Dhru Purohit Show - How to Get Fit for Summer: Ranking the Best and Worst Health Trends of 2025 including Fasting, Creatine and Detox Diets with Cynthia Thurlow

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Our Place, and Maui Nui. When it comes to intermittent fasting and sustainable weight loss, the advice out there can be overwhelming and often conflicting. Today’s guest joins the podcast to cut through the noise and tier-rank the most effective lifestyle strategies for long-term success, spotlighting what truly moves the needle—and what’s better left behind. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Cynthia Thurlow to unpack what we need to prioritize—and just as importantly, what to let go of—for sustainable weight loss and long-term weight management. Together, they tier-rank the most impactful lifestyle habits and debunk common myths around overexercising, one-meal-a-day diets, and detox trends. Cynthia also challenges outdated narratives targeted at men and women over 40, offering a science-backed approach to behavior change. Plus, she dives into the most destructive mindsets that often lead to self-sabotage. Cynthia Thurlow is a nurse practitioner, author, and host of the Everyday Wellness podcast. With over 25 years in health and wellness, she’s a leading expert in intermittent fasting and women’s health during perimenopause and menopause. Her TEDx talk on intermittent fasting has over 15 million views. Cynthia’s mission is to empower women to thrive through midlife and beyond. In this episode, Dhru and Cynthia dive into: Role and benefits of intermittent fasting in weight loss (00:24) Long-term goals for fasting (4:08) Counting and tracking macros (5:36) The downsides of the one-meal-a-day (OMAD) trend (11:15) The connection between body parasites and weight loss (20:24) Gut health tests and their impact on weight loss (25:22) “Thyroid-pause” and its effect on weight (33:26) The role of fiber in our diet and its impact on the microbiome (41:16) Detoxing for weight loss—does it help? (43:05) The difference between intense daily cardio and strength training (51:10) Daily alcohol consumption and its effect on weight loss (1:00:25) Regular and diet soda consumption—how they affect the body (1:03:45) The role of mindset in a successful weight loss journey (1:09:28) Recommendations for developing a stronger mindset (1:12:48) Destructive beliefs that sabotage wellness goals (1:15:16) Why a daily dose of creatine matters (1:17:32) The role of protein powders and shakes in your diet (1:21:49) Seed oils and how to reduce ultra-processed food intake (1:25:05) Thoughts on GLP-1 medications (1:35:25) Hormone replacement therapy (1:47:44) Cynthia’s practical steps for sustainable weight loss and building strength (1:55:01) Also mentioned in this episode: Everyday Wellness with Cynthia Thurlow ™ - Podcast Cynthia's Creatine - The Midlife PAUSE: Strength, Radiance, and Resilience Dhru's protein shake: Try This newsletter For more on Cynthia, follow her on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Our Place, and Maui Nui. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the Momentous Three: Protein, Omega-3s, and Creatine made by and used by the best. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription.  Reduce your toxic load by upgrading your cookware! Go to fromourplace.com today and use promo code DHRU at checkout to receive 10% off any order. Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/dhru to secure your access now —but hurry, supply is limited! Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cynthia, today you are helping us understand what are the most important and least important things that we need to prioritize or deprioritize in our life if we're interested in the topic of weight loss, body composition, especially for those that are 40 plus. So let's jump into it. Starting with the first one, which is intermittent fasting. You are an expert on this topic. Help us understand what's the role of intermittent fasting with weight loss and where would you rank it. on our list. I think it depends. So when I talk about the desire to intermittent fast and the health benefits that come from it, it's always with the dovetail caveat of it depends. And because intermittent fasting is not new or novel, despite what the media would like us to think, it is designed to be able to help us utilize stored fat as energy, ideally. Unfortunately, in kind of our modern day culture, many of us are no longer able to access stored fat. as a fuel source because of how frequently we eat and the types of foods that we consume.

So when I think about intermittent fasting and whether or not where it should tier on this list, it really depends on the individual. And I'll give you a specific example. Many women that are in my practice and programs that are clients within our business are individuals that are super type A. They exercise really hard. They don't sleep enough. They don't eat enough food.

They probably have a very compressed feeding window. and those are typically the patients that I will actually suggest to them, especially because they come to me, they're tired, their weight loss resistant, they're trying to figure out why things aren't working for them. More often than not, I will ask them to do a gentler form of intermittent fasting. I'll have them do something called digestive rest,

which is 12 hours of when you have a feeding window of 12 hours and 12 hours of not eating. On the contrary of that, male or female, if you have someone that is not metabolically healthy, someone that is maybe just getting started on their health and wellness journey, and individuals who's consuming snacks and many meals, someone that's eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, maybe they're not as physically active as they would like to be.

Having a compressed feeding window for an individual like that in particular can help jumpstart a lot of health benefits. Most of the health benefits that we talk about in terms of intermittent fasting, improved biophysical markers, a degree of reduction in inflammation, improvement in brain health and brain cognition, reduction in specific types of cancers, you know,

having the ability to evoke this process called autophagy where we have this waste and recycling process going on. So it's always in the context of, it depends on the patient. I do still like and embrace the concept of intermittent fasting, but it's always in the context of understanding that fasting is one of many types of hormetic stressors, you know, beneficial stress in the right amount at the right time.

And for some people, it's too much stress over time that can be problematic. And so I think when I start to zero in on, you know, how my thought process has changed over the past 10 years about fasting, it has gotten a much more nuanced and just having patients get really honest with themselves. Are you struggling to build muscle? Are you someone that's not sleeping at night? And this can be male or female, helping them understand, you know, intermittent fasting might be something you do on a couple days out of the week. It might be on the days you're not lifting weights. It might be something that you entertain around your cycle, specific times around your cycle. And so I think that it's always a nuanced conversation when it comes to fasting.

So if I'm thinking about a ranking, I'd probably make it a B or C. So something in that kind of average range really depends on the individual. Still has merits. But if you are that type of woman that is middle-aged and you are over-fasting, under-eating, over-exercising, you're not doing yourself any benefits. No, that's a great breakdown. If somebody's listening today, they're like, you know what, I have like five to 15 pounds that I want to lose. And I think my biggest problem is that I just need to eat less.

And they come to you and they say, you know what? Fasting seems great. And I've done it in the past. And it's always a great way to lose weight in the short term. What would you tell that person who maybe even has done a little bit of fasting and feels like it's helped them? What would you tell them when it comes to their long term goals that the pros and cons of that would be. Yeah, it's a great question. I think the first thing that I would actually have them do is track their macros because that gives me a sense right there of, are you able to

meet your protein targets of where you should be? That's number one, because that'll allow me to see, could you get away with having a compressed feeding window or do you struggle to get in 50 grams of protein a day? Because that is a totally separate issue. I think when it's five or 10 pounds, I find for most people, it is the discretionary fun foods. It's the alcohol on the weekends. It's the desserts. It's, you know, maybe having that extra portion of ultra-processed foods that are adding to, you know, the trouble with losing weight or weight loss resistance. So sometimes it's starting there like the transparency piece and I'm a data geek. So it's like, let's track your macros for a couple days just to see what you're doing. And then we can decide if you're already

getting in 120 grams of protein a day, you know, having a compressive. feeding window is probably not a big deal. But if you're someone struggling to get 50 or 60 a day, you're the last person that I want you to have an ultra compressed feeding window. I find for a lot of patients, it's cutting out alcohol, it's crudding out the sweets, it's crudding out processed carbs that have a huge net impact on those last 5, 10, 15 pounds. You know, you mentioned tracking macros. That is one of the icons on our list. We have a little bit of food here that's on a scale that's being, you know, weighed out. Just double-click. on that a little bit more. Yeah. Because I think that there are a lot of people that are like,

oh, you want me to count all my calories forever? No. And then there's another group of people that feel like, you know, why do I have to be thinking about, you know, my foods and auditing them? I'm eating a whole food diet. So rank counting your macros. Yep. Right. So let's put that somewhere on the list over here and then go into that a little bit more. Okay. So I'm going to give it a B because I do see merit in it and I'll be fully transparent and tell you I hate counting macros, but there is utility in it. And for some of my patients, they need that quantitative information to say, this is how much protein you're consuming.

These are your carbohydrates. This is how much fat you're consuming. Because I think for a lot of people, they mindlessly go about their day, not realizing that, you know, that half an avocado or sometimes that whole avocado a day could be, yes, it's a healthy fat. Yes, it's a healthy monosaturated fat. But if you're overconsuming healthy fats, that can impact your weight loss resistance. So number one, I like to track macros short term.

So some people, I'll say, let's track it for a week. A week is something everyone can do. Now, if I have someone who has eating disorder behavior, that sometimes can be triggering. And so there's other ways I'll say, let's just track protein. Let's just track one metric. I think it is that important. Then you can also track hydration. You can track your discretionary macros.

We can track where you are if you're still menstruating. We can track that too. But I find even for men, very beneficial to for transplant. transparency to see, are you getting enough protein in that meal? Do you understand that you have to hit this protein threshold to be able to trigger muscle protein synthesis, which I'm sure we'll probably talk about? And so number one, I think tracking macros can be beneficial for the short term. In no ways do I recommend anyone be tracking macros in perpetuity. For the same reason, I think weighing yourself daily for a lot of people can be very triggering. So it's a short term benefit, short term effort for a long term benefit. benefit. And when I think about, you know, kind of high level concepts, it's, are you having enough protein? What are you doing with your carbohydrates? And I'm not anti-carb. I think, unfortunately, because I've been someone that's been aligned with intermittent fasting for a long period of time, people assume I'm ketogenic or I'm low carb. That is not the case. I think it's important to have

high-quality carbohydrates, looking at the types of fats you're consuming and understanding that as a differentiator, that protein and carbohydrates are four calories per gram. And fat is nine. Yeah, it's nine. And so helping people understand that, you know, if you're trying to lose weight and you think you can have all the fatty meat and have two sticks of butter a day and three avocados, and I have met people who insist that's what they consume. And I'm like, if that works for you, great. But for the vast majority of us, it would not.

And so once you can quantitatively look at that information, it allows you to make very specific recommendations for patients. And that's where I find tracking macro is helpful. Let me be very clear. I'm not suggesting you do this for the. the rest of your life. It is not meant to be feeling like you're tethered to your app on your phone. It is really just to help you build awareness about portion sizes and quantity of macronutrients that you're consuming. And what I like about one particular app that I have no affiliation with is

chronometer. It also gives you micronutrients. So you'll be able to see, you know, what's your magnesium or potassium, chloride, all these micronutrients that do impact food craving, satiety, etc. And so I would give this a solid B more as a, I think this is an important tool to have in the toolbox, but not something that I'm suggesting people do for the rest of their lives. But I think it can be very, very insightful. I mean, when I first started tracking my macros, it was a game changer for me. Even though I've been eating healthy for years, you really don't understand how much you are consuming of different categories until you track.

And then you get better at eyeballing. You look at a piece. Me and my wife have this fun thing where she'll be like, oh, like, how? How much protein isn't that? And I'll try to guess and then we'll weigh it out. And I'm usually pretty much there because I have gotten so good at eyeballing it after tracking for a period of time. And I also have noticed for myself that if I waver on my diet, which we all do every so often, if I get back to tracking for a week, that's a nice way for me to reset and regroup. Yeah.

And I think it's also, it's one of those things like my husband and I laugh about this because he's a former college athlete. He thinks he doesn't ever have to track anything. and I said, I actually want you to track for an entire week, so I know exactly how much protein you're consuming. To his credit, he was getting plenty of protein, but he was surprised about the carbohydrates, you know, how much carbohydrate he was consuming. And, you know, he was finding that, you know,

when you looked at the data over time? He's like, when do I eat the most of my carbs? Friday and Saturday night. And so it was like, okay, are you not eating a food on Friday or are you just allowing yourself to indulge? It just builds that awareness so that you can get back on track if you need to. It's not designed to be punitive.

And I think that's sometimes the common misconception is that tracking is designed to be punitive. And I'm like, oh, no, we're just data mining. We are just information gathering. And I think that that allows us to make better decisions overall. And I think all of us have opportunities where we have things we need to clean up. I'm going through that myself right now. I'm like, okay, time to get back on the saddle. Well, you kind of talked about this, but this is a trend that got really popular a few years ago.

and people have a lot of questions about. And that's OMAD, right? One meal a day. And it's on our list over here. And some people feel, oh, well, because they've maybe heard from an author. There's some pretty prominent books that are out there is, oh, that's all you need. And this seems like, well, why don't you tell our audience, what is OMAD? Why do it get popular?

And what are the downsides for somebody who is wanting to, not only lose weight, but stay fit, especially as they age. In a perfect world, we'd get all the nutrients we need for high-level performance from food alone. But in the real world, most of us could use a little bit of help. That's why I start the day off with the momentous three, protein, protein, and omega-3s. These three nutrients form the foundation of long-term health and performance, and research shows that most people aren't getting nearly enough from diet alone. Taken daily, this trio supports every cellular functional.

in the brain and the body. For muscle recovery and growth to sharper focus, steady energy, and even longevity. It is one of the easiest ways to make a big impact on your health span and keep doing what you love doing for longer. But what really sets momentous apart is their obsession with quality. They're driven by what they call the momentous standard. A commitment to rigorous science, premium ingredient sourcing and unmatched transparency. That means no artificial flavors, sweeteners, gums, or fillers, ever. Every product is NSF certified for sport or informed sport certified, meaning it's third party tested for purity, label accuracy, and ban substances. So what's on the label is exactly what you're getting. That level of

integrity is why they're trusted by over 200 professionals and collegiate teams, including all 32 NFL teams. And they've been awarded over nine research innovation contracts with the U.S. Their formulas are developed with the best in the game. Think Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Andy Galpin, Dr. Stacey Sims, and Dr. Kelly Starrett. You can get the Momentus 3 today. Just head over to livemometus.com and use the code D-H-R-U, that's Drew, for 35% off your first subscription. That's code D-H-R-U, Drew, that's me, at L-I-V-E-M-O-M-M-M-MENTUS, for 35% off your first subscription today. Did you know that one of the most toxic items in your house might be your cookware?

A study by the Ecology Center in California found that, shockingly, 80% of non-stick pans contain Phaas, these PFAs, the forever chemicals. These are toxins that can leach into your food and body every single time you cook. Even worse, a brand new study published in Science of the Total environment revealed that a single scratch on a non-stick coated pan can release up to 9,100 plastic particles into your food. Yuck. I've been on a mission to swap out my toxic cookware with non-toxic options, which is why I use the titanium always pan pro. It's the first ever non-stick technology that's coding free and like all of the hour place cookware line made without PIFs, otherwise known as forever chemicals, otherwise known as super toxic.

for our body. This super durable pan has a titanium surface which is 300% harder than stainless steel, making it virtually indestructible and able to withstand up to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. This pan also is fully clad and tri-ply and is constructed with quick heating aluminum core and a durable titanium interior. It's also dishwasher safe and perfect for seasoning, flipping, deglazing, deep frying, and so much more. I love it to personally pan fry sweet potatoes. steak and make crispy fish or the perfect omelet. This pan can handle all meals making cooking at home easy and of course non-toxic. Stop, stop, stop, stop cooking with toxic cookware and upgrade to our place today. Visit from our place.com slash drew and use the code Drew for 10% off sitewide.

That's from F-R-O-M-O-U-R-P-L-A-C-E dot com slash D-H-R-U. Drew, that's me. With a hundred-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and returns, you can experience this game-changing cookware with zero risk. Yeah, so OMAD means one meal a day. And I think that, again, it also gets kind of lumped in with the intermittent fasting community, that that is, you know, a strategy, one of many strategies that you can utilize. I think my greatest concerns about OMAD, and I've been very open about this from the very beginning is it's the concept of food intake over time.

Now, if you go on vacation and you come home, you're like, I just totally, you know, enjoyed myself, indulged and everything, I'm coming back home and I'm going to get back on track. And I'm going to have a day of one meal a day so that I can kind of reset myself and move forward. That is very different than most individuals that are doing OMAT and they're barely getting close to their protein threshold for the day. So my concern over time is that, yes, a lot of people want to do OMAT because they want to lose weight. They're like, this will be effective. I'm not going to be hungry for a second meal. I don't need a second meal. And then helping them understand is that over time,

if you start tracking those macros, at least with my female patients, what I start to see is someone who's eating 50, 60 grams of protein per day. And over time, what are the things that happen after the age of 40? This progressive loss of muscle. And so what you are essentially doing is you are making that progressive loss of muscle, which is sarcopenia, it exacerbate that.

It magnifies it. And so if you look at all the longevity researchers versus the individuals like Dr. Don Lehman, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who were very big proponents of consuming adequate protein to offset sarcopenia, frailty, falls, et cetera, you start to understand that ultimately you decide for yourself which path you want to take.

And as someone who's both as a clinician and as an individual watching people that are doing, OMAT over time, you know, watching people track their macros, talk to us in programs, talk to us in one-on-one environments. Consistently what I see happening is this progressive loss of muscle, the loss of muscle leads to not just frailty over time, but also leads to a loss of insulin sensitivity. So really understanding that our muscles are a metabolic sink and helping people understand that you're not getting enough protein into your diet. You are just going to worsen that unraveling of this loss of muscle. I'm a very visual person. I'm a very visual

person so I always like to provide comparisons. So young healthy muscle looks like filet. We all know what that looks like versus a delicious ribby still equally delicious, but it has a lot of marbling. It has a lot of fat infiltration. That is what older muscle looks like. We want to remain looking like a filet over time. So my concern about omad is number one, if it's a occasional thing, not a big deal, you've overindulge, you came back from vacation, you just ate too much. That's very different than a stained omat effort. And there are people in the health and wellness space that do omat in perpetuity, many of whom have lost a significant amount of weight. And I don't want to take away from that. But I also don't think in many instances they're really fully understanding the long-term impact of

that loss of muscle. It is significant and quite profound. And so that is always where my concern goes. Is, you know, are you getting enough protein? Can you get 100 grams of protein in a meal? I can't. I'm sure there are people out there that might be able to. In fact, I have one female friend who does. I just call her the unicorn. But in terms of everyone else, most of us are not getting 100 grams of protein into one meal. And if you're not getting at least 100 grams of protein in a day, you're just making that whole process of muscle loss.

You're just magnifying it. So long-term sustained OMAD, where would you rank it? I'm going to put it as a D. As a D, not an F. Not an F. I'm sure there'll be other things that we'll get an F. But it's always that cautionary. Like I understand the utility of it.

Yeah, you understand why people do it. You understand what they're shooting for. And you also understand now as, you know, we know a lot more about things and the importance of muscle mass, you understand why it might be misguided. Yes. And that's why podcasts like this and podcasts like yours help people weigh out the pros and cons so that they can make the right decision for themselves. And what's interesting, Drew, is that I can assure you if I take any heat for this interview,

it'll be about that. About OMAD. About that without question. without question. Well, I got some other ones that might give you some heat too. Okay. Let's get spicy and let's bring them on. Okay.

So in this world that we often find ourselves in, integrated medicine, functional medicine, holistic, you know, however you want to say it, often people who listen to your podcast and my podcast will hear the reason that you can't lose weight, especially guided at, you know, people above the age of 40, is you have this thing that you're dealing with. So I'm going to go through a few different aspects like that.

All right. So the first one that I have on our list is the reason you can't lose weight is because you're dealing with a parasite. All right. So talk to us about that specifically in the context of weight loss. Is there any truth to it? Is that crazy? And then help us rank it.

Now, in addition to that, there might be other things that are related to the topic of parasites. And you can share your thought about that. But let's talk about parasites and weight loss. Yeah, well, I would say, I would back up and say our gut microbiome has a tremendous amount to do with the health of our gut microbiome, whether or not we can or cannot lose weight. And I know this because I just wrote a book on it. So I feel like this is a uniquely perfect time to have this conversation. So number one, opportunistic infections, whether it be a parasite, H. Pylori, Candida, dysbiotic organisms, all of those things are opportunistic.

And so when someone says to me, I think it's the parasite that is making me weight loss resistant. And I'm like, there's so many other things that happened first. I think that it is a sign that there is a significant gut microbiome shift. And it is not per se the parasite. The parasite is kind of the symptom, if you will. But there's other things that are going on below the surface. So when I think about this, it just, it brings me back to understanding. And I'll give you an example.

So when young boys and girls are born and they're growing up, up until puberty, our microbiomes are very similar. It's only the advent of puberty that we start seeing differentiation in the microbiome. Obviously, men predominantly with testosterone, women predominantly with estrogen, but also progesterone and a little bit of testosterone. And up until, you know, we go through puberty, if someone chooses to get pregnant, they go through pregnancy, there's a shift in the microbiome. And then we get to perimenopause. And it's these three big shifts in our lives as women in particular. And then ironically enough, we go into menopause and our gut microbiomes resemble men's. And so the reason why I'm bringing this up is when women in, you know, north of 40,

perimenopause, menopause suddenly have aberrancies or weird or unusual things that come up on stool testing is one example. I'm like, it's really a reflection of what's going on at the gut microbiome, both with the differentiation with immune function, things, are changing there. It speaks to, you know, individuals that are making less hydrochloric acid. So all of us are exposed to parasites and other type of organisms on a daily basis. You know, if you eat lettuce, I mean, you are exposed to things because you can only scrub the lettuce or clean the lettuce so well. But we have lines of defenses in our body that are designed to do away with these things, hydrochloric acid in the stomach. You know, you've got other, you know, bicarbonate,

other things that go on in the microbiome and beyond that are designed to help, you know, these defenses systems that are designed to get rid of what does not belong. Now, how does a parasite come about? There's a couple different things that happen. You know, it could be you're a certain life stage. You're more susceptible. You make less hydrochloric acid. You're an individual that in many instances you have chronic stress. You're not sleeping. Your nutrition is terrible. We know 70% of us as Americans alone are eating ultra-processed foods. So you're not even eating. food that has much nutrient quality to it. And so do I think parasites are the reason why people are gaining weight or weight loss

resistant? I think it is many other things contributing to a degree of inflammation, oxidative stress. There can be so many things that are going on with that. The parasite per se, I would say, is just a symptom of a bigger issue. So that's where I would leave that. It's not that the parasite is what drove it. It's that there were a lot of other dominoes that had already fallen over. And that just happened to be the one.

thing that someone did some testing, they figured out there was something else going on, but many, many things contribute to that. I don't think it is solely from the parasite. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea that a parasite is causing weight loss resistance for somebody or is driving their weight gain, that's going to be ranked pretty low. It's going to be ranked pretty low.

And by no means am I saying that people don't go through this. Yeah, people deal with parasites. They travel. Right. Different countries. They might pick something up. I have picked up many. But in the context of weight loss or weight loss resistance, there's not much there there.

It's usually other things that are contributing. And it's usually that is, it's like the red herring. It's like, okay, so we do stool testing. Then we pick up, oh, you have a parasite or you've got significant dysbiosis. Oh, by the way you have H. Pylori or you've got CBO. I mean, there's many things that can create this domino effect. It's usually multifactorial. Like, why are we weight loss resistance?

It's never just one thing. It's multiple things. So would you throw it as a D and F? I'm going to give it a D. Okay, got it. And a double click on a question for you. So we've had different people come on this podcast that have talked about the category of gut health. And one of the things that often comes up is that it's tough for us to know.

I mean, we have like the American Gut Project or other things like that. But there's people have a lot of different feelings about the different testings that are out there. We even have some practitioners that have come on this podcast that said that they've taken, you know, two samples from a patient on the same day and got wildly different results that are there. How strongly do you feel about stool testing, what it can tell us, what it can't tell us, when it comes to what an individual's gut health should or shouldn't be. Taking a quick break here to share about our amazing sponsors who help support our mission and help me keep this podcast free for listeners.

Okay, guys and gals, how many times have you heard an expert on my podcast talk about the importance of getting your protein? But we're all looking for the magical trifecta when it comes to looking for a protein-rich snack. Healthy protein is one, great tasting, and bonus, if it's something that can help restore balance to our ecosystem. Well, the great news is that this snack is real, and it's instantly become a huge part of my daily routine.

I'm talking about Maui-Nui venison sticks. Whether I'm running between meetings, finishing a workout, or about to hop into a podcast recording, I grab one and I feel good knowing I'm getting 10. grams of high quality protein in just 55 calories with no weird ingredients or crazy flavors. Honestly, Maui Nui has made it so much easier for me and so many of my friends and family to not only hit their protein goals and get a quick snack in, but stay focused and energized without relying on a crazy processed food bar that's often filled with junk and sugar, which just leaves people feeling super sluggish.

And as I mentioned, Maui Nui is doing something truly special. They harvest 100% wild access deer in Hawaii as part of their conservation efforts to restore balance to the ecosystem. It's one of the most ethical, thoughtful, and cleanest sourcing options I've ever personally come across. It's focused on sustainability, community impact, and the health of the land. There's truly nothing like Maui Nui on the market. My whole family loves this company and true story, I can barely keep them in stock at my podcast studio because my guests are always walking away with a handful, which I'm happy to give them. Once you try Maui-Nui-Venison, you won't go back to any old protein snacks because they're so much better.

That's why Maui-Nui is offering the Drew Prood Show listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products, but supply is limited because of the nature of their work and how they harvest. So don't wait. Head over to Maui-Nui-Venison.com slash Drew to secure your access now. Again, that's Maui, M-A-U-I-N-U-I-V-E-N-I-V-E-N-I-O-N-I-N-S-O-N-O-N-N-E-H-N-E-R-U-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-R-U-N-N-E-N-E-V-N-E-N-N-E-V-I-N-W-E-N-E-E-V-E-N-I-W-E-N-E-E-V-E-N-I-V-M-E-M-E-V-E-E-N-E-V-E-V-E-E-F-E-E-E-E-E-V-E-V-E-E-V-E-E-V-E-L-E-E-E-L- food sensitivities. Where are they on, you know, are they female or male? Where are they on their female journey? Are they in perimenopause or menopause? I mean, there's a lot that can impact the interpretation of testing. Do I think there are better companies than others? Absolutely.

I think that from my perspective, I have found them to be incredibly invaluable and very validating. In terms of the symptoms that someone's experiencing and then working through a protocol to address exactly what we're finding. I think that in many instances, There are circumstances where we need antibiotic therapy for things that we find. As an example, I've had people who've had C. diff, which is an opportunistic infection. Sometimes we just see it in the hospital, but you can see it in the community as well. So I think for a lot of individuals, it is really taking a good history. That's number one.

Like any clinician should be, and I'm sure the good ones do, really good history because it helps tease out what direction you're going to go in. And then using testing to kind of rule out or rule out. rule in or rule out other things that you're concerned about. I think that is helpful, but, you know, there's no one test that is perfect. I mean, it just doesn't exist. Do I sometimes run tests on people that I'm convinced they have SIBO

or they have significant candida or some other issue or even something more significant than that? And that's when I refer them to a specialist. But I think in many, many instances, if I'm having great concerns about, you know, do they have colorectal cancer? Could there be something quite significant going on? But I think a lot of it is the interpretation based on the clinician's experience, taking a good history, and then also working with companies where you feel like there's a degree of reliability.

There's one company that will remain nameless that since the pandemic, almost every one of my patients was showing up as having H. Pylori. And I called the company. I said, how is this even possible? Because this wasn't happening pre-pandemic. And, you know, that required me to do a little bit of course correction. it was like, okay, I'm going to start working with other companies because I'm concerned that this may be an abarancy. This may be something that it just doesn't make sense that every single person's test would be positive for H. Pylori. When you look at a broad section of the population, it was like, that just doesn't make sense.

So I think it's a bit of provider preference, provider comfort, getting that good history, and then deciding what does that patient specifically need? Like, there's no one size fits all in my world. So you mentioned you just got done. writing a book about this topic of how your gut health specifically impacts you through the years and how it might tie into weight loss. Is there anything else you can add about that? We were chitch chatting a little bit before we started recording. And this is the book that you have coming out in a couple years. So it's not out for the audience that's trying to get it now. 2026. But as soon as it is, you'll know, and we'll link to it and we'll have you on the podcast. But is there anything else high level

that you feel is universally applicable, especially in the context of this episode for our audience? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is understanding that we start in one kind of realm, and we understand the influence of sex hormones are significant and profound. So it's not just immune function and why women in middle age suddenly

start becoming more susceptible to parasites and other type of opportunistic infections, but it's bone health. The gut microbiome and bone health are intricately related. Our mood is interesting. intricately related to the type of neurotransmitters were able to create in the gut microbiome. There is literally next to nothing that is not impacted positively or negatively by the microbiome, including when we go into menopause.

Ovarian senescence is the concept that probably hasn't been talked about a lot, but it's like now that I've kind of opened that Pandora's box, helping us understand that the role of, you know, childhood adverse events can impact when we go into menopause. and vis-to-vis communication between the microbiome and the ovaries. And, you know, it is utterly fascinating. So expect it to come out that everything is interconnected. You know, traditional allopathic medicine tends to think about health care and silos. You know, the heart is in one bucket, the brain's in another.

And the one thing that I've learned over the past 10 years is that everything is interconnected. And the more that we understand about the gut microbiome, the more that I am impressed, the fact that we function day to day. also understanding how important all this hormone signaling, polyphenol signaling from things like Eurylithin A, from nitric oxide, all of these signaling molecules, communicating within the body, within the gut microbiome to get things to work and be optimal is incredibly humbling. Amazing. Well, we have a couple more things in our list here that relate to that. But before we do it, we're going to wrap up this section of things that could be the reason why you aren't able

to lose weight. Another common one that a lot of audience hears, especially the women that listen, is that something is broken with your thyroid specifically. And that's the reason you're dealing with weight loss resistance or that's the reason you can't shed those last, you know, 15, 20 pounds, which obviously we've talked to them on this podcast multiple times before. You know, from all the experts that have been here, yourself included, it's not about weight loss. It's about healthy body composition being strong and being fit and carrying that well into your later years of life. But for simplicity purposes, I'm going to call it weight loss instead of healthy body composition. So where would you rank that and where is there truth behind that or where is

that maybe misleading for some people? The idea that your thyroid being broken is the reason that you can't lose weight. I can absolutely contribute. And the greatest concern that I have is traditional allopathic medicine as a very narrow-minded perspective on thyroid testing, and therefore many, many women outside of a traditional allopathic world are oftentimes not properly diagnosed. So let's back it up and talk about the fact that when I was working in traditional allopathic medicine, we probably did two blood tests to look at thyroid function, which does not encompass everything. You add on top of that that just like we go through menopause, perimenopause, we go through thyroid pause. There is absolutely positively,

most often than not, women that are navigating that perimenopause to menopause transition are experiencing some degree of underactive thyroid. Now, the allopathic physicians would say that's bunk, that doesn't actually happen. I've seen it thousands of times. If you look at trends over time of lab work, looking at like where was their TSA and their free T3, free T4, etc. over time, what is happening is they have this loss of sex hormones. So number one, the most common thing we will see in perimenopause and menopause is this underactive thyroid, hypothyroidism, typically caused by an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's less commonly by graves, which is where it's overactive. So I find for a lot of women, it is not just this subjective, I'm tired, I'm gaining weight, I'm constipated, my skin is dry. it is the thyroid is just not optimal it's not optimal it's not in a position where they even feel like

they have enough energy to get out of bed so it can be very complicated when we start talking about it's not just thyroid it's also the sex hormones piece it can be lack of sleep it can be chronic stress but i find for a lot of individuals thyroid mismanagement or thyroid under management is absolutely contributing to weight loss resistance when i find most women you know even if they're on a very low dose, it's compounded or even, you know, traditional things like armor thyroid and things like that, they get started on thyroid medicine and they feel like their brain works better. They feel like they can get out of bed. They may not lose weight immediately, but they will start feeling like they have the energy to go to the gym. They're making better food choices because they have more energy

to cook. And so I would say that when it comes to thyroid, it is absolutely contributory to weight loss resistance, shifts in body composition. This is absolutely a B. Yeah, it's a B. It's a bee. It's a bee. So I'm hearing a couple things for you is that when your thyroid doesn't function well, it has impacts on all sorts of other aspects of your life. We have a receptor on every cell in the body. So it'll affect your motivation, your mood, and when it gets corrected and fixed appropriately,

and maybe we'll have you mentioned for somebody that's not as familiar with it, what things they should be asking for in additional testing so that they go beyond the typical testing that is more limited. as you saw firsthand working in a hospital setting. So if your mood is low, if you don't have energy, if you don't have motivation, you're not going to be doing a lot of healthy habits. You're not going to feel inspired

to even sometimes want to eat healthy. So there's the immediate indirect components. But also there could be some more subtle things that are more direct components that are there. It's not, I'm not hearing from you and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's probably more of the indirect things, but it can play some,

role in some of the direct things as well. Is that I'm hearing that appropriately? Absolutely. And I always like to be fully transparent that it was probably eight years ago. And my primary care provider checked my thyroid. And I was that typical perimenopausal woman. I was exhausted. I was tired.

I was weight loss resistant. I couldn't sleep. My skin was dry. My hair was drying. I mean, everything. And she pointed out, you know, your thyroid's underactive. And I was like, I don't want to take a medication for the rest of my life. And so for about three months, I fought this.

And then I finally went to her one day and said, I'm absolutely exhausted. I cannot function. And within three days of starting medication, I felt like a light bulb had been turned back on in my brain. And so I think it's important to share that even I was resistant because I didn't want to take a medication every day. But I happily take said medication every day because it has made such a significant difference. Now, did I go from having brain fog and not feeling great and not having energy to instantly losing weight?

Absolutely not because it's like peeling an onion. You have to keep peeling and peeling and peeling. But I think for a lot of individuals that are listening to this that suspect they might have an underactive thyroid, everything slows down in the body. So you get constipated. Your cycles may change. You may have dry skin. You may feel like you're not mentating well, meaning you're just not feeling like you're as clear cognitively. People may have slowed heart rate.

They may have, you know, brittle nails. There's a lot of things that can happen. Everything slows down. And so for a lot of individuals, it's getting tested to figure out what's going on. And so the types of tests that I recommend TSA, which is thyroid secreting hormone, looking at a free T3 and a free T4, that's the actual, especially the T3 is important because that's the actual active form of the hormone. Looking at reverse T3, which sometimes the allopathic community screams about, it can be a sign

if you're dealing with chronic stress, if that is high. Looking at antibodies, super important to look at antibodies because just like I mentioned earlier, the number one reason women will develop an underactive thyroid is related to Hashimoto's. Now, I've never had a positive antibody, but I do have Hashimoto's. So I think for a lot of people, it's helping them understand, like, why do we get more susceptible to autoimmunity as we get older? It goes back to that immune system dysregulation that happens with those sex hormone changes in middle age.

And women are much more likely to develop autoimmune conditions just by virtue of our gender. We tend to have a more hyper-responsive immune system. which is what protects the fetus when we're pregnant, but also can be problematic as we're getting older because our immune system just tends to be more easily provoked. And so when I think about thyroid function, it's helping people understand there are far more people under-treated for thyroid

than should be the case. And a lot of women suffer needlessly in middle age for this reason. And men are not immune to it. I have plenty of male family members, people that I know personally, who are otherwise healthy, who just have underactive thyroid. It's almost like it's like a spark plug that has just kind of lost its ability to generate enough

ATP enough energy. And so helping people understand that it's not that you've done anything wrong. It's just it's like many things. Like I hate to use the analogy to a car as the aging process. But just like we have to replace things in the car over time, there are things that just don't work as effectively or as efficiently over time. That's great. I want to double click back on the topic of gut health.

You know, one of the things that we have on our list here, is the topic of fiber. Where are you going to rank and what are the nuances that you want to share? You know, you've talked about protein and tracking your macros and other things like that. And then within this category of carbs, you have this very divisive community.

Some people come on the show and they're talking about how fiber is a game changer for many people. I've definitely felt that in my own life. And there's other people that feel maybe a little bit differently or don't prioritize it as much. So fiber's on our list over here.

where do you want to rank that and what kind of commentary do you want to add specifically in the context of helping to maintain a healthy body composition, especially as we age. Yeah. So I think it goes back to bioindividuality. You're going to have people that will tell you I tolerate zero fiber. I get gassy. I get bloated. I feel terrible. I don't like it. And then I have other people who thrive on higher fiber diet. So let's talk about the biggest issue is most, if not all of us are not in a fiber. And if you look at the research on the gut microbiome, fiber feeds the good bacteria in the gut. I mean, it's simply stated if you look at the research, I think bioindividuality plays a large role in here. I know that I was full carnivore for nine months after being hospitalized. I tolerated zero fiber for a long

period of time. When patients tell me they tolerate no fiber, I start to think about what's going on in your microbiome that is driving these intolerances or this discomfort or your symptoms, more often than not. I'm a bigger believer of the fact that some fiber is better than none. For each one of us, it might look a little bit differently. You know, the guidelines say 25 to 30 grams a day. I would imagine most of us are not getting even half of that. So I think that I go into this saying bioindividuality rules. If you look at the research, though, the research absolutely supports the need for fiber to feed the healthy gut microbiome and to look at, you know, these prebiotics and and probiotics and what feeds, you know, short chain fatty acid production and all these very

important things that go on in the gut. And I know far more now than I ever thought I would. But with that being said, this is very much a bio-individual because I feel like there's enough people that don't tolerate fiber that I try very hard to get a little bit into their diet, you know, whether it's with a supplement or we dip our toe in the pond and we try just, you know, you have an eighth of a cup of lentils one day and maybe another day you're having, a small amount of greens and then the day after you might introduce some, you know, low glycemic berries just to be getting something into the diet.

But I think more often than not, if someone is completely intolerant fiber, it's a reflection of what's going on in their microbiome. Yeah. So if somebody can find the right fiber to work for them, and we double clicked on this recently on an episode that just came out with Dr. Will Bolshevich talking about, you know, how low-fodmap diets may be a better solution for people. Exactly. What are examples of low-fod map foods?

What are supplements like Cillium Husk for some people, obviously taken with the appropriate amount of water and other things like that? Or guargum or gum acacia, other things like that. But if you can find fibers that work well for you, where would you rank that on our list? I think it's quite important. I would say I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this.

I'm going to put it up as a name. Okay, great. I think it's actually important. And the irony is over time, because I've had patients try inulin and cillium and I mean all sorts of different it is as individual as the patient and we start in some instances we're starting with an eighth of a teaspoon a day just to see you know what can we build them up to it's that important to at least try it yeah yeah well I didn't realize I learned from will that inulin is the highest source of FodMap food that somebody would be happening so he would say that he would often have people that would say oh it's crazy even if I go and have like an olypop right, which is like, you know, the healthy, quote, sodas, which are sweetened with inulin, they get so bloated. Well, that's an indication that you probably are having some issues with higher FODMAP fibers.

And you might want to be looking at foods that are lower FODMAP if you're trying to find fiber sources to at least support your gut microbiome. And I think it's an important, you know, it's a bit of experimentation. And certainly I've had patients who've had SIBO and we've had them on very low FODMAP diets. And there's all sorts of great resources online where you, you can see it's like a traffic light, you know, green, yellow and red from like lowest to highest FODMAP, I think for a lot of individuals, that can be very, very helpful. The other thing that's really interesting is it goes back to reflecting on the health of your microbiome

has a lot to do with what you can or cannot tolerate. And I don't say that to be shaming because I think my gut microbiome has been all over the place over the last 10 years. But I think for a lot of people, as they start healing, they will find that they are more tolerant. Yeah, that's great. You know, I forgot one on the list of things of the reasons that you cannot lose weight. I forgot this one. And this is a big one.

And there's ads all over my YouTube channel for this. Guys, I don't pick the ads. I have no control of that. And you don't pick the ads that are there. If you listen on the audio, it's all brands that you support. Right. Right. For your podcast and same for my podcast as well.

But you'll see so many ads that the reason you don't feel good, the reason that you can't lose weight is because, you need to go on a detox, some sort of extreme detox. And if that happens, then everything will magically be fixed. What are your thoughts on that? And where would you rank that sort of mass market detox, recommendation and approach that people get served by companies and ads all the time? I mean, I do think cumulatively over time we are exposed to a lot. So our toxin bucket over time can get filled. And I think by middle age, most, if not all of us, whether it's between environmental exposures, food exposures, personal care products exposures, which I think are not probably talked about enough. Mercury amalgams, you know, I don't want to get controversial. Like vaccines,

just everything, cumulatively over time, depending on our genetics, depending on who we are, we can be exposed to a lot. I am a fan of, you know, looking at specific testing to determine, and based on symptoms and getting Mexican. good history determine if someone actually needs something like that. Now, do I do testing where it is evident to me that someone has been exposed to a lot of plastics? Yes. Do I see people that, you know, are not breaking down their estrogens properly? Absolutely. Are there people that don't detox well? And by that I mean, not just detox in a box. Like they have the genetics, snips that they either, either it's phase one and phase two, which occur in the liver,

or maybe they just recirculate their estrogen because their guts of disaster. Do you I see plenty of people like that? Absolutely. I think that if we have this one size fits all methodology that everyone needs X, that can be problematic. And so I think that I would go back to say, I think this is kind of a mediocre recommendation in the context of everyone needs it and everyone needs the same, you know, everyone needs the same binder and everyone needs the same detox program and everyone needs everything, you know,

you know, there's, there are programs out there that have hundreds, if not thousands of people in them and their service. thousands and thousands of people all doing exactly the same exact thing. Now with that being said, are there things that I think that can facilitate natural detoxification processes in our body that all of us can do? Absolutely. Like sauna. Sona exercise, dry brushing, lymphatic massage.

I mean, you think about how do we detox optimally? We poop, we pee, we sweat, we breathe. I mean, that is how it's supposed to be optimally happening. But there are a lot of lifestyle things. you know, whether it's, you know, certain types of vegetables, whether it's, you know, certain types of, you know, hydration. I mean, simple things. Hydration, sleep, dry brushing sauna, infrared sauna. Cuciferous vegetables, broccoli sprouts, sulfurophane.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, you talk about dim as a molecule that you can find in specific compounds of vegetables like your crucifers. Absolutely. And then, you know, it's just thinking about just testing demonstrate that you actually need X, Y, or Z. Like I have MTHFR. I have two copies. I am a terrible phase two detoxifier. So in my body, there are certain nutrients that I need more of.

But I eat plenty of those vegetables that have those things. But I also take a specific supplement to facilitate that. But it would not be the recommendation I would make to everyone, which is why I don't love these one size fits all detox in a box programs, unless it's really what you need. Yeah, you're working with somebody or you're following broad evidence, based recommendations like anything that gets you to sweat. Yes.

Right. You mentioned sauna exercise. You know, cassiferous vegetables. Absolutely. Fiber in the diet, which often binds. Loving every day, multiple times a day. Not being constipated.

Yep. Right. So detox in a box. This pill is going to solve all your problems. Let's rank that. It's a D. That's a D. Okay.

Not an F. I don't, I think I... Not that I'm trying to sway you. No, no. I think there's an F in there. I just haven't hit it yet. Although I do, I do the cautionary thing is, I think there are very well-meaning people out there.

Yes. And that's kind of my prevailing thought process in life. You're very optimistic person. You see the bright side and a lot of things. I have to believe that. But there are charlatans. And the charlatans are going to convince the thousands of people out there need exactly the detox in a box.

And I'm here to tell you that that's probably not the case. Let's move on to a few other categories of things. Okay. All in this topic of the top things that people are wondering, do they have to do more of or less of it or how does Cynthia Thirlow feel about these items when it comes to being over the age of 40, men or women, and feeling like you're not able to have a healthy body composition or lose the weight that you want to do. So the next one that we have on the list is intense cardio. We have a woman that's riding a bike over here. It looks like a peloton or something like that. Where would you rank

intense cardio on the list of things? And what do you want to say about it? I'm going to give it a D. And And it's context of why I'm saying this. Yeah, intense daily cardio. Right. So I think zone two cardio, which is designed to keep your heart rate at a certain level, is very different than chronic, unrelenting, hardcore cardio, which is very different than high intensity interval training. We know that burst training is important for women in particular, but burst training is

five to ten minutes. It is not 30 minutes. It is not an hour-long slog where you're killing yourself on a bike or you are, you you know, doing, and I'm going to take a lot of heat for this, CrossFit or Orange Theory Fitness five days a week with no breaks. That is not what we're talking about. And so I think that there's a place for strength training. There's a place for Zone 2 training,

which is designed to be done where you're not panting. You're able to carry on a conversation. You could be walking up hills in your neighborhood as an example. I live in a very hilly part of my state. Very different than chronic cardio. And I think my generation has been convinced. Number one, we want to be skinny and not strong. And the other thing that I think about quite a bit is that we were the generation that was convinced that we wanted to do all these aerobic activities.

And that's probably not what is going to allow us to lose weight over time. Now, are there exceptions? Probably. But I find more often than the not, the amount of cortisol that you are eliciting with that chronic, unrelenting, hardcore cardio is not the cortisol that is going to be your friend. I think when we're talking about that intense cardio that we've been conditioned to believe is what. what's going to allow us to lose weight. We know that exercise is actually a poor way to lose weight. It does many other benefits,

but if you're purely doing hardcore cardio to lose weight, that's actually not particularly effective, and that's looking at the science. So when I'm helping women understand how to restructure their exercise, it's like, I'm not telling you not to exercise, but let's exercise smarter. Put your time into strength training, do some zone two training,

high intensity interval training, or, you know, burst training is important. but that's not an hour-long activity. That's like 10 or 12 minutes of activity. This is where people have gotten hit and Tabata all wrong. It's not a 30-minute class. It is designed to be short durations. Like when I work out with my trainer,

which I do twice a week to torture myself, it is 12 to 15 minutes most of burst training. And it is very intense. And then you take two minutes off. And it's like that is what you are doing. So I think many women that come to or have been doing chronic, you know, they just want to run 10, 15 miles every day or they want to get on that bike for two hours.

It's helping them understand that those types of activities over time will actually work against us. They will break down muscle. They will raise cortisol, which just fuels these, this breakdown in inflammation, gut health, muscle breakdown. You know, even Dr. Stacey Sims talks about, you know, why we have to exercise smarter as we're getting older. And it's just helping people understand. We have to find that reframe.

because we've been conditioned, at least my generation, skinny over strong, you know, do all the chronic cardio because that's going to help you lose weight. And that's actually not the case. Yeah. Well, we don't have an icon for it, but for that smarter style of working out, and maybe you can just recap what it is. Are you talking about strength training? I'm talking about strength training in Zone 2.

Zon 2 is the kind of training where you are still able to carry on a conversation. It's designed to be, you know, when I think about what I do for Zone 2, it is usually walking hills because there's so many of them. Yeah. And then, you know, two days a week, 10 or 15 minutes of burst training or high intensity and real training, that is very different. And I think for many individuals, that becomes something that is sustainable as opposed to like, oh gosh, I've got to go run and mile.

I've got to run for the next hour. Or I have to be at this super high intensity for a 30 or an hour long class. And you just don't recover the same way. You just don't recover. No. And that's important. So I think for a lot of, I would say this is. this is actually an S.

Yeah. So we don't have an icon for that, but if we had it, it'd be an S. Yes. That would be one of the top things that you could be doing. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, another one that we talk about a lot on the podcast, and it's going to have some context around it,

but it's a great opportunity to bring it up. This magical number, which everybody knows now, kind of just came from a Japanese pedometer company, but there might be some truth that's there to it. And the idea of getting 10,000 steps a day, or at least shooting towards that. So what do you think about that? And where would you rank that?

I personally am a big walker. Like I actually like that non-exercise-induced thermogenesis. So just being active throughout the day. So I think that every person realistically is going to hit 10,000 steps every day. Probably not. I have three dogs, so it's pretty easy. But I think for a lot of individuals, like if they can just build it into they after a meal, they walk. You know, they park a little farther out at the grocery store.

or at the mall if anyone still goes to malls. Or you know, you're just doing some type of physical activity. Like for me, I can just walk hills up and down my street and get plenty of steps in. So I think what it's encouraging people to do, like the prevailing theme is be physically active. This is in addition to the other types of exercise that you're doing. And I know that a friend of mine recently was talking about how she does not feel that walking is exercise. I feel differently. I think it's important because you have to meet people.

where they are. Yeah. For some people, getting 5,000 steps a day is a lot. So I look at it as 10,000 is great. Do I think that it's important to be, you know, for locomotion purposes,

for being physically active, absolutely. And I think for a lot of people, I go back to tracking macros. For a lot of people, they just don't realize how sedentary they are. Like when I started tracking how far I was walking back when I was still seeing

patients in the hospital in the office, I was shocked. I was like, oh, I'm all over the hospital. I'm getting in 10,000. steps a day. No, I wasn't, even though I was in a big hospital. So I think for a lot of people building awareness of what are the things I can do, whether it's maybe you get up a little earlier in the morning to walk for 15 minutes before you go to work, maybe you walk after lunch, maybe you and your

spouse, you know, now we're heading into spring and summer. You know, it's, it's lighter later, walking with your spouse or your kids or whomever your pet after dinner, you know, just getting opportunities to become more physically active. I think it's very important. The emphasis on activity. And so walking is something you don't need a lot of special equipment for. You don't have to do a lot of special things for for people that are dealing with mobility issues, sometimes getting in a pool. Like if your gym has a pool, you can get in the pool and just, you know, you can do water laps going back and forth. You don't necessarily have to swim. But I think for every reason I've been given by patients over the years of why they don't, they're not been more physically active. I try to come up

with alternatives. And so I would say being more physically active, plus or minus those 10,000 steps is a B. It's important. It's very important. That's great. You know, on that note, I saw a tweet recently from an episode that Rhonda Patrick did where she said, okay, we want physical activity for sure. Like we want a lot of movement throughout the day.

And if you can't get 10,000 steps, even getting 10 minutes of this burst training, this high intensity training for 10 minutes, that's even more impactful. or just as impactful as that. So don't feel bad. There's plenty of days where I don't get in 10,000 steps. You're busier. You're sitting down. You're not a lot of meetings.

But since seeing that and looking at some of the research that's there, it's like, okay, we all have 10 minutes where we can go all out and do something, safe and appropriate for what we feel our capabilities are. Sometimes for me, that's doing a series of sprints, not continuously for 10 minutes. You get tired after 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and you need to do. take a break for a couple of minutes and then do it again. Or it's doing maybe one of these classes that sometimes I'll pull up on YouTube or, you know, my friend has a website word called T-Mac Fitness.

So even if you can't get 10,000 steps, just doing anything that's rigorous for you for 10 minutes, that is still a lot right there. And it matches what you're saying. Yeah. And it's interesting because even burst training can be helpful for visceral fat. So for a lot of people, we know visceral fat is. the fat accumulation around our vital organs, that burst training can be very effective at improving the degree of visceral fat we have.

And we know, again, it's like this little switch that goes off north of 40. We are much more prone to fat deposition there, especially as women, than we are in other areas where maybe it's more pesky if it's on our rear ends or on the back of our arms. But that visceral fat is the stuff we want to avoid. So burst training can be helpful for that as well. All right, here's one we've asked you about before, but we got to bring it up in the context of this conversation, alcohol. Daily consumption of alcohol, which sometimes seems to go up, especially as people get older and they feel like, oh, to cope with all the different things that they're dealing with, being a caregiver or this or that of the state of the world or crazy times in business. You know, it's that glass of wine, which turns into two glasses of wine.

What is the challenge with that when it comes to specifically weight loss, weight loss resistance, and where would you rank it? I think alcohol is one of the, you know, the hidden reasons for why people are weight loss resistant because it's a, it can be very triggering to have a conversation. You know, we use a cage questionnaire in traditional medicine to talk about habits around alcohol. And sometimes it's like poking a tiger. You know, you know you probably suspect this patient or this individual probably. is drinking more than they're comfortable sharing with you and coming from a place of no judgment. I think that alcohol is challenging because it is one of the few socially acceptable drugs that we can use. And I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable, not choosing not to drink if that's what they

choose to do. I think there are equally a lot of people that feel completely uninhibited that they can drink as much as they want. And I'm not talking about like the teenagers and young adults and college age kids that are just experimenting. I think when you look at alcohol as a toxin, it's particularly harmful to many issues or many systems in the body. So I think that when we talk about alcohol, by no means am I saying be a teetotaler, don't enjoy a glass of wine on your birthday or a celebration. But I think for many individuals, it's reexamining that relationship because we know that

one glass of alcohol in a woman is going to raise her estrogen levels. for up to eight hours after consumption. If you're on HRT, guess what? It's going to magnify that. Wow. Helping people understand the way that our body detoxifies it is it's detoxified as a toxin. It will prioritize your body will prioritize processing the alcohol first before anything else. We know it can be toxic to our brains.

It can shrink our hippocampus. We know it can increase our risk of breast cancer. I think that for anyone that's listening, that's thinking that maybe it could be contributing to one of the reasons why they're struggling to lose weight, I would say there's absolutely nothing wrong with cutting back, reducing what you're consuming. I think for some individuals, it's they want to numb themselves from actually experiencing difficult feelings. And so alcohol, just like a lot of other vices in life, is something that allows them to come home, decompress, have a couple glasses of wine, fall asleep, maybe their sleep isn't so great. And I can make the

argument that if you're already not getting good sleep, this isn't going to help. But alcohol is definitely contributory to weight loss resistant without question. And I think that if you're trying to lose weight and you're trying to figure out why you're not losing weight and maybe all the other things are dialed in, maybe look at the alcohol piece. Is it going to be our first F on the list? This might be an F. Okay. All right. We got it. We got our first F. Okay. On the topic of beverages, I only have one icon for this, but we're going to split it up. up into two that you can rank the daily soda that even a lot of healthy people sometimes have and also let's call that a daily diet soda where does diet coke and then a regular soda

play a role in weight gain and people's journey of improving their body composition and feeling like, I just cannot lose those last 5, 10, 15, 20 pounds. Yeah, I would say regular sodas with high fructose corn syrup. That is enough. That's enough. I think there's no automatically we're going to put that right up there with alcohol. That's a therapy. Well, therapeutic, there's no therapeutic benefit.

But if you're someone that really enjoys a soda and that's your vice, then I would say having a diet soda is going to be better than having the real thing. Now, we have a lot of people talking about the role of artificial sweeteners, whether it's sucrylose, aspartame, people even sometimes will lump stevia, saccharin. I don't know anyone that uses saccharine in their drinks, but that always comes up. If you look at the research, there's research to suggest in some rodent models that these artificial sweeteners can be impactful on insulin sensitivity as well as impacting the gut microbiome within 28 to 30 days.

So that is significant. But in the grand scheme of things, I think that we have to think about what is realistic for our patients. Like, I'm a realist. And I will people say to me, whether it's the diet soda or a protein bar or a protein shake, I'm like, listen, I'm a realist. If that is how you're going to be able to get through the day, if you've been consuming eight cans of Coke a day for 20 years, if I can get you to stop consuming eight cans of Coke a day

and get you transitioned onto something else, maybe we go from eight cans down to four cans, down to two, down to one, and then we transition you to a diet soda and you get acclimated to that taste. that is infinitely better for you than that high fructose corn syrup is. And the net impact that we know that our body effectively, fructose in general, is processed very differently in the body than other types of sugars. And I think soda is one of those kind of, it's a really bad idea. I think in terms of impact on health, it's so profound and significant that a diet soda

here and there I'm not particularly worried about in the grand scheme of things. Are there people out there that are absolutists? Yes. And I just think that that's not necessarily reasonable for most individuals. Yeah, I've had a few people on my podcast that have kind of changed my mind on this topic. I'm not a diet soda drinker. I understand that people drink it. And we had on a couple of folks, but one in particular, he broke down that, you know, on these big studies where people are measured with water, diet soda, regular soda.

the people that lost the most weight were the people that were actually on diet soda right and and that's obviously just you know one study but it was a well done study and it was a good amount of people and um the other aspect that this individual brought up this is lane norton who i know is you know a controversial figure for a lot of people in this space that are there i got introduced to him through dr gabriel lyon who him and they share the same mentor he's been on your podcast don layman and he was saying on the topic of diet soda and some of these artificial sweeteners, which I personally choose to avoid, is that when people make a big stink about them with the gut microbiome and, you know, some of the rodent data that's out there is like you have to look at, if you take a rodent

and understand that 50% of the studies on rodents don't translate to humans. Right. But then also, what is a dose appropriate, even if you're taking that rodent study is true, if you look at the amount of diet soda equivalent that you would have to be having as a human being to what they expose those rodents to, you're talking about having 50 sodas a day, which nobody's really having those 50 sodas. I hope not. I tend to be somebody that's probably in the same camp as you. I want to skew and I have a bias towards probably a more natural lifestyle, but you're also a realist and you take care of a lot of people, right? I'm not even a practitioner.

I don't take care of anybody, but I just get to interview really cool people like yourself and laying on the podcast. And so if that's the thing that's helping you out, amazing. Because I do believe in the larger aspect, which if you ask people to do too many different things to change their life and upended, they're going to end up throwing up their arms and say, I'm not going to do anything. It's too much work. And that's not what we want people to do. We want them to focus on the things that matter the most, like exercise and eating more fiber and tracking their macros and, you know, getting activity in, right? Those are the things that we want them to focus on the most so that they actually can make this journey sustainable for them. Well, and I think it's, it's

interesting to me, you know, being in a position much like you that, you know, I've interviewed some amazing people and met and interacted with so many health and wellness experts. I sometimes think that we're shooting ourselves in our feet if we are too absolutist and too not accepting of where people are in time and space. Because that diet soda to me is not a big deal. I have a husband who used to drink, I don't know, four or five diet Pepsi's a day when I first met him. Now he doesn't drink any. Now it's kind of a. Every once in a while, I'll laugh. I'll find some Diet Pepsi in the outside refrigerator.

And I'm like, I don't care. It makes them happy. But I think for a lot of people, it's like the journey that we're on. I mean, I'm sure the way I ate 15 years ago is very different than how I eat now. And so it's like just, you know, what decisions can we make day to day that over time we're going to have the largest impact? And that, to me, a diet soda is not that big of a deal. Yeah.

That's well said. Well, you know, that really goes into this question of mindset. And that's one of the icons that we have on here. You know, the role that mindset plays when it comes to our journey of feeling strong, aging in a way that is strong and not sort of feeling like we're sort of disappearing in the background, the weight loss journey that a lot of people are on where they're going from focusing on just the numbers on the scale to really understanding the role of a healthy body composition. And originally this wasn't on my list. And I was catching up a couple days ago on some of your episodes for your podcast, which is fantastic. Can you mention the name of your podcast? The Everyday Wellness by Cynthia Therlo.

We have a link in the show notes below. Please follow, especially if you're a woman that's going through the stages of perimenopause, menopause, that stage of life. You're curious about that or somebody that you love is going through it. This is absolutely the best podcast for people in that bracket and many other brackets to be listening to. but you had on a friend of yours recently, and you were talking to her about mindset. I believe it was Natalie Jill, is her name.

And you had asked her the role that mindset plays into it. And I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity to really talk about this because we don't give this enough attention. And just how important is it on the journey of weight loss, weight loss resistance, and feeling strong? I think it's one of the most important things because ultimately that's what you fall back on every day. You know, you have a good day, you have a bad day.

ultimately your mindset and the way you view the world has everything to do with decisions that you make, perspectives that you embrace or reject. And so I think the only way I've gotten to where I am today is by consistently investing in my mindset and coaching and being able to share what I learn on the podcast or books I'm reading or people I interact with. Because ultimately, I mean, ultimately, that's the most important thing. That's the only thing that's gotten me from you know, birth until 53 years old and being a super positive, you know, optimistic individual. And when I look at colleagues of mine that are doing amazing things, they are constantly fine-tuning.

It's like fine-tuning a piece of sculpture. They are constantly working on it. And it's not to suggest that I never have a bad day or bad things don't happen. I mean, they do. But I'm always looking for the reframe. You know, how can I look at this differently? Like, what's the lesson and what can I take? from this moving forward that's going to make me stronger a better person a better showing up is a

better mom better wife better entrepreneur better nurse practitioner what are the things that i need to do because it's very easy in life to get caught up in you know the yuck of day to day living it's so easy to get caught up in that and the people that i see that are thriving irrespective of age right now are the people that are constantly working on personal development i mean without question so would you put that as another S? I think it's an S. Okay. Let's put it as another S. We don't have the icon for the other S, which I forgot, which is exercise, the most important thing. Smart exercise, resistance training, something that matches where you are in life to help you keep strong, but mindset is going to be right up there. Is there one, two or three things that you think are universally

applicable for people who are like, hey, I want some of that, right? I want some of that. What is some introductory things that you would recommend that they could be thinking about creating in their own life. It could be a book. It could be a habit that could help them improve their mindset. Yeah. I mean, I think first it's deciding like what appealed. Like I'm a reader. I think that that's reading books is what really appeals to me.

And then maybe secondarily to that listening to podcasts. So I would say Dr. Wayne Dwyer's work has just been on my mind a lot recently, largely because it's always like looking at this reframe. I think Atomic Habits is a particular book that I think there's a reason why it's on the New York Times bestselling list week after week after week. I think a great deal about having some type of connection to whether it's God or the universe. I mean, having some degree of spirituality I think is so important. How you choose to practice is obviously as unique as each one of us are. I think that, you know, having close friends, we know that loneliness is as part on our bodies is smoking.

And so, you know, the research is coming out from the pandemic era, showing how a lot of people essentially died of loneliness is heartbreaking. And so having a support system, I think, is important. It doesn't necessarily like to be a lot of people. It just has to be people that you know you can go to and talk to about things that you find concerning having a mentor. I think that's important. I would say the best coaches are being coached constantly.

So, you know, throughout the last nine, ten years, I've always had. some type of mentorship or some type of coaching where I've been having someone I've been paying and I've been participating and looking at it as an investment in my mindset and depending on what I'm working on in my business might be working on messaging or something else. But I think for each one of us, it's like just be open to the possibility that there's probably someone's work out there that will appeal to you. And I think it's it's important to just experience different things, like whether it's Dr. Joe Dispenza, whether it's Dr. Wayne Dwyer, whether it's, you know, Mel Robbins. I'm just using

these as examples. Like, these are people that have kind of got larger than life personas and have different prevailing philosophies about how they see the world. But, you know, just being open to the possibility that there's more to learn, I think is important. Having a curious mind and a curious spirit. Are there top things like destructive mindset beliefs? that people have that sabotage this journey. Oh, absolutely. Any that you want to name? I mean, I think having that kind of scarcity mindset,

I was talking to someone the other day, and I just said, well, I think the most important than we can do right now is just find a reframe for what you experienced. I'm not diminishing what you experienced, but I think if you can't look beyond your circumstances right now, and this is something that had happened to this individual months before,

if you don't have the ability to kind of reflect and say, what is the lesson here? So that's always the way when stuff, happens and it always does because that's part of life, what is the lesson that I need to learn here? So I think having a scarcity mindset and we're all guilty of this, whether it's, you know, you're going through tough financial times or, you know, someone in your family's health is going sideways or maybe even argument with someone you're very close to. It's like working through those tough times and just trying to figure out like what is the lesson? What can I learn from this? Or the other side

of that, Drew, quite frankly, is therapy in general. I've been in therapy, some form of therapy for the last 30 years. I had a wonderful college roommate who took a look at me and said, I think you would benefit from some therapy. And so we still laugh about it. I'm like, that is a real friend that says to you, I think you could benefit from talking to someone about the things you're struggling with. And so I think that, you know, therapy, whether that is with a traditional therapist or you are doing, you know, MDMA therapy with a licensed provider or you are, you know, to a meditation retreat. I just think it's really important to acknowledge the stuff that you need to work on.

I always say, again, it's like a sculpture. You're constantly fine-tuning things. If I get triggered, it's like, okay, there's something there that I need to work on. And so I think therapy, if people are open to that, is also very important with the right practitioner, the right person. Very, very helpful. Well said. Well said.

All right. We're going to switch to another category within this tier ranking. that we've been doing, you were one of the first people on the podcast that was really talking to women in particular, but everybody, about why they needed a daily dose of creatine. So let's talk about creatine. Yes. You can talk about a big picture. Creatine is having its moment. It is. Right now, it's everybody's talking about it. The dosages keeps on going up for the, uh, the recommendations. It went from five grams to 20 grams for some people. Ten grams seems to be a little bit of where a lot of people are talking about right now. People are talking about how it's helping

for a lot of things way more than muscle building. Yeah. Why don't you chat about that? And then does it have a role in the topic of weight loss and healthy body composition? So creatine monohydrate is the type of creatine that we're kind of alluding to and speaking to. That is the best research. That is the one that the only type that I consume. And I've been on the creatine bandwagon for about four years now. So I was a scoge ahead of this big curve of people that are taking a lot of interest. And what's amazing to me is that on my own, even without speaking to the wonderful researcher I've had on the podcast multiple times, Darren Kandau, who I think is amazing,

you know, is that on my own, I've been able to figure out that creatine is not just helpful for strength and sleep architecture, but helps with jet lag. And so for me, with all the time changes that I'm doing, like this week, I'm in L.A. And next week I'll be in Barcelona. So like my body's gone three hours in one direction and then it's going to go nine hours in another. And so how do I deal with jet lag? One of the things I do is I increase my creatine. So it's helpful for jet lag.

There's research emerging talking about brain health as well as bone health. Really important because we know women make 70 to 80 percent less creatine. We have less storage than men. So we actually need more than men. And from my perspective, I think it's very exciting that the research is demonstrating that at higher doses, 8 to 10 milligrams to help cross that blood brain barrier can be helpful for jet lag, for brain health, for bone health, which that to me is like emerging research, but very exciting because not every person can take HRT. And so we know that that loss of estrogen and progesterine signaling on bone can, you know, make women much more susceptible to osteopenia. and ultimately osteoporosis. So from my perspective, something that's relatively inexpensive, well-tolerated.

It's a foundational supplement. I mean, to me, it is probably the most important supplement in my supplement stack without question. Yeah, you're such a huge fan. You ended up creating your own creatine. I did. You want to get a little plug for that? Yeah. So it's the midlife pause creatine.

So what's exciting about it is we added things to the creatine monohydrate that allows us to get better crossage across the brain barrier. So alpha GPC, which is a neurotropic, some B vitamins. But it's exciting because I have so many people that it's really changed their lives. I have all my kids take it. My husband takes it. I have my mother taking it. My mother's 79 years old and, you know, retired and she loves it.

And so, you know, from my perspective, it's an easy thing that plays well with other supplements. So it's not like you take this and you can't take other things. You know, from my perspective, something that's multi-purposeful is really exciting. Yeah, and creatine is one of the most research, if not the most research supplements. Yes. Yeah. And so people still say, if I take creatine, is my hair going to fall out? No, there's no research to that.

I take creatine isn't going to damage my kidneys. No, if you have healthy kidneys, it's not going to damage your kidneys. But helping people understand the way it works and why it's important to look for the purest form, which is Crea pure, which is the stuff that you have to license that is processed in a way that it's less likely to cause side effects. Some people get bloating and GI upset, and that's usually. from the cheap stuff. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So a high-quality creatine, like the one that you make,

which, by the way, where can people go to find that? www. www.w.w. The midlife pause. Okay, great. We'll put in the show notes. Where would you rank that? A high-quality creatine. Where is it rank? It's an A.

It's an A. Awesome. Beautiful. You know, on that note, you mentioned it previously, but since we're on the topic of supplementation, you know, what about like protein powders, right? some people want plant base some people want are okay with way some people do like a beef protein how do you feel about protein powders and where would you rank them on the list again it goes

back to being a realist and probably twice a week i have protein powder so i think it's important if you tolerate way that is going to be way is going to be a complete protein really well tolerated but you don't want 15 or 16 ingredients it should really be the the weight protein you know maybe like a clean sweetener if you tolerate stevie or a monk fruit or if you don't like it flavored totally unflavored but you definitely want to make sure it's a short ingredient list you know preferably sourced by you know grass fed cows but if that's not doable just keep the ingredient list short beef protein isolate is fine it's just not a complete protein so if if that's something and i do have some of that in my house i'll just round it out with some essential amino acids um and then the plant

based if you find one that you like again short ingredient list tolerable um sometimes that some of the products i've tried to been it's it's been a more of a consistency and for me if it's chalky or gritty it's hard for me to get it down um but i know that there there are some good brands that are out there i'm a real list i think it's fine if you're having one a day but sometimes i meet women that i're having two a day and i'm like okay we need to figure out how to get another meal into your diet and if you're using that last you know that last bowl of protein just to buffer your protein intake, I think that's fine, but we ideally want to actually get the protein from real whole food sources.

Again, ideally, like tomorrow I'm traveling, it might not be a day that I hit 100 grams of protein, but, you know, it might be a day. I buffer it a little bit. Yeah. I went to Japan last year with my wife for the first time, and it's like they generally, it's kind of hard to find a lot of protein there. Our hack, by the way, if anybody goes, is just really try to load up at breakfast. Yeah.

But I was having sometimes, you know, two quick protein shakes in a day just to make sure that I hit my... Different and unique. Right. Different and unique. Yep. Right. But yeah, I have probably about two scripts of protein a day as part of my routine of creating a healthy shake in the morning with some fiber, healthy fats, you know, I'll throw in some microgreens. I'll throw in some broccoli sprouts.

I always post my recipe in my newsletter if anybody's interested. I'll have to check out. You put some fruit inside of there as well. I like some frozen strawberries. And I actually throw in a couple of coffee beans as well because I love the, I love the grit. I love a little bit of greatness in my, in my shake. So, okay, so, you know, a protein that works for you as a part of your, you know, life to help you sort of top up and hit those protein goals, not abusing it. Where would you rank that?

I think it's a bearer-see. And meaning, like, I'll be totally transparent. I had a protein shake yesterday because there's. just no way I was going to be able to buffer out that protein. And I think that's fine. You know, sometimes you're stuck with filtered water in a shaker bottle and that's what you got. But, you know, when I'm at home, I get a little more creative. Yeah, I love that. You know, on the topic of, you know, talking about supplements, I want to go to food a little bit because a lot of people hear mixed messages about this topic that there's certain foods that if you would stop eating that food,

then all of a sudden you would be able to lose weight. And one of the biggest ones that's out there right now is the topic of seed oils. I don't have an icon for it, but we're going to rank it. Talk to us about that from your perspective in the context of weight loss resistance. I'm holding on to 5, 15, 20 extra pounds that are there. And there's a lot of people that are out there that are shouting from the rooftop that if I could only get rid of all the seed oils in my diet, then everything would correct itself. What are your thoughts on that? You know, it's interesting.

When I think about what is going to drive inflammation, oxidative stress, et cetera, it is probably more the processed food. And as a byproduct is cooked or is consumed with seed oils, it is probably more problematic. Again, because we know that if you're consuming processed food, you're consuming an additional 500,000 calories a day because your body doesn't register that you are full. So do I think seed oils are less than ideal?

Of course. but with that being said, I think if we aim to consume less seed oils, it means we aim to consume less processed food. So I think the processed food piece is the most important. You know, if I look at the research, and certainly I know we both have had Dr. Kate Shanahan on. I read her books, which certainly paint a really ugly dark picture of the impact, you know, oxidative stress on the cell, how it damages cellular membrane can lead to carbohydrate cravings and weight gain. I think it has more to do with the actual processed food consumption and less about the seed oils. I'm by no means saying like, you know, go out and buy that big canola oil canister because I don't have any of that in my house.

But I think it's the bigger picture sometimes we forget about it. It's like really the message should be eat less processed foods. And by virtue of just eating less processed foods, you will consume less seed oils. I don't, I don't go to restaurants and I stress about seed oils. I think that I eat out so sporadically. that if I eat a meal with seed oils, I'm like in the grand scheme of things, for me personally, this is not going to be a make or break situation for me. Now, I think if all you're doing is eating out in restaurants and you're not looking at food labels, you probably are getting quite a bit

of inflammatory rancid seed oils, probably more than what you should. And just a lot of extra calories. Correct. Again, that same thing, 500. This is average 500 to additional 1,000 calories a day if you're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods. So I think if we look at it from that perspective, it yields that we understand that, you know, aim for less processed foods. By virtue of eating less processed foods and reading some food labels, you will become more aware. You will try to avoid maybe make some swaps. I mean, I still laugh.

I think I went to visit my mother-in-law and I opened up her cabinet and it was just like, my husband's like, don't say it. Don't say it. She's 80 years old. She's not going to change anything she's doing. And I was like, I'm keeping my mouth shut. But I think that from the perspective, like, no better, do better. it's just trying to be very conscientious about, you know, what we're consuming and swapping it out,

reading the food labels piece, which you can pretty much be guaranteed that most, if not all, I mean, it's insane how much seed oils and things. I mean, it's most of the protein bars that are out there. I've got sunflower or safflower oil on them or canola. I mean, just you're in a airport and you're starving and you're like, I don't have time to eat a meal, but I'm going to grab a protein bar and you realize, you're like, all right, I can eat the protein bar or I can just fast. You know, those are my two options right now because neither of these are super healthy.

Yeah, totally. I generally feel the same way as you. The only thing uniquely I've always seen for myself, and it took a long time for me to figure it out. I figured out in sort of college is that in particular, like, deep fried foods, which are often fried in seed oil, right? Now there's a strand of people frying in beef tallow and other stuff, but it wasn't ever really the case. I would usually feel immediately off within like one, two, three, four servings of that. Like if I had fries, like two days in a row, my throat was always my Achilles heel. And if I felt like my throat was getting inflamed or other stuff, I remember talking to it with

the functional medicine doctor, he's like, you could have like a stealth virus. Like sometimes people have like stealth strep virus that's in their throat. And you have denatured oils that. come in contact with your body and all of a sudden, you know, you can have viral expression, bacterial expression, you can have other things. So you've immediately getting this inflammation. There might be something that's going on. He said sometimes people even have it in their tonsils. And they said they've biopsyed people's tonsils and they've sent it in. They've had issues. You know, if their tonsils always get inflamed. Luckily, I just, I didn't have to, you know,

take out my tonsils as an adult. I just stopped having fried foods. And I don't, you know, feel like shit, especially in my throat when I have like fried food. Well, it's interesting. You said you're a hyper absorber, right? Of cholesterol. Yes. So I'm the same. Yeah.

And what I found interesting was every time, you know, you go to these really nice restaurants and they, you know, you'd have a steak and you'd have like steak and frets. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm going to enjoy my french fries because they're cooked in duck fat. And then I would be sick. So sick. And I finally realized I was like, I never tolerated a lot of heavy animal based fats. That's why I gravitated towards lean meats and did so much better not having like lard and tallow and duck fat stuff.

And I was like, oh, it's because I hope it's like my body just soaks it up like a sponge. No wonder why I was so like sick to my stomach. Wow. The average person doesn't process cholesterol that way. And so it finally made sense. So when we finally did that Boston heart cholesterol balance test. Yeah. My doc looked at me and he goes, your body knew all the way along because I never tolerated fried foods.

I just, and I think it's because my body just soaked up everything that was there. It just made me sick. Totally. And, you know, I don't know the restaurants said, you know, you were going to, but there's a restaurant that was out here that was sort of advertising like, oh, you know, we don't use, you know, we cook our fries in like tallow or duck fat or other things. And then a friend of mine, Kayla Barnes, who lives in L.A., she went to that restaurant and she said, hey, like, she went into the kitchen and said, hey, like, okay, just, I'm just checking

because I'm crazy about this stuff. Like, do you actually, it doesn't touch any seed oils? They're like, no, no, no. We initially cook it in seed oils. We finish it in duck fat. Oh, great. And she started calling around and she found out that that's actually quite common. They finish it in duck fat, but it's still cooked in seed oils that are there.

But again, these are minor items. You know, again, we're talking about our own personal journey of dialing a few things in a little bit here and there. But in the larger context of things, if you're just not eating out as much, if you're not eating a lot of processed foods in general, you're not going to have a lot of the crappy stuff that typically comes along with it. Well, my husband makes fun of me because when I travel, there's usually a few restaurants that I trust that I can order food from and I don't have to worry about overconsumption of stuff I wouldn't normally eat. Yeah. And so it becomes this running joke. Oh, is there a true food kitchen anywhere. Oh, I love true food kitchen. Yeah, well, every, my hotel is literally

around the corner. And so he was, he said, did you plan that? I said, no, I didn't even realize it. But it's like I know I can get a clean meal and I don't have to worry about it. But yeah, I think that for those of us that eat out very sporadically, I mean, when I'm traveling, it's it's a given that I'm going to have to eat out. But at home and we rarely eat out, like rarely eat out. Yeah. No, shout out to True Food Kitchen here in LA, sweet greens. Yes. Stop using seed oils.

Parakeet, which is a local restaurant. I heard you talk about that. Yeah, parakeet is a local restaurant. It's based in, I think they have a bunch of locations in San Diego. Now they've come up to LA. There's more and more places every year. There's a consumer demand. That's here in LA that's at the Brentwood Farmers Market and a few other farmers market.

It's called Artie's Burgers. He only uses the acre oil. The acre, I forgot the name of the company, but he doesn't use any seed oil. So consumer demand, people are waking up. They're wanting different things. And there's entrepreneurs that are willing to create that. Well, the one thing that we started doing, Masa chips.

Yeah, maschips. But I can tolerate because they're not greasy. It's like I can have a couple of those chips and I feel like it's being super indulgent. Yeah. And I'm like, they're handmade. And I was trying to explain to my husband. I was like, there are as many people in that organization working on their kind of, you know, hand doing all their process as in all of Frito-Lay.

Oh my gosh. Because one is a massive, massive manufacturing facility and one is not. Yeah. But going back to, you know, tracking your calories and your macros. my love masa chips got up to them you look at it and you look at a serving a serving is 28 grams which is I think nine chips correct when you look at corn and beef tallow and these other things that are part of it again if you are thinking oh it's a seed oil free snack I'm just going to have it really nilly you can end up eating you know 200 500 600 600 calories extra in a day just by smashing

you know, not even a whole bag, you know, a quarter of a bag easily can put you over the top. So this is why having that awareness that you were talking about at the beginning of the episode is so key. Not that you have to track your calories or your macros forever, but just auditing it enough so that you know what your favorite foods are coming in on. Yeah. And absolutely. I mean, sometimes I'll suggest to some of the patients.

I'm like, just measure out a serving. Like whether nuts are a big one, nuts are so easy to overeat. It's like if it's a quarter cup is the serving of pistachios, measure it out and put the bag away. Like, don't leave the temptation out. out there. If you know that that's your kryptonite, either don't keep it in the house or just measure a portion and put the rest of it away. Yeah. All right, a few more categories that we have here left over on the list of your game. I'm game. And so far, this has been fantastic. I love all the nuance you bring to every

item that we've rated because there are a lot of things that it depends. Are you going to do it this way? Are you going to do it that way? And one of those categories that I really want to get your thoughts on as I want to get a lot of my experts on the podcast their thoughts on is your updated stance and views on g lps right yep so let's talk about it yeah i mean i'll just share transparently i think i've done a 360 i think the more i interview experts and um see the incredible results in my own patients the more i realize like some of these patients i've been working with for four or five years and so I know them very well and when we get to a point where I'm like I think it's time to add in terseptitai which is a glp1 and then all of a sudden I start seeing their fasting insulin

finally going down and their glucose finally going down their inflammation finally going down they're sleeping better and they feel better I think if used judiciously and used appropriately I think they can be really powerful I don't believe in shaming people because they choose to take a GLP1 because I think that we have enough issues here in the United States that we don't need to add to it by, you know, whether it's someone in social media pointing out a celebrity and saying, oh, they have Ozempic face. I'm like, even if they use Ozempic, why is that our business? I just have seen incredible improvement in biophysical markers, inflammatory markers, especially in people in many instances who've been dealing with weight loss resistance for quite a bit of

time. Now I can share and I've been given permission to disclose my husband last year when we were starting to see some trends in the wrong direction and so I had spoken to his functional med doc and I said you know maybe interject a conversation about a GLP1 and the one thing that my husband said was he was never overweight but what was interesting was he said it quieted all the food noise like on a Friday or Saturday night when he'd have a glass of alcohol and he might have some chips he said I had no desire to have a glass of alcohol or even have any chips. And he said, one day out of the week, he might have a drink. But he was saying to me, it was like almost like someone came in and just erased all these cravings that I used to have on Friday and Saturday nights because I was home and

we were just, you know, socializing. And so I think for a lot of people, the more I understand about these drugs, and especially the second generation GLP-1s where they've got both the GLP-1 and the GIP, so they've got a different mechanism of action. We know we have GLP-1 receptors. the brain. But for a lot of people, they're really struggling with food noise, I think this is going to revolutionize what we're doing. I think that initially when they came out, when we were hearing a lot of reports of people developing an ilias or people developing irretractable vomiting, I think there still are practitioners out there that go too fast, too high, too quickly, and you have patients that aren't able to tolerate the drugs. I have interviewed some experts who feel like they're lifelong

drugs. And I think that conversation needs to be had with patients. If that is indeed the case of, you know, they'll need to be on the drug lifelong to keep things balanced. But in my circumstance, most of the people that I have worked with, it's been a short-term thing to kind of get on top of worsening metabolic health. But what I think is really interesting is this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we're seeing them being utilized with adults. I'm not talking about it for any other population, but how they're being used with adults, which I think is encouraging. I think that I was part of an event last fall,

and there was a whole, I wasn't part of this conversation, but there were a bunch of experts on stage with varying backgrounds, and it got very contentious. And so I kept saying, I think we're missing the boat on ultimately, what are we trying to do? We're trying to help people.

And if we're trying to help people, and we know this drug can be beneficial to improve metabolic health, if only 92, if it's only 7 to 8% of us are metabolically healthy, really we need to do something differently. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into this conversation, but I'm not opposed to GLP ones, but I think they have to be dosed judiciously with fully informed consent.

I think those two pieces, along with getting some type of a contract that says you will have weights and you will eat enough protein because those two things must go hand in hand. Because with changes in body composition, it is more often than not just fat loss. there's also muscle loss that occurs. And as we've talked about how important muscle is for longevity, metabolic health, it's important that we not lose that too. Yeah. Like you,

I've had different friends or family members that have gone on these drugs. And I've gotten a front row seat because many of them have been okay with me talking to them about it or even talking to their practitioner about it. And I've seen firsthand the people that do it right and the people that do it wrong. and on the wrong side, not wrong, but I would say in a way that is not supportive of their long-term goals that are there. And it could be that their doctors are only focused on the obesity that they're dealing with or they're just looking at the blood markers. They're not looking at the level of frailty that it's creating or how many of them because they don't feel that hungry. put this in the, I'm just using wrong as in quotes, right?

The misguided camp or the camp that's not looking after long term sort of the full 360 picture, I've seen this trend where they're not that hungry and they also are used to things kind of stimulating them. So just the natural tendency is to just eat a little bit of very hyper palatable foods, which tends to be more processed. Yeah. So that means that they're not getting the protein. They're not getting the fiber.

They're not getting a lot of things that you ranked very high on the list here. And they just know that they're so scared of getting off the drugs that they just have said, I'm just never going to get off of them because I don't want to go back to that lifestyle that I had previously. Yeah. And then there's the people in the camp that are doing it right because they've made an individual decision with their practitioners. and it seems to be people who've had this conversation of like, okay, we have to see how you relate and react to these personalized dosages that are there for you. It would maybe not be a full dose.

And I know this is a very controversial topic because there's all these companies that are dealing in litigation with, you know, these compounded pharmacies and technically they're breaking the law and like how that sort of pans out. And then big pharma wants all the compounding pharmacies to stop. prescribing these drugs. Nonetheless, there's been a conversation with the practitioner that says, all right, we have to see how you react to these dosages, and we have to see about the progress that you made. And then, but know that ultimately, I am trying to do everything that I can with you, and I want you to also be in the camp that would you be open to getting off of these drugs? if we can set up enough lifestyle components and other aspects that are there that we can get off. And again, those practitioners are not saying that to everybody.

Maybe there are some people that need to be on them for a longer period of time. But that they feel like they've gotten momentum and they feel excited to ultimately get off. Now, I only know one person personally that's gotten off. And I can't even say that they've been off of it long enough to see how it all has shaped out. what's been your experience with the people that either you know or clients that you've worked with? Have you seen people successfully get off? And, you know, it's been some time now. I mean, this is all very new, right?

For a lot of people in our modern day and age who are taking these drugs. But have you seen instances of people who have been able to get off and then keep the weight off? Yes, but it appears to be more of the rarity. And I think it has more to do with if you are taking the drugs and you're not changing the life. style pieces. When you come off the drug, the weight is going to come back on because you haven't changed whether your types of foods that you're eating or focusing on stress management or getting enough sleep or weight training. I mean, those things that we know are so critically important. I think that for some people, depending on how much weight they had to lose, I think for those

that lost a tremendous amount of weight, it's probably more of a tenuous stepping off point. it may be like a very slow taper down. You know, they may slowly taper up and then slowly taper down and see how they do and monitor. What I find interesting is just socially I know several healthcare professionals who take micro doses. So sub-therapeutic doses of GLP-1s and some of them have lost so much weight. They're like, I'm never going to stop because I'm just not willing to run the risk of gaining the weight back.

So I think it's a twofold issue. I think if someone is able to successfully come off and keep the weight off, they are very likely making significant lifestyle changes, either before they come off or around that same time. I think if you go back to the same habits, you will very likely put weight back on. Now, I'm not familiar enough with the research to know how quickly that would occur, but we do know, you know, yo-yo dieting is something that can be hugely problematic. Now, obviously with GLP-1, most people are not losing, you know, 10 pounds in a week. but I do think for a lot of people who've had a lifetime of yo-dieting. I think their metabolism in many ways is already disregulated or damaged to a degree that they're probably more susceptible to that.

So, GOP-1s ranking them on our list for those that need it, which, again, sort of a broadening category, and I'm trying to stay open-minded with my own views. I was talking to a woman a few weeks ago who is doing a fundraise in a nonprofit around getting people to contribute to clinical trials that they want to do for addiction studies. Right. And there's another other people that are working in this space because there's a lot of promising anecdotal evidence of people who have been able to break free of alcohol addiction. and some of these other things, which is, you know, pretty mind-boggling that that's out there. So I'm trying to stay open-minded. And like you, I've had a change of mindset, you know, as I've talked to people over the last year or so,

comparatively when I've first been hearing about it. But we're talking about appropriately using GLPs, again, for those who need it, who are also doing the things that you've talked about, and other people in my podcast have talked about, resistance. training, having protein, and all the other lifestyle components. Where would you rank that? I think there are a solid B for people that really genuinely need. I'm not talking about the health influencer who has no way to lose, who just wants to use it as an edge off their appetite.

I'm talking about people that legitimately need the drug to be able to improve their metabolic health. Yeah. So B. Yeah. Amazing. All right. Well, we've gotten through most of the. the list. All right, let's talk about another one on the topic of medications,

supplemental things that people can do. Everybody's talking about it right now in this meno revolution that we're having. And it doesn't just apply to women. It applies to men as well. And that's hormone replacement therapy. Give us your nuance take on it. And where would you rank the appropriate use of it? I would say A, if not S. I think it is that impactful. So number one, before women were living to be into their 80s and life expectancy 100 years ago was like in our late 40s. A lot of people have made the conversation, well, if we were meant to live this long, then we don't need more hormones. But what many people don't realize, and this applies to men as well, is just not nearly as dramatic. Men go through antropause.

Women go into menopause. But for women, it is a catastrophic decline in hormones. You know, you go from what harkens the beginning of perimenopause. and the beginning of ovarian senescence is this loss of progesterone. And you get a relative estrogen dominance, which explains a lot of the symptoms that women experience in perimenopause. And so we initially have low progesterone. At the end of perimenopause, we also have low estrogen.

Depending on the individual, about 25% of us still make a good amount of testosterone and menopause. I'm not one of them. But for me, being on hormone replacement therapy personally has been life changing. In most of my patients, life, changing in terms of sleep, libido, energy, cognition, bone health, heart health. There's just so many benefits if dosed properly. And that is the caveat is that we still have clinicians that are in many instances fearful

to prescribe hormones, aka oral contraceptives are not hormone replacement therapy. Number one, for anyone who thinks, like, we have women that will write into the podcast. I'm like, I'm so excited for you. And then I'm like, no, that's not it. So oral contraceptives or combined oral contraceptives are not HRT. But helping women understand that the differentiator in sleep quality is unbelievable. When we do intake forms, I know who's on HRT. They are the people that are sleeping better, have more energy, have more vitality.

Their hair is still vibrant. They feel like their skin is glowing. They just feel so much better. And it allows them to show up uniquely in their personal and professional lives. So from my perspective, having a conversation, every woman and frankly, every male deserves to have a conversation with their hormone proficient provider about what is needed and necessary. And for women, that could be, it could be progesterone, estrogen, it could be testosterone, it could be testosterone. It could include thyroid replacement if that's what you need. It could include things like Pregnitalin, which is important for memory and DHA, depending on what you, yourself,

need. And then in addition of that, just helping people, you know, navigate their choices, but understand that you do have choices and there are providers that are out there that can help you navigate what choices and options are available. They run the gamut from stuff that's covered by insurance

as well as compounded options. And obviously, the compounded options are more expensive. I always transparently share that I have an estrogen patch, which is $5 a month. And then I take compounded progesterum, which is, I think, $90 for three months.

And then I take testosterone, which is about $100 for three months. So relatively inexpensive. And no, you do not have to spend $150 a month on an estrogen patch. There are some online companies that will remain nameless that charge an arm and a leg for their products, which I think is, I'm all for people making money. But I think that for a lot of individuals, they need stuff that's more affordable. But I think HRT is a total game changer. And every woman and man, for that matter, deserves to have a lot.

a conversation with a hormone savvy provider that can start things low and slow. You know, a lot of the concerns that women express to me is, I know if it's not dosed properly, I'm going to gain weight. That's a huge concern and a huge fear. And I feel that in my bones because I know how frustrating that would be. But if it's dosed slowly and appropriately, you know, starting with some progesterone, then adding in some estrogen, then eventually if needed adding in testosterone, they've done it, you know, the proper doses, people should not be gaining five, 10, 15,

20 pounds like I hear across social media that occur on occasion. But HRT, absolutely a game changer. Amazing. And what about the idea of some people feel that, oh, as long as I finally start HRT in whatever capacity, then I'll finally be able to lose weight? Where do you want to sort of address that or sort of temper the expectations around that? Yeah. I mean, I think this is the reason that you can't lose weight is because you're not on hormone

replacement therapy and your hormones are completely out of whack. Well, I think there's, that's an important question. There's also an important caveat. We know if we look at research that as a woman's estradiol, which is the predominant form of estrogen, is lowering in late perimenopause and menopause. And as our FSAH, which is follicular stimulating hormone is going up, in our bodies, if we are not getting enough protein. So it goes back to the protein.

So this is physiologically what is happening. If we don't eat enough protein, that change in those two hormones will drive. drive us to continue eating. So when women say to me, and we look, again, one week's look at what they're taking in in terms of macronutrients, and they say to me at seven, eight o'clock at night, the pantry is calling to me. It's just calling to me. I just go in there and I start eating. It's because they've eaten enough food throughout the day. So that protein piece becomes even more important. So I'll just dovetail that. This protein leverage hypothesis is very important. You don't get enough protein. Your body will seek out calories from fat and carbohydrates in other

ways. Number two, I think that there's many things that contribute to weight loss resistance. Being in a low estrogen or low testosterone state can exacerbate that. It is usually never just the change in sex hormones. It's usually multiple things. It's probably your stress isn't being managed. We know stress, think about it, like the primary thing that happens of cortisol is your blood sugar goes up. Your blood sugar goes up, your insulin goes up. So helping people understand that not getting good sleep, not managing your stress, the loss of muscle. your macronutrients being a disaster, all these things, and then add in all the other nuances about gut health,

toxin exposure. I mean, all these things can contribute to weight loss resistance. It is never just one thing, but I think once we get your hormones properly balanced, and by balanced, you know, we can define what that is. Sometimes that can be elusive. That includes thyroid. That includes making sure your adrenals are supported.

I know we didn't touch on this, but adrenal pause is a real thing that happens. So if you're not managing your stress, your cortisol is going to be a disaster. And so I remind women that doing something quantifiably every day to support stress management is important, you will be on the road to losing weight. But it may not be you get put on the patch. You get start some estrogen. You start testosterone.

It happens automatically. Rarely does that happen. But you'll be heading in the right direction as those hormones are better balanced. That's great. Love that. The thing about you, Cynthia, that I always saw. appreciate it is you are really amazing at making things actionable and practical and straightforward. You know, not everything on the list that we talked about today is simple. But when you explain

it, the application of it is straightforward. And I think that's the thing about the topic of weight loss resistance, being strong, being fit. It takes work and effort and energy. and it's a little bit too overly simplistic to call these simple, but that doesn't mean that they're not straightforward. There's only a few things at the end of the day matter or get ranked as an A or an S or even a B. And you've really helped us highlight those aspects. So if you were to summarize your view,

if somebody sat you down and said, or somebody was hopping into an elevator with you and you had just a minute with them, to basically share your viewpoint on this topic that feels so complicated for a lot of people, but actually can be straightforward, how would you summarize your approach to weight loss and getting strong for people above the age of 40? I would say, number one, it's understanding that each one of us are our own individuals. So what may work for five patients may not work for 10 others.

So when I'm talking to someone, it's taking that history to really get to know them to figure out what is their motivation for getting healthier. That's number one. And then number two, figuring out what are the lowest lying fruit that we can work on first that are going to yield improvements in how they feel so that I can get them more motivated to take further action. Because like I stated, everyone is their own individual. And I think weight loss resistance is just a sign of a larger problem. It's an imbalance that we have to figure out the more often than not is related to sleep and stress and loss of muscle and hormones, multiple hormones. And then, you know, add in the other things that make us who we are as individuals,

whether it's long-term stress, whether it's, you know, trauma from our childhood. I mean, these things really do become problematic toxins we're exposed to in our personal care products, environment, and food. All these things can ultimately impact how well we do or do not lose weight. Amazing. Well, Cynthia, I think this is your third or fourth appearance. on the podcast. And every time you come on the show, you totally deliver. So with an immense amount of gratitude, I thank you for coming back on. And it's always so much fun to do that in person.

Absolutely. And, you know, our audience is forever in your debt to help us navigate this tricky topic. Thank you for having me. Always an honor. 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 it with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about 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 protocols 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-H-I-T-com and click on the tab that says, try this.