Dhru Purohit Show - Expert Exposes Biggest Weight Loss Myths and the Secret to Longterm, Sustained Body Composition with Dr. Morgan Nolte

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bioptimizers, and AquaTru.  There is so much conflicting and outdated advice on weight loss and calories in and out. Although some of this advice may initially lead to weight loss, it does not always result in long-term weight loss, sustainable habits, and overall health. Today’s guest is here to break down the research, myths, and advice to help us navigate what actually works in the realm of weight loss and what can be disregarded.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Morgan Nolte to discuss why weight gain and insulin resistance have become more prevalent and what we can do to change our relationship with insulin and ultimately maintain ideal weight.  Dr. Morgan Nolte is a board-certified clinical specialist in geriatric physical therapy. She recognized a need for preventative education and care that focuses on reversing risk factors instead of just treating symptoms. That led her to focus on developing online courses and coaching programs that help adults reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Nolte dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Why unwanted weight gain and insulin resistance have become the norm (2:30 / 2:30) Aging and how that changes our relationship with insulin (16:17 / 13:35)  How calories drive eating behavior (25:02 / 21:28)  Tips for keeping the weight off (30:26 / 28:04) Sustainability by adding in rather than removing (37:35 / 34:12) Dr. Nolte’s tips for navigating conflicting advice (42:35 / 38:41) Breaking down carbohydrates (50:55 / 46:50)  Optimal fiber levels (1:05:06 / 1:00:47) Four pillars to a low insulin lifestyle (1:08:44 / 1:04:24) Toxic traits that damage mindset (1:20:10 / 1:06:03) The impact of sleep on your appetite (1:26:37 / 1:22:26) Strength training and stress management for optimal insulin levels (1:35:40 / 1:31:16 ) Understanding the why behind your goals and what actions you are taking (1:44:25 /1:40:20) Also mentioned in this episode: Zivli Ultimate Food Guide  Dr. Nolte’s episode with Dr. Lyon  You’re probably eating way too much protein To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Start the New Year off right and dial in on your sleep. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order. AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For women who are like, I feel like I hardly eat anything and anything that I do eat just like sticks to my body. How can I weigh so much when I eat so little? The foods that they're eating are likely the ones that are spiking insulin and driving all of those nutrients into fat storage. Versus eating a high protein, high healthy fat diet, high fiber diet that helps you feel more satiated. Hi, everyone, Drew Prode here. Today's guest is Dr. Morgan Nolte. And we're talking all things insulin resistance, weight loss, and how to optimize your health, especially after 40. Let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Morgan Nolte.

She's a board certified clinical specialist in geriatric physical therapy. And Dr. Nolte recognized a lack of preventative education and care that focused on reversing risk factors instead of just treating symptoms in the work that she was doing in geriatric care. That led her to focus on developing online programs and coaching programs that help adults reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention. That's a big theme of today's episode. Long-term weight loss. Anybody can lose weight for a little bit, but then a lot of people, based on the data, gain it back and more. How do we create long-term weight loss and strategies that we can actually implement into lifestyle routines? That's what Dr. Nolte is here to talk about.

Now, Dr. Nolte's online content has reached millions of people through her podcast and YouTube channels. She's previously been a guest lecturer on the DPT programs at Crichton University, the Nebraska Physical Therapy Association, and has been a guest speaker addressing insulin resistance on top-rated wellness podcast, and now she's on our podcast and show. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode with Dr. Morgan Nolte, all things insulin resistance and long-term weight loss. Dr. Morgan Nolte, welcome to the podcast. You know, unwanted weight gain is a major, major issue for so many people. And the problem, as we all know, just look at the stats, is getting out of control. We have now over 65% of Americans, and the number goes up every single year that are struggling with obesity or being overweight.

And we're now exporting this to the rest of the world. You have some pretty mind-blowing thoughts on why unwanted weight gain and visceral fat have now become the standard. and why they're so hard to shed. I'd love to turn it over to you. Would you mind sharing some of those thoughts? Yeah, well, first off, thank you for having me. I love spreading the message about insulin resistance anywhere I can.

And I hope that your audience finds this interview really valuable. We're going to try to make it very practical action-based for you. So I think that there is, you know, this is a loaded question, first of all. You handed me a loaded question to start with. And I think the first thing that comes to mind is we, have an environment that no longer supports optimal health. And we have an environment where people are chronically stressed, chronically sleep deprived, we're overworked, we're underrested, and obesity is becoming the norm. And so I think that looking at the population as a whole, you know,

you go to a concert or you go to a football game, someone who's overweight or obese, they're not going to stand out anymore. Someone who is at a healthy weight. they stand out now and people are questioning, oh, like, what are they doing? You know, I think that a healthy lifestyle is becoming rarer and rarer. And so I think that we're living in this culture, we're living in this environment that makes unhealthy choices so easy. Look at Netflix, for example. You know, they just say, continue the next episode in five, four, three, two, one. And so we stay up and we watch four episodes of, you know, Reacher or Homeland or whatever the, the show is of the choice and we're not sleeping. And then we wake up and we have convenience food for

breakfast and lunch and maybe dinner. And then we're sitting in a desk all day and we're not very active. So to say like what is causing this, it's really our environment, but it's also our understanding of the factors that contribute to weight gain. So the first part of the answer is we are living in an environment that does not support optimal health. The second is we are living with outdated beliefs around weight and weight loss. And the first of those beliefs is that losing weight, gaining weight is all about calories in and calories out. And I'm not saying that calories don't matter.

But the fact that a calorie is a calorie is complete nonsense. A calorie is a unit of measurement that we use in the lab. And I like to say once you swallow the calorie, they are no longer equal. So we can get into that a little bit more. throughout this interview, but we have to break through these outdated beliefs around weight loss. Another outdated belief is that cardio is king. And if you just run more, you run more, you run more, you walk, walk, walk, you're going to lose weight. And many women listening to this know that that's not necessarily true. So we really need to shift away from the caloric model of obesity and towards

the insulin model of obesity, which is a more scientifically proven, model of obesity. And so when you learn how to think about weight loss in a way of like, well, how does this affect my insulin instead of how many calories does this have, weight loss and the choices that you need to make to lose weight and keep it off become a lot clearer. And then the third problem is mindset. And I think a lot of people live again in the society of instant gratification. And we are an impatient. we're getting very impatient in our nature. And that's why medications like Ozmpic are skyrocketing. They're flying off the shelves.

People want to lose weight and they want to lose weight now. And we're forgetting that the goal is not to lose weight. I'm going to say that again. The goal is not to lose weight. The goal is to lose weight and keep it off and improve your health. And that requires a different, more holistic and comprehensive strategy than just here. take this medication or, you know, get liposection or whatever the next quick fix is for weight loss. Do this chronic calorie restricted diet. Just do some significant intermittent fasting.

The weight will come off. I don't care if the weight comes off. I care if the weight stays off because that's when we get the metabolic improvements that reduce the risk of chronic disease, which I'm out to prevent. So I think that when we're talking about weight loss, we can't forget about all of these aspects and I'm so happy to unpack all of them. So much that's there. And I think one of the most important things that you mentioned is that many people actually can lose weight initially. But if you look at all the data that's out there, they not only end up gaining it, but they gain more when they can't find a plan that's sustainable for them. We're going to break all that down today. Let's start off with the first one that you mentioned, which was insulin. Why is insulin such an important part of

this conversation and how does it take the idea that it's all just about calories in and calories out and really expand it. It's not that that's not true, as you mentioned, you know, but it's actually there's a lot more to the story. So what would you like to share about insulin? Today's episode is brought to you by the Birch mattress by Helix. So we all know that getting a good night's sleep is super important, not just for our health in general, but for being a functional and thriving human being. I can tell you that when my sleep suffers, the next day is rough. That's why I'm so psyched about today's sponsor. Burch mattress by Helix. I've been sleeping on my birch mattress for three years now. True story and it's the real deal. The birch mattress is certified,

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I think I want to approach this interview as if somebody has never really heard about insulin or insulin resistance, and I want to build a really strong foundation for them to understand it, and then we can kind of go deeper throughout the interview. So insulin is a hormone made in your pancreas,

and it is absolutely vital for our survival. It has a lot of different functions in our body, but the primary one that I focus on is blood sugar regulation. And as you know, continuous glucose monitoring is a hot topic right now. And the glucose that we're monitoring is actually a downstream effect of how well your insulin is working, how sensitive you are to insulin. So when you eat like a high carbohydrate meal, for example, the carbohydrates are broken down into glucose in your blood, right? But your body doesn't like high blood sugar.

So it has to release insulin to move the blood, the sugar from the blood, into the cells to be stored. So insulin's role is to move blood sugar from the bloodstream into the cells for storage. And that's why I call it the fat creation and storage hormone. So insulin has two primary roles, regulation of blood sugar, fat creation and storage. It also has other roles, but those are the two primary ones relevant for this conversation. And a beautiful example of that is a type 1 diabetic. So people with type 1 diabetes, they don't make their own insulin anymore. So their pancreas isn't making insulin.

So if they eat a high carbohydrate meal, their blood sugar is going to spike and it's going to stay elevated. It can't get into the cells to be used for energy or to be stored to be used later for energy. And so type 1 diabetes used to be called the wasting disease because people would literally waste away. They would eat, eat, eat, eat, they'd be thirsty. They had plenty of available energy in their cells, but it couldn't, in their body, but it couldn't get into their cells because insulin wasn't there to unlock the cell for the energy to get in. And so once insulin was created and a type 1 diabetic could then inject themselves with a proper amount of insulin, then it was now a survivable condition. So that's a really beautiful example of

why insulin is crucial for our livelihood. We can't survive without it. But the problem comes when our levels of insulin are elevated too high for too long because insulin is an inflammatory hormone in excess. And inflammation is kind of like the root of all chronic disease. And so when your insulin levels are high, that's going to trigger more fat creation and storage. So from a calorie standpoint, we can talk about this a little bit more. I think this is a good place to put it in. We've been taught about the macronutrients, right? We have carbohydrates, we have proteins, and we have fats.

Those are the three major macronutrients. carbohydrates have about four calories per gram. Proteins have about four calories per gram and fats have about nine calories per gram. So traditionally, women are taught, men are taught, you need to eat a low calorie diet to lose weight. You need to be in a calorie deficit. So what do they do? They reduce the fat in their diet because fat's the most calorically dense. So then they're left eating a bunch of vegetables and if they're smart, also a bunch of protein.

but not a lot of fat. So that's the caloric model, but from an insulin model, if you're looking at like a chart of time and then the insulin response, carbohydrates at four calories per gram have the highest insulin response. We're talking starches and sugars. Now, protein will actually reduce that, excuse me, fiber, the other type of carbohydrate will reduce that insulin response. But for people who are trying to follow this low fat diet to lose weight, if they're they're having like snack well cookies and ritz crackers and all of these carbohydrates that are low in calorie, they are spiking their insulin, spiking their fat creation and storage hormone. So protein has a moderate impact on insulin and then dietary fat has almost negligible.

So it's almost reverse, you know, from a low fat to a higher fat diet. And protein really needs to be the staple of the diet so that we maintain lean muscle mass. So again, focusing on calories in, calories out, all calories are created equal, you are losing so much valuable insight on how to actually fuel your body for long-term weight loss. Because when we're focused on that, you're focused on how can I eat in a way that keeps insulin low. So that's going to be prioritizing healthy fats, protein and fiber, and including starches and sugars if you want strategically, and also building and maintaining lean muscle mass as you age.

because when we're talking about glucose after a meal, for example, when you're eating a high-carb meal, it has to go somewhere. Like, where does that glucose go? Well, your muscle tissue is a really big repository for glucose. And the more muscle mass you have, the better insulin sensitivity you can have, and the easier your weight will stay off. So it is a much bigger conversation than just how do I lose weight or, you know, eating a low calorie diet. It's really about how do I eat in a way that keeps my insulin and inflammation

low and also supports healthy muscle mass so that the weight that I lose can stay off. You know, one of the things that you are really good at explaining is helping people understand especially women as we age, our relationship with insulin can change a little bit. So you first talk about how important insulin is when it comes to sustain. weight loss, and also, of course, living a low inflammatory lifestyle, excessive, elevated, chronically elevated insulin being connected to inflammation. Now let's talk a little bit more about aging and how that plays a part into this. Absolutely. Well, I think especially for women going through menopause, they know that that is kind of a volatile time for their hormones. And a lot of

women are like, oh, I gained weight because of menopause or menopause is causing me to gain weight. I'm like, no, it's not. Menopause is a date on the calendar one year from your last miss period. So blanketly blaming menopause is not helpful. But understanding the hormonal changes that go on during menopause that cause you to gain weight during menopause, and specifically for a lot of women, they're gaining belly fat. They might notice that the belly fat that they have is getting firmer or harder. That's indicative of more visceral belly fat, which is more unhealthy, more inflammatory than the

subcutaneous fat that's under the skin that you can pinch with your hands. So women during this menopausal phase of life, they very well may be noticing 20, 30 plus pound weight gain in the years surrounding menopause, even though they're like, I'm not eating any differently. I'm not exercising any differently. I'm having some menopause symptoms, but I should not be gaining this weight. And as a woman, I think it's wise of us to go back in time and say, well, when else did you gain weight in your life without really changing what you were eating or how you were moving? And there's two other times, puberty.

So when a girl goes through puberty, she's going to gain weight. But then also really telling one is pregnancy. And so if you're looking at how does insulin change during a woman's pregnancy, insulin goes up during pregnancy. Insulin resistance goes up during pregnancy because the body is trying to gain weight. So lo and behold, if we look at, well, what happens with insulin as a woman goes through menopause? It goes up. And the reason is because when a woman goes through metapause, her estrogen levels essentially plummet over time. And estrogen is an insulin sensitizing hormone, which means you need less insulin to maintain stable blood sugars. And if you need less insulin, that's going to cause

less fat storage. But as insulin drops, or excuse me, as estrogen drops going through metapause, that baseline level of insulin will go up. And that's why women are experiencing more weight gain, even though they're not eating differently, even though they're not really exercising differently, their insulin has gone up because their estrogen has gone down. And another really important key factor at this stage of life is, well, your body needs estrogen, not just for reproduction, but for your brain health, your bone health, your skin health. It's more, it's important. It's not just a reproductive hormone. So when your ovaries stop making estrogen, then there's two, like two organs that pick up the slack. So the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys,

will start to make more estrogen, but also adipose or fat tissue will start to do the estrogen production. So now, not only are you having more fat because you have higher levels of insulin, but that fat becomes more valuable real estate because it's producing estrogen and it becomes harder to lose. And one of the big things that women overlook when it comes to weight loss is stress management. And especially in this midlife range, they might be, getting the kids out of the house or having young grandkids, a lot of times they have aging parents, and that's causing a big stress on their life. They're in the thick of their careers or they're nearing retirement. That's a stress. The adrenal glands are also responsible for stress

hormone production. And so if the adrenal glands are just pumping out the cortisol, pumping out the stress hormone, two things, right? The first is they have less capacity to really optimize estrogen production so that your body relies, even more on your fat tissue for that estrogen. So stress management, if you can bring that cortisol down, you can kind of allow the adrenal glands to pick up even more of the estrogen production to make the body more comfortable releasing some of that fat tissue. But the second thing is think about what cortisol does.

Cortisol is your stress hormone. And back in the day, if you were faced with an enemy or a tiger is a common example, and you had to run away, that's a stress on your body. So when cortisol is released, that causes your blood glucose levels to go up so that your muscles have available glucose to soak in when they're contracting and you're running away. But the problem with modern-day stressors, like a sick parent or an angry boss, is you're not really moving your body to utilize that glucose.

So cortisol goes up because you're stressed. your blood sugar goes up in response to the elevated cortisol, anticipating you to fight or flee the situation, but you don't. And so if muscles aren't soaking that glucose in, the only other way it can get into the cells is through insulin. So that's kind of a double-edged sword, double-edged sword on stress in mid-life, especially for women, is if their cortisol is going up, their insulin is going to go up and their fat is going to be more likely to go up to. So that's kind of the whole picture of why weight loss gets harder after menopause. It's definitely not impossible, but it is the time to optimize your lifestyle to lower the

insulin, lower the cortisol, lower the inflammation. and then your body will feel like, okay, I can release this weight now. But just following a low calorie diet, not going to cut it anymore. So we have to have a more specific approach for this phase of life. You know, I'd love to talk about that for a second. You know, this new approach, which you, your company, your team, and many other experts that have come on this podcast are champoning, which is keeping insulin top of mind, not making insulin the enemy, but understanding its role. And then let's say the traditional approach

of calories in and calories out. Largely, you know, following a lot of the same people that you follow, my understanding of things has been that, hey, if you constrict calories and you really watch every single calorie you eat, even if you're eating a lot of processed foods, you will lose weight, right? If you are to the T monitoring each calorie and setting a deficit, being in calorie deficit. And as we see that that's been the advice, tracking every calorie to the T is extremely difficult. I've done it before as I've been part of a, you know,

very intense sort of workout regimen. And I'm so grateful for the experience that I had. It's not something that most people are going to do. It's not sustainable for people long term. But it does work. Now, the other side of it is this idea that if you keep insulin top of mind, that, you know, you understand its role in, sort of making you hungry, how it distributes weight inside of the body. But the area that I've

always been a little bit kind of confused about, maybe you could shine a light on it. Are you saying that if calories are, let's say, able to be managed for an individual, right? They're at a little bit above what their baseline is. So they're having some excess level of calories. Are you saying that if they are eating foods that are not putting them on this insulin roller coaster and glucose roller coaster throughout the day, that they wouldn't gain weight, or is the idea that, hey, if you are eating in this way where you're keeping insulin in mind and paying attention to it, that you are just not going to crave a lot of the things and continue to overeat in a way that causes you to seek foods that will increase the weight gain in your body. Does that make sense? And it could

be some hybrid of those too, but I'd love to get your thoughts on it. That's such a great question, and I'm going to do my best to answer it. And if I don't answer it as specifically as you want, please let me know. But when we're talking about calories, we have to recognize that it's not just caloric density and how they impact insulin that matters for weight loss. So it also matters how do they drive eating behavior? Because different calories, different types of calories, will make you want to eat more. And different types of calories will make you want to eat less.

So let's take protein, for example. Protein will trigger your satiety hormones. It makes you feel full. When you have like a chicken breast for a meal, for example, it's not like you often say, oh, man, I could have two more chicken breasts because of all the protein. But if you have a cupcake at the end of the meal, it's very likely that you're like, oh, I just want to go back for a little bit more and a little bit more. And so that's because the starches and the sugars and the cupcake, that spikes the

the pleasure center in your brain, it activates the pleasure center in your brain and it triggers you, it activates you to want more food and specifically want more sweet food. It wants that reward. But if you have protein, that doesn't happen. And so like these GLP1 agonists, like some of glutide, that's what it does. It essentially mimics the effect of protein. It increases that GLP1, or mimics it, and makes you want to eat less. So when we're talking about like, well, can you eat a bunch of calories, and not gain weight, you might be able to depending on the calories that you're eating. But the opposite is also true. So for women who are like, I feel like I hardly eat anything and anything that I do eat

eat just like sticks to my body, how can I weigh so much when I eat so little? The foods that they're eating are likely the ones that are spiking insulin and driving all of those nutrients into fat storage versus eating a high protein, high healthy fat diet, high fiber diet that helps you feel more satiated. The other thing about fats, too, is fats will also trigger those satiety hormones similar to protein. Fiber will cause stomach stretching, essentially, that can signal feelings of fullness. So we have to pay attention to how do different types of calories impact eating behavior

and reward behavior and recognize that if you're having, you know, 200 calories of walnuts, you're going to be a lot more satiated than if you had 200 calories from a piece of chocolate cake. And you're going to be less likely to then overeat at the next meal. So I think in the long run, you can eat a small amount of calories and still have a weight problem if those calories are spiking insulin. You can eat slightly more than your baseline from a calorie standpoint, especially if those calories are coming from protein. You're going to be able to maintain your weight. The other thing that we didn't really talk about yet is how much energy, different types of calories need to break down.

So the thermogenic effect of food, essentially. And protein has the highest amount. So if you're eating 100 calories of protein, your body is not assimilating all 100 calories. It's actually using quite a bit of that energy to break the protein down, get it to where it needs to go. So that's another distinction between like the calorie model and then going a little bit deeper. is how does your body use those calories? How do those calories impact your brain and subsequent eating behaviors?

No, that's super important. You know, we're not lab rats who have control feeding. We're living in the real world. And so we have to take into account so that even though if you eat excess calories, you will gain weight regardless of what source it's from, but if you eat whole food diet and with these tips that you and your team talk about, which we're going to get into a second, you're going to put yourself in a position,

if I'm hearing correctly, where you're just not going to feel hungry as much. And also, for a lot of people that I've seen, even if you think you're eating very little, a lot of these sugary foods also tend to be sugar, fat, and they're highly processed, and many people don't actually know how many calories are there. You know, it's so easy to take a few potato chips,

then eat the whole bag, even if they're cooked in avocado oil, by the way, right? And end up in a place where you eat the entire bag and not realize that you just crushed 2,000 calories in that one snack. So it doesn't seem like a lot of food, but you just had so much in a concentrated situation of hyper-palatable foods that didn't leave you satiated. Exactly.

And I think that if people were to actually measure out a serving size of things, they would be shocked to say, oh, my gosh, like, I'm way overeating and I didn't know it. But yeah, when you're eating nutrients that make you feel full, it's easier to maintain an energy deficit over time to lose weight. Well, you said something important, and we're just going to keep on returning back to this as a core concept in the interview. You said, you know, losing weight is straightforward. But my goal is to help you keep that weight off for the rest of your life.

So now that we've established a little bit of some of the building blocks, and there's others that we're going to come back to because there's a lot in this topic that's here. I just want to give some tips to the audience that's there. What have you found, especially for the demographic that would be listening to our podcast episode today, you know, largely it's probably 75% women who are, you know, 40 plus demographic and they're thinking about making these tips practical. What are some of the top tips of keeping that weight off for the rest of your life so that it feels like this is something that not only that you can do, but you look forward to doing.

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say it by name. And Aquatru is made with BPA and BPS-free plastic, and they also recently launched a new glass craft container, which I'm a huge fan of. Right now, Aquatru is offering my community an amazing deal. Just go to Drewfilter.com, D-H-R-U-Filter-T-E-R-com, and get $100, off when you try aquatrue for yourself today. That's Drew D-H-R-U filter.com to get $100 off when you try aquatrue for yourself. Yeah. So the first is protein. I'm coaching someone right now who's been following a ketogenic diet for a while and probably has 10 grams of protein a day. So she's just doing a ton of vegetables. Yeah. Eating a lot of vegetables, thinking that she's eating healthy. And I'm like, oh, oh boy, we have some work to do here. So a proverbs.

protein goal is one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So if you want to weigh, an ideal is not like what's realistic for you. Because if someone's 250 pounds, their ideal weight in their mind might be like 170 pounds, but that's still not an ideal body weight for your height. So that's really the only time I recommend using the BMI chart, the body mass index chart, pull up like BMI chart online and then go to the healthy zone for your weight and pick pick a weight and then that's kind of your protein estimate. So I'm 5'8. A good protein goal for me is like 130 to 140 pounds or pounds, you know, or grams of protein a day. So it depends on your height. But that's kind of the ultimate goal is one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.

Now breaking that down because I'm sure a lot of women are like I'm way under eating protein. The first stepping stone towards that goal is at least 30 grams of. of high quality protein a meal. And the reason that it needs to be a high quality source is to get that minimum dose of leucine, which is an essential amino acid required for muscle growth and support. And so 30 grams of protein really isn't that difficult to attain. A lot of women are close to that, but they're not quite getting it. So they might be eating like two eggs for breakfast. And maybe it's bumping it up to three with some, you know, breakfast meat on the side or like for lunch day I had five eggs with some cheese. That gets me to the 30 gram of protein threshold. That's another reason why

you see a lot of protein supplements have like 30 grams per serving size that they know that that's needed for muscle health. Now, why I suggest starting with a protein thing, with a protein recommendation, is it makes everything else easier. So protein and water are really the two dietary places that I recommend starting because if you're adequately hydrated and if you're eating enough protein, you will naturally have fewer sugar cravings and be more satiated and it's going to be easier to maintain a caloric deficit over time. So the other thing is water and I am shocked. I'm shocked how many people are under hydrating their bodies. So we recommend, you know, a good baseline is about 100 ounces a day. I think for most people, that's probably more than what they're doing. But half your

body weight and ounces of water a day at a very minimum. So if you're, oh, you know, 200 pounds, again, that's 100 ounces of water a day. So those would be the first two recommendations. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to be hydrated and you have to adequately dose your protein. And there was a really interesting research study that came out that compared like a very low calorie diet, a ketogenic diet, a lower carb diet, a high protein diet. And they looked at where did the weight loss come from? Did it come from muscle mass? or did it come from fat mass? And the results were astounding, like a high protein diet preserved the most lean muscle mass during weight loss. So when we're losing weight, we want to

preserve that muscle mass because, again, it's metabolically active. And it helps you with insulin sensitivity. So the more muscle you can have as you lose weight, the more likely it's going to be to stay off. And that's why I have such huge problems with diet programs like Nutrisystem or Octavia or Weight Watchers who have no emphasis on protein or just why you take like people taking GLP1 agonists like some glutide kills their appetite completely. Great. You lose all this weight, but you've lost so much muscle mass and the weight is going to come back on with a vengeance now. So those would be the two biggest dietary tips. And then from there, I think adding some fiber into your diet is great. About 25 grams a day for women, 35 for men. There's fibers.

kind of a controversial issue. I think carnivore is such a hot topic right now, but I personally fiber, I recommend fiber. I think that there's some benefits. So adding some fiber, but from foods that are lower in starches and sugars. And that's kind of the caveat. Like a lot of people think of fiber and they think of starchier foods, like whole green breads or whatever, but you can get a lot of good fiber from low starch and sugar foods. And that way you're really minimizing the blood sugar and the insulin response from those fibrous foods. So that's a little bit of a dietary approach to weight loss, to long-term weight loss. I'm happy to go into more or. Yeah, before we go into more, I think it's worthwhile to talk a little about these diet tips that you suggested.

And the first part of it that I want to emphasize for the audience is you have a very specific methodology and your approach to sustain weight loss is actually in the beginning. It's about adding in. And it's about doing more habits that themselves may not make you think that I'm eating less, but they're going to put you into a situation that it's a lot more sustainable and you're going to find yourself hungry less often. You know, there's some people, you know, not right or wrong, they both work, but the challenge is what's more sustainable, which is your approach that will have you focused on just eating less or immediately moving to, you know, cutting out ultra-processed foods, which in general is a good

idea. But I love your approach as I started to get more familiar with it because it's about adding in things, right? Do you want to expand on that any further about why that's such a central part of your message and your business and your company? Yeah, well, you know, we run an online course to reverse insulin resistance and the fuel module alone has over 200 references. I have read so much. I have read research. I have read books, but a huge part of weight loss mean into psychology. And so from a behavior change standpoint, if you're asking someone to go from A to Z and completely change their lifestyle, it won't stick. And so from a behavior change standpoint, point, I really follow the science. And the science says, adding in things is a more sustainable

solution than completely cutting things out in the long run. Yeah, cutting things out is going to get you faster results. I'm not here to argue that point. But again, that's just shifting our beliefs from like, well, what's better? Fast results or long-term results. I believe long-term results. The other thing is we incorporate a lot of behavior change strategies into our program. So we have a Zivli habit hierarchy. And we talk a lot about mindset first. So when we're talking about adding things in, let's talk about some more things that we want to add in. We want to add in a daily mindset routine. We want to add in a weekly meeting for self-accountability. And we want to add in a good night's sleep. So mindset meetings, accountability, sleep, water and protein, those are going to be the major things.

that we focus on first before, you know, reducing the net carbs or reducing the sugar. And people come into the program, they're always like, oh, I've already reduced my carbs. I'm like, okay, good. Let's not forget about these other foundational habits. So that's kind of what we build on. And then from there, we talk about intermittent fasting. From there, we talk about how do we strategically exercise? How do we incorporate more of whole foods? But if we don't have this foundation of mindset and sleep, everything else is so much harder. So I like to describe it as dominoes. Like you're stacking up these healthy habits like dominoes so that the subsequent dominoes fall easier.

So on the subject of adding in, I just wanted to start to expand this conversation and bring in more lifestyle factors besides just nutrition. Yeah. And we're going to get into that in the second. I'm just going to ask you a few more things on the nutrition side because for a lot of people, these tips that you're saying that are well documented. You know, we've had individuals like Donald Lehman on the podcast, Dr. Real Lion, who's also been on your podcast as well, too, which we'll link to in the show notes. And many others talking about the research around protein. We've had Dr. E on the podcast, and he has a satiety app called Hava, where they do a bunch of different things. And they've talked about

fiber and protein being so important for satiety. And, you know, naturally in this world that we live in, a lot of people have different messages that are out there. You know, one of the ones, I don't know if you saw this recently that came up. This article was floating around the in the last week, right? This article, which for those that are not watching on YouTube, is from Vox.com. And the title is, you're probably eating way too much protein. And the subtitle is Americans are obsessing over protein and forgetting about fiber. Now, the interesting thing is that I think that you and I would both agree that a lot of

people are forgetting about fiber. And fiber is an important thing. I will link to the article in the show notes that are there. But whether it's this, and you can do it. read all the details and the recommendations and them citing different governmental, you know, organizations saying that, you know, we shouldn't be shooting for that one gram of protein for ideal body weight that actually a lot of experts out there say that we should be looking at, you know, 0.33 grams of protein, you know, for our daily needs that are there. So if people

want to read it, we'll put it in the show notes. You can check it out. But the reason that I bring this up is that as you can imagine, those individuals that are watching us right now on YouTube, listening to us on the podcast, and are feeling in alignment with what you're sharing are also saying, well, I've been hearing different things or I was watching Netflix and I saw the vegan twin study and they're talking about how important. You know, just wanted to get a chance for you. How do you as an individual who's deep in this space look at the conflicting advice that individuals are getting? And how did you arrive to this place of feeling strong? in not only your own recommendations, but the lifestyle you follow with the gram per pound of

ideal body weight for protein. Oh, that's, I did watch that Netflix documentary. And I was just like, I fast forwarded to the end. I'm like, I don't need to see all this in between stuff just to show me what they said the results were. Well, they looked at LDL. Like, they're not looking at the right numbers to interpret the meaningful, like the effectiveness of the intervention. So they're like, oh, your LDL went down. Like, this is a good sign. And I'm like, LDL cholesterol means nothing. Like total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, they're, in Dr. Robert Lesteg's works, they're garbage. And so I think what I would have liked to see is like, did they look at APOB? Did they look at LDL particle number? Did they look at fasting insulin, which I don't think that they did?

So I think that we're looking at the wrong outcomes and we're giving too much weight to outdated information. So if you're prescribed it, like I always just say this on an interview. if your doctor prescribed you a statin based solely on total cholesterol or LDL numbers, please, please go read Dr. Robert Lustig's book, Metabolical. It's a great explanation of LDL particle number. So I think for me, gosh, you're right. I mean, it was years of going down research rabbit holes. You read, you read, you read, and you're like, okay, well, this is conflicting with that.

So what's my litmus test? Who is my mentor in this space? And so the first thing that I really established was who do I trust? Who do I really trust knows what they're talking about? And a few people just to kind of throw them out there, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Robert Lustig, Dr. Peter Atia. Like those be my three kind of go-to people on metabolic health issues. And so if I ever had a question, I would go to their stuff and I would say, well, what does Dr.

Fung say about this? What does, you know, Dr. Lustig say about this? What does Dr. Attea say about this? And then I would read this. their opinions and thoughts and whatnot. But then the other thing I thought was very helpful was to have that litmus test of insulin and inflammation. And so how does something impact my insulin? That's very important to me. But a lot of studies, just mainstream stuff like that, I don't know if they're looking at that. And it's not like, I think that that's a headline. Like we were talking about that

a little bit earlier. It's like people love to take extremes because extremes are clickbait. And people like, oh, am I getting too much protein? Oh, am I forgetting fiber? And it's like, it doesn't have to be that dramatic. It's not that hard to reach your protein and reach your fiber goals. And we can all coexist in the same arena without having such extreme opinions just to get clicks on a video or on an article. So I think from a research standpoint, the other thing that I looked at was the longevity studies because a lot of dietary studies are only like eight weeks long, a year long max. And I wanted to look at, okay, well, what does an older adult need? Because my end game as a geriatric physical therapist is to help somebody age well,

prevent diabetes, prevent heart disease, prevent sargapenia. What is the dietary approach that we need then and how can we start to incorporate more of that now? And so when that article is like, well, 0.33 grams, whatever they said, I'm thinking, yeah, that might be enough to survive, but that's not my goal. I want to thrive and I want to prevent disease. So I always had that lens of disease prevention and long-term weight loss in mind as I'm coming through each and every book or article or opinion piece. I hope that answered your question. That what absolutely does. And a lot of these people in this space, you know, you mentioned a few,

some of them even have, you know, one in particular, I think Peter Attia, he's kind of come on the other side of the fence of, you know, and it has shared some of his thoughts about, hey, actually, I do think that LDL is still, you know, matters on a population level that are there. And I think the thing is this, is that for most people, if you just focus on the basics and you double down on the basics, which are largely the things that you're talking about over here, you're going to be in a better shape than like 99% of the population. And a lot of these little nuances, is getting better and better. I come from a background and a family where I have familial hyper-collestinalemia. And then just in the last couple of years, my cardiologist

that I got connected to through Dr. Gabriel Lyon, Michael Twyman, there's a new test that's out there and it actually can look at, it's an advanced CT scan that looks at actually soft plaque in the heart. It's called clearly no affiliation. I went in to do it because I was like, you know, my LDL, and especially since I've been eating more of a clean paleo diet, has gone up. And my APOB is quite high, you know, so I want to know, do I have a lot of soft plaque that's there. Now, this test is like $2,000 and then you need a doctor to interpret it. I think clearly is now doing some direct-to-consumer things so you can see it on their website and you can order it directly.

But I went and had it done. And to both my cardiologist's, you know, he wouldn't be surprised because I live a low-stressed lifestyle. I don't have, you know, alcohol on a regular basis. I didn't really drink alcohol at all kind of, you know, growing up. And, you know, I'm not doing a lot of things that I think probably contribute to poor endothelial health, but are maybe hotly debated. Like, I stay away from a lot of the refined fats, even though I know that's a very, you know, controversial topic for a lot of people. Are seed oil is inflammatory? Are they not? I've made the decision to pretty much eliminate them, you know, from my diet because I just feel, you know, better that way.

And both my cardiologist and also there's a vegan cardiologist who was on this podcast who I sent my results to and he went over him on the podcast, Dr. Joel Kahn. They both had shared that my results was the best they ever seen. Now, in Joel's case, he said, your results are second best. My results were actually better than you. So you're probably doing some things right. I'm probably doing some things right. And I thought, you know, okay, you know, at least I got, you know, a partial wind that was there.

So all this is to say is that, you know, if we focus on the basics, which are what you're talking about over here, and the things that actually help keep sustained weight loss, which is really the goal, an improved body composition. Yes. I don't remember which guest it was, but they were like, look, you want to lose weight? Go chop off a foot. You'll lose weight, right? Immediately a way less. We all know that doesn't make sense and we don't want.

want to do that. What we want is we want healthy body composition transformation. We want more muscle, less fat that's there in general based on our population. And we want to keep it that way for a sustained period of time in a way that doesn't make eating the primary focus of our entire life. And that's the plan that you've put together. Now, before we get into, you know, some of the other lifestyle areas that impact insulin, wanted to give you an opportunity. for anything else you want to add in, but also just a couple tips on fiber. Are there amounts that you are telling your audience and the people that are following your program to shoot for?

And how are you getting in the target amounts of fiber in your diet? What are your favorite ways to do that? Good questions. So anything else I want to share on the nutrition standpoint. I'm not including fasting in this conversation. Yeah. But like the fuel module of our course is like two hours and 40 minutes of me talking about macronutrients. So I don't want to go like too deep, but I think it's really

important to help people understand carbohydrates a little bit better and fats a little bit better and that a carb is not a carb and a fat is not a fat. And so there's three main types of carbohydrates, starches, sugars, fiber. And a lot of people are a little bit naive when it comes to starches and they're like, oh, I'm not having any added sugar. And so I'm eating healthy. But I'm like, well, not all sugar is sweet. And so for breaking down sugar, there's three simple sugars. There's galactose, glucose, fructose. Then those combined to make slightly larger molecules. So sucrose is table sugar. That's glucose plus fructose. Lactose is sugar found in milk. That's galactose plus glucose. All of those are just, you know, simple sugars. And then if people are

like, well, is it a simple carb or a complex carb, that depends on if there's fiber involved in the food matrix. So when we're talking about starches, there's two kinds of starches because the starch is not a starch. There's amylose and there's amylopectin. So amylose starches are going to be like the oh, the rice, the barley, the keemaw, the more complex types of starches, the darker starches, like sweet potatoes. And amylose is like a straight chain. So if you think of like a stick, you know, a wooden stick. And there's two ends. And so those enzymes can chew up. up the glucose molecules only one, you know, two ends at a time, and it releases the glucose slower into your bloodstream. Compare that to amylopectin that looks like a tree branch. So there's

multiple places where the enzymes can chew up the glucose and it's released faster into the bloodstream. That's from like white rice, white bread, white pasta. So I don't want people to come away from this interview with such a dogmatic mindset. They're like, oh gosh, I have to go keto or I can't have carbs anymore. I need to go carnivore. You can include carbohydrates. hydrates in your diet and still live a low insulin lifestyle. But I want you to do it strategically and understand that it's not just the fiber content in a starchy food that matters for blood sugar control. It's also just the type of starch in general. Is it amylose straight or is it amylopectin branched? So the more whole food, obviously the starch is the better it's going to be. But again,

the exception there is like rice and potatoes. So like a simple solution is make your mashed potatoes ahead of time. Put them in the refrigerator, take them out on Thanksgiving. That actually helps some of the amylopectin starch convert into amylose starch and slow the blood sugar release. Another thing that you can do is just have the starches at the end of the meal. So if you have your fiber, like if you have a salad first, for example, or maybe some non-starchy veggies, and then your protein and then have the sweet potato or the barley or the quinoa at the end of the meal, that's going to have a slower blood sugar response. If you go for a walk after you eat, that's going to help reduce the blood sugar spike. So I think those little tips, like a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and some water before a

higher carb meal, that's fine. So I really want to encourage people that there's blood sugar hacks that you can use when you do choose to have a higher carb meal. Now, in general, I typically recommend 30 grams of net carbs per meal at a max. For me personally, on a continuous glucose, monitor, that's the level where if I go over that and I don't walk after the meal or I haven't exercised before the meal, my blood sugar response is going to be higher than optimal, which according to Levels Health is about 30 milligrams per decilator. So if I'm starting my baseline at 90 before meal, I don't really want to go above 120. And Levels Health has another parameter where it's like what's like the max spike in general that they want and it's like 110 to 115. That's really, really tight

blood sugar regulation, even for me, and I'm metabolically healthy. So in general, I think we want to be paying attention to those numbers and recognize that the American Diabetes Association goal of like, it should be less than 140 two hours after you eat is ridiculous. Like that is not optimal blood sugar management. So I think a lot of people are being given false hope by the American Diabetes Association guidelines on blood sugar management. And a lot of people, can empower themselves through a continuous glucose monitor to see how do different nutrients impact my blood sugar? Because again, that's the byproduct of your insulin. So that's one big thing. I wanted people to understand carbs from a, and then fats from fat standpoint. Can I mention one

thing on the carbs side? You know, just to highlight something that you mentioned earlier, you know, another tip for that allows you to get away with having more carbohydrates in your diet. and I went through this experience myself, and you talked about it earlier, add more lean muscle. You have more lean muscle. Muscle is highly metabolically active. And I went through a situation where I was training more intensely, and I never really grew up training and lifting weights. And in that process, my trainer said, listen, you know, I want you to add some more carbs that are there. You're working out, we're working out like four days a week.

We're doing strain training. You have very specific goals that you want to get to for strength. And as we're on that way, you need to, you know, repair your glycogen stores. And so I need you to have a little bit more carbs. And initially, you know, I'm not an expert in this space like you are. I was just like, I don't know. I've had carbs in the past. And I'm an investor in levels.

And I've worn continuous glucose monitors. And I regularly get my fasting insulin measured. And I was like, I'm not sure. When I eat too many carbs, I don't feel good. He's like, something is happening. to your body now. You're adding every month. You're adding about, you know, 0.8 to a pound of lean muscle mass because we're on this program. You're meeting your, you're meeting your protein goals. But because we are very active, you're feeling a little gassed, right? You're running out of

energy. And so your strength is going to start plateauing a little bit. And you will find that you can have some more carbohydrates in your diet. You know, I'm not eating these pharmacological doses and drinking, you know, a liter of sugar sweetened beverages. We're talking. We're talking. talking about a little rice, a little oatmeal, you know, things like that. And not only did I incorporate it and find that my strength increased because of restoring those glycogen stores, but I actually found that over a period of time of about nine months of adding about nine, almost 10 pounds of lean muscle mass, my fasting insulin proved in that time period because I had the benefits of just having that extra muscle as somebody who previously was one of the, you know,

skinny fat individuals that was out there that didn't have a lot of muscles. So again, just connecting all the dots for my audience here on things that you shared, that we don't have to demonize certain things. Yes, we want to stay away from these pharmacological dosages of refined carbohydrates and sugar that is out there that a lot of people are eating, but you can still incorporate some of those things when you practice some of the tips that you mentioned. Well, and I'm really excited. Maybe you know something I don't about continuous insulin monitoring because I think blood sugar monitoring monitoring is awesome. But I also think, at least from my personal experience, it makes me a little bit if you're full to eat carbs. You know, even after you exercise,

like, yeah, you're going to have a lower blood sugar response, a slower blood sugar response. And I want to explain why. So on, yeah, in your cells, you have something called a glute for transporter. And that is like a tube slide for glucose to get from your bloodstream into yourselves, right? So I love sourdough bread. I like making sourdough bread. Like that's my favorite post-workout carb. And I say that there's like a, there's a 30-minute window. It's like the golden window to eat carbohydrates because those glute four transporters that allow glucose to kind of slide from your bloodstream into your cells, those get to the cell membrane either via muscle demand, from exercise or insulin.

And so about 30 minutes after you eat, those glute four transporters are going to still be on the muscle cell membrane soaking in that glucose. You don't need insulin for the glucose to get into your cells immediately after exercise. That's why it's the golden window of opportunity. So I'm waiting for a continuous insulin monitor to come out because you're still going to see that rise in blood sugar. But like I want to know what is my insulin doing in the background. So that's why it's okay to eat carbohydrates, especially like before or during or after your workout.

Your muscles are using them, like you said, to replenish the glycogen stores. So what's just as an investor in levels, I'm kind of curious. Have you heard of any new technology coming out for continuous insulin monitoring? Yeah, I know it's something that they're working on, you know, big picture. Obviously, you know, they're in talks with a lot of different individuals and I don't have any privileged information. but I know it's something that they want to, you know, make a priority and as part of their long-term goals that are there. So I'm in the same boat as you, you know, getting more information and having access to seeing in real time what different foods are doing to our body is going to put us into a situation where we're just going to end all the diet wars, right? Either it's working for you or it's not.

It's like it's working or it's not working. There's no in between. Yes. And I think that that's a really important conversation for fats too. because I think different people have different responses to dietary fats, especially saturated fats. So I wanted to do a little deep dive on fats. Like there's a few different types of fats, right? There's trans fats.

Let's start there. There's industrial trans fats banned in the U.S., I think in 2018, clear contributor to cardiovascular disease. Some trans fats are found naturally in ruminant animals, small amounts, okay. And then there's the saturated fats, which are not. You know, there's short, there's medium, there's long chain saturated fatty acids. And a lot of people are like all hot and heavy on the MCT oil. That's a medium chain triglyceride MCT. That's a saturated fat.

And it's not found in large amounts in regular food products, you know, some coconut, some palm. And so the oils are extracted and they have this concentrated form of MCTs. So the long chain triglycerides are what's found in like animal products. and butter, the majority of coconut, that kind of stuff. And so I think people have different responses to saturated fats. And I think it's a lot like based on genetics from my understanding. And if you, if you have a high APOB level, then a lower saturated fat diet may be advantageous to you. Or if you have a high LP little A, which is another kind of genetic risk factor for cardiovascular disease, a lower saturated fat diet may be advantageous for you. And I don't ever say like a

eliminate saturated fats. I'm not saying that, but bias your fat intakes towards the even healthier ones. So I view the mono-unsaturated and unprocessed polyunsaturated fats to be the most healthy. So let's break those down. The mono-unsaturated are the omega-9s. So you're thinking like avocados and olives and their associated oils. I like those. The polyunsaturated fats that are, there's two categories. there's omega-3s, and there's omega-6s. So we're going to start with the omega-6s. In a processed form, like we were talking earlier, all those refined seed oils, those are going to be highly inflammatory.

But in a natural state in nuts and seeds, they're okay. And especially when they're found in a whole-food product, you're also getting vitamins and minerals and other things in the food matrix. And then from an omega-3 standpoint, there's ALA, EPA, and DHA are the three main kinds. And so the EPA and DHA are the ones that are especially anti-inflammatory. You'll find those a lot in like different omega-3 supplements. And for people who are strictly plant-based, they're really primarily getting the ALA, which isn't as anti-inflammatory.

And there's a very low conversion rate from ALA to EPA and DHA in the body, like 8 to 15% from what I see. And so I think like an omega-3 supplement either it can be plant-based. like some blue-green algae, that's fine. But if you're only plan-based, if you're vegan, if you're vegetarian, you're probably not getting enough of the bio-available omega-3s that are really anti-inflammatory for your body. So from a fat standpoint, keeping it super simple, okay, well, it's good to eat.

The best things to eat are the olives, the avocados, the nuts, the seeds, fat from animal products like eggs or chicken or beef. The fats that we want to limit are those processed seeds. oil. And those are found in so many processed foods. So you're thinking like soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, grape seed oil, those are the things that we really want to limit in the diet. And then a lot of people don't realize that those refined seed oils aren't just high in omega-6 fatty acids. They actually have trans fats. So even though trans fats have been banned, when you heat those oils to such high temperatures, they have trans fats.

and those are the types of oils that they're using to make French fries at McDonald's, and every single time those oils are heated up, the concentration of trans fats increases. So that's an important thing to remember is if you're going and you're eating, you know, chicken strips and French fries, yes, you're getting unhealthy omega-6 fatty acids, but you're also getting trans fats unknowingly. So from a fats standpoint, the more whole food we can incorporate into the diet, the better.

And then to answer your original question on fiber, how do I get enough fiber? We have a free download called our Ultimate Food Guide, and people can find it on our website, and we have like tables of high fiber foods according to, you know, fruits or starchy vegetables, non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds. They can download that. The goal is 25 grams for women, 35 grams per men per day. Typically, like 10 grams a meal is a good recommendation. and I'd have to pull up the, you know, the charts to see the exact amount, but you can do that in like a cup of raspberries and, you know, a handful of nuts.

It's not that hard once you know which foods are going to be higher in fiber. So that's a resource that I would suggest to anybody who's really looking to increase the fiber in their diet. And that's what I do. I just try to pick some of those high fiber foods. I love vegetables. I eat a lot of roasted vegetables, roasted broccoli, roasted carrots, roasted sweet potato. some salads in the summer. There's different additives, too, that you can do to food, but I prefer to get my fiber from whole foods versus like metamusole or other additives.

That's great. And you know, you were talking about, and we were both talking about how a lot of individuals have never sort of track their calories. And it's a worthwhile experiment, even if you did it for a week, just to kind of see and audit your general portions, even though we don't want people doing it long term. And it's very hard and it's unsustainable. But one of the components that comes with that is the realization that even a lot of people who think that they eat very healthy, if you, like a lot of us, there's convenience foods, and there's so many foods at Whole Foods or Costco, if you've ever made it to L.A. Air 1, that are health foods, quote unquote, but are more processed. Now, they're not ultra-process, but they're still processed. So that means, typically,

there's going to be less protein, you know, there's less fiber inside of there because that's part of what people do to kind of make it tasty. They refine the carbohydrates. And there's a higher amount of fat. There's a higher amount of calories. They're hyper palatable, even healthy foods that are there. And so many people are amazed to actually see when they start auditing that they're not eating near enough fiber as they thought they were.

So the first thing, even when I have friends that are. telling me that they're constipated or they don't feel as good or they're not as regular as they want to be just one example of a low fiber diet say how much fiber you're having no no i eat fiber i eat healthy i eat a clean diet no but actually like maybe take a look like text me you know the you know the text me what you're eating and we kind of tabulated and we my fitness pal or one of the apps that are out there and i'm like check this out i kind of calculated it for you you only had like 15 grams of fiber day. That's not enough to really get things going and support your body and also get all the benefits of fiber being very satiating as well, just like you talked about with protein. So it's a

good opportunity to audit and take a look and actually see are you having enough fiber just as you had recommended. So you've been wanting to move from nutrition now to a few other areas that are also an important part of the inflammation story, the insulin story. So now is a perfect opportunity I'll hand it back over to you to be able to take it in any direction that you want to. Okay. This is so fun. I love that we have such a long time to talk about this because it takes a while to unpack all the different factors. I like to say there's four pillars to a low insulin lifestyle. There's nutrition. And that includes what you eat, which we kind of already covered. and when you eat. So intermittent fasting, we'll get to that. It includes physical activity. That's the second

pillar. Stress and sleep. Those are the four primary pillars. And I include, if you're thinking about environmental toxins and other types of toxins, I include that in the stress. There's different kinds of stress, and that would be a form of cellular stress. And then all of that is on the foundation of mindset. And I describe it as like a healthy habits house. If you're trying to build a house of good nutrition and physical activity and good sleep and stress management and you build it on sand, that's not going to last. Those habits aren't going to last. But if you have a strong foundation of mindset, then those habits will last, whether you're going through a stressful season or you have a busy work project or it's over the holidays. like anytime somebody gets off track, quote unquote, it's a mindset issue.

And so I think that's a huge component of my coaching and of our program is addressing habit change and mindset. And so I think we can kind of wrap that up at the end, but just to kind of dig into some more of the science behind insulin and inflammation, if we're talking about intermittent fasting. Actually, sorry, before you go further, just because it's so valuable, what you're sharing about mindset and how related it is, even though I know my audience is going to be upset because I interrupted you while you're in your flow. A question that I have on behalf of my audience and for myself,

if you had a list, what are one, two, three of the most sort of toxic things that you see people doing when it comes to mindset? That is the key single thing, you know, however many it might be. It might be one thing. Might be two things. Might be three things. I think it's worth highlighting because if you're saying that mindset is so pivotal to sustained weight loss, it's worthwhile here while we have everybody's attention to sort of highlight. So what are some of the

most damaging things that you see over and over that interrupt people's goals when it comes to mindset? What a beautiful question. No one has asked me that question before. So I'm going to have to really think about it. The first thing that comes to my mind, and I'm so happy to unpack mindset. We could have another entire episode of mindset. I think the first thing is comparison. And so if we're thinking about social media and we're thinking about scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through Facebook, and you're seeing people losing weight, you have no idea how they're doing it. You have no idea if they're doing it in a way that's sustainable, but you compare yourself to them. Or maybe you see a picture of yourself from 20 years ago and you're comparing yourself to yourself 20 years ago.

And you're like, oh, gosh, like I have gained some weight. So anything that that draws your attention from your progress to like the gap in the progress. I don't know if you've heard of the book, The Gap and the Gain. Yeah. Okay. I think that's a really helpful analogy here. So a lot of people focus on the gap of where they are compared to where they want to be. And I think it's a lot more advantageous to focus on the winds and how far you've come.

And our brains primitively want to look for the negative. We are wired to look for danger and for the negative things that could go wrong. But we have the power to choose our thoughts. We have the power to choose our thoughts, which means we have the power to choose how we feel. And so if we have that power, we need to use it. And one way that we can use it productively is anytime you find yourself in a gap, like, oh, I've only lost half a pound this month. You're comparing where you are now to where you want to be. And we have to, but what else changed in this month? Are you being more consistent with your water?

Are you being more consistent with your protein? Are you having a better emotional attitude? Are you sleeping better? We have to rewire our brains to focus on our winds and not comparing ourselves and not focusing on where we want to be, but instead of how far we've come. Right. Did you also get, did you gain muscle because you're now working out? And so you only lost a half a pound. And last month you lost more. But maybe you gain muscle because you're working out or you're doing some resistance training, which is why people are so much of a bigger proponent of like not just the scale, but body composition, whether it's through an in-body scan or a dexas scan.

There could be a lot of reasons that play into it. But kind of thinking about, especially women and postmenopausal women, a lot of them come from the Weight Watchers generation where the end all be all is a scale. And that was the only measurement of progress. and they perhaps were shamed in a Weight Watchers meeting like, oh, you only lost a half-town. Are you sure you did everything that you could? And so that really plays into it. A lot of like trauma from weight loss happens.

And so we have to retrain our brain. Another really, really powerful thing that's overlooked is not practicing gratitude. So gratitude is one of the fastest ways to kind of raise your vibrations. and when I say vibrations, I mean your thought frequency. A lot of people are, I don't even know, I wish I knew the percentage of people that were on, like, anti-anxiety, medication or antidepressants. And I really wish that physicians knew more about mindset and the power of gratitude and, like, and the power of diet with mental health, my goodness, and started to prescribe this stuff either before or in conjunction with those medications. but when we focus on specific gratitudes, that will help elevate your vibrations. And so I think a lack of that is important.

I think, you know, the other thing that I want to add in is a lack of understanding. So you're like, what are they doing? And I don't necessarily think that they're doing something. I just think that they don't understand that they can choose their thoughts. And they don't understand that your thoughts create an amazing. emotional, like it's actually a vibration in your mind. And the emotion that you feel is a direct relationship to the thoughts that you were thinking. And then the emotions that you feel will drive your actions. Oh, I'm stressed out. So I'm going to go eat. Well, why are you stressed? You're stressed because

you had a thought that ignited the emotion of stress in your body, which drove you to eat. And then that eating, if you do it over and over, it becomes a habit. And so I think that a lot of people just aren't aware that they can choose their thoughts, therefore they can choose their emotions and behavior change becomes so much more enjoyable. You're not trying to like white knuckle your way there. So those would be kind of my top three things, like being in the gap instead of the gain, not practicing gratitude and then just not being aware that you have so much power that is untapped if you're not paying attention to your thoughts. Those are beautiful. For not having thought of the answer, you had a perfect answer.

And I'm sure it's going to be very helpful to our audience. Okay. So I interrupted you. You were about to go down the pathway of continuing on the conversation of insulin. I actually wasn't sure exactly where you were going to go. But, you know, I'll pass it back over to you now that we've had a chance to talk about mindset. And it is funny. Please don't anyone like leave him a negative comment for interrupting me.

I see those on YouTube a lot like not necessarily from you. But oh, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. Everybody can express their opinion. At the end of the day, I'm here to make sure. sure that your message gets out there and I'm here to fight for my guest. And so I'll take a I'll take some haterade. You know, I'll take some haterade here. I love that. Because I'm here to fight to make sure that your message gets across and that I ask and I represent the audience who I know, you know,

would be interested in those topics. So yeah, bring it on. I'm okay. I'm a big, I'm a big, I'm a grown boy. So I'm good to go. I like that. Okay. So I'm going to use that hater aid in the future probably. So I wanted to talk about the pillars, right? So we talked about nutrition. You want to prioritize a high protein, healthy fat, fiber diet, keep starches and sugars to a minimum. When you do eat them, use the strategies to reduce their blood sugar impact that we talked about. Intermittent fasting is probably the most powerful tool that you can use to lower blood insulin levels. However, a lot of people are jumping into this tool too soon. So intermittent fasting is pretty much anything over 12 hours, in my opinion.

The research will vary. There's not a great definition. It's also known as time restricted eating. You're just choosing to eat within a certain window. So I think 12 hours should be the baseline for pretty much everybody. 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. That's a great baseline. 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

I prefer people to eat a little bit earlier before bed, like stop eating at least like three hours before bed, I think is great for sleep. Anywho, intermittent fasting will be so powerful, but if you're already stressed out, it's not going to be your best first step or your best strategy because it is kind of like another layer of stress on your body. So for people and for women in perimenopause, it might not be the best solution, especially if they're really stressed out. Men tend to tolerate intermittent fasting really well. Post-menopausal women tend to tolerate fasting very well. Women, women who are still cycling like myself, we have to be a little bit more specific around when we're fasting.

So like anything longer than about 14 to 16 hours, I save for the week of my period and like the week, kind of like the week after. But I don't like to fast during ovulation and I don't like to fast the week before my period around that time. So the hormone production is just ramping up for women. We tend to need a little bit more food. We want more food. And so, like, honor your body and fast according to your cycle. But I tell you what, like if you can tolerate intermittent fasting, once you have those baseline health habits established, again, like mindset, weekly accountability means,

sleep, water, protein, that's a really, really great strategy for you to move into. But I'm not a fan of using fasting as the end all be all. because if you don't have good baseline health habits, your results from fasting will be short-lived. And so we want to use it as a tool and the lifestyle. Use it strategically. I think that a lot of people could benefit from like a 16-8 schedule during weight loss. I really like that. And then one day a week doing like a little bit more of an extended fast.

It's like a 20 to 22-hour fast doing one meal a day. And then one day a week doing like not really any fasting. So having like a, oh, 12 to 14 hour fast day, kind of like an exception day is what I call it. That seems to be a really nice rhythm for women, especially to lose weight. Like Monday through Friday, maybe you're eating 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. an eight hour window. And then on Saturday, that could be your exception day. Maybe you go out to eat, have three meals a day. And then on Sunday, just have one meal a day.

So it's okay to mix up the fasting schedule. And then I usually like longer fasts for weight loss. plateaus and for severe blood sugar issues. So if people have really, really high blood sugars, like one of our members right now doesn't want to take blood sugar medication, blood sugar lowering medication. And so his starting blood sugars were around 300, like baseline. And so he had, he needed a little bit more of an aggressive fasting schedule to get those blood sugars down. So he's doing like a 36 hour fast a couple days a week. And so for him, that's a good strategy. because we really want to be bringing those blood sugars down.

For women who have a weight loss plateau, if they can try like a 36-hour fast, that might be a really nice strategy. So I view it as a tool in the low insulin toolbox, but not the end-all be-all. And maybe not the thing that a lot of people should start off with if they are new to this world. It's better to focus in on the add-in components that are there because, sure, fasting might help you lose weight quicker, but will you be able to keep you? keep it off afterwards if you don't have these tools, as you were mentioning. Exactly.

Yeah, but I love that I love fasting. I think it's a great way to like recalibrate your relationship with food. For me personally, it really highlights a lot of my cravings are emotional. So is it physical hunger or is it emotional hunger? And a lot of times it's emotional hunger that we're experiencing. And so I think it's a great way to learn those true hunger cues versus emotional hunger cues. Can I ask you a question on that topic? You know, there's a mutual friend that's also been on your podcast as well, Cynthia Thurlow.

I know she shared that over the years, especially as an individual who doesn't have a lot of weight to lose, right? She's not, you know, obese or, you know, being overweight and had not really prioritized protein and strength training and other things for herself personally. Again, this is somebody who, you know, has a TED talk on intermittent fasting and the benefits of it that, are there. She said for me personally as being, you know, in a lot of my demographic being similar to me, you know, they might have 10, 15, you know, pounds they want to lose to get into their optimal sort of space, not, not her, but she's saying my audience, but they're also trying to work on the protein goals. They're trying to build lean muscle mass. They're also trying to do this. I've sort of changed my mind a little bit. This is her speaking. And it's that if I do some of these

longer fast that are there beyond like the 16 hours and 12 hours, I end up losing or there's the fear of losing so much muscle mass that's there. And it just takes me so much effort and energy as I age to get it back. So I've largely now that I'm in a healthy place and I feel good and I'm very stable and it's really about optimizing, I've stayed away from those fast because the tradeoff is not as needed for me and the risk of losing that muscle mass is is is very high you know do you generally agree with that thought process i do i think that there are some benefits for autophagy from longer fast and she would agree with that you know atophange is that cellular cleansing process it starts at about 18 hours of a fast and the longer you fast the deeper you get into autophagy and so there's some really

good evidence that longer fasts that stimulate autophagy may be efficacious for cancer prevention. And so for me, that's the tradeoff is I want to do all I can to preserve lean muscle mass, but once in a while, I want to bias the autophagy benefit. And I don't have the weight to lose either. Like I'm kind of in that maintenance phase. Fasting is harder for me. Like I think I did a 40-hour fast once after a really heavy food vacation. And that was fine. And I think I've done a 40-ish hour fast another time, and that was okay. But it's hard, you know, and I think that there's companies like pro-lon.

I don't know if you've had them on the show. And they're like a fasting-mimicking diet where you eat a little bit of food, but you stay kind of under the nutrient thresholds that prevent atopathy is kind of my understanding of it. It took me a long time to wrap my head around that. And I think that that might be a little bit more the route that I go if I want to focus on autophagy, like boosting it just to make it a little bit easier for me. But yeah, I mean, in general, I agree. And it's interesting, like Dr. Peter Attia, I thought he was on some show, maybe, you know, like some Netflix documentary with maybe Chris Hemsworth.

And he was having him do a four-day fast. Do you know what I'm talking about? I know of the show, but I didn't watch it. But yeah, I saw, I saw the clip where they were talking together and they were revealing, I believe it was Chris Hemsworth risk of Alzheimer's or something like that. They were talking about the APOE genes or something like that. I could have gotten that wrong. But yes, I'm familiar with it.

Right. But then in his book, Outlive, which was very dense. Did you read Outlive yet? Let's call it skimmed. And I'm regularly going back to read sections that because it's quite dense. But yes, I'm generally familiar with the frame. work and the approach and the key messages that are in there. And I have seen how he sort of changed his mind on fasting. Exactly. Yeah. And I really thought that was really interesting that he changed

his mind on fasting. I used to prescribe like those longer extended fast and now I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. And I'm like, that really makes sense. So I kind of agree with like Dr. Atia and what Cynthia is saying. And just from my own personal standpoint, like I feel better when I don't fast for an extended period of time. But I want to do what. occasionally just for the autophagy, but I probably won't make it that long, that long, like a four-day fast, a five-day fast. Like, it's just not probably in my, and I don't have it in me to do it. So I think that there's benefits, especially for people like that gentleman I was talking about

for blood sugar management, there's benefits for those extended fast, but for just people at a healthy baseline, we got to prioritize the muscle mass, I think. Yeah, that's great. So this is all part of a conversation of the four pillars that you were walking through and fasting was one of them. What are some of the pillars that you want to walk through when it comes to this approach that you have with clients? Yeah, let's talk about sleep next. A lot of people don't understand how important sleeping, you know, seven to nine hours a night is. I think eight's kind of the sweet spot.

And I used to say, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I used to get, you know, five to six hours of sleep regular. early a night and didn't know. Like, I just think a lot of people don't know how important sleep is. So the reason that sleep is really important is because of how it affects your appetite. If you are not sleeping well, you're going to have a higher level of, you know, stress, so cortisol. And those levels of cortisol actually make you want to eat more carbohydrates. So that's an important thing. After a bad night of sleep, like just pay more attention to your hunger and your satiety cues, you're going to be more likely to overeat. You're going to be less

likely to feel full after you eat. It also just doesn't recharge that willpower battery, like that emotional reserve that we all have before we get to the screw it line in the day. I'm screwed. I don't care. Like the better, the more sleep you have, the more reserve you have before you get to that screw it, I don't care line. So sleep is important. It's important for your hormones. It's important for muscle mass, like human growth hormone, for example, spikes at night when you're sleeping. That's when you repair. That's when your muscles build and get stronger. So again, back to the muscle conversation, sleep's important for that. I think that, like I said earlier, everything is easier with sleep. But it ultimately comes to how does it impact our hormones? And it impacts

your grayland. It impacts your satiety hormones. It impacts your cortisol. It impacts. It impacts your impacts your human growth hormone. And so some practical tips for people to sleep seven to nine hours a night. Very important. Consistent sleep and wake times. So if you're really struggling, turning the TV off at night, you have to ask yourself, like, is it more important that I watch this one more episode or is it more important that I get a restful night of sleep to support my health? Like, obviously, that's more important. So you have to be on the same page with your partner about what time is bedtime. I want you to, if you need to set an alarm on your phone, if you need to, I wish that, like, TVs had, like, automatic shutoffs or something like that, but stop, you know,

stop at the middle of the episode before they hook you in with another hook, stop between episodes, but you got to figure out of time to turn that TV off. The other thing is blue light blocking is critical. So blue light is emitted from all of our screens, cell phones, computers, TVs, these tablets. And the amount of blue light that's emitted naturally as they make their products is about the same that you get from the sun at noon. And blue light goes into your eyes and it actually causes a slight elevation in cortisol. Again, the stress hormone, but it's not just like, oh, we need to fight or flee. It's also let's stay alert. We need to stay alert here. Cortisol and melatonin, which is your sleepy hormone or on a teeter totter with each other. So if cortisol

is up, your melatonin cannot come up naturally. And so when we block that blue light, we help lower the cortisol production so that melatonin can naturally come up. So if you're popping a melatonin gummy or you're taking a melatonin tablet and you're not already blocking your blue light, please do that. You need the orange or like the amber colored light, the blue light walkers, not just the yellow, not just the light tinted. You need the ones that block nearly all blue light. Yes, your TV will look funny, but you will sleep deeper and you will fall asleep faster because your melatonin is naturally increasing. So a couple things, and that's so obvious, it's like if you've had a stressful day,

of course it's harder to fall asleep. Of course your sleep isn't that good. And that's again because your cortisol is up so your melatonin can't gum up. A couple other tips is to eat carbohydrates earlier in the day. So a higher carb meal around bedtime might impair sleep. and try to stop eating around three hours before bedtime. That's going to help, obviously, reducing alcohol intake. If you choose to drink, do it earlier in the day so that it has time to metabolize

and it doesn't wake you up in the middle of the night from your blood sugar, kind of spiking and then dropping again. Early morning sunlight is going to be great for your circadian rhythm to help reset that internal clock. If you can get outside, it's so hard. sometimes, but even like I'll just pause when I take the kids to school and I'll try to look towards the east and get some natural sun in my eyes, even if that's all I get. It's a pause within about 90 minutes of the sun coming up. So all of those are some really simple tips that people can do to improve their sleep, that cleaning up your diet will help too, like reducing the added sugar,

reducing the blood sugar spikes throughout the day. That's all going to be great for your sleep. Some simple things people might not think about as an eye mask and earplugs. So we want it to be dark. We want it to be quiet and we want it to be cool. We live in a farmhouse that'll be a hundred years old in 2030. And so there's really, there's really poor insulation in the closets. And so we got an eight sleep, which is a mattress cover that, have you heard of that one? Yeah, I use it at home. I love it. Yeah, I like it too. And it really helps because in the thick of the summer, our bedroom's like 80 degrees. And I'm like, oh, oh my gosh, do we need to get a window AC? What are we going to do here? But the eight sleep, it can cool off or it can heat up based on what you need. And so that's really

helped me sleep better in an environment that can get kind of cold or get kind of hot. And so I think all of those are basic sleep tips and people aren't doing them. They're so simple. And I think it's a gym around that said, you know, it's the simple things that lead to success. The hard part is it's all like, it's easy to. do the simple things that lead to success, but it's also easy not to do them. So that's all these things that I'm talking about that we're talking about. They're simple habit changes and they really have a cumulative effect. And that's why when someone comes to me, someone came to me today during a coaching call, I was like, what do you think about this blood sugar supplement? And I'm like,

I think we have bigger fish to fry. Like are you doing your mindset stuff? Are you sleeping? Are you drinking your water, are you eating your protein? Are you eating your fiber? Like, once we have these in some supplements to augment your results or to break a plateau or whatever we need to do. But if we're ignoring these simple basic health habits, which so many people are, you can't, you're not going to get results. You can't out supplement an unhealthy lifestyle. So I think that's a really important point. And then the last phase of the pillars is stress. And I wanted to save this for last because it really works into mindset nicely. So for stress, there's different types of stress. There's emotional stress. There's physical stress. There's

metabolic stress. There's cellular stress. So emotional stress is like you're angry, you're scared, you were offended, you were hurt, you're stressed out, you're just, you feel it, you know, viscerally in your body. The physical stress would be things from like a high intensity interval training session, intermittent fasting perhaps, strength training, all of those would be good stressors on your body in moderation. Not in moderation. The next would be like a metabolic stress. So when you have those refined seed oils or when you have added sugar, that's a stress on

your cells. And then the last would be like the cellular toxins. So if you're eating things out of plastic or if you're cooking on non-stick cookware, I live on a farm. We have pesticides around us. That's definitely a cellular stress, which concerns me a little bit. So, you know, heavy metals in your water. For example, we really tested the water when we moved into the farmhouse because I wanted to be sure that our old pipes weren't leaching metals into our water. So all of those things are cellular stress. But predominantly, the biggest problem is the stress caused by your own thoughts. And that's where the mindset comes in. So so many people are

causing inflammation by their negative thinking. And so when it comes to stress management, I mean, I'm never going to tell someone don't go to counseling. Like I think if you need professional help, please get professional help. There are also so many things that you can do to help your own mental health. Every single thing that we talked about today is going to help your mental health. Exercise can be very beneficial. From an insulin standpoint, I kind of skipped over this one, but we want to focus on strength training, all major muscle groups at least twice a week at a moderate to high intensity. That means that you're getting to muscle fatigue, like where you can't do another one with good form after about 10 to 50, no more than 15 repetitions is what I usually

recommend. If you're doing more, you need to increase your weight. But then whatever reduces your stress, if that's gentle walking, if that's running. I used to teach jazzercise, if that's yoga. We want to do the stress reduction, physical activity exercises. Those are the two that we focus on, at least at first. So that can be great for stress management. Sleep is good for stress management, proper nutrition. But the mindset piece, I did a similar interview, and they wanted me to go into a little bit more depth on how do I create, you know, this wellness vision for my life. And I didn't know if you thought that'd be helpful for your audience. Yeah, absolutely. Anything that you have to share would be helpful. So yeah, share with our audience.

And why is that like the idea of like how to kind of put this together or like imagining a future that you want to like actually really your why of like why you're driving towards that? Yeah. If you could explain it, that'd be great. Yeah. So the first habit that we recognize recommend everyone implement as a daily mindset routine. But when I say that, they're like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to pray? Am I supposed to read something? Am I supposed to like beef myself up with positive affirmations? And so I have this start daily meeting agenda. And so it's an acronym. So S is for say your personal faith formula. That's what we're going to go over. The T is for thankful. So I say write or think of. It's better to write three specific things that

happened within the last 24 hours that you're grateful for. This is not I'm grateful for my husband. I'm grateful for my kids. I'm grateful for my health. It's I'm grateful for the way that my daughter's hair smells after she takes a bath. I'm grateful for the big hug that I get from my son every morning when he wakes up. I'm grateful for how my husband keeps my toes warm in bed at night. You know, those are the kinds of things. We want to get specific. I'm grateful for this interview and this opportunity to be here with you today and the technology that makes all this possible. Like when your attention is on what you're grateful for, that really shifts you out of that

gap that so many people tend to be in. So thankful. S-T. A is your action items. This one's really important because when people start a healthy lifestyle, overwhelm is such a common emotion. And if you're overwhelmed, you're going to get paralysis. you know, by analysis, and you're not going to continue. You're not going to, you're not going to keep going. So to reduce the overwhelm, that's really where our Zivoli habit hierarchy comes in,

your daily mindset routine, your weekly meeting with yourself. Are you sleeping? Are you getting your water? Are you getting your protein? And I want the action items to help you implement those habits in order. So someone's action item, like an early, earlier member might be one guy actually bought a smart water bottle. I didn't even know these existed. And it synced to his phone. So he could actually open an app on his phone to see how many ounces of water that he had drank that day. So like his action item might be drink 100 ounces of water a day. Another member is really focusing on sleep. So it's be done eating by 7 p.m. turn the TV off by 9 p.m. So the action items are a little bit more granular than those big habits that we want people.

people to implement. They're like, what are you actually doing to accomplish that habit? And if that's all they're doing, great. We want no more than three because if you focus on too many things, you're going to get overwhelmed. And that's again going to the instant gratification. We have to just cut that off. So the R is to recognize your wins. So this is not, I lost half a pound overnight, or I exercised yesterday, even though, like, that's maybe a good one, but we want to get really specific. Like, I left the kitchen after I had my one predetermined amount of dessert and then I went and brushed my teeth. Or I wanted it to yell at my son for not listening to me, but instead I practice non-reaction and I used a gentler approach. Or I am here right now.

now doing my daily mindset routine and being accountable to myself. So we want to get in the habit of recognizing our wins and practicing gratitude. And then the T, so S-T-A-R-T, is for thoughts and obstacles. This is the most overlooked one, unfortunately. And what this means is think ahead to your day. And in relation to your action items that you set, what are thoughts or obstacles that could get in the way of you reaching them. So if your goal is to eat dinner by 7 p.m. Do you have all of the ingredients in your house to be able to prepare that meal by 7 p.m? Or if your goal is to be in bed by 9 p.m., what thoughts are going to be coming up at 830 or 845 or 9 that you have to be ready to combat? Is it, oh, it's not that big deal. It's not that big of a deal. I'm just going to watch one more

episode or I'm just going to stay up 10 minutes later. It's like you have to arm yourself because it's this internal fight all the time about doing what's right or doing what you want to do now and then doing what's right for your future self. So our whole system is designed to set your future self up for success, to honor what your future self needs instead of what your current self wants. So we want to think ahead, what am I going to think that's going to self-sabotage me today? And what answer am I going to have to that? So that's going to be the tea or like say you're trying to not snack at work, you know, like that's your action item is I'm not snacking today. And there's food in the break room. And I'm going to think, I know I'm going to think, ooh, that looks good.

What rebuttal thought are you going to have when you think, ooh, that looks good? Are you going to avoid the lunchroom today? So what's your strategy? We have to be planning ahead to overcome our own weaknesses that we all know that we have. So any questions about the start before we back up and impact the personal faith formula? No, those are fantastic and they're actionable, they're doable. And the biggest thing is people can step into that framework and they can imagine themselves doing it. Like it's very straightforward. It just goes back to what you were saying about the Jim Rohn quote, which is like, are we going to do it? Does it matter to us enough? Do we care about this? Do we know R. Why? Do we know that we want to do this because it's important to us to

age healthy and still have the energy to want to play with our grandkids. It's important for us to feel that we want to have agency in our life and God forbid do everything that we can to avoid, you know, being in a nursing home one day, right? So these things are all practical, doable, and I love the examples that you share. So crystal clear. Good. Okay. I want to unpack this document called the personal faith formula, haven't figured out a better name for it. You can also call it like your wellness vision statement. But this is the document that you're going to create for the future version of yourself. Someone else said this. Everything is created twice, first in your mind and then in reality. So we are creating that future version of yourself now.

And we're going to do it in a way that feels good. I think a lot of problems with these vision statements are that people are too grandiose, and they're like, and it creates too much cognitive dissonance when they read it, and they're like, I could never do that. I'm never going to be there. And if that's the case, it needs refinement, it needs tweaked. So the other thing that's important about this document, we recommend people read it first thing in the morning. Like your brain is going to be most receptive to new ideas first thing in the morning. And then we also recommend reading it right before bed because overnight, if you tell yourself something like right before bed, it's going to be more likely to be impacting that subconscious mind. And that's where those beliefs are held.

So from a personal faith formula standpoint, the first step I haven't pulled up here is to define your why. And is it okay if I just kind of read questions that way if people are watching or listening they can pause, they can go back. So step number one is to define your why. I'm going to read questions. I want you to either, you know, pause the video, pause the podcast when you have a moment, get a journal, get whatever you need, but really thoughtfully think through these questions. Why is it important for you to lose weight and or get healthy? What can you do or do better at like a better health level? How does your life change when your health or weight is no longer an issue? What good for you and your loved ones will come from you being healthy?

how are you able to show up in bigger and better ways at work home and in your community when you're healthy and maybe people don't resonate with every question but i like to give a lot of those questions to really draw out why is it important because if you're coming to me with a goal of i want to lose 20 pounds my response is why because that goal is not going to be strong enough to overcome late night emotional eating to over to shut the tv off when you need to to go to the gym when you don't feel like going to the gym. So we have to have a really strong why. Now the second step is to describe your process. And this is actually the step I focus the least on. So especially starting out, I recommend people kind of outline this, but not necessarily

focus too much on it. And it's what actions are you taking consistently? So this is from the version of the healthy person that you want to become. This is not from current you. This is from future you. So I ask people, close your eyes, imagine yourself at the healthy weight. Imagine yourself, you're on vacation, you're walking on beach, you're wearing shorts, you're wearing a tank top, you're feeling confident, you're feeling energetic. That's the state of mind where I want you to be when you're answering these questions. So what foods do you see yourself eating? What is your physical activity routine? Are you meal prepping and planning? Are you logging your food? Are you sleeping seven to eight hours at night? Are you making stress management and

self-care priority? And then how is your environment set up for success? So how is your calendar or schedule set up to allow margin time to work on your health? When and where are you holding your weekly meetings with yourself to reflect on your wins, obstacles, and action items? And what team or support structure is in place to ensure your success? So it's almost like you have to go, you have to envision, you have to ask the future version of yourself, okay, Morgan, how do you get there? And you're going to reverse engineer the process in your mind. So I don't like people to focus on that too much because it might feel a little out of reach to them when they're starting out.

And so it's good to describe it. It's good to think about it. But what I care even more about is step three. And step three is going to be probably the most important part. and that's focusing on outcomes and feelings. Because when you're doing this mindset work, this subconscious work, you can't just really go through the motions and say things. You have to elicit things that make you feel something.

And that's why that specific gratitude is so much more important. Like, let me just say this one again. And I want people to feel the difference. I'm grateful for my daughter. Her name's Leah, by the way, and she's like three and a half. And she's so cute. I'm grateful for Leah versus, is, I'm grateful for how Leah says green goblin, like green goblin, and it makes it laugh.

And so you see, like, did you feel the happiness and the emotion and the specific versus the general? So we want you to feel when you're doing this. So desired outcomes. What activities do you see yourself doing or doing better when you're healthy? What can you do when you're healthy that you can't do now? Is it like I can put my shoes on comfortably? I can buckle the seatbelt up in the airplane comfortably. I don't have to suck in my stomach when I walk by mirrors. I'm able to pick up my grandchildren from the floor. One of our members, one of her wins was I passed ninja training with my grandkids, like, you know, her grand, put her through ninja training. It was really fun. Who do you envision sharing your wellness with and in what ways? What are objective numbers that have

improved. So examples are like weight, HDL, triglystorides, glucose, insulin, etc. We don't focus too much on that. Like, I don't need you to tell yourself every day, my fasting insulin will be less than six. Like that will come. Most important part is right here. How do you want to feel? And so this one can be so hard because people are accustomed to feeling pretty crummy about themselves. And it might feel like such a stretch to be like, I feel confident. I feel energy. I feel grateful. I feel healthy. And so this is the part where we really work in coaching to refine the language and fine tune it so that it's true to them. And maybe it's like I'm looking forward to such and such or I'm working towards such and such to make it a little bit more true

where they're at now. What does your mood feel like? What does your energy feel like? What do your muscles and joints feel like? What is your confidence level? Are you free from food and weight obsession? Are you proud of yourself? And if so, what for? So once they have those three parts, part one part two, part three, then we just say, you know, compile them and distill them. And you're going to edit them for a couple of things. You're going to edit them for present tense language.

So that's a good example of this. if people are saying, I'm trying to think of one for my own. So one thing of mine in my own personal faith formula is I prioritize my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health every day. It's I do that, not I will prioritize my mental, emotional health every day. So we need to make it present tense because your subconscious mind only works in the present. So it won't pay attention to words in the future. It's like, oh, yeah, I'll get to that someday.

Like, no, we want to start creating the emotional experience that you want to experience at a healthy version of yourself now. So we have to reflect that language that creates that confidence and that pride now. So I think that that's one thing that we try to edit for, present tense in positive language, and then distill and synthesize it. And then I think that, that this is kind of, that's what we call your definite purpose, right? So this, I'm going to sum it up. I'm reading it again, like this is a huge part of our program that I'm giving away to your audience, and I hope that they take advantage of this. So I'm going to read the whole personal faith formula. And then I want people to think through their why, like that we just kind of came up with.

That's their definite purpose. So that's going to be inserted into this personal faith formula. And it goes like this. And it can change. Like, obviously, this is a living, breathing document. This is not like a rigid structure, but this is where we have people start and then we have them modify it from here. I am allowing and achieving my definite purpose. I commit to take the action required to achieve it every day. I concentrate my thoughts for 30 minutes daily upon gratitude and abundance. I choose to think and do things that make me feel good. I protect my asset, which is me and my ability to prioritize with margin time to think. think, listen, learn, play, rest, and sleep. I prioritize my emotional and physical health every day.

I closely guard my mind against negativity from myself and others. Any desire that I persistently hold in my mind will eventually come to fruition, positive or negative. My thoughts are controllable and they are my responsibility to control. I have clearly written down a description of my definite purpose. And I will never stop trying until I have developed sufficient self-confidence and consistent deliberate follow-through to attain it. My definite purpose is, and that's where we would have them insert what we just came up with. My definite purpose will take time, determination, passion, and a sincere commitment to make it happen. I fully accept responsibility for my thoughts, actions, inactions, and results. I reconnect my energy, attention, and passion towards

reaching my definite purpose. And that's really important because we forget, like we are forgetful creatures. So I recommit my energy, attention, and passion towards reaching my definite purpose. By signing my name to this personal faith formula, I commit to reading it out loud, at least once a day, first thing in the morning, with full faith that it will gradually influence my thoughts and actions so that I will become self-reliant, self-accountable, and achieve my definite purpose. So that's kind of the whole personal faith formula. People can bullet point it, synthesize it, add to it. But that's kind of the starting point for that mindset work that I was talking about. If people want to just like take it and run, please do because it's life changing.

It's been for me. It's been for so many of our members. It's truly powerful. I look at that and I immediately think like so many people use this term, oh, I've fallen off the wagon or I've gotten distracted. And that happens to all of us. There's not one person that that doesn't happen to. But then the question is, can you find your true north? And for most of us, we're going to need tools. We're going to need supports. We're going to need a framework that was successful in helping others return to their true north. And it's not just about the habits. It's about the why that's driving the habits. And I love that example that you shared with us for, you know, That sounds like that's actually your personal faith formula, right?

That's like... No, I have mine here somewhere. That was an example. Well, it was so good. It felt like it could have been easily... It was, but it's grown and it's progressed. And mine is a little bit more role-centric now. So just to kind of sit-ball, I don't have it completely memorized, but it's...

I expand an abundance, love, and success every day. I prioritize my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. every day. I am an active, present, and engaged mom, loving, patient, and supportive wife, and wise business owner, things like that. So it's a little bit more role-centric for me as a mom, a wife, a business owner, how do I want to show up? And then it kind of gets into more specifics. And the beautiful thing, too, we really teach people how to identify their limiting thoughts and then incorporate some solution thoughts into this morning mindset, personal faith formula. So that's why it's a living and breathing document is things are going to come up. And if they come up,

we want to incorporate that into your personal faith formula so that at least once a day, you are embedding in your subconscious mind, you are intention to follow through on that action item. But so many people just like they forget about their good intention. So if you have this regular rhythm, like you said, it's like you can't get off the wagon for more than a day because you're right back on the next morning with your daily mindset routine. Well said. Morgan, while we have you here and we're getting towards the latter part of our, um, and the end of our interview together,

I just always love, you know, you shared so many gems with our audience and as our audience is here and for those that are, you know, listening and still engaged, which is going to be a high percentage of the people, because I know this episode is going to do well.

Um, I always like to go into a little bit of just origin story, you know, just tell us about you and the why and what led you to be an individual who wanted to prioritize. this approach and ultimately end up creating a business that, you know, helps thousands of people all around the world all around the globe. That's such a good question. I never wanted to own a business. My mom's a lawyer. She did family law and I saw her work her tail off. And I was like, I don't want

to run a business. That's way too much work. But I was, I'm a geriatric train physical therapist. I have my specialty in geriatrics. I went into geriatrics, which is pretty much anyone 55 plus. Sorry if you're that age and I just called you geriatric. because I love my grandparents so much. So at our wedding, eight out of nine of our grandparents were there. My grandparents played a huge role in my development growing up. I was very close to my grandpa who passed away. I'm still very close to my grandma.

My other grandma just moved into a nursing home. And, you know, you learn things from your grandparents that I think that you don't learn anywhere else. Like you learn fidelity and work ethic and faith. and the importance of family and loyalty and hospitality and generosity. So many things. I just love that they're so rich in wisdom. And for me, going into geriatrics was a way of paying it forward because I wanted to help other grandparents be healthy and be there for their family,

like mine were there for me. So that was kind of why I went into geriatrics. And then once I was there, I became really jaded. with the medical system. I saw the care that we were providing was too little, too late, too often. And I saw so many people didn't just have diabetes. They didn't just have heart disease. They didn't just have obesity. They didn't just have dementia. They had symptoms of insulin resistance. Like, I never saw someone just with diabetes. It was always like diabetes, heart disease, cognitive impairment, altered cholesterol. And that really got me digging into why? Why are all of these

people so sick. Why do they have so many common symptoms? And that really brought me to the insulin resistance and inflammation denominator. And that's where my mind exploded. Like, I didn't learn about this in school. I didn't learn about this in my residency. I studied nutrition in college and they taught me all wrong. So I really thought, like, if I could work with these people 20 or 30 years earlier, they wouldn't need a geriatric physical therapist. They wouldn't have had this heart attack. They wouldn't have had this fall. They wouldn't have this neuropathy because insulin resistance compounds. And the problem with insulin resistance is, and most other things, is the longer you wait to solve the problem, the bigger the problem gets. And so I wanted to

help people solve it in its infancy so that they could have lived as long and happy and healthy life as possible. And so that's kind of my story of origin. And then it got to the point where I couldn't not pursue this business. I couldn't go to work from a place of integrity. Every day, I was going to work and feeling like a piece of my soul was dying. And I'm not being dramatic there. Like it was soul draining work because I knew that that wasn't my ultimate calling. And so after I had my son, who's five and a half, when he was four months old, I started my business. If you imagine like your first kid, four months old, what is this crazy woman doing? And it's been a ride and it's been such a joy to be able to serve people at my highest capacity and not be limited

by what's covered by insurance and be able to bring this holistic approach and this mindset approach and things that would never be billed by insurance. But I can do it, you know, because I just created my own business and I can do it now. And I think the other thing that I'm Loving is seeing the growing awareness of insulin. Like, doctors are not talking about this with their patients. Doctors are not testing insulin, even though it's been shown to predict type 2 diabetes up to two decades before glucose. So just to be able to hear the truth and share the truth and not be filtered by a big company,

not be limited by insurance, like, that is so personally fulfilling to me to be able to help prevent all of the tragic conditions that I treated in geriatric physical therapy. And then here are these stories of health transformation knowing that they don't just get to be healthy now. They get to be healthy 10 years from now and 20 years from now and how I'm impacting. We always talk about like fall rates and re-hospitalization rates and polypharmacy. It's like, I'm doing so much good for these people when I help them earlier in life than when we wait and help them later. So that's kind of the story of original. It's super powerful story. And I know there's a lot of individuals in our audience besides just just being interested, you know, because they're so tuned into this episode. There's also for anybody

that has felt that inner calling themselves, you know, for a lot of people who get healthy, they naturally think, okay, my next step is I want to make my family healthy. So you focus on your family, your wife, your husband, you know, your kids, you know, sometimes then even then it goes to your parents. That's the stage that, you know, I've been in life in the last like 10, 12 years. It's like, I really want to focus on supporting my parents, get them to, you know, develop some lean muscle mass, some more lean muscle mass, improve their diet, et cetera, you know, dive in and get them some really great personalized care because I care about my parents and they took such great care of me. And then once you go to your parents, you know, and then you want to go to, okay,

how do I actually make an impact in my community or in society? And for a lot of individuals who are out there struggling today, it really comes back to we are in an education crisis. Going back to the beginning part of the interview, you talked about some of the top myths that are out there. Even though the evidence shows that a lot of these myths are not true, you know, these old myths, they die hard. Yeah. You know, because there's still a lot of smart individuals, many of them well-intentioned, who are repeating these myths, to their patients, their friends, their family. And it takes a while to sort of unpack them and start to have a different focus for a different

future that's there. So I know that your story is also going to resonate besides the incredible health tips that you shared. It's going to resonate because we all feel that call to adventure on our hero's journey of, you know what, this feels scary. But if I don't do it, what kind of life? am I going to leave and what kind of world am I going to leave for my kids, for the future of people that are out there that are just genuinely struggling and they're not an expert like you.

They're just trying to find the right answers. And I think that you've done an incredible job and you're continuing to do an incredible job of not only putting that information out there, but making it into a program that is straightforward for people to follow so that they can get sustained and long lasting results. So I want to acknowledge you and I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. to share your message and your vision. I'll just repeat to the audience what I shared when we started recording is that I'm so surprised I hadn't come across your content way earlier than like a couple months ago

when I came across it because my team had shared it with me. And I hope that we get some new individuals that also feel the same way after this interview. In fact, I know that they will. Morgan, I would love for you to close out by just how can people follow you? How do they check out your online program and anywhere else that you want to send them to? Yeah. So thank you for the opportunity to share that. My business is called Zibley, and it's ZI-V-L-I.

And that does mean something. Ziv means live in Croatian. The L-I is students for low insulin and inflammation lifestyle. The first place that I would suggest someone start is actually our website, just Zivli.com. And they can see we have an insulin resistance diet starter course that they can take any time. We open enrollment for our full, like, robust program called Zibley on how to lower insulin resistance, lose weight, all that good stuff. It's an eight-week program, but they have lifetime access. And we open that twice a year in March and September. And then we also have, I really would

suggest they check out our insulin resistance playlist for beginners on YouTube because there were a couple things here we didn't cover like, how do you test for insulin resistance? And what are the signs of insulin resistance. And so I have some really, really quick tip videos on that playlist where I would suggest they start. And then they can follow me on Instagram. I'm at Dr. Morgan Nulte. And my podcast is Reshape Your Health with Dr. Morgan Nulte. And we kind of have a broad array of topics surrounding insulin resistance and sustainable weight loss and mindset. So those would be the few ways. Again, we have the free food guide. They can find that on the website or we share a lot about it on social. So I really hope that people found this episode helpful.

And if they have any follow-up questions, they can reach out on Instagram. They can email us at support at zivli.com. We're really responsive that way too. Incredible. Well, we'll have all those links in the show notes and in the captions on YouTube. You can check them out and get a chance to follow Dr. Nolte, her team, her business. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much again for being on the podcast and sharing your incredible wisdom with our audience. It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me on. Hi, everyone, Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something. something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter,

and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step calls for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says try this.