The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Whitney Prude, President and CEO, Whole & Happy Living Health Coach on Healthy Weight Loss

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Whitney Prude, President and CEO, Whole & Happy Living Health Coach on Healthy Weight Loss Mywholeandhappylife.com Sugar Detox Manual Biography Whitney Prude is a practicing Board Certified Clinical Pharmacist (PharmD, BCPS), as well as a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and Nationally Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). Whitney is also certified in Medication Therapy Management and Pharmacogenomics. She currently works part time as an inpatient clinical pharmacist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where she has been for 7 years. Whitney is also a public speaker, entrepreneur, and CEO of Whole & Happy Living where she helps individuals truly transform their health from the inside out while also losing weight in a way that can be maintained long term.

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So we're going to learn a lot from her and what goes in the show. So if you don't learn something from this damn show, go back and listen to it twice and just keep listening because I know it's going to be a good show. Whitney Proulx joins us on the show with us today. She is, I believe, the owner and founder of Whole and Happy Living and her company on what she does and how she does it. She is a practicing board certified clinical pharmacist, as well as a Mayo Clinic certified wellness coach and nationally certified health and fitness coach. She is also certified in medication therapy management. Maybe she can refill my prescription for methadone and lithium or no, wait, yeah. Is that what bipolar? I don't know. I'm just making up stuff at this point. So there you go, but she's probably not going to do that.

So that's probably, that's just a joke people get over it. So anyway she has been uh working uh in part-time as an inpatient clinical pharmacist at mayo clinic in rochester minnesota where she's been for seven years she's also a public speaker an entrepreneur and ceo of the aforementioned whole and happy living where she helps individuals truly transform their health from the inside out while also losing weight in a way that can be maintained long term welcome the show Whitney how are you I'm doing well thank you so much for having me there you go you got a lot of certifications there in your dealio there man uh you you're you might be too smart for the show oh gosh there's. You fit right in. We've got a lot of brilliant people on the show and none of them are me. So, uh, Whitney, give us your.com so we can find you

on the interwebs. My whole and happy life. Your whole and happy life.com. Yep. There you go. And, uh, there you can find all the wonderful things that she does. So, uh, give us a 30,000 overview in your words, Whitney, about who you are and what you do. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, my bio speaks well to who I am, what I do as, you know, as a pharmacist. I actually, my dream was always to become a pharmacist. Since I was in high school, that was, you know, I was very dedicated in becoming a pharmacist and had some, some health issues, some life changes that really kind of made me switch directions. So I never intended on owning a business. I never intended to be a health coach and things kind of took a shift. And I, I mean,

I feel like I ended up right where I'm supposed to be. It's been a pretty cool journey for me. There you go. Now, Mayo Clinic, they're the guys who make the mayonnaise, right? Something like that. Is that how it works? They originated the mayonnaise? We were joking before the show. Anytime I see Mayo Clinic, I'm like, I should buy some mayo.

That sounds good. But one of my favorite things is the mexican corn elote where you take the corn and cover it and mayo sauce oh boy and then parmesan cheese anyway i digress uh so give us a bit of a hero's journey on your story what made you get into medicine what made you get into uh health and all these things yeah hero's journey if journey. If we get, I mean, usually when I, when I start out telling my story, I, I go back actually till when I was a teenager and it's kind of where it all started for me. It was when I was 16, I always ask people if they've had their life turn out exactly how they thought that it would. And usually we don't, right. Because challenges

come up, things come up and things happen in life that we don't ever expect. And so when I was a teenager, my parents went through a divorce. And for me, it was devastating, right? It was my whole life, everything I knew. And I was a teenager, like a really challenging time of life. And essentially, I didn't know how to deal with it. Nobody teaches us how to deal with those things, deal with those types of things, the emotions, how to do it in a healthy way, at least. So what I did was I decided, I had already decided at that point I wanted to be a pharmacist. So I took all of my pain, my hurt, my sadness, whatever, and I buried it in busyness.

And just became hyper-focused on becoming a pharmacist. There you go. Some people go into drugs when they're depressed. You really went into drugs, but you know, the good way. I know, I know I did. I went into drugs and, uh, thankful. I mean, thankfully, right. It's like, that was the choice that I took at that time of life because I could have taken a lot of other avenues that wouldn't have turned out quite so well. Yeah, you could have been a Colombian drug runner from Miami or something for cocaine. But it's good that you're in the field you're in because it's legal, you know. It is, right, right. I try to keep it that way.

There you go. That's always good. So you've accomplished a lot of different things here going on. I mean, the Mayo Clinic and lots of great certifications. You worked really hard to build a good resume and a good sort of experience. What led you into being an entrepreneur? So when I was, I mean, let's say nine months into my first job as a pharmacist. So I did a residency. I went to New Mexico. I did a did a residency at the

University Hospital in Albuquerque. And then my first job was at the Mayo Clinic. And I mean, that was fantastic, right? I was like, wow, I'm lucky. So I started my first job at the Mayo Clinic. And within nine months, I actually ended up with a wrist injury. So it was in both of my wrists from using the computer doing like manipulations with like packaging medications and that type of thing to send it up to into the hospital for all of the inpatients. And what happened, like I thought in my head, I was like, Okay, so you know, I was like, I'll just let him rest for a couple, a couple weeks, everything will be fine, they'll heal back to normal. And that didn't end up being my story. So what happened was I, about two months from that time, I ended up

incredibly sick. I was nearly bedridden, super fatigued in an incredible amount of pain. And I ended up with an autoimmune disease. So at that, I had a lot of restrictions at my work. I couldn't use the computer anymore. I went from, you know, being able to work nine shifts to being able to work one. And, you know, in the back of my mind, I was like, well, I have $200,000 of student loan debt hanging over my head. And my wheels are spinning of like, if I can't do my job, like what happens? So that started my journey. So you started your own company then at that point? Yeah. So I had always, for whatever reason,

for whatever reason, I had always had this dream of actually becoming a public speaker. I don't know where it came from. I always wanted to. And so when I started thinking like, what would be the next thing? You know, if I couldn't do pharmacy, what would I do? And I actually thought, okay, so it would be public speaking. So I started going that route. And then over the course of, you know, working on public speaking and that sort of thing, I was like, well, I need I need something to go with speaking. Right. And a lot of times speakers are coaches. They write a book. They do a lot of those types of things. And so that's kind of how I ran ran into health coaching. And it was kind of it was kind of cool, because at that point, I mean, I was, I was spending hours, days, weeks in bed, months even in bed. And, um, I was just miserable, you know? And so I decided at that

point, you know, it was like, my painting really does me no good unless I can transform it into something that is. And so I, I really started thinking, you know, like, what can I put together that can help other people avoid, you know, the pitfalls that I ran into with my health. There you go. And what, what, uh, uh, sort of coaching and, and, uh, assistance you give to people usually, what are your main, uh, standards that you, uh, help people with? My main focus, the thing, the thing that sets me apart because there's like, okay, if you go into the weight loss industry, diet industry, whatever you want to call it, there's 1000s, millions, whatever of people or products or whatever that can help you in terms of weight loss or improving your health. What I do, in particular, that really sets me apart is I'm very passionate about helping

people get long term results. Now, when I say, when I talk about long-term results, what I mean is that the majority of people, when they want to lose weight or they want to improve their health, they'll focus on, okay, I need to change my eating and I need to start exercising. But the stance that I take is every single decision that you make and all of your actions are driven internally from your mental state, your emotions. And so all of this, like your physical weight, the weight that you have on your current status of your health usually stems from whatever else is going on inside of you. So what I do is I really help people dig into the why. Like, why did I get here in the first place?

What are the mental and emotional barriers that are keeping me stuck that have caused me to gain all of this weight that have caused me to be unhealthy? How do we unfold those things, discover them, overcome them, process them, work through them, so that then as you are losing weight and changing your physical health, you can actually maintain those results because the mental and emotional barriers are actually out of your way. There you go. And you have what's called a five-step power plan to whole health transformation. You want to tease a little bit of that out to us? Yeah. So that was when I, when I initially put my program together, I, I mean,

I didn't want, I didn't want a weight loss program, even though really like that's what brings people to my program. But the five-step power plan really takes you through this journey of figuring out the big why, right? The big why helping you to discover all of those things internally and helping to drive you forward. So the five steps, the first one is the power of mind, helping people actually understand what goes on in your brain and how it actually works. Because if we can understand how our brains actually work and why, you know, it's like certain triggers or reactions or the things that are automatic. And then we understand how we can actually change those things. We have a lot more power than we think in terms of, you know, how we can change what we do, how we change our habits, how we can change our outcomes.

There you go. I know some people that just need to start using their brain, just basically. I've seen them on social media. Some politicians, if I can name. Um, but, uh, that aside, you know, uh, having, having, you know, looking at our mindset, some of the beliefs that we have towards food and sugars. And, you know, I remember when I lost a lot of weight, uh, I had to reprogram a lot of my belief systems, a lot of my mindsets, you know, and, uh, and a lot of my thinking. And without doing that, I mean, you, you can try and eat better and you can try and do the

right thing. But if your mind still kind of kicks back to old habits, you're kind of stuck. Yep. Yep. There you go. Uh, and then you have awareness, the power of awareness. Yep. Power of awareness. So this is, I mean, this is, this is actually really powerful. I, I always with my own personal journey, of course, after my parents went through a divorce, I had several years where I was trying to figure out all of my own crap. Right. Um, and the biggest, really the, the biggest tool and the most powerful thing that I found was awareness. If I could just figure out why I was doing certain things, why I was feeling certain ways and, you know, those, those details.

And I'd be like, Oh, you know, it was like, I don't have to do that anymore. You know, once we, once we start realize what we're doing and why we're doing it, it starts to lose power over us essentially. And we can start to choose different things once we are aware of what we're doing, why we're doing them. So that's the power of awareness, really digging in and figuring, helping ourselves be really aware of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis, why we're doing it and et cetera. Right. A lot of people are stuck in robot mode. I mean, we've all been there. We, you know, we get a little caught up on everything and,

and suddenly we wake up, you know, that seems to happen to me a lot. I'm like, Hey, it's a day two of the new month. And then all of a sudden I'm like, wait,

the month's over. Where, where are the month ago? Uh, you know, and you're becoming aware, aware of how you think, aware of what you're doing,

aware of what you're putting in your mouth. You know, sometimes we just go, I did that today. I was, I was trying to do my intermittent fasting and I found a cookie that I bought and I was like, Oh, found cookie. And I'm like, ah, this should really wait till later. And then I'm like, ah, put it in your mouth. And there we go down the wormhole. And so, um, you know, being aware of like, Hey, okay, that seems like a great idea, buddy, but maybe you should save that till later.

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I mean, it's a common problem. And a lot of people, even like if they're binge eaters or emotional eaters, whatever, right. It's like a lot of times we'll eat all of this food and attempt to like come for ourselves. And it's like, what the crap did I just do? You know, sometimes it's like so absent--minded we don't even realize what we're doing that's one of my problems that i used to have i think i still have a little bit because i just did it uh as i mentioned uh where sometimes you're just bored you just go eat something it's not like that you're really hungry you're just kind of like i want to munch on something yeah you're like i don't know get a life dude why are you bored um i don't know man i mean quit shoving stuff in your pile just because you're bored and you want something to do like go to the gym and get on

a treadmill if you want something to do right there you go and then you talk about easy exactly yeah uh then you talk about the power of self uh tease us out a little bit of that on that yeah the power of self actually dives into a lot of different aspects of ourselves the biggest biggest thing that i see with the majority of my clients is self-abandonment and this can be like this can be a bunch of different things but just to give you a general idea the majority of the population uh in a sense abandandons themselves. Now, when I say this, it's like, if we think about how busy we are on a daily basis, we keep ourselves incredibly busy. We're meeting expectations. We're trying to be successful in our careers. We're taking care of

our family. We're doing all of these things. But when we're trying to create more time in a day to do all of these things, what always gets put on the back border? I not only abandoned myself, I put myself up for adoption. Yeah. All right. Anybody want me? Yeah. Just check your local dog shelter. I'm there. And so that's really important. The power of knowledge. Tell us a little bit about that if you would. Yeah. Power of knowledge dives into a lot, actually. This is where we take all of the physical health stuff and we lump it in. So it's actually the biggest portion of the program where we actually dive into six weeks of really in-depth nutrition education, six weeks of mindful eating education to help us. It's's like what are what are my triggers why am i eating am i hungry like what do i really need all of that type of stuff to really help

people to be become an expert right like i don't want to put people in my program and just be like okay follow my strict instructions and then as soon as i'm gone you have no clue what to do i want you to finish my program and be like okay okay, like I might fall off a little bit because we're human beings, but I have all of the knowledge now to be empowered to do this for the rest of my life and be healthy and take care of myself. There you go. There you go. That knowledge is a power to the extent that it's used. And so being able to utilize that is important as well. And so that brings us to your fifth step, the power of growth. Now that probably doesn't mean my waistline, right?

No, that would be negative growth that we're working towards there. The power of growth is, so within the power of growth, there's a couple of different things where we really start to dive into getting getting to know ourselves but also how do we propel ourselves forward and how do we find our internal motivation to keep us moving forward so we start diving into you know like what are my personal strengths and how do i use them to set me up for success what are my values and my priorities and am i living my life in line with my priorities because the majority of people, like if you looked at your schedule,

like if you gave me a list of like your values or priorities, and then you showed me your calendar for a month, they probably wouldn't line up. They probably wouldn't. Right. And it's, it's just fascinating that it's like we don't, we don't live our lives in line with what we say our values and our

priorities are. My values and priorities is sleep 24-7 and hibernate all the time. And I'm sure that doesn't line up with what you're now looking like. I'm sleeping right now, people. So there you go. Yeah. But that's important so that people can have these things. And so you call this your five-step power plan to hold health transformation to follow up on that.

And it's a 16-week program you help people go through. Yep. There you go. And then, of course, you do speaking and coaching and all that stuff. When people are losing weight or they're dealing with being overweight, what are some of your thoughts? I don't know if you want to dig into this, but what are some of the thoughts on some of these new drugs that are coming to market that claim to be able to speed up your thing like Ozempic and I think there's a few other ones. Yeah. And it's a good question, especially because I am a pharmacist.

Yeah. I figured that. So I definitely see both sides of those. Honestly, because I focus so much on long-term results, I do not recommend doing a medication. Now, if someone is getting on one of those medications because they have diabetes, so they're going to be staying on that medication, that's fine. But if someone's going on the medication just for weight loss, they can't stay on that drug long term. And it's not causing them to create a new lifestyle, to learn new habits, to learn, actually learn nutrition and

how to eat. So the reality is, is even if the drug helps you get off some weight, as soon as it's gone, you're going to be right back where you started from. Really not a long-term solution. Cause you'll still be shoving McDonald's hamburgers in your face and, and chocolate chip cookies like I did today. And I know how that is. You, you, if you go, if you don't change, like you've outlined in your five-step power plan where you change your mindset, your knowledge, your power over yourself, your awareness, you just go right back to your habits. And I think it's probably going to be the same as like a lot of people that, you know, I've had friends that have gone in and got that stomach thing done where they shrink the stomach. Yep. Or staple, you know, whatever the hell it is. And they, and yeah, they lose a little bit of weight initially,

but then they actually end up heavier because they just go back. They're like, I have a smaller stomach, so I'll just keep going to McDonald's and eating, you know, awful crap. And of course there, as they age, their metabolism and stuff goes in the toilet. So yeah, there's, there's all that that goes on. And I think a lot of people might end up that way. I know it's helped one of my friends who's, I believe, you know, he's a diabetes one or two, one.

Um, you know, he's got the, he's got the damage to his, uh, pancreas or whatever it is. Okay. Type one diabetes. Type one diabetes. There you go. And, uh, so he's, he's, he's loved the Zempik, but you know, it's like, I think he's paying like $1,200 a month with insurance and stuff, which is a bit much. That's a lot of money. You know, when maybe, you know, it's free people not to just shove stuff in your pie hole.

Like, it doesn't cost anything. But you have to get your brain right. You have to get your brain right. You have to get your mindset right. You know, one thing I, when I lost a hundred pounds as I, as the rules I had and the belief systems I had, and the, the games that I would play with my head, you know, well, it's only one Mountain Dew, you know, uh, and then, you know, an hour later, it's another Mountain Dew. And, you know, you know, you're like, well, I'll go out to eat today and I'll go to McDonald's or whatever. And then you're like over McDonald's tomorrow, you know, and all these, you know, kind of mental gymnastics people play with their head. Do you find a lot of people struggle with that? Or was it just me? No, it's, it's human nature.

It's just, it's so, so common, very, very common. And so it's just, that's why, you know, it's like when I, when I tell people about my program, I, I don't sugarcoat it. I tell them like, this isn't a quick fix. Sorry. If you're looking for a quick fix, I'm not your girl. Um, we, we do the hard work, right? We do the real work so that, I mean, if you're paying $1,200 a month for Ozempic, like you could do my program right uh really easily and have you know have those results for the rest of your life as opposed to just having them for a short period of time and

having all of that go away you're you're literally flushing money down the toilet yeah and then you don't have side effects i think they still don't know the full side effects of some of these newer drugs yep and then uh you know it's kind of like teaching what's an old adage if you teach a man to fish if you give a man a fish uh he'll eat it and then if you feed him for a day if you teach him to fish and that's what i had to learn and other people uh that i've seen you know you have to really change your whole behaviors you know nowadays, nowadays when I go into the store, I go to the grocery center and I go where the, what we call the live foods and I stay out of the dead center, you know,

where the dead foods are, the frozen foods, the crackers, the pop, the, all that stuff that's got so much, you know, preservatives and whatever. And you have to change your patterns. You have to change what you put in your cart. uh you know preservatives and whatever and you have to change your patterns you have to change what you put in your cart um and uh you know you gotta you got you talk about awareness you know one of the things i do is i look at my cart especially when i go to checkout and i go okay you know what's gotten in here that doesn't need to be here and uh unpacking yeah yeah you grab the oreo thing throw it back out. I mean, come on, dude, let's, let's, let's be, you know, self-aware and let's be responsible.

Uh, you don't need that, you know, and, and of course, you know, stores are notorious. They put all that, that, uh, tasty sugary, you know, flavorful stuff there when you're checking out, it's like, Hey, you want a candy bar? Hey, you want a candy bar? You know? And you're checking out it's like hey you want a candy bar hey you want a candy bar you know and you're like marketing it's sales yeah i mean even the farm that i go to i go this wonderful farm that's down the bar from me um and it's healthy local grown food they make these great cookies which is the one i ate earlier today and even i go over there and and uh it's hard to say no to that cookie that's sitting right there. In fact, I should yell at them about that. No, but, uh, when it comes to weight loss and stuff and in

working with people, what do you find is the healthiest way to lose weight? We've kind of alluded to some of it, I think, but let's clear that up. Yeah, for sure. So there's, there's a few different things that you can do in terms of weight loss. Let's take, I mean, let's take a standard person that they're just, they're overeating, they're consuming too many calories, right? So this is a pretty straightforward person that wants to lose weight. So for them, essentially, what I would do is come up with number one, a calorie deficit that makes sense for them and their body. So that essentially means that, you know, we're putting them about 500 to 1000 calories lower than like what their body needs in a day. And at that point, so you're so you're lowering down

your calories so that your body can start using the fat that you're storing and start using that as energy and getting rid of it. Right. So you have to have, you have to be in a calorie deficit, but what you don't want to do is you don't want to do what a lot of people do with dieting and they start to starve themselves, um, reduce your calories too significantly. And they're like, Oh, I'm losing all of this weight. But what happens is your body goes into starvation mode and eventually you'll hit a plateau. You won't be able to lose anymore because your body's like, oh, I'm losing all of this weight. But what happens is your body goes into starvation mode. And eventually, you'll hit a plateau, you won't be able to lose anymore, because your body's like, hey, you're making me live on very little food. And I'm going to start holding on to all of this. So it's not, you know, your metabolism is no longer moving at a fast pace,

you can't eat as much food. And for someone like that, I actually if they come into my program, I actually have to build their metabolism back up so that then we can drop them into a deficit. So it's really, you don't want to be losing more than one to two pounds a week. Oh, really? Week is like the absolute max in terms of like healthy weight loss. And people usually aren't, they're not willing to do it that slow. But that, that really is healthy weight loss so that your body is not like completely going to basically retaliate against you and make it so that you, you know, it tries to restore energy back to how you were.

There you go. And, and, you know, people run into insulin resistance as well, is my understanding. Is that correct? Yeah. And so, you know, if you've been someone like me, who's abused your body most of your life, going out to eat and having just a little bit too much good time at those fine restaurants and those big steaks and, uh, fatty stuff and all that Italian food, um, and tacos, of course, you know mexican food can't live without mexican food if i could find me a wife who was a mexican cook and an italian cook at the same time i would marry her yeah but the problem is i'd be like 700 pounds yeah so there's that maybe i should just find a really skinny chick who doesn't cook and i might be i'll find a vegan chick or

something maybe that's the way to go but i i eat a lot of vegan now. So, um, but yeah, it's, it's really healthy and processed foods. Do you, do you find a lot of, um, do you find a lot of your clients are eating a lot of these processed foods and, you know, they've been linked to all sorts of stuff now? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I mean, it's a pretty standard American diet, right? We have so many processed foods available to us. And so it just becomes, it becomes second nature. It's just, it's easy. It's quick. We're busy. We want something fast. And so yeah, that's the majority of what people eat. And what I what I try to get people to do, once they come into my program, in terms of weight loss, what we want to do is number one, we want to get them

eating good quality protein. Protein is a huge part of like being able to be in a calorie deficit, but not be hungry. I don't we don't want you to be hungry during the process of weight loss. Because if you're if you're hungry, it's going to be counterproductive, your body's going to start fighting against you with cravings and different things like that. So if we can, you know, we can get good quality protein into your diet, you know, fruits and vegetables, and then, you know, your healthy fats, your healthy carbohydrates, get you really to a point where you're eating good quality foods that can keep you full. That's where people are going to experience the most benefit in a weight loss journey,

which essentially is just eating healthy. There you go. Yeah, eating healthy makes all the difference. What a concept. Who knew? Wow. Looking at those calories that are labels that are on the thing, reading your labels.

You know, one of the things I try and do is eat live food. And so I try and stay away from processed stuff as much as I can and eating live foods, broccoli, cabbage, beets. Uh, we try and blend all that up once a day or every other day and, and eat it. Um, and, uh, you know, your body is so much different when your body gets what it wants. It really, you, you get this feeling of where your body goes, hey, we really like you these days. We should keep you around. It makes all the difference in how you feel, you know, tuning into how I was feeling in my body, you know, maybe starting to eat better. And sometimes, you know, people think of, oh, salads taste awful or, you know, whatever, it's fun. Once you reset your palate and you get away from all the sugars and some of that dopamine

crap that you're being hit with at places like McDonald's that are chemically designed to give you a dopamine hit, you get off the addiction drug, you really start enjoying foods. And like I buy a lot of my life foods and salads and tomatoes and everything at a local farm here. And you can usually find those places or farmer's market anywhere. But I got to tell you, the food, the lettuce, everything I get, it tastes so much better. And it's not some of the stuff that comes from, you know, wherever it comes from in the world. You know, everything comes from everywhere and they, they kind of race, they kind of race it with, uh, sometimes I've heard

they use methane stuff on tomatoes to get them to ripen faster so they could sell them faster. It's funny. The, the, the, uh, produce from my local farm actually lasts for weeks where if I buy a head of lettuce at the local store, it's dead in a couple of days. Yeah. Yeah. Tomatoes last store. It's dead in a couple of days. Dead in a couple of days, yeah. Yeah. To me, his last line, everything's better.

But your body, after a while, it goes, hey, man, thanks for taking care of us. We're going to take care of you. Yep. And you really start listening and becoming, like you talk about, aware. And it can make all the difference in the world. One thing you do is you talk about misconceptions about weight loss in women and menopause. I know women sometimes have issues with weight loss and they have, you know, more hormones than men. So talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah. Menopause. I mean, menopause is a struggle. That's just bottom line. I, you know, I feel for

women that are going through it, it is a struggle. A lot of women will come and they'll say, my hormones are super out of whack. Like I need to go to my doctor and I need to, you know, I get, need to get them figured out. The reality is, is that when, when women are premenopausal, like a woman's life, their whole life, they have like hormone cycles that are very, very consistent. And once they become premenopausal, their hormones are literally all over the place. So when they say my hormones are out of whack, I say, yeah, they are. That's just how it is, right? Once you hit menopause, those hormones flatline. And what women struggle with is then, you know, you have the decrease in

hormones, decrease in estrogen, your metabolism starts to slow a little. That's also due to age though. But it does become more challenging to lose weight. Now it's not impossible. It is more challenging though. So if I were to bring someone into my program, someone who's pre pre menopause, you know, we, they could get two pounds a week off if they, if they wanted to, if they wanted toause, you know, we they could get two pounds a week off if they if they wanted to, if they wanted to be, you know, that dedicated for someone that's in menopause, they come into my program, I could guarantee them probably a half a pound a week. That's more reasonable. But what we have to do with a woman in menopause is actually that we have to get their calorie deficit very specifically aligned with like

their body and their metabolism. And that's something that's really hard, challenging to find on your own without, you know, expert guidance. There you go. And I imagine with you, with your pharmacist background and your medical understanding, you probably have a better dial in than most, you know, wellness coaches or weight loss coaches, because, you know, you kind of understand the chemical nature of all this and, and how to do stuff. Are you able to, are you able to recommend pharmacy? I don't know how the laws work for local and States and stuff. Are you able to, with your clients, uh, recommend medications to them and prescribe them? So I don't prescribe medications. One thing that I can do is if someone I'll usually, if someone has a really long list of medications, I'll

usually take a look at it. I'll usually look at, you know, are there any interactions that like we're not aware of? Like you, you might go to a bunch of different doctors and your doctors are never looking at your full med list and being like, Hmm, should we change things here? They're just like, okay, you say you have a problem. Let's start another medication. So, uh, what I do is I'll just kind of look through that and talk to them about their symptoms. I'll go through their medications and see if they're on medications that might be contributing to weight gain and making it so that it's difficult to lose weight. So I do, I will look through people's medications just to make sure that there's nothing that's interfering

with what we're trying to accomplish in terms of weight loss and getting them to a healthier place in their life. There you go. So one of the benefits of working with you is you can kind of do an audit. Kind of. Kind of do an audit and be like hey man you know like you you're like hey chris you've probably got that lithium and methadone and what other drugs can i do jokes on i don't know methadone's for heroin right and then lithium's for bipolar disorder or yep schizophrenia basically a pharmacist well i i just i just pulled jokes for the thing. But, yeah, I'm glad I didn't. Methadone clinic jokes are always a good callback joke.

So there you go. What have we touched on that you help people with and you serve your clients and stuff with that people are struggling that we can entice them to work with you on? What haven't we discussed? Yeah. Is there anything we missed in, in all the stuff you, um, I mean, I honestly, the, the biggest thing for like people that like when I talk with someone and I describe my program to them, the biggest thing that makes someone like makes it a no brainer. Like I definitely want to work with you is very much like being stuck in this yo-yo dieting. Like I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this, nothing works. I've gained this much weight. I've lost this much weight. I gained

it all back. I gained more. I, you know, um, done all of these things. And it's like, are you, you know, it's like, are you ready to stop doing those yeah because if you're dieting is the worst we can do the work right yeah you find a lot of people they're doing that yo-yo dying or worse they're doing fad dieting everybody does it does do they really everybody does it i mean honestly so this just blew my mind. There's a study that was done in the UK and they were looking at essentially like how many diets does the average adult try over the course of their lifetime and what they found in that study. Well, do you want to take a guess? How many do you think? 12. 12. Okay. So the, the study found that the average adult attempts, 126 diets.

Holy. Lifetime. Holy crap. That's my excuse. Then I'll use that. Isn't that crazy? That is a lot. Is that like them sometimes retrying and then,

and then, uh, going on, you know, it's like you do it for two weeks, you stop, you try again, you try something else.

It's like, once you think about it like that, oh man, you could do 50 in a year. Like. Yeah. Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll just try different diets. Different diet, different day. Roller coaster diet.

You know, I have a friend, God bless him. He comes on the show regularly as an author. He does the Atkins diet, which is, I guess, supposed to be a lot of protein or something. Or no, he does the keto diet, you know, where it's like fat and protein, you avoid carbs. Yeah.

He's does the keto diet and he'll, he'll show me like this giant plate of ribs and everything else. He's like, I'm on the keto diet. And I'm like, no man, you're just, you're still eating like 5,000 calories in a plate there,

buddy. Well, it's mostly protein. Well, I don't, you know, I understand calorie deficit like you talk about. And, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm like, like, uh, you're not losing weight, dude. In fact, I saw the other day and I was like, you got a pot belly going on, man. But I'm on a keto diet. I don't think you think, I don't think it's what you think it is.

But a lot of people are deceived that way or they are they you know like you're talking about mindset they're kind of self-conjoling themselves or or giving themselves you know excuses really you know uh what what you're thinking on cheat days speaking of excuses i've always thought that's interesting when people have cheat days. Cheat days? My take on a cheat day is, I mean, I think they're counterproductive, honestly. My approach to help people, like when I bring someone into my program, I say, okay, nothing is off limits. And the reason that I say that is, like I said before, as soon as we start restricting something, we want that thing. So if we say you absolutely cannot have this, then they're just there, eventually, they're just going to crave it. And once they have it, then they're just, you know, they're going to fall off. And they're just going to want that thing. So essentially,

what I try to help people accomplish is, how do you work your favorite ice cream into your life in a way where you can still lose weight or maintain your weight, right? And there is actually a way to do that. You don't cheat day, you can still consume these things on occasion, you know, you consume them in moderation, you consume them on special occasions, small amounts, but you still can eat those things in small amounts and still fall within your calorie deficit. You could still go out and eat with friends. So we really structure this to help someone learn how to do this the rest of their life so that you know how, right? You don't need to have a cheat day and basically destroy all of your results. You just need to learn how to do these

things in moderation and control them. There you go. You know, once you, uh, I did, I did a thing, um, uh, where I took two weeks off of eating candies and everything else. And I mostly ate potatoes. I think it was from the Presto book, uh, with the pendulumulet um and it was designed to reset your addiction to sugar and taste okay and so once i did that uh and just ate potatoes for two weeks um it reset my taste buds and then when i came back to start eating salad and broccoli and all these different things they tasted great. Because I was, I cut off my sugar addiction and my dopamine addiction of getting, you know, this food that's like, it makes me high, you know, the dopamine hits the brain. And now, you know, one thing I learned was making it taste great without making it, you

know, so calorie rich is all the difference and like i mentioned the farm that i buy from the uh the colors on the lettuce and the and all the different things the kale and everything i get is just so much richer it looks tasty to my brain my brain goes hey that looks tasty you know and then i go look at the lettuce and stuff at the store and it's like it looks dead you know You know, it's thin. It's some pale color that you're just like, I don't know, is that thing alive? Poke it. And so it just makes all the difference.

And there's a lot of ways vegans figure this out, all the different variations of vegan that there is that's out there. These guys figure it out by if you season stuff right, if If you can taste stuff and you don't have to have like, you know, McDonald's secret sauce seasoning. You know, if you just have some really good salts or peppers or different, different, uh,

simple seasonings, you can make stuff taste amazing as sometimes better than I think than some of the burgers you eat. And then you don't have that sodium hangover where you're like, Oh God, what kind of rock gut do i have now yeah no 100 you can make healthy food you can make healthy food taste really good but i agree with you that it takes some time for your brain and your taste buds to adjust to the fact

that you're not eating a bunch of sugar right it just It just takes time. It's not, you're not going to just switch overnight and be like, yes, I love this. I mean, I used to drink 10 to 15 Mountain Dews a day and I don't drink Mountain Dew anymore. I might have a Coke every now and then, but I think the other day I had a Mountain Dew. I was waiting at the haircut and I was like, I'm really going to fall asleep. And so I went next door to a train restaurant and all they had was Mountain Dew, cigarette Mountain Dew. And it was gross. It was the grossest thing ever. And I remember sitting there going,

how did I ever drink all of this crap? It was so gross. But don't do that, people. Stay away from all that crap. So this has been wonderful and insightful, Whitney, to have you on the show and

go through all this wonderful stuff. Give us any final thoughts you want as we go out. Yeah, for sure. I mean, my final thoughts to people is ditch the diets. You know, it's like these quick fixes, these fad diets. Like, this stuff doesn't work. It doesn't work long term. You're just going to mess up your metabolism.

So you're going to do it. Do it right. Do it in a healthy way. Start to change your habits. Start to, you know, implement. Start to slowly incorporate healthier foods into your diet. Start where you are with exercise. Start slow, right?

Even if it's just a five-minute walk a couple times a week, you know, just get yourself moving, start small and just gradually over time, start to change your habits so that you can actually maintain your results in the end. Because I don't consider it a success if you lose 50 pounds and then you gain it back. It's not a success. Yeah. And it just wrecks your body, your health and everything else. And you screw your metabolism and your insulin resistance and it just creates a mess for you. Yeah. You got bigger problems after you mess that stuff up.

So. There you go. And if somebody who's 55 years old, I tell this to everybody now, don't wait till you're older. And it is so hard to calorie correct and insulin correct and i have to long fast uh you know you can do intermittent fasting on a pretty consistent basis but i really have to push the the long fasting um to break through and it just do it while you're young man do not wait until the very end or you know till you're later in life because man i was 20 man i could lose weight so quick and it was like oh this is easy you know when you're 55 you're

just like i mean you know i just take one of those carrot shavers and just start shaving fat off anyway uh thank you very much for coming on the show whitney we really appreciate it uh give us your dot coms one more time so as we go out my dot com, www.mywholeandhappylife.com and my Instagram's the same, so at mywholeandhappylife. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas, youtube.com, Fortress Christmas,

linkedin.com, Fortress Christmas, all those crazy places we are on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that's