dr mindy here and on this video we are going to talk about a whole new hormone the hormone I want to talk to you today is not insulin we tend to think that insulin is the only hormone we need to manage in order to lose weight on this video I'm going to talk about a whole other hormone your fat hormone and what fasts you can use to be able to kick yourself out of resistance to this hormone so stay tuned [Music] let's talk about insulin for a minute and then I'm going to reveal the hormone
okay let's start with this idea insulin is your fat storage hormone insulin is the hormone that will start pushing glucose and toxins and other hormones into your fat cells and will make you have create more atapose tissue but the hormone that I want to talk about today is actually one that affects how you burn that fat and it's called leptin it is your fat burning hormone so and they have found that and I'll link the studies again that they have found that people who carry more atapose tissue have more leptin it is the number one
driver of whether your body will access fat for energy and be able to burn fat so when we come to fasting what we're doing is we're really helping to regulate insulin we don't want the body to store more fat but we can't take out of our sight and out of our picture this hormone leptin we need to tap in to leptin to be able to get our body to burn fat again for energy the thing I want you to know about leptin is just like all hormones leptin isn't working on its own it lives in
the fat cells and it communicates with the hypothalammus in your brain and the when the hypothalammus knows that leptin is down there it will create a signal that allows you to burn that fat for energy but just like you get insulin resistant you get leptin resistant so there are three fasts that you can do that will help to start to kick you out of leptin resistance so let's just dive into the research because the research is incredibly impressive on fasting and leptin first study and first fast your 24-hour fast hopefully you guys know I love
the 24-hour fast it is one of my favorite not only for gut reset but off this study that I'm going to talk about right now what they did is it was a study done on 14 obese women and 12 lean women so it's a female study hallelujah we don't have a lot of those in fasting but you've got 26 women about half of them were obese half of them were lean and they put them on a 24-hour fast and here's what they found they found some changes in leptin but they also found changes in insulin
so I want to make sure that you're clear on the changes that happened in just one 24-hour fast so they saw not only did their BMI start to go down but their serum leptin went down in the obese individuals that leptin went down by 20% in the lean individuals leptin went down by 62% so just in those two statistics you could look at those and say,"Well why do the lean people lose leptin so much faster from a 24-hour fast than the obese people?" Because there are parameters that make you leptin resistant what those parameters are
what is making people leptin resistant but I first want you to understand that if you want to bring your leptin levels down so that your body can start to burn fat better you're going to need to tap into some 24-hour fasts okay the other thing in this study by the way is they saw insulin go down by 23% in both obese and lean women which I think was quite interesting okay second fast that is helpful to to get your body burning leptin again and using this hormone efficiently and it's any fast that will increase BDNF
so they have show and studies are showing that the higher the BDNF brain fertilizer the lower the leptin levels so okay let's go back to what we know about fasting what is the number one fast that increases BDNF i hope you guys know that've been following me for a while it is the dry fast so these are the Ramadan fast people who are going sun up to sun down without any food or water for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours is what we recommend no more than 24 hours for dry fasting um and of course
during Ramadan they do it for 30 days but you want to get your BDNF levels up so that your leptin levels can go down now I'm going to throughout this week I promise you there are some really cool ways to get BDNF up other than just fasting but fast number two is the dry fast and then the third fast that I recommend to be able to become leptin sensitive again is anything that will stimulate autophagy so the study that we are seeing and this was a mouse study that people who had a dysfunctional autophagy process
in the cells specifically in the hypothalamus of the brain became more leptin resistant so if you're hearing all of this and you're frustrated with losing weight what I want you to know is there are three variations to fasting you're going to lean into you're going to lean into the 24-hour fast you're gonna lean into some 12hour dry fasting is where I would recommend you start and then you'll lean into some autophagy fasting those are going to be your leptin uh sensitive fasts those are going to be the ones that are going to go after your
fat hormone so now you compare when you eat you can put that with certain foods okay this video is so needed so stick with me as I walk you through this process so the first thing I want you to know is that when we come to fasting and the ketogenic diet or and or any version of the ketogenic diet we get really excited about this idea of fat burning but what I want you to know is you're not meant to be a fat burner all the time and when it comes to leptin resistance leptin again
being your fat burning hormone when it comes to leptin resistance fasting isn't enough keto isn't enough what you've got to do is you've got to get yourself in a state of metabolic switching so there is a really interesting study that I'm linking in the notes that is showing that intermittent metabolic switching will increase a protein in your body called BDNF so brain derived neurotropic factor and BDNF is like a brain fertilizer it's like miracle grow for your brain and it'll help you grow new neurons this is fabulous for when you want to improve memory this
is amazing for those of you that are learning you're maybe you're in school or you're studying for a test you want to get a lot of BDNF but what this study shows is that you do BDNF has to come through going in and out of states of sugar burning and fat burning and what is so important about this is that not only do you have to switch in and out of these two states to get BDNF but as BDNF goes up guess what hormone goes down leptin if we want to get BDNF then we're going
to need to go in and out of these two states and I want to read you something from the study this is actually a line from the study it said that intermittent metabolic switching is repeating cycles of metabolic challenge that induces ketosis that's fat burning and they put in parentheses the challenge is fasting or exercise so you need to put yourself in a fasted challenge or you need to put yourself in an exercise challenge in order to tap into the ketogenic pathway for energy and then it goes on to say "But then you have to
follow that with a recovery period." And the recovery period is when you're eating you're resting or you're sleeping so go back to the video I did on sleep there were three things I taught you guys that are really important to know about sleep when it comes to leptin so in order to get BDNF to go up and leptin to come down you can't just fast you got to do metabolic switching so now what exactly does BDNF do other than lower leptin there are two other things it does for your weight loss efforts one is it
suppresses your appetite okay that's going to be really helpful right so if I'm going to try fasting or get over into this ketogenic pathway I got to make sure that my my hunger is down the third the second thing is it lowers leptin and then the third thing is it regulates your blood sugar better it is literally like this miracle protein that you're going to want to access so how do you access it how do we get you in and out well dry fasting is an incredible way to increase BDNF but what I didn't perhaps
tell you in a deeper part of that story is that dry fasting specifically when they studied it in the in the parameters of Ramadan is that dry fasting will increase BDNF but what do they do in Ramadan what do they do when they're dry fasting they're eating in the morning they're dry fasting all day long and then they're eating at night so they're going into a metabolic stress and then they are going into a recovery period so the first thing if you want to bring BDNF up is you need to do a fast intermittent fasting's
fine autophagy fasting's great you could pair any fast but then you want to go into a recovery period and you want it to ideally not be a ketogenic recovery so going into a fasted state and then recovering with a low carb diet that might not do it so what you've got to do is get yourself over into more of a sugar burner doesn't mean you're going to do a fast and then go to McDonald's or eat a big piece of cake you could go into the carnivore diet or you could go into a hormone building
day like for women in menopause that I've taught you guys how to use hormone building techniques or protein cycling you could fast for 15 hours and then decide that you're going to recover with protein cycling so there's a lot of ways that you can use these principles to switch in and out but if you had a test that showed your leptin was high you're going to want to get BDNF high if you had if you know your leptin's high you're really struggling to lose weight you want to get BDNF high and in the fasting principle
that will get BDNF high is the metabolic switching okay how else do we get good BDNF and that really comes from something called HIT training it's an exercise and what's interesting about HIT training is what are you doing you're going into periods of stress that's what this study showed it's where you're like doing a jumping jack as fast as you can or you're running in place as fast as you can i recommend you do it for 30 seconds and then you recover for 90 seconds so if you want to pull yourself out of leptin resistance
then you want to make sure that you're pushing yourself hard enough and then recovering what wouldn't pull you out of leptin resistance with exercise is getting on the treadmill and running at the same rate the whole time you're just burning calories and we've already decided that insulin and leptin resistance they don't care about your calories they care about metabolic flexibility so if you want to use exercise as a tool to get yourself out of leptin resistance you're going to need to get that heart rate up and down where you push it and then you rest
so really interesting study i will link it in the notes i more and more I dive into this information the more convinced I am that we are meant to have our cake and eat it too and I mean that where we're meant to fast but then we're also meant to to go through feast periods we're meant to work out really hard and we're meant to rest so we've got to use all of these tools to learn again we have to learn over again how this body wants us to treat it and we've gotten so far
off course because we get up we eat all day we don't think about ever getting into the the metabolic pathway of the ketogenic pathway we just eat all day we don't think about what we're eating we think about what our taste buds want we're not moving the human race right now we don't have these metabolic switching periods and it's in that switch where the magic happens so the first part of getting yourself out of leptin resistance is you want to look at three different types of fasts the research is showing us dry fasting can get
you out of leptin resistance that there's an autophagy dysfunction that happens with people who have leptin resistance so you want to lean into more autophagy fasting and then the 24-hour fast and remember I only re I don't recommend more than 24 hours dry fast dry fast autophagy fasting and the 24-hour fast those are your go-to leptin resistant fasts okay we also talked about there are four food changes you need to make to kick yourself out of leptin resistance so first one you're going to keep your carbs down this is definitely proven over and over to
keep those carbs down but you're going to increase your protein those of you that are doing a low keto diet or you're doing ketobiotic or a keto vegetarian you want to increase your protein not a ton you could increase it by 15% 15 20% is what the science is saying the second thing is many of you are lectin sensitive not to be confused with leptin this is lectin lectins are in your cereals your millets your grains they're also in corn rice quinoa they're also in your beans your all types of legumes and they're also in
pasteurized dairy so you might need to take those lectins out in order to get yourself leptin sensitive again so food number two is decrease your lectins the third thing you're going to want to do and this is for those of you that are are getting blood tests regularly I want you to look at your triglycerides the lower your triglycerides when they're in a healthy normal range you're going to bring your leptin levels down so make sure you're bringing your triglycerides down the research I showed you in that video was from the New England Journal of
Medicine showing that a low carb diet is one of the strategies for bringing your triglycerides down and then the fourth food and this is just a good general principle is avoid processed foods processed foods are fake foods they have the inflammatory oils they're usually high in sugar they will make you both insulin sensitive and they'll make you leptin sensitive so if you are looking to take your weight loss to the next level look at those four food principles and you can match them to the fasts and I'll show you again how this all plays out
on a like a weekly basis uh in a moment so stay tuned okay the third thing we talked about was sleep so there were three things you had to look at was sleep we had to look at how much sleep you were getting so remember I said you have to get at least more than five hours five hours and less was making people more leptin resistant but then we also looked at the power of making sure that you're getting morning sunlight that that morning light will set your circadian clock and can help with bringing leptin
levels down we also talked about red light therapy and then and then the third piece of sleep was consistency when you go to bed at midnight one night get up at 5 the next night you go to bed at 9:00 get up at 8 that up and down with your habits of sleep is really damaging to your brain and can affect how your brain will start to heal and process fat so with sleep you want to work on those three things and then the last piece we talked about was metabolic stressors so so many of
you guys I I mean many of us when we come to these principles we get so excited about being a fat burner but the name of the game isn't to be a fat burner the name of the game is to go in and out of this metabolic switching state and so there are a couple ways you can do that you can pair any of those three fasts I just taught you so I taught you how to dry fasting autophagy 24hour you compare that with a feasting meal what I notice is that so many women especially
we go into this restriction with keto and it throws our hormones off so if we want to use the principles of metabolic stressors and switching you could do like a 24 or a 17-hour fast and combine it with some hormone building foods now you're using that you're stressing and you're recovering you're stressing and you're recovering and that in and out is what is bringing leptin both insulin and leptin down so that would be one strategy was hit training that when you do an exercise that brings your heart rate up and then you recover and then
brings your heart rate up and then you recover that metabolic stressing uh mechanism will also bring leptin down so what this could look like for you in in a week schedule is some days you do intermittent fasting 13 to 15 hours and you follow that with a keto meal the next day you could do a longer fast you could do a 24-hour fast and maybe do carnivore that night the next day you could decide hey I'm going to autophagy fast this day and you can do 17 hours and keep your protein down and break your
fast with fat it's all of the switching in and out of the different fasts and the different foods that is going to bring both of these hormones down and those of you who've been through any of my resets before you know this is what I'm teaching if that's really confusing to you I always tell people start with a 511 5 days a week intermittent fast and choose an eating style of your choice one day a week fast 24 hours one day a week don't fast that's a really good metabolic switching routine the other thing is
look at your exercise variation a lot of times we just do the same exercise over and over and over again but what we learned this week with leptin resistance is that we need to push the body and then relax the body so some days you could do a hard workout the next day you could do yoga some days you could go on a hike the next day you do sprints so it's the variation that's going to really have an impact when you're looking at your exercise and then the last thing I'll just remind you again
is sleep matters so many of you guys are working really hard at building a fasting lifestyle and then you don't get a result and sleep might be that okay have you been watching my videos and you're like I don't know how to put this stuff all together you might need my fasting lifestyle free course i'll teach you exactly how to do it just click on the link below it'll take it to you and it's absolutely free my gift to you okay there is a hormone that makes you fat and it's not insulin we have two
hormones that cause you to hold on to weight the first one is insulin so insulin is what is storing your excess and leptin is actually a hormone that lives in our atapost tissue and sends a signal up to the brain and says "Hey I'm down here you may want to burn me for fat as fuel but the problem is just like we get resistant to insulin we become resistant to leptin so really interesting study as always i'll link the study in my notes what they that they looked at people who were on low carb diets
and they took one group and they lowered their carbs down and they kept their protein pretty much equal to what they were eating before and they went and measured their insulin and leptin levels after being on this diet for several days and they found that just lowering carbs by itself didn't really have much of a change didn't create much of a change in leptin so then with the second group what they did is they kept the carbs low again just like the first group but this time they asked the second group to up their protein
by 15% so just a little increase in protein and the minute they upped their protein what happened is that their leptin levels went down so leptin is not only the fat burning hormone but it does have an impact on your hunger so their belief in the study was that as they upped the protein on these low carb diets is that it killed hunger and when it killed hunger people ate less and when they ate less leptin started to go down so my first recommendation to you is if you are keto if you are low in
carbs it may be time for you to up your uh protein and make sure that you're eating a little more protein okay so that's step number one step number two and those of you been following me you're going to see a trend here of what diet I'm going to recommend at the end that hits all four of these points by the way step number two they have found that people who are sensitive to lectins and I'll explain where you get lectins in a moment also become leptin resistant so lectins you ready for the list i'm
going to power through them really quick are found in a lot of your grains so your wheat rye barley wheat germ quinoa rice oats millets and corn but we also find lectins in legumes we find them in dried beans soy peanuts and in pasteurized dairy coming from grain-fed cows not grass-fed so what they what they discovered in this study was if you had a diet high in lectins that those lectins went into the receptor sites of leptin and made you leptin resistant so the second food change I would encourage you to make is to pull
the lectins out so remember the first you're going to up your protein second we're going to pull lectins out number three the third diet change that needs to happen when you have high triglycerides it prevents the transportation of leptin from fat up to the brain so you want to keep your triglycerides low and in this study what they said this was actually a study in the New England Journal of Medicine what they said is how the best way to keep your triglycerides low is through a low carb diet well we love low carb diets and
that matches really well with staying away from lectins and it also matches really well with a higher protein low carb diet okay number four is processed foods so at the root of all obesity issues lives processed foods your bad oils your fake ingredients uh everything when you walk into a supermarket in those center aisles that is all your processed foods so the fourth thing you're going to want to make sure is that you're not eating those toxic what I call fake foods the fake foods are going to increase leptin in your body and make you
more leptin resistant okay so if you keep those four things in mind what diet comes to mind and I I know you guys who've been following me for a while are already thinking it which is the carnivore diet so we have seen in our resetter community that when people go on a carnivore style diet there's a lot of different variations they're removing the lectins they're removing the processed foods they're bringing the carbs down and they're upping the protein so they're m meetinging all four of those steps and they start to lose weight but not only
are they losing weight and temporarily not only are they helping insulin but they are bringing those leptin levels down for good okay check this out i have a free fasting guide for you all it's free and it's going to teach you all the basics of fasting it's going to teach how to kill hunger when you fast which is really cool and it's going to show you how to break your fast among many other things all you got to do is click on this link right here and enjoy leptin is your fat burning hormone it lives
in the fat goes up to the brain and tells the brain to burn fat for energy and there are three things you need to think about when it comes to your sleep so that you can make this system work a lot better and kick yourself out of leptin resistance okay the first one and this is kind of like I know you're going to be the dreaded one you're going to be like I know I know I'm supposed to sleep more but I want to explain the nuances of what we're seeing in the research so the
number one thing you've got to look at is the amount of sleep so what they have found is that it typically takes if for a person to stay healthy and free from leptin resistance is usually about 7 to n hours a night the study that is showing where leptin starts to go up that you get more leptin is when you're consistently getting 5 hours of sleep or less so my first recommendation to you on sleep is make sure you're getting more than 5 hours and you want to be closer to that 7hour mark if possible
now there's if you're thinking well gosh I can't get more than five hours you struggle to sleep maybe you sleep you have a night shift that you that you've been doing you have young kids there's a couple of caveats to this that are really intriguing the second thing is that when you get up in the morning they are finding that as soon as your eyes register light it starts your circadian rhythm now what's interesting is you don't have to like have your eyes open to see the light you can just have your eyes closed and
if the light is coming in from your uh from your windows your brain starts to register that it's daytime and it'll start to set your circadian clock what they've noticed in the setting of the circadian clock early in the morning is that specifically you are getting more red light so we have the most amount of red light in the morning at sunrise we have the most amount of red light at night and it is this red light that will start to bring down your leptin levels how cool is that so the study went on to
say that if you only got 5 hours of sleep but you woke up to light and you registered red light early in the morning that you you would still bring your leptin levels down that the amount of sleep didn't matter as much as long as you were registering this red light early in the morning because it is that light that sets your circadian clock how cool is that so what do you need to do to register that red light well couple things I'll tell you that I've been doing is getting up with before the sun
rises and making sure I have a what I call my thinking chair i get up and I do my morning ritual i do my meditation and my fill my mind up with positive thoughts before the day begins and I make sure it's near the the the window so I'm registering the light coming in my brain is registering that the day is starting there al also are some really interesting alarm clocks that will actually in your room start to turn on the light so even as you're like you know your eyes are closed if that alarm
clock is the light starting to fill the room that's starting your circadian clock bringing that leptin level down and then as many of you know we love the biohack of the Jew light so that's our personal there's a lot of great red lights out there we personally use the JV light so if you have like a JV Mini or a JWV go you can just put that right next to your morning chair and make sure that you're getting red light early on and that will reset your circadian clock it'll make it easier for you to
go to bed at the end of the day and it will also bring your leptin levels down how cool is that okay third thing that I want to tell you on sleep the most important part of sleep is not the amount it's not the light that I just talked about it's not necessarily the depth of your deep sleep or your REM sleep but it's your consistency of sleep if you go and get 10 hours of sleep one night and the next night you get seven hours and then you get five and then you get eight
that inconsistency of sleep is more damaging to the neurons of the brain than if you're getting five hours consistently over and over and over and over again so let's put these three principles together if you know that you don't get a lot of sleep couple things you're going to want to do you want to make sure you're waking up to light you might even wake up to red light and you want to make sure you're going to bed at the same time and that you're getting up at the same time those two pieces seem to
have more of an influence on our what our brain does when we sleep and seems to have more of an influence on our leptin levels than anything else in in related to sleep okay you trying to maximize your weight loss apple cider vinegar may be the key go check out this video where I show you exactly when how and why you want to use it for weight loss apple cider vinegar changes your microbiome of your gut this good bacteria is going to help to bring your blood sugar down and make it so that you can
switch over into the fat burning
