GLP-1s, Fasting, and the Future of Women’s Metabolic Health

GLP-1 medications are changing the conversation around weight loss, metabolism, and women’s health. But are we asking the right questions about long-term health? In this solo episode, Dr. Mindy Pelz breaks down the science behind GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, including what they do well, where concerns are emerging, and how fasting mimics many of the same metabolic benefits naturally. Dr. Mindy explores: • The connection between GLP-1 drugs and muscle loss • Why women over 40 need to think differently about metabolism • New research linking GLP-1s to declining bone density • How fasting impacts glucagon, ketones, and fat burning • The importance of protein, refeeding, and resistance training • Why metabolic flexibility matters more than rapid weight loss • Natural ways to stimulate your body’s own GLP-1 production This episode is not about fear or shame. It’s about helping you understand your options so you can make informed decisions for your body, your hormones, and your long-term health. For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep341 Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academyWatch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter https://www.drmindypelz.com/ Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, let me ask you a personal question. And this one is a really important one, which is when was the last time you had your vitamin D checked? And I'm saying this because in all my years of working with women, low vitamin D is one of the most consistent findings I see, and one of the most consistently missed. And vitamin D matters for so many aspects of your health. We're talking about a deficiency that can show up as hormonal imbalance, mood struggles, poor sleep, immune issues, even stubborn weight that won't budge no matter what you do. But here's the part that most people don't know.

• 0:43Mindy Pelz?

  Taking an isolated D3 supplement isn't enough. This isn't like just running down to the local store and grabbing some D3. Your body actually needs D3 to be combined with very specific cofactors to actually absorb and utilize vitamin D the way nature intended it. And most supplements on the market don't include these cofactors. That's why I personally love Cataplex D from Standard Process. It's a whole food supplement. It's vitamin D complex, not just an isolated nutrient. There's an incredible difference between checking a box and actually moving the needle on your health, and this one really moves the needle.

• 1:27Mindy Pelz?

  In fact, in my clinic, we used to test vitamin D, and we could see with a product like Cataplex D, we could see on lab work, the vitamin D levels in people go up. So you can learn more and you can get yourself some vitamin D. You can test out Cataplex D at drmindypels.standarprocess.com. Enjoy.

• 1:56Mindy Pelz?

  A lot of you are on the GLP-1 drugs and you're getting great results with it. And I'm not here to discredit the results because millions of people are losing weight and improving their metabolic health with it. And I also want to bring forward, when we start to see that there are some side effects that might not be presented to you or discussed, I think it's really important that we fill in where these GLP-1s may be creating some health consequences. Beyond just, you know, obviously the scale loss is phenomenal, the A1C going down is incredible, but there's a few health things that we need to look at.

• 2:40Mindy Pelz?

  And there's some new evidence that the GLP-1s are really hard on bone density. I want to talk about some of the information that is coming forward. So if you're on those drugs, you're able to course correct so we don't lose that bone density. And keep in mind that if you want to get off the drugs, or you don't want to be on these GLP-1 drugs, then I've done a lot of videos on how you can use fasting and food to actually repair the microbes that make GLP-1. So I'll leave those links in here so you can dive into those videos if that's helpful.

• 3:20Mindy Pelz?

  But here's the information that we are seeing that basically, and it was presented at an orthopedic conference, which is really, it was, it was basically what the research was presented at one of our country in America's top orthopedic surgery conferences. And it came out with this declaration that GLP-1s may be increasing the risk of osteoporosis, bone softening, and fractures.

• 3:51Mindy Pelz?

  But the good news is you, if you know this, you can course correct and add some things in. At the end of this video, I'm going to give you five ways you can prevent this from happening if you're on the drugs. So what was happening at this conference? And what is the research saying? So Dr. John Hornif, a orthopedic surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, started really looking at what was happening in the musculoskeletal system with his patients that were on GLP-1s. And he had a suspicion that these drugs were affecting bone and connective tissue. And he looked specifically at the semiglutides, so Ozempic and Wegovy,

• 4:35Mindy Pelz?

  and the liraglutides like Victoza and Saxenda. So he looked at both of them if you're a GLP-1 expert. And his team analyzed five years of medical records from more than 146,000 adults. This is a lot. Who had both obesity and type 2 diabetes. And what he found, and stick with me through these stats, because I found them interesting. They found that 4.1% of GLP-1 users developed osteoporosis.

• 5:17Mindy Pelz?

  Now, that's in comparison to 3.2% of non-users, which doesn't seem like a huge percentage increase, but it's a 30% increased risk of osteoporosis. Specifically, he saw that it was contributing to osteomalacia, which is a softening of the bone. He saw increases in gout, which doesn't surprise me because as you're losing that much weight, all of a sudden you're getting a lot of uric acid crystals that are going to go into your system as your body drops weight. I've seen this even with fasting. And so gout can increase from that toxic

• 6:01Mindy Pelz?

  Dump from fat being burned so proficiently. And the gout rates were increased had a 12% increase. Now, what he said, this doctor at this orthopedic conference, and I just want to point out to you. Is that this is observational research. Which means that it's by association, not causation. So when you observe findings like this, you're not saying that this is actually the causing it. You're just saying, we see a trend here. And we might want to look out for the trend. What they really need to do is now dive deeper into to then and really study this in isolation.

• 6:45Mindy Pelz?

  The other interesting thing that I think we need to talk about. Is that there, there is a study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. That linked GLP ones to higher fracture rates in adults. So we're, we're, I mean, it's enough, I don't know about you, but it's enough information for me. To want to do a video on it. And for me to want to advise you to do some lifestyle steps that will make sure you hold on to bone. So first, I just want to point out like, what would be the mechanism? Behind why these weight loss drugs would weaken your bones? And there's two theories that the experts are going off of.

• 7:30Mindy Pelz?

  Theory number one is that you're not getting enough nutrients in. So vitamin D. Vitamin D is really brought in through fatty fish. So this is going to be one of my recommendations to you is if you are on these drugs. Let's make sure that you're getting enough vitamin D. When you're eating and if fatty fish doesn't feel good to you. I would recommend some vitamin D supplementation. Cataplex D is my favorite by standard process. I'll leave links for that in the notes. But you also, what they're seeing is you're not, people on these drugs aren't getting enough calcium. They're not getting enough protein and they're not giving, getting enough. Collagen.

• 8:12Mindy Pelz?

  This orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Hornoff, said, "People are taking these medications, and there's a tremendous amount of upside, but with that, they start to decrease their food and nutrient intake. So you have to be very intentional with each meal. Think about your protein. Think about collagen. Think about vitamin D. Like, everything you put in your mouth needs to have, be intentional, or the consequences will start to appear." Theory number two is that when you carry less weight, you've dropped all this weight, there's not as much strain on your bones. So your bones have no reason to be, hold vitamin D and calcium inside them.

• 8:56Mindy Pelz?

  So they have no reason to be strong, to keep themselves strong. And Hornoff's analogy is that he says, "When astronauts come back from space, they come back often with low bone density. There's nothing forcing those bones to hold on to calcium, and so the skeleton starts to weaken." Well, when you don't have, carry as much weight, you also have that problem. So you might think about adding a rucking vest when you go for a hike to keep those bones, put a little bit of added weight to, because you've lost weight, to be able to keep those bones strong. And additionally, for women, I just want to point out that there's a 2016 review in Nature Reviews Disease

• 9:41Mindy Pelz?

  that bone density in women declines rapidly through menopause. I think we all know that because of estrogen loss. And it's particularly in the first five to 10 years of your post-menopausal experience that we see that rapid density go down. So if you are combining menopause with these GLP drugs, you may actually find that you lose bone density even quicker than the average person. So this becomes so much more important for menopausal women because you could put yourself... Well, if you're already, I mean, I know I have osteoporosis in my family. I'm post-menopausal.

• 10:26Mindy Pelz?

  I'm doing everything I can to keep that bone density up. And so if you add that with these GLP drugs, you may weaken your bones and then you've got an osteoporosis problem. So, something that we just need to bring to the GLP-1 conversation. Here are the five things you can start to do if you are on these drugs and you don't want to lose bone density. Here they are. Number one is you get a DEXA scan. So know your baseline before you go on the drug. Your GP can do that. Your OB hopefully can do that. But let's get a baseline because bone density is not easy to measure. It's not easy to figure out.

• 11:10Mindy Pelz?

  So I want to make sure you have a baseline before you get on the drug. Okay, and this is especially important for women over 40 because you are going to lose bone density as you lose estrogen. Number two, and this may be the most important one, lift weights. When you lift weights, what you're doing is you're actually putting more strain on the bone. A bone has to pull in more calcium and more phosphorus into your body when it has more muscle. Now, for our menopausal women, that's hard because you're not building as much muscle. You're losing muscle as you age.

• 11:54Mindy Pelz?

  So lifting weights, specifically heavy weights. If you're menopausal and you're on these drugs, we need to weight lift. We need to get muscle on those bones. And so there's a Dr. Christopher McGowan, a gastroenterologist who runs a weight loss clinic, and he uses these GLP-1s. And he is saying that we should combine all GLP-1 prescriptions with structured exercise. And he says that lifestyle factors will play an incredible role. So we gotta make sure that we don't go on these drugs and just assume everything's going to be beautiful and incredible,

• 12:38Mindy Pelz?

  but that we actually are aware of where we need to backfill in with our lifestyle. And weight loss is one of those places that we need to backfill in. Okay, number three. I want you to think about eating enough collagen and enough protein. Um, this one's hard because your appetite is low. But we've got to get some protein and we've got to get some collagen in. Now, good news. You can actually put collagen peptides in your coffee. You can put it in a smoothie. And the research shows that collagen peptides that you'll, you'll see in protein powder, powders are really popular. And you can get them at your natural health food store. And here's the research on them.

• 13:22Mindy Pelz?

  It was a 2018 study done in Nutrients. Gave 131 post-menopausal women. They, there were two groups. So one group got five grams of collagen peptides daily. And the other group was a placebo group. And they, they did this for a year. And the collagen group, the people that got the collagen peptides showed an increased bone mineral density and improved bone formation. Whereas the placebo group didn't have that same effect. So collagen is not just for your skin. It's for your bone. And if you're on these weight loss drugs, put, put a scoop of collagen peptides

• 14:06Mindy Pelz?

  in your coffee every single morning. Have it in your protein drink. You gotta make every meal count. Now, number, number four. The fourth thing you can do is supplement with vitamin D. So remember, vitamin D is really helpful in the formation of bones. I've done a whole video on vitamin D, how it's a prohormone. People who carry extra weight, that fat in their belly around their body actually becomes a repository for vitamin D. Therefore, there's less vitamin D circulating in the system. So as you lose weight, you should become more sensitive to vitamin D.

• 14:48Mindy Pelz?

  Your body should know how to use vitamin D better because it's not storing vitamin D. So actually, a vitamin D supplement becomes even more potent as you start to lose weight. And specifically, when you are doing vitamin D, and I just want to point out a couple of interesting studies, because a 2011 study in the Journal of Nutrition and Research found 42% of Americans are already clinically deficient. And so, and we know vitamin D like food sources are not that great. I mean, they're like fatty fish, so that's great.

• 15:27Mindy Pelz?

  But what I've heard from a lot of people who are using these drugs is that their appetite, even when they do eat, is just not spectacular. So I don't think most people are going to crave sardines. So we've got to look at adding in vitamin D. Number five, add in magnesium and vitamin K2. Now, this is uber important because when we start to look at exogenous nutrients, where we are adding in different nutrients, sometimes these nutrients work in synergy. So vitamin D and K2 work together, magnesium and K2 work together.

• 16:09Mindy Pelz?

  And there was a meta, 22 meta-analysis that pulled 16 clinical trials with over 6,400 women and found that vitamin K2 significantly improved lumbar bone density. That's your low back. So, and it was specifically in post-menopausal women, over 6,000 of them. And interesting enough, the food source that has the best vitamin K in it is something called Natto. It's a fermented soy food. It has a tremendous amount of vitamin, or K2. So you might actually try to add that into your food.

• 16:51Mindy Pelz?

  I want to tell you about something that genuinely moves me. And that's watching what happens when women come together around real health science. There's something powerful that shifts when a woman realizes she's not broken. She's just been given the wrong information. And when she is surrounded by other women who are waking up to that same truth, wow, it's magic. The healing accelerates. The consistency becomes easier. The loneliness of the health journey just literally dissolves. And that's what I have been watching over and over again, happen inside my Reset Academy, month after month.

• 17:35Mindy Pelz?

  Women who come in frustrated and depleted. They start to find their rhythm. They start to reclaim their energy. And the most beautiful part is they start rebuilding trust with their bodies. Inside my academy, you get monthly trainings, live coaching calls, and an incredible community of women who are all doing this work right alongside you. And I show up every single month with new content, new tools, new ways to explain things, because your body is always changing and your health education should grow with it. So come join me over there. All you've got to do is find us on resetacademy.drmindypelz.com.

• 18:16Mindy Pelz?

  That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I can't wait to see you there. I personally take magnesium every single night. My favorite to take right now that I'm loving is standard process is Easy Mag, because it's whole foods base. And I like to just try to get everything in through food. And this is just food put into a supplement. There's no synthetic ingredients. So again, I'll leave links at the bottom here for you. And so we have people who are either all in on it, and that's fine. And we have people who are a little bit more cautious about it. And what I want to do in this video is really compare it to what I call a fasting lifestyle.

• 19:01Mindy Pelz?

  Because in full transparency, when I first heard about these weight loss drugs, the first thing I asked people who were using them was, what do you notice? And this is before we knew about the muscle loss. This is before we knew about the regain. Like, everybody was just totally enamored with these. And every single person said, "I'm not hungry. I stopped being hungry." And my brain was like, "Yeah, that's what fasting does. That's fasting lifestyle. The more you learn how to cycle your fast, and the more you learn the importance of breaking your fast and refeeding, your hunger goes away." And so, I was baffled as to why we would choose $800 a month over something you could do for free

• 19:45Mindy Pelz?

  for yourself and get the same result. So, in this video, I want to break down the scientific difference of these two. And this is not about shaming anybody that's on these. This is not about convincing you to get off these medications. It's about helping you make educated choices so you can see what's right for you. So, first, we've got to talk about what a GLP-1 actually is. So, GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide. Glycogen actually is the stored version of glucose. So, when your body raises glucose from food, if it doesn't know how to use all of that, the first place it will send glucose to

• 20:28Mindy Pelz?

  is it will convert it into something called glycogen. And glycogen, most of it gets stored in the liver. When the liver's glycogen stores are high, then what it will do next is, then it starts to put that extra glucose around your belly, around your face, and your breasts, like your booty, like it stores it in other places. When you get into a glucose deficit, when you're not eating for a while, what happens is you stimulate a hormone called glucagon. The way we learned it in school always was glucose is gone.

• 21:10Mindy Pelz?

  And so when glucose is low and glucagon gets stimulated, then that glucagon will actually go to the liver and say, hey, liver, release the storage. Hey, fat cells, release the storage. So glucagon is a really powerful hormone. And what these drugs are doing is that they're adding this hormone in, which is a big part of why you're losing weight on them. And with GLPs in your system, this glucagon-like peptide, it will signal fullness to the brain. It will slow down the digestive system. And it will help improve how your cells respond

• 21:52Mindy Pelz?

  to insulin and the glucose being released. Now, what products like Ozempic and Wegovy, TriZepatide, Monjaro, Zepbound, these are all synthetic versions of that hormone that keep you full longer. And what's interesting is that it actually keeps glucagon up at a level that is consistent in your system for as long as the drug is there. I first want to note that the problem with that is now we've put the body in unnatural physiology. We are meant to have this GLP-1 hormone

• 22:33Mindy Pelz?

  should get released 30 to 90 minutes after we eat. And it will be released when you fast. We'll talk about that in a moment. And so the clinical trials, I'm not, I'm not, I can't, nobody can knock what the clinical trials are showing, that 15% weight loss in 68 weeks. That's pretty impressive. People are losing weight. But there are hidden costs with these drugs. So first, the first hidden cost is muscle loss. And what's interesting about the muscle loss that I want to point out is let's use this as an example. If for a younger woman, if you lose some muscle,

• 23:19Mindy Pelz?

  You still have the hormones in you like testosterone and estrogen, a little bit of progesterone as well that will help you rebuild muscle. So if you're in your twenties and thirties and you go on these drugs and you lose muscle, you still have all the hormones, specifically testosterone, that will help you build back up those muscles. But if a woman is in her 50s, 60s, or 70s, she doesn't have as much testosterone, so the ability to build muscle back up becomes more compromised. So muscle loss for women over 50 on these drugs is a serious concern because sarcopenia is what they call it,

• 24:04Mindy Pelz?

  and it really can be dangerous for the 70 and 80-year-old version of you. If you lose muscle and you do not regain it, that is a problem when you're in your 70s and 80s. So here's an interesting way to look at this. 56-year-old woman, she starts on a GLP-1. She loses 30 pounds and roughly 10 of those pounds are muscle. It's something that they're now calling sarcopenia obesity. It's a new term that came from these drugs. Now, she decides to get off of these drugs, and we know within a year she's going to gain most of that weight back.

• 24:47Mindy Pelz?

  But she doesn't gain it back in muscle. She gains it back in fat. And so she's now gone on this drug. She's had this experience where she got to lose weight, which is exciting, but she also lost 10 pounds of muscle. And she's going to have to fight like hell to get that muscle back. The long-term consequence of this needs to be talked about. If she regains 20 pounds, that's not, she still has down 10 pounds of muscle. And this is one of the biggest problems that we see with the hormone is this muscle loss. Now fasting can do the same thing.

• 25:29Mindy Pelz?

  It can, when you go into this fasted state, it can stimulate glucagon. It will stimulate glucagon. And your body will go and break apart all the stored glucose. And you'll start to up-regulate things like autophagy. And we have evidence that at somewhere between 16 and 24 hours of fasting, when ketones come in, ketones preserve muscle. This is an evolutionary design in our bodies that kicks in in a longer fast. So if I can teach a woman, the same woman at 56,

• 26:11Mindy Pelz?

  how to do a protocol like I wrote about in Fast Like a Girl, that is like a, what I call a 5-1-1. Five days a week she intermittent fasts at a comfortable level. One day a week she elongates her fast. And one day a week she doesn't fast. So I can still teach her how to access, getting that glucagon to break up the excess glucose. She's not losing muscle. She's losing fat. You don't lose muscle when you're fasting, especially if you are cycling fasting, especially when you go into longer fasts,

• 26:52Mindy Pelz?

  and especially when you understand the principles of refeeding. So there is some really interesting research, and this is one of my favorite studies that was ever done on fasting. It's a 2019 meta-analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine. And it showed that mild versions of fasting produces improvements in insulin sensitivity, in blood pressure, and in oxidative stress. The same claims that you're seeing in these GLP-1 hormones. Now, let's go back to this muscle preservation.

• 27:30Mindy Pelz?

  In the shorter fasts, anything under 16 hours, when your body switches over and it starts to make ketones, one of the things it may do is start to break down some glucose from your muscle. It may feel like your muscle is breaking down. But once you get past that 16-hour mark, ketones typically kick in and we start to see that that muscle preservation starts to be prevalent in the system. Your body will not break muscle down anymore. Now, if you take that same fasting window and you, when you're done with your 17-hour fast

• 28:15Mindy Pelz?

  and you re-feed with protein, you are feeding those muscles and you are actually building your muscles stronger. I will tell you that I'm 56 years old and I have been fasting for over 15 years, doing it the way I teach you all to cycle it and I teach you the importance of refeeding. And I have not lost muscle. I still have muscle. It's possible. You just have to be intentional. When we look at the calorie restriction with GLP-1s, we see the muscle go down. And my fear is that when we go back off the drug,

• 29:00Mindy Pelz?

  we've lost muscle that we cannot regain. And by the way, those of you that have been following my principles, I know there's many of you who come back to my videos and I just want to say thank you. And you've been reading my books. If you've noticed that you have lost weight without muscle loss, please put it in the comments so everybody can learn from you. There was a 2020 study in JAMA that I want to bring your attention to in the Journal of American Medicine. And it found that time-restricted eating alone, fasting alone, without additional dietary or exercise structure, resulted in lean muscle loss along with fat loss,

• 29:46Mindy Pelz?

  just like the GLP-1 users.

• 29:49Mindy Pelz?

  But I'm not advocating for fasting alone. I'm advocating for fasting done correctly. And fasting done correctly means you are focused on the refeed. And so you, when you go back in to your food, protein, protein, protein, 30 grams at that first meal, we've got to make sure that we're getting 30 grams at that first meal. Now, let's address something that has come up over and over again from many of you and out there in social media land. And that is the female physiology that changes the equation of fasting.

• 30:32Mindy Pelz?

  And this was brought by Dr. Stacy Sims, who is a popular health influencer. Stacy and I know each other. I brought her on to the Resetter Podcast. You can listen to that. But one of the things she's saying, and I want to quote her, is that it's fasting for women who are under chronic stress, or fasting for women who are endurance athletes. If you are under pushing yourself physically, if you are pushing yourself mentally, and you have a lot of cortisol surging through your body, you should not fast. I 1,000% agree.

• 31:18Mindy Pelz?

  If you take a woman who's been under so much stress, and you tell her to go on a three-day water fast, that is raising cortisol. That is not good for female physiology. More than a man, women need to start to make sure that we aren't pushing these fasts when our body is already maxed out. This is why everything I taught you in Fast Like a Girl was about N of 1, you finding your fasting behavior, and you doing it in a way that works with your lifestyle. I have shared this before, that last year was the most stressful year.

• 31:59Mindy Pelz?

  Of my life, I did not fast as long, uh, fast last year. I was feeding, I was refueling. I recently, last week, I went through a seven day experience where I was doing webinars for our Fast Like a Girl Certified Coaching Program. And I, it was very demanding on me. When I got done with those seven days, all I wanted to do is eat. And I ate because I needed to bring in more resources into my body. Fasting is a tool that is flexible based off of your lifestyle. It's not, oh, I'm stressed, therefore I don't fast. No, you have more options than that.

• 32:42Mindy Pelz?

  The last piece that I want to bring to your attention is let's just compare the GLP. How do you decide if GLPs are the right tool? Or how do you decide if fasting is the right tool? Or maybe you use them together. So GLPs are the right tool if you are type 2 diabetic and you are not responding to lifestyle intervention. If you are severely obese and you have a BMI of 35 or higher and you can't get a hold of that, GLP-1s are your tool. I really loved the interview I did here on YouTube, you can find it, with Dr. Lee Erin

• 33:25Mindy Pelz?

  Caneely, who is, treats cancer patients. And she has a whole longevity clinic. And she says, when somebody is really obese, um, she says, I'm going to give you a little head start. We're going to do these GLP-1s, but I'm going to be working with lifestyle. You're going to, she likes to pull people off of them within 30 to 90 days so they don't lose muscle. So in severe conditions of obesity, of metabolic syndrome, it can be really helpful, but it be, should be used with lifestyle and there should be an exit ramp. Fasting is a better first line tool for women 45 plus with metabolic dysfunction.

• 34:09Mindy Pelz?

  If your hemoglobin A1C is below 5.8, this is a great tool for you. If your hemoglobin A1C is more in the sixes, then you might look at GLP-1s.

• 34:23Mindy Pelz?

  The whole idea that we're giving these GLP-1s to people who want to lose 5 and 10 pounds, that is ridiculous. So anyways, just had to say that.

• 34:35Mindy Pelz?

  Fasting is a great tool for those women that want to help address insulin resistance. And fasting is a great tool when body composition is what you're looking for. You want to make sure that you decrease fat, but you preserve muscle. If you are wanting that, fasting is your first-line tool. So here are your five action steps. First, let's start with a 12-12 eating window. That's 12 hours of fasting and 12 hours of eating for two weeks before you go any longer.

• 35:15Mindy Pelz?

  So if you're new to fasting, let's start with two weeks of 12 hours of fasting and a 12-hour eating window. If you don't know, if you need to know more, this book has it all in there. After two weeks, you're going to move to a 14-10. 14 hours of fasting, 10 hours of eating. And then after you get comfortable there, after a couple of weeks, you can try a 16-8. 16 hours of fasting, 8 hours of eating. Okay, number two. Front-load your 30 grams of protein at your first meal. The magic of fasting isn't just the fasting window, it is the re-feed.

• 35:58Mindy Pelz?

  And that first meal needs 30 grams of protein to stimulate the growth of muscle. End of story. You can, you know, you can break your fast a lot of different ways, but if you want to lose weight and you want to make sure that you preserve muscle, make sure in that first meal, there is 30 grams of protein.

• 36:20Mindy Pelz?

  Number three, add resistance training in two to three times a week. This is mandatory. Everybody needs to be adding this in whether you're on the drugs or not. This is two 30-minute sessions per week of some kind of squatting, deadlifts, rows, something where you're pushing against a resistance that will strengthen muscle. Number four, this is an important one, is track your waist circumference. It's not just about the scale. We want to make sure you're not losing too much muscle. You might see the scale go down, but that means it could also be the muscles going down. So the scale lies all the time.

• 37:01Mindy Pelz?

  And so waist circumference is an important measurement, and many of you care about belly fat. So let's make sure that waist circumference is used, that should be your mark along with hemoglobin A1C as to metabolic improvement. And then the last thing is, as I have always said, is cycle, cycle your fast. If you are a woman who has a menstrual cycle, this book was written for you. It was written to change the fasting game for women. If you're a post-menopausal woman, I do have information in here, or you can check out Age Like a Girl, where I have information there as well.

• 37:45Mindy Pelz?

  So in this video, I want to show you how to do that, whether you're on the medication, you're thinking about going on the medication, or you want to not go on the medication, but you want the benefits of the medication. This is the video for you because I want to show you exactly how you create a meal that feeds the microbes that makes GLP-1. Sound like a plan? Let's dive in. So first, I think we needed to have a conversation about what GLP-1 hormone does. I just got done doing a webinar series for our Fast Like a Girl certified coaches, and it was all on GLP-1s. And I just assumed everybody knew that term, GLP-1 hormone. But what I

• 38:29Mindy Pelz?

  Realized in this webinar series was that a lot of people know Ozempic, they know Manjaro, they know the weight loss drugs, and they know people are losing weight with it, but they don't understand the mechanism behind it. So we dove into GLP-1 hormone. What is it? And I realized that before I give you the, give you all of the insights on how to make it, you should probably know what it is, right? Okay, so here you go. The first and most important thing that GLP-1s do is it's a hormone that tells the brain that you're full. So one of the interesting researches that I saw as I've been diving deep into this hormone is that it takes about 15 to 30 minutes

• 39:13Mindy Pelz?

  for your brain to register that it's full. But really, it takes 15 to 30 minutes for the microbes in your gut to make enough GLP-1 to go up into the brain to turn off the hunger signals. So this idea that you hear a lot of people on these drugs are like, "I just can't eat." It's because they have so much GLP-1 hormone in them because of the shot that it has turned off any hunger signal. But again, you can make your, you can make this yourself. The other thing that the GLP-1 hormone does is it tells your stomach to slow down digestion.

• 39:56Mindy Pelz?

  That's really good because a system that's working in like a digestive system, remember the digestive system is under the parasympathetic nervous system control. So what ends up happening is that when you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, it's called the rest and digest system. And so you need this GLP-1 hormone so that it can slow down digestion, which is on one hand really helpful, but also could be one reason that so many people are getting these weird nausea and other side effects is because there is a slowing down of digestion. And then the third thing that this hormone does

• 40:38Mindy Pelz?

  is it tells your pancreas to release insulin so that blood sugar doesn't spike. Okay, that's fascinating because we're really demanding a lot of the pancreas and when we have a lot of this hormone in us. But it's a trifecta here. We have fullness, we have slower digestion, and we have plenty of insulin, which is really important for those of you that have been insulin resistant before. So it's a really good combination for making sure you don't overeat and making sure that what you are eating is usable for your cells. And we don't want to destroy the microbes that make this hormone, and I'll talk about that here in a moment.

• 41:21Mindy Pelz?

  So these drugs work by mimicking these hormones. So why it matters to fat loss is because more GLP-1, less hunger. Less hunger means smaller portions to feel satisfying. So you eat a little bit. Put in there if you're on a GLP-1 and you notice it. So you don't have to eat as much. And because it has this control over the pancreas, it stabilizes your insulin. So there's less insulin and glucose swings, which means no afternoon crashes. This is amazing. So but let's make you, let's give you the keys

• 42:04Mindy Pelz?

  to be able to make it for yourself. The other thing that we know about these, about GLP-1 hormones is that it will boost your energy because it's helping regulate that glucose-insulin system. So you're not getting this huge spike of glucose and then a total crash. You actually will help you create some kind of balance with glucose and insulin. So your energy stays balanced. But remember that this is also important for menopausal women because if all of a sudden glucose is on this wild ride, up and down and up and down, you're, you're going to find your moods are on a wild ride. I'll never forget, I worked with a celebrity one time

• 42:49Mindy Pelz?

  who was a vegan, and she was eating like eight to nine meals a day. Little snacks all day long. And we put a continuous glucose monitor on her. And I saw these spikes going like this up and down. And my first reaction to her was, is that what your moods look like throughout the day? And she was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's definitely my moods. So we have to realize that sometimes this blood sugar instability is so much bigger than weight gain or weight loss. But it can put you on a roller coaster that has your moods feeling really unpredictable.

• 43:32Mindy Pelz?

  So of course, you take the shot and all of a sudden, you're getting the fullness, you're getting the blood sugar stability, you're getting the slowing down of the digestion. That is all great. The only problem is that's a pharmacological change, not a physiological change. There's a difference there. If I put you on a medication and I change you through a pharmacological substance, the question is, what happens if I take that medication away? Did your physiology change? And what we're noticing with these weight loss drugs is the answer is no. And there's like 50% of the people that go on them are off of them within the first year.

• 44:14Mindy Pelz?

  So they had a year experience of not being hungry, of having more energy, of losing weight, but they're stuck. So we got to teach people to start using, learning how to make it themselves. Now, I think the bigger question and the most important question that hopefully you're asking and that I can answer for you is what does a meal look like? How can you put a meal together that would stimulate the GLP-1 hormone? And it's not that hard. There is actually research showing that there is an ideal GLP-1 plate that we can put together. And it looks like this. It is a combination of fiber, protein, and healthy fat.

• 44:59Mindy Pelz?

  But there's an order in which you are going to eat these foods. And there's an amount you're going to reach for so you can get maximum production of these GLP-1 hormones. So let's start with the most important one, which is protein. I've said this many times here. You want every single meal, you want to look for 20 to 40 grams of protein at every single meal. It is the most filling macronutrient you can possibly eat. It raises your metabolism. They call it thermogenic. It increases that thermogenic response because it takes more energy to break down.

• 45:40Mindy Pelz?

  And what might not be getting enough airtime for the protein world is that it is, food-wise, it is one of the strongest natural triggers for GLP-1 hormone, which is really cool. So let's have it at every single meal. And the Journal of Obesity in 2023 found that something called protein-paced meals of 20 to 40 grams of protein every meal, combined with intermittent fasting, I've talked about this study a lot here, led to two times more weight loss compared to just calorie restriction. So there's science behind this.

• 46:24Mindy Pelz?

  There's a formula for you to lose weight, and it doesn't look like rushing off to the pharmacist. You can actually do it every time you eat. Okay, second thing you're going to focus on is fiber. I keep thinking that fiber must not have a PR agency like protein does, because protein, everybody's talking about protein. But why is nobody talking about fiber? Like, they're equally as important. Fiber slows down digestion, it blunts blood sugar spikes, it feeds the gut microbes in your gut that make things like GLP-1 hormone, and produce short-chain fatty acids and make

• 47:08Mindy Pelz?

  you things like serotonin. Really, I'd love to hear from you if you've been forgetting about fiber in your daily life, because it's, in my book, it's equally as important as protein. And for menopausal women, you're losing hormones. You want to make sure that the hormones you are getting, they are in a format your cells can use. And fiber re-formats them. It feeds those microbes that can reformat that. So, one food choice, looking at getting 25 grams of fiber every single day, starts to help feed those microbes that make this miraculous hormone.

• 47:51Mindy Pelz?

  But it also feeds the microbes of a whole set of bacteria called the astrobolome that break estrogen down, so it becomes more usable. Fiber also feeds the microbes that make melatonin, that helps you sleep. Fiber also feeds the microbes that makes the neurotransmitter serotonin. I mean, this is the, this is the most important food group, in my opinion, for overall health, is fiber. And it's the one we can really agree on, right? So that we don't all fight. The vegans and the carnivores don't fight. Silly fight. But, but it really is something we need to put our focus on.

• 48:34Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, third thing you're gonna put your focus on is healthy fats. So, you wanna look at things like olive oil, avocado oil, grass-fed oil. I've shared this a lot here on this, on my channel. But if you're new to my channel and you haven't heard this yet, we are shooting, in order for our metabolic health to be in a good place, for us to not have that extra visceral fat, we need to make sure we are getting a ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s. That that is a one-to-one ratio. Most people, especially here in America, have a 20-to-1 ratio.

• 49:19Mindy Pelz?

  They have more omega-6s, 20 times more omega-6s.

• 49:25Mindy Pelz?

  Then they do omega 3s. There are two problems with this. One, that's contributing to visceral fat. That's contributing to menopausal belly weight. That's the, all this stuff here can be, you know, we've talked about it being cortisol, but it also can be this imbalance of omega 6 to omega 3s. We also know that visceral fat goes around the organs, which is really damaging for chronic disease and longevity and increases mortality rates. This ratio, this omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is something that as a, as human species, we should probably be talking about

• 50:08Mindy Pelz?

  because we're over here talking about protein and that's great, but we need to get this balance right for people. Because if the balance is off, it's deadly. So, we want to add in omega 3 healthy fats. When you add in, let's say you've been eating an ultra-processed food meal and that you have your omega 6 is high and your omega 3 is low. If you add in something as simple as 2 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil every single day, you're starting to bring that ratio back into balance, which is stopping your body from making visceral fat, which is saving your life.

• 50:53Mindy Pelz?

  That, and, and it's feeding your microbes, especially things like olive oil are really high in polyphenols. So, let's break this down. What are the foods that are GLP-1 amplifiers? And what are the foods that are GLP-1 blunters? Let's start with the amplifiers first. Ready? I'm gonna, you might want to get a pen. We're gonna go through this quick. So they are obviously high protein foods, but your best combination, based off of everything that I just told you, is to combine protein with fat. So what protein has a high omega 3 mixed with a high protein content?

• 51:38Mindy Pelz?

  And here it is. Eggs, fatty fish. So this can be everything from cod to wild salmon, to mackerels, to sardines, to anchovies.

• 51:51Mindy Pelz?

  Grass-fed meats, these are your grass-fed bison,

• 51:57Mindy Pelz?

  grass-fed elk, we do a lot of the wild animal meats that you don't typically get, but even grass-fed cow, all of that is higher in omega-3s. Grass-fed dairy is higher in omega-3s. They have that combo of high protein and high omega-3 ratio. That makes it a perfect food for supporting these microbes so that they can make you GLP-1 hormone. Second category for my plant-based friends, legumes. So there is a combination that you look for in legumes. Legumes have a lot of fiber, which is great.

• 52:39Mindy Pelz?

  So we have fiber, we have protein, and then we have phytoestrogens. That's the combination you're looking for with legumes so you can start to make this hormone. So these are your lentils, your chickpeas, and your black beans. Lentils are my new hero. I have them every single day, sprouted lentils, and they're so packed with protein and they have so much fiber. Okay, third category that you're looking at are some of your good mono unsaturated fats. So things like avocado, I have an avocado every day, olive oil, we keep talking about that, and nuts. But I want them to be raw nuts so they still have the enzymes in them

• 53:24Mindy Pelz?

  that can feed the microbes in your gut that make this hormone. Then we've got our tried and true fermented foods. So I did for you all a video on kimchi and how important kimchi is because it combined to microplastics in the gut. So can you have a dish of kimchi every single day? If you're like, "No, I can't", then we're gonna do things like sauerkraut and a probiotic-rich yogurt. If you can't do dairy, you might do like a coconut yogurt that has some new probiotic strands in it.

• 54:05Mindy Pelz?

  But these fermented foods feed the gut bacteria that signal the release of GLP-1 hormone.

• 54:15Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, and then the last thing that I think is really another way to add into this whole design of creating a meal around GLP-1s is our favorite, actually it's your favorite. I've watched the videos that you love of mine, and one of my favorites that everybody loves is apple cider vinegar. So when we look at an amplifier of GLP-1, apple cider vinegar is an amplifier, and you can have it before your meals. Remember, it takes like 15 to 30 minutes for the release of that hormone to go up into your brain. So you can have it before your meals, so you're feeding your microbes. Maybe you have a little bowl of salad, maybe it has some lentils in it, has some olive

• 55:00Mindy Pelz?

  oil dripped over it, and you've got your glass of water with a little bit of apple cider vinegar in it, and you're eating and drinking that before or while you're cooking your meal. That would be really interesting. So you are actually ahead of your whole meal experience, you're queuing up the release of GLP-1 hormone. Try it, it really, really works. Okay, GLP-1 blunters. This one's interesting, I really want to point this out because so many of you will rush away from this video and you'll be like, "Oh, I gotta go do all that." And I think that's awesome, like I applaud your enthusiasm, but let's make sure we're

• 55:43Mindy Pelz?

  doing that while we're avoiding the things that suppress it. Otherwise, you're gonna be like, "This lady doesn't know what she's talking about, it didn't work for me." I am telling you a system that works. So here's what blunts the GLP-1 hormone: ultra-processed foods. I find this really interesting, that we have put ultra-processed foods into our food, our whole food world, and then everybody gained weight, and then we showed up with a drug that was built off of the hormone that the ultra-processed foods destroyed. That's a great business model. So there was a 2025 study in Nature Medicine, and this one was interesting.

• 56:28Mindy Pelz?

  They took people who were eating an ultra-processed food diet.

• 56:34Mindy Pelz?

  And they took people who were just eating a regular diet. And both of them were technically on diet style eating. But what we know about ultra-processed foods is they're packed with these chemicals that blunt GLP-1, which is why they don't work long-term. I've been saying for years, when you go and you look at some of the foods that like Weight Watchers puts out, go read those ingredients. It's just junk that's actually killing the microbes that make the hormone that tell you that you're full. It doesn't make sense to me. A lot of the diet foods and the diet junk out there is destroying your GLP-1 production.

• 57:17Mindy Pelz?

  And you're eating it because you think it's going to help you lose weight, but actually, long-term, it's making you gain weight. It's insane. Okay. The other thing I want to say is that refined sugar and high fructose, specifically high-fructose corn syrup, spike insulin so high, and they cause that insulin to go up and down and up and down. And that kind of insulin crashing causes the death of these little bacteria in your gut that actually make this hormone for you. So let's get off the refined sugars and flours.

• 57:56Mindy Pelz?

  And then we've got our vegetable oils, which are like canola oil and soybean oil and corn oil. Those are destroying the microbes. And then we have the diet foods, not necessarily just from the angle I just shared with you, but because they have artificial sweeteners in it. Isn't that interesting? That these artificial sweeteners, there is emerging evidence that's showing that they are confusing the hunger signals to the brain. And they are destroying those little microbes. And so the brain doesn't know if it's full, which is why these low-calorie diet food strategies are not long-term success. So fascinating, right?

• 58:40Mindy Pelz?

  So what's interesting that I just want to point out is that many of you know this. You're starting to wake up to this ultra-processed food issue. And I applaud you for being willing to just look at it straight on. And you start to clean up your diet. And within the first week, you're exhausted. You feel horrible. Anybody have that happen to you? Put it in the notes. And so what ends up happening is that you are so tired and feel so much brain fog because you're coming off the stimulation of these ultra-processed foods. They've been amping up your dopamine system. They've been amping up your sympathetic nervous system. And now you go to get off of them.

• 59:24Mindy Pelz?

  And you are in a full-on crash. So one of the ways that you can get around that, that we've noticed in our community, is by some of these electrolyte packets, these salts specifically, because sometimes sodium crashes as we exit out of those chemical-laden foods. So my favorite, when we're looking at a sodium product, this one has sodium, potassium, and magnesium in it, is Elemente. We've been fans of Elemente for a while. They're great for fasters. And if you're going to go and make a real stab at getting off of these toxic foods,

• 1:00:07Mindy Pelz?

  just be kind to yourself and make sure that you're putting a packet of something like Elemente in a glass of water. This one, I just had this mint chocolate. Sometimes I put it in coffee in the morning. And just make sure you're having one a day so your body can get off of these ultra-processed foods a little bit quicker. And if you want to know more about Elemente, go down into the notes and we'll have codes and everything there for you. Okay, so the next thing to really think about when you're thinking about creating this GLP-1 meal is the timing of your meal. And this is a hidden lever that most people ignore when they're trying to make GLP-1 hormones. And there are

• 1:00:50Mindy Pelz?

  About four different steps I want you to focus on that will help support the GLP-1 lifestyle. First is you're going to compress your eating window. I like people to get to about 16 hours of fasting. And then you're going to go into the plating of food that we've been unfolding here. I'm not done, don't leave me yet. Okay, second, you're going to front load your calories. Eat your biggest meal at lunch or at breakfast. Eat it in the light so that you have plenty of insulin. Remember, when you eat a meal in the dark, it ends up causing a spike or it causes the pancreas to go to sleep.

• 1:01:34Mindy Pelz?

  I did videos for you all on to stop eating three hours before you go to bed is really important for cardio metabolic health. And then no grazing, stop eating in between meals. So for someone like me, I do a two meal a day. I usually eat lunch and I eat dinner and those will be my major meals. If I'm hungry in the middle of the day, maybe I'll graze a little bit. Okay, so how do we put this all together? Thank you for sticking with me all the way through here because I really, there's a lot to share with you. So I'm going to walk you through a sample day. What would this would look like?

• 1:02:16Mindy Pelz?

  Again, you might want to write this down or go back and re-watch this video. So the morning, you're in your fasting window. You're going to have black coffee or you can have some green tea or you're going to have some sea salt with lemon. And an optional thing to put into the water, I don't think you put into your coffee, is apple cider vinegar. This would start your day right metabolically and it would prime, the apple cider vinegar specifically would prime these little microbes to make the hormone, the magic hormone, maybe we just call it that. Okay, first meal, let's say at 12 o'clock, you have your lunch. You could do something like a three egg veggie scramble.

• 1:02:59Mindy Pelz?

  So you're taking scrambled eggs and you're using avocado, sauteed spinach and maybe a side of berries. So that would be a 30 grams of protein and you would have fiber and you would have your healthy fats. Then around 3pm, maybe you're hungry again. Have a big salad. Have mixed greens with a cup of lentils, like I mentioned, or chickpeas. Maybe some grilled salmon or chicken on it, drizzled with olive oil and some lemon. And then that's kind of your main meal. That 3pm meal could be a main meal for you all. And then at 6pm, you're gonna do a lighter meal.

• 1:03:42Mindy Pelz?

  And that might be your grass-fed beef or your wild fish. Maybe some roasted sweet potatoes. And then after dinner, we don't snack. Now, one of the things that is happening to a lot of the people that are on these pharmaceuticals is that their hunger has gone down so much. And this is perpetuating the problem and making it harder for them to get off of it. Because there are five mistakes that deplete GLP-1 hormone. First is under-eating. So you do need to eat. If you get your calories under like 1,000 calories a day, you're gonna tank your thyroid. So all these people are like, "I'm so full, I can't eat."

• 1:04:26Mindy Pelz?

  This is a thyroid problem we need to address. The second problem that we're seeing is people, because they're not hungry, is that they're not eating enough protein. And if they're not eating enough protein, then they're not feeding the microbes again. And so the microbes are gonna be... You're not gonna make as much hormone. And the third thing is our ultra-processed food diet. The fourth thing is endless snacking. And the fifth is skipping fiber. So, an ultra-processed food diet that doesn't have enough protein, doesn't have enough fiber, doesn't even have enough nutrients in it. And so you're just grazing and eating little snacks here and there.

• 1:05:08Mindy Pelz?

  That is gonna be the death to your GLP-1 hormone. Which is so fascinating because how many people are eating like that that are on these hormones? Oh, and then the last blunter of GLP-1 hormones is not eating enough food in the eating window. So we have to support thyroid health. Make sure you're getting 1,000 calories. Okay, that was a lot. There was a lot to teach you. So I want to leave you with five really important things. Don't go away yet because you need to know these five so you can move this into action. Number one, first meal of the day, we are going to hit our 30 gram protein intake. This can be eggs, this can be smoked salmon, this can be Greek yogurt.

• 1:05:51Mindy Pelz?

  First meal of the day, 30 grams of protein. Number two, we are going to add a cup of fiber-rich plants to our lunch and to our dinner. This can be your lentils, this can be your chickpeas, this can be your berries, this can be your leafy greens. Number three, we are going to compress our eating window to somewhere around eight hours. So we're getting about 16 hours of fasting so we can get that metabolic switch going. Number four, we are going to cut out one ultra-processed food a week. So here's where accountability comes in. Put in the comments how many, which ultra-processed food you're giving up this week.

• 1:06:35Mindy Pelz?

  I'm watching, I read the comments. So put it in there. And number five is to add one to two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water and drink it before your first meal. Okay, that was a lot. And I know that many of you will say, "Oh, I can just take a shot and that would be a whole lot easier." But what is your exit strategy? What is your exit strategy? And are you getting enough protein? Are you getting enough nutrients? I have concerns on that. Those of you that want off, there's your formula. And those of you who don't ever want to go on those drugs, I just showed you how. And I will tell you, this is how I eat.

• 1:07:15Mindy Pelz?

  And the number one problem that I have, and it's not unique to me, is I'm just not hungry. Because my microbes are making a lot of GLP-1. I know it because I've been doing this style of eating for years. And I want you to have that same experience. So as always, I hope that helps. If you like this video, you're definitely going to want to check out the next one.