A Weight Loss Checklist: Solve Your Own Health Equation

Join Dr. Mindy as she reveals the secrets to a healthier, happier you! In this solo episode, she dives into fasting, fitness, and self-love, sharing her ultimate weight loss checklist. Discover how to unlock your metabolic magic, eat smarter with fiber and protein, avoid hidden liver saboteurs (like alcohol and meds), kick out lingering anger, embrace a "movement diet," master detox strategies, improve your sleep, eat with the sun, and find your daily chill. Tune in to become your own health hero—no gimmicks or surgery required! To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep308 Check out our fasting membership at https://esetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

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

• 0:03Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I bring you my very own weight loss checklist from my book, Eat Like a Girl. The most important thing I can tell you around weight loss is, is love yourself now. Love yourself before you lose the weight. Find peace and harmony within you first, and the weight will shed. We all have reasons that weight sticks to us. Ask yourself if there is something that the weight, how it might be serving you. Because when you shed it, who will you be? And can you love yourself, no matter what you look like? Can you love yourself, no matter what the scale of love says to you? And can you love yourself, even if people around you?

• 0:46Mindy Pelz?

  I've sat with a lot of friends whose husbands have been very harsh about their weight. Can you love yourself anyways? So, keep that in mind as I go through this checklist. Because what you're looking for when it comes to weight loss, might actually be self-love. It might be as simple as that. So, that's the context I want to start this checklist off with. Is just really go in and ask, like, how can you be worthy anyways? How can you love yourself anyways? And if you find that before you drop the weight, you are going to find a lot of happiness. And you will find the weight loss journeys much easier. As always, enjoy, and I hope this helps. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast.

• 1:31Mindy Pelz?

  This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 1:53Mindy Pelz?

  So, okay, with that, here's a checklist. The first is make sure you know how to metabolically switch. Okay, remember, we've gone from eating all day to, wait, timing of eating matters. So that's how do we start to see that we have this lens of two metabolisms? One is a metabolism that turns on when we eat, and one is a metabolism that turns on when we fast. If we don't, if we don't ever go 12 hours without food, you are always operating from one metabolism. You have totally left out the other metabolism.

• 2:37Mindy Pelz?

  So the first weight loss step, and I know I'm speaking to the choir here, is to learn to tap into these fasting windows. Now, how do you know if you are metabolically switching okay? Well, this is where, you know, like a ketone reader, we talk a lot about the blood sugar readers, but we don't always talk about the power of the ketone reader. So I'm a fan, if you're really wanting to master this switch, is to not only know your blood sugar from what foods are doing to you, but also know your blood sugar from, are you getting, is your blood sugar going down in the fasted state?

• 3:22Mindy Pelz?

  So, and then are your ketones going up in the fasted state? So let me give you an example of this. When I was working one-on-one with a lot of people, the very first thing we did, because we didn't have access, when I first started doing this, we didn't have access to CGMs, that was still only for diabetics. So we used the little ketone reader. I would have people take these blood sugar readers, and I would have them write down, we charted it, we charted it like throughout the whole, for like two weeks, and they would take a blood sugar reader when they first woke up in the morning, and they would take a ketone reading.

• 4:05Mindy Pelz?

  Now, if you get a keto mojo, they come with two strips. One is for blood sugar and one is for ketones. I really recommend you try this. These little keto mojos are like easy to do, but they come with two strips. So you're going to take a blood sugar reading and a ketone reading. They're two different strips. And you're going to look at those. And you're going to create a baseline.

• 4:31Mindy Pelz?

  And then you continue along your fasted state. And the next, right before you eat your next meal, your first meal, you take a blood sugar reading and you take a ketone reading again. What should happen is that blood sugar should go down from the first reading. So you should see a dip in the blood sugar from the first reading. And your ketones should go up.

• 5:02Mindy Pelz?

  If that is happening, your body can metabolically switch.

• 5:08Mindy Pelz?

  And you are doing it. You are on your way to mastering this switch.

• 5:14Mindy Pelz?

  If that is not happening, then if you're not seeing ketones go up in that second reading, you're not seeing your blood sugar go down in that second reading, then there's one of two things you've got to work on.

• 5:29Mindy Pelz?

  You've got to clean up your food a little bit more. So, and I'll go through that here in a moment, or you need to fast longer. And I always would do this with people, and it usually took people about two weeks for that change to happen. And for them to be able to metabolically switch. So if you're not sure if you're metabolically switching, I want you to start with that simple, simple exercise. Do it every day for two weeks. Most people, by the way, will wake up with, the reader can't even read ketones. It'll say, it says like NA, like they're not even there.

• 6:13Mindy Pelz?

  So don't freak out if that happens. And then if they, it shows that it can't, the measurements are too low to register. And then four hours later, you go to break your fast. If it says point one or point two, you're moving in the right direction. Point five means you're officially in ketosis. Okay, second thing is that once you're switching and you're making ketones, it means your body's burning fat. If you want your body to burn more fat, you need to stay in the fasted state longer. So some of you are just gonna need to try to get into those longer fasts

• 6:56Mindy Pelz?

  and just keep working the principles, but I promise you the longer fast is where the accelerated weight loss comes off. And what's interesting is you would think like, oh, when I go into a longer fast, of course I lose weight because I'm not eating, but then once I eat, it'll come back. That's not how it works. This is why this is better than Ozempic, because you didn't have to spend any money for it. You didn't have to, you know, you didn't have to get nauseous for it. Like you just had to train for it. So if you're struggling to lose weight or you, some of my coaches on the line, we got to train you into that 36 and 48 hour spot. So that's number two on the checklist. Okay.

• 7:39Mindy Pelz?

  Number three on the check fit list, and this is really important one that I just, I think it's getting a little more airtime now, but make sure you are eating fiber at every single meal. Like try, like making fiber your go to food. So like, you know, if you're hungry, have a carrot. If you're putting a meal together, always put a salad with it. And then when you're looking at your plate, eat the fiber first. Fiber first should be a mantra in your head. Always think fiber. So if you want a snack, pick a fiber snack.

• 8:24Mindy Pelz?

  If you're looking at your plate, pick fiber. If you're at a restaurant, get a salad on there. So fiber, fiber, fiber. It's so baffling to me how sometimes on the other side of weight loss is eating something. Like and eating fiber. Try it for a week where you just fully go in on vegetables and eat as many as you can. Fourth one is now we go to protein. So protein with every single meal. And this is where you can be plant-based, you can be omnivore, but you literally again,

• 9:08Mindy Pelz?

  when I'm looking at a plate of food, a classic go-to plate in my family is a grass, and we eat meat, is a grass-fed steak, a salad, and a sweet potato. You know, if you, if I bring up that to my kids, they're like, oh yeah, we had that like every frickin' night of our childhood. That's pretty much what we had. But here's the trick. Can you eat the vegetable and the protein first and the carbohydrate last? When it comes to protein, I think you all know, I, I don't like, if you like one gram of protein and it works for you, you know, great, one gram of protein for every pound

• 9:52Mindy Pelz?

  of body weight, great, if that's working for you, great. I, it didn't work well for me. I started gaining weight when I powered up on protein. So I've gone back to just protein at every single meal. So you're gonna have to find your kind of own N of one with that. Okay, now, fifth one. Get rid of the liver agitators. These are interesting ones. I'm gonna give you a checklist of them. For sure alcohol is number one. I hate to say that because I think there is something beautiful about sitting at a meal, if you, with a glass of wine and a lot of great company and sitting and like eating an incredible meal.

• 10:33Mindy Pelz?

  I think the art of eating and connecting with others is a beautiful thing. So in that context, I think a glass of wine is, can be beautiful, can be used as a health tool almost, like it's a part of a health environment. But most of the time, our daily glass of wine, if that's what you're drinking, is actually agitating your liver and as long as you have, this is a really startling stat that might be helpful for you to grasp, which is as long as you have alcohol in your system, your body is not burning fat.

• 11:12Mindy Pelz?

  Because the liver has to prioritize its needs and a toxin like alcohol is its number one priority. Get it out of the, clear it out of the system. So it's not breaking down estrogen and it's not breaking down burning fat, which are two of its most important jobs. So you might try getting off alcohol for a month and see what happens with weight loss. Okay. Other things on liver agitators. Some medications are liver agitators. Tylenol, acetaminophen is the most dangerous medication, one of the most dangerous that I

• 11:52Mindy Pelz?

  know for the liver. So much so that I can tell you because I have worked, I've gone through multiple surgeries with my aging parents and you know, they put acetaminophen in every painkiller on the planet and there is a limit of what our liver can take with acetaminophen, which is Tylenol. So if you're taking any painkillers and those are my coaches that are on the line, this is a subtle one that people can come to you and be like, I'm not losing weight, I'm not losing weight. But then when you actually break it down, you realize that they're doing some things around that is damaging the liver, like nobody would ever think their daily Tylenol that they use to kill pain is preventing weight loss.

• 12:34Mindy Pelz?

  But it is really hard on the liver. So there are many medications that are like that. Okay. The, the third part of liver agitator is anger. It's the emotion of anger. You, it's, we're back at, at weight loss as an emotional journey. You can't stay angry and lose weight. The thing about anger is that it can sneak up on you. And when you're in a fasted state, sometimes it's really present. Like it's really right there. Like it shows up. The first time I started fasting, all this anger came out of me and I was like, what? What is going on? And I realized that as my liver was healing in this fasted state,

• 13:19Mindy Pelz?

  there was this stored anger coming out. I, I'm not a, a mental health expert in any way, shape or form. I can only share from what I'm learning. One of the things that happens as we go through the menopausal journey is that a lot of unresolved trauma reveals itself. And that trauma is there for us to heal.

• 13:40Mindy Pelz?

  And as women, I've talked about this before, and especially on the coffee chats, a lot of us have anger for having to push our authenticity aside and quiet our voice in a patriarchal culture. And we may not even know we're angry. And so, being able to speak your truth, being able to express anger, I can tell you what my therapist says when I get angry. She goes, "Awesome, you're angry. That's amazing." I'm like, "Really? It doesn't feel really amazing." And she's like, "No, because when you're angry, you have clarity and you're setting boundaries. You're not letting people take advantage of

• 14:23Mindy Pelz?

  you anymore." And I was like, "Oh, well, now I like anger." So I've come to look as anger as protection. And then I go, I ask myself, "What do I really want to say if the thing I'm angry about, what do I really want to feel? What do I really want to say?" Because anger's showing up to protect me. So I was, there was something that I wasn't expressing, there was something I wasn't doing, there was some way I wasn't, I was turning away from my authentic self, and I'm angry about it. So if you're in a fasted state and anger comes up, or you have a lot of resentment or anger that is showing up, know that that's

• 15:06Mindy Pelz?

  there protecting you, and you may want to dive in and figure out what you can do to heal that. Now, let's go to exercise. So I love this movement diet. I really love, like, are you moving on a regular basis? And so I can tell you something that I've been doing that's really working well for me, is in this discussion with Katie Bowman, I asked her how much we should be walking every day. And she said, "Three to five miles a day."

• 15:41Mindy Pelz?

  So I was like, okay, well, let me try that. So I have been, I have been like leaning into the more fiber. That was a big one I needed to work on. And I've been walking three to five miles a day. Nothing has dropped weight more quickly for my body than that. Like I can feel, I feel lighter, the belly fat, you know, that accumulates during menopause, like feels like it's releasing, like it was a portal in to loving, living in my body. So if you're not moving every day, try something as simple as three to five miles a day.

• 16:21Mindy Pelz?

  And then I really tried to figure out where I wanted to go with the weightlifting. And I was trying three days a week and then I realized that I think it was too much. And so I brought my weight training down to two days a week. And then I found a sweet spot. I'm like, oh, this feels good. I like it. I feel invigorated afterwards. So we got to bring weight, weight training into the picture. And I started in the last couple of weeks. I started doing heavy, heavy weights. Like I shared with you all, the interview with Stacy Sims, that I'm now doing eight, max eight reps, but the heaviest weight that I can find.

• 17:06Mindy Pelz?

  So really worked walking with two days of weightlifting. And then I'm doing two days of HIIT training, like I do with you guys on Saturday morning. I do one more day. And I have, now I got to figure out where I'm going to put yoga, because I do love yoga. That I got to figure out. Tony's Horton's Power Sync 60, that is an incredible turnkey program we've already created for you.

• 17:33Mindy Pelz?

  And if it's gotten easy, get a vest, put a weighted vest on and now try it. But that we have to have exercise variation and I don't want to leave walking out of the conversation because I feel like walking is really important. We just need to walk enough. And we and hills are great. And yes, Power Sync 60 is for all women. And the beautiful thing about being post-menopausal is you just start on day one, you go all the way through. And Tony and I created the program that in every in 30 days, you will have honored every hormone. So, so anyways, so try, try, yeah. So if some of you have injuries, like try working on getting up to somewhere between three to five miles of walking every day.

• 18:18Mindy Pelz?

  You don't have to. If you're like, oh, I don't have a weighted vest. I don't have hills. Don't use, don't, I'm just giving you options. Just get out and walk and see what that does. Next one, go for a 20 minute walk after every large meal. So when you eat a meal, you are increasing your, your glucose is up. Now, how's your body going to use that glucose? This is why eating a meal at the end of the day is horrific. So after a big meal, either take the dog for a walk or do the air squats where you just for like, do 100 air squats. Just why air squats is because you're moving the glucose

• 19:02Mindy Pelz?

  into the biggest muscles in your body. So when you start squatting up and down for 100 times after a big meal, you've now driving all that glucose to your quads and your hamstrings and your glutes. And your body is using it to perform the exercise. And it's not going to store it as fat.

• 19:27Mindy Pelz?

  So make sure that if, and you can do it after every meal if you want, 100 squats is easy to do. So 20 minute walk or 100 air squats after your largest meals. And with walking, you know, there's a couple of ways you could approach my walking theory. You could say, okay, five days a week, or I'm just offering, especially for those of you that are stuck with your weight, just try it, try it 30 days of walking, three to five miles every day. And then just so you can see what it did for you. This is why I call this a checklist, because it's not meant, you're not meant to do all of it at the same time. You're meant to use it as a, yep, I'm doing that.

• 20:12Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. Let me try something new. Okay. No, yeah, I did that. Ooh, this one right here. I haven't done this one. I'm not walking enough. Okay. I like creating 30 day challenges for myself. I do it all the time. So I, you know, just, you could just say, you know, I'm going to try it every day for 30 days, and then after that, maybe I'll do it three times a week. So, so that's, that's the power walking. Okay. Evaluate your toxic load. So this is one that is really, really complex. And this is why I did a whole class for the Reset Academy on detoxing. But here's what you need to know about toxins, and this is the one that is like, ah, like

• 20:55Mindy Pelz?

  I'm, I know I'm not the only one agitated about this, but it is so frustrating, these obesogens that they have poured into our food and they have put in our, in our markets. And we are buying them and they taste amazing and, and they, and they are making, they're programmed to make us gain weight. We've got to take our power back with these obesogens by sticking to what nature gave us. So just always look at, did Mother Nature make it? Or did a human make it? And if you keep asking yourself that question, you will avoid these obesogens. But in Eat Like a Girl, I have a list of them for you.

• 21:37Mindy Pelz?

  I'm like a whole page of obesogens in this book, so you can start to get to know that. But That is one of the really important things for us to realize is that just because they put food in your grocery store doesn't mean it's safe. Okay, next thing is, is to go through some kind of detox. Sometimes a good old fashioned detox is also the door into losing weight. So I'm not again, going to go into that, but I can't tell you how many people in my clinic, because we did, in my clinic for a good solid 10 years, the last 10 years of the clinic,

• 22:17Mindy Pelz?

  we detoxed so many people and I watched so much healing be restored and it was all through supplementation and it was shocking how somebody who was, couldn't lose weight, we would get them going on a detox and somewhere, and our detoxes were six months to a year, somewhere along the journey, they would come into my office and all of a sudden their weight had completely dropped and I was like, what happened? And they're like, I don't know, I don't know, something just released in my body. Okay, next one. Ooh, this is a good one. Prioritize sleep. Here's what happens when you sleep. Your body repairs.

• 23:01Mindy Pelz?

  And if you're not sleeping, your body's not repairing. So, but when you sleep, your brain shrinks so that you can, you can flush out all the toxins. Your liver dumps out all of the stored sugar, so it can be there to be a fat burner for you. And every single organ in your body does a self-assessment and is like, hey, this, these cells aren't working, we're going to dump those and then we're going to build the cells here. So you are literally, when you're sleeping every night, your body is letting go of the old and it is building you a new, healthy body. There is no way we should skimp on sleep ever.

• 23:47Mindy Pelz?

  In fact, it is like my number one health priority right now is sleep. And I'm like eight, nine hours every night, like boom, that is like my most important part of my health path right now. So please prioritize sleep because all these other things could be blocking you. The next one is eat only in the daylight.

• 24:12Mindy Pelz?

  Only in the daylight. So this is a fun one if you if it's summer for you. But when it summer comes around, let's make sure that we are eating only in the daylight. It because once it gets dark, melatonin kicks in and you become more insulin resistant. So try eating in the daylight, super easy. Okay, and then the last one is to evaluate your stress levels. So if you're under a tremendous amount of stress, you cannot lose weight. Bottom line. And here's why. If you're under chronic stress all day long, your body's like, we're not dropping weight.

• 24:57Mindy Pelz?

  We're running from a tiger right now and we're trying to stay alive. So dropping weight is of no, no importance to us. And you know how it does this is it literally blocks out insulin's ability to push glucose into your cells. This is why when you're completely stressed out, the worst thing you can do is go to the go to your pantry and start eating. Go move, go take a walk. I promise you it will relax you more, it'll calm you down. But when we have cortisol high and insulin high, you are going to gain weight because insulin cannot do its job when cortisol is around.

• 25:40Mindy Pelz?

  This is why some of these traumas that may still be running you may be why you're holding on to weight. Because cortisol may be at a really high level. So why we've got to heal ourselves because if we can actually start to work on bringing that cortisol down, then insulin can do its job.

• 26:00Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. So there is what I hope is a very thorough checklist. You will notice that I didn't say berberine supplement. I didn't give you any fancy weight loss peptide. I didn't, you know, endorse the weight loss drugs. And if you're on the weight loss drugs, go through the checklist still because at some point you are going to want to get off of those drugs, I think. So but what I want is, you know, a moment where you are stuck for you to be able to go back.

• 26:35Mindy Pelz?

  And solve your own health problem. Because when you solve your own health equation, then you get the credit. You get the power. And so this checklist was designed to be able to help you solve your own health problem. I hope this helps. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.