Marcelle Pick, a women's health expert with 33 years in practice, identifies why weight loss stalls despite diet and exercise: slow metabolism, food sensitivities like dairy and gluten, gut problems including parasites, hormonal disruption from stress, poor detoxification, and emotional patterns. She recommends removal diets, gut treatment, and stress management tailored to each person.
Hi, I'm Marcel Pick, women's health expert and best selling author. And I've been in practice for over 33 years. So I want to talk to you about something that I talk to you about all the time. And it's actually something that has been an issue for me. Are you someone that is struggling to lose weight? I've talked about it several times on Facebook. And I had a patient that came in yesterday and said to me, I went to my endocrinologist, I went to my gynecologist, I went to my sports medicine doctor. And I have hit this stage. I'm 49, I'm gaining weight. I've been so careful. I measure everything that I put in my mouth. I go to the gym and work out twice to four times to five times a week. I work out for two hours and I have gained 20 pounds. Is that you? Is that something that you see happening to you and you're being so careful and then finally you just say, forget it, it's not making any difference, why bother? So I'm here to remind you that if your body's not losing weight, you need to understand something's off. Something's off. But it is true that if you have a metabolism like mine, which is very slow, my brothers used to tease me in high school and used to say to me, if you look at cake, you gain five pounds. And I swear that's really true. So I learned to be very, very careful about my nutrition in high school. And guess what? It didn't serve me very well because later in life it made my metabolism slower. So the name of the game for you is to figure out what might be the problem. And there are several categories. I've talked about them before and I'm going to talk to you about them again because it's so important for you to understand there's nothing wrong with you. Did you hear me? There's nothing wrong with you. We just need to figure out what the problem is. Now, it is possible that you're somebody that uses food for stress reduction. But did you know that if we look at your neurotransmitters and start to understand what might be off with them, and that you then can have a normal appetite, that you might not be having those cravings for foods that you get so frustrated about because you're overeating when you shouldn't be, and that sometimes can be a food sensitivity. Who knew? My brother, he drinks a gallon of milk a day. Can you believe it? Oh, my God. I've been Telling him for a long time, I bet dairy is part of your problem. And he laughed at me for years. And guess what? He's reactive to dairy. So you may find that you go after a specific food all the time and oh my God, you can't wait to have it. And that's one of the foods you may need to take out of your diet. So food sensitivities can be a big problem for some people that prevent them from losing weight. When we find out what your food is that you're reacting to, you might be able to take dairy out of your diet or gluten out of your diet, or eggs. Those are the big ones that I see. And peanuts for sure. And when you take those out of your diet, people sometimes lose 15 pounds like that at the drop of a hat. Now, we also know that digestion, if you have digestive issues, and about 80% of my female patients have digestive issues. We know now more than we've ever known before, that your gut flora, that bacteria that's in your gut, we have millions of them. They contribute also to perhaps your issue of not being able to lose the weight. And as we change the flora, we change the gut, we start to see what foods you might be reacting to, or perhaps we even need to treat a parasite. Or it may be that you have an overgrowth of some bacteria you shouldn't have. As we treat that, guess what happens? You start to lose weight. The other thing we know is that hormonal imbalance can cause significant problems for women. And the biggest thing that I see is stress. I talk about it all the time because it actually affects our hormone cascade. So as we have a lot of cortisol, we're running around with the kids, we're trying to get our job done, we're doing last minute projects and we want to keep the house clean and we want to do the laundry and we have our parents to take care of and we have to go shopping and we're in traffic and we have road rage. Oh my God, is that you? Those things affect your hormones. So the more stress you have, the more we start to notice that that hormonal cascade gets very disrupted. And you might notice you get a little bit more pms, you get a little bit more irritable. A small thing makes huge reaction. When my kids were little, I had a one year old and then I had twins who were all in their snowsuits, ready to go outside. When my oldest was three and my twins were two and somebody spilled water, you would have Think at that time. You would have thought at that time it was like the worst thing that ever happened in the entire world. God, I got so upset was water, for God's sakes. When I saw that in myself, I knew my rage was out of control because my stress level was out of control. Now, what else could it be? So we've talked about hormones, we've talked about digestion, we've talked about food sensitivities, we've talked about compulsively going for food when you're stressed out, that it could be a food sensitivity. All of these things can block weight loss. The other thing that we know also is if you're not detoxing very well, for example, you might be somebody that has a system that's not able to get rid of toxins very easily. That could cause a problem too. And I know we talk about it kind of nonchalantly. Well, you need to detox. It is a reality. We are exposed to so many different things. And your job then is perhaps to use organic as much as possible. To go to the Environmental Working Group and look at what are the top 12 foods I need to do organically and the other foods I can be more lenient about. What about using organic meats as much as possible so you're not getting exposed. So some of the hormones they're still using in chicken and in meats. That's going to be also very helpful as you start to look at what are the things that are blocking you from that weight loss. And then the other thing is sometimes our issues are in our tissues. If we're finding we have a lot of stress, we have a lot of emotional issues, issues that we carry, and trust me, we all have them. You're not alone. That can be one of the things that blocks weight loss as well. We know that people that have a history of a lot of trauma as kids, they also sometimes use that body fat as protection. So if any of these things resonate with you, know that there's nothing wrong with you. You just need to figure out what the problem is so that your body's able to lose the weight and you're not resistant to that weight loss. So if you have any interest in reading more about this, my website has a lot of the information for you, and there are solutions. Please don't feel alone. Please don't feel isolated, because there's lots of things we can do. We just have to figure it out for you. What is your true need? We also know that there's not one diet that fits all. I know that for some people, it's a Mediterranean diet. For some people, it's lower carbs. For some people, it's a little bit lower fat. And for some people, it's more of a stabilized food plan. We need to figure out for you what's that plan on the other end, And I do a genetic test in my office to figure that out. So please know there are solutions for you. We have them everywhere on my website. And know that I'm here to support you in any way I can. So if you like this, please go below and like us and also follow us, and then we'll be able to help you so much more in the future. All right. Thanks for watching. Take care.
