Can Yogurt Help You Lose Weight? The GLP-1 and Gut Health Connection

What if one of the simplest ways to support your weight loss journey is already sitting in your refrigerator? In this solo episode, Dr. Mindy Pelz breaks down a fascinating study examining how probiotic-rich yogurt may influence hunger, blood sugar, and your body's natural GLP-1 production. The findings offer a closer look at why the bacteria in your food matter and how certain fermented foods may support your metabolic health. Dr. Mindy explains the connection between your gut microbiome and two important appetite-related hormones, GLP-1 and ghrelin, including why hunger can become more challenging as you lose weight. She also shares what to look for on a yogurt label, why she prefers protein-rich Greek yogurt, and how pairing fermented foods with fiber can help you build more satisfying meals. You'll walk away with practical ways to incorporate yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and other fermented foods into your eating window, along with a better understanding of how food and fasting can work together. In this episode, you'll learn: What a study involving 140 adults found about probiotic yogurt, blood sugar, and hunger-related hormonesHow your gut bacteria are connected to natural GLP-1 productionWhy certain probiotic strains and CFU counts are worth understandingThe difference between GLP-1 and ghrelin and how they influence appetiteWhy Dr. Mindy recommends plain Greek yogurt over many flavored varietiesFour fermented foods to consider adding to your mealsHow pairing probiotics with fiber can support gut healthSimple ways to incorporate these foods into a fasting lifestyleRESOURCES MENTIONED FREE Fasting & Food Guide https://bit.ly/3RNLAojFresh Pressed Olive Oil https://www.getfreshmindy.comStudy: Yogurt & Vitamin D (Food Science & Nutrition, 2022) https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.2816? For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep380 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep380/ 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.

• 0:00Mindy Pelz?

  If you've spent years buying everything low-fat and measuring every drop of oil, I want you to think about what happens when you sit down to eat. Are you enjoying your food? Or are you still doing the math? I want you to feel comfortable bringing olive oil back to your plate. Farm-fresh, extra virgin olive oil is one of the foods I encourage women to enjoy, and enjoy lots of it. And tasting it is actually a great place to start. I don't know if you realize that there are actually olive oil sommeliers out there, because olive oil is so complex and has a vastly different taste profile depending

• 0:45Mindy Pelz?

  on where you are getting your olive oil from. Drizzle some over warm vegetables and notice a fresh, grassy flavor. Give yourself permission to put it over an avocado and you might notice that there's a little of a peppery taste. And every time you look at pairing olive oil with your meal, I actually really feel as if you are going to discover that olive oil has a very diverse taste, along with the fact it is one of the healthiest foods that you could eat. I like fresh-pressed olive oil. And to try it, you can just go to GetFreshMindy.com.

• 1:30Mindy Pelz?

  And they offer you three bottles for the price of two with 100% money-back guarantee. If you don't love it, request a refund without returning anything. That's how ethical this company is. So I'm excited to share this olive oil with you. I want you to fall in love with drizzling this over as many different combinations of food that you can find. So all you gotta do is go to GetFreshMindy.com and you can get your first olive oil experience like you have never had before.

• 2:08Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in. A study published in the Journal of Food Science and Nutrition wanted to look at one specific type of food, and it was yogurt, to see if it had a weight loss effect and if it would kill hunger.

• 2:50Mindy Pelz?

  And so they actually took the group of 140 adults who were struggling with obesity and broke them into four different groups. And what they found was that the group who ate and got their probiotics from a yogurt that was high in two very specific strains of bacteria, I'll dive into that in a moment, and had the highest, what we call CFU count, had 4 billion more types of bacteria in there than the other groups got the greatest weight loss result. The reason behind why they think this worked is this particular type of yogurt actually

• 3:35Mindy Pelz?

  accomplished not only bringing fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin levels down, but it actually helped support an increase in GLP-1 hormone production. I have done many videos for you on all the different foods you can use to make your own natural weight loss drug. You make it. What I love about this video that I am bringing you is something as yummy as yogurt. And I want to show you exactly the type of yogurt. I want to show you how much these people ate. And I want to make sure you are picking the right ones and pairing it with the right

• 4:18Mindy Pelz?

  food, so you can enjoy eating something that helps you lose weight. I am a huge fan of adding in foods for weight loss. And then, of course, I'm still a huge fan of tacking that to some fasting windows. Food can actually accelerate weight loss when you understand the nuance that a study like this provides. So let's break this down. And if you are new to my channel, welcome, hit the subscribe button. I am here on a mission to help people understand that your metabolic health is in your control.

• 4:59Mindy Pelz?

  You just gotta learn how to pick foods like this incredible yogurt to be able to make your own GLP-1 hormone production and to help with this metabolic switch that I have been teaching here on my channel. Also, for those of you who don't have my Food and Fasting Fundamental Guide, it is free. Start there so you can understand the rhythm of being able to go without food and use food for weight loss. Let's start with the physiology of why this yogurt is working so well. Well, I'm just gonna keep saying over and over again, Big Pharma did not come up with some miraculous medication.

• 5:41Mindy Pelz?

  They just mimicked what your body was already doing. It was already making GLP-1 hormone. Now, the challenge that we are dealing with right now is natural GLP-1 hormone production when you eat these foods that I'm teaching you about, specifically in this video, this yogurt, is that what happens is your natural GLP-1 production only lasts minutes. It's not long, unlike what we know about the shot, is it can last for hours. Now, you could look at that and say, well, gosh, then I'm gonna take the shot because it's gonna last hours.

• 6:23Mindy Pelz?

  But what I want to teach you is that we can pulse in, in your eating window, things like yogurt, things like yogurt with berries. We're gonna talk about yogurt and berries in a minute. We're gonna dive into protein and fiber and things that you can eat every couple of hours that will keep that GLP-1 production going in a more natural state, as opposed to putting it, your body into an unnatural state, which is keeping GLP-1 hormone going at high levels all day long. Now, one of the major findings of this study was that it was the strain count, so it was

• 7:02Mindy Pelz?

  how many CFUs is what they call it, the more CFUs that you can get in your yogurt. You just take your yogurt container and you just look on the container, on the label, for what, how many CFUs. You want as high of a CFU as possible. I've seen some yogurts with about over 100 CFUs. This particular study just looked at the difference of what, 4 billion CFUs, what that difference is compared to in yogurts. But I've seen over 100 billion on different yogurts. So, second thing that we know is that the strain of bacteria mattered.

• 7:46Mindy Pelz?

  So if you're gonna become a label reader, which I really encourage you to do, I want you to start to pick up your yogurt, turn it around, look at the label, and you wanna find something called Lactobacillus acidophilus. It is the most common strain of probiotic. Sometimes it's written as L. acidophilus. You're also wanting on your label something that is called Bactocillus lactis or B. lactis. These were the two particular strains that they saw created a byproduct, it's called a short-chain fatty acid, that stimulated the L. cells to make GLP-1 hormone.

• 8:30Mindy Pelz?

  It was like a cascade. Highest amount of CFUs, the higher the better, with those two strains of bacteria in them. That is what you are looking for. Now, the other interesting thing about this study is that they had regular yogurt, was pasteurized, didn't have a large CFU count. They had probiotics with yogurt, the one with a huge CFU count. They gave one group vitamin D, which was interesting, and then they paired probiotic with vitamin D. I found this really fascinating in the study.

• 9:11Mindy Pelz?

  And then they asked the group of eating yogurt to eat 100 grams of yogurt a day. And what they found was that probiotic yogurt by itself without vitamin D was the winner, 100 grams a day. And not only did it help with GLP-1 production, but it actually brought over 10 weeks the median fasting blood sugar for the people who just had the probiotic. I mean, vitamin D is great, but we don't need it with probiotics, which was a big understanding years ago. We thought we had to put our probiotics with vitamin D, but for fasting blood sugar, that's a no-no.

• 9:53Mindy Pelz?

  And the probiotic group actually took their fasting blood sugar from 114 down to 93 over a 10-week period. Again, I want to start getting yogurt, the high-dose yogurt, into all of your refrigerators because of the magic on your blood sugar and the magic on GLP-1 hormone. Now, the other interesting finding in this study is not only did they see GLP-1 go up, but they saw another hunger hormone change, which is called ghrelin. And ghrelin is often stimulated when we fast.

• 10:30Mindy Pelz?

  And ghrelin, what they looked at was that when we diet, when we go into calorie restriction, it often drives ghrelin up and it makes us more hungry. Those of you who have been working with my teachings for a while, when we do this metabolic switch where we eat a little bit fast, eat fast, going back and forth, it actually drives ghrelin down. And the probiotic group who brought their yogurt into this, they didn't have a change, an increase in ghrelin like they typically see in people who are dieting. Plus, the GLP-1 hormone went up. Keep in mind, in this particular study,

• 11:13Mindy Pelz?

  they were looking for these hunger hormones. This was a large part of what they were doing in the study. I want to point out in full honesty that at the end of the study, all four groups actually lost weight. They did have them on some calorie restriction, moving more. They had them on a bring down your calorie count and increase your movement. But what they found was that just eating yogurt isn't a magic pill. That's the point I want to make. I want to show you food chemistry and how it relates to your body here. I don't necessarily want you to walk away from this video

• 11:56Mindy Pelz?

  and say, "Oh, if I eat yogurt, I'mma lose weight." We're looking at a probiotic-rich yogurt, eating 100 grams of it a day on a regular basis as a way to kill hunger. When we look at the weight loss drugs, that's a big thing that they do is it kills hunger, which is why people lose weight. So think of this information that I'm giving you as a resource to kill hunger. And when we kill hunger, we lose weight. I'm not saying eat more yogurt and you will lose weight. I am saying eat more yogurt and you will start to see your hunger go down. Now, mistakes a lot of people make,

• 12:39Mindy Pelz?

  I saw this all the time in my clinic, was we go to get yogurt and we don't get the yogurt without sugar. We've gotta get, when you are gonna start to learn to read labels with your yogurt, I already told you the two strains of bacteria that you need to look for, and I told you how many grams. So you're off to the races. You can already go into the refrigerator while you're listening to me right now. But I want to make sure that that yogurt does not have sugar in it. Because a lot of people will go to the flavored yogurts. Or, you know, your yogurt, I just want to say, is that your yogurt should be white. So if your yogurt is blue,

• 13:24Mindy Pelz?

  if your yogurt is a different color, that is because we know that they put a chemical in it. The other thing I want to point out about hunger and weight loss is that over 127 different studies show that the more weight you lose, the hungrier you become. This is why weight loss is so hard. And why I'm so excited about bringing you this yogurt video is because I have been teaching the world how to use fasting and food to lose weight and to not regain the hunger. And those of you who have been applying the principles of fast like a girl, those of you who have been watching my videos for a while,

• 14:08Mindy Pelz?

  this is like, I feel like this is a conversation we need to have. How do we bring in a probiotic-rich yogurt into your daily routine so we keep that specific hunger level at low? 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.

• 14:52Mindy Pelz?

  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. 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.

• 15:35Mindy Pelz?

  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. That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I can't wait to see you there. So with all of that in mind, thank you for sticking with me through this because it's so important. It's such a critical piece to the weight loss and metabolic switch conversation. Here are five different steps we can use and learn from this study. One, I just told you, we are gonna start to look at using more yogurt on a daily basis,

• 16:20Mindy Pelz?

  but specifically, I want you to use Greek yogurt. Go find yourself a great Greek yogurt. The reason I want you to use Greek yogurt is because it's the highest in protein. So this is one that I actually got from my local farmer's market. It is pasture-raised. It is definitely higher in good fat. It's been grass-fed, I know because I talked to the farmer. And it doesn't have a lot of sugar in it. And it is high in protein. So protein also stimulates GLP-1 production. So you're getting a double whammy. A great breakfast meal would be

• 17:05Mindy Pelz?

  a cup of Greek yogurt with berries. Now you have stacked two GLP-1 hormones-producing foods together. And you got the protein, you got the fat, you got the fiber. Another way you can use Greek yogurt is you can start to put it over a bowl of soup instead of sauerkraut. Use it in place of sauerkraut. You can put it on a taco. You just, it's a great alternative because of how many probiotics it has in it and because of how much protein. Food number two, kefir. So kefir is a really interesting one. And I'll be honest, I always get nervous

• 17:48Mindy Pelz?

  to tell you all kefir here on a YouTube video. And here's why. There are a lot of keifers that are in your supermarket that are packed with sugar. If you're gonna do kefir, it is a fermented milk. It has trillions of bacteria, good bacteria in it, good probiotics. It is one of the highest counts of probiotics out of any fermented dairy possible. But again, just like the yogurt, I want to make sure there's no sweetener in there. But kefir is a great addition if you're like, "I just can't eat yogurt every day." Get some kefir and you pour yourself a little bit of a glass of it anytime throughout your eating window.

• 18:33Mindy Pelz?

  Somewhere between 2 to 4 ounces is a good starting point. It can give you a little bit of gas in the beginning. So go slow because it has so many good probiotics in it. Food number three. Now, this is one that I actually grew up on. Goat's milk. Or, some of you like sheep's milk. Let's talk about this for a moment. We live in a world where a lot of us are dealing with a very depleted intestinal tract. We have been on antibiotics. We have had ultra-processed foods. We are feeling like we, you know, have so much stress and it is destroying our gut. And those of you who are going through menopause,

• 19:17Mindy Pelz?

  the actual reduction in estrogen also can destroy the gut. And so when we look at the molecule size of cow dairy, if I was to blow those molecules up, cow dairy is a very big molecule and it's hard to actually digest. Whereas if we look at something, the milk that we know is the best for the human GI tract, it's mother's milk. We know this from when we were babies. And a mother's milk molecule is like this big. Goat's, cow's dairy, this big. Mother's milk, this big. It's a very huge contrast for our digestive system. When we go to look at goat's milk,

• 20:01Mindy Pelz?

  there is goat's milk yogurt. I used to do it all the time for my kids. I ate it all the time when I was a kid. It often has really fresh blueberries in it. Go, you just have to go look for it. If you're a goat's milk fan, put it in the comments. But goat's milk and sheep's milk has a molecule size more like this. It's more equivalent to what we can, our digestive system can actually digest. So if you ever get bloated with yogurt, you can't do dairy, try moving to goat's or to sheep. Make sure, for the sake of what we're trying to accomplish with the information in this video, let's make sure it's fermented so we can work on that hunger hormone

• 20:45Mindy Pelz?

  and kill the hunger hormone. If you can't find goat's milk or sheep's milk, the other milk I highly recommend is A1 milk. That's actually quite easy to find. It is a style of cow that actually gives a milk that is much easier to digest. Food number four. Okay, we're now moving out of the dairy. So those were three of my favorite dairy ones. This one is my favorite fermented food because of the power to heal your body. It is kimchi. And kimchi has fermented cabbage or radish, so sometimes both.

• 21:28Mindy Pelz?

  And I know somebody out there is watching that it's like a kimchi expert. So if I get this particular part of kimchi wrong, tell me, I'm always open to learning. But it has cabbage or radish. It has garlic, it has ginger, and it has chili. It also sometimes has a green onion or scallion. And what we know about fermenting vegetables is each vegetable that gets fermented gives off a different bacterial probiotic profile. And kimchi has specifically lactobacillus acidophilus, but it's loaded with lactobacillus plantarium.

• 22:13Mindy Pelz?

  And what we know about L. plantarium is that it is one of the best for reducing obesity. So we have lactobacillus acidophilus that helps with hunger and GLP-1 production. And we have lactobacillus plantarium that helps with getting your metabolism to speed up so you will lose weight. And what this study, we're going back to this original study, found that men who had 1 to 3 servings a day of kimchi actually had the lowest obesity rates. So adding in some extra kimchi

• 22:58Mindy Pelz?

  maybe at the end of the day with your dinner is going to not only help with hunger, but it's going to help with weight loss. Now, what's interesting is I just mentioned cabbage or radish. It was the radish kimchi that lowered belly fat 8% in men and 11% in women. So if you have a choice, pick the radish one. That's what studies like this really absolutely can help us with. Last thing about all these magical probiotics that can help you with hunger and help you with weight loss. Always pair it with fiber. That is the key. If you pair it with fiber,

• 23:40Mindy Pelz?

  we're really ramping up that GLP-1 production. So your yogurt goes with berries or chia seeds or flax seeds. Your salad gets kimchi on top of it. Even though it already has fiber in it, it's getting kimchi. Your avocado, we're going to put a little drop of kimchi in the little hole where the pit came out of. But if you want to amplify the effects of probiotic-rich yogurt or probiotic-rich kimchi, add it with another fiber. Put it with fruit. Anything that has fruit, any fruit or vegetable is going to have a fiber component to it.

• 24:24Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, 3 things that you can start to do today to get the same results that the people in the study did. One, go to your refrigerator right now and check your yogurt label. And if it's got sugar, if it doesn't have those strains of bacteria in it, toss it out, go to the store tomorrow, get a new one. Second, my fasters. We're going to take this knowledge that I just gave you and we're going to use a probiotic-rich yogurt, preferably a Greek one, with some berries to break some of our fasts. And then we can plop the kimchi in at another time. And the third thing is that we are going to ask ourselves on every single moment that we eat something, is we are going to say,

• 25:08Mindy Pelz?

  "Am I putting my probiotic with some type of fiber?" This means that you put sauerkraut or kimchi with your salad. This means that your kefir that you're going to drink, maybe you do that with a bowl of berries. But we're always thinking probiotic and fiber go together to be able to get the maximum result. And if you pair something like what I just brought you with a fasting lifestyle, weight loss becomes effortless. I promise you, I've watched millions of people do it. As always, I hope that helps. And if you have noticed this for yourself, what I taught you here on this video, please tell your story. I love reading your stories. If you've lost weight with a fasting lifestyle or adding in the GLP-1 hormones,

• 25:53Mindy Pelz?

  please put it in the comments so I can see the results that you are all getting. But most importantly, do not give up on yourself. You don't need a medication to lose weight. I promised you. I'm watching millions of people get the results by improving their metabolic switch, which means we are going to build in these fasting windows. And then when we eat, we're going to build in these foods that kill hunger. You were not cursed because you have food noise. You trained your body to have food noise and you can train it to have a different experience. I promise you. As always, I hope that helps.