What up, homies! Welcome to Women of Impact Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bilyu, and today, today, my guest is the author of the book, I'm so effing tired. The fasting MD herself, Dr. Amy Shah. Guys, we're diving deep into why fasting is not the same for women as it is for men, and how we can naturally increase our energy levels, feel better about ourselves, and optimize our monthly cycle. She shares super easy tactics that you can implement into your life, whether you're a fasting freaking pro or a complete newbie. So guys, get absolutely ready, get out your notebook, get out your pen, I'm telling you, you don't want to miss this one. With all the freaking gems, she's about to drop. If this did bring you value, please please do rate, review and subscribe and share.

Tell all your homies, let them know that they too can also be a woman of impact. Alright, now without further ado guys, let's get into it with my girl, Dr Amy Shah. Welcome to Women of Impact. What I want to talk to you about is so many people say right now that fasting is just another form of an eating disorder accepted. Now being the fasting MD, what do you say to that? Fasning is like exercise, right? You can exercise to the point where you injure your body. You can overdo it, you can become obsessed. And that's how intermittent fasting is. The way it's portrayed in the literature and in the social media realm is like this hard thing where you can't eat all day, and then you push yourself to the max. And that can be very detrimental, just thinking in that way that it's about deprivation,

it's about control, it's about food is the enemy and that's like diet culture, right? So we want to turn it back and flip it back and say, hey, just like a nature walk, it's so good for you as a form of exercise just for almost everyone. circadian fasting, looking at time of day and eating with the rhythm of the earth and with yourself is equivalent to like a nature walk. Everyone will benefit mentally and physically and so then it becomes, hey, you don't have to do 24 hour fast. You don't have to even do a 16 hour fast. Just do a 12 hour overnight fast and see how good you feel and guess what? People around the world were eating for 16 hours a day. We don't take a 12 hour break. Taking a 12 hour natural biological break, that doesn't sound like fasting, but it is. That's what I call circadian fasting. Okay, we're going to go deep on this. I get so excited about this sort of thing. So I want

to start with the benefits. So just give me a couple of things like you said confidence, like building your confidence. By fasting you can actually build your confidence. So what other things are going to be beneficial for people to really want to dive deep on us on this interview today. You are going to, you won't believe the clarity, BDNF, which is a brain neurotypic, who doesn't want to grow their brain cells, right? You can grow your brain cells and then you want lower inflammation because inflammation leads to disease, brain fog, feeling, sad, depression is inflammation. So by following circadian rhythms, sinking your life by fasting overnight, getting sunlight during the day, it builds up this brain gut connection that makes you feel more confident and actually lowers your risk of anxiety and depression. And so building up that gut health by intermittent fasting, by following the sun's rhythms of the day, you can actually boost the way you feel on a daily basis. People don't make that connection. They think it's just about, oh, you feel how you feel right now, you know? No, you're feeling how the bacteria in your gut are feeling and what they walkie-talkie to your brain.

When I first had something like this, I was like, it doesn't make sense. Like, what do you eat? Doesn't really affect your body. I didn't understand the connection. And then one simple idea was like, oh, hangry is a thing. Yeah. So you don't eat, listen, you get mad. Now when you're mad, it feels real.

But really, it's just like,

oh no, you just need to fuel your body.

So with everything you're saying of how you show up,

to understand. when you get mad, now when you're mad, it feels real. But really, it's just like, oh no, you just need to feel your body.

So with everything you're saying of how you show up, to understand how fasting can impact anxiety and depression, God, that's freaking next level. Like to me, that becomes a, I'm always about, don't judge yourself for the way you feel or the way that you are, but just look outside and see what can you do about it. Yeah. And so by you saying like this can really help depression, this can really help anxiety, this can help your confidence.

Yes.

Is now as a female, like I'm taking back the control of my own body. Yes. Women already have double the rates of anxiety and depression than men, than men. Why is that? And that's the question. What is it that we have doubled the rates So is it that we are having hormonal issues? You know how you feel depressed or anxious right before your period? Is it that it's being labeled as anxiety and depression because we don't know women's hormones? Perimenopause, the years before, 10 to 15 years before you hit menopause, you have hormonal swings that look like anxiety and depression. It's diagnosed as as anxiety and depression But really it's that we are changing our hormones and we don't understand why we feel the way we feel So that's why I talk so much about hey, we know what we can do to actually boost your mood to boost your energy to boost your confidence Through science yet we leave it on the table. Wow. that's so fascinating. Okay, so let's talk about hormones because that's

where you started. How does fasting affect our hormones? And how do we... I'm going to say manipulate you, mate. Yes. But how do we actually manipulate our hormones to make us feel the way we want to feel by using fasting? Okay, I'm going to tell you something as mindblowing, but for women, you can fast and eat in accordance to your hormones. You have never been told that there's a way to eat, to fast, to exercise, that actually works with your hormones and cycles you through a monthly plan that is based in biology. So as you know, with women, most women have a 28-day cycle. And so I always say, learn your cycle. It's a vital sign. And then you can coordinate your fasting, your eating, your exercise, your life to that cycle. And your life will feel so much better. You'll feel more in in control and you'll feel happier. It's all understand what's happening. Yeah. The vital sign things so fascinating is so powerful. So take me through what that first step is. So people are listening to a really long board, a kayak, I want to improve my depression. Oh, I just want to get good about myself. I want to find the confidence. What's that first step? So how do you recognize your your cycle. Yes, take me to the step by step of that. This is a simplest way I've tried

a million different ways. want to find the confidence, what's that first step? So how do you recognize your cycle? Yes. Take me through the step.

Okay. Step of that.

This is a simplest way. I've tried a million different ways. People sometimes they just know, you know, okay, I put on my calendar, like I put on my calendar. But if you're new to this and you're like, oh, wait, you can control how you feel on a daily basis by learning more about your hormones? Yes. The day of your period for most women, they're having a period

every 20 days, right? The day one of your period. The couple of days before that, you feel like shit. Those couple of days before you feel like the world is prumbling, you hate your partner, your business sucks, you're never going anywhere in life. And that is not you talking. That is your hormones talking. Your estrogen is really low and your serotonin, they feel good hormone is really low. And that's why people reach for the bag of candy. That's why we're eating all the chocolate. That's why we're crying because our life just feels awful right now. But understand, I'm telling you women, understand that don't make any rash decisions about your life during those couple of days. Don't feel like, oh my god, I might need to go on medications because of this couple of days or I need to end my relationship. Wait. Just wait till day one, day two, probably day three of your period when hormones reset and watch how you feel. So I tell people those three to five days before you don't have to test. Guess what? You don't have to exercise. You want to concentrate on self care. So if that means fasting 12 hours, great. That means going for nature walks instead of your high intensity workouts. You want to concentrate on self-care. So if that means fast in 12 hours, great. That means going for nature walks instead of your high-intensity workouts, you need to give your body a little reprieve because your hormones have dropped during that, what we call the PMS week, in medical terms, we call it the late-luteal phase. So even just learning that one fact will change your life. That late-luteal phase, before your period, you're going to feel more tired. Your hormones have dropped. You're going to feel like you can't work out and stash as much. And you're going to probably feel like shit. And that's part of it. And is this everything you're saying? Is this the difference in between the idea behind men-fawsting and the idea behind women's I think Is that obviously the men don't have the same rhythm? Yeah. And so they can almost, do they reboot every day? Whereas women is like, it's the 20 days. For example, we have a testosterone spike at the middle of our cycle. So like after the period week, there's one more week and then day 14, like the middle of our cycle, we get a testosterone spike, which men have all the time. During that time, you might be able to do fasting similar to man, to a man. You may see that, oh, you have a little more capability of, so now we know that there is a hormonal connection between fasting and hormones, but guess what? There's zero studies in the science that ever looked at it. There's rat studies that are poor studies that don't even, you know, understand, 13 studies in the whole literature. So what we're talking about now is not talked about. This is brand new information. You can't just retrofit the information for men, for women. We know that we can't. We actually know we have proven that there's many conditions across medicine where, for example, a sleeping, a popular sleeping pill called the ambient. It worked completely differently in women. Metabolize completely differently affects hormones. You can't just give the same dose or a little bit smaller dose to, it't work in the same way and so we can't just assume That men's physiology is going to be the same. It's not we've proven that all right, so I love that so Day 14 yeah roughly guys if you're if you're listening put on your calendar day 14 This is when I get the spike with this lost right? This is when what I have more confidence, more energy, quite set down for me. You can go harder on your workouts. You'll have more confidence. You're at the peak of your energy, your power. So if you could schedule your life around the last couple of days before your period, the late-lead-of-year phase, don't make big decisions for your business, for your life, for your relationships. And then middle of the cycle of day 14, if you can catch that couple of days, you're gonna feel in your power. This is the time to take advantage of it. If you have the option to do something big and confident and bold, that's the time. Okay, I love it. Because literally you're taking me through a way that I can not judge myself for being the way I do, but using it as a way to really, again, like show up on, on no, not to show up today because it's, it's not going, you're not going to actually be able to be your forself even if you want be. Now that you understand your physiology, you have the power now to control it. Now you can say that I want to be my best self and here's how I'm going to make that happen by scheduling things the way to empower my biology. You just so beautifully eloquently in your book talk about how fasting then really does impact your gut and I really want to talk about gut health. A lot of my audience already know that I've been suffering from massive gut health for six years to the point where when it first happened I couldn't stand up for longer than five minutes at a time. My hair was falling out, my nails were brittle and it took me over a year to even be able to eat more than like four or five different ingredients. I was that malnutrition, and of course with that, the gut health just completely falling apart, affected every aspect of my life, from my sleep to how I felt about myself, my confidence, my moods, my relationship, everything. So I really want to talk about the importance of gut health. And so if you don't want to take me through, how on a false thing actually helps with your gut health? Okay, so you're all about radical confidence, right? Yeah, buddy. So you're a confidence right now. Your anxiety level, your happiness, it's coming from your gut. And it is these bacteria can determine. We know that when you're feeling happy, and if you're always happy, your gut bacteria look different from someone who's always feeling bad. And so it's fascinating to me. So then you think, oh, wait, if gut bacteria have the power to change your mood, they also have the power to change your personality and your confidence levels. You can control this through the gut brain connection. And this is where we blow open the world of mental health, because it's not about taking something for your brain anymore. Yes. Okay. So what's the first step? How does somebody use or assist their gut health and then use fasting as a way to improve the gut health so that they can show up to be confident and happy? When, that's the billion dollar question, right? So people are designing probiotics or, you know, this and that what we do know is that increasing the number of gut bacteria and the diversity we want diverse. We want all the different types of bacteria. And right now in our guts is modern people, we have less diverse and less bacteria. I mean, there's a hypothesis says that the more sterile your gut becomes, the worse the outcomes of health, depression, autoimmune disease, asthma, allergies, food allergies. And so what we do by something like sinking to the sun, circadian fasting is that we're saying, oh, you know that gut bacteria that live in these

bales, these start bales, they have circadian rhythms and they actually need to live and eat with the sun also. And so it's once you understand that, oh, I have power to grow these bacteria. I can nurture these bacteria. It's crazy to me that we have found that 5,000 years ago are they've been able to sequence gut of people that lived then. Their bacteria were more diverse and they had more. And so we've of course come a long way of modern times and we're done amazing things but in in some ways we've gone backwards. And we have tribes today that still live similar called the Hazda tribe in Tanzania. They're like hunter-gatherers. They live, they're one of the only places in the world where they still live kind of in the traditional way that we think was present five thousand years ago. Their guts, yes, they have more diversity, they have more bacteria. What are they doing? They don't eat first thing in the morning and they don't eat late at night and they eat fresh, diverse foods and they're eating, you know, small meals all day long. So we learn a lot from that kind of world. And we're saying, oh yeah, that makes sense. There's no refrigerators, microwaves, or drive-throughs at midnight back then. So maybe you shouldn't be having your biggest meal of the day, you know, right before you go to bed at midnight. What I think about it and where I talk about it with people and in my book is think about biologically

how to support yourself. Now you don't have to be, Lisa and I don't have to be, we don't have to be exactly the same. You got to listen to your body. If you finish eating at 7 p.m., I can finish eating at 8 p.m. or you can finish at 5 and I can, it doesn't have to be in in an exact time, there has to be two to three hours before bed to be optimal.

And when you wake up, don't just roll out of bed and have a glass of orange juice, you

know, maybe... doesn't have to be in exact time, but it has to be two to three hours before bed to be optimal.

And when you wake up, don't just roll out of bed and have a glass of orange juice. You know, maybe go for a little walk, go for a fasted workout like biologically you're supposed to. You know, back then they didn't have something at the bedside or right at the kitchen, right when they got up. You know, maybe take your time to have your first meal of the day. doesn't have to be noon or one or three.

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