Why Your Nervous System Is Blocking Weight Loss with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Why are so many women doing everything "right" and still struggling to lose weight? In this solo episode, Dr. Mindy explains why the missing piece may not be your diet or workout routine, it may be your nervous system. When your body is stuck in chronic fight-or-flight, it prioritizes survival over fat burning, making weight loss feel impossible despite your best efforts. You'll learn how chronic stress impacts cortisol, cravings, digestion, sleep, and metabolism, the five signs your nervous system may be keeping you stuck, and practical ways to help your body shift back into a state where healing and sustainable weight loss become possible. From fasting and food to movement, sleep, and simple daily habits, Dr. Mindy shares actionable strategies to help your body feel safe enough to finally let go of stubborn weight. Resources Mentioned Free Nervous System Guide https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/nervous-system-reset?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=nervous_system_resetFast Like a Girl https://hayhs.com/flag_pp_hc_azBurn Fat Like a Girl Reset https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/fat-burner-reset?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=resetFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep354 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep354 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?

  I want to invite you to something that I am crazy excited about. This October 3rd and 4th, I'll be joining an incredible group of speakers at Empower Your Life, a live event at the Alex Theater in Glendale, California. We'll spend two days exploring health, personal growth, mindset, and practical tools to help you create meaningful change in your life. I'll be there alongside speakers like Suzy Orman, Jim Quick, Jamie Kern Lima, Brendan Bouchard, Nancy Levin, and many more. It's going to be an amazing weekend filled with learning, connection, and inspiration.

• 0:44Mindy Pelz?

  I'd love to see you there. I'd also love to give you a big hug. And you can grab your VIP or general admission ticket by visiting hayhouse.com/DrMindy. That's hayhouse.com/DrMindy. I can't wait to see you. 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.

• 1:28Mindy Pelz?

  Here's a myth we've got to bust right now. If you are not losing weight, it's not because you didn't try hard enough. Think about this for a moment. Three out of four Americans are either overweight or obese. Yet, we have more workout plans, more diet ideas, more supplements that will help us lose weight, more bio hacks. We are not at a loss of information. We are at a loss of safety signals.

• 2:02Mindy Pelz?

  And in this video, I want to show you how teaching and training your nervous system that it is safe is your absolute greatest weight loss tool. So what you're going to learn in this video is how a stressed out nervous system leads to a stubborn weight loss experience. Those of you who leave me comments and you're like, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck. I don't know how to get unstuck." This is the video for you because a stressed out nervous system will stick your weight loss efforts and no matter how hard you try, in fact, if you try too hard, it's even worse. You can't drop that weight.

• 2:45Mindy Pelz?

  I'm also going to show you five signs that will help you understand if you are in a locked fighter-flight nervous system. And of course, I'm going to show you what you can do about them. But more importantly, I want to give you fasting ideas, food ideas, movement ideas, sleep ideas, supplement ideas, a lot of ideas that I'm going to dish out for you here on this video on how you start to send a message back to your body saying, "Hey, we're safe, we're okay, you can drop weight now." And these things, these techniques and tools I'm going to give you, they're easy

• 3:28Mindy Pelz?

  because you can't do hard when it comes to a nervous system that already thinks it's under a stress. So let's dive into this.

• 3:42Mindy Pelz?

  First, we got, just like we have been tabbing these conversations about your metabolic switch, that you are a sugar burner and a fat burner, and that you switch between eating food and your body using that food for energy, and then you switch over into a fasted state so that your insulin can come down and your body will burn fat for energy. That is a switch. You also have a nervous system switch. And one side of the switch is what we call your parasympathetic nervous system. It is also known as rest and digest.

• 4:22Mindy Pelz?

  And that is when your nervous system calms down and it feels like it's safe and it's not sending cortisol signals out into your whole body. Then we have your sympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic is your fight or flight. And this nervous system will make cortisol. This nervous system is always agitated, always on the go, the mind is always running. And what you were built to do, just like the metabolic switch, is you were built to move in between these two systems. I can rest and digest and I can move into fight or flight

• 5:05Mindy Pelz?

  and go into a state, a stressed state, without it tanking me. Stress is not the enemy. It is the constant stress that starts to shut down the metabolic system. So we want to get you back into this safety signal. Your body is not broken, it's guarding you, it's protecting you. If you can't lose weight, no matter what you're doing, what your body's saying to you is like, "Hey, we're still running from the tiger over here. You want us to drop weight? We still think we're in a massive crisis." Now, there are a couple of ways you can understand where your nervous system state is at.

• 5:46Mindy Pelz?

  One has become quite popular and it's called heart rate variability. And the heart rate variability that a lot of people use when they're wearing like some of the biometric wearables, like there's a band and there's a ring. Some of you have a Fitbit. And if you're measuring HRV, what it's doing is that it's telling you how capable your body is of resting.

• 6:14Mindy Pelz?

  The higher your HRV, the more your autonomic nervous system can perform this switch. It can go into stress and it can relax. The lower your HRV, the more your system is struggling to go back and forth into these two states without a big chaos going on. But heart rate variability and this ability for the nervous system to let go and relax is so key for making sure that your body feels safe enough to drop weight. Now, here are the five signs that your body is stuck over here in fight or flight. Are you ready? First one,

• 6:56Mindy Pelz?

  you're doing everything right and you're not getting a result. I read your comments. So many of you are saying that. And I want to just come through YouTube land to you and say, okay, tell me about your life. Because if you have chronic stress, you will carry chronic extra weight. It is a very, is a very common and well-known fact. So if you're trying everything and you're not getting a result, that's a sign we're locked in fight or flight. Number two, sugar and carb cravings all day long.

• 7:34Mindy Pelz?

  What that means is that when your cortisol levels are constantly high, they disrupt your blood sugar levels. And as your blood sugar levels are doing this all day, when a blood sugar level comes up and then crashes because your cortisol levels are so high, when it hits that low point, what your body does is say, feed me sugar because I need to get the high again. There's so many of us who have fallen prey to this experience. And we're not even, we're like, why am I craving carbs? Why am I craving sugar? It's because your cortisol is constantly dripping through your system.

• 8:18Mindy Pelz?

  Let's get cortisol under control and the cravings will disappear.

• 8:23Mindy Pelz?

  Number three, you're tired, but you're wired. So those of you that with the end of the day, you get on the couch and you're like, whoo, okay, that was a day, but you can't relax. So you start doom scrolling or you binge watch TV because you can't get out of your head and you're exhausted, but you're wired. That is a sign of a nervous system that is stuck. Okay, number four, those of you who feel like you're never fully full. You just can't get full. You eat and then you just want to eat again. This is part of the food noise. I've been really diving a lot into these weight loss drugs, trying to understand where are they helpful?

• 9:06Mindy Pelz?

  Where are they harmful? Where can we mimic what they're teaching us? And I think there's one thing we're learning about the food noise and that it has a stress component to it. The way I see when people go on these drugs and these weight loss drugs and they're like, oh my God, the food noise went away. I'm like, yeah, because you were living such a stressed life that something just calmed the voices in your head. And when those voices calmed, we start to see cortisol go down. I'm not saying that's not a good thing. I'm saying it's a temporary fix for a long-term problem. Okay, last one is a sluggish digestion

• 9:46Mindy Pelz?

  or any kind of belly bloating, belly tension, constipation, bloating, slow digestion is a lack of parasympathetic energy. Remember, parasympathetic energy is rest and digest. But if you're over here in fight or flight, you're not in rest and digest, so your whole system starts to slow down.

• 10:13Mindy Pelz?

  So and you end up with many different symptoms of poor digestion. Now, research is showing that stress in our cravings, that there is a direct correlation between these two. There was a 2017 study in obesity that followed hundreds of adults. And they found the higher the cortisol levels, the more they could predict future weight gain. They also, in that same study, found that higher levels of cortisol led to higher levels of a hunger hormone called ghrelin. And ghrelin is the hormone that makes you hungry and increases your cravings.

• 10:58Mindy Pelz?

  And so the stronger the food cravings, the higher the ghrelin levels. The higher the stress, the higher the ghrelin. So we want to help you get that stress down. We also know that when you have lots of stress, you have poor sleep. And have you ever heard that like, sleep is your greatest weight loss tool? Yeah, for many reasons. But when we look at evidence like this study I'm about to show you, a 25 study showed and looked at over 88,000, yup, 88,000 adults linked to poor sleep, disrupted sleep, that they had a string of really long list of health problems.

• 11:42Mindy Pelz?

  Sleep is really important. And wired and tired isn't a personality trait. It's a nervous system that never got the signal it was safe enough to power down. Okay, I have something I've got to say that I really think a lot of women need to hear. If you've ever followed a health program and it didn't work, check this out. This is not your fault. I promise you, let me explain. Most fitness programs, most fasting protocols, most dietary advice, it was researched on men. It was designed for men and then handed to women with a shrug. And here you go. Works for you. But here's the thing.

• 12:25Mindy Pelz?

  You operate on a 28 day hormonal cycle. The foods you eat, the length of your fasts, even the intensity of your workouts, all of it needs to be timed to where you are in that cycle to actually get a result. This is the science I teach inside my Reset Academy. This is the science that I have researched for over a decade. And inside my academy, every month, I walk you through it in a very practicable and actionable and way. And it's actually built for your body, for a feminine body. So it's gonna work. I promise you, I see it over and over again. This is a moment to get back into relationship with this beautiful body that you are so blessed to live in.

• 13:10Mindy Pelz?

  So if you're ready to finally understand this incredible body of yours and work with it instead of constantly fighting against it, come find me over in the Reset Academy. That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I'll see you there. So here's what I want you to not do. So when you get into this place where you hit a plateau, you can't break through, you're not losing weight, you think it's your nervous system. I want you to stop trying harder. Your nervous system is locked. Stop doing more. So when, don't restrict harder. Stop exercising more. Stop fasting more.

• 13:55Mindy Pelz?

  I see a lot of you do that here. That is only putting you into a more sympathetic state. And exercise is not a punishment, by the way. Exercise is actually a gift when done right and mapped to your nervous system. I don't want you fasting long. I don't want you doing more. I actually want you doing less. And it's interesting because I found a 2019 study in Current Biology that said even a weekend catch up of sleep didn't reverse the metabolic damage from short weekday nights. And it's the consistency that we're looking for. So you can't skimp on sleep

• 14:39Mindy Pelz?

  and then do more sleep on the weekend. Because you need that slow consistency over time. So your body responds to consistency, not extremes. Here's what I want you to do. So here's, get out a pen and paper if you have one. I want you getting morning light. This is one of the most important things to tell your nervous system that it's safe. Is we start mapping it to the circadian rhythm. So morning light starts to regulate your natural cortisol production. It doesn't let you get too much or too little. So make sure that not only are you getting morning light, I'll add another one for you.

• 15:22Mindy Pelz?

  Midday light without sunglasses on is going to stimulate serotonin receptor sites in your eyes. That is going to help you with feel better throughout the day. Second thing I want you to do is walk after meals. Use the glucose you just, you just created from eating. Go for a walk so your body starts to go, oh, okay, we fueled ourselves. Now we're going to use that fuel instead of store that fuel. Eat without distractions and slow down. How many of us are on our phones, sitting there on our phones, eating, looking at the news of the day? You should eat in a parasympathetic state.

• 16:07Mindy Pelz?

  And if you're on your phone, you're switching yourself over into a sympathetic state. And when you eat really fast, you tell your body, we're right, we're in a hurry, we're running, we're running. You can, as you slow down, you're sending that safety signal. We're not running anymore, we're slowing down. Fourth thing I want you to do is to protect your sleep. Sleep is where all those thoughts shut off. And you can start to bring the down, all of the noise from the day. Sleep is the, is the deepest safety signal that you can send to your body.

• 16:47Mindy Pelz?

  The fifth thing I want you to do is to periodically down-regulate on purpose. I'll give you an example. For me, Friday afternoons, after 2 o'clock is a time to just relax. I tell my body, "The week is over, and now we're moving into the parasympathetic part of the week, when starting for the weekend." So we want to start to down-regulate on purpose at the end of the day. After 5 o'clock, after I'm done with this video right here, I shut down work and I start to focus on resting and taking care of this parasympathetic nervous system.

• 17:32Mindy Pelz?

  If you don't down-regulate on purpose, you will never tell the parasympathetic nervous system when it needs to activate. Number 6, something I find really helpful, is learn to co-regulate your nervous system with another rhythm. Some people find nature to be that rhythm. I'm totally blown away right now by all the interesting science that's coming out on bird watching and how birders are having incredible cognition, energy, focus, because they're listening to nature, they're regulating to a bird, they're regulating to the pattern of nature.

• 18:18Mindy Pelz?

  Many of you have heard me tell my surfing story. You can follow me on Substack. I wrote articles over there on it. I started surfing a year ago. And going into the water every day and being in rhythm with the ocean improved my sleep, my mental clarity, my moods. It was a really powerful tool for me. Some of you, we've talked about how important it is that you go hiking in nature and you get that right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot kind of experience that calms the brain while you're taking in all the sounds and smells and air that trees can provide. Some of you live in the city and you can't do any of this.

• 19:00Mindy Pelz?

  So how about you sit with your pet and just understand their rhythm?

• 19:06Mindy Pelz?

  I really strongly believe right now, one of the biggest challenges that we have as humans, especially with metabolic health, is that this world is speeding up. Just look at the news cycle, the news cycle, like something comes out and two days later, we're on to the next thing. So the world is speeding up, and the more we speed up, the more struggles we're gonna have with our, not just our nervous system, but our whole body, but specifically the metabolic system. So find other patterns you can regulate with on a weekly basis. Okay. Now, how would you put this, what I just taught you, into action for like a week? I'm gonna give you some ideas.

• 19:49Mindy Pelz?

  First, every day you need your anchors. So what's your anchor gonna be? For me, it's the ocean. If I can't get in the ocean, it's the trees. Some of you, it might be morning sunlight. Some of you, it's walking after meals. But let's, let's make some of those the anchor. Pick your favorite one. Then every day, I want you to tack on one. So Monday, you might reset your circadian rhythm by getting out in the sun in the morning, sun in the midday, and red light at night for sunset. So you're just gonna, if it's Monday, you could just say, hey, today's the day I map to the circadian rhythm. Tuesday, you're gonna decide to maybe take a few moments in high-stress situations and breathe.

• 20:34Mindy Pelz?

  Four, seven, eight breathing is my favorite. Box breathing is great. There's lots of great breathing techniques. Just make sure you have a longer exhale than inhale, because that calms the nervous system. Wednesday, maybe now you're not a nature person, but today you're gonna be. Go to a park, listen to bird noises, put, you can even hear on YouTube, put some nature scenes on and listen to babbling creeks. All of that lowers cortisol. Thursday, you're gonna find a friend you wanna go hiking with and co-regulate, or you're gonna spend extra time with your pet. Friday, you're gonna nourish your body, you're not gonna restrict. You're gonna eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

• 21:18Mindy Pelz?

  Saturday, you're gonna recover and just rest. And Sunday, you have a slow morning and prepare for sleep. These are easy. These are just, this is why I'm pointing out these simple things. It's because we think weight loss is complicated. We think weight loss is gonna be expensive now that we have access to these drugs. But it is massively important to send a safety signal to your body. So just pick, pick a handful of those and do those. Now, it's interesting. I found a fun study for you. It was a 24 randomized trial in complementary medicine research said that people who practiced that long out breath and extended, they call it an extended exhale,

• 22:00Mindy Pelz?

  had fewer food cravings and less impulsivity. Isn't that fascinating? That just stress can change our cravings. I think that's so cool. Now, how do you map fasting, food supplements, and exercise to your nervous system so you can finally drop weight? First, with fasting, I want you to make sure that you are mapping your fasting length to your nervous system situation. So if you are overly stressed and you're not getting a result, stop trying to fast harder, fast less. And then when the nervous system calms down, you can go back to some longer fasts. There was a 26 review in Frontiers in Nutrition

• 22:45Mindy Pelz?

  that actually called fasting bidirectional, meaning that it's good for the body in the right dose. But a real stressor is when you push fasting too strong. So if your system is already overloaded, fasting will make it worse. But if your system is not overloaded, fasting will make it better and will actually improve your nervous system. So the dose matters. It's massively important to understand this for those of you that have loved fasting and have been following me for a while. Exercise.

• 23:24Mindy Pelz?

  I want you to move in a way that regulates your body, not punishes it. So I want you doing daily movement, walks, yoga, stretching. This is, you're trying to lose weight and we tend to think, oh, if I can't lose weight, again, I better work out harder. I'm asking you to work out less, but to do it consistently. I don't want you doing big hit trainings. I don't want you lifting ridiculously heavy amounts of weight. I don't want you skipping rest days when you're locked in fight or flight. Those things work great when this nervous system switch is working.

• 24:06Mindy Pelz?

  But this video is about when that nervous system switch isn't working. Supplements. Fascinating. There's a lot of good ones that will bring cortisol down. Magnesium is one of the most famous. Magnesium is great at calming the system. I've done videos on ashwagandha. I'll leave the one right here because it was one of my favorite videos that I did over the last year. The evidence on ashwagandha bringing cortisol levels down is profound. So really look into, I used to keep a bottle of ashwagandha next to my bed at night. If it was a stressful day, I would take two before I would go to bed to get that cortisol down.

• 24:49Mindy Pelz?

  L-theanine is great for calm and focus. It's great in the day, it's great at the night. Glycine will relax you to go, help you go to sleep. Omega threes will help the, this switch, the nervous system switch balance. Kava is incredible for, it's a tea that's incredible for giving you GABA, the calming neurotransmitter. And as always, B complex and vitamin C are incredible for nourishing your complete nervous system. So those supplements, again, don't go for the pill first. Let's bring in the fasting that works. Let's bring in the safety signals that work.

• 25:32Mindy Pelz?

  Let's bring in some of the, of these supplements that work. Now, you can, you can use food as a way to send a safety signal as well. This is where you're putting protein in every meal. You're adding in magnesium-rich foods like leafy green vegetables, pumpkin seeds, avocados, chocolate, good chocolate, high, like bitter chocolate. You're having complex carbs at dinner. Dinner's a great time to have your carbohydrates like sweet potatoes and potatoes and fruits and squashes and rices. Have them at dinner. They're a safety signal to the nervous system to calm down. It'll help with sleep.

• 26:16Mindy Pelz?

  Your omega-3 fish, we did a sardine fast here. So it's the smashed fish that will help to balance the omega-3, omega-6 balance. Fermented foods are incredible for your gut-brain connection. And as always, enough salt and minerals. That calms your nervous system as well. A stressed body needs enough food and minerals to feel safe. And restriction sends the opposite. This is why some of you, you have been fasting more and more and more and you're getting a worse result. Because we need to get you back into nervous system balance before these fasts start to work for you.

• 27:00Mindy Pelz?

  Here's your five action items. One, you're going to get morning light 10 minutes every morning. Two, you are going to take five slow breaths before every meal. I challenge you. It's not that hard. You've just got to be intentional and make sure your exhales are longer than your inhales. Three, you're going to walk 10 minutes after your biggest meals. And you're also going to walk when stress gets high. Go for a walk. Get it out of your system. Four, Enough protein. Protein gives you amino acids that support nervous system health, brain health, muscle health. Stop restricting.

• 27:43Mindy Pelz?

  Protein and plant forward is absolutely the best diet for a frazzled nervous system. And number five, you're going to protect a consistent wind down time at night. I didn't say wind down. I said wind down, by the way, at night. And your sleeping window consistently. The way that you get the nervous system to relax is through consistency of these micro habits. This is not, you'll notice, I gave you a lot. And you get to play with this now and create your own toolbox. But most importantly, I want you to see that you're not out of answers. But most importantly, don't give up on yourself.

• 28:28Mindy Pelz?

  You can drop the weight without expensive weight loss drugs. We've just got to get you out of fight or flight and tell your body it's safe enough to let go. As always, I hope that helps.