This content provides science-backed nutrition and fasting strategies specifically tailored for women's bodies, emphasizing how hormonal differences and physiological responses necessitate a distinct approach compared to men for optimal health, body composition, and well-being.
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I have spent hours digging into videos,
podcasts, and scientific studies from
top female health experts so you don't
have to. And what I found, six powerful
scienceback tips that will help you eat
and even fast in a way that actually
works for women's bodies. Many of these
tips have been condensed from two
powerhouses in this space. Dr. Stacy
Sims, PhD in exercise physiology,
nutrition scientist, and internationally
recognized expert in women's health, and
Dr. Mindy Pel, a fasting guru for women
who has helped thousands worldwide.
Let's begin. Number one, eat [music]
before exercise. Everyone has probably
heard of the saying, if you exercise
without eating first thing in the
morning, your body will burn more fat
and taa, weight loss. Well, friends,
while fasted training seems to work
terrific for men, it is highly not
recommended for active women. After 30
minutes after waking, we naturally get a
spike in cortisol, aka the stress
hormone. And despite social media
painting cortisol as the bad guy, it's
an essential hormone that helps you wake
up, become alert, and get into that
fight or flight mode. If you don't do
anything to bring that cortisol down by
having food, your body stays in a
catabolic state, which is a state of
breaking things down instead of building
them up. For men, this is usually less
of an issue. The male hypothalamus,
small but powerful control center in
your brain, checks the blood, liver, and
muscle for sugar. And if there's little
to none, male body goes, "No problem.
Let's just get better at burning fat.
Now, let's compare that to women. When a
[music] woman doesn't eat and goes to
exercise, it thinks I should probably
store and hold on to fat because fat is
the preferred fuel I'm going to need
later. You might think that's not fair,
but it all comes down to the makeup of
our muscle fibers. Usually, women's
muscle fibers are more efficient at
switching between carbs and fat for fuel
and also just using fat as fuel. But in
the state of starvation, it is less
efficient for women. On top of all that,
women's brains are much more sensitive
to blood sugar and food coming in. If
the hypothalamus senses low blood
glucose and no nutrients coming in, it
goes into survival state. And one of the
first things it goes for is muscle
itself. So, the simplest thing a woman
can do is within 30 minutes of waking,
have a little bit of food. Just enough
to tell your hypothalamus, "We're good.
Fuel is coming in. You don't need to
break down muscle today." So, how much
and what should you eat? 15 gram of
protein before resistance training and
15 gram of protein plus 30 grams of
carbohydrates before cardio. And having
protein improves post exercise epoch,
meaning you burn fat afterwards for
longer. I want to know faster training
can benefit certain populations. We'll
discuss that more later in this video.
If your goal is to build muscle, then
eating before training is crucial.
Number two, eat [music] breakfast. Want
better sleep? Start by eating breakfast.
Even if you're not training first thing
in the morning, we want to dampen the
cortisol response over time. Eating
early can bring down your baseline
cortisol. And why does that matter?
Because when cortisol is lower, your
body can finally switch into
parasympathetic mode, which is the rest
and repair system you need for deep
sleep. If cortisol is high all the time,
we're stuck in the sympathetic mode,
more alert and basically stuck in fight
or flight. That's why deep repairative
sleep feels impossible. And if you're
undereing or skipping breakfast, your
nighttime wakeups might not be because
you need to go to the bathroom, but
because of low blood sugar, we want a
circadian rhythm to be tuned to nature,
aka eating during the day and not
[music] at night. Several studies show
that skipping breakfast shifts the
normal cortisol to the right, meaning
you have high cortisol levels later
during the day and at night, which is
not ideal for sleep and appetite. The
daily cortisol pattern was also flatter
than normal, which has been linked to
things like insulin resistance, belly
fat, and high blood pressure. Number
three, eat after training. Let's talk
about why the 30 to 45 minutes after
your workout actually matters so much,
especially for women. Right after
exercise, your body is in a very
specific state. Blood flow to the
muscles is high and your muscles are
super ready to take in nutrients because
it is more receptive to insulin. When
proteins and carbs are consumed during
this [music] window, insulin acts like a
key, opening the door for glucose to be
sent into your muscles for energy and
amino acids for repair. That's why this
period is sometimes called the golden
window. For men, that window stays open
for a very long time, anywhere from 3 to
18 hours after exercise. For women, the
window drops back to baseline much
faster, often within 45 minutes after
exercise. And here's the part most
people don't realize. Recovery starts
when food [music] comes in. Until
nutrients arrive, your body stays in
breakdown mode. For most women, the goal
is 25 to 30 grams of protein within
about 30 to 45 minutes of finishing
training, ideally paired with a small
amount of carbs. The sex hormone
progesterone increases muscle breakdown
in women, especially during the lutal
phase of our menstrual cycle. So you
need more protein to protect your
muscles. And studies show that
exercising in a fed state followed by a
post exercise meal led to lower overall
daily calorie intake. Whereas exercising
while fasted and skipping a post-workout
meal increased hunger and causes your
body to burn fewer calories. Moving on
to the next
Sorry. Moving on to the next. [sighs]
What is it?
>> It's my turn to talk now.
>> Fine. Are you done now? And now, please
give it up for your TED talk to speaker, H.
H.
>> Thank you. Thank you. We love you, H.
>> I love you, too. Today, I want to talk
about something very serious.
>> Humans love being healthy. They use
scales to track progress. And let me
tell you a secret. The number is
misleading. Normal scales can't tell you
how fat, how muscle, or how water you
are. Butts do not feed with the body
part you can. It has 40 health metrics,
easy to understand descriptions and
humanoid diagram that shows muscle and
fats in your arms, legs, and torso. Any questions?
questions?
>> Pick me. Pick me.
>> Yes, you. In the h shirt.
>> What about muscle mass? >> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> Body fat? Yes. Even viseral fat?
>> You bet it's there.
>> Wow. It must be perfect for knowing
whether you're losing fat or gaining muscle.
muscle.
>> Exactly. Next question.
>> Oh, pick me. Pick me. Is there a
discount code that we can use?
>> Ah, I've been waiting for that question.
There's special up to 50% off using code
Hannah. Also, the body part is HSA FSA
eligible in the US, so your insurance
can cover it. Thank you to the body part
Number four, timerestricted fasting. To
fast or not to fast, that is the
question. First, fasting is very
different for men and women. Dr. Mindy
Peltz even published a book named Fast
Like a Girl, where she shares that women
should fast differently depending on
where they are in their menstrual cycle.
Second, fasting isn't a one-sizefits-all [music]
[music]
rule. It's a tool and it should be used
strategically depending on the person.
Though it's not usually recommended for
active women, fasting can be beneficial
for some women like with obesity, PCOS,
and post-menopausal women trying to lose
weight. Fasting can be one tool of
autophagy aka cellular cleanup and
repair. But note exercise is also a very
strong tool for autophagy as well.
Third, fasting is about timing. Dr.
Peltz says eat in the light, fast in the
dark. While Dr. Sims emphasizes eating
in alignment with your circadian rhythm.
Basically both saying the same thing.
During the non-eing period, the body can
be efficiently using up all your glucose
and dropping some of those insulin
levels. Most doctors don't recommend
long fasting periods for women. We're
talking a couple of days because they
can induce a stressful state which can
lead to storage of more visceral fat and
cause increased inflammation and disturb
hormones. Though Dr. Mindy does
recommend longer fasts, she mentions
that the most accessible fast that women
can practice on a semi-regular basis is
13 to [music] 15 hours, which would
basically be eating from 8:00 a.m. and
finishing eating around 5 to 7:00 p.m.
Number five, eat protein. The
recommended dietary allowance of 0.8
gram per kilogram of body weight is
survival doses of protein which was
meant for preventing malnutrition and is
definitely not for people who are active
wanting to build muscle or older women.
The ideal amount of protein is 1.6 g per
kilogram of body weight. And this is
even if you're recreationally active.
There's a study conducted on [music]
women who were skinny fat. Normal BMI,
high body fat percentage, and low muscle
mass. For 12 weeks, two groups ate the
same amount of calories. [music] The
only difference between the two groups
was that the intervention group bumped
their protein intake up to 1.6 g. And
[music] after just 12 weeks, the
intervention group had muscle quality up
and body and visceral fat all down, all
from just eating enough [music] protein.
Further studies also show that protein
intake over 1.6 g had the lowest frailty
scores in older women. Hitting protein
goals isn't just about muscle size or
strength. It's also key for metabolic
and hormonal health. Number six, focus
on gut health. One key feature of female
gut health is the biirectional
relationship between hormones and the
gut microbiome. Some gut bacteria called
estrabalone make an enzyme called glucuronidase.
glucuronidase.
>> This enzyme helps reactivate estrogen
that your body has started to get rid
of, allowing it to go back into your
bloodstream and stay active. This
recycling keeps estrogen levels balanced
and active in the body. But when there
is lower diversity, there are fewer of
these helpful bacteria, so less estrogen
stays active. Gut bacteria can either
help protect against cancer or
contribute to it by changing how cancer
cells use energy and hormones. So what
messes with your gut? Things like
ultrarocessed foods, low- fiber diets.
These can all cause inflammation which
we really want to avoid. So what helps?
Plant-based fiber. Fiber richch foods
feed your gut bacteria, keeping them
strong and efficient. Alongside that, we
want to have our probiotics and
fermented food as well. You can learn
more about gut health and tips to
improve your gut health over here. With
that said, that is the end of this
video. If you want to watch part one of
how women should exercise, you can check
out the link in the description below.
Also, in the description below, you can
find the link and resources to my glowup
challenge, which you can still join.
Hope you guys have an amazing start to
Moving on to tip number four.
Honey, you just wait. I can see. I'm
like blinking before you. Moving on to
tip. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Oh, yeah. It
is tip. Wait. Is it tip? Moving on
[music] to the next. Moving on to the
Hey. [laughter] Hey.
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