119. Fasting, Feminine Power & Vitality at Every Age with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:00):
But when we look at our lives, what women do is
I'm not losing weight. Okay. I'mgonna do a three day water fast,
and then I'm gonna go keto, andthen I'm going to gym every day.
And I'm gonna do that inbetween, you know, balancing
work and picking up the kids,and I'm gonna skimp on sleep.
And then I'm like, wait asecond.
Why am I losing weight?

Kate Northrup (00:16):
I have such a treat for you. Doctor Mindy
Peltz is here today. Her book,Fast Like a Girl, really changed
my life and changed myrelationship with my body. So if
you don't know doctor MindyPeltz, she is an absolutely
incredible health expert whouses the wisdom of the menstrual

(00:38):
cycle to teach us how to fix ourhormones and and optimize the
experience of living in a femalebody, specifically with using
fasting in a cyclical cadence.So today, we talk about how to
fast when you're inperimenopause, the incredible
changes that happen in thefemale brain, and how we can

(00:59):
fuel ourselves at every stage oflife optimally.
What to do if you don't have acycle? What to do if you do have
a cycle? Her absolutelyincredible, somewhat
heartbreaking, but in the end,really beautiful story of
getting to the breaking point inher own life around her work and
her hormones and herrelationship with her body. This
conversation was so rich. Wewent so many places.

(01:22):
I felt like I was talking to anold friend. Enjoy. Welcome to
Plenty. I'm your host KateNorthrup and together we are
going on a journey to help youhave an incredible relationship
with money, time, and energy andto have abundance on every

(01:43):
possible level. Every week,we're gonna dive in with experts
and insights to help you unlocka life of plenty.
Let's go fill our cups. Pleasenote that the opinions and
perspectives of the guests onthe Plenty podcast are not
necessarily reflective of theopinions and perspectives of
Kate Northrop or anyone whoworks within the Kate Northrop

(02:06):
brand.

Hi. Hello.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

It's so fun. It's so synchronistic. Like, we were
just talking about how, youknow, our D O O was just reading
your book, and then it popped upthat you were gonna be here, and
then, like, all thesynchronicity of I was on your
podcast right as I was readingyour book. And it's just like
very meant

to be,

and I'm so happy to

finally I be know. It's funny because when I
got here this morning, I waslooking at my schedule. I was
like, oh my god, we've never metface to face, but I feel like I
know you. I love that about theway social media

works I know that it's really special. Sometimes
it can be awful, but mostly IThis think it's

is true. This is true.

Okay. So I want to start off by asking you, were
you always really into themenstrual cycle Oh.

In your life? This is a really good question.
It's a that's a really goodquestion. Nobody's ever asked me
that. The answer

is because you're mostly on men's podcast. Yeah.
Maybe. No. I don't think I don'tthink that's actually true.
I'm sure you're on many women'spodcast, but we were just
talking about the in person onesNo. That happen to be men.

Most the in person are men, which is really
interesting. And most of

them I am breaking the trail.

Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. So the answer
is no.
I mean, I have had and mostlybecause my menstrual cycle
throughout most of my life waslike just picture perfect.

Cool.

It just came and I didn't have a lot of PMS
symptoms, and then it went. AndI never thought anything about
it until I hit my early 40s. Andbecause it was so regular, it
was like a non event. But then Ihit my early 40s and it was like
spotting happened, and nightsweats happened. And it went
from every two weeks to everysixty days.

(03:50):
And I was in my clinic teachinglifestyle to mostly women. I
call them the mama bears, likethere was just a huge group of
mama bears that would bring alltheir family to me. And all of a
sudden I started solving my ownhormonal problems with lifestyle
and dove into understanding themenstrual cycle. And then once I
figured out my own hormonalchallenges through lifestyle,

(04:12):
then I started experimenting onthe mama bears. And the next
thing I know, like a formulastarted to emerge, especially
when it came to It's

so cool. So I heard about your book from my
therapist who lives in Marin.And it was so about a year and a
half ago, let's I was about toturn 40, and I was just gaining
weight, and I did a session withher about it because I was like,

(04:44):
I feel like I either have tochoose between just being
heavier than I want to be Mhmm.Or being in a restrictive fight
with my body. And I don't likeeither of those choices.

No. Those are bad choices.

Also, don't wanna buy new jeans. I mean, just
practically speaking, was like,I don't wanna buy new clothes. I
have clothes I like. You know?And so she recommended Doctor.
Sarah Gottfried's Women Food andHormones and Fast Like a Girl.
Amazing. Yeah. She's the best.Anne Davin, shout out.
So, and I read your book. Ifirst read Sarah Gottfried's,
which was so helpful, and then Iread your book, and I was able

(05:21):
to create my own, you know, myown protocol. I lost that
weight. I felt amazing. I feltlike better than I ever had even
before kids.
Amazing. Like phenomenal. It wasgreat. So first of all, just
thank you.

Oh my god. Love

it. And for someone like me who had a
history of restriction and beingin a bit of a war with my body,
it did feel like it had thiswonderful ebb and flow where
there were times that hormonallyit felt totally appropriate to
be just eating less and almostliving on the vitality from

(06:01):
within, and then times whenthere were more these feeding
cycles that also felt great. SoI wasn't walking that tightrope
of constant feeling like I can'thave what I want, which was a
lifelong history I had. Sothat's cool. So can

I I just have to say something on this because
when I started figuring outwhere women should fast and not
fast according to their cycle,we had experimented on not just
myself at my perimenopausephase, but all these women in my
clinic? And then I took it toYouTube and I experimented on
all these women on YouTube. AndI was like, hey, tell me what

(06:37):
you're finding. And that's howwe came up with like when a
woman should fast and not fast.And it was in that that I
realized like, literally thequestion that kept burning my
brain is like, why would we eatthe same way throughout our
whole cycle?
Like, why have we been searchingfor that one diet? And then the
second thing that came into mybrain as I was watching all
these women have the sameexperience you were having was

(06:59):
like, oh my God, this is whyevery woman has failed at
dieting. Because we hop on one,we're like, worked for a little
bit and then it stops working.And then we hop on another one,
but we never go, oh, wait. I'm arhythmic being.
Totally. I have rhythms, foodrhythms, I have fasting rhythms,
I have sleep rhythm, I have workrhythm.

Exercise rhythm. Yeah. Sex rhythm. Yes. Yeah.
Like, we're just not supposed tobe the same all the time. So
obviously, we wouldn't wanna eatthe same

That's right.

All the time. Yeah. Phenomenal. So like, duh.

And also Like, duh. Like, and like, I'm a
little bit there were peoplelike, Alisa VT wrote in the
flow, and there are people thathave done, like, you know,
incredible stuff on this. But Iwas like, why haven't we why
aren't we talking about this?

I know. And, you know, even my mom in women's
bodies, women's wisdom, like,she actually did talk quite a
bit about the different kinds offood at the different times, but
I will be honest, I just andeven sorry, I grew up with her
as a mother, and then I knewElisa in New York and read her
books and stuff, and still Ijust was like, I didn't want to

(08:04):
do it. And so it wasn't until Ireally kind of needed it and had
a problem I wanted to fix that Itapped into it, which I'm kind
of bummed about, but anyway itis what it And maybe my girls
pick it up earlier. So I amcurious for people who have
resistance like I did, not withyour work because I really

(08:27):
needed it, but before when Iheard about cyclical living,
cyclical eating, cyclicalalignment with our work, which
now I have literally written abook about that, but early days
I was just like, I'm too busyfor this.

Oh, yeah.

I have too much to do. This is for women who
wear feathers in their hair.

And mullabeads.

Are at like ceremonies all day. Meanwhile,
I'm like increasingly becomingone of those women. That works.

Welcome to aging.

Yeah. Oh my god. It's the best. But what do we
what do you say when there'sresistance around this of like,
I don't have time or like, I'mtoo busy to pay attention to
that? So I what I think isreally interesting is we

can get away with a lot more when we're 20
and 30.

It's so true.

So I could probably If I had handed my own
book to my 30 year old self, Iprobably wouldn't have read it.
Yeah. Because I had a strategy.I was like eat clean and work
out a bunch. Okay.
And that kept me in a body thatI loved. Yeah. So there wasn't a
motivating factor. So to yourpoint, I think I think we
prioritize things when they'reimportant to us. Yeah.

(09:36):
So the women that I've seen,this has actually been a shock
since Fast Like a Girl came out,was the number of twenty and
thirty year olds that do nothave a cycle. Like no cycle.
Like that book just 20 and 30year olds, like there's, they
poured their questions onto myplatform. They emailed me.
They're like, I love this work,but how do I map it?

(09:56):
Because I don't have a cycle.

Where's their cycle?

It's gone. What's going on? It's gone.
Thank you. This is the questionthat I was like, what do you
mean?
And I answer some of this in EatLike a Girl because I was like,
what do you mean you don't havea cycle? And I think it's two
things. Well, I think it's threethings. One for sure birth
control. So birth control, manyof them take away your cycle.
The second is under eating. Soif you don't eat at least a

(10:21):
thousand calories or more, thenyou've got yourself a thyroid
challenge over and over and overagain. They'll throw your cycle
off. And then the last one isstress. So women are under so
much, they're so saturated withcortisol that the reproductive
system has shut down.
And that is a huge problembecause what I mean, as you

(10:44):
know, like not just the ritualof bleeding, but in Eat Like a
Girl, I really did a lot ofresearch because I wanted to
address these women on howtoxins are shed through our
blood. And I actually found astudy that said there's four
toxins that are shed everysingle time we have a menstrual
cycle. It's BPA plastics,forever chemicals, phthalates,

(11:10):
which we breathe in. And now Icannot think of the fourth one.
But there's pesticides.
Well hello. Those are

all the big ones. Wow. Pesticides, phthalates,
BPA, and what was the last one?Forever Chemicals. Thank you,
Forever Chemicals.
Wow. They come out. They passduring menstrual cycle, but I
have a question about that. Sodoes that mean that they're in
the uterine lining if you getpregnant? Yeah.
Listen I'm like, dun dun dun.

That So feels kind in my clinic for a good
decade, I did a ton of detoxing.And we did everything from heavy
metal detox to mold detox. Youknow, all of these chemicals are
packed in us. And they arehanded down, a lot of them by
our mothers. Because when we'rein the womb, this is really sad

(11:58):
and I hate saying this, but whenwe're in the womb, it's the
ultimate detox for the mom.
So when hormones go up, thesetoxins come out of stored tissue
and they go into the baby. Andwe enter into the world with our
toxic load of our mother. Andour mother entered into the
world with a toxic load of hermother. And it just keeps
getting passed down. And then weaccumulate our own toxic load.

(12:20):
So yeah, there's probably somelevel of toxicity on that
uterine lining, and that isbeing absorbed into our systems
and handed down.

But hopefully, if a woman is going to have a baby,
she's not having the baby on herfirst menstrual cycle That's
true. And so she has manychances to pass through many of
those things before gettingpregnant.

Definitely, when we're talking about the uterine
lining.

I'm always going for the hopeful message. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Or just learn to detox before What
you get

was your background? What was the nature
of your practice?

Yeah, so I think it goes back to how I was
raised. So I was raised by atotal health food nut mom. In
fact, Eat Like a Girl wasdedicated to her because we
didn't have sugar in our house.I introduced rice cakes to the
elementary school back in the70s. Literally had rice cakes
with the natural peanut butterand honey and banana wrapped in

(13:15):
a wax paper bag because I and werecycled our cans and like my
parents were hippies.
So cool. So, and then we didn'thave a primary care physician. I
mean, we had one, but we went tothe chiropractor. And the
chiropractor, every time we hada cold, every time I had a
sports injury, we went to thechiropractor, he was our primary
care physician. So I went on toschool to learn nutrition and

(13:38):
exercise physiology.
I was a competitive tennisplayer. And I was like, I
thought I wanted to be like dosomething with exercise
physiology, but then I fell inlove with nutrition. And so then
I went on to chiropractic schoolbecause I wanted to teach the
lifestyle that had been taughtto me. And so my practice was a

(13:58):
lifestyle medicine practicebefore we had like functional
medicine as So a my backgroundwas as a chiropractor. And I
literally taught everything fromdetox to hormones to food to
exercise all through the lensthat the body heals itself.
And if you're not feeling thatway, there must be some kind of
interference. So we did, I mean,I took my patients to the

(14:21):
supermarket and I taught themhow to relabel. I did recipe
nights where everybody wouldbring a recipe and we'd talk
about how we made it. I didlectures on this is how your
thyroid works. It was like a allencompassing lifestyle clinic.

That's so cool. Where did you grow up?

In Malibu, believe it or not.

You grew

up in

Malibu, okay, and then you raised your kids in
Northern California, and yourpractice was in Northern
California. When did you stop,I'm assuming you don't practice
anymore.

I don't

practice anymore. There's no way you could do
everything you're doing now andalso see patients.

It was really sad. When Fast Like a Girl took
off, Hay House put me incontract with more books and
bought my self published books.And all of a sudden I became an
author.

They're like, oh.

Yeah, like, okay, what am I doing now? In my
so career now. So I closed myclinic. It was really hard to
do. But it was just in light ofa calling to try to bring what I
was doing in my clinic to abigger level.

No, I mean you can reach What many more do you
think it was about the timing ofFast Like a Girl that hit in
this particular way in terms ofour evolution as women?

Such a good question. I've asked myself I I
wanna say, what do you think?

I I'll tell you, but I wanna hear what you

think first. Great. Okay. I think there's a
couple things that happened inthat book. For starters, fasting
was already peaking.
Yes. And women were being toldyou shouldn't fast. Right. Which
really sucked because women weregetting great results fasting.
And it was like, it was a littlebit like what the the culture

(15:58):
was saying is here's this reallycool tool, it's free, but women
can't do it.
So I had already beenexperimenting with fasting
cycling within my practice, andI had already had like five
years of working with theprinciples, and then I had had
all these people YouTube. So Iknew what I had worked.

So you were doing your practice at the same time
as building your YouTubechannel?

Oh yeah.

Cool.

Everything. Yeah. Those years were not I
wasn't paying attention to myhormones. Okay. Well, yeah, I
needed know to your work at thattime.
Literally. I mean, lot of what Itell perimenopausal women right
now is like, my perimenopausaljourney would have been a lot
easier if I wasn't working somuch. But yeah, it was ten,

(16:42):
twelve hour days. I would seepatients for three hours in the
morning. I would do all myvideos for three hours in the
middle of the day and all mypodcast interviews, and then I'd
see patients three hours in theafternoon.
And then I'd home and be a mom.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah. And I did that every like seven days a
week. Like, yeah, it was crazy.Wow. So but but back to your
point, I think

By the way, we're coming back to that.

Yeah. No, because I Okay. We can. But I
think I just, it was like, Ithink it's an acknowledgement of
how thirsty women were forplease give me something that
works, that's inexpensive, andspeak my language. Really
appreciate when women are like,I read it in two days.

Totally, it's a very easy read.

Yeah, thank you. I think it's because I wrote it
like I talk to patients. Yeah.

And it's so honoring of the reality of life.

Yeah, thank you.

It was very easy to incorporate. Very easy to
incorporate. I think that you'reso right about fasting has been
part of this more mainstreamwellness conversation, but I
also think that there'ssomething about having a tool
that we can use to feel so vitaland alive that is deeply

(17:57):
connected to our femininecyclical nature. And I think we
are at a time when theconversation around honoring the
feminine is so much on the rise.And so to have that's like one
thing, again, in more of aceremonial space and in more of
an ephemeral way inspirituality, and I love all of
that.
And I love tools to honor thefeminine, to honor how we were

(18:23):
designed, which I think by thegoddess, you know, depending on
how people talk about it, that'show I talk about it, that in a
very practical way, on a dailybasis, knowing what day of your
cycle you're on Yep. And knowingwhat phase of your cycle you're
in Yep. Or, you know, if you'reif you're no longer bleeding,
just being able to track withyour fasting cycle just

(18:45):
according to what's in the bookis so practical. Mean, I also
tell women, you know, alwaysalways always we have the moon
there for us, and that's nevergoing away and way more
predictable than your menstrualcycle anyway.

Thank you.

So, you know, you could probably organize your
fasting cycle around the lunarcycle just as easily.

Yeah. And eat like a girl, I put a little text
box in about the moon cycle.

Thank you.

Because so many So great. Because so many people
were asking, like, what if I,you know, don't have a period?
What do I do? What if I'mmenopausal? And that's when I
started thinking about the mooncycle.
And so then I mapped the fastingcycle to the moon cycle. Same.
But here's the funny thing isyou know how many interviews
I've been on? Like, my this ismy favorite. I was on and I
won't say the name of thepodcast, but it was a mainstream

(19:27):
podcast, a female.
Yep. And she loved the idea thatwe would map it to the moon. And
she's like, yeah, because we aremagical bitches was her was her
response. Oh my god. The on herreel with that were insane.
Like, people ate me up. They ina bad way. They were like, what?

(19:48):
This woman's crazy. What are youtalking about?
And one one woman this was myfavorite. One woman, her comment
was, I looked up the moon cycleand fasting thing she's talking
about. There's no evidence onthat. Therefore, I don't believe
anything she says. And I waslike Oh my god.

Okay. That is

They're not studying us. Yeah. They're not
gonna study us in the moon.

No. Also okay. And if anybody wants evidence
about the lunar cycle, I wouldencourage you to do some
research about biodynamicfarming. Yes. Because if you
plant carrots, for example, at aparticular phase in a particular
way, you get bigger carrots.
We are also nature. Samegoverning principles govern our

(20:34):
bodies as govern carrots. And Iknow you might think, like,
okay, now that lady is crazy.How is it possible that the
science that governs tides

Tides is the one I always used

not govern our bodies when we are largely made
up of water?

Yes. Thank you. Thank Right. I know. No.
It makes perfect sense to me.

It's also just I will just say, like, I find
tracking the lunar cycle,whether it's for eating, for my
more manifesting mysticalpractices, for my productivity,
for whatever, like, just aroundmy kids, it feels very
comforting. Yes. I feel held byit. Yes. Do you do any lunar
tracking in your life?
Anything around your own eatingor your own like, how do you do

(21:16):
your own fasting cycles now?

Yeah. So I'm postmenopausal, and I do all of
it through the lunar cycle now.Cool. So I'm always I have a
moon app. My my favorite moonapp is Moonly.

Yeah. I love the Moonly app.

I love the pictures on it.

I know. It's really beautiful.

Yeah. And so I just go there and I go, okay,
what day am I on? Okay. Knowingthat, how long do I want my fast
to be? Do I want more carbs?
Do I want less carbs? So Ieverything's done by the man. I
haven't thought to manifest acarnivale.

Oh, well, I'll send you a video about that.

Will you? I will

try High to level. Right? High level, like,
the dark of the moon is the timeto plant seeds. This is the very
same as biodynamic farming. Sothis is just the metaphor of
farming in our lives.
Okay. So the dark of the moon isthe time to plant seeds, and
then the the full moon is thetime of of of harvest. Okay. And
so really, it's like every newmoon, what are the desires that

(22:06):
we are putting into the cosmos,right? Like, what are we
planting?
And then every full moon is alsoan invitation to ask, is there
anything that the light of thismoon is shining on in the shadow
blocking this manifestation thatI need to let go of, a way of
being, a way of thinking, arelationship, a pattern, or

(22:27):
anywhere that love needs to gothat it hasn't gone before, and
then so at the full moon, you'rekind of clearing the way, and
then the second half of thelunar cycle is really just,
like, anything else that youneed to bring about as you're
manifesting your desire, andthen you just kind of, like,
start again

Start again.

The next round.

And then there's, like, a

whole thing with which I won't get into, but
there's a whole thing withastrology, and, like, the new
moon coincides with the fullmoon six months later in the
same astrological sign. So thenew moon in Aries is gonna
happen in March, but then thefull moon in Aries is gonna
happen in October, Then there'sa whole thing with 18 But On
month your video? No. But nowI'll make a new one for you.

(23:09):
I'll do a podcast episode on it,and when I do it, I will send

it to Thank you. A part of

me It was will be dedicated to Mindy.

Thank you. Thinking I was I was thought you
were gonna say you plant theseeds at the end the new moon

Yeah.

And then you wait for it to happen at the
Right. At the full moon. Whichis what would be like days
later. It's not the

whole thing. Yeah. Some manifestations, of
course, would take one lunarcycle, but as we know, some take
longer. Yeah. So there's like awhole cool you know, and
astrologers, of course, knowmore about it than I do, but
anyway, that's manifesting withthe moon.
Okay. So I have a question.Because when I did the fasting,
I am and I love this aboutmyself, but it's also one of my
worst qualities. I'm a littlebit extra. And so what happened

(23:52):
was and I wanna know your takeon this as a practitioner.
What happened was I felt amazingon the longer fasts.

Mhmm.

So I would do I did like, I worked up to a
twenty four hour, and I feltincredible. And then I worked up
to a thirty six hour, and itfelt like amazing. Right? I
didn't go beyond thirty sixhours. And I started to work
those in twice a month.
I think about twice a month.Yep. And that was great, and I
was probably stretching my fasta little longer than I should

(24:21):
have.

Okay.

And this, what I'm about to share is obviously,
like my own personal experience.Please, as you're listening
folks, please do not be afraidof fasting based on what I'm
about to share.

Okay.

Okay. Oh. Because I successfully fasted in various
ways for over a decade.

Okay.

And I've backed away from it a little bit, but I
want to go back, and so I'mgonna ask you. So what happened
is I ended up, and I think forvarious reasons that were
probably more spiritual, I got Igot really sick, not because of
the fasting, but then I didn'tget a cycle for like seventy
days.

Yep.

And I think I had overdone it a Yep. Little bit
based on what I have shared,it's clear that I did. And so
what about for the like, justtell me what I mean, probably I
just needed to back off about ita little bit, but I think I just
kind of fried my adrenals orsomething. Do you think

I did? Yeah. Okay. Well, so tell me how old
you are.

I'm 41.

Yeah. Okay. And when was this, in the last year?

This was yeah. So it was it was a year ago right
now. Yep. I got really sick andhadn't had a cycle for about
seventy days. Okay.
No. It came back, and I feelgreat now.

So Yeah. So I think one of the things we have
to honor as women is we can'tstack all our cortisol rich
habits together. Yeah. Right? Sothis is what this is the whole
premise of fast like a girl wasreally when not to fast.
Yeah. Because what was happeningand why the media was like women
shouldn't fast is because it isa cortisol inducing activity.

(25:50):
So, you only want to do it inthe longer fast when estrogen is
coming in. Estrogen is verycortisol tolerant. She I always
say that estrogen if estrogen,progesterone, and testosterone
were at a party, I feel likeestrogen would be like, woo hoo,
let's go.
And she'd be dancing on thetables like she could stay there
all night. Testosterone would bemore focused, like can we really

(26:14):
stay till six in the morning?Testosterone, want make sure
that the whole night was freeand progesterone would be hiding
in the corner. So we have tothink about cortisol the same
way. Like when estrogen comes inday one through day ten, she's
okay if you fast long.
We move into ovulation, shepeaks day ten to day fifteen, we
have a little bit ofprogesterone, a whole lot of

(26:35):
testosterone, moderate fastingis good. Then we come out of
ovulation, there's a drop, wecan fast a little longer, but
it's around day nineteen ortwenty that progesterone's
coming in and progesterone'slike, I always say when
progesterone goes high, or whencortisol goes high, progesterone
goes shy.

Oh, yeah.

So you lost progesterone. Yeah. So you
needed to do this fast, like nowthat it's back?

Yeah. I could probably be okay. I also started
adding in some HRT. Yeah. So nowI'm taking some progesterone, so
I think I'm more supported.
And I also think my estrogen wasa little low, so also maybe
Yeah. That was a factor. Nowthat I've like done the testing
and stuff, I'm like, oh. Yeah.Got

it. But here's like something I even do for my
own self and I did it throughall my perimenopausal years is
I'd always check-in and be like,is stress maxed right now? If
your stress is maxed right now,eat breakfast. Don't fast.

That is such good advice.

Yeah. Yeah. And that doesn't mean for Regardless

of where you are in your cycle, like if your
stress is at the max, becauseyour body at that time needs to
know That's right. There's fuel,there's resources. That's right.

The feminine body does not do well with
cortisol stacking. And so we goback to why these young women
don't have a cycle. They'reliving in a cortisol saturated
world that we didn't have tolive in luckily. Yeah. But when
we look at our lives, what womendo is I'm not losing weight.
Okay, I'm going to do a threeday water fast, and then I'm

(28:05):
going to go keto, and then I'mgoing And do gym every I'm to do
that in between, you know,balancing work and picking up
kids, and I'm going to skimp onsleep, and then I'm like, wait a
second, why am I not losingweight? Because your body's
like, it's not safe.

Too much. Yeah. It's not safe, yeah. And then
other things will tank out.

That's right. Okay,

So I certainly have a lot of listeners who are
in perimenopause and arewondering what's the best way to
support myself so that maybe Icould have as easeful and
supported of a transition aspossible into my post menopausal
year. So obviously, I think yourfasting cycling would be really
effective. But when you arestarting to have a cycle that's

(28:46):
less predictable, would yourecommend to go ahead and just
shift to tracking with the moon?Or what do you do in those days
when it's like, ugh, where am I?What's happening?
I don't actually know.

So that's the hardest phase for me to teach.
And I usually say there's one oftwo things. You either just go
by the moon, and I've actuallyput women who are like, I
haven't had a cycle in onehundred and twenty days, and we
put them on a moon cycle, andthen their cycle comes back.
Isn't

that amazing? Same

thing same thing with fertility. Yes. That is so
cool.

I literally was just with a girl in her
twenties. She's like very highpowered, like running around LA,
doing all this stuff, and shewas like, I lost my cycle, what
do I do? Obviously I'm not agynecologist, but I was like, I
know a lot about women's health,I'll help you

here You in were the birthed by one.

So Here in the Air One Supplement aisle. And I
was like I was like, just gooutside at night and look at the
moon. And she was like, really?I was like, yeah. That's what

that's what brought mine back. Amazing. It
was

just becoming aware of the cycle.

Oh my god. I love that. And this is the big
thing that like, I always tellpeople that I thought I was
writing a fasting manual, butwhat I didn't realize is I wrote
a women's empowerment book.Yeah. And in that, I and then
especially when I looked at whatI was gonna write for Eat Like a
Girl, I realized you can't takenature and the earth and a
woman's body and separate thosetwo.

Yeah. Mean, you can, but you get a mess. You get
a mess. And we're so craving tobring them back together. Okay.
So you say like, okay, whenthings are all over the place,
go to the moon.

Yeah. Go to the moon. When in doubt, go to the
moon.

It's so predictable.

Yeah. It's very it's there. It's very
predictable. The other thingperimenopausal women can do is
they can look at their symptoms.Okay.
So in I tried to like eat like agirl is consider it like a
companion manual to fast like agirl. Fasting's the fasting
window and then eat like agirl's eating window. But I also
answered a lot of questions thatwe got from from fast like a

(30:40):
girl. So in there I am, I have athing of match your food style
to your symptoms. And I'm like,if you are having these
symptoms, this is where you needto go low carb.

Okay, great.

If you're having these symptoms, this is where
you need to bring carbs up.

Yeah. Okay. And what are some of the symptoms
that you might need to increasecarbs? Because I think that for
so long since, you know, theearly 2000s, depending on who
you were following or whatever,we got the message that carbs
are bad. And I certainly gotprogrammed that So what are some
of the signs that we may notneed more carbs?

Yeah, okay, well the first one's anxiety. Like
you need carbs to makeserotonin. So anxiety,
depression, constant like mooddisorders, we need to bring
carbs up for that. Hair loss,that was a big thing I saw on my
YouTube channel. All these womenwere like, I'm losing weight,
but I'm losing my hair.
And that's when I realized thatwe are completely deficient of

(31:32):
minerals because our soils areso horrible. So hair loss,
spotting is another interestingone. So when I was playing with
the fasting cycle for my ownself in the back half of my
forties Yeah. I would spot likeon a Monday, and then I wouldn't
have a period till the followingTuesday.

That just happened to me. I spotted for
five days

Yeah.

Before I got a real period, and then my period
was only four days, whichpreviously it had been like six.

So those are the moments I bring carbs up. Okay.
So whenever I would spot yeah.And and do you know that like by
the like by the time I was in mylate forties, I was having the
best periods of my life.

That's so cool.

I was like on my on my way out. I was like, I had
my cycles just nailed. Wow.Because any little bit of
suppotting, any anxiety, lack ofsleep, just agitation, I'm like,
gotta have some carbs, and Igotta step You out of

knew. And so, you know, the carbs that you're
talking about, right, like, justto be clear, if you're
listening, we're not talkingabout, like, going through the
drive through and gettingMcDonald's fries Yes. Or, like,
you know, eating potato chipslate at night in your pantry.
That's right. We're talkingabout sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes.

What else?

Yeah. Sweet potatoes.

I'm like, I always go to sweet potatoes.

Well, I wanna tell you a story about sweet
potatoes that I'm that I'm usingfor my next book because I think
sweet potatoes and women go handin hand. Think the I think
nature gave them just to us.Cool. Yeah. I'm pretty sure of
that.
So anyways, but sweet potatoes,any kind of potatoes, legumes,
quinoa, tropical fruits,

which

anybody in the keto world, like

I know.

Getting the women in my practice to eat a
banana again?

Oh my god, I have to tell you, I got a little
brainwashed by the keto world,and it almost became like carbs
became a avoid at all costsbecause I got so obsessed with
checking my ketones, and so yourprotocol helped to heal me of

(33:28):
that, and really see, okay,there are times for like, it
just feels like more padding.Yes. Like, bringing in the carbs
feels like cushion.

Yes.

For me, it's nice.

Yeah. And yeah. No. And and I always say, like,
we're so lucky because we canhave our cake our cake, meaning
a gluten free, you know, lowsugared cake and eat it too.
Because there are times we needmore food.
And the fruit one, I'll neverforget standing in line at a
buffet at a conference with afriend who was super keto. And

(33:59):
she turns to me, and there's allthis whole fruit platter. And
she goes, are you scared to eatfruit? And I was like, yeah.
Like we like, it was like, youwould have thought we were like,
do you, are you drinking toomuch alcohol?
Like, that wasn't theconversation. It was like two
people who were scared to telleach other that we were scared
to eat fruit. And finally,looked at her. I'm like, that's

(34:21):
not good. I can't imagineanything from nature would be
harmful to my body.
Totally. I'm like, I need tolook that up because we both had
gotten so keto that we werescared to death to eat fruit.
And that was my wake up momentwhere I'm like, I am very clear
the earth did not provideanything that's going to be a
detriment to me. 100%. Yeah.
So I started bringing foods backin and that was part of the back

(34:42):
half of my 40s. Like havinggetting my normal cycle back.

And so for you now, and also of course this is
what you're working with womenon who are at any stage of life
really. Like is your Fast Like aGirl protocol, and of course
supported by the recipes in EatLike a Girl, is that something
that someone can do forever?Like can a woman in her eighties

(35:10):
be using this protocol?

Yeah, this is okay, so I'm working on my book.
It's gonna come out next year.

What's do you can you say the title? Yeah.

It's called it's gonna be called age like a girl.
Yeah. It's one of my one of mydear friends is Leanne Rhimes,
and she said to me I love her.She's like, when do I get to be
a woman? I'm like, no.
It's a play on words.

Do you not You're always a woman, Leanne.

Yes. Have you seen yourself? You're a
beautiful woman. But here's thething about whole process of
aging. The reason that we haveAlzheimer's and dementia is
because the female brain becomesone of the reasons less
sensitive to glucose.
So that needs to be discussedmore. Because as we go into the

(35:58):
perimenopause and well into thepostmenopausal years, I actually
believe that a female brain doesbetter with ketones than with
glucose. So now, this is thenext book, is the grandmother
hypothesis. Do you know thegrandmother hypothesis? No.

So excited.

So Lisa Mosconi taught me this in her book, The
Menopause Brain, and then Iinterviewed her on my podcast.
We go back to those primalyears, the grandmother, the
woman who was in her postreproductive years had a
purpose. She took all the energythat she had to reproduction and

(36:40):
she put it towards taking careof the clan.

The hunter She was the wisdom keeper.

She was the wisdom keeper. Was the food
Medicine woman. And she was thefood keeper. So the men and the
people who could hunt went offand to go make a kill, and 3% of
the time they came back withfood. And when they came back
with food, they fed the othermen first because they were the
hunters that needed And to gothen they fed the woman who was

(37:08):
birthing.
Right, the pregnant woman. Andthey fed the children. And if
anything was left, thepostmenopausal woman went and
got it. But the postmenopausalwoman's job was to go forage for
things like tubers, like sweetpotatoes, and things that were
in the ground and she would pullthat out and bring it back. She
too would take all of that andgive it to the mom who was

(37:30):
pregnant.
So the whole clan, the woman whohad to know how to go without
food the longest was thepostmenopausal woman, which is
why I think our evolutionarydesign was to eat less and rely
more on ketones and we'd havebetter brainpower if we did that
when we went into the postmenopausal years. Wow.

Is that your sweet potato story?

Yeah. It's part of my sweet potato story.

Yeah. Do think of that? I think it's really
interesting. And I think that soI'm in this dance as my
reproductive years come to aclose, about are we closing
those years or are we not? AndI'm thinking about how great I
feel when I'm in ketosis, and Ijust wonder, sort of like from

(38:14):
an evolutionary perspective andalmost more of like the cosmic
evolution of my being in thislifetime, like if I was trying
to almost by getting, you know,I hesitate to use the word
addicted, but like loving thatfeeling so much of the high of
fasting that I wonder if therewas a way in which I was like

(38:35):
trying to skip a phase of lifealmost.
No.

No. I have a theory that you're actually,
what you just described isyou're lining yourself up with
your perimenopausal design. Asyou're moving into these
postmenopausal years,postmenopausal women get the
best results with fasting.That's so cool. We have like 80
year olds in my community thatare like, I gained 50 pounds

(39:02):
throughout menopause and then Ibought your book and now I
dropped it all.
Phenomenal. Like post menopauseAnd

sure they feel like a million

bucks. Energized. And I think it's
because it's in our evolutionarydesign.

To like edge that way. Yeah. And well, is
interesting, you know, as peopleget older, they do tend to want
to eat less. That's right. Thatis a thing.
Yeah. Mean, that's just like weall notice that. Or like

the Okinawa women, we've put them on
pedestals forever and we say,oh, they live so long. And
because they eat low amount ofcalories, they also eat sweet
potatoes. They also form moaisthat gather women together and
support women and shareresources. There's a lot of
things they're doing, But one ofthem is they're eating less.

Wow. So interesting.

Yeah. I know.

Okay. So you're in Miami for the Miami Book
Fair. Yes. And you said thattomorrow, which will have
already happened by the timethis is released, but that you
are going to share your authorprocess. And author to author, I
wanna hear about what it's likefor you to write everyone so
different in that regard.
Some people write their ownbooks. Some people don't. Some
people research and write foryears alongside. Like, what's

(40:07):
your process like?

Yeah. Okay. Well, each book has brought a
new process. Did you find haveyou found that?

Actually, both of my books were written very
similarly, but I hope to writethe next one in a different way.

Okay. Yeah. So I'll tell my I'll I'll tell my
way and then you tell your wayBecause it is really
interesting. So I do have a cowriter. We call him a ghost
writer, it's reallycollaborative writer.
So we meet we just met thismorning. We meet every Friday
morning, and we kind of talkabout where I'm going with my
thoughts. And then I map out thewhole TOC, and then underneath

(40:41):
just table of contents. And thenunderneath each chapter title, I
just start bullet pointing,like, what do I like, mind dump.
Yep.
This is what I'm going put in Sothen she and I bounce that off.
But when I start my book, Iactually feel like I'm starting
a conversation with the reader.And just as if I was telling you

(41:03):
a story, I wouldn't take toomany detour. I would want to
have a linear way to tell you awhole story. So I write it in
order.
I tried writing my book out oforder and I cannot do that. So
it has to have like when I sitdown, I'm like, Okay, now where
were we in the story?

Where were

we in the story? Okay, now I need to tell you
about this. Now that youunderstand this, you're gonna be
able to understand that. Itshould hopefully my books feel
like a conversation becausethat's how it's mapped in my
mind. And then this other thingI have a rule that if when I'm
in process, full process ofwriting a book, if I wake up at
two in the morning, if I wake upat three and a thought comes to

(41:46):
my head, I get out of bed and Iwrite.
And I start writing in the darkin the middle of the night. Most
of my writing is done beforenoon. I can't write afternoon.
And it's all done in that space.I learned this from Bruce Lipton
that the going into sleep andthe coming out of sleep is a
really magical time.
And so I use the coming out ofsleep to write then. So it's the

(42:10):
best writing I can do.

Like first thing in the morning?

Yeah, first thing in the morning.

Sometimes fasting, depending on what's
always Always fasting. Right.Because you're not really
probably eating until the suncomes up, no matter where it is
in the cycle.

But also because then I'm working off ketones and
my brain works a lot smarter.

What about coffee?

I do do coffee.

So do you drink coffee while you're writing?
Yes. Oh, that feels verypermissive to me. Okay, so I
really want to drink coffeefirst thing when I wake up, but
I've been making myself waitninety minutes. Oh, yeah.
Do I need to do that? It feelshard

every day. Okay, I'm going to tell you here's
what I'm going tell you. I'mgoing to tell you what Sachin
Panda, circadian rhythm experttold me.

Love it.

I feel like he is a good Within the first half
hour of you starting your day,cortisol is going to spike. I
know we have said two hours,you're probably doing an hour
and a half because you want toSo ride the he's like, Just wait
a half hour, and cortisol isstarting to ramp up. The minute
cortisol is starting to come up,you can drink your cup of

(43:14):
coffee. Now, I'll tell you whatDoctor. Stacy Sims told me.
She said that she wants peopleto get some kind of nutrition
first thing in the morningbecause it triggers the
hypothalamus to start hormonalproduction. So I've kind of
combined everybody's ideas, andI say within the first half
hour, have coffee. I like rawcream because raw cream has

(43:38):
probiotics and enzymes in it. Iput collagen powder in mine. You
do?
Yeah. And I put creatine in

mine. And

then sometimes I'll put some MCT oils. So
you've

a whole bunch of stuff going on So in

I took everybody's theory and I put

You it put it in your own. I love that. Okay,
that's great.

So

you don't have a problem with collagen. What do
you do you know anything aboutthis? Like, it create it's a
problem with the it puts, like,deuterium in your body. Do you
even know what I'm talking aboutwhen I say that? No.
Is that a heavy metal? Let'sstrike it from the record.

Yeah. I ever that's a new I

have another guest on my podcast mentioned
it, and I need to, like, godeeper, but Yeah. Great. Neither
here nor there. Okay. Fantastic.
So you do that every morning,and that's your writing process
when you're in a book Yeah.Process.

Yeah.

Okay. When does this Age Like a Girl come out?

It it comes it so the manuscript's due in in
March Okay. And it comes out atthe end of twenty twenty five. I
think we're gonna put it out thelast couple of weeks of the
year.

Okay.

The new year, new year kind of thing.

I'm so excited.

But okay. So then I have to be fully
transparent about what happenswhen there's a deadline. Yeah.
And I have to write at night.Oh.
Have you had that?

No. So the way I've written both of my books is
I wrote them in an hour a dayright before the deadline, and I
think it is because my books arenot nearly as research heavy.

Yeah, mine are

pretty You're very you know, mine are more
like what's in my head goes onthe page. You know, there's
research, but it's not likescience y.

Yeah, no, have like a team of researchers, and
then I gotta pull them alltogether. Yeah, so

my next book is going to be more research heavy
because I'm bringing in a lotmore about the nervous system
and neuroscience, and I'm veryexcited about it. And I cannot
just like, you know, No. Do

An hour a day.

Yeah, no. What's it on? It's about women and
money in the nervous system. Ilove that. My God, let me know
when it I comes will, I will.
Okay, so when you're

on a this happened with Fast Like a Girl
because it had to be turned inon February 1, and I was facing
a deadline. So January was rightall day, and many times I was at
ten at night. And so I did threethings. And this is full
transparency. Great.
Hugh chocolate gems.

The greatest thing ever.

The salty ones. Literally, if I'm chewing
something and typing, absolutelyworked. Okay. Okay. A glass of
organic biodynamic wine.
Okay. Not too much because Ineed my brain to work, but
enough to just not have my tohave my brain stop telling me
deadline, the deadline, dude,you're going to freak. You know,
this is horrible. The deadline,like I had to just calm my

(46:11):
brain. And then the third one isreally funny because I found
this musical artist and his nameis Tom O'Dell.
Uh-huh. And he plays this kindof jazzy, like, sultry music. I
started typing to him, to FastLike a Girl to him. And then he
came to San Francisco. And I'mlike, I'm gonna go see the guy.

Of

course. And I paid for a meet and greet. Oh.
And I was like, I need to gotell the guy that he got me
through writing Fast Like aGirl. And then when the day
actually came, I couldn't go tothe meet and greet to tell him,
but I went and listened to him.
But I'm like, he's like a 27year old guy that got me through
writing Fast Like a Girl. Haveyou

ever like DM'd him or anything? No. You should
tell him, because your book is apretty big deal.

Yeah, thank you.

And I think it's cool. I don't know that we would
consider ourselves artists, butthere is something when you put
something out into the world, Ipersonally love knowing on the
other side what it helped peoplewith.

That's right. Should I send in a message? I
should. I should. Especially nowthat it's done so well.

Because that's gonna be an unusual message.

I know. Right. Like like, hi. It's Mindy. I'm a
post menopausal woman.
I'm not your typical fan, butyou got me through this thing.

Yeah. And also, you know, the energy of that is
also in the book.

Yeah. That's How beautiful. Almost thank you for
the energy. You did. I lovethat.
That's so fun. And then I'mlike, that would have been
really funny.

Okay. But what was it like to write eat like a
girl because now there's recipewell, were actually there are
recipes in fast like a girl too,but like, this one is a more
Well,

and those recipes are done by professional
chefs. So with Eat Like a Girl,that one, I literally went in a
contract in November with them,with Hay House. They were like,
we want this. And then the bookwas due March 1. So I'd write
fast.
Yeah. So luckily nutrition, Iwas raised by this mom who
taught me nutrition from So day

just knew.

Yeah. So I just knew, and then I knew all the
questions that everybody hadfrom Fast Like a Girl. So
writing it was easy.

Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. And then you hired
some professional chefs to dothe recipes.

So this was interesting because I'm not a
chef nor do I wanna play one. SoI hired two. One was a woman
who's a plant based chef, ButI'm not completely plant based,
so had to make it congruent withme. And then we had trouble
finding an omnivore chef. And Iwas like, I want a woman.
I want this to be a woman'sproject. And I couldn't find

(48:32):
one. But then a friendintroduced me to this incredible
man who has been the greatestgift to this book. He is your
official chef. He studied underhe learned meats and rubs and
charcuterie under Spain.
He literally like spent a coupleof years in the back area with

(48:56):
these wise women who taught himhow to cook meat. I was like,
you're it. You're my guy. That'sso special. So he did those
recipes.
Amazing.

So you don't cook, really?

I do cook.

You cook, but you just like don't consider
yourself like a chef y kind

I'm of not a

chef. So you're like a straightforward cook.

My son's actually a chef.

Yeah. That's cool. You guys have a food
lineage.

I know. So my 22 year old son has just put his
steak in the ground and is like,I'm going to be a chef for
prayer. So it's really sweet.That's so cool.

So you have a 22 year old And a

24 year old daughter. Wow.

Yeah. Are they Okay, so your son does he's a
chef. Is your daughter at allinvolved in health?

No. I tried to bring her in.

I know.

I'm sure you can I had a whole path for her?

Of course you did. Growing up, everyone would
say to me and my sister, so areyou guys gonna be doctors like
your parents? And we were like,Hell no. Like, I see what that
life is. No, thank you.

Yes, yes.

And I do feel like I'm carrying on the lineage
in my very own way. It's like,

but, yeah, no. My daughter is an animal lover,
specifically horses, she so is afarrier. Do you know farriers?
No. It's where they changehorseshoes.
And Oh, she makes a living doingthat. And she is learning to be
a vet tech. She's moreinterested in horse and animals
than humans.

So beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. That work, I don't
know if you've ever done I knowthis is not what she does and
this is a bit of a tangent, buthave you ever done like an
equine therapy session?

No. But I've watched it. Wow. I've watched
the work with horses heal her.But I'm yeah, tell me about it.

It's absolutely amazing to see how your energy
communicate obviously horsesdon't talk, you know,

English Or any other language

other Or any other language other than the
language of energy. And you goin the ring and you can
literally direct them with yourloving intention, and it was
wild to be in there with myselfand a bunch of other people, and
there was one woman whose energywas really erratic and all over

(51:08):
the place, and the horse was nothaving it. Was just like Wow.
Also all over the place. Andthen it would be another
person's turn, and you couldliterally direct your heart at
the front flank, the front,like, left flank of the horse,
and, like, intentionally justwith your heart and your energy,
invite it where you want it go.

(51:29):
And if you were clear about itwith your energy, it would just
go. Amazing. And people likemyself who like, I'm not a horse
person. It's not like I grew uparound horses. Wow.
So anyway, Where, how do I dothat? You go to well, have it at
Miraval, but all sorts of placeshave equine I have a client who

(51:50):
does it now in Kentucky. I don'tknow. Like, all over the place.

Yeah. And maybe my daughter can show me how

to do this. Maybe she could. Interesting. It's
really cool.

So you my assumption is you walk away from
and you realize that your energyis affecting Everyone. Everyone.

Yeah. Because if if, you know, because as we
know, 90% of communication isnonverbal Right. Between humans.
That's right. Yeah.
So what's going on between usright now is not verbal. No.
Largely.

Clearly. And isn't that wild? Yeah. It's
really crazy. Okay.

So which brings me back to the time that you
were running your practice inperimenopause.

Oh, yeah. You're not gonna let me I'm

not that it worked probably best. And doing
the YouTube channel, and also,you know, and also seeing
patients, and then raising yourkids, and, kind of possibly
frying your gears. What happenedduring that time in your life
and with your own energyreserves? I just kind of want to
know any stories you would wantto about that time.

I'll tell some good ones. I mean, it was the
back half of my 40s. I mean,that's why I really discovered a
lot of this. Because what I didis at around 45, maybe a little
bit earlier, I started noticingthat I was having all these
perimenopausal symptoms. And Iwent to my mom because I was
like, well, she's the closestmom and my sister should be the

(53:10):
closest things to mereproductive wise.
Both of them were like, we hadno problem. I don't know what
you're talking about. So you'relike, it's not genetic. It's not
genetic. So I lost my cycle.
I spotted, I couldn't sleep. Ihad massive anxiety, but I think

(53:30):
I'll tell a story that I haven'treally told and we're actually
trying to figure out how to tellit in the new book. So I'll tell
it in the softest way I canhere. I had a moment where I was
spinning out of control mentallyand my family was all together.
And my son walked into the room,who I just adore, and I just

(53:55):
screamed at him in a way thatI've never screamed at him
before.
And the look on his face waslike, Oh my God, what is going
on with my mom? And I wentupstairs into my room and my
brain went, If this is how Ihave to live, I don't want to
live. And I laid in bed at 05:00on a summer night, trying to

(54:17):
think about how I might takemyself out. Because if this is
how I'm gonna live, I can't dothat. My husband came up and I
was like, I'm so scared.
I don't know what's going onwith my brain. And that was the
beginning of me changing myworkload.

Wow.

Yeah. And the next day, my son was very honest
with me. He's like, I neverthought my mom would yell at me
like that. And I said, I'm sosorry and I'm gonna become a
better version of me. And I knewthat that meant I had to work
less.

Yeah. Wow. That's really

That was like breaking point.

Yeah. Right. And so I would imagine your mom and
your sister did not have thestress load that you had, the
level of working that you had,which is why they sort of
breezed through those years.

Yeah, and my sister's a teacher at Boston
University. She gets five monthsoff a year. She works three days
a week. My mom was a stay athome mom, and I was the primary
breadwinner of my family.

So vastly different roles. So in the
limited time we have left, thatbreaking point of needing to
change the way you worked, somany of us feel, and I've
certainly had these moments whenmy husband was ill, and I had
these two little kids, and I hadpayroll to make, and it's like,

(55:38):
it didn't feel like I hadchoices. And the work that I do
now came out of that. But I'mcurious for you, you're at the
breaking point. Did it feel likeyou had a choice?
What did you do first?

Yeah. Well, I mean, luckily I'd already had
momentum with like my YouTubechannel. And so, and I think at
that point, I think we werewaiting to see if I had written
the book proposal. So I knewthat I was going to try to get a
book. I had an agent.
So I knew things were alreadychanging. But here's the crazy
thing. Oh, and this is so goodfor so many women. I had to stop

(56:14):
the people pleasing, which meantfor me, I had to start thinking
about leaving my clinic. And Ihad raised all these families in
my clinic.
I had taught all these mamabears how to take care of their
kids. And it was really hard forme to tell them I couldn't guide
them anymore. So a month later,Hay House had given me another

(56:35):
book deal, Fast Like a Girl.Like, things were starting like
no, I guess it was no, a monthlater, I'd gotten the book deal
with Fast Like a Girl.

A month after this month.

Yeah. And things were starting to really like,
okay, I'm going to go be anauthor now. And so I closed my
clinic and what I did is I wroteall my patients an email and I
just said, we've had a goodride. I love you guys. You've
raised your families.
It's been amazing. And I need tomove on to the next chapter of

(57:04):
my life. And I sent this emailout to these hundreds of
patients. And then for twoweeks, I sat in the waiting room
and hugged them all, cried withthem all. And I closed that
chapter of my life.
And that was the beginning ofstopping that level of chaos in
work. That's amazing.

Yeah. And for you to also honor and really close
that chapter so beautifully

Thank you.

I think is also really amazing. It makes me
emotional.

I

I was was thinking about our pediatrician,
and when she closed herpractice, I was like, Oh my God,
now I'm out here by myself! Butit's this invitation to tap into
our own inner wisdom.

The hardest one was I had a man who had lost his
eye in the Vietnam War. And hewas a Chicano man who grew up on
a farm on a field farm worker,had farm worker parents. And he
used to come and tell me storiesabout how he was sent to
Vietnam. He lost his eye. Andwhen he was sent back, he wasn't

(58:08):
honored because he was a ChicanoAmerican and he was just thrown
back onto the field.
So he started a publishingcompany, and he ended up writing
Chicano history books. And so hewould come in every week, and he
would say to me, You need towrite a book, Mindy, you need to
write a book. You need to dowhat's in here. So the day, the
last time I saw him, he walkedin the door and I went back into

(58:32):
my room and I literally lieddown on the ground before I said
goodbye to him. And I justheaved like a little baby.
Like I'd like, how can I say?And I called one of my old
employees, I'm like, how can Isay goodbye to him? I don't
know. And I put my big girlpanties on, and I went out and
said, Charlie, this is happeningbecause of you.

Wow. That's beautiful.

So that was that. Was quite an experience,
the whole thing.

Yeah. So beautiful. You know, to really
honor all the work, all thegrief, all the love, and also
come out here in this other hugebig way to be able to help the
hundreds of thousands of morepeople. And both matter, right?
Of course.
For anyone listening, if youhave a private practice, it's
not better than or worse than,but this is obviously your

(59:19):
calling. I mean, you were meantto be doing this.

It's You so know when the universe just lines a
bunch of things up for you?You're like, Okay, I have to
step into this. It's like cominghere. It was like, I knew I was
coming to the book fair. I had agood sense in my gut I should
come.
And then all these amazing womenstarted popping up, and like,
hey, I'll see you here. I'll dothis. I'm like, yeah, that was

(59:42):
it was just a hunch that Ifollowed.

You got to follow the magic. Exactly. Right?
Exactly. And following the magicdoesn't mean it's not also going
to be sad.

That's right. That's right. The bittersweet, I
feel like my life that afterlike 50, bittersweet pretty much
sums Really? It Yeah. Like, I'mjust right now I'm doing all the
hard work to like really own myown voice to be true to myself.
I had a friend tell me, actuallythe friend I saw here, one day
this year, she said to me, youknow what Mindy, I find so

(01:00:13):
interesting about you is you'reso willing disappoint. You don't
wanna disappoint everybody else,but you have no problem
disappointing yourself. Wow,that's a good friend. That's
good feedback. Yeah, and whenshe said that to me, I was like,
Oh my God.
So in June, I made a pact tomyself, I would not disappoint

(01:00:34):
myself anymore.

Kate Northrup (01:00:35):
Good for you.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (01:00:36):
And so I've been on this real journey of like,
I'm gonna tell you somethingthat's gonna hurt you because
I've been a professional peoplepleaser. But I need to tell you
this because if I adapt to whatyou want me to do, I'm
disappointing myself.

100%. And also, when we say yes to someone and
something to please them,there's no way we're actually
showing up in our fullness. Weare also doing them a disservice
every time, even though it'slike one thing to say that in
some whole other way.

So hard. There's also I mean, not to throw more
interesting thoughts here, Butdo you know about the feminist
philosopher Carol Gilligan? No.Okay. So she wrote a book called
In a Different Voice.

Okay.

This is something to teach your
daughter. Great. How manydaughters do you have?

Two, six, Okay. And

She did research back in the eighties on boys and
girls at 11, and before theywent into puberty. And she found
that if you asked a boy and agirl at 11 what they wanted,
like let's say, what do you wantto eat? They would tell you both
directly what they want to eat.Fast forward to 13 where their
hormones had come in, both ofthem. Now you ask that same

(01:01:42):
question and the boy will tellyou what he wants and the girl
will say, I don't know, what doyou want?
And what she discovered was thatthe brain changes that happen
with hormones is thattestosterone makes a man's
hormone or makes his brain workfrom the back to the front. And
he's very linear. Give me therules. I'll break the rules.
I'll create the rules.
Just need to know the game. Forgirls at 13, our brains start

(01:02:07):
the hormones make our brainswork right to left, and
everything we do in our life isrelational. Every single thing
we think about, we think aboutthe relationship of others, and
that's the beginning of thepeople pleasing. What I think
menopause is, is the moment weactually hear our own voice
again. Because as those hormonescome out, go out, I think what

(01:02:29):
happens is we start to get thisinner knowing that pops up that
is our voice we lost at 13.

Wow. It's adolescence in reverse.

It's adolescence in reverse, but not just the
symptoms in the PMS. It's thatwomen are hearing themselves.
And this is one of reasons whyif you look at 45 to 55 is the
most common time for a woman tocommit suicide. And I think it's
because she doesn't know what todo when she hears her own voice.
Yeah.
Because she hasn't set up herlife This to support

is big stuff. Yeah. I'm so excited for your
next book.

Yeah. Thank you.

I'm so excited for the ones we

have. Yeah.

Thank I'm so excited for what's coming next.

Thank Thank

you so much for being here, for saying yes to
the invitation, also for whatyou do and who you are. Yeah,
You're such a delight.

Yeah, thank This is really fun. Need to do more
together.

I would love that.

I feel like we are speaking the same language,
just in different ways. Very

different ways. But it's so cool. Thank you. So
if people want to connect withyou, where should they go?

Well, would say just go to my web page, but
YouTube is my passion project.So what most people don't know
is I do four new videos a week.Wow. There's a lot there.

Amazing. What a library.

Yeah. So there's a lot there. Obviously, the
books are everywhere. The booksare sold. And then I have a
podcast that you came on.

I did.

The Resetter Podcast. The Resetter Podcast.
We're gonna dive into even moreof these kind of issues next
year.

Amazing. Is it drmindypeltz.com? Yes. Okay,
great. Yeah.
Amazing. And everything will bein the show notes. Yeah. Thank
you.

Thank you. What a pleasure. Yeah, appreciate
you.

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