Reset Your Metabolism to Lose Weight with Dr. Alan Christianson

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people, people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to today's podcast. I've got a really awesome topic. We're going to talk about metabolic flexibility. This is going to be one of the biggest buzzwords going. We're going to talk about what the heck that is, what is metabolism, how do you know if you've messed yours up and what do you need to do to become metabolically flexible? And I also, my guest today, who's been a guest before and is a long, long time friend, super pal, has an amazing challenge that can help you start to shift things fast. You know how big of a fan I am of that because I want you to start to notice changes quickly so you'll stick with it and you'll be able to get all of that@jjvirgin.com metabolicreset and my guest today is Dr. Alan Christensen, known everywhere as Dr. C. He's a naturopathic endocrinologist who focuses on thyroid function, adrenal health and metabolism. And he is my doc. He has basically rescued my thyroid, it's the best way to say it. And he is the person who I love to send all of my thyroid people to. He's been in Scottsdale since 1996 and the founding physician behind the Integrative Health Clinic, which is an amazing clinic clinic in Scottsdale. Incredible doctors practicing in there. He's also a New York Times bestselling author. His books are the Adrenal Reset Diet and the Complete Idiot's Guide to Thyroid Disease. And the new book that you are going to want to have and get for your friends too, the Metabolism Reset Diet. This is going to be huge. And I'm sure you've already seen him all over the place. He appears regularly on national media, including the Doctors and Dr. Oz and the Today show. And he really is my go to reference whenever I have questions because he is an absolute research fanatic. So I always know that if I have a question I go over to Dr. C. Now I want to remind you again. Jjvirgin.com metabolicreset before we dive in, I want to share this favorite with you.

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Alrighty.

Welcome back Dr. Alan Christensen. What took you so long?

I've been just been goofing off and pining off the distance and waiting to. Waiting to come back.

Riding your unicycle and climbing up. Climbing up walls. Well, it's a topic that everybody wants to know more about metabolism and how to reset it. And I want to dive in with this one because to me it's all started because you did the ultimate metabolic reset on yourself.

Yeah, right.

So let's talk about that boy, for sure.

You know, I got into all this because I saw what a struggle it was when, you know, when you were didn't like your weight and felt self conscious and had health symptoms from that. And I saw it was a tough thing and it drove me into medical practice. And then from here I've learned that this is behind almost all the chronic symptoms and all the ongoing disease that people face.

So metabolism, let's start there before we even get into resetting it because I wonder if people even know what that means.

Yeah, funny thing, they always talk about like speeding it or boosting it, and that's not so much the case. It's really how your body adjusts to different amounts of fuel coming in. And we never get exactly what we need on a given day. I did a bike ride this morning and I've eaten some food and I can't perfectly match that. I can't plan that. So all of us have some ability to adjust how our body uses energy based upon our liver function. And when it works well, your appetite, your energy and your weight, they all just sync up and they all just line up the way you'd want them to. But what's not working? Well, you can get one of those three in place, but not like a Rubik's Cube where you got the one pieces, but the other ones won't come back without goofing something up. So that's how it plays out. I think most people know that if they just starve, they can change their weight, but then they're tired and then they've got this out of control appetite and cravings.

Don't you find that so many people though, it's like kind of a badge of honor and they think they're actually doing something right by feeling bad. Like they're like, I'm on a diet, I feel horrible. It must be working.

I think you're right. I think there's some puritanical idea like that.

And so why are they feeling so run well?

So if it worked well, you know, we've all got just a pound of fat, which every one of us has. We could get by on that for a day or a day and a half. But we can't do it well because our liver's not able to break it down effectively and just give out the energy that we need when we need it.

So let's talk about, you know, you mentioned if we just had a pound of fat, a lot of us have.

A lot more pounds of fat than that.

And, you know, early on, I've always been a heavyweight for my height, but not a heavy fat person. A light fat, heavy weight. Right. And, you know, it's driven me crazy for years that we use a scale when we really need to look at what that weight is made up of. And, you know, but we still have people going, like, I just went to see the doctor yesterday and got thrown on a scale. I'm like, doesn't it really matter what my 150 pounds is made up of, not that I weigh 150 pounds? So let's talk about being over fat. I wish the terminology would be lose fat, not lose weight. Being over fat, not overweight. What's the difference?

Yeah, huge, huge difference. We've heard about belly fat. And fat is comprised of three things. We've got the fat around the organs, the belly fat. We've got the fat under the skin. I don't know if I told you this one before, but we're the only mammal that has fat under the skin that doesn't live in the ocean.

Wow, that's kind of weird. Like, why would that. You always come up with these things. Every time I talk to you, I come up with something new. I'm still kind of getting over the dry carbs, wet carbs, which I'll have to talk about. But why do you suppose that is? I mean, we're not. Just so that we could swim. Is this why my dog does not like to swim?

Well, so like, your dog, if your dog did eat too much, you know, she would have her skin and then her ribs right beneath that, and then all the fat would be beneath the ribs. Right. So. But no, we can get fat beneath the skin, too. And there's a strong theory never that we were like mermaids and mermen, but that we developed quite a bit of time near the oceans and swimming and getting a lot of food from the oceans. So we're adapted in some ways. Kind of like aquatic mammals are.

Well, maybe we are mermaids and mermen. Possibility.

So there's this subcutaneous fat and the belly fat. But there's this new category called. Well, it's not new, but it's new to talk about, called organ fat. And that's the stuff that is by far the most dangerous. And what happens is that you use the word over fat, which is really good. People have thought about their weight, and we define overweight and obese by skill, weight and height by body mass index. But like you said, that fails to take into account a lot. And there's many people that might be heavy per their size, but they're perfectly healthy. And there's even more people that might have a good weight per their size, but they're the skinny fat, you know, they're under muscled, right?

The tofis, the thin outside fat inside. So how does one figure out if they've got this organ fat?

So this is really cool. I spent a lot of time sorting this out and it bothered me because at first pass, you know, body fat is a hard thing to measure accurately. There's electronic devices you can hold and there's DEXA machines that scan your body with radiation. And you can't do them every day, they're expensive. So I looked around quite a bit and I found that one of the simplest things there is is actually the most accurate. And it's just not even hard math. So most of us as adults know our height because it doesn't change a lot. If you haven't measured it for a long time, you might update it because we can lose some height over time. So you know your height and convert that to inches. Now the other number you need is take out a tape measure, wake up in the morning, empty your bowels, empty your bladder. We're used to tucking our belly in. So for this you don't take a deep breath in, deep breath out, let it relax and measure right around the belly button. So all you do is compare your height to your waists and the formula is drop dead simple. If your waist is more than half of your height, you're in this category of risk. And if it's well below that, you're not.

We will put this in the show notes because people's cortisol already started going up. They went, that's still math. We'll put that in the show notes so that everybody can do this, you know, because we've always talked about waist circumference, waist hip circumference. So this is great. So waist to height. And I remember this is so funny that you mentioned this. I, when the whole waist circumference thing came out, I go, wait, wait, wait, I'm 5, 11, 6ft tall. You can't tell me that what's normal and healthy for me as a waist measurement is going to be the same as a woman five feet tall for sure. And I remember talking to one of my doc friends who was like, no, that's what the studies. I was like, no, no, think, think. This doesn't make sense.

I've seen papers, jj, that have shown that you could compare the predictive value of cts, coronary artery, cts, cholesterol levels, all kinds of things. And you can compare that against just this, height to weight ratio. And the height to weight ratio is a bigger predictor of total mortality and also cardiovascular mortality.

Height to weight or height to waist height?

Height to. I'm sorry, Height to waist. That's what I meant to say.

Okay.

And with guys, it's easy because our waist is pretty much our waist size. For our pants, it's close to that. So we often have a number, so.

Well, I have to call BS on that one. I got to tell you, because here's what I think they've done with guys. I know what they've done with women, and I will tell you.

Sizing.

Okay.

Yes.

I used to wear a size 1012 in pants, and now I wear a size 4.

Oh, my goodness.

All right, Now I. Come on. Right. So I know with men, because, you know, when I used to do one on one clients, I had a lot of male clients, and I'd come in, they go, my waist is 32. Well, I think the thing is too, is they would. Their waist might have been 32, but the thing hanging over their waist was not 32.

The medical. The medical term is Dunlap disease. I don't know if you've heard that before.

No, it's more so.

It's more so something that happens to men. Men later in life, and it's kind of tragic. It's where your belly. Dunlaps over your belt.

Yeah. So whatever you can get your belt to as tight as possible. That's not your waist.

Right.

It's the thing hanging over it. That's your waist. All right, so let's talk now about. And I'm really excited about this whole idea of metabolic flexibility. I think that this is going to become one of the big new buzzwords out there. So explain what this concept means.

Yeah. So every single person, your body has to make do with how much energy you need and how much energy you've got. And that's your liver adjusting it. And when you've got a flexible metabolism, if you have more food than you need, you don't have to go up four or five pounds. And then if you've got a little less food than you need, you feel fine, you're not craving and you're not full of brain fog, you're still functioning well. So when those things don't work, when you lower your food and you feel awful. Now, of course, anyone, if they starve, they're not going to feel well and anyone, if they overdo it, they'll eventually gain. But when you've got metabolic flexibility, you've got reasonable latitude to where your food needs don't have to be perfect for a given day. And your body sorts it out, your body just takes care of that. And I think if nothing else, most of us have some time in our lives, maybe when we're kids even to where, you know, we played when we wanted to and ate what we were hungry for and it all worked out. But somewhere along the way that got lost. And the message is that's not healthy. That means something is wrong.

I think where it got lost, I'm gonna throw Weight Watchers under the bus. But because I remember going on, you know, I've tried every single diet known to man here and remember trying a diet like a similar type of thing of a Weight Watchers where you count your points and what you're going to eat and it completely disconnects you from how much do I need? Am I really hungry? It's like, nope, I have to, it's 10am and I have to get my like whatever points of this, you know. So I think that a lot of these diets where they tell you what to eat when have really disconnected us from, you know, what do we need, how do we feel?

You know, the other, the other part about it that I think has really been harmful for people is the expectation that you've got to live your life on a diet and that, you know, your habits should achieve your day to day maintenance habits should make you lose weight and they should not, you know, it's, it's, you've got to do some weird stuff to really change your body size. And you do that for a while, you reach a goal and then you do a whole different way of life to maintain that and be healthy.

And the study shows this. You know, the studies show that like what you do to lose weight is different than what you do to maintain your weight, but that it's like one of those, I had a buddy used to call them the studies that get ignored. Yeah, it was like it's the study that gets ignored. I think the big challenge is there's really two concepts and we use one word for them and that is diet. Because we should have. Diet should really indicate a thing. You go on to learn something, change something, you know, for the desired outcome and then the way we eat, which should be another word and they're two very different things to get convoluted.

Yeah.

So let's talk metabolism reset diet, which I am so glad that you wrote, like, walk us through it. What exactly is it?

Well, the whole idea is how do you, how do you go about making that transformation? You know, how do you go from having a poor metabolism that doesn't give you any leeway at all to where extra food is wasted?

So define a poor metabolism. Someone knows they have a. And my buddy, Dr. Diana Schwarzbein used to call it. How I first really got into this idea was that, you know, people have to, people have damaged their metabolism and you don't lose weight to get healthy. You actually get healthy to lose weight. You have to reset that metabolism. I love that this is coming out. I'm like, big fan of this. So how do we know if we've got our metabolism isn't working?

Well, it's when you've got to watch and micromanage your food intake and the day that you don't, your weight shoots up many pounds or all of a sudden the clothes don't fit. And on the other side, when you do lower your food intake, you feel miserable, you're exhausted, you're craving, your brain shutting down and you can't function. When your metabolism works right, your body should have a safe place to store the extra food and a safe way to get that out when you need it again.

Okay, so those people that, you know, miss a meal and an hour later are losing their mind or have to eat every couple hours or literally because you hear about this, like go out to dinner and their weight goes up a couple pounds the next morning. These can all be signs of this. And so who would this be perfect for? Like, who should be going on this program? Because I know you have a free.

Challenge, which we love, free challenges.

So I know you have a free seven day challenge. We're going to be able to put everybody on who should be doing this.

The person who eats healthy and their weight doesn't respond, you know, quite simple, they eat good foods, but nothing seems to really budge for them.

And let's talk about a lot of the different things going on right now. I mean, between intermittent fasting, ketogenic diet, caloric restriction, we're going to go one by one because I want to understand how this is different from say someone just going on a diet, lowering their calories.

Yeah. So the pitfall is, and this is how we talk about waste loss as the real goal over weight loss. You know, any way you lower your food intake, you can temporarily lose weight, but the trick is either you're going to rebound, you're going to lose a whole lot of muscle mass or both. It's just not going to last and not going to stick. So that. That's the big distinction.

And what about fasting and intermittent fasting?

Fasting and intermittent fasting. You know, I've done a lot of. A lot of research on these and followed all the literature. And this is tricky. There's a lot of. There's many ways in which people could do something that kind of works, but not for the reason that they thought so. They've done almost all the studies on intermittent fasting have been on weight loss or changes in metabolic syndrome markers, things like blood sugar, blood cholesterol, triglycerides. And what they show is that if people do intermittent fasting, they can improve in those ways. They can lose weight, they can get better blood sugar or whatnot. But then when they see, okay, what if the same people ate the same food but didn't choose when to time the food? And it always turns out they get the same results. So if someone eats less food via intermittent fasting, say their food goes down 25%, they get the exact same benefits they would get if they ate at any time and their food went down by 25%. So it was.

I was on the. Okay, so it wasn't the intermittent fasting. It was the food shift.

Yeah.

You know what was interesting? I went on David. I was on the Today show with David Shinchenko, who wrote Eat this, Not that. And they had both of us on. I'd just written, I think that was for the sugar impact diet. So it was me and him, and he was doing the eight. Whatever the eight, 16, his whole thing. Now you could eat whatever you wanted for eight hours. And I thought, boy, you just blown your whole brand and platform. Because it was. Now it's like. It's like, eat this, not that. No, you can eat this.

Just don't eat it.

Then I was like, dude, like, just logically, this doesn't make sense. We'd love it to make sense, but come on, come on. So you don't think there's anything to. Let's say that you are. Because what you're doing is effectively, when you do intermittent fasting, kicking out a meal.

So if you do that. But the loophole is you could eat more during that window than you would have otherwise.

I mean, that's what they pledge during that time is, you know, you can eat as much as you want or whatever you want. I think it's shifted from that, but it Just seems to me, though, that if you are eating with a little bigger window, because I've read the windows about the 12 hours and the 14 hours, that you're also giving yourself time for your insulin to come down to, you know, for that, too. I mean, wouldn't that make an impact?

Well, not really. So insulin's pretty fascinating. It's something that it shifts carbohydrate to store fat only when there's too much fuel in the body. And this is something I'm excited about with this book, too, is I'm talking about the concept of fuel. You know, protein is different from other calorie sources, but when. And also carbs, fats, ketones, they've all got some unique properties, good, bad, sometimes useful, that are all distinct from one another. But when we get down to how they serve as energy, they're all burned to the exact same thing called oxaloacetate. So once you're down to your liver and energy balance, they're all the same. And if you've got too much energy, your body creates insulin resistance and it doesn't matter where that energy comes from.

Yeah, I think that's important because I think for some reason, people are always looking for the free food. Yeah, there is no free food. It's going to be harder if you do the damage on, say, broccoli and spinach as it is on, you know, cookies. But come on. So what about ketogenic dieting then? Because you just said ketones, so I have to move to that.

Yeah. So ketones. There may be some role that happens in terms of ketones diminishing appetite. And any way that you lower your fuel intake below your body's threshold, you may make small amounts of ketones. And we don't know if the ketones actually lower the appetite or if they're just there while other things are going on that lower it. But that may be a useful effect. But that's completely different than ketogenic. So ketogenic. This is so bizarre. But you're in a ketogenic state when your body is unable to burn fat. It's not when you're burning fat. Well, it's when you can no longer burn fat. That's when you're in a ketogenic state. And what's happening is all the stuff you can't burn just stays in circulation in the form of ketones. So high levels of ketones are ultimately no different than high levels of blood sugar or high levels of blood triglyceride. They're just another kind of fuel that your body has nothing to do with.

So where has this whole urban legend? Because I know I forwarded you something. I was like, we got to get this, you know, we got it. We got to do something about these things where it said, you know, you must be in ketosis to burn fat. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is. This is what confuses the population. Where is this coming from?

Well, I guess it's from having just a real superficial understanding of. Of biochemistry and then speculating from that. If people and Atkins first started this idea, as far as arguing that you had to be in ketosis to be burning fat effectively. And, yeah, it's really the exact opposite of how it works in the body. So there's a process. I don't want to go get too geeky here, but there's a process called beta oxidation, and that's when you're burning stored fat for fuel. And you can only do that when you've got some stored glucose in the form of glycogen. So once you run out of all of your glycogen, you can't run beta oxidation anymore. And now all that stuff you can't burn becomes ketones. So it's the exact opposite of burning fat effectively.

So let's go back over to your new metabolism reset diet. And I know you've been working on this for a while. We've been talking about this for, gosh, what, over a year now. I'm very excited about it, and I've been working with, running people through the program. Just walk us through. How quickly can someone shift themselves into healing their metabolism and becoming metabolically flexible?

You know, this is the part. This is the part that just lights me up, because the human body is so resilient, given the right circumstances. And the story centers on our livers. And when we talk about how resilient the body is, the liver's like, star of the show, you know, in theory, you could lose 80% of it, and it would just grow right back again. So in the first seven days, we can clear out all the trapped fat between the liver cells that are blocking the body from being able to use fat for fuel effectively. So that happens that fast. And that's what happens to people in that free challenge. They gain that property back again.

Awesome. So for everybody listening, I keep talking.

About this free challenge.

You'll be able to grab that and all the show notes, and we'll do put that little waist to height, height to waist ratio in there too, and you can get that at jjvirgin.com forward/metabolic reset and this is all because Alan has, Dr. C has an amazing book he's been working on. This. This to me really is, is the like pinnacle of what you've been working on now for years and years and years. You know, with the adrenal reset and all your thyroid work and your thyroid books. It's like this, like brings it all together and gives people a way to start to shift things quickly so you'll start to feel better fast, which I love. So you're going to want to grab that@jjvirgin.com forward/metabolic reset and Dr. C, I appreciate you so much for coming back on the show again. I'm always love listening to you and I always learn something new. And before we go, I just would love you to share with everybody because I kind of mentioned it, dropped it, but didn't say what it was. And I remember you were in the kitchen at my house and and you said something about dry carbs versus wet carbs and it has literally changed my life. So I want everyone to have this, this idea because it is a game changing idea.

You know, it's a simple thing. And when you do have struggles with appetite, it seems that some foods can be bigger drivers than others. And many have mistakenly thought that all carbs were the enemy. But it's often more about the carbs that are crunchy, like the dry ones. So think about, think about like pretzels and think about oatmeal. So wet carbs would be like oatmeal or rice or beans. You know, when's the last time that you snuck down to the refrigerator at night and, or stuck down to the pantry and like polished off two, three cans of pinto beans? You know, it doesn't happen.

Says no one ever.

But, but the crunchy thing, the cereal, the crackers, the cookies, even like rice cakes for some people that they're, they can be completely different. So yeah, easy way to distinguish those is the wet ones and the dry ones.

I loved that because yes, Tim and I have sat on the counter and realized we just ate a bag of healthy bean chips. I was like, and you're right, I was like not sit down with a can of beans ever once. Never once got really pigged out on those beans tonight. Wow. And I think if you really did pig out on those beans, beans like that, you'd never do it again anyway. All right, I want to remind everybody again, jjvirgin.com forward/metabolic reset and I thank you so much for Being with me today, Dr. C, it's always awesome. And be sure to stick with me because after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question. This episode is brought to you by McAfee.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. Now you guys jump on Instagram, jj Virgin and Facebook JJ Virgin Official. Come and join me on my lives. And I just dig being on them and chatting with you and seeing all the different questions. It's really how we decide what podcasts do, what blog posts to do, what recipes to provide. So let us help you. And tell me what, tell me what you got going on. Jump on over and chat. And of course, you can always DM me on Instagram and you can always comment on the posts on Facebook. We're also building up our YouTube channel and doing a lot of how to's over there too. So again, I'm putting this together based on what you guys are talking about. And, and I was doing an Instagram live the other day and Marcia puts in the. Puts in the little chat line. I am so confused. Like, where do I start? Do I need to exercise, Sleep right? Eat more vegetables? What? I like, don't know what to do. I'm overwhelmed. So I think this came up a little bit today. But here is my philosophy on all of this is I love this book by Gary Keller called the One Thing. The reality is when you start, and this always seems to have at the beginning, gear. I'm going to eat healthy. I'm going to eat more vegetables. I'm going to drink more water. I'm going to go to bed earlier. I'm going to start exercising. I'm going to do yoga. I'm going to work on tapping to help with my stress. I'll start meditating. You know, all of those things. Not one of those things. All those things. And what happens when you do that? You totally set yourself up for failing. So what I want you to do is choose one thing. You heard Dr. C today. So maybe that one thing is joining his seven day challenge to help get the fat cleared out of your liver. So whatever it is maybe it's that. Maybe it's just like, I'm gonna just make sure that I start increasing my non starchy vegetables to five to ten servings a day. I'm gonna get 64 or more ounces of water in a day. One thing. Nail that one thing. It could take you three days.

It could take you three weeks.

When you got that thing nailed, go to the next thing. Become habits. We are what our habits are. Our habits dictate our hormones. Our hormones dictate everything. They dictate our metabolism. So the first thing starts with great habits, Creating those great habits. All right. Okay. There you go, Marsha, pick one thing. No overwhelm here on my watch, there's enough stuff going on to get us overwhelmed Enough. All right. Gratitude. So gratitude is one of those little hacks that can change everything. If you're feeling stressed out, just think about what you're grateful for. Boom. Changes things. So I am grateful for my fabulous humans who comment on my podcast. And here's why. So there's a couple different reasons. Number one, I'm over here and I'm recording these podcasts, and it's like, is anyone over here with me? You know, sometimes you feel all alone. All alone behind a microphone. And again, I want to do podcasts that serve you. That's the whole point of it. So when people share and subscribe and then comment, it's everything. My team reads them, I read them. It is everything. And I read every single one of these. So I want to do a shout out to to true at Eat, Live and play from Canada. Who said, love five stars, by the way, Winning without willpower. Love the episode with Ben Hardy about willpower. By the way, Ben Hardy wrote willpower doesn't work. I think that's the name of the book. He's super cool guy. Adore him. Anyway, after losing 30 pounds five years ago, I learned that relying on willpower was the surest way to fail at weight loss. This is why I wrote a book about focusing on building healthy habits instead of relying on willpower, because I want to help end the struggle for others to hear. Ben's insight on the research behind willpower was fascinating. Bravo for another great episode. Jj. Keep it coming. By the way, Ben, who's a buddy of mine that was his whole doctoral thesis was around willpower, and willpower doesn't work. So that is super cool. I just got to do this one too, because it's like, love this pod from Greta gangsta from Norway. And she said, five stars. This is the best podcast ever. Okay. Thank you Greta. And she says love you JJ and love all the guests. I'm a nutritionist and still learn a lot. Awesome. Thank you guys. I'd love to shout your name out, hinty hint hint. And what I need to do that is a review. So leave a review. Go to jjvirgin.com just jump on my website. You will find my little itunes symbol there. Grab the podcast and you'll be able to give a review and subscribe so you don't miss it. And I will see you next week. Make it a great one. Bye.

Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moments. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.