If you have searched YouTube for fasting and menopause, you already know the problem. You get one of two things: a general intermittent fasting video with a single sentence acknowledging that women exist, or a menopause channel that never mentions fasting at all. The overlap — fasting explained for a body in perimenopause or menopause — is one of the thinnest areas on the platform.
Here is where to actually watch, what each source is good for, and the claims worth treating carefully.
The short answer
For fasting and menopause specifically, the useful sources are WomenFasting for research-anchored, weekly videos on fasting in perimenopause and menopause, Dr. Mindy Pelz for the largest women-focused fasting library, Menopause Taylor for understanding the hormonal changes themselves, and Dr. Stacy Sims for the well-argued case against aggressive fasting for active women in this stage. Watching all four gives you the disagreement, which is more useful than any single confident answer. Subscribe on YouTube — and when you want it applied to your own body day by day, join the FastSyncer app waitlist.
Why menopause changes fasting, and why most videos miss it
Most foundational fasting research was run on men, or on post-menopausal women, and then generalised to everybody. That generalisation is exactly where it breaks down for the years around menopause.
Through perimenopause, oestrogen does not decline smoothly — it fluctuates, often wildly, sometimes higher than it ever was before dropping. Progesterone typically falls earlier and more steadily. Because oestrogen influences insulin sensitivity and progesterone influences how the body handles stress, the same 16-hour fast that felt effortless at 38 can feel completely different at 47 — and different again from one month to the next.
Cortisol is the part most videos skip entirely. A long fast is a stressor. In a body already dealing with disrupted sleep, night waking and fluctuating hormones, adding an aggressive fasting protocol on top can push cortisol in the wrong direction — which shows up as stubborn weight around the middle, worse sleep, and the frustrating sense that you are doing everything right and going backwards.
This is why so many women say fasting "stopped working" in their forties. Usually nothing stopped working. The protocol stayed the same while the body it was designed around changed.
What to watch, and what each is for
WomenFasting — the research-anchored option
WomenFasting is our channel, and it exists because of the gap described above. Each video takes one real question — why menopause belly fat appears when nothing about your food changed, why women over 45 wake at 3am and why it is not simply stress, why two women eat identically and only one gains weight, whether fasting genuinely disrupts your cycle — and answers it with the study, the researcher and the actual number named on screen.
It is free, in English, and published weekly. If you have been frustrated by confident advice with no source behind it, that is the specific thing this channel is built not to do.
Dr. Mindy Pelz — the largest women-focused library
Dr. Mindy Pelz did more than anyone to put fasting-around-your-hormones into mainstream conversation, and there is simply more women-specific fasting content there than anywhere else. Worth watching — with the caveat that parts of the framing run ahead of what the published research currently supports. Treat the specific protocols as a well-informed starting hypothesis to test on yourself, not settled fact.
Menopause Taylor — the hormones themselves
Menopause Taylor is not a fasting channel. It is one of the most thorough free explanations of menopause anywhere, taught slowly and clearly. Understanding what is actually happening to your hormones makes every fasting decision downstream of it easier — including the decision not to fast in a particular week.
Dr. Stacy Sims — the counter-argument
Dr. Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist specialising in female athletes, and she is notably sceptical of long fasts for active women, particularly around perimenopause, on the grounds of cortisol, muscle maintenance and under-fuelling.
Watch her because she disagrees with the fasting channels. If a protocol only sounds sensible when nobody argues with it, you have not tested it. When credible people genuinely disagree, that is a signal the evidence is unsettled — and knowing which parts are unsettled is more valuable than another confident answer.
Four claims to be sceptical of
These come up constantly in menopause fasting videos and all four are shakier than they sound.
- "Fast longer as you get older." Longer is not automatically better, and in a body under existing hormonal stress it can be actively counterproductive. Duration is a variable to tune, not a score to maximise.
- "This exact protocol matches your cycle." In perimenopause, cycles become irregular by definition. Any protocol requiring precise cycle-day timing is difficult to apply honestly in the years when timing itself is unpredictable.
- "Fasting replaces HRT." It does not, and no serious source claims it does. Fasting and hormone therapy answer different questions; that is a conversation for your doctor, not a video.
- "If it isn't working, you aren't disciplined enough." In this stage, a stall is far more often information about the protocol than about your willpower.
How to judge any menopause fasting video in 90 seconds
- Do they name the study? Not "studies show" — the researcher, the journal, the number.
- Do they distinguish perimenopause from post-menopause? These are physiologically different, and a video treating them as one thing has flattened the most important variable.
- Do they ever say "we don't know"? In this specific area there are real gaps in the research. Total certainty is a warning sign.
- Does the free content stand alone? Plenty of good channels sell something. The question is whether the video is genuinely useful if you never buy it.
Where the app fits
Video is very good at explaining one idea and quite bad at giving you a plan. It cannot see that your last three cycles ran 24, 38 and 31 days, that your sleep collapsed in week three, or that the fast length that worked in spring stopped working in autumn.
That is the job FastSyncer is built for: taking what these videos explain and applying it to your body, day by day, adjusting the fast to where you actually are rather than to an average. Watch the channels to understand the why. Use the app for the what-to-do-today.
Related reading
- Intermittent fasting during menopause
- The perimenopause fasting guide
- Fasting and cortisol in women
- Why fasting stalls weight loss in women
This article is for information only and is not medical advice. Talk to a qualified healthcare professional before starting or changing a fasting protocol, particularly during perimenopause or menopause or if you take any medication.