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30-Day Fasting Reset Challenge

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The 30-Day Fasting Reset has three essential criteria: First, it must metabolically flex you in and out of different-length fasts to provide enough of a hormetic stress so that your body adapts positively. Second, if you have a cycle, it needs to be timed to where you are in your cycle. If you don’t have a cycle, it needs to supply all the neurochemical needs your hormones have in order to thrive. Lastly, resets are best done with a community.

The three different-length fasts you will lean in to with this 30-day reset range from 13 hours to 20 hours. If you haven’t fasted before, please make sure you do the two-week pre-reset work laid out below. This will make your 30-day reset experience much smoother.

You will be moving in between no fasting, intermittent fasting, autophagy fasting, and a gut-reset fast. All are perfectly timed to your cycle. Now here is the hard part about creating a reset for women: All of you are in different places in your cycle. And some of you don’t have a cycle.

If you do have a cycle, the first thing I want you to do if you are not already doing it is track your cycle. You want to start this reset on day one of your cycle and follow it all the way through until the moment you start to bleed again. If you have a 28-day cycle, then this will be a 28-day reset.

If you don’t have a cycle, you can start this reset anytime you want and go all the way through for 30 days. This works fabulously for younger women who have lost their period and want it back, as well as for postmenopausal women who want to balance the hormones that might have gone on a wild ride throughout the menopause years. The beauty of this reset is that it has the power to pull you out of any imbalance you may have and get your hormones back in sync.

 

PRE-RESET: TWO WEEKS LEADING UP TO YOUR 30-DAY FASTING RESET

If you have never fasted before, don’t worry. This pre-reset is for you. Think of it as time to prepare your body for the fasting experience that is to come. I realize that you may have been eating six meals a day or indulging in many of the foods the Western diet provides. Jumping into a 17-hour fast with a dramatic food change could provide a strong stress response that makes you feel pretty crummy. Doing the pre-reset is a beautiful way to ease your body into the lifestyle changes you are about to make. If you are new to fasting, it takes about two weeks to prepare yourself for this 30-day experience. This is the right amount of time to see your blood sugar begin to come down, making it easier to move into a fasted state. Taking your time and setting yourself up with this pre-reset so that you succeed with your new fasting lifestyle is key. There are three easy parts to the pre-reset: foods to avoid, foods to add in, and compressing your eating window.

 

Foods to avoid

The first category of foods to avoid are the bad oils that cause your cells to inflame and make you insulin resistant. They also often make you hungrier, which can easily derail your fasting efforts. In order to best avoid these oils, you are going to want to read ingredient labels. You might even have some of these oils in your house. If possible, I highly recommend you throw them out and replace them with healthier options like olive, avocado, and MCT oil.
The harmful oils you want to avoid are:

  • Partially hydrogenated oils
  • Corn oil
  • Cottonseed oil
  • Canola oil
  • Vegetable oil
  • Soybean oil
  • Safflower oil
  • Sunflower oil

You will also want to avoid refined sugars and flours. These foods are higher on the glycemic index and will put you on an up-and-down blood sugar roller coaster that can also make fasting harder. Removing them now will minimize any cravings you may get as you swap out inflammatory foods for healthy foods.
Foods high in refined flours and sugars include:
  • Breads
  • Pastas
  • Crackers
  • Desserts

When it comes to refined flours, women will often ask me about gluten-free flours. Many women are discovering that their bodies don’t do well with gluten, the protein found in wheat. For some women, gluten can cause brain fog, weight gain, loss of energy, and a whole host of digestive problems. Although removing gluten from a product can help both your gut and brain, many gluten-free foods still spike your blood sugar and should be avoided during both the pre-reset and the 30-day reset itself.

The third group of foods to remove are the ones filled with chemicals. Commonly found obesogens are high-fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, and sugar substitutes like NutraSweet. NutraSweet, for example, can spike both glucose and insulin, and can stimulate the hunger centers in your brain. This is not the optimal environment you are looking for to thrive with your fasting lifestyle.

Common synthetic ingredients to avoid:
  • Artificial colors and flavorings
  • Red or blue dyes
  • Saccharin
  • NutraSweet
  • Splenda

Foods To add

As you begin to remove some of the harmful foods that you have been eating for years, you may notice an uptick in unwanted cravings. This often happens for two reasons. One, because processed foods can feed bad microbes in your gut that control your cravings, as you pull these foods out of your diet, microbes often scream at you for more food. It can take up to three days for them to stop yelling at you. Two, these inflammatory foods often put your blood sugar on a roller-coaster ride, and when you remove them, it takes a couple of days for your blood sugar to even out. The best way to stop these cravings is to stabilize your blood sugar and kill your hunger hormones. This can be accomplished by adding more good fats and protein into your diet.

Good fats to add:
  • Olive oil
  • Avocado oil
  • MCT oil
  • Flaxseed oil
  • Pumpkin seed oil
  • Grass-fed butter
  • Nut butters
  • Olives
  • Avocados

Healthy proteins to add:

  • Grass-fed beef
  • Bison
  • Turkey
  • Chicken
  • Pork
  • Eggs
  • Charcuterie meats like salami and prosciutto


Compressing your eating window


During this time, you want to start to train your body for fasting. We call it compressing your eating window. At the start of this two-week period, move your breakfast back an hour. If you normally eat breakfast at 7 A.M., push it back to 8 o’clock.

Every two days, push your breakfast another hour—9 A.M., then 10 A.M., etc.—until you can successfully go 13 hours without food. Once you can do that, you are ready for your 30-Day Fasting Reset.

If you want to push your dinner back an hour and breakfast up an hour until you hit that 13-hour mark, that’s okay as well. For example, if you normally finish dinner at 8 P.M. and eat breakfast at 6 A.M., you could finish your dinner at 7 P.M. and not eat breakfast until 8 A.M. This would give you a 13-hour fasting window.

 

THE 30-DAY FASTING RESET


Whenever I start a new health program, I like to see the big picture of what I am doing first; then my mind is more receptive to the details. With that in mind, let’s get a general overview of what your 30-day reset will look like and then go into the details.
There are three ground rules to remember as you move through this reset: You will avoid four major food categories, use two different eating styles, and experience three different fasting lengths.

OVERVIEW

Avoid
  • Bad oils
  • Refined flours and sugar
  • Toxic chemical ingredients
  • Alcohol
Food styles
  • Ketobiotic
  • Hormone feasting

Types of fasting

  • Intermittent fasting (13 hours and 15 hours)
  • Autophagy fasting (17 hours)
With the ground rules in place, let’s walk through what your 30-Day Fasting Reset will look like. Remember, this reset is designed to help you metabolically shift in a way that maximizes your hormone production, so you will want to follow each day as it is laid out. The fasting length is what moves the most with this reset, especially in the power phases, so be sure you keep a close watch as to how long you should be fasting each day. Here is a day-to-day guide to your 30-day reset:

POWER PHASE 1

Food choice throughout the phase: ketobiotic
Days 1–4: intermittent fasting (13 hours)
Day 5: intermittent fasting (15 hours)
Days 6–10: autophagy fasting (17 hours)

MANIFESTATION PHASE

Food choice throughout the phase: hormone feasting foods
Days 11–15: intermittent fasting (13 hours)

POWER PHASE 2

Food choice throughout the phase: ketobiotic
Days 16–19: intermittent fasting (15 hours)

NURTURE PHASE

Food choice throughout the phase: hormone feasting
Days 20–30/bleed: no fasting

ADVANCED FASTING RESET

If you have been fasting for some time, follow this advanced version of the 30-day reset below. Longer fasts are here to stretch you and provide you with just enough hormetic stress to encourage your body to make that jump to the next level of health. You will also see that this reset gives you the option to fast the week before your cycle, if you have one. Because this is an advanced reset, the assumption is a shorter fast like 13 hours won’t create a cortisol spike for you since your body is most likely used to this length of fast.

POWER PHASE 1-ketobiotic food

Days 1–5: intermittent fasting (15 hours)
Day 6: gut-reset fast (24 hours)
Days 7–10: autophagy fasting (17 hours)

MANIFESTATION PHASE-hormone feasting foods

Days 11–15: intermittent fasting (15 hours)

POWER PHASE 2-ketobiotic food

Day 16: gut-reset fast (24 hours)
Days 17–19: autophagy fasting (17 hours)

NURTURE PHASE-hormone feasting foods

Days 20–30/bleed: intermittent fasting (13 hours)



Excerpt From
Fast Like a Girl
Dr. Mindy Pelz



Helpful things to have while fasting (to check you are burning fat)

Check that you're actually in ketosis with these 

Ketone Strips (Urine)
https://www.chemistwarehouse.co.nz/buy/110870/zest-keto-ketone-test-strips-urinalysis-100-strips

Glucose meter and ketone testing strips (Blood)
https://www.chemistwarehouse.co.nz/buy/97513/caresens-ketosens-test-strips
https://chemistwarehouse.co.nz/buy/97303/caresens-n-blood-glucose-meter-pack
https://www.chemistwarehouse.co.nz/buy/97299/caresens-30g-100-lancets

And use them to test foods that might be causing your blood sugar to spike