---
title: 'The BEST Way to Burn Fat & Trigger Autophagy - Stop Cutting Calories!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=rqcfgh1hp38'
video_id: 'rqcfgh1hp38'
date: 2026-10-04
duration_sec: 2043
channel: 'Dr. Mindy Pelz'
---

# The BEST Way to Burn Fat & Trigger Autophagy - Stop Cutting Calories!

> Source: [The BEST Way to Burn Fat & Trigger Autophagy - Stop Cutting Calories!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rqcfgh1hp38)

## Summary

This video challenges the conventional 'eat less, exercise more' weight loss advice, arguing that fat loss is fundamentally a hormonal issue. The creator explains how declining estrogen, insulin resistance, and gut health affect metabolism, and introduces two metabolic states—sugar burner and fat burner—along with practical strategies like food ordering, intermittent fasting, and omega-3 balance to naturally boost GLP-1 and promote fat loss.

### Key Points

- **Challenging the Weight Loss Myth** [00:00] — The 'eat less, exercise more' approach is a myth; fat loss is a hormonal issue, not a matter of willpower.
- **Hormonal Changes in Midlife** [01:40] — Declining estrogen increases insulin resistance and directs fat to the midsection, explaining weight gain in midlife women despite no change in diet or exercise.
- **Reframing the Goal** [02:22] — The goal is to create a condition that turns on the fat-burning switch, which requires lowering insulin and ensuring a safe nervous system (low stress).
- **Two Metabolisms Explained** [03:31] — Two metabolisms: sugar burner (linked to GLP-1) and fat burner (linked to growth hormone and autophagy). Eating fiber, protein, and fat in order boosts GLP-1.
- **Gut Microbes and GLP-1** [04:09] — Gut microbes produce GLP-1; eating fiber, protein, and fat together helps rebuild these microbes and the satiety hormone.
- **Fasting Timeframes** [05:45] — Fasting 12 hours switches to fat burning; 12-15 hours stimulates growth hormone; 17 hours triggers autophagy (cellular cleanup).
- **Intermittent Fasting Study** [07:16] — A 2025 human study found that four weeks of intermittent fasting turned up autophagy genes, leading to fat mass loss and lower inflammatory markers.
- **Sardine Fasting** [08:21] — Sardines are protein, omega-3s, and mineral-dense, making them a 'perfect food' for accelerating fat loss.
- **Omega-3 to Omega-6 Balance** [09:38] — The ideal omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is 1:1; most Americans have 18:1, which turns on the fat-accumulating switch.
- **Break-Fast Meal Importance** [12:48] — The break-fast meal is crucial: 30 grams of protein (leucine-rich) and 30 grams of fiber, eaten before other foods.
- **Five Action Steps** [15:43] — Five action steps: pick an eating window, break fast with protein/fiber/fat, add fermented foods daily, protect sleep, and layer in strategic challenges like sardine fasting.
- **Snacking and Insulin** [21:48] — Constant snacking keeps insulin high, preventing the body from entering a low-insulin state, which increases food noise.
- **Ultra-Processed Foods** [23:03] — Ultra-processed foods hijack fullness signals; a UK study found minimally processed diets led to greater weight loss than calorie-restricted ultra-processed diets.
- **Fiber and GLP-1** [25:51] — Fiber-fed bacteria stimulate L-cells, which release GLP-1; aim for 30 grams of fiber daily and 30 different plants weekly.
- **Stress and Fat Burning** [26:51] — Stress turns off the fat-burning switch, redistributes fat to the belly, and increases cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods.
- **Protein and Satiety Hormones** [28:13] — 30 grams of protein per meal raises GLP-1, PYY, and CCK, and lowers ghrelin—all satiety hormones.
- **Breaking a Weight Loss Plateau** [29:23] — Five steps to break a plateau: close the kitchen between meals, make first meal protein-forward, feed your gut with fiber and fermented foods, lower stress, and practice flex fasting.

### Conclusion

Weight loss is a hormonal chemistry experiment, not a matter of willpower. By eating to boost GLP-1, fasting to stimulate growth hormone and autophagy, and balancing omega-3s, you can naturally shift your body into fat-burning mode.

## Transcript

I'm going to challenge one of the biggest weight loss myths that we have ever been taught. And that is, I need to eat less and exercise more in order to lose weight.
How many of us have bought into that thought? And on this video, I'm going to walk you through why that no longer works and that fat loss is a hormonal issue.
This is incredible news because if fat loss is a hormonal issue, hormones are like a big chemistry experiment. If you lose one, then you start to signal changes to all the other hormones.
So when we start to realize that it's not about eating less and exercising more, it's about creating a different chemistry in our body, weight loss becomes effortless.
And I'm not joking. So let's break this down so that you understand it. So, and it was, by the way, it was never about eating less. This is why, oh my God, like how many years have we been talking about eating less and working out more?
And we still have the biggest obesity problem we've ever had. So here is what I want you to know. So weight gain for my midlife women, it hits us harder.
We do start to hold on to weight more. Are we eating more? Think about that for a moment. Are you eating more? If you're 45 and you are starting to gain weight eating the same food you ate at 35, are you exercising less and eating more? No.
So, estrogen, as she goes down, she starts to make you more insulin resistant. We also know that as estrogen goes down, all the fat starts to go towards our midsection,
which is why we start to get belly fat. So, that is chemistry. That is not input-output. So, no, and it's not willpower. You didn't just gain weight at 45 because you didn't have enough willpower.
because the chemistry in your body changed. So here's what we're going to do. We first have to start with this idea that you've got to reframe the goal.
The goal is not a smaller plate of food. The goal is not I need to go move my booty more, which exercise is great for so many things. The goal now is I need to create a condition in my body that turns on a fat-burning switch.
And that condition needs to lower insulin because insulin's out of control, especially with the loss of estrogen. Damn, this is so big. It has to be mixed with a safe nervous system.
If you are trying to lose weight and your life is completely stressed out, your nervous system might not feel like it's safe enough to drop that weight. The moment you start realizing that eating less is not your ticket to a thin body is the moment you are set free.
So here's how we're going to look at this. And I've taught it to you all in a lot of different ways. I have new ways of looking at it and new language that might be helpful. Sugar burner. You have two metabolisms. One is a sugar burner metabolism.
One is a fat burner metabolism. I want you to start thinking about the sugar burner metabolism as your GLP-1 resource.
We are talking so much about these weight loss drugs right now. And what I want you to realize is that there is a style of eating that helps you make the GLP-1 hormone.
You have been making that weight loss hormone your whole life. And the reason that it has potentially diminished is because there's been some damage to your microbes in your gut.
It is the microbes in your gut that make GLP-1 hormone. So when we are in a sugar burner mode, when we are eating food, we want to eat to rebuild this hormone.
And what that looks like is every time we sit down to eat, we are putting fiber, protein, and fat together. Carbohydrates can be a little sidekick here.
I'll talk about that in a second. There is an order in which you eat that brings back the microbes. It reinvigorates the microbes that will make you this satiety hormone, GLP-1.
So when you're eating, we used to say in this sugar burner world, we used to say eat low-glycemic food. I'm not saying don't do that. We've also talked about keto. We've talked about carnivore.
If you are trying to lose weight, I want you to think of your sugar burner system through the lens of, I am going to make more GLP-1 hormone, and that means I may eat fiber first, protein, and then fat,
and that is going to be the combination of food that I put together. I am not counting calories. I am not counting macros. I am a big chemistry experiment, and I am putting this order together to change my chemistry
so the satiety hormone can kick in so I'm not as hungry. Simple? Right? Okay. When we come over here to fat burning, this is what I've typically taught you all, that
this metabolism is your fat burning metabolism. And you can reach this by going typically 12 hours without food. Somewhere between 8 and 12 hours without food, your body switches over to
the fat burning place. When you're over here, at 12 hours, you are stimulating growth hormone. Growth hormone is a fat burning hormone. It is chemistry. We're back at chemistry. So I can make
the hormone when I eat that helps me shut off the hunger cues. And when I fast, I can make the Hormone that burns fat if I am conscious about what I'm doing.
So 12 to 15 hours, you're going to get more growth hormone. If you continue on to go 17 hours over here in fat burning, you stimulate something called autophagy.
Autophagy means self-eating. It's where your cells start to recycle the damaged parts. I've done so many videos here. It's like a spring cleaning. and it's really interesting because there's a phenomenal study that I never brought to you
I'm bringing it to you now it's a human study which is even better probably not on men though a 2025 study found that four weeks of intermittent fasting measurably turned up the genes that run
autophagy. And alongside these genes getting turned on for cleaning up your cells, it also started to see fat mass loss. I didn't say muscle mass. That's the problem with the drugs.
I said fat mass loss and lower inflammatory fat, lower inflammatory markers. Okay, we have two tools now. We've got, I'm going to make GLP-1 when I eat and I put my food together. I'm going to be
a chemist that is changing the chemistry of my body when I eat. And then I'm going to go at least 12 hours periodically and I'm going to intermittent fast and I'm going to make sure I get more growth hormones so I lower, that I turn my body into a fat-burning machine and I stimulate autophagy.
And I'm not even done with the possibilities of how you change this chemistry. But those two, you're off to a phenomenal start. Okay, we're going to talk about a very popular fast that has taken over YouTube.
I did a whole video on it, and we're about to do a fast training week on it, and it's Sardine Fasting Now those of you because I seen a lot of the comments and on the YouTube live I do with you all on Tuesdays I see so many of you like going uh no sardine fasting isn
for me. But let's unpack what sardines are. So sardines are proteins, they are omega-3s, and they are mineral dense. They have so many minerals in them. So they kind of act as the
perfect food. So a lot of people who are sardine fasting are noticing better energy. They're noticing weight loss. They're seeing a massive change in their body because this food seems to
have all the right nutrients in it to be able to accelerate fat loss. Okay, now how does it do that? We're back at chemistry. So I talked about this before. I've got so many videos on it. I really
want you to understand this. So we need in order to slow down fat accumulation, in order to stop making more fat, you need your omega-3s and your omega-6 fatty acid balance in your body to be at
a ratio of one to one. Most Americans are walking around with a ratio of 18 omega-6s to one omega-3.
And when you have that ratio skewed, what happens is you turn on the fat accumulating switch. So if you want to turn on the fat burning switch, then you want to make sure that you bring your omega-3s up.
This is why starting fasting has been so powerful because you've got people going into a fat burner state. We're about to do this for Fast Trading Week. Just put in the comments companion guide, and my team will send you the companion guide and everything you need to sardine fast with us.
I have a few caveats on there. But when you sardine fast, you have mastered everything you need over here in sugar burner, and you are getting the benefits of fast burner.
But you're not just, you're eating something. so know that it is the perfect food for balancing this ratio out okay now we have three chemistry
tools I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here we've got I'm going to eat in a food order to make more glp-1 I'm going to fast in a way that I can improve my fat burning hormone
and I can stimulate my detox system and get rid of the old junk that may be slowing down my metabolism. Okay? Now I have another tool.
I'm going to start eating in a way that is going to allow me to bring my omega-3 and omega-6 ratio back into balance. And if you don't like sardines, I'll leave a link to some of the videos I've done on virgin olive oil
and how it can bring it back. I think it's really important that you get off the ultra-processed foods and you get on to the Omega-3 rich foods. And you can join me in my 30-day fast. So we'll all have fun together.
Okay. Now, the next piece that I want you to know is when you move between these two metabolisms, how you move in between them matters.
So if all of a sudden I'm over here in my sugar burner system and I'm eating whatever I want, and then I decide, oh, I'm going to fast, and I start to fast and I come over into my fat burning system,
it might be a little difficult to switch from sugar burner to fat burner. So this is why I always say the first step to fasting is to clean up your sugar burner system. Well, the other way is also really important, that when you go from your fat burner system back into your sugar burner system, that first meal matters.
And you're going to see this more and more on my videos. The first meal matters. The fast is only as good as the first meal you eat.
And you want to make sure that you get enough protein. You need 30 grams of protein. And you want most of it to come from leucine-rich types of protein.
I have lists of leucine-rich proteins in Eat Like a Girl. I've got recipes in there for you. So you can reference that book if you have it.
So protein, loose and rich foods, phenomenal. That's great. Okay, second thing, you want to make sure you have 30 grams of fiber. And if you can get it the first meal, great.
But once you open up that eating window, from the time that you open your eating window until you go to sleep, let's get some fiber in there. And let's make sure that fiber acts like a net.
It slows down the absorption of glucose into your system. So we want it to be fiber-rich, and we want it to have more good fats. So it could have olive oil drizzled all over it. I just had a breakfast that I broke my fast with, which had duck eggs, and it had microgreens, and it had garbanzo beans and lentils.
I ate that first, put a little bit of sauerkraut next to it, ate that first and then I went and I had a piece of toast because I wanted a piece of toast. I didn't have the toast first. I had the other meal first so that I could get that satiety hormone
going and then I had my piece of toast. It's a really good loaf of bread that I know if I unleashed myself on it I would probably eat the whole thing. So I followed the rules I'm teaching you.
So the break fast meal is massively important. And if you can just nail the break fast meal, that would be great. So the ultimate fat burning formula is that we have got to have food that is rich in minerals,
that is high in good omega-3s. and we need to make sure that we're getting enough of that protein and fiber and fat so that we are rebuilding the microbes that make this satiety hormone.
Okay, we're going to add that to autophagy and to growth hormone production through fasting anywhere from 12 to 17 hours. And then we're going to balance our omega-3 and omega-6 ratio.
That's it. That's it. It's not bad, right? There's a lot we can do with that. Now, let me give you five action steps so that even if you're confused or you're overwhelmed, I know this is like, like I said, this is not the way we normally talk about weight loss
because weight loss is a chemistry experiment. And you get to constantly experiment on yourself. And you get to change the chemistry within yourself.
So here are your five action steps. First, pick one eating window that you're going to do over and over again in the beginning. If it feels comfortable to you, one window.
I personally like the 16-8. It's a good right in the middle. Maybe go 16 hours most days. Mind your menstrual cycle. Mind your stress levels. But if you can do 16 on a consistent level, then we're talking fat burning here.
That can be really great. Number two, you're going to break every fast with protein and fiber and fat first, getting that 30 grams with the leucine at 2.5.
Number three, this is a really important one. Every single day, you are going to add a fermented food into your diet, whether it's sauerkraut, a kombucha.
It was just kind of a weak fermented food, but let's have fun with it. a fermented yogurt kimchi is the hero of all fermented foods but every single day you are going to have add in one fermented food Number four you are going to protect your sleep like it is the greatest fat loss tool you have ever had If you are really adamant about losing weight let get you on a regular sleep
schedule and let's protect that sleep because it will downshift stress. And when you bring cortisol down, you will stop gaining that menopausal belly weight or just any belly weight. It goes both ways.
and then number five i really like this so you've set this foundation and you're like okay i'm fasting on a regular basis i've got my break fast meal down i'm rebalancing my omega-3 and six i'm
protecting my sleep um every once in a while layer in a strategic challenge maybe your strategic challenge is the sardine fast i'm gonna do it i don't love sardines but i'm gonna do it with you
well, just to see how I feel and what my body can feel like doing that. So, again, if you want to join me in my Sardine Fast, just put companion guide. Every once in a while, I'll do a 24-hour fast, maybe once a month,
depending on where I am in my stress levels. And I'll do a three-day water fast a couple times a year. So number five is you are going to layer in a strategic challenge periodically,
once you have the first four steps down. and then from there you're going to start to see results so you don't need to do this all perfectly pick you can take those five steps and you can pick them pick one or two you can make it small
and sustainable you can change up your eating window you can change your fasting length you can decide you don't love sardines but you might love salmon which is another smash food You have the choice.
You can make this choice. You have agency in your own health. You don't have to sit and listen to a health guru say, you've got to eat breakfast, or you've got to not fast, or whatever. You be the health agent for you.
You have flexibility. but what I do know is that if you and I went on vacation for a month together and we practiced these strategies right here every day for a month,
you would lose weight. I absolutely know that. So I'm going to keep bringing you these tools because I know so many of you are trying so hard, and I'm really cheering you on, and I want you to understand that weight loss is chemistry.
So let's get the chemistry experiment right. Here's a controversial truth that the drug companies do not want us to know. Medications are not the only way to make GLP-1 hormone.
You actually make it. You've been making it your whole life, and it's accessible to you to make it again. You just need to know how to apply some tried and true strategies, which is what I'm going to teach you on this video.
I know a lot of you are trying to lose weight. I look at your comments. I look at the efforts. I'm cheering you on. And I also know weight loss plateaus are real.
And so what do you do when you've lost this weight loss plateau and it becomes very seductive to want to reach for medication? I'm not here to shame anybody who's done that, but I am here to show you how to do it naturally
because your whole life you've been making this hormone that tells your brain it's not hungry. And if that hormone hasn't been around for a while, the food noise has been up, you're going to want to listen to how you can start to bring that hormone back for free.
So here we go. The GLP-1 hormone is really interesting because it slows gastric emptying, which is great in small amounts, not in large amounts. We're coming back to that in a moment.
It also signals fullness to the brain, which is, again, something that we should have periodically throughout the day, not all day long.
We'll talk about that. And it steadies blood sugar. So when the drugs flood the system, what happens is it creates a moment where the stomach slows down, it's emptying,
the blood sugar starts to normalize, and signals start to tell the brain it's full, don't eat anymore. Now, let's go back to some of the habits that many of us have had over the years, and one of them is constant snacking.
Constant snacking, although you think you're either helping your hunger or maybe it's the food noise, it's actually making you more hungry. So every bite of a food triggers insulin and grazing all day never lets insulin fall.
And so your body never goes into an insulin low state. and when it's not in an insulin low state, the food noise often comes in from the body
and tells it to keep eating because that's what it's used to. A body that is keeping insulin up, you have trained it. You trained it to be that way. It wasn't your fault but you've been eating all day,
snacking here and there and all of a sudden, you're bringing your insulin levels up and it tells the body, keep insulin high And so the food noise kicks in.
Number three is that the ultra-processed foods have hijacked your fullness signals. Now, this one's a biggie because there was a free living trial in people with overweight or obesity
that they found that minimally processed diets led to greater weight loss. So these are like your real food without a label. These are your fruits and vegetables and your meat.
They have, when you look at a meal or a food, ask yourself, how many people did it take to make this? If it was probably just a farmer that had to grow it and pick it, that would be more of a minimally processed food.
And what they found is that when they switched people from an ultra-processed food diet to a minimally processed food diet, there was greater weight loss and cardiometabolic improvement than if they restricted calories on these ultra-processed diets.
And this was done in the UK over eight weeks. so ultra processed foods also stimulate your dopamine centers so your brain starts to think of food as dopamine so it really messes up the signaling centers and you take that ultra processed
food that's disrupting the fullness and you add that to eating snacking all day long and you have trained your brain to eat food all the time. And if you have trained it, you can untrain it. And
that's what I'm going to show you how to do. So now first, I want you to realize that your gut, this part of your body, your stomach and your intestines is an appetite control organ. So
think about that the next time you eat, you are eating to tell the microbes and the neurochemistry down there how to control your appetite. I find that fascinating because how many of us choose
food based off of taste, right? Oh, that looks good. I'm going to eat that. But what you don't realize is that every single time you go to put something in your mouth, when it hits your gut,
you are sending a chemical message to your gut to tell it how you want your appetite signals to come to you Fascinating right So when we do a low fiber low diversity of plants into our body what happens is we start to deplete
T-hormones. So fiber is a very important food for the gut when it comes to appetite control. It's also great for metabolic control and blood sugar control.
But you have fiber-fed bacteria in the gut that directly stimulate something called L-cells. And L-cells release GLP-1 hormone.
So if you would like to send a signal to your gut and tell it, hey, stop sending me so many hunger signals. Remember, it's more chemistry. so you eat something to tell the gut to perform a certain way so that it tells the brain a certain message,
you are going to want to increase your fiber because low diversity, low amounts of fiber are going to tell the gut that you want to eat more.
And they say about 30 grams of fiber is what you're looking at every single day. okay second thing I want you to know is stress turns off the fat burning switch entirely so when
you are under chronic stress what you're telling your body is take all the fat that's on my arms and my breasts and my face and like just put it around my belly and so all that stress goes around
your belly and now and help makes you more hungry. I've done a ton of videos on this on cortisol and weight loss. And it signals to your brain, hey, eat more high fat, high sugar, high carbohydrate
food. That's what I want. So you're not eating fiber. And so you're telling those guts, that gut is getting the message that it needs to amp up the food noise.
You're eating all day, and so you've got the insulin staying at this steady baseline, which is telling your brain that you're going to eat all day, so when I don't eat all day, just make sure you keep giving me that signal.
You are under a tremendous amount of stress, and so you're telling your body, hey, take all the fat in other areas, put it around my belly, and increase my cravings for all the wrong things.
And then two more things I want you to know on this is protein and fiber are nature's natural GLP boost. When you get 30 grams of protein at every single meal, you are raising your GLP-1 hormone.
You are raising PYY and CCK, and you're lowering ghrelin. These are all satiety hormones. So weight loss is not willpower. It is chemistry.
And fiber, like I said, slows down the absorption of glucose into your system, and it starts to regrow and stimulate the GLP-1 hormone.
Fasting is also increasing your metabolic intelligence. So when you give your gut a rest, we see insulin drop, and we see this metabolic switch come back online.
so you can have a couple of months of really really bad eating where you gained weight and tons of stress and you just pop back into your natural habits of fasting like 13 to 15 hours
we're not talking big fast and all of a sudden you reset your metabolic switch so here are your five action steps if you are looking to undo this weight loss plateau. First, close the kitchen
between meals. Stop the snacking. So how do you get as far away from the kitchen and the snacks as possible? Let that insulin level fall so that you can re-establish this metabolic switch.
Number two, make your first meal protein forward. I would even say protein and fiber, but build everything around protein. Aim for 30 grams and you'll start to bring those society hormones back up.
Number three, you want to feed your gut. Add one new fibrous plant. The research shows 30 grams of fiber a day and 30 different plants a week.
So they need to be different plants. So challenge yourself and count them. And then increase your fermented food, and all of that will support these L-cells and help these L-cells start to make more GLP-1 hormones for you.
So that food noise goes away. Okay, number four, lower your stress load. Stress redistributes fat, increases all those cravings. You can do this many ways.
I did a whole video on foods that will lower cortisol. I did a whole video on walking and how walking lowers cortisol. We will leave links for that in here so that you can learn about all the strategies.
The fascinating thing is that you can lower cortisol without, like, lowering your stress. Like, how many of us have been sitting in those moments where we're like, stop stressing, stop stressing.
and you know you're not supposed to stress, but it's really hard to stop stressing. Well, let's try a backdoor approach, and let's start looking at things like walking. Let's look at breath work can be really helpful.
There's some great research on lowering cortisol levels that yoga can do, can lower your cortisol levels better than any type of exercise. So you have a lot of things you can do to add in,
or mindsets you can change or activities you can do at home to bring cortisol levels down. And then number five is start to practice fast, what I call flex fasting. Flex fasting is where
you are deciding your fasting length, you are deciding your eating and fasting windows. I did a whole video on that. I'll leave it right here. Most importantly, I want you to know that it's
not your genetics and you're not stuck. It's chemistry and nobody gave you the chemistry lesson and I just gave you a great intro. If you're overwhelmed and you want an experience of this or if you're just want to like somebody to show you what to do step by step, come join us
for our burn fat like a girl experience. We do this every couple of months where we take two weeks as a community in my reset academy and we guide you through a weight loss experience
last round we just had a month ago the average weight loss for we had 600 people sign up was 5.8 pounds in two weeks that is an appropriate amount of weight loss most importantly and this
is what I really, really want you to hear. You're not broken. You didn't mess up. It's not because you're undisciplined. Weight loss is chemistry, and you've got to get the chemistry experiment
right. And videos like this are helping you start to implement all of the different parts of this chemistry experiment that you are embarking upon. Stay curious. Figure out your path.
But don't beat yourself up because nobody gave you this message. And one of the most beautiful things about these weight loss drugs is we're starting to look at weight loss through this chemistry lens.
So let me know if you're joining my Fat Burner Reset. I love that. I'll be in there. I'm giving talks. We work out together. I'm giving classes. I'm in the community. So I would love to get to know you.
and most importantly, I don't want you to give up on you. There's too many things you can do, too many things and hopefully this video started to give you a starting point.
As always, I hope that helps. If this helps, you're not going to want to stop there. Check out this video.