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

  • Writer: Dr. Mindy Pelz
    Dr. Mindy Pelz
  • 2 hours ago
  • 2 min read

EP343 with Dr. Mindy Pelz



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



Resources Mentioned:


Studies Referenced:



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