Your Body Already Makes Ozempic | Dr. Doug Lucas and Dr. Ashley Lucas

Today, I've got another great interview for you. I actually interview arguably my favorite guest ever, who is my best friend, the mother of my children, my wife, my business partner, Dr. Ashley Lucas. Dr. Ashley is a PhD in nutrition. She's a registered dietitian. She has been running a weight loss company called PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition for over a decade, helped over 12,000 people to let go of excess fat, reverse chronic disease, all without drugs. So I bring her on the show today to talk about her approach, the behaviors, the habits, the things that we don't talk about enough, especially in the world of GLP-1s, because now the standard of care has been to go all medical and actually forget about the work. So we talk about what that work should include, what success looks like off or on a GLP-1 drug. And lean on her experience helping thousands of people to find the underpinnings, the underlying issues behind their fat gain, to help them to sustainably lose weight and keep it off for good. Welcome back to the Health 3.0 podcast, brought to you by LifeMD. I'm your host, Dr. Doug Lucas, orthopedic surgeon, head of longevity medicine at LifeMD. Each episode, I sit down with the innovators, disruptors, and clinicians redefining what's possible in modern medicine and what that means for your health. Let's get started. So you might have actually the longest list of credentials, at least as far as I'm concerned, of any guests we've had so far.

Oh my gosh.

You are my best friend. Oh, mother of my children, wife. Uh, what else? Business partner. We have done a lot of things together over the 25 plus years actually that we've known each other. But today I want to talk about what you've learned over the last 10 plus years in the nutrition space, because you've been in really in the space of weight loss almost exclusively. You have helped thousands, thousands and thousands of clients let go of fat, keep it off sustainably, reverse chronic disease without medications. And now you have seen this change over the last several years with the advent of GLP-1s and your practice has changed. Now you're actually seeing people who have used weight loss drugs and failed, used weight loss drugs, gained their weight back. And so you have a perspective that I think is unique because you were not an early adopter, despite maybe some recommendations from me, but you were not an early adopter. Um, and you are continuing to adapt to this changing world. So the question is, what are your concerns around GLP-1s based off of your clinical experience?

You know me, and I'm always into root cause. I think I probably drive you crazy when something's going on, and I'm— and I think, you know, the body never makes a mistake. There's got to be a reason that it's responding in this way, that something's off, that we're gaining all this fat weight, that something is off with the body, and I don't believe that just giving it a medication is gonna solve the issue. I think it's gonna mask the issue. And so my biggest concern— there's a few of them, but my biggest concern around GLP-1s and the way that most of us are using them right now is that it is masking the issue. It's not getting to the root. The majority of the people using these medications will drop weight only to rebound. And that rebound process is so painful. And I hate that for people. It is such suffering to drop the weight only to regain it and think that it's a flaw in yourself or personality or a lack of discipline when it really has nothing to do about that, right? So for me, no matter what route someone goes, they have to go about it in a way that manages the root cause issue. So if utilizing the GLP-1s as a tool is a healthy approach for someone, that could be okay if they're changing their lifestyle, if they're working through the emotions tied to the excess fat weight, if they're working with their mindset. So we really have to get to the root cause. There's no way out but through. We talk about that a lot. So if someone's just taking this, wanting the quick fix, looking at it as a magic pill, they are going to be sorry. Because they're going to find themselves right back where they are, or probably more worse off because they've lost muscle, they've had nutrient deficiencies, they now have lost confidence in themselves even more. Those are a few of my concerns.

Yeah, well, those are big ones. And you actually hit on some, some pieces there that I really want to dig into. Now, when I talk to most providers about the challenges around GLP-1s, they'll say, well, people lose lean mass, which is true, but everybody loses lean mass to some extent when they lose weight. There's some unknowns around nutrient deficiencies, how people are actually using them. But what you said around the root cause, when the root cause is potentially behavioral, mm-hmm, it's emotional, mm-hmm, sometimes it's trauma, mm-hmm. You know, these are the things that you've been able to actually get at through your approach. So can we dig into some of these a little bit? Like how do you actually start to bring this lever into play? How do you actually move the needle on a behavioral challenge.

80% of any change comes from the mind. We got to look at the mental, emotional, the habit behavior. I always say that dropping weight is a process of letting go, letting go of the excess fat weight that's no longer serving you and all of the emotions that are tied to it. In my clinical experience, I've seen that if people just drop weight on the scale and they don't do the deep work necessary then it's just a matter of time for the weight to creep back up to where our emotional status is. But if we can let go of those emotions, if we can transform and transmute those things, then we can actually maintain this physical weight at a new place for the majority of us. And so how do we tackle that? I mean, in our program, we have really high-touch intensive care, weekly one-on-one coaching with really high-trained, highly trained, uh, coaches and nutritionists where we talk about about the sabotaging thoughts and the triggers and the common responses that we have to, say, a stressful event. We work on changing the neural pathways in the brain. We actually have audio sessions that our clients listen to that retrain the neural pathways, because the way that we respond to certain triggers becomes such a habit, and it takes time. It takes time to create a new identity. Right? I know we were talking about one of our family members and she was asking you, how do you train discipline? And we were talking about the fact that it has to be an identity. Like, you and I have an identity around exercising. Like, we don't feel right if we don't move our bodies. We have an identity around eating a certain way, so we don't have to think about it. It's now just who we are. And in my weight loss program, that's what we are training and helping and guiding our clients to see, that this is not a diet. This isn't just taking an injection or a pill. This is really retraining who we are and creating these new habits and behaviors where it feels uncomfortable if we don't participate in them.

Yeah. I think there's an interesting thing about doing the work. And this is where, you know, I've, I've been using, I've been using GLP-1s in my, in my practice for I don't know how many years now. And I do notice that there is a big difference in those who are using the drug and despite what I'm asking them to do, not doing any of the work, their weight regain has been 100%. Right? Because they eventually wanna come off of the drug. Yeah. And they haven't changed anything. So why would we expect any other outcome actually? And, but I think part of it is the fact that the, the problem isn't just a GLP-1 deficiency, although I wanna pick your brain on that too. But the problem is all of these other things. And, and I actually wanna dig into the behavior piece because it's easy to say behavior, but can you give us some examples of some behaviors that you have actually helped people to change? So, just maybe like pick some common behaviors that can change over the course of a relatively, I don't know, 2 to 3 month period of time.

Yeah, the majority of our clients create these changes within 16 weeks. From my clinical experience, at the 16-week mark, there's something miraculous that happens with the body. That's when we start seeing our clients get off of medications, when these things really settle in, when new habits start to become their identity. Mm-hmm. So common things that I see, maybe, uh, we get a stressful email at work and in order to cope with the stress, we go and eat a donut. We go into the break room and we drink a Coke and we eat some chocolate. Those are the most common things. We go for these foods that are more junk foods, uh, higher carbs, higher sugar, higher fat, hits the dopamine, makes us feel better for a brief second before we feel, uh, significantly worse and bad about ourselves. So that's a common habit that I see, and a way to shift that, number one, is awareness. So, okay, let me take a breath for a minute. Let me pause and not react immediately. And in that pause, what am I gonna do now? And so we work on that reframing of, okay, this potential issue, this challenge, this is actually happening for me rather than happening to me. Okay, now I can sit and I can think about what I'm gonna take, what action I'm gonna take. And this action might be taking some deep breaths. Mm-hmm. Something to reduce cortisol. Maybe it's going outside and taking a walk. I know for me, I'll go outside and stand barefoot on the ground. I know that it sounds crazy, but for me it's helpful. It's retraining those common pathways.

It's like, um, if you pause instead of reacting to this thing, being proactive. So we love saying that.

You have a choice.

Reactive versus proactive, right? We can be proactive, we can choose another route. So talk to me a little bit about the impact of optimized sleep on performance in your program.

Yeah, sleep is key. If someone is falling, so in our program, we will create for you a customized meal plan, right? We tell you exactly what, when, how much to eat. We take the guesswork out of it. So if someone's not dropping 2 to 3 pounds, if they're a woman, or 3 to 4 pounds if they're a man, naturally, by the way, if they're not doing this, then something's off. And the first two things that we look at are stress and sleep. Those two things impact your metabolism and your speed of weight loss just as much as what you are putting in your mouth. So there was a study looking at a large group of individuals and they divided them into two groups based on their sleep. There was one group who slept more than 7 hours, and there was another group who slept less than 7 hours. The group who slept more than 7 hours ate more and weighed less. There's just a whole cascade of hormones that are impacted by sleep. So if you are sleeping less, like you did during residency, during nights, you had increased cortisol, increased insulin levels, and increased ghrelin levels, which are your hunger hormones. So you just felt more hungry, and when you ate those foods you're gonna have a propensity for that, those excess calories to be stored in your belly as fat. Mm-hmm. Versus if you can sleep more, you're gonna have more leptin, you're gonna feel more full, you're gonna be able to eat more, and you're going to be able to make wiser decisions that support your overall health. So sleep is key for many reasons.

So you mentioned something really interesting that I wanna go back to, which is the hormones, the hunger hormones that work around cortisol and around stress. So, you know, I went through residency just like every surgeon, like I'm not special in that, in that regard. But when I was going through residency, what was so common, short hours, short sleep hours rather, long days, lots of stress. And some people continue on like that through life. I feel like when it comes to the GLP-1s, there are some people, not all people I would assume, but there are some people who seem to actually just be deficient in these hunger hormones. And I don't know if maybe I've always been like that. I mean, my family does tend to be, we've, we have obesity in our genes. Everybody in my family has been, you know, obese at some point in their life, immediate family anyway. And so maybe it's genetic, maybe it's environmental, maybe it's both. But for someone like me who never feels full, I mean ever, like until I'm physically like, I cannot actually put any more food in my stomach, I don't feel full. I always feel hungry. So you mentioned ghrelin, you mentioned leptin. Where does GLP-1 fit in that? And do you think it's possible that we could actually be deficient in GLP-1?

I think anything's possible. And I think that we need to look at that genetically. Are there people who just secrete less GLP-1? Or I wonder if it is the length and the severity of metabolic dysfunction that we have. That's impacted those cells and the degree to which we either produce GLP-1 or recognize it in the brain. So for sure, I think something could be there. I do believe that the way that we eat, the way that we put our foods together, the way that we manage stress and sleep all significantly impact it. So I would say likely the majority of humans who are struggling with obesity It's, it's not necessarily because we have a deficiency in GLP-1, but I think we could create so many changes in our life that could get us either all the way there or a large portion. So we don't have to use such a significant dose of the medication or have a chance of not having to take something forever. I really, something intrinsically in me is bothered by having to take a drug forever. I think it's because I know there must be a root to it. I mean, the, the human body is a miracle and we have a birthright of, of perfect health. And I know that we live in this toxic soup that could be a component of it, but I do believe we have the power within ourselves to create wholeness and good health.

What are some natural ways that we can increase GLP-1?

Number one is eating adequate protein. For me, for weight loss, I look at 0.8 grams of protein per pound optimal body weight. And not by optimal body weight of like you choosing how much you'd like to weigh, but your true ideal healthy body weight. So if you're weighing 200 pounds right now listening to this, you know that your optimal weight for your body is 120 pounds. I'm not great at math, so I'm not doing this math, but it would be 0.8 times 120.

Mm-hmm.

And that would tell you how many grams of protein to consume in a day day. And then you want to divide that protein up. You want to have the biggest amount of protein with your first meal and your last meal of the day because that is going to trigger muscle synthesis. And that's what everything is about, right? Maintaining muscle. Muscle is your organ of longevity. It's your biggest metabolic currency. And one of the biggest issues around these GLP-1 drugs is that we're not consuming enough. We're not hungry. When we do eat, we don't really feel great. And so we're going for the, the carby foods that we usually eat when we're kind of feeling like we've got the flu. As a result, we've got nutrient deficiencies. It's not the drug causing it, it's how we're eating. As a result, we're losing up to 30 to 40% of weight coming from muscle. Then actually, recent study coming out showing that, uh, a meta-analysis of 37 different studies of GLP-1 users and folks regain all the weight within 1.7 years of stopping the drug.

Like 100%.

Yeah, this is really significant. That's a good number. Really bothers me because I know there's another way.

Yeah.

Okay, so adequate protein. I was talking about timing— first meal, last meal. I think it's important to, to eat lunch and a snack. I think it's hard to intermittent fast and get adequate protein in there, so I'm not a huge advocate of intermittent fasting all the time. It depends on the individual. It's a toolbox in our programming, but it's definitely not toolbox, especially if you tend to overcompensate or kind of binge as a result of the fasting. Not good for you in this moment. In this moment, fiber is another thing that will trigger GLP-1, especially if you eat it with protein. So here we've got this protein-fiber-resistant starch kind of combo. So that would look like a steak with maybe some green beans and a side salad with some avocado and full-fat dressing. Never do anything low fat. You don't need anything fat-free. You don't need anything diet. You want to eat real food. I think one of the most surprising things that my clients share with me is that they can eat healthy fats and that fat doesn't cause you to get fat. And that's another thing that's going to help support GLP-1 secretion. So you're going to eat protein and fiber together. You're going to make sure that you put some healthy fats in there. Um, yerba mate is a drink that has been shown to increase GLP-1 levels. Managing stress, getting adequate sleep, letting alcohol go. And then there are some kind of supplements that can be beneficial, like berberine. I like dihydroberberine as the form, uh, chromium picolinate, eriolmin, which is a citrus bioflavonoid, and then a special probiotic called Akkermansia. These are all supplementations that can be helpful for improving and supporting natural GLP-1 secretion. I was so encouraged by the significant impact that these ingredients have on GLP-1 secretions. I formulated some specific products for that.

Let's get back to the GLP-1 thing then. So it sounds like you don't want people to take them forever, but you're not opposed to using them as a tool.

Yeah. And minimum effective dose.

What does that mean to you?

What that means to me is right now we are given these drugs, they're dropped off on our doorstep in a macro amount that might be way more than your body actually needs.

Yeah. The starting dose, even at, you know, let's use tirzepatide, Mounjaro, for example, the starting dose at 2.5 milligrams is— it's either hundreds or thousands of times the amount that your body secretes. So then my question is, is, okay, well, don't we have to start there then Or are you saying that there could potentially be a lower dose?

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that if people take an approach where they work to get their body out of this survival mode, that they eat in a way that supports their body and allows it to feel safe again, to allow to release the fat, then the amount required could be significantly reduced if we're actually starting and doing the work necessary to drop the weight naturally. And then we put this on top as an, an added layer, as a tool for those who need it. I do believe that the dose can be considerably lower.

And we see that now. Obviously, there's this trend for quote-unquote microdosing, which is not well defined. But have you— do you have any experience with with microdosing? I know you're not prescribing these in your clinic, but for people that are on doses, whether they be macrodoses or microdoses?

Yeah, I mean, again, this is anecdotal, and I have quite a few clients who came into PhD already utilizing the medications, and they were able to, A, either get off of them and continue the weight loss, or at least maintain, and then B, able to reduce the dose if they were on a higher level. So I have, yeah.

Yeah. And people who are specifically microdosing, are you asking their doses?

I'm asking their doses and they're microdosing with success.

One of the things that, that stands out to me though as a red flag, a warning on this, is that we have seen weight loss drug trends come and go, right? I mean, when you started in practice, it was what? It was HCG.

That's right.

Yeah. What else was there?

Pretty much HCG was the biggest one. I think we had missed— oh, back in the day was Fen-Phen.

Uh-huh. Yeah, that one actually killed people. Um, and so we've seen these things kind of come and go. Some of them have come and go and come back again. Do you think this will be different?

I think that it will be different in that it's helpful in other aspects of achieving optimal health, and we're focused now as a society more on longevity. And I think both of us can see it as being a helpful tool in specific ways for specific people in specific doses. It needs to be personalized just like everything else. We're so unique.

Yeah.

And so I do think we will see these medications be— continue to be used, but the way that we're using them right now I believe will drive us toward the next health crisis. Hmm. It is terrible and it is causing a lot of damage. So we just— it, it needs to be managed. People need to be guided. And again, we've got to be able to do the work, the mental and emotional, the lifestyle, the behaviors, or else we're just gonna see a big rebound. And because we haven't, most of us haven't done this in the right way, we're going to end up metabolically worse off than when we started.

Yeah. So it, it seems like there's a future where these things could be utilized, maybe more of like a longevity approach, right? More potentially some lower dosing thresholds. I don't, I don't know how we get there on the pharmaceutical side, but I do see, I see that future. What do you think are the biggest longevity benefits? What have you seen?

I have seen benefits around autoimmune conditions. Uh, support even with migraines, which is really interesting. We've also seen reduction in inflammation, which could result in reduced joint pain, skin irritation. You know, the, the belly fat, which we haven't talked about much— the belly fat is actually an active organ in there. I look at it like a tumor, and all it wants to do is get fatter and fatter as fast as possible. And the belly fat cells actually secrete hormones like interleukin-6, which is this major inflammatory hormone. And I think we feel really bad in our body and experience a lot of resulting poor health conditions and diseases when we are struggling with this excess body fat because of the inflammatory hormones being secreted by this belly fat.

Mm-hmm.

So if we look at GLP-1s in a way of inflammatory reduction, uh, I think that can also be beneficial alongside, of course, of dropping this excess fat weight to overall reduce inflammation in the body.

Yeah. So you're actually getting reduction in inflammation from both sides.

That's right.

Yeah. I think as we look at some of the potential longevity benefits, it is gonna be hard to separate out like the benefit from actually the visceral fat reduction. I know. Versus the potential benefit from, from the drug. I think fortunately there is so much money in this that there, there will be research done on these topics. So more to come. You mentioned some interesting topics. I, I want to just dig into, 'cause I don't, we haven't talked about 'em on this podcast. One of the things you mentioned was fat adaptation.

Mm-hmm.

Can you define that for me?

That is teaching the body how to burn fat as fuel. Mm-hmm. Really, the ultimate goal is that we wanna have metabolic flexibility. We want to be able to burn sugar or burn fat at the flip of a coin. Most of us are sugar burners. As a sugar burner, you're not gonna feel great. You're not gonna have great focus. You're gonna have more inflammation. Free radicals, which cause inflammation, are a byproduct byproduct of sugar metabolism. I explained sugar metabolism like this wood-burning fireplace. You know, you have to stick wood in there all the time, it burns, the air is sooty, it's not good to breathe. That's what it's like when we're living as a sugar burner. Instead, what we want to do by how we eat and when we eat, we want to teach the body how to burn fat for fuel. And it feels so good. I mean, you notice the difference. It's significantly enhanced your mental focus. I'd say it's enhanced your performance in all areas, uh, and it's just a really, really great tool. And I equate this to a propane fireplace, you know, you just turn the switch on and it lasts a lot longer and it's much more clean. But because we've been— of the way we've been told to eat, we just haven't been able to get to this place. And so, um, yeah, our metabolism is not very flexible, it doesn't feel good, we're inflamed, we can't sleep. We've got type 2 diabetes. By the way, none of us need to have or should have type 2 diabetes, and this is not a chronic progressive disease. You can put type 2 diabetes into remission. The majority of people can by how they're eating and how they're living their life, and you can do it very quickly. I'm not saying 100%, it depends on your body and the severity of the disease, but the majority of people can make significant improvements if they're struggling with type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea. All of this can change when we can shift the metabolism into becoming fat adapted and metabolically flexible.

The other thing I wanna get into is alcohol.

Okay.

You said let's come back to it. So, yes. So let's come back to it. Mm-hmm. I know one of the, one of the biggest things when, when people start working with you and you kind of start laying out the program, probably some of the biggest kickback or negative feedback you get is when you say, oh, and stop drinking alcohol. Mm-hmm. So why, what's the big deal?

So first of all, if you're listening to this and, and you say, I am not gonna drop weight because I need to cut out alcohol, that's not true. I mean, you still can make huge changes and you can still drop weight if alcohol is a must, but I would encourage you to reconsider, uh, for so many health reasons. We do know that alcohol is a toxin in any amount, unfortunately. And so if you can Cut it from your lifestyle. You will only benefit, and I promise you, you will not regret it. We both don't drink anymore, and both of our lives have significantly improved. So I encourage you, if you're listening to this and you have doubts, uncertainty, you think you can't do it, you can. And I'm gonna teach you about the science behind alcohol because that's really what matters. I think a lot of people when they're going through weight loss, they think, oh, I just need to eat less and move more. But I will tell you, it's not about calories in and out. I'm not saying that we defy the law of thermodynamics, that it doesn't matter, but all calories are not equal. So with that being said, I'm not saying you need to let go of alcohol because it contains calories. I'm talking about alcohol and how it impacts your metabolism. We know that one shot of alcohol or one glass of wine will blunt fat burn for about 4 to 6 hours depending upon your metabolism. The liver is in charge of burning fat. It's also in charge of metabolizing alcohol, and it just is doing a lot for you. And so if you put alcohol on top of everything else, it's just like, oh my gosh, I can't take this. Alcohol is a toxin. I've got to get rid of it somehow. And it focuses on that. It can definitely multitask. But for this analogy, just pretend like it can't multitask. It needs to focus on getting the poison out of the body. And that's what it's going to do. So it just stops everything else when it comes to fat burning. If you consume more than one shot or more than one drink, it's going to knock you out of fat burn exponentially from there. So you could, you know, hinder away, throw away 3 to 4 days of fat burn, and it's gonna slow your progress. So you will lose fat at a slower rate when you drink than if you let it go. So, so that's the reason behind it. Now, if you say, gosh, I'm just gonna drink, I don't care what she says, The best type of alcohol is going to be something clean like a vodka or a tequila, and you want to make sure that you don't mix it with something sweet because when you do mix it with sweetness and carbs, it blunts the liver fat burn even more. So beer, for example, liquid bread. If you are carrying belly fat and you want to get rid of it, you don't want to drink beer. When it comes to wine, I'd say a dry white or red wine. It really doesn't matter the color, you just don't want to have a lot of sugar in Tonic water, like a gin and tonic. Tonic water has just as much sugar as a Coca-Cola. A lot of people think that because it doesn't taste sweet, it doesn't have sugar in it, but it does. So those are gonna be your best bet. But your true, true best way of going about to optimizing your health is to totally let alcohol go.

Sad for so many people.

Sad for so many people.

But I can just reiterate, 5 years later, I haven't had a drink since, like literally over 5 years. And I mean, after the first day, honestly, once I decided to let it go, I've never looked back and never felt better. I think a lot of people are concerned around the social aspect, like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? You and I were at a great dinner last night with some mentors, people we looked up to. They ordered a glass of wine. We didn't order a glass of wine. Nobody said, thought, I mean, even think about it.

You talked about triggers when it comes to weight gain and weight loss, and we were talking about stress. Well, social pressure is another one. So it's the same around food or alcohol, but it is managing social pressure and how to say no and how to feel okay about doing that and supporting your body. I think that saying no to yourself is actually a form of self-respect. It's not deprivation, it's not restriction. This is where the mindset piece really comes into play. You are doing this out of love for your body, respecting your body, honoring your body. You always call your body your temple. You're like, I'm not going to consume that and his temple. And that really is the way that we need to look at it. And I think if you really embrace this as your identity, you're not judging or shaming anybody else— they get to choose what supports their body— then they're going to ultimately be okay with it. But first, you have to be confident in your decisions and your identity, and then the rest becomes a lot easier, I'd say.

I mean, I think a big switch for me that occurred actually at the same time was around the work for me, just really literally respecting myself on the way to learning how to love myself. That was never a part of my upbringing, how I felt about myself as a child. I was overweight as a kid, so I hated my body and I just, I lived that way. And so for me then to be able to get to a point where I can actually say that about my temple and have respect for the things that I'm putting in it, I mean, first of all, it's been so much better for me personally. But also I love the effect that it's having on the kids. And it's, again, it's not a, it's not a reactive decision to consume something. It's a proactive decision around what am I going to— what's the impact of this for my body? And alcohol is a great example of that.

All right. Can we, can we go back to the topic of self-love for a moment? Yeah. So we've been studying Kabbalah lately, and I love it. It's been really fun for us. And in Kabbalah, they talk a lot about challenges happening to us. And I've, I've always talked to our clients about this. I say, you know what, you can focus on what's wrong or you can focus on what's right. You get to decide. And if you focus on what's right, life's gonna be a lot easier because then you have the power. You're not a victim anymore. We don't get to solve anything when we're a victim. It might feel better in the moment, but ultimately it doesn't get us anywhere. So if we look at, okay, these challenges that are coming into our lives are here for a reason, and we've actually chosen these challenges. When we look at the challenge around our weight, I think that we choose these challenges, or they present in our life because we need to work on transforming certain patterns that keep coming up in our lives. And I think a common pattern that comes up when we are struggling with weight is one around self-love. And so we've chosen this challenge so we have no other option but to love ourselves, and we have to love ourselves in the moment. And I know that this sounds a little bit cheesy, but if you think you're going to be happy when— and I'll love my body when I look like this this, you're never gonna be happy, and your body again is going to be stuck in this survival mode with elevated cortisol levels, therefore higher insulin levels and more belly fat. It's like this propagating cascade and cycle. So instead, I really urge you that if you are in the process of dropping weight, that you start to love your body now in this moment. Because when you can love your body now in this moment, it's going to feel safe again, and it's going to start working for you again, and you're just going to see this fat start to release. I, you know, the body is waiting for you to come at it with love rather than force. So if you've been constantly struggling with weight throughout your life, I would encourage you to look at the patterns that you might need to work on overcoming in order to release this fat weight. And that's why I think that weight loss is so much more than an injection and a pill and the next magic drug. And it makes me very sad to think about so many millions of people thinking that this alone is the answer. Yeah.

Can you speak a little bit more on the difference between self-love versus I deserve this? Because— because I think this is actually a really slippery slope where you can say, well, I love myself and my body is craving this thing and I deserve this thing because of X. We've seen this. In our family, certainly in your clients, you know, people that just cannot seem to make good decisions around food because they feel like they deserve it, and how that's not the same thing.

Yeah, you know the foods that support your body. This spacesuit is fueled off of certain foods. You know that's not the donut, you know that's not the cake, you know that's not the drink, you know that's not staying up late and watching Netflix. You can choose to do these things once in a while, but being consistent is key here. When you want to change your identity, you've gotta be consistent. You've gotta retrain those neural pathways. So I think if you, again, take a pause, think about, okay, what truly serves not me and my emotions, but this human body and what it was built on, you're gonna be able to make the right decisions.

Mm-hmm. Let's kind of bring this back. So for someone who is currently, let's say, on a GLP-1 at a traditional pharmacologic dose, what does the future look like for them? How do they continue on this drug and successfully complete the mission, which is to achieve optimal weight? How do they do that in the best way possible? And then how do they get off of the drug?

To do that in the best way possible, you've got to work on the diet. And you've got to work on yourself, right? There's, there's no way that you can actually make a significant change in your body, in your brain, in your life if you don't do those things. So we've talked about the main things here, and I know you provide a lot of great information on this podcast. There's lots of other programs out there. You want to do your due diligence and make sure that you, if you do join one, that they focus on the habits and behavior, and they actually have a comprehensive dietary approach to get you into this metabolic flexibility, to help you become fat adapted like we've talked about today. And then the best chance of actually getting off the medication is to remain consistent in these and to have support. Yeah, to have accountability. This is the biggest thing, I think, for weight loss. We think, oh my gosh, this is easy, I should be able to do this on my own, I should just eat everything in moderation, I know what to eat. And I just need to have more willpower. I've heard this over and over and over again. I know what to do, but it is complex and it is difficult, and there are so many things out there and so many pressures that it is okay to ask for help. You do not have to do this on your own. So if you feel like dropping weight and keeping it off for good is something that's very important to you and you're not able to do it alone, then you just ask for help, and that's okay.

Yeah, I love that, that sense of community and knowing that other people are going through the same thing and being successful. And if someone is starting to gain weight back after having stopped a GLP-1, what do you tell them?

Yeah, that's a great question. So they're noticing the creep a little bit. I would say go back to basics. Make sure you're— I mean, for me, I live and breathe this. This is all I do is weight loss. That's it. Nothing else. And I have to bring myself back in. Yeah. For me, it's getting adequate protein or working through my workout. I have to reel myself back in. This isn't serving me. This isn't a form of self-respect for my body. I'm gonna put my body back in survival mode and it's not gonna listen to me. And so I think it's just taking a deep breath and coming back to the basics. And then if that's not working and you feel like the medication was a big help and you wanna do it in a different way, maybe that's a little bit of a microdose as you get back on track., but you want to avoid the rebound. So you wanna catch that. I usually say for men within 8 pounds, that's the alarm bell going off. It is not 50 pounds anymore, right? It's not 80 pounds. It's 8 pounds is the alarm bell of, ah, gotta check myself, gotta reel myself back in. That's not, doesn't mean you've ruined anything or that you failed. We all have that. You have your top end weight.

I sure do.

And you're like, okay, Hey, something's gotta change here. Like we all do it. Even the professionals, you are not alone at all. I think for most women it's about 5 pounds or so. You're gonna kind of know your range, but I know if I get 3 pounds up, I don't feel good. My clothes start to feel different. I'm like, okay, Ashley, let's, let's get back to it.

Yeah. So last question, same question I ask everybody at the end of this podcast to get to where we wanna be in the future of healthcare. This Health 3.0 space to get to there from where we are now, it's going to take some work. It's going to take some magic. It's going to take a lot of thought. If I gave you the keys to the kingdom, unlimited budget, unlimited resources, what would you build or what would you do to help us get to where we want to be?

Well, back in the day when we were sick, like way back in the day, the doctors would come to our house and treat us and look at us like as a whole person, look at the whole body. And now doctors are so specialized, they look at just one organ or the front of the eye or the back of the eye. And I, I see why we've gone there. And I think ultimately it's done us a bit of a disservice. You know, I, I think about my father and he's dealing with some cognitive decline and it took him 8 months to figure out what it would be. And then he went to the doctor and the doctor said, you need to eat more tofu and you need to eat more beans. And I'm thinking, are you serious? After everything we know at this point about the brain, that's what he's been told. Another friend who has blood counts just all over the place, platelets, all his platelet numbers all over the place. He's been to every doctor, eye doctor, spleen, liver, bone, everything you can imagine. Still has no idea after 8 months. Thousands and thousands of dollars, so many tests. What's going on? So I think at this moment, I believe that we need to bring it back together somehow. And I don't know what the answer is to that, but where we're able to look at the whole person again, but also utilize all the knowledge that we have in these specialties. So I don't know if that's some type of collective community work where we can really bring healthcare again back to the whole person. I don't know again what that would look like specifically, but we've specialized so much that I don't think that we're taking the best approach for our health anymore.

Fair enough. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks a lot.