I Stopped Fasting for a Year - Here's What It Taught Me (& Other Habits I'm Giving Up)

EP343 with Dr. Mindy Pelz

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After 30 years of being in the health trenches, Dr. Mindy is doing something that might surprise you.

She's calling time on the rules.

This solo episode is one of the most honest things she's shared on the podcast. It covers two distinct but deeply connected ideas: why she stopped fasting for most of the past year, and the five health habits she's deliberately walking away from in 2026. Together they make a case for something she's calling the great unlearning — the process of unwinding the "have-tos" that have quietly turned health into a full-time job with a performance review.

What You'll Learn

• Why prolonged fasting raises cortisol — and why that matters especially for menopausal women

• How to read your body's signals to know whether fasting is appropriate on any given day

• The Raglan's test — a simple at-home clinical tool for checking adrenal health

• The five flex fasting principles, including how to match your fasting window to your stress season

• Why Dr. Mindy gave up counting — macros, biometrics, scale, followers, all of it

• How she thinks about metabolic tracking tools as training wheels, not lifetime commitments

• Why she broke up with the gym and what functional fitness actually looks like

• The bumper sticker that changed how she handles urgency, texts, and other people's timelines

• Why she flipped her calendar — health and joy first, work backfilled around it

• How information overconsumption is cognitively depleting us — and what going "vertical and deep" means instead

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Resources Mentioned:

• Fast Like a Girl

• Age Like a Girl

• Substack Article "I Stopped Fasting for a Year"

• Carb Manager App, available on iOS, Android, and web

• The Movement Diet: Redefining Fitness at Every Age with Katy Bowman

• BEAM Minerals, use code MINDY for 20% off

• LMNT, get a free sample pack with your order

Studies Referenced:

• Study: Prolonged Fasting, HPA Axis & Cortisol https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12736288/

• Study: Estrogen & Cortisol Regulation

• Midlife Women Fasting Trial

• Study: Self-Selected Fasting Windows

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This is where we explore hormones, brain health, fasting, midlife, and what it really means to trust your body, together.