5 Habits That Turn On Your Natural GLP-1 & Burn Belly Fat Fast

You have spent years, maybe decades, being told that if you just eat less, if you just move a little more, the weight will come off. That's all you need to do. And I want to acknowledge something before we get into anything else, because I don't think enough people say this out loud. You have already done that. You have likely counted the calories, you've skipped the meals, you've gotten on the elliptical machine for an hour when you are already exhausted. You have said no to the piece of cake at maybe your own birthday party, and your body has not cooperated the way it was supposed to. So I want to take a minute to reframe this for you today because, and I've said this before, your metabolism is not broken. Your metabolism has really been protecting you from a strategy that has been quietly working against your biology, your body, your physiology, for a really, really long time. And the way out is not more restriction. It's not more punishment. It's not more forcing the body to lose weight. The way out is 5 specific habits that speak your body's actual language. And that's what we're gonna walk through today. Now, I'm Dr. Ashley. I'm a PhD nutritionist, a registered dietitian. I'm the owner and founder of Dr. Ashley Wellness and PhD Weight Loss. To date at PhD, we have helped more than 13,000 people collectively drop more than 480,000 pounds. My entire career to date has been spent watching real bodies, not textbook bodies, and everything I am going to share with you comes from what I have actually watched work. Now, before we get into these habits, you need to understand something that will change how you think about your own body for the rest of your life. When your body slows your metabolism, it is not malfunctioning. It might feel like it, but it's not. It's actually working for you. It is protecting you. Chronic dieting, restriction, overexercise, high stress, poor sleep, all of it reads to your body as a threat. When your body senses a threat, I want you to think of it like it, it turns down the burn. And it holds on to fat stores as protective fuel reserves. It turns hunger and cravings up so you go find food, and usually it urges you to go find high caloric density foods. So think high sugar, high fat, high carbs. Now, it might feel like sabotage, but it's not. It's actually intelligence. This is your body that has been trying to keep you alive with the exact machinery it evolved to use. It's only doing everything it knows to do.

Here's something most people don't hear. Your body is not broken. I'm Dr. Ashley Lucas, PhD and registered dietitian, and after helping thousands lose weight, I realized something important. When people diet without proper support, the body pays the price— metabolism, hormones, energy, and even muscle mass. At Dr. Ashley Wellness, everything we create is designed to work with your body and not to fight it. Clinically studied ingredients, high absorption rates, no fluff, because weight loss should feel empowering, not depleting. Visit drashleywellness.com, use code YouTube10 for 10% off your first purchase or 20% off your first subscription order with free shipping. Plus, enjoy a 30-day money-back guarantee. Back to the show.

Now, the 5 habits that I'm about to give you are not about hacking or forcing that system. They're about giving your body a completely different set of signals so it feels safe enough to let go of the fat it has been guarding. Habit number 1, protein-forward eating. You guys have probably heard about protein lately because it is all over, which is helpful because that means it's not going to be as hard to get protein in the diet. Protein is the single most metabolically important food you can eat, which is why you're hearing about it everywhere, which is why you can go to Starbucks and get protein cold foam or whatever it is, cold brew foam. You know, most of the people I see though are still drastically undereating protein, especially at the first meal of the day. Now here's why this matters is because protein directly triggers the release of your body's own natural GLP-1. This is the fullness hormone that these appetite-suppressing medications that are all over the place are trying to mimic. It preserves your muscle, and your muscle is the largest organ you have for burning fuel at rest. It does not spike your blood sugar, so it does not trigger the insulin release that puts your body into fat storage mode. And it takes more energy to digest than any other food, which means that you burn more calories simply by eating it. What I want you doing is anchoring your first meal of the day with 30 to 45 grams of protein. If you're a big man, maybe up to 50 to 55 grams of protein. And I'd love for you to do the exact same thing at your last meal of the day. And this is what I call a protein bolus. It matters at those 2 meals specifically because your first meal sets your metabolic tone for the entire day and your last meal supports muscle repair through the night while you are sleeping. Everything in the middle is important, but those 2 meals I want you to think of like bookends and they are non-negotiable. Habit number 2 is strength training and post-meal walking. This is where a lot of people go wrong, right? They think that if they can't get an hour at the gym, it doesn't count. They think they have to do 2-a-days. But here's what really matters: muscle. Muscle, because muscle is your metabolic tissue. The more muscle that you have, the higher your baseline metabolism runs, And the more fuel you burn while sitting on your couch watching TV. If you are over the age of 40 and you are not deliberately training your muscles, you are losing them at roughly 3 to 5% per decade. That's a lot, you guys, and it's really, really hard to build lost muscle as you continue to age. Losing muscle at this clip is a metabolism problem you cannot solve with cardio. So I really, really urge you, want you, recommend as much as I can to participate in strength training 2 to 3 times a week. It doesn't have to be at the gym. You could do bodyweight exercises, resistance bands, dumbbells at home, squats, push-ups, rows, deadlift, press, right? 20 to 30 minutes of some kind of overloading the muscles. You will only grow your muscles in 2 ways. You need 2 things to the equation. Eating adequate protein and overloading the muscles. That's why these are my top 2 habits for you. In addition to strength training, I also want you to be walking. Walking specifically after meals is one of the most powerful tools you can add to your day, and no one talks about it because it's not really a sexy thing, right? We think, oh my gosh, it's not this fad, it's not a standout thing, it's just walking. Walking is really, really important. Just a 10 to 15 minute walk after your biggest meal of the day reduces the blood sugar spike from that meal by about 25 to 33%. That's a lot. That means less insulin is released, which means less fat storage triggered from that meal just by walking 10 to 15 minutes. I want to pause here for a minute because everything that I shared with you so far The protein, the resistance training, the walking, it all works best when your body is cooperating from the inside. And for a lot of people over 40, especially those who have done years of chronic dieting, your internal signaling is dysfunctional. Blood sugar is unstable. Fullness signals are not firing. The gut is not making the GLP-1 that it should. So I put together the Belly Fat Reset Bundle for exactly that person. It pairs 2 types of products because they work synergistically together. It includes GlucoCut Plus, which supports stable blood sugar, appetite regulation through your natural GLP-1 signaling, and it helps to preserve lean muscle while you're dropping weight. And that's paired with the other product, which is called GLP-1 Gut Longevity Plus. This one supports the gut microbiome that produces your natural GLP-1 in the first place. It includes antioxidants from grapeseed extract and resveratrol to help support healthy gut bacteria. It includes acromantia, which actually helps to secrete GLP-1, and eriomin, which is a citrus bioflavonoid which has been shown to increase natural GLP-1 secretions by 37%. Together, these 2 support the systems that make the rest of these habits that I'm going to talk about work in your body. Now you can find this bundle at drashleywellness.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, head on into the description, click the link for drashleywellness.com. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, just head over to the website, drashleywellness.com, and you guys use code ASHLEY10 for 10% off your first purchase or 20% off your first subscription order, and you will get free shipping with that. All right, habit number 3 is deep, consistent sleep. I know it's tough and it's so important. Sleep, I think, could be the single most underrated metabolic tool that we have, and it seems to be the one that I see most people negotiating with. Now, what happens when you are chronically underslept? And for most research, it says about, you know, less than 6 hours. 5 to 6 hours is considered underslept. When this happens to your body on a consistent basis, cortisol runs high. That pulls your body into storage mode and it preferentially deposits fat around your belly area. Insulin sensitivity drops. So the same food you've been eating for weeks suddenly produces a bigger insulin response than it did when you were sleeping. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. That goes up so you're more hungry. Leptin is your full hormone. It goes down so you don't have the same feelings of satiety by eating the same amount of food. So this means that you're going to wake up hungrier and less satisfied by what you eat. And, you know, this is not a weakness at 3 in the afternoon. It might feel like it when you're like, oh my gosh, I need, I need something. I need a candy bar or a coffee drink or something sweet. What this is, the next time you feel this happen at 3, 4 o'clock, Now, you know, this is your hormones responding accurately to a body that just didn't get enough recovery. So if you get this crash at 3 to 4, look at your sleep, look at your stress. 7.5 to 9 hours a night is going to be the best. Helpful tips: consistent bedtime. Just like if you had a child and you were sleep training them, you would have them go to bed and you would have them wake up same time during the weekday and on the weekends. I know weekends are tough. I'm right there with you. But keeping that consistency through the weekend is important. A cool room. Most research shows about 65 to 68 degrees. For me, that's too cold, but kind of as cold as you can get it. No screens the last hour before bed. You want to give your body, your eyes, your circadian rhythm just the best, the best support possible and turning off the screens at least 1 hour before bed will help you. If you are perimenopausal or menopausal and your sleep is being disrupted by hormonal changes, you want to talk to your practitioner about that specifically so they can set you up with HRT, which is going to be helpful for the majority of women. You cannot out-supplement, you cannot out-exercise or out-diet chronic sleep deprivation. I think that's why it's so important, because there really are no hacks around getting less And still being able to function. Habit number 4 is morning sunlight and circadian rhythm. You know, this is probably not one that you were expecting on the metabolism list, and it's one of the most powerful, again, because sleep is so key. When you get sunlight directly in your eyes within the first hour of you waking up and you get that sun in your eyes without sunglasses, you actually set your circadian rhythm for the entire day. That circadian rhythm regulates your cortisol pattern, and your cortisol pattern regulates your appetite. We talked about that, and it regulates your energy across the day. So when cortisol rises appropriately in the morning and falls the way it should at night, your appetite's going to be more stable and your body's going to burn fat more efficiently. When your circadian rhythm is disrupted, and it's disrupted for most people in this country, Cortisol runs at the wrong time. So then that means you're going to be wired at night when you should be tired and you're dragging at 3 in the afternoon when you should be alert. That's not normal to have a drag there in the mid-afternoon. You're going to find that's when you reach for the sugar and the fat and the calorically dense foods to compensate for that energy crash. So what you want to do here is get about 10 to 15 minutes of morning sunlight outside, no sunglasses, Even on cloudy days, it still counts. It's still helpful. And that's it. The good thing about that, it's free, it's available, and it's one of the highest leverage things you can do for your metabolism. Habit number 5 is mindful stress management. You know, stress is not just a mental health thing. It is a metabolic thing as well. When you are in a chronic low-grade stress state, your body is producing cortisol at levels that it was never designed to produce all day. And it's doing it it every day. Chronic elevated cortisol just tells your body to hold on to fat because it thinks it's in survival mode, and it holds on to fat specifically in the belly because that's going to be the fastest reserve for it to pull from when it's running from that lion that's coming at it, right? When it's running from whatever that event it is preparing for. And what it does is it also interferes with your ability to burn stored fat even when you're eating well, even when you're exercising. So that's why I have clients at PhD who are eating perfectly, they're walking every day, they're sleeping pretty well, and the scale still does not move. So for these people, what I do is I, I dig into their lifestyle, and for a lot of people, we'll see that they're in a job that's running them to the ground, or maybe they're caregiving for a parent, or they've been in a low-grade state of anxiety for so long that they don't remember what calm Yeah. And you know, it takes time to reset your nervous system and that's okay. It's a part of this process. And there are a lot of tools that are helpful for resetting the nervous system. If you guys feel like you want some tips on that and that would be helpful, just drop it in the comments below and I'll read them if you're watching this on YouTube and make sure to do an episode where I talk about nervous system regulation. And I have to do a lot of that work myself. You are not alone. You know, you cannot outeat, you cannot out-exercise or out-supplement chronic stress. You have to address it. There is no way out but through. And if we break it down to some of the most simplest things you can do is really carving out a few minutes of your day to be quiet, to just sit with yourself and 2 minutes to feel the feeling as if you've already achieved that state you're working toward. So if that state is weight loss, and you can, you know, feel that feeling as if you're already there. Feel that feeling of feeling whole in your body, of peace, of calm, of being healed. What would that feel like? The interesting thing is that your body and brain aren't aware as if you are already in that state or if you're just feeling it. And so as often as you can feel throughout the day as if you are already in that end state that you're reaching toward, then you can kind of trick it in a way and trick your nervous system in a way to be like, oh my gosh, that's just my natural state. And it will be easier for your body to walk, your body and your mind to walk into that reality. Another thing that might help your stress levels might look like saying no to the things that drain you. It could look like therapy if that's what you need. You know, we all need support to get through the tough times in our lives. And I think a lot of us think we should do it on our own, which just continues to increase the general stress level and doesn't, Doesn't help us get where we need to be. So what I want you guys to walk away with are the fact that none of these habits I talked about today are hacks. They're basically 5 daily choices where you get to show up for your body from a place of care and not fear. I found that most people come to weight loss from fear, fear and fixing, like something's wrong with the body. They might have fear of the scale, fear that something is wrong with them, fear that it might not work, or fear that, oh my gosh, what happens if I do lose the weight? Now, the thing is, is that a body approached from fear is gonna continue to resist, right? And we know that whatever we resist persists. It's so true. And your body, your brain, your nervous system reads the fear as a threat. So instead, what you're gonna want to do is make sure that you're approaching your process from a place of compassion, of love, from the intention to steward the one temple, the one body that you have been given, right? So you're gonna look at protein at breakfast, not as restriction, not as, oh my gosh, I can't eat this cereal that I like. Instead, you're gonna approach eating protein for breakfast and dropping the cereal or dropping the oatmeal. As care for your body because it's setting your body up for success. A walk after dinner, it's not a hack, right? It is nurturing your body. Your metabolism is not something to fix. It's something to steward, to pour compassion and love into. And when the daily choice comes from that place, your body's going to meet you there. Now, if any of what I shared with you today made you think that this sounds Like a lot to manage on your own. That is exactly what we do at PhD Weight Loss. We look at your health history, your metabolism, your specific life. We build a customized plan that changes and evolves as you do, because your body at week 2 of your weight loss process is not your body at week 12, and your plan has to keep up with how your body's shifting. If you want that kind of individualized support, go to myphdweightloss.com. Or click the link in the description if you are watching this on YouTube. Once you visit our website, you are gonna be guided to give us a call and you're gonna get on the phone with one of our nutritionists who will create a specific game plan for you, and you can decide if it's the best fit. If you are listening to this on a podcast platform, please leave a review. They really matter. I read them and it helps us impact more people. If this video helped you and you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe so you can catch the next one. And take a look at the video right here that I have on the 4 foods you should be eating every day. It pairs perfectly with what we just talked about. Now remember, you got to step up to make the change. Lead with your heart, train your mind, and listen to what your body already knows. I'll see you next time.