This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Fast Like a Girl" by Mindy Pelz. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you know how to fast safely? How do you maximize the benefits of fasting?
While fasting doesn’t seem complicated, Mindy Pelz has a couple of tips for maximizing the benefits of fasting. These are incorporating different-length fasts into your routine, and paying attention to the foods you eat when you’re not fasting.
Let’s explore these two tips in detail.
Tip #1: Incorporate Different-Length Fasts Into Your Routine
According to Pelz, incorporating different-length fasts into your routine prevents your body from adapting to the fasting state, ensuring continued long-term benefits. To clarify how to fast safely by doing this, we’ll explore how your cells respond to both glucose and ketones, then explain how strategically switching between these two fuel sources (by varying fasting lengths) guarantees ongoing benefits.
Up until now, we’ve touched on the downsides of relying solely on glucose as an energy source. However, this doesn’t mean you should always prevent your body from burning glucose. Both fuel sources are essential for your body to function optimally.
- When your body burns glucose, it activates mTOR signaling, a process that builds new cellular structures and contributes to hormone production, muscle building, and cell regeneration.
- When your body burns ketones, it activates autophagy, the cellular detox process we discussed above that breaks down and removes damaged components.
Pelz explains that switching between these two states (by eating and fasting) creates hormetic stress, a beneficial form of stress that encourages cellular adaptation and resilience—like the way new exercises challenge muscles. However, sticking to the same fasting routine every day reduces this stress, causing you to miss out on the beneficial effects of switching between fuel sources. This is because your body gets too comfortable with routine—just as doing the same exercises every day stops having an effect. Therefore, Pelz argues that incorporating different-length fasts prevents your body from adapting to a specific fasting pattern, ensuring it benefits from fasting over the long term.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Mindy Pelz's "Fast Like a Girl" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full Fast Like a Girl summary:
- Why women should be aligning their fasting schedules with their hormonal cycles
- Tips for prolonging and enhancing the benefits of fasting
- How mistiming your fasting can deprive your hormones of nourishment
