Jay Shetty & Dr. Mindy Pelz ON Getting Rid of Your Belly Fat

In this On Purpose episode, Jay Shetty sits down with Dr. Mindy Pelz to explore how tailored strategies can maximize results. Dr. Pelz is a women's health expert, podcast host, and best-selling author of Fast Like a Girl, The Menopause Reset, and her new book, Eat Like a Girl, with a mission to empower women by helping them understand their bodies.

How can you align your fasting and exercise routine with your personal goals?

In this On Purpose episode, Jay Shetty sits down with Dr. Mindy Pelz to explore how tailored strategies can maximize results. Dr. Pelz is a women's health expert, podcast host, and best-selling author of Fast Like a Girl, The Menopause Reset, and her new book, Eat Like a Girl, with a mission to empower women by helping them understand their bodies.

The health expert reveals to Jay Shetty that cardio or yoga on an empty stomach works best for fat loss, while strength training benefits from protein before and after workouts. Whether you're aiming to lose fat, gain muscle, or get healthy overall, Dr. Pelz stresses the importance of staying flexible and aligning your approach with your unique goals for lasting success.

Various Fasting Methods

According to Dr. Mindy Pelz, humans need to vary fasting practices to avoid slowing metabolism. She explained to Jay Shetty that the human body adapts to repetitive fasting routines (such as eating one meal a day consistently) by reducing its metabolic rate. This occurs because the body anticipates a limited food supply and conserves energy rather than burning stored fat. To optimize fasting, she recommends a "feast-famine cycling" approach: adjusting fasting lengths and incorporating non-fasting days to ensure that the body remains in a responsive, adaptive state.

Moreover, Dr. Pelz highlighted to Jay Shetty that fasting windows should align with individual lifestyles and goals. Women should also consider their menstrual cycles when structuring fasts, while those seeking strength and muscle gain should eat before and after workouts to fuel and repair muscles and keep fasting windows later in the day. Dr. Pelz emphasized that fasting should seamlessly integrate into your life for long-term sustainability.

How to Lose Belly Fat

The body stores excess glucose, hormones, and toxins around the belly as a survival mechanism to protect vital organs. Nowadays, we have been trained to see belly fat in a negative light, but Dr. Pelz insists that we learn why the body reacts this way to our lifestyle choices. Stress and high cortisol levels play an essential role in our bodies storing belly fat. To address this issue, Dr. Pelz recommends walking in nature, surrounding yourself with positive influences, and avoiding negative environments.

Toxins play an essential role in weight gain, especially from products applied to the skin and chemicals in food. Dr. Pelz told Jay Shetty that obesogens (chemical compounds in pesticides, food packaging, and artificial additives) reprogram stem cells to create fat cells; not only do they alter fat distribution but also hijack taste buds, making processed foods addictive.

Moreover, the health expert explained to Jay Shetty how food companies manipulate products to trigger dopamine release, ensuring consumers crave more without feeling full. For women, this cycle often leads to misplaced self-blame when dieting and exercising fail. To become healthier and to lose weight, she advises switching to natural foods over processed ones and learning how chemicals impact your metabolism.

Calories Matter Less Than You'd Think

Dr. Mindy Pelz clarified to Jay Shetty that while calories matter scientifically, they are impractical for most people to track accurately. Instead, blood sugar offers more insights into health and weight management; wearing a continuous glucose monitor can help track your eating habits and your body's response to them. She told Jay Shetty that her patients reduced glucose spikes, improved moods, and achieved weight loss just by adjusting their meal composition, such as adding fiber and fats or switching ingredients like oat milk.

Another way to understand how healthy you are is to measure glucose recovery time. According to the health expert, a healthy blood sugar level should return to its pre-meal baseline within 90 minutes. If it doesn't, this may suggest insulin resistance. According to research, a 16/8 fasting pattern (16 hours of fasting, 8 hours of eating) allows the metabolic system to reset.¹ Dr. Pelz adds that this approach prevents increases in insulin, hemoglobin A1C, and inflammatory markers.

Fasting and Eating Healthier

Food cravings are often driven by gut microbes signaling the brain to feed them specific substances like sugar or carbs. These microbes thrive on repetitive diets and processed foods, making it seem like cravings are uncontrollable. Therefore, Dr. Pelz urges the listeners to turn to a healthier, chemical-free diet and diversify the diet to nourish a healthier microbiome. You can shift microbial populations and reduce unhealthy cravings over time by expanding food choices and incorporating fasting into your routine.

Studies on participants who alternated eating freely one day and fasting the next have shown that their metabolic health improved, and cravings shifted toward healthier options in a year.² Fasting helps starve out harmful microbes, breaking the cycle of dependency on unhealthy foods. Dr. Pelz drew Jay Shetty's attention to the importance of momentum rather than motivation when creating lasting changes.

To the health expert, protein is the “hero macronutrient” because it produces hormones and neurotransmitters. While the mainstream recommendation is one gram of protein per pound of body weight, Dr. Pelz suggests prioritizing protein at every meal and building other components, like carbohydrates and vegetables, around it. This way, healthy eating becomes more practical and sustainable. Yet it is important to remember that each body works differently and that you need to find the protein pattern that works for you individually.

What Makes Us Fat?

Dr. Mindy Pelz explained to Jay Shetty that the type of fat we consume plays a key role in our health. Toxic fats, such as canola, corn, and hydrogenated oils, are stored in the body as fat because it cannot process them properly, leading to inflammation and weight gain. On the other hand, healthy fats like olive and avocado oil are easily metabolized, nourish the brain, stabilize blood sugar, and suppress hunger, assisting this way in weight management and overall health.

It is, however, essential to understand how fat consumption can enhance performance and reduce cravings. So, Dr. Pelz recommended incorporating healthy fats into meals, especially during periods of extended fasting or before high-performance activities, to maintain stable glucose levels and prevent brain fog. The health expert told Jay Shetty that olive oil is good for its polyphenols, which support gut microbes and metabolic health.

Being mindful of what we eat is essential because food provides the essential nutrients required to make hormones. Dr. Pelz identified 24 key nutrients, including amino acids, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamins, as foundational for hormone synthesis. Furthermore, she encouraged the listeners to see food as hormonal medicine and be wary of weight-loss drugs that suppress hunger. She explained to Jay Shetty that the effect of these drugs may lead to nutrient deficiencies and hormonal imbalances over time.

Complexities of the Female Body

The female body is driven by rhythmic hormonal changes that influence energy, mood, and physical needs. Unlike men, who primarily manage testosterone on a 24-hour cycle, women navigate a 28-day cycle with varying hormonal demands, including more rest, recovery, and attention to diet and exercise. Dr. Pelz told Jay Shetty that women are more vulnerable to issues like insulin resistance, PCOS, and severe menopause symptoms due to hormonal fluctuations and toxicity sensitivity.

Therefore, Dr. Mindy Pelz outlined some high-level dietary strategies for women, according to their life stage:

20s and 30s: lower-carb diets during the first half of the menstrual cycle to support estrogen and higher-carb diets in the second half to cater to progesterone.
Perimenopausal and menopausal: fasting and a lower-carb diet to address insulin resistance caused by declining estrogen levels.

The health expert urges women to prioritize a rhythmic lifestyle, balancing activity with recovery and alternating low-carb and nutrient-rich diets. She advocates lifestyle changes as the first line of treatment for hormonal and autoimmune challenges rather than immediately resorting to medications.

Lifestyle Changes for Women of All Ages

Dr. Mindy Pelz emphasized to Jay Shetty the importance of addressing menopause and perimenopause through lifestyle changes rather than solely relying on pharmaceuticals. She explained that many women are unaware of the physical shifts during this time and turn to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) without considering necessary lifestyle adjustments. While HRT can be beneficial, she stressed that changes in diet, stress management, and self-care are equally crucial.

The health expert's five key lifestyle changes include:

fasting to regulate eating windows,
varying carbohydrate intake to balance hormones,
supporting gut health to process estrogen,
detoxifying her environment,
addressing stress through mindfulness and less intensity in physical activity.

Dr. Pelz highlighted fasting as a transformative tool for jumpstarting health improvements, particularly for weight loss and hormonal balance. She noted that while fasting is generally accessible, pregnant or nursing women or those with eating disorders or certain cancers should first consult a specialist.

High Protein Diet

Dr. Mindy Pelz discussed with Jay Shetty the growing trend of women consuming meat bowls. According to her, high-protein diets stabilize blood sugar and reduce insulin production, helping with weight loss and metabolic health. Yet you need to ensure you consume protein from clean sources, such as grass-fed and hormone-free meats, and balance protein with fiber for gut health because fiber supports hormone breakdown and microbiome diversity.

Moreover, Dr. Pelz uses short-term carnivore fasting as a therapeutic tool for patients with autoimmune conditions. The meat-only diets and fasting helped them regulate immune responses and manage conditions like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). However, these diets are only to be used in the short term because the body needs fiber for hormonal and gut health. Dr. Pelz wants to empower the wider public to make informed decisions rather than blindly following trends and to gain greater independence from the influence of the pharmaceutical and food industry.

The Body Gives You Cues

Dr. Mindy Pelz shared with Jay Shetty accessible ways to assess health without expensive technology, like observing how meals impact energy, brain clarity, and cravings. She advises women to listen to their body’s cues rather than society's judgment. You can use fasting as an affordable and effective tool to improve your health, but you should approach it gradually, starting with delaying breakfast.

Moreover, Dr. Pelz addressed challenges like under-eating, emphasizing the importance of consuming at least 1,200 calories daily to support thyroid function and overall health. She discussed with Jay Shetty the harmful cycle of controlling weight to achieve societal ideals, yet she advocates for focusing on health metrics like glucose stability instead.

It is important to align your fasting and exercise strategies with your personal goals - to lose fat. The health expert recommends engaging in cardio or yoga on an empty stomach. Conversely, strength training is better supported by consuming protein both before and after workouts. Dr. Mindy Pelz emphasized the importance of recognizing your personal objectives and maintaining flexibility in your approach.

More From Jay Shetty

Listen to the entire On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast episode on “Dr. Mindy Pelz ON #1 Question to Ask Yourself if You Want to Get Rid of Your Belly Fat The ONE Ingredient to Add to Your Diet That Will Suppress Your Appetite” now in the iTunes store or on Spotify. For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out Jay’s website at jayshetty.me.