At 19 years-old, Mindy Pelz found herself relentlessly exhausted. Undeterred after an initial diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome that could take years to recover from with no known cure, her mother brought her for a second opinion with a holistic doctor. Under the doctor’s guidance, Pelz was able to fast herself out of fatigue’s spell.

After earning a degree in Kinesiology and a Doctorate in Chiropractic Pediatrics a now Dr. Pelz entered the medical industry and was soon confronted by the rising public health crisis, research conducted primarily on the male body, and patients struggling to improve their health. Reflecting on her own experience at 19, she recognized fasting as a tool capable of addressing the two major challenges her patients faced – money and time. Motivated, she set out on a mission to personally educate and connect with patients on the possibilities found in healing through fasting.

Opening with the history and science of fasting, Pelz highlights the contrast of today’s 24/7 food availability from grocery stores, drive thrus, and overstocked home pantries to our hunt-and-gather ancestors’ periods without food, forced by nature’s hand. Scientists are now researching whether these feast-or-famine conditions led to the development of a gene enabling cells in the body to resourcefully acclimate to staggered cycles of food availability. This so called “thrifty gene” hypothesis introduces further evidence aligned with the health benefits experienced by those who regularly fast.

Within Fast Like a Girl, Pelz explores six prominent fasting styles and their respective health benefits starting with the most popular and simplest to integrate, Intermittent Fasting. Typically beginning after dinner and ending with the following morning’s breakfast, it is 12-16 hours long with benefits like increased energy levels, cell repair, and improved blood pressure and gut bacteria. Autophagic Fasts, vividly described as a dimmer, last for at least 17 hours with benefits including increased brain function, cold prevention, and re-balanced sex hormones. Lasting 24-36 hours, a Gut-Reset Fast is used to improve the body’s microbiome by producing stem cells and repairing damaged cells.

The remaining three highlighted fasts Pelz recommends incorporating only once a year or so. The Fat-Burner Fast is 36 hours or longer and minimizes weight-loss resistance as the body regulates cholesterol and burns the body’s fat reserves. A Dopamine-Reset Fast, 48 hours or more, introduces mental health benefits as the body creates dopamine receptors and improves existing dopamine pathways with clarity slowly revealing itself in the following weeks as the dopamine system regenerates. Finally, Pelz introduces the Immune-Reset Fast, sometimes referred to as the three-to-five-day water fast. After 72 hours of fasting, the body begins regenerating stem cells which help heal damaged and aged cells.

With common ground understanding of prominent fasts and their benefits, fasting “like a girl,” the distinction to Pelz’s work, emerges in the identification of differences between male and female hormonal cycles and how this impacts dietary and nutritional needs. Whereas the male body follows a 24-hour hormonal cycle with a single dominant hormone, testosterone, the menstruating female body follows an approximately 28-day cycle with three fluctuating primary hormones: estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.

Women’s nutritional needs, like their cycle and hormonal balance, are dynamic. Despite the well documented understanding that men and women have different cycles and therefore different needs, health and diet education centers on the male’s 24-hour cycle, leaving half the population uninformed in how to aid the body in performing its best. Pelz’s work flips the script, spreading the power of fasting like a girl by educating women not just in its benefits, but the hormonal shifts and corresponding shifts in nutritional needs throughout their cycle. The very nature of fasts’ customizable structure and timing supports the complex lifestyles common for women – an area where traditional diets tend to fail.

When optimized across food, menstrual cycle, and lifestyle, fasting fuels the body with the nutrition it needs to heal, support hormones, and maximize wellbeing. This considered approach extends the health benefits compared to only fasting, while simultaneously creating a health tool that is sustainable for years to come. Pelz’s rich text emboldens and educates women that to fast like a girl is to live a healthy and dynamic life in harmony with their body.

Learn more about fasting like a girl and Dr. Pelz’s work on her website.