The Biggest Fasting Mistakes That’s Blocking Your Fat Loss

Dr. Mindy Pelz (0:00)

I have done thousands and thousands of videos on fasting. I have written a whole slew of books on fasting, and there is a major lie out there that needs to be brought to the surface. And we need to talk about it, because I am seeing it all over socials. And it's time that we roll up our sleeves, and we understand that fasting is only one part of the healing experience. So many people think that fasting is where the healing happens, but they forgot that actually it's as equally as important for the refeed, and what that first meal is, that it will amplify any healing that started in the fasting window, or it will dampen it. So on this video, I want to break down some of the key things you need to know about your break fast meal, some of the key things you need to know about what's happening to your thyroid. There's a lot of concern that it's tanking your thyroid when you fast. I want to show you the research on that. And I want to talk about what's going on at a microbe level, because fasting isn't this tool left in its own toolbox. It goes with other tools. And so we need to be looking at fasting as one piece of the metabolic equation, and that re-feeding, what we eat when we go back into our food as equally as important as the length of the fast. What I'm seeing with a lot of people is that they don't get a great result with, well, I don't see that often, but when people don't get a great result with fasting, they double down and they fast even more. That's not the answer. If you are not getting a great response with fasting, then we need to have a conversation about the refeed. Are you ready? Let's have that conversation. So first, if you're in the mindset, well, if I went 16 hours, then that was great. 24 is better and 48 is the next and 72 More is not better when it comes to fasting. There is a reason that I have written three books that all have fasting in them because there is a rhythm to fasting that will work for you and it's unique to you.

And this rhythm involves refeeding and eating food that helps support the healing that happened in fasting. So here's a prime example. There's a 2014 study in Cell-Stem Cell paper that showed that prolonged fasting depletes old immune cells and switches stem cells into regenerative cells.

I put this out in Fast Like a Girl. I talk about stem cells. And I also talk about it, this study, in the book, but everybody forgot this part, which is that when you refeed after a long fast, a prolonged fast, that those stem cells generate new, healthier immune cells, or they called it immune population. Okay, so how do we look at this? I go into a 72-hour fast because I heard it's going to clean my system. I heard it's going to regenerate my immune system. But I forgot to read the nuance that said, but when I go back into food, that that food is going to stimulate and energize the stem cells that were created in the fasting window. You're going to see the same thing with thyroid. This is, this goes, they go hand in hand. They're not meant to be used in isolation. So fasting opens the door, and refeeding lets you walk in to a state of health. Now, one of the criticisms that we hear a lot is about thyroid. Oh my god, fasting is going to damage your thyroid. The same situation as I just explained with stem cells. Your thyroid produces T4.

T4 has to go to the liver and to the gut to be converted into T3.

Inside every cell, T3 has to get into the cell, it has to be T3, to get into the cell, to activate your metabolism.

So most T3 is not made by the thyroid. It has to be converted in liver. And recent studies, research, human studies, are showing that extended, fast, lower T3.

Okay, that doesn't sound good on the surface, right? That's what everybody's talking about. When you hear people go, oh, it's tanking your thyroid, like, no, it's not, because we're not talking about the refeed. You have to look at the refeed in combination with the fast. And here's what it shows, that when we go into a fasted state, there's an evolutionary survival mechanism. Yep, that's why we fast, to get this evolutionary survival mechanism. And that the body deliberately downshifts metabolism during this perceived scarcity.

And so, but what happens is once you bring food back in, all of that T3 goes up. I have seen multiple studies showing it goes up. I've even seen studies that show it can actually double if you go into the refeed. And here is what they're showing, is that it's primarily, I'm gonna come back to one key thing here, which is for your thyroid in that refeeding needs to be carbohydrates, because carbohydrates restore T3. So let's put this in use to you. I go into fasting. I love fasting. I'm doing great, but now I'm losing my hair. Now I'm having a thyroid storm. And every time I go back into my refeed, I'm just eating protein and maybe I'm on a keto diet or on a paleo diet. Nope. You need some carbohydrates to bring that T3 up. So if you're losing your hair while you're fasting, you're getting heart palpitations while you're fasting, super important that we bring carbohydrates back in. You may have also heard, those of you who have more sophisticated with thyroid, know that when you go into a fasted state, you can see an increase in reverse T3.