your tongue when you're fasting. If it's white, if it's yellow, if it's I've seen black tongues, um that's that's fungus dying off and it's coming out through your mouth. So, the pit and the puff and the tongue became measurements of how what was going on in the detox experience of fasting. Holy moly, Dr. Mindy, you're blowing my mind. Black tongue? Oh, I don't want a black tongue. Um okay, but that is the body detoxing. So, taking like pulling out all the toxins. So, the dry brushing, I'm sure that it's just allowing that circulation to happening uh when you're trying to dry brush. Um so, question for you, to become a fat burner when somebody is not eating. So, they've done the fasting window, they're doing all the protocols that you're doing. They have to know, Dr. Mindy, what do I need to be eating in my eating window? Do you think all foods are safe that they can just choose anything they want and they're going to get the results cuz they fasted? I think foods that come from nature are pretty safe. Um I I anything that's made in a warehouse is and has an ingredient label, now I'm going to be a little dubious. So, um for for like how my husband and I eat is we go to farmers markets and we we eat fruits and vegetables and meat and um and our carbohydrates come from sweet potatoes and potatoes. Sometimes I'll have rice. Um but things that don't have these long ingredient labels. I think if you eat and they call it a whole food diet. If you're eating a whole food diet without a lot of ingredient labels, I don't think you need to be counting

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macros. I don't think you need to be counting calories. You're eating good food, eat with good oils. Where we start to veer is once that thing has an ingredient label on there, we better be able to understand those ingredients in there. So, that would be where like, okay, if you have a potato chip addiction, if you have if you're a sugarholic, if you um are eating a high carb diet um and you you fast and you're still haven't cleaned your diet up, I think yeah, I think then you do need to start macros. You might want to look a little bit more because you have all these mysterious ingredients in there. In In Age Like a Girl, I I you know, in Fast Like a Girl and and Eat Like a Girl, I gave macros. I was like net carbs, I explained all that. With Age Like a Girl, I was like thinking a little deeper on it and I'm like, if you want somebody to thrive metabolically, you would have them eat like a Mediterranean diet. Mix that with fasting. That's a really good diet. I was going to ask that because there's so many different ways of eating. Keto, carnivore, low carb, vegan, vegetarian, but I'd say the premise is to eat whole unnatural foods. You do have an emphasis on eating protein. And if there's one conversation for women especially and men is to increase their protein. Why is that that so important? Yeah, well, so the protein conversation is like it's another should for women, right? It's another like I just it's another like, okay, we're going to put, you know, now you got to count your protein. You got to make sure you get 30 g. So, let's make it simple. Protein has amino acids in it. When you eat protein, you break it down into amino acids, which helps you build muscle. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism will be.

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your metabolism will be. That's a great strategy. What the research is showing is that the best way to get your protein in is through something called protein pacing. In fact, I just did a video on this on my YouTube, where they actually looked at just every meal you have 30 g of protein. Just make sure every meal you have 30 g of protein. They didn't put a total protein amount at the end of the day. They just said 30 g of protein. And you pair that with 15 hours of intermittent fasting. The This was a study that came out in the last year that said this is one of the best ways to lose weight. Is to do just make sure at every meal you get 30 g of protein. So, I think we can all do that. I think we don't Like when I make a meal, I start with the protein. Okay, I'm going to have eggs. Okay, well, I know I need to have about six eggs to get to over 30 grams of protein. Okay, so I'm going to have an omelet. I'm going to have scrambled eggs. Sometimes I have duck eggs, which is only like two to three of those cuz they're bigger. Um so I do a lot of um grass-fed sausages. So I'll you know, I'll throw some Okay, I'm going to break my fast. I'm throwing grass-fed sausages on on uh in my pan. And luck we're we're lucky lucky we live in an area where there's a lot of um great food. And so I've got venison and bison and rabbit and all those different meats are going to give you a whole bunch of different um amino acids. So I think we need to be protein focused, but not protein obsessed. And then after I get the protein in, then I'm going to be like, okay, do I want to put some microgreens with this? What else do I want to put with this? So the protein conversation has definitely has taken on a life of its

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own. Um but I just I really want women to get out of this, oh, now I got to do that. Oh, my god, really? I totally get it because we're not trying to measure the numbers in macros and calories and oh my god, another bloody thing I have to do. But like just understand that eat protein. Where's protein come from? Probably meat, eggs, and seafood. So if you can have a meal that has meat, eggs, and seafood in it, you're probably winning. You eat two to three meals a day, you're probably winning. So last question for you. You talk about a number one hack in the morning to double your fat burn in a week, which is very interesting. So the question for you, why do you have to be in the sun in the morning, the vitamin D? How is that linked to burning belly fat and losing weight? It's so funny. I feel like you were in my recording session on Monday for my YouTube videos. [laughter] I just did I do I know. I'm like, "Wow." Okay. So, um I'm like cuz I'm like I would I'm going to say what I've been saying. I got an a video coming out on that, which is really exciting. Okay. So, first, um for both men and women, we're we're rhythm. We need to follow a rhythm. Our body works really well. Our hormones are going to be um uh they're going to be controlled by a rhythm. And that rhythm's called your circadian rhythm. So, this is why shift workers, this is why, you know, that conversation about people living in the dark, like tho - those are a little bit like challenging because you're out of sync with a natural natural rhythm. So, you have to figure out how to manipulate that rhythm. But for the rest of us, you know, it's really important that we get up with sunrise and that we see that red light in the morning. If if I just did this this morning, I'm staying at a friend's house and I woke up and I It's I'm in Sausalito, California, looking out at San Francisco, the skyline. It's beautiful. And I saw the sun come up and it was

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orange, kind of that orange yellow glow. Well, on one level, we can be like, "Oh, it's so beautiful." But what was happening is my eyes were saying, "It's daytime. Let's turn melatonin off and let's start waking the pancreas up so it's ready for food. Let's become more insulin sensitive. Let's get cortisol to all the come in you're going to the day is starting, so this person needs to actually go and move." So, it's I've learned, and I really hope that as humans we go back to this, that there's like this slow sort of warm-up in the morning that we can do with light. Like I sat in front of the window and I looked out at the beautiful skyline and I drank my cup of coffee, like slowly waking myself up. That is important because it put me in rhythm with the day-night cycle, like with the light cycles. And now my body is preparing to be more insulin sensitive. So, if I wake up in the dark or I wake up when it's fully light at light out, I grab my cup of coffee. Oh, the other thing I don't do is I don't turn my phone on within the first hour. But let's say I wake up, get my cup of coffee, I the I don't care about the light. Maybe I turn all the lights on in my house. Um I get go on my phone. I'm like, "Okay, what do I have to do today?" I start stressing out about the day. There was no warm-up. Where's your warm-up to the day? It's because in that warm-up, you're literally sending chemical messages to your body that the day has started. We're ready for you to make cortisol. We're ready for you to be insulin sensitive again. And if we miss that moment, that that can throw all every hormone off and can make us gain weight. Now, vitamin D, what's really interesting about vitamin

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D is that it it's a fat-soluble vitamin, and so it will actually get stored in fat. A little bit like those omega-6s. And so, the more fat you have, your body actually starts to take vitamin D and put it into those fat molecules. And vitamin D is actually not really even a vitamin. It's a prohormone. It's It helps you make every single hormone in your body. So, you want to make sure that you get enough sun exposure. You can do it in the morning, you can do it at night, you can take vitamin D. But if you're going to put those two principles together, we need vitamin D. And the more weight we carry, the less is available to make hormones. And you need hormones to be a healthy human. And so, when we look at the circadian rhythm, okay, here's our circadian rhythm. We're warming up for the day. We're using light to to indicate hormonal production. And we need vitamin D to be able to make all these hormones. That's how sophisticated we are. Now, that was the best explanation of how I can get my life back, my belly fat, and just live a damn good life, irrespective of politics and what's happening in the world. Dr. Mindy Pelz, thank you so much for your time. I'm going to leave all your books in the description of this episode. People can check it out. Even if you're a man, buy it because you're probably married to a woman, and you can understand her better. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thank you. I hope you love this episode. Check out this one with Dr. Ben Bikman. It is all about the number one instant trick proven to burn belly fat faster. I'll