My 20-hour fasting experience (FAST LIKE A GIRL BY DR. MINDY PELZ)
Note that this is my personal experience. I share to shine a light on the power of supporting healing from the inside out, but please know that this is an individual journey and what works for me may not work for others. I work with chronic wellness warriors around the world creating bio-individual care plans. Please do not hesitate to reach out for support.
Hi there! Em here, and I’m so excited to share this experience with you. I’ve been embarking on incorporating fasting into my lifestyle over the last nine months to level up my health. I first read Dr. Mindy Pelz’s book Fast Like A Girl and began the journey of slowly incorporated fasting into my life. I learned from Dr. Mindy that women need to fast differently than men and I tied my fasting with my cycle to match my hormonal needs all month long.
If this fasting topic interests you, I HIGHLY recommend reading Dr. Mindy Pelz’s book to fully understand the process and prepare your body safely and effectively. If you’re looking for more support, I work with my clients as a Fast Like A Girl Coach in my nutritional therapy practice.
It has been so much fun becoming more in tune with my body’s rhythms and bringing in fasting as a tool to level up my health.
Several months of incorporating fasting into my life (specifically following the fasting protocol for chronic fatigue because it matched my individual needs) has been a beautiful thing in my life. I followed this protocol because of my history with a vestibular something and what the protocol supported: depleted cellular mitochondria, adrenal exhaustion, and viral load.
There are two healing processes that attracted me to fasting: autophagy and ketosis. I won’t go into detail regarding these processes here, but you can learn lots on Dr. Mindy Pelz’s YouTube channel and it’s also something I teach my clients about.
After months of teaching my body how to fast, I was ready to go deeper in my education and healing. I studied under Dr. Mindy and it only further opened my eyes to the opportunity we have to support vibrant health in our bodies.
There are certain phases of a woman’s cycle when longer fasts serve the body, so once I felt ready, I knew I wanted to try a longer fast.
Enter the 20-hour fast.
At the appropriate time in my cycle, I chose the date I would fast. On that date, I listened to my body and stopped eating at 5pm. I nourished my body with a protein-packed plant-powered meal and then began fasting. I drank filtered water and mineral water between 5-8pm and then went to bed around 10pm. I had been practicing fasting for months, so this routine was not new to me.
It’s important to remember that I have a heart-felt goal for this fasting: supporting my body in vibrant health. One of my obstacles in chronic illness has been a high toxic load. It has taken years for my body to release that, and fasting is a method for me to encourage this process.
I want to assist my body in further healing itself :)
The next morning, I hydrated and listened to my body. At 15 hours in (8am) I was ready for a fasted snack. When you fast, your metabolism burns through available carbohydrate stores, and once they’re gone, it shifts into a state called ketosis (burning fat for fuel rather than carbs). Ketosis is partially responsible for a lot of the benefits of fasting: stabilizing blood sugar, increased mental clarity, decreased inflammation, and suppressing hunger.
A fasted snack is low-calorie, high-fat, low-carb and low protein. During certain times in my cycle, my body really likes Fat Fuel Coffee so I moved into an iced coffee at hour 15. At this point my body felt satiated (from the high fat) and my mental clarity really started setting in. I worked all morning long and at hour 18 I was ready for another fasted snack: enter avocados.
At hour 20 I knew I was ready to break my fast and I had a very dense smoothie that had the following: (and it tasted dreamy!!!)
Daily Harvest Cold-Brew + Cocoa Smoothie plus
2 scoops of Sun Warrior Active Protein
My body was HAPPY.
This was truly a wonderful fasting experience and I felt awesome throughout the process.
—
It’s important to note that not all fasts have gone this way for me and fasting in a safe way is the most important thing. I’ve had to do A LOT of detoxing in my healing experience and some of it has felt absolutely miserable. For example, detoxing lead recently was a migraine-filled, tiring, emotional experience. But coming through it leaves me with a lightness and clarity of feeling more and more like myself. I use BioField Testing to further support my health.
Update a few weeks later: This 20-hour fasting experience was only the beginning of many longer fasts, and also following a plant-based keto diet for periods of my cycle to further promote healing. It’s been so much fun to incorporate these pieces into my life and if any of this interests you, I’d love to support you on your journey.
—
I share this experience because I truly believe we have so much power when it comes to creating chronic wellness. It takes time, patience, and honoring our individual situation.
Know that I’m rooting for you every step of the way.
