Fast Like a Girl: A Woman's Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy,and Balance Hormones

by Mindy Pelz

Insulin resistance is a condition in which your cells can no

longer successfully use insulin as a hormone to escort the sugar from your food into your cells. When your cells become unable to use glucose for fuel, not only will you experience a depletion in energy but they will store the unused glucose as fat. This is the root cause of metabolic syndrome, which is defined as having three out of five of the following components: obesity, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides, high blood sugar, or low levels of HDL cholesterol.

Let’s go back to the calorie-restriction diets you may have tried in the past. The rigidity of these diets often creates stress, spiking your cortisol levels. You start reducing the number of calories you eat, which makes you hungry and irritable. This new agitated state creates a fight-or-flight reaction in your brain, and your brain responds by releasing cortisol into your bloodstream, telling your body there is a crisis at hand. Your body responds to this crisis signal by shutting down digestion, halting fat burning, and raising

your glucose levels so that you are physically prepared to handle this stressful situation. As your glucose levels go up, insulin rises to meet the new sugar demands. Once more, a surge of insulin overwhelms your cells. The crazy part is that all of this happens without a single nibble of food entering your mouth. Repetitive cortisol spikes will impede your dieting results. Any rigid diet that you have to consistently muscle your way through will keep cortisol high for potentially too long. But cortisol spikes don’t just happen because your boss overloads you with work, or you have an argument with your spouse. Often cortisol spikes can happen when you hop on a diet that is restrictive and hard to fit into your lifestyle. Cortisol can also rise when you are overexercising, trying to force your body into a state of health. I have even seen women who get so obsessed with their results with fasting that they go longer and longer in a fasted state, creating a constant flow of cortisol. Cortisol is the elephant in the room that is often not addressed on popular diets. You can’t be in constant states of stress and improve your health at the same time.

Day-to-day stresses can give you cortisol spikes. We call it a rushing woman’s lifestyle, a term coined by Dr. Libby Weaver in her book Rushing Woman’s Syndrome. That’s because a woman’s body is much more sensitive to swings in stress than a man’s body. We are hormonally designed to procreate, and when stress goes up it signals a massive hormonal shutdown to occur. When a stress response gets triggered, our brain thinks a tiger is chasing us. It will reorganize all our hormones in that moment so that we are neurochemically prepared to run from the tiger. This new configuration of hormones often means that our sex hormones drop and insul...

What chemicals are considered obesogens? The list is long, but these are the five worst: BPA plastics, phthalates, atrazine, organotins, and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

Common obesogens found in food include monosodium glutamate and soy protein isolates.

They, too, block the hormonal receptor sites, making it impossible for your hormones to enter your cells to do their job. This can dramatically blunt everything from thyroid hormones to insulin from entering your cells, leading to more weight gain, fatigue, and erratic mental health.

Estrogen, for example, loves a low-carbohydrate diet, while progesterone wants you to keep your carbohydrate load a little higher.

Ketones are an alternative fuel source for your cells when glucose is not readily available.

Ketones have the power to regenerate damaged neurons that carry information throughout your brain, improving your memory and ability to retain new information, as well as giving you increased focus and mental clarity.

in regard to ketones, if your mitochondria are sluggish and not providing the necessary energy to function at your best, ketones will power them back up. It’s the ultimate mitochondrial reset. This energy is much different from the energy you feel when you eat. When operating from the sugar-burner system, you will often feel your energy go up and down. Ketone energy is much different; it is consistent, giving you both physical and mental clarity throughout your day.

Ketones will also go up to the hypothalamus of your brain and turn off your hunger hormone. This is a large reason why the more you fast, the less hungry you will become. As your brain senses ketones when you click into your fasted state, it will use those ketones to kill your hunger. Many fasters use this decline in hunger to extend their fasts a little longer, getting even more of a healing benefit. The rise in ketones also triggers the release of a calming neurotransmitter called GABA. This neurotransmitter has an anti-anxiety effect on your brain, leaving you feeling more relaxed despite not eating any food.

When your cells register dipping blood sugar while in a fasted state, this incredible repair process kicks in.

Autophagy improves cellular resilience in three ways: detox, repair, and the removal of diseased cells.

Instead of looking for nutrients outside the cell when food is scarce, that cell turns within and eats what’s inside.

Over time our cells accumulate a variety of damaged organelles, proteins, oxidized particles, and harmful pathogens. This accumulation causes our cells to become dysfunctional. When in a state of autophagy, our brilliant cells will detox these malfunctioning parts out of the cell, thus revitalizing them.

Intermittent fasting: 12–16 hours Autophagy fasting: starts at 17 hours Gut-reset fast: 24 hours Fat-burner fast: 36 hours Dopamine-reset fast: 48 hours Immune-reset fast: more than 72 hours

FOODS THAT SUPPORT ESTROGEN

FOODS THAT SUPPORT PROGESTERONE

LEUCINE-, ISOLEUCINE-, AND VALINE-RICH FOODS

PROBIOTIC-RICH FERMENTED FOODS

PREBIOTIC FOODS

POLYPHENOL FOODS

The rules for ketobiotic eating are as follows: Consume no more than 50 grams of net carbohydrates per day. Focus on natural carbohydrates such as vegetables and greens. Consume no more than 75 grams of clean protein per day. Greater than 60 percent of your food should be coming from good fat.

The rules for hormone feasting days are as follows: Consume no more than 150 grams of net carbs per day. Focus on nature’s carbohydrates such as root vegetables and fruits. Consume no more than 50 grams of protein per day. Consume healthy fats as desired.

The harmful oils you want to avoid are: Partially hydrogenated oils Corn oil Cottonseed oil

Canola oil Vegetable oil Soybean oil Safflower oil Sunflower oil

Foods high in refined flours and sugars include: Breads Pastas Crackers Desserts

Common synthetic ingredients to avoid:

Artificial colors and flavorings Red or blue dyes Saccharin NutraSweet Splenda

Good fats to add: Olive oil Avocado oil MCT oil Flaxseed oil Pumpkin seed oil Grass-fed butter Nut butters Olives Avocados Healthy proteins to add: Grass-fed beef Bison Turkey Chicken Pork Eggs Charcuterie meats like salami and prosciutto

POWER PHASE 1

Food choice throughout the phase: ketobiotic Days 1–4: intermittent fasting (13 hours) Day 5: intermittent fasting (15 hours) Days 6–10: autophagy fasting (17 hours) MANIFESTATION PHASE Food choice throughout the phase: hormone feasting foods Days 11–15: intermittent fasting (13 hours)

POWER PHASE 2 Food choice throughout the phase: ketobiotic Days 16–19: intermittent fasting (15 hours) NURTURE PHASE Food choice throughout the phase...

Foods to break your fast with that support your microbiome: Fermented yogurts, including coconut and dairy varieties Bone broth Sauerkraut Kombucha Seeds and seed oils Prebiotic-rich protein powders

Foods to break your fast with that support muscle building: Eggs Beef sticks Beef jerky Protein shakes such as pea, hemp, and whey concentrate Sliced deli meats (nitrite-free) Chicken breast Turkey Grass-fed beef High-protein vegetables such as peas, broccoli, sprouts, mushrooms, and brussels sprouts Chickpeas Lima beans Quinoa Avocado

Foods to break your fast with that keep you burning fat: Avocado Raw nuts or nut butter Olives Bone broth

Things that often pull you out of a fasted state: Coffee creamers Sweeteners in your coffee or tea Sodas Diet drinks Gatorade Alcohol Things that don’t typically pull you out of a fasted state: Supplements

Medications Black coffee Coffee with full-fat milk Tea Oils, including flaxseed and MCT Mineral water

Good fasted snacks: ¼ cup of grass-fed cream 1 tablespoon of MCT oil 2 tablespoons of nut butter 1 tablespoon of seed oil

Two of my favorites are put out by LMNT and Redmond. Hunger can be caused by many things, and sometimes it is triggered by a mineral imbalance. So get a boost of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

If you feed those microbes, they stop giving you hunger signals. You can do this by adding a prebiotic powder to your water, coffee, or tea.

Be sure you are having daily bowel movements, sweating often, drinking lots of water, dry brushing or loofah brushing your skin, placing castor oil packs over your liver at night, and getting lymphatic drainage massage on a monthly basis.