Dr Mindy Pelz Fasting Cycle Options

Dr Mindy Pelz fasting cycle options are the main point of discussion in this Mel Robbins podcast titled ‘Take Control of Your Health: 6 Intermittent Fasting Tips From Holistic Doctor’

There is a lot of information in this 1 hour 9 minute discussion between Dr Mindy Pelz and Mel Robbins. This article will give you the best highlights and takeaways.

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Six different fasting length options

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Dr Mindy Pelz discusses these six fasting length options and what happens during each stage. For more information about maximizing these fasting cycle options to align with your monthly cycle, read Mindy Pelz’s book, Fast Like a Girl.

#1) 12 – 16 hour fast:

Glucose and inflammation will come down, we begin to make ketones, and growth hormones will start to kick in.

When inflammation is high, nutrients tend to get blocked from getting into the cells. Inflammation will cause pain and brain fog, amongst other things. So, it’s good for us whenever we can dip into a state of lowering inflammation. 

Our bodies use ketones as a fuel source when the glucose from the food we eat is depleted. When our bodies are using ketones, we’re burning stored fat.

Mindy talked about how we stop producing growth hormones around age 30, but fasting is one way to continue getting it.

There are a lot of great benefits of fasting 12-16 hours! Just thinking about this usually keeps me from going for a snack at midnight so I can wake up in the morning with most of the 12 hours of fasting behind me.

#2) 17 hour fast:

With a 17-hour fast, autophagy will start to kick in. Autophagy is a process the body’s cells go through when it’s gearing up to restore energy so we can hunt and gather food (like our ancestors did for thousands of years.)

Autophagy will repair and even eliminate some damaged cells and turn them into new functioning cells. It’s like an internal cellular detox.

Dr Mindy also talked about how viruses don’t have their own energy systems. Viruses will have a party in a sugar-burning system, but when autophagy is going on, they can’t survive.

#3) 24 hour fast:

Mindy calls the 24-hour fast the gut reset fast. After 24 hours of fasting, our bodies may begin to repair a leaky gut and get rid of harmful bacteria. She talks about an MIT study showing that the intestinal stem cells inside our gut are made at 24 hours of fasting.

Mindy also joked about how people can spend thousands of dollars to have stem cells injected, but we can do that for ourselves with 24 hours of fasting for free!

#4) 36 hour fast:

Dr Mindy Pelz calls this one the fat-burning reset. She explains that this is when our system will go find the stored fat that’s been around for a long time. She says sometimes all it takes to unstick weight loss plateaus is one 36-hour fast.

Dr Mindy Pelz also reminds us that we should NOT do 36-hour fasts all the time. In her book Fast Like a Girl, there’s more information about when it’s safe to lean into longer fasts like this.

Also, we should not start with a 36-hour fast! Start with a 12-hour fast and train yourself over the course of a few weeks or months.

 {RELATED POST: How To Start Intermittent Fasting}

From this point, you can continue to train and experiment with 48 and 72 hour fasts as well. Read on to learn about the benefits of these extended fasts.

#5) 48 hour fast:

The 48-hour fast is the dopamine reset fast. Mindy explains how new dopamine receptor sites are made during this time, giving dopamine more availability to get into our cells.

When our receptors for dopamine are primed and enter our cells, there are benefits most of us will love. Dopamine is motivation. Ketones increase GABA (which is calming). Combining the two (dopamine and GABA) will help us feel happier.

Dr Mindy Pelz said that in their community, they’ve clinically seen many people who will feel higher happiness levels for weeks after a 48-hour fast.

#6) 72 hour fast:

Mindy calls the 72-hour fast the immune reset fast. With the 72-hour fast, we can get rid of old white blood cells, and new ones will kick in.

Mindy explained this by talking about how a scientist from the University of Southern California (USC) discovered that at 72 hours, the immune system reboots itself. This scientist put patients who were on a chemotherapy protocol on 72-hour fasts before, during, and after chemo. Instead of experiencing low immune systems after chemo, he witnessed white blood cells being re-energized.

A 72-hour fast can also repair chronic injuries and neurons of brain cells that have been degenerating.

That’s a lot of information to process! Not all people will benefit from fasting. Everyone is different, so while many folks feel happier for a few weeks after a 48-hour dopamine reset fast, others will not. Please discuss these protocols with your doctor, especially if you’re on prescriptions.

Dr Mindy Pelz Fasting Cycle For Women

Mindy Pelz’s book Fast Like a Girl will give you the information you need to know more about how to use these fasting lengths at specified times in your monthly cycle to maximize your results.

Dr Pelz does not recommend doing the same length of fast every day. There are times in our cycle when we don’t fast much beyond while we’re sleeping, and there are times in our cycle when we can lean into longer fasts.

In Fast Like a Girl, Mindy also explains which foods are best to eat to support our hormones. Combining the suitable fasting cycle options with foods that support our hormones allows us to feel as good as possible.

Intermittent fasting can help people who are food addicted

In this podcast, Dr Mindy Pelz explains how intermittent fasting can help people who are food addicted. Because fasting is a way to help our bodies with metabolic switching (which is when our bodies use food as fuel and, in the absence of food, will use ketones as fuel.)

After fasting for about 12 hours, our bodies may begin to make ketones. Ketones will turn off hunger hormones.

In a fasted state, there can be positive changes in the diversity of our gut microbiomes. When harmful bacteria goes away, cravings are likely to subside.

Fasting also helps repair inflamed cells, which helps cells absorb nutrients. We will have fewer cravings when our cells are supplied with the nutrients they need. 

Interesting discussion point 

Mindy and Mel discussed the fact that the New England Journal of Medicine did a review of 85 studies on fasting and found very positive results overall. As a matter of fact, the New England Journal of Medicine recommended fasting as a frontline protocol to treat many illnesses.

“Preclinical studies and clinical trials have shown that intermittent fasting has broad-spectrum benefits for many health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurologic disorders.” ~New England Journal of Medicine

Summing it up

If you have time to watch this podcast, I highly recommend it. Listening to the discussion between Mindy Pelz and Mel Robbins is inspiring. Mel does a great job flushing out all the questions to understand what each of these fasting lengths can do for us.

I’ll end with a quote. Mindy said this about fasting, and I found it to be exciting and inspiring:

“Click on an intelligence inside your body that you can only get with the absence of food.”

All the best to you!

Dawn