#277 The Top Foods & Drinks That Burn Fat & Naturally Balance Hormones with Dr Mindy Pelz

11th Dec 2024

Dr Mindy Pelz is back on the show talking about what foods to break your fast with, the fat burning potential of specific ingredients and how she thinks about cooking food for health and vitality.

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I love talking to various thought leaders across the health and wellbeing space, which is why I’ll speak to a professor of immunology, a psychologist and a chiropractitioner all on the same podcast. You don’t get many people in the nutrition space willing to engage people from other disciplines that they don’t get along with.

I’ll be honest, some of the terminology I hear online like detox, fat burning and immune boosting does get my back up. But it’s also the simple way people think about complex subjects. In a similar vein you still get medical doctors referring to cholesterol as good and bad, which is completely incorrect. So we can’t be too judgmental.

I love chatting with and hanging out with Mindy Pelz, she’s full of energy, motivational and has helped countless women around the world take control of their health. Her new book, “eat like a girl” is a fantastic recipe book that dives into what and how we should be eating whether or not you choose to fast. We also cooked one of her recipes in the kitchen which was awesome.

Episode guests

Dr Mindy Pelz

Bestselling Author | Fasting Expert| Public Speaker

Dr. Mindy Pelz is a world-renowned women’s health expert on a mission to empower women to Believe in their Bodies! Her high-profile clients include entertainer LeAnn Rimes, former race car driver Danica Patrick and popular influencer Jesse Itzler. She is a bestselling author of Fast Like a Girl (top-selling release of 2023 from Hay House Publishing) and The Menopause Reset.  Her podcast, “The Resetter Podcast,” is ranked within Apple’s top 20 category of leading U.S. science podcasts, and routinely features top guests including LeAnn Rimes, Danica Patrick, Lisa Bilyeu, Miesha Tate, Cynthia Thurlow, Sheri Salata, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, Max Lugavere, and many others. Her Youtube channel has garnered over 60 million lifetime views.  She holds a BS degree from the University of Kansas and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. 

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Podcast transcript

Dr Rupy: Mindy, so good to have you back on the show.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Thank you. I was really excited to come. I had so much unexpected fun with you last time. I didn't know you were so fun to talk to. So I'm happy to be here.

Dr Rupy: Oh, so so good to have you back. We've had a ton of questions from folks since you were on. And one of the key questions that I want to talk to you about, and you're the perfect person to talk to about this, are drinks to speed up fat loss. Fat loss is a big thing that people want to know about. Are there any drinks that we can consume to speed up the the loss of fat?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, and I think there's two things to look at when it comes to fat loss so that you understand the drinks I'm about to say. Is you want to stop creating more creating fat, right? So one of the goals is, what can I do to make sure I don't create more fat? And I'm going to answer what drink fits in that. And then there's the other side of it is, which is what can I do to speed up my metabolism so I can burn more fat. So when I put them into those two categories, the first of course is the hero, which is apple cider vinegar. Do you like apple cider?

Dr Rupy: You know what? We have a friend of ours who is a no and low alcohol specialist, and she uses apple cider vinegar based cocktails that are no sugar, have tons of botanicals, and it gives that complexity to the drink that you can't get from other elements and other bitters. So I'm now converted to apple cider vinegar. I love the flavor of it.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, and so I used to hate the flavor of it until I understood the science behind it. And I like it, you can do it in a fasted window, which is great. You can also do it right before a meal or right after a meal. And what it does is it helps regulate blood sugar. So if we go back to the principle that when glucose goes up too high and your insulin is not sensitive to those cells and you can't get the glucose into the cells, then the body stores it in fat. So the name of the food game is let's make sure every meal has a minimal blood sugar spike. Now, what happens, and many experts have been sharing this, but what happens if you look at a piece of chocolate cake and you're like, that's going to be a big spike, then drinking apple cider vinegar will help regulate that, adding some fat, of course. But then if we look at it in the fasting window, what we saw a lot, this one blows me away and it just shows how poor the metabolic health of our world is, is that when people go into a fasted state, their blood sugar goes up.

Dr Rupy: Oh, really?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah.

Dr Rupy: Oh, right.

Dr Mindy Pelz: It's crazy. So what the typical trend or a very common trend, I should say, is that when people switch over into this fat burning system, they may see a decrease in their blood sugar in the beginning, but then there's at some point along the fasting journey, it spikes up.

Dr Rupy: Okay.

Dr Mindy Pelz: And the only explanation I can find for this is it has to be the body releasing glucose. So it has to be glycogen stores that get triggered in the absence of glucose coming in. So in those scenarios, how are you going to regulate that sudden influx? And we have found based off of CGMs on our community is that if they drink an apple cider vinegar drink when that happens, it really stabilizes all of that.

Dr Rupy: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Mindy Pelz: So.

Dr Rupy: So when you're in that fasted state, you're not getting any sugar coming in. The body has amazing stores, like within your liver, within your muscles where it can release the stored glucose that's stored in glycogen and then also create glucose through gluconeogenesis to maintain that level. But what you've seen is that you get actually an actual spike.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Oh yeah. So when I was coaching people one on one, the very first thing I did before I ever changed their diet was put a continuous glucose monitor.

Dr Rupy: Ah, interesting.

Dr Mindy Pelz: And I would just say, eat, just go eat. I just want to see how your body's responding to different things. Then we would tweak their food and then we would tack on a fasting window. And they it's kind of like training wheels on a bike. They would get the hang of it and then inevitably, every single time, I would get a call and somebody would be like, I don't understand it. Like I was fasting for 18 hours. I was doing really great and then my CGM says that there's a big glucose spike.

Dr Rupy: Huh.

Dr Mindy Pelz: And I'm like, yeah, that's stored sugar. Or in the middle of the night because you can see what your glucose patterns are in the middle of the night. People would say, oh my god, why did my glucose spike at two in the morning? I'm like, yeah, because your liver was dumping. So spikes aren't always your fault, not eating the right foods. Sometimes the body's just letting go. And that's where in a fasted state, throw apple cider vinegar in and it can help stabilize it.

Dr Rupy: And how, how do you use apple cider vinegar? How much? Like, do you dilute it? Do you add other things?

Dr Mindy Pelz: It's a great question. Um, so, you know, the what I typically saw when I first looked into this was like a tablespoon of of apple cider vinegar for like a pint if you like of like a beer glass. So that's typically what we would recommend. Um, I don't, I don't like apple cider vinegar if I'm like really transparent. So I either have to down that fast or I have to put it with some interesting things. So in the new book, we have some apple cider vinegar that worked for me. So if you're one of those people. But yeah, it's um, it's a good little hack.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, that is nice. I mean, I've started using a little bit of apple cider vinegar when I when I can just to sort of mix things up. Um, but that's a that's a good tip about putting it into a ton of water so you can't really taste it.

Dr Mindy Pelz: You can't taste it.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. Any other drinks that you are experimenting with?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Okay, so then let's we could actually put two things together, which are going to be really interesting. But when we look at speeding up your metabolism, something spicy, something hot, like something that has capsicum in it. Uh, research shows that actually will speed up your metabolism. So, okay, well, spicy. Now, now we've sort of got spicy and we have this sour taste of apple cider vinegar. Do those two go together? Uh, do you remember the master cleanse diet?

Dr Rupy: No. Tell me about that.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Oh my gosh. This was like, this was my first experience with fasting. It was called the master cleanse. It was super popular. It became like the Hollywood diet for people to lose weight. And every single day you would drink um, lemon, fresh squeezed lemons with uh, cayenne pepper and a little bit of grade B maple syrup. Which they should have taken that out because they would have just put people into a complete fasted state. But the idea was, let's keep your blood sugar up. And people would do that, they would just drink that drink for like days.

Dr Rupy: Right.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Like my husband and I did it and we did it, I believe we did it for like eight days or nine days. That's all we drank. That was like my first experience with fasting.

Dr Rupy: Wow.

Dr Mindy Pelz: But it's actually really brilliant because what happens with the cayenne is it's got that capsicum in it, so it can speed up your metabolism. Um, if you put some lemon in, lemon's a detoxer. So again, if we're looking at how do you, what drinks can you use to detox or to improve your metabolism, remember that toxins slow the metabolic system down. The body stores toxins in fat. So adding something like lemon in is so, so important. So that combination was a really smart idea. Now you add apple cider vinegar to that where you've got cayenne pepper, apple cider vinegar and lemon.

Dr Rupy: Gotcha.

Dr Mindy Pelz: And now you have yourself a drink that will detox you, will regulate your blood sugar and will speed up your metabolism.

Dr Rupy: Gotcha. And would you have that drink, that concoction uh, only in a fasted state or can you use that even when you're out of that fasted state?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, you can use it outside of it as well. And again, remember that the name of the game always is how do we regulate our blood sugar? Like if we just spend all of us spend the rest of our life being curious about our blood sugar, I mean, we would solve so many chronic health problems. So a drink like we just talked about, if you do it before a meal, it'll make sure that that meal has a minimal blood sugar spike. You could do it after a meal as a course corrector or you could do it in a fasted state.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Mindy Pelz: In fact, I'd love to say that I've put that drink in my in my cookbook, but but I didn't. I should have. I just thought of it now, actually. But but putting those three things together are are really important.

Dr Rupy: That could be in the next edition. You never know. If you're going to do another cookbook, well, I know that this one's been quite a journey for you, hey?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure I'm ready. I need a couple year break before I do another one.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's an interesting one. So capsicum, uh, that combination with the the the sort of vinegariness, the citrus of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. Um, are there other sort of elements that you have found that have boosted up that the metabolism, boosted up fat loss?

Dr Mindy Pelz: You know what's really interesting? Everybody else found this one, which is coffee. So why do we do coffee when we're in the fasted state? Well, for starters, most people skip breakfast and we can talk about that if that's a good idea or a bad idea because I I have mixed opinions on it. Um, but if you do coffee in the morning in a fasted state and you add some MCT oil, what that does is we know if it's clean coffee, it's stimulated autophagy. So it's cleaning out the cells, which is amazing. Um, we know that coffee and caffeine, especially if it's caffeinated, can raise the metabolism just a tad. Um, and then you add the MCT oil in it and it kills hunger. So those that combo, you've got again, a detox, you got a hunger killer and you have a gentle mild increase in metabolism. So I think that's why I'm not always telling people get off coffee. Just be careful what you put in it.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the quality of coffee like you alluded to is really important because a lot of coffee does appear to be poor quality in terms of molds and pesticides. And actually, when you look at independent lab testing of common coffee brands, you do find a lot of contaminants. And so, you know, there are certain coffee brands, I think in the states, there's purity in the UK, there's exhale coffee. If you haven't come across them, I'll give you a bag. They're brilliant.

Dr Mindy Pelz: I thank you for purity. I don't know exhale though.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, they they're pretty much the equivalent. Actually, the founders know each other as well. They vibe. Yeah, yeah. So, um, uh, it's a, yeah, it's a really good brand. And in terms of like the independent lab testing, they go that step further because they realize a lot of coffee is not the best quality. And so I think it really depends on.

Dr Mindy Pelz: And then so it's it's an interesting dilemma and I'm sure you have this as somebody who's an advocate of food is that you say coffee and people go meander into their local, you know, coffee shop and they don't, they're like, oh, this is going to speed up my metabolism. But we have to have nuanced conversations because if you're walking into the franchise coffee shop and you're getting a cup full of chemicals with a plastic lid, now you've got an issue where the body doesn't know what to do with all those chemicals, so it's going to store it as fat and we're not, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about clean coffee, MCT oil and then the cream that works best for you because everybody cream works different.

Dr Rupy: Yeah. Do you, uh, on in the same line of of coffee with the caffeination and the polyphenols, do you recommend other sort of caffeinated drinks in that realm? Like I'm thinking green tea, matcha, yerba mate. Are those sort of all the other?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, there's yerba mate is amazing. I mean, there's so many studies on yerba mate, um, killing hunger as well. So I've done a lot, I like yerba mate iced, so I do a lot of iced yerba mate in the fasting window. So you really good point. Um, green tea for me, if I have it in a fasted state, it makes me nauseous.

Dr Rupy: Really?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah. So I, if I put it in, if I put green tea in in a fed state, fine. It's really good. But so it's not one that I gravitate towards. And there's actually, I heard this a long time ago that there when you look at coffee, black tea and green tea, they all have different caffeine, um, deliveries. So they we're only looking at the amount, but it's how it gets delivered into your body.

Dr Rupy: Oh, gotcha.

Dr Mindy Pelz: So coffee is the quickest hit. Caffeine's coming in very, very fast. Black tea is going to be a little slower, so it might take double the time for that caffeine to get into your system. So it's a gentle lift. And green tea is the most, takes the longest to get into your system. So it's actually the guys from Pique Tea. They told, they were like, if you're going to look at your caffeine delivery system over the course of the day, you would do coffee in the morning, black tea maybe mid-morning or midday and green tea in the afternoon because it gets it gets divvied out in a much slower way.

Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Yeah. I've never really thought about that because I think most people will just look up on Google amount of caffeine per 100 mils of coffee, amount of caffeine per 100 mils of green tea without really thinking about the delivery system and just how quickly you absorb said caffeine.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Dr Rupy: Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah, yeah. Okay, these are great drinks. So apple cider vinegar, capsicum, coffee. Any others that we've missed out?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yerba mate, I think is a good one to put on there because we do that a lot in a fasted state. Um, well, I mean, the way you asked the question was what speeds metabolism up. There's another piece to to what you drink in your fasted state is what do you do when you're hungry? What do you do when you're bored? And that's where you can look at, I mean, we've tried all kinds of fun things. Like we've taken mineral water and put them in wine glasses. So you feel kind of fancy. And you know, like and some people like to just, some people do decaf coffee because they're gripping to their coffee. Other teas are fine. You can do any kind of herbal tea in your fasted state as long as it doesn't have cream or sugar in it. Um, so I I'm a, I like to encourage people to drink something in the fasted state. It just it can't raise your blood sugar.

Dr Rupy: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Are there other things that you've noticed within your community that raise people's blood sugars that are outside of what they are eating and drinking?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, like that they wouldn't think would raise it. Yeah. You know what the biggest one that was early on when we first started teaching the world this, we had so many comments on, and I and I don't mean to bash a name, but this is the way it came to us, which was, can I have a diet Coke in my fasted window? So you have to answer that. First, you have to unpack the ingredients. So there's chemicals in there and those chemicals, many of which, one, the worst one is NutraSweet. Um, another again, brand name. Um, and it is an obesogen. So an obesogen is a chemical that can actually turn a stem cell and reprogram it into a fat cell.

Dr Rupy: Okay.

Dr Mindy Pelz: So if I'm drinking diet Cokes in my fasting window or something with NutraSweet in my fasting window over and over and over again, thinking that it's keeping me fasted, thinking it's helping me lose weight, actually it's not because there's this chemical side that you have to remember that the body doesn't know what to do with a can of chemicals. And you have to remember that NutraSweet triggers these stem cells, not the first time you do it, but if you do it over a course of many years, yes, it's going to start to trigger the those stem cells. And then the last part of that that most people don't realize is NutraSweet increases appetite.

Dr Rupy: Yeah.

Dr Mindy Pelz: It stimulates the appetite center of the brain. So it's actually one of the worst things you could drink in your fasting window.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And so in terms of like, you know, the 24 hours where people are consuming food, if you're going to be taking the the diet soda, let's say, it's going to encourage you to feel like you need to eat more. So you're going to you're going to have a worse time maintaining that fasting or just maintaining your your general sort of intake of of food.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Yeah, you, I mean, the whole goal is when you switch over into the fasted state, you shouldn't be hungry. You should, your hunger over as the hours go on should be fine. And if you drink something that either spikes blood sugar or stimulates the hunger hormone or the hunger centers in your brain, you may just really struggle with your fasting window. Um, well, I'll give him a shout out, but on Tuesday, I went on Chris Evans' radio show. And such a sweet man.

Dr Rupy: I know Chris, yeah, he's lovely. He's a really big supporter and so nice.

Dr Mindy Pelz: He loves all of you guys. You know, Rangan was, he loves all of you. It's really sweet. So he lovingly asked me what I thought of oat milk in his coffee. Okay, just so I don't know if Chris is going to listen to this, but in case he's going to listen, I just have to say because I said it very politically correct to him on live radio. But I'm like, no, Chris, no, not oat milk. And there's multiple reasons. If you're going to make your own fresh oat milk, fine. But it oat is a grain and oats in general tend to spike blood sugar. So oat milk is not a wonderful thing to put in your coffee because it's going to have the highest glucose response. Okay, second thing is almond milk, cashew milks, same kind of thing. We're going to find that it's going to create a bit of a spike plus almond and cashew now have protein in it, so it could pull you out of autophagy. So I think what you put in your milk is really important and test it on your blood sugar. That's probably what I should have told Chris today. But uh, I my my favorite one is I've um, I've been working with an a very famous actress and she was vegan when we first met. And I was like, okay, I want to honor that you love your vegan lifestyle, but let's just test everything on your blood sugar and see what's working for you and not. She was addicted to her coffee with oat milk and stevia. She had it like every morning, thinking that was the healthy path. And so I'm like, well, let's look at it. So I just had her put her CGM on. She was shocked. Like her blood sugar spiked 30, 40 points. It was really high. Next day, I said, okay, now let's put MCT oil in that combo. And it only went 20 points. I'm like, okay, do you see what fat's doing? Next day, I was like, now I want you to try if if you'll just play with me for one day, we're going to try whole milk, I mean, uh, full fat, organic, raw cow's milk. And then we're going to put a little tiny teaspoon of MCT oil in your coffee. Next day, her blood sugar dropped.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Mindy Pelz: You knew where I was going with that.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, totally. No, no, no. I I like the reason why is because my wife said the same realization. The penny drops, right? So like when she, she loves her matcha oat latte. She loves it. Like, you know, she goes to work and it's like a nice little treat, you know, mid-morning, whatever. And she started wearing a CGM. And uh, and I remember she called me at like 11 and she was like, my CGM is just going off at me. Like it's it's a huge spike. I was like, have you by any chance had your oat milk matcha right now? And she was like, yes. And that was when the penny dropped. And you know, you can tell people about the the oats and how it's processed and how it squeezes out the starch and that that creates the sugar spike and stuff. But until they see it on their own personal CGM, it's a different sort of realization. And that's why I'm actually a fan of CGMs for certain people who, you know, need to sort of see that visualization to have the sort of the the penny drop and and you know, we changed her milk and stuff and she's a lot better. I was going to ask you, what is your preferred milk? Is it the raw?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Raw. And and I I don't know what the rules on raw are.

Dr Rupy: So that you can source raw milk in the UK, but you just need to get it from a provider. You won't be able to find it in most supermarkets because it has to be pasteurized. Um, but yeah, you can find it in in farmers markets and and uh, yeah, uh, sort of market towns.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Okay. Because in the US, they think it's, you know, it's it's going to kill you. Like they they really are putting a lot of pressure on raw. Here's why I like raw is that it has probiotics in it and it has enzymes in it. So the probiotics are adding good bacteria to your gut and the enzymes are helping you break down anything that's in, you know, that you that like the lactose. So if you're mildly lactose intolerant, actually many people can do raw cow's milk. So when you pasteurize all that stuff, you kill it all. And then it's just, you know, it's dead. And then I think the other thing is when it's dead, it also spikes your blood sugar a little bit more because a very interesting fact that most people aren't aware of and I know you know this, is that it's actually our gut bacteria that control our blood sugar levels. So if we aren't feeding them what they want and we're just giving them dead food, then the bad guys thrive and now they're the ones that are going to create this really exaggerated response of blood sugar spiking.

Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. So in terms of this fat loss sort of conversation, we have our drinks, we have fasting as a tool. Are there any other things that you sort of recommend people to sort of lean into when it comes to fat loss specifically? And particularly in certain areas of the body where people are like, you know, thinking like, I really wish I could lose fat in certain parts of my body. Is that even possible?

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, no, this is such a good question. And uh, probably the biggest trending videos on my YouTube videos are ones about menopausal belly fat.

Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.

Dr Mindy Pelz: So there's a, let's let's break that down because in the in eat like a girl, I actually created a checklist for people because we got that question so many times. I was like, here's your checklist. So the first thing to understand is what is what is belly fat? So belly fat typically is the place your body is going to store excess and it's excess hormones and excess toxins. Okay. I didn't say excess glucose. Glucose typically is going to go to other areas of the body, but the belly is tends to be a sign of this toxicity component. Instead of the body putting that excess around your organs and causing them to have problems, it put it around your belly. Now, I'm sure there's some excess glucose in there as well. But with that in mind, now, how do we get rid of the excess? So for starters, we got to make sure that your body is able to detox and the two organs that detox are liver and gut. So how do we support the liver and the gut? Well, the liver loves bitter foods, which is really fun. Like my my favorite food outside of the sweet potato is radicchio.

Dr Rupy: Oh, nice. That's one of my favorites as well. Radicchio and all the different like you you got tardivo and trevisano and like we're really lucky because we're so close to Italy and like we get a lot of these different bitter food, but they're wonderful, wonderful.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah, so and they make great wraps if you're not going to do if you're not going to do, you know, like a a bread. So, um, so lots of bitter foods, dandelion greens, ginger, lemon, we're back at the at the benefit of lemon. Um, and that will support your liver, which will help you break down these toxins and get them out of your system. If you can get those toxins out of your system, then your body's not going to store them in menopausal or in that belly fat area. So the liver is keen. And then alcohol, avoiding alcohol, mocktails are becoming really popular. We have some great ones in the book, but mocktails are the greatest thing that ever was invented as long as they're not packed with sugar.

Dr Rupy: It's just very hard to get, isn't it? Like most mocktails I think of of like really sugary fruit juice based and a lot of people think they're doing the healthier thing by avoiding the alcohol and going for the mocktail. That that's not the case.

Dr Mindy Pelz: No. No. I mean it's healthier, but it's not healthy. So, uh, so when you're looking at that extra weight, supporting the liver is is super helpful. Then the gut, you know, you got to make sure that your gut is stabilizing your blood sugar, is breaking down hormones. So I think we talked about this the last time, but if not, it's a it's a cornerstone of this new book, which is we have a set of bacteria in our gut called the estrobolome. They break estrogen down. Okay, so what do you do with the woman who's been on birth control pills for over a decade? I just read a study on this the other day. Birth control pills actually change the diversity of our gut microbiome. And they upregulate the bad guys and they create an environment where the good guys, which make up these this estrobolome, actually become deficient. And one of the major things that they they do is they upregulate a bacteria that blocks us from being able to extract flavonoids, which are antioxidants, from our foods. So a woman goes on the birth control pill and what's the most common thing you hear? I gained weight. Well, you gained weight because it changed your microbiome. So what we see, I mean, again, the audience that I've been working with is like 35 to 65. And it's in that time period that women are like, I don't know, I don't get it. Why am I gaining weight? And what they don't realize is something maybe like the birth control pill that they had been on in their 20s and in their teens changed the gut diversity. And now the gut really needs some rehab. It needs us to add those foods in that let the good bacteria increase and so that the bad bacteria go away and don't dominate. So I think, I mean, that's a very nuanced answer.

Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Mindy Pelz: But again, I'm trying to get people to think this through for themselves.

Dr Rupy: Totally. I know, I appreciate the nuance because I think we do need to sort of teach people the principles of why you're suggesting certain foods, why would it be the bitter. So, you know, people who are adverse to that flavor actually learn to appreciate it and like, oh, well, this is going to be impacting my body by providing nutrients, by providing certain elements that I might not be having from other certain foods. So that's why I'd want to like try and encourage it even in small amounts and then titrate it up.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Yeah. And then the other thing that is I've been really trying to teach this recently to people and I and I think they're grabbing it and it's easy in the summertime, which is eat only in the light. So, like we've been debating fasting eating windows in my community. And we have people, you know, that start to attack fasting because they're like, oh, you're supposed to eat breakfast, which we can chat about that in a moment because I I literally got the answer on breakfast from the horse's mouth, Satchin Panda. I brought him on my podcast. I was like, tell me about breakfast from a time restricted eating standpoint. But I think the biggest thing you should do is let's just make it easy on yourself. Like eat in the light because what happens is when it's dark out, melatonin's around. And when melatonin's around, I and this is the way Satchin explained it and I love it this way. He's like, melatonin makes you sleepy, but it also makes your pancreas sleepy. So if you're eating in the dark, you're going to have less of an efficient insulin system because the pancreas is going to sleep as melatonin is coming in.

Dr Rupy: That's a really good way of putting it. Yeah, I've never really thought about the impact of the circadian rhythm on the activity of your other organs. That makes sense.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Isn't that fascinating? The other thing, just we're on it, the other thing we learned and I this is probably a geek out between you and me, maybe maybe the audience is enjoying it. Um, but we have our bacteria actually day bacteria and night bacteria are different in our gut. So when it gets dark, all of a sudden there's a change of guard with the gut bacteria.

Dr Rupy: I don't think I even appreciate that.

Dr Mindy Pelz: That's what he said. And he said and the night bacteria kick in.

Dr Rupy: No way.

Dr Mindy Pelz: Okay, so what happens to people that travel across time zones and the circadian rhythms all mixed up? What's going on with their gut bacteria? I don't have an, I haven't looked into the science on that, but for people who are struggling to lose weight and are really um, missing that ability to break down estrogen and so it gets stored all around that that belly fat, you know, look at your sleep patterns and look at your eating patterns in conjunction with the dark and the light.

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