Why Intermittent Fasting Is Different for Women (Most Get It Wrong)

Intermittent fasting for women is often considered dangerous or damaging to hormones, but what if the opposite is true? When done correctly, intermittent fasting can be one of the most powerful ways women can support their hormones.

Why intermittent fasting is different for women. There’s a large group of women out there that are told by doctors that there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to have a baby. They’re told that even the fertility drugs won’t work. And then they stumble on this intermittent fasting protocol and all of a sudden they’re pregnant. I had my own clinic for 30 years and worked with 40,000 people and I will tell you intermittent fasting is one of the most powerful tools for women and especially if they have hormonal issues, which includes infertility.

And sometimes I’d have a conversation with a woman about intermittent fasting and their attitude about it was it’s dangerous. It’s going to wreck my hormones. So, I want to show you where that actually came from. It came from a single study involving 3-month-old rats. The rats were biologically equivalent to a 9-year-old human child.

And their version of intermittent fasting was an extreme starvation that no human would ever want to do. But somehow that study has become the warning signal about intermittent fasting for women. But the studies that do involve women in intermittent fasting show that it helps their hormones. It does not disrupt their hormones. One of the biggest chronic hormonal problems that women go through is something called PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome.

But also you have menopausal weight gain, you have sluggish thyroid function, you have irregular periods. You’re about to find out intermittent fasting is one of the most powerful tools for a female’s hormones. But the catch is you have to do it correctly and it has to depend on your biology. If you take a 28-year-old female with polycystic ovary syndrome, the protocol for intermittent fasting is going to be much different than a 48-year-old female going into perimenopause. So, let’s say for example, you get up in the morning and you have your breakfast at 8:00 a.

m. , all right? And then your last meal is at 8:00 p. m. That would be a 12-hour eating window.

But, it’s also a 12-hour fasting window. To start getting into doing a true intermittent fast, you have to go at least 14 hours without eating. So, let’s say for example, your last meal yesterday was at 8:00 p. m. [snorts] That means you have to not eat all night long, wake up the morning, and push your breakfast to 10:00 a.

m. That’s like the minimum basic amount to actually start the fasting process. Then we get to 16 hours of fasting. So, let’s say for example, yesterday your last meal was at 8:00 p. m.

at night, okay? You’re going to fast all the way to the next day, and your first meal is going to be at 12:00 noon. All right? That would give you 16 hours of fasting. That’s when you start autophagy, which is cellular cleanup.

Now, the question is, what is the big thing about fasting? What gives you the benefits? It really has to do with this master switch called insulin. If insulin is too high, you do not get the benefits of fasting. Insulin has to be low, and it’s going to force your body to start burning your fat reserves.

If insulin is too high, what can happen is their androgens can start going higher. And that’s why their voice is getting deeper, they get facial hair, they get cystic acne because of this high level of androgen, which actually is coming from the high level of insulin. Also, this high insulin can put you in a state of estrogen dominance with very low progesterone. Now, let’s just go through the menstrual cycle. Let’s say for example, you haven’t gone through menopause yet, and you still have your menstrual cycle.

And you have day 1 through 14. Day 14 is when you ovulate. This period of time, which is 2 weeks, is a very safe time to do fasting. So, you can easily fast 16 hours, and then your eating window will be 8 hours, or even up it to 18 hours of fasting with a 6-hour eating window. And you can do that very comfortably the first 2 weeks of your cycle without too much of a problem.

Now, the second part of the month, starting at right around just after ovulation to day 28, which is the beginning of your period, you may find that you have problems with sleep and other symptoms. To be able to reduce those symptoms, you wouldn’t necessarily want to do this type of fasting. Maybe you do a 12 and 12, which basically means you’re having a breakfast at 8:00, and then you’re having your second meal at 8:00 p. m. But for women that have menstrual issues, that second half, the hormone demand for fuel is very, very high, especially in that last week, okay?

And this is where progesterone is most vulnerable to stress. And so, if you’re doing extreme fasting, that can throw off progesterone, and a lot of women that have very low progesterone cannot sleep, in which case, we don’t want to do extreme fasting. So, what I’m saying is if you have problems that last 2 weeks, especially the last week before your period, I would recommend that you don’t do a lot of fasting. You do a 12 and a 12, and you might even benefit by increasing your carbohydrates. But the type of carbohydrates I would recommend would be more berries, or even a little bit of starch in the form of yam or red potato, because we need to feed the endocrine system, especially progesterone, and you may feel significant benefit and be able to sleep if you do that.

But if you don’t have a problem with your menstrual cycle, I wouldn’t recommend doing this. So, a lot of people ask me, “What supplements do recommend? ” Now, of course, I’m not biased with my own high-quality supplement line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you’ll find more information. Now, for women that are menstruating heavily, they’re losing blood, it’s very important when they eat, they consume food high in iron, which would be red meat, organ meats like liver, that would be even better, but a lot of people don’t like liver, so I’d recommend increasing more red meat if you’re menstruating to get your iron versus taking some version of iron that’s not very compatible with your body.

If you have heavy cramping, I also recommend you increase magnesium before you menstruate. Now, let’s go back to this other thing I mentioned, polycystic ovary syndrome. This is where you really want to do some hardcore fasting because we need to drive down insulin. So, you would want to do 18 hours of fasting, which basically means your first meal is at 12:00 noon, and your last meal is at 6:00 p. m.

And you want to go low-carb. Why? Because your high chronic insulin production is causing polycystic ovary syndrome, and to undo and unravel that problem, you need to do hardcore low-carb and hardcore intermittent fasting. Well, what about fertility problems that are connected to this? I’ve seen great results with this type of fasting with fertility, but with some women, when they do this type of fasting for various reasons, let’s say they’re usually deficient in certain nutrients, their cycle goes away.

They become less fertile if they do more hardcore fasting. But, what I would recommend as a sweet spot is to do 16 hours of fasting with an 8-hour eating window, which basically your first meal is at 10:00 in the morning and your second meal is at 6:00 p. m. And then make sure that the meals that you eat are really nutrient dense. And I’m talking about with salmon, eggs, especially the yolk, yogurt, cheese, even shellfish for the trace minerals.

Now, what about perimenopause? Okay, that’s before you are going into menopause. A lot of women start having problems just before they go into menopause, which usually is around age 52. The best intermittent fasting pattern will be 16:8. 16 hours of fasting, the first meal would be at 10:00 i