The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk 4 Main Reasons Why Your Weight Might be Slower to Move with Dr. Paul Hrkal, ND - Fall 2024

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

In this live guest expert segment, Gina chats about the 4 main reasons why your weight might be slower to move with Naturopathic Doctor Paul Hrkal.If you are in the Fall 2024 Support Group, you can check out the full video here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodfall2024Topics covered:When you're doing "all the things" but your weight is slow to move, what is going on?Staying the course: how patience, grace, and curiosity can help on your journey to optimize your health.What inflammation is and isn't.Reactivating the metabolism is a goal when addressing inflammation in the body.The connection between emotional stress and low-grade inflammation creating a negative environment in the body.Why slow and steady weight loss is better in the long term to optimize health.Celebrate non-scale victories, especially when the scale is slow to move!Dr. Paul's #1 reason the scale may be slow to move: Our psychological state and mindset.What we can do to help improve inflammation in the body.The differences between gut dysbiosis and food sensitivities.How food sensitivities can negatively impact weight loss.Getting curious: is our body's reactions to certain foods part of the story?Our gut microbiome has a massive impact on our overall health.The role of hormones in metabolic health as we age.Building resilience: why stress is not always a bad thing (and why more stress is not better!)Insulin and artificial sweeteners.The thyroid's influence on metabolism.Today's takeaways: Be curious and non-judgemental about what you may have been avoiding to level up your health!Where to find Dr. Paul: www.paulhrkalnd.com Instagram: @drpaulhrkal To learn more about the Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. this is an opportunity to become curious to learn some things how do we help you feel less overwhelmed so you can continue on your journey keep believing yourself and keep trusting the process just be patient you're trying really really hard you're doing all the things but you feel like nothing is happening your weight isn't moving maybe it's more than just what you are eating and when that's the conversation we're having today with my guest, Dr. Paul Herkel is back to talk about reasons why your weight might be slower to move. Not that it's not going to move, but things that might be getting in the way of you seeing that scale move sooner rather than later. Hello. Hi. Hello. Good morning, Gina. So let's get right into it. We've had this conversation before.

You not only have you been with us for a while, you know the program Inside and Out, but you see many clients that come to you. What do you want to say on this topic for someone who feels like they're doing the things but their weight isn't moving? Well, I think that first thing that I'm going to say is that, you know, you want to, you want to be patient, Gina, you don't want to halfway through a program or the first third of the program, you're seeing other people move and the natural human inclination is to say, what's wrong with me? And I think that is a normal, I think, response. I think we have to be gracious to ourselves through that feeling and response.

But maybe this is an opportunity, Gina, for, as I said in the introduction, to get curious about what might be going on in your health. And that's kind of the topic for today, look at obstacles. Now, sometimes those obstacles are obvious and they're straightforward. They can be remedied. And maybe this is the one of the four or five things I'm going to talk about today are going to really resonate with you. You can address them. You might need the help of someone that's going to maybe act like a bit of a navigator for you. That could be a healthcare provider, that can be a specialist, that can be a naturopath, that could be a psychologist

or many other healthcare providers. And then that will release the next step. However, you know, it may not be as simple as that. And so I still encourage people to really stay the course because sometimes it takes a couple sessions for people to unlock. So that's also been my experience. So I'm willing to share and chat about all those things today. So I hope people are really paying attention because there's going to be a lot of gold we're going to be dropping today. No doubt. Okay. So it is still normal for people to not see any movement on the scale up into this point. Week six, week seven, we're like, okay, maybe we start, you might want to start looking into really what's going on, but we like to have this conversation a little bit earlier. And I do want to preface like one to two pounds a week is

amazing. You know, you can see people in the group losing a lot more than that. Generally, that's because they have a lot more weight to lose. So, you know, it really is relevant to how much you are looking to lose. Also other things like the state of your body coming into the program, when you start. Also your lifestyle, your stress, your sleep, all of that you have going on. And then, of course, how diligently you are doing the things that you need to do as well. Okay, let's start with inflammation. So today we're going to talk about four main reasons, maybe five. We're going to talk inflammation, food sensitivities, gut dysbiosis, your gut issues, hormonal health, and I'm pretty sure

your microbiome would be tied into one of those. For sure. Yeah. Okay. All of the above, actually. And that's what I've said before, is that one of the key underlying issues that the evidence now is showing, and I'm kind of staying on top of all the latest research when it comes to what drives obesity, what drives people to be overweight and stay overweight. There's a lot of factors, but it keeps kind of get boiled down to your gut microbiome. And that's directly related to inflammation, Gina. So what is inflammation? I've talked about it before. Every single time we do a program, we talk about it and I get tons of questions about it. Number one,

let's talk about something a little bit different today. What inflammation is not? And this is a key thing because a lot of people will say, they'll sit here in my office and they'll say, Dr. Paul, I'm inflamed for sure. And just because you have pain doesn't mean you have inflammation necessarily. There's lots of different types of pain. For example, migraines is not necessarily inflammation. Osteoarthritis is not necessarily inflammation. What we're talking about, Gina, is a signal or state of your body that is preventing it from reaching its optimal metabolic state. Okay. Inflammation, a state or process in your body that is preventing you from getting to your optimal metabolic state. And there's lots of different sources of inflammation. We're going to talk about one of them, which is food sensitivities.

That is an allergic type of inflammation. There can be also autoimmune types of inflammation. There can be gut related inflammation. So you've heard of a term called leaky gut or the fancy term called intestinal hyperpermeability. When your gut is not happy, it's letting more inflammatory molecules in your system. And when your body has more inflammation to deal with, Gina, that means it's not really focused on weight loss. It's really focused on healing itself. It's focused on survival. It's focused on trying to resolve that inflammation. So one of the ways that I think we have to think about this is that we're trying to make our metabolism as unencumbered as possible. We want to throw off all these chains that our body is kind of having a hold on us. And that might be one of the reasons why weight is sluggish or why weight is

not coming off at all. Well, you have to be healthy in order to lose weight. And a lot of people are coming into this program and this process, really not all that healthy and their body's now taking all this resources and repairing and rebuilding and regenerating and rejuvenating and trying to get you to a healthy state. I love that you talked about metabolism. Can we just talk about how that factors into people's weight loss journey? Because I know there's that gets thrown around a lot, right? Your metabolism. Why is that important? In fact, I think it's the most important thing, Gina. Like I think that part of the Libby method, as I've kind of come to appreciate it, is that it is different because people actually end up

eating more. They eat up meeting, they seem, think they're eating more, they're eating more frequently. We're trying to get your metabolism to become reactivated. There are many things in our previous endeavors to lose weight that actually stunt your metabolism. Like, for example, going extreme starvation style diets. Some people do sometimes intermittent fasting can be, you know, really detrimental to people that are under a lot of stress. You said it perfectly. You know, there are factors that our body is trying to survive and not often thrive. And so when you're under a lot of stress, for example, this could be emotional stress.

Your body's signal that's constantly being sent to all of its cells is, hold on, we're under attack, save our fuel sources. So we're going to keep our metabolism actually turned down because we're trying to deal with all this extra stuff. So metabolism is your body's ability to be in an optimal metabolic state, Gina. And part of that is optimal body composition. So it's not just like metabolism equals I'm skinny. That's not as simple as that. Metabolism is my brain's functioning well. I have lean muscle mass. We talk about that a lot. I know a lot of other experts on the shore talking about that. You want to have active tissue to use the things that you eat for proper energy production. If you have a lot of tissue like adiposity, for example, your metabolism,

your lean muscle mass is getting choked out by that. Inflammation is choking your metabolism. We're trying to unencumber ourselves, like I said, to allow our metabolism to function optimally. And when it's functioning optimally, you're going to get to an optimal weight. Amazing. Let's talk about inflammation. How do we know that inflammation is our issue? Yeah, it's a great question. And like I said, and I'm glad I kind of mentioned this because it's the most common question that I get is that, you know, pain does not equal inflammation. So that could be one sign, Gina. So the typical thing that people think about inflammation is like, it's red, it's swollen, it's tender, you know, I bumped my knee, of course, that's inflammation. But we're talking about a more insidious type of inflammation, a low grade inflammation, inflammation, that is now affecting

a lot of our cellular function. And and your cells are basically the building blocks for your metabolism, your muscles are made of cells. Your brain are made of cells. And your inflammation, these are signaling molecules that are going to create a negative environment for that metabolism, for your cells. And like I said, that can be produced by physical damage. That can be produced by emotional damage. We now have studies, and this is what I presented on early this year in Europe when I was lecturing. There's research showing when you're under emotional stress, Gina, your gut lining, the one cell lining that basically regulates all the things that we absorb out of our intestines,

all the great things we're putting in our diet can become more permeable. And now all of a sudden, it's letting in proteins that normally your immune system which is just hanging out behind your gut wall to protect it from things like viruses and bacteria and all the external things now that immune system is being overwhelmed by these proteins gina and that can be a source of inflammation and that's why i just mentioned something, the gut microbiome. I just mentioned food sensitivities. I just mentioned inflammation. You can't talk about one of these without actually talking about all the other things too, Gina. This conversation is like a web. It's not a step one, step two, step three. They all work together. And so in order for us to

optimize inflammation, we also have to think about where the sources are. And one of them is gut. One of them is stress hormones. We're going to talk about that right at the end. And another one is microbiome. So all the things we are exposed to day in and day out can be a source of environmental stress. But your body has the ability when it's optimal to fight this off. Can you test for inflammation? Can you test for inflammation?

Can you test for inflammation? You can. And so there are tests I run with my patients that you could look at. Is my body under more of this stress? There are a number of markers that are going to show, do you have inflammation in your blood vessels? Do you have stickiness in your blood vessels? There's a marker called fibrinogen. There's another marker called C-reactive protein, which will tell us about

inflammation. But there's other indirect ways that it's not just as simple. And this is, I think, where a lot of, I think, sometimes family doctors will miss the mark. Well, they'll just say, okay, you know, inflammation marker A, CRP, is it high or low? No. Okay. It's, it's not that high. So, you know, you're fine. You know, keep doing what you're doing. We have to look at other markers. Like for example, if your liver enzymes are starting to be elevated, that means you have inflammation in your liver, Gina. And when your inflammation is elevated in your liver, your main processing plan in your body, you're going to not be able to eliminate the things. Like for example, all the, all the things you're trying to put in your body or through your gut has to be

eliminated through the liver. Fatty liver is a massive problem. And that is something that I'm seeing a lot of my patients. And I know you talk about it a lot because the first place that your body is going to store fat is going to be around your liver. Yeah. So fatty liver, if you have fatty liver, can you just assume you also are dealing with inflammation? Yeah, you have a certain type of inflammation that's related to your liver. Absolutely. And then what does that mean? Well, I'm not detoxifying as well. Well, if I'm not detoxifying as well, my metabolism is not going to be as functional. If I have fat around my liver, what does that tell me? That means I probably have had an intake

historically of too much sugar in my diet. Sugar, especially those high glucose syrups that a lot of processed food are made, they are the most poisonous for the liver, if I can even use that term, because they get rapidly converted to fat in your liver and around your liver, and they can't really be used for fuel as easily as plain old glucose which is what most foods are broken down into that's why good fats and good protein are going to minimize this huge influx of sugar and it makes it a lot easier for your liver to process the things that it's putting you're putting into your body plus Plus, amino acids, Gina, and B vitamins are super important factors for detoxification. So again, this is another reason we've talked about supplements

in our last conversation. There's a method, I think, to this, there's a madness to this method where we're putting in the cofactors, the nutrients needed for your body to do its job. And that job is trying to improve its metabolism and lower inflammation and resolve inflammation. Well, and support detoxification, right? Like this is sort of what you're going to realize today is that you're already doing so many of these things just in following the Livy method in general. Everything that we talk about, including the supplements, are all going to benefit you when it comes to addressing these issues. It can seem like a lot, it's a big conversation, but this is where like one of the things I want you to understand if you're struggling with your weight and Dr. Paul said it

off the top, like keep at it, keep doing the, keep showing up, keep, you know, you're taking the thing, all the little things that you're doing and they're adding up and making a big difference. That doesn't mean though that you don't want to get investigative and say, okay, I'm doing all these things. I'm not feeling any difference in my body. I'm not seeing the scale move at all. Like, would you say Dr. Paul, five weeks into the program, people should be feeling something after consistently showing up and putting this kind of energy day in, day out into making change. It's been my experience that yes, Gina, and this is part of, I think, a really good time to pause and think about, you know, what is your goal in going for this program? And, you know, I'm going to say weight loss is your gateway, but I think most

people leave Gina with a lot more than just weight loss. And I think the message that I definitely try to get across, and I know a lot of, I know you and your guests also try to talk about this, is that this is about helping your entire body and optimizing your entire health, not just weight. Being overweight is a symptom of a metabolism that's not optimal, of a system in general of not being in optimal health. And so the byproduct is that you're going to lose weight. If you lose weight too fast, and I'm going to say this, and this might kind of be a little bit more justifying to the people that are kind of slower to move on the scale, the most sustainable way to lose weight and to keep it off, we have a long-term perspective here, is, as you said,

one, two pounds a week. Anything more than that, Gina, if you're six weeks in the program and you're down 50 pounds, I would really be careful and caution you to be like, you've got to really work hard on maintaining that because all the data shows that that's hard to maintain because that's crash dieting. And that is something that, um, with that comes a lot of this extra detoxification. It's just really hard on the body to do something like that. Now, if you want to lose that amount of weight, you could starve yourself. You can go on Bernstein. You'll lose that weight. However, all my patients that have gone on Gina, they don't keep it off. Yeah. Or at some point, if you do lose that amount of weight, because people do lose a lot of weight with the living method, you will encounter a long plateau at some point.

Absolutely. You might lose 60 pounds in the first program and then your next program, you might not lose any. And that doesn't mean that your work is for nothing. That's your body saying, whoa, wait a minute. I need to take time to adjust to the weight that I've lost. And so at some point, it's equal and opposite reaction. You've got to put that time into helping your body to adjust to the weight that you've lost.

And that's where plateau is even our normal, right? When you see someone lose what seems like you've lost five pounds in a week, probably is not five pounds like overnight. It's like your body releasing that fat over maybe even the weeks leading up and it just translating to the scale. Then you might not see any kind of movement for a couple of weeks because your body, five pounds is a lot. I had someone today, just today, I screenshot, I actually screenshot a comment. Did I screenshot? Oh, I didn't. But what she was talking about is she said,

I'd only, I've only lost five pounds. Oh, is this it? No, that's not it. But I only lost five pounds. I'm like, my response was, oh, here it is. I'm discouraged as though I've lost five pounds. It seems so slow as I'm following the diet very well. I'm afraid to stray off one tiny bit. My only issues are I don't sleep well. And that hasn't really changed. My response is like five pounds in five weeks. That's amazing. That's really great. But sleep, then I'm like, sleep does make a difference, right? Like, so what would you say to that? I've only lost five pounds. It's five weeks. I mean, that's a pound a week, you know, isn't that like right in line what we've been saying? Like, I mean, okay, so think about this. Okay, so that's five weeks. What about next? What about next month? Another

five weeks, four or five weeks? Or would you be happy with another five pounds? Okay, that's 10 pounds. All right, another five pounds by the end of the program. All right, that's 15 pounds. For most people, that is amazing. Now, if you have 100 pounds to lose, you might be discouraged by that. However, I'm here, Gina's here to say today that that is a sustainable way to lose weight. Now, some people lose it faster than that. And that comes with a double-edged sword, Gina. Where, as you said, you're going to have to do some kind of reckoning work at some point to address some of these things. The first, especially if

you're listening to this in your first session, people come into this program, in my experience, with still the same mindsets as a lot of previous programs, where it's like, I'm doing a program, and I expect results, because I paid for it, damn it. And I see all these other people losing this weight. Really, this is one of those things that you're like, we're trying to do the finally and forever thing. And we're trying to really rehabilitate your metabolism. That's what we're talking about. These four things.

It's not just about blasting off adipose tissue and then all gaining it all back. Cause you haven't actually changed anything in your life. If you get healthier, Gina, your body will naturally get to a better, healthier weight. Yeah. That's the long-term play and short-term solutions are going to lead to long-term problems. And that is why we're having these types of conversations right now.

Yeah. I mean, I wish it was much easier for people. I mean, for some people it is, they follow the program. They're like, that was so easy. Thank you very much. But it's been a lifetime of getting to this place. Like, think about that for a second. Like, you know, one of the most important questions I ask people is in the first session, I said, what's your experience with the Livvy program? And first thing they'll say is their weight number and how much I've lost. And then I say, okay, what about some of those non-skill victories? And then they start listing off all these things. I sleep better.

My IBS has disappeared. My PMS has gone away. And I said, so what do you think about that? They're like, yeah, that's pretty good. But I'm still like not down like my 20 pounds or like my 50 pounds. And I kind of have to kind of talk a little about mindset at that point and being like, these are all really, really, really, really huge things that are making your quality of life better.

Now, let's see if we can find a way to address some of these underlying things. However, don't discount all the other healthy ways that you're improving on the program. So to answer your question that you asked me earlier is, you know, if you're six weeks, five weeks in the program, and you haven't lost any weight, I would encourage you, almost everyone sees some sort of change. And so think about things outside the scale. If the scale hasn't moved, if it has, amazing, keep motivated, stay confident. But there's other things that are changing your body that some, for some people, Gina, have to change first before you start seeing scale movement.

Sometimes it's nothing for a month, and then they have a great month where your body starts losing weight. You know that. You've seen that many times. Oh, my God. So today, again, we're talking about, for anyone just tuning in, is four reasons why your weight might be slower to move. We're talking inflammation, food sensitivities, gut dysbiosis, hormonal health. With all that said, what do you think is the number one reason why people have a hard time losing weight? Is it these four things actually that we're talking about today? Oh, Gina, you're going off script on me here. I like it. I like it. Give me a second. I want to think about this because there is an answer. It is related to all of these

factors. However, we haven't specifically named it. And I really do believe it's our psychological state, our mindset. And this has just been my experience. If you look at those 20 obstacles that we wrote down, write down on the program and people go through and they look at all these things. Am I sleeping right? The underlying factor on almost every single one of those, Gina, is a person's psychological state. Now, what we now know is the way that we are in terms of our mindset has a huge impact on our physiology. So it's not like the two things are separate, Gina. When you have stress, your gut becomes more perennial.

I mentioned that. When you have stress, your stress hormones go up. There's a hormone called cortisol that goes up in your body, and there's a lot of receptors around the waist for cortisol. And what that does is that now gives the body a signal to store fat around your waist when you're constantly in stress. So I have so many people, and I know there's people listening that are resonating with us right now, that are going through the program and they're saying, Dr. Paul, Gina, I'm doing all the things. I'm doing all the things. Why can't I lose weight? And you start going through those 20 questions

and you're like, I'm under a tremendous amount of stress. When you're in that state, some people can lose weight, but the majority are not able to because your body's metabolism, Gina, is purposely being turned down. Thermostat goes down because the signal is I'm dealing with an existential threat here to me in my existence. I'm trying to survive. I need to feel safe. If you don't feel safe, then your body is not going to be focused on things like rest and digest and eliminate and detoxify. Those are secondary things. Yeah. I mean, this is where I try, this is where, when I say to people, we're trying to get the body to help the body specifically focus on fat loss when it has all these other things to focus

on. Really, that's really what that's about. Okay. Let's finish up the conversation on inflammation. I know you're going to be back on Thursday and talk secondary supplements, and probably those will factor into this conversation as well. So we have inflammation. I think I have inflammation. I go to get my doctor, I get some tests done. I have inflammation. What can I do about that? Well, first thing is continue to do all the things. If you haven't fully leveled up in the program, do that. The simplest things, Gina, eating a whole food, colorful fruit and vegetable rich diet are full of anti-inflammatory molecules. Part of that also is that they're full of minerals and nutrients and that have what

I'm going to say is a balancing alkalining effect. Now, this is not like I'm drinking alkaline water. Don't get me kind of mistaken. Fruits and vegetables have a characteristic that has been shown in the evidence to be anti-inflammatory. One of the ways that they're anti-inflammatory is they actually have an acid balancing effect. If your body is too acidic, and think of the most acidic foods, alcohol, processed foods, processed sugars. Most highly processed foods are the most highly acidic foods. And so when you have a lot of these whole foods that you start adding back in, they start balancing the internal chemistry in our

body. We have a ton of chemistry going on at the very most microscopic level. And that balance of nutrients and alkalinity and acidity is huge. So that's the first step you can do. Second step to lower inflammation is to balance your stress levels. A lot of people don't realize this, but when we're in a state of stress, we are actually decreasing our body's most powerful anti-inflammatory system, which is our body's cortisol hormonal system. We're going to talk about that right at the end of this conversation. And that cortisol, think about it. If you have an inflamed shoulder, your doctor may send you to a sports medicine doctor to inject it with cortisone. That is an anti-inflammatory effect.

So to balance our stress levels, we can have our own anti-inflammatory effect when we are having optimal adrenal function, Gina. Okay. So that's the second thing that we can do. And then the third thing is really looking at your gut health. If your gut health is good, then you're going to have the optimal inflammation resolution. And so I look at this as a part one conversation. Part two is going to be on Thursday. We're going to talk about secondary supplements.

I'm going to walk you through some of the things that we can do to lower inflammation from a supplement perspective, but nothing is stronger than sleeping well, eating well, moving your body in a positive way and having an anti-stress mindset, a resilient mindset. Those are very anti-inflammatory. The secondary things build on that, Gina. Okay. Amazing. You talk about gut health. So is this where food sensitivities and gut dysbiosis come in? Let's see, there's the next two topics. How are they different? Well, okay. I think the first thing we need to look at is that we have 10 times more bacteria in our gut than we have cells in our body. Let that sink in for a second. We are more bug than

human, if you think about it that way. So what we're now realizing more and more, Gina, is that the effects of our microbiome are not just limited to our gut. They're affecting our entire body, including regulating inflammation, including regulating appetite. This is what is fascinating me right now, is that if our gut microbiome, there's a normal healthy balance that our microbiome has. And it can be actually different between people. So there's not one particular makeup of our microbiome, which is all the bacteria in our gut. That's what microbiome means. And if it goes to an imbalanced state, now that's called dysbiosis.

So you're no longer in eubiosis, which is happy, balanced state. You're in dysbiosis, which is dysfunctional. Now you've allowed some of the good bacteria that are keeping all the things in there in check, your lining, your mucus layer, your bowel movements, now they become in balance. And now you've allowed an opportunity for bacteria that are opportunistic. These are guys that we have in small amounts like E. coli, for example, we have in our guts. However, if we take a whole bunch of antibiotics, what that might happen is that kills off some of our good bacteria and allows the opportunists to grow up. Well, that's a perfect example of dysbiosis. H. pylori infection, another common,

well-known bacteria is an example of dysbiosis. It actually will erode the lining of our stomachs and overcome our protective mechanisms. So these are all examples, Gina, of what's called dysbiosis. And that can have not just local effects, but far-reaching effects. Food sensitivities, on the other hand, are foods that you're eating that when your immune system sees it which is the again first line of defense after your gut lining is creating an allergic reaction it's the same as if you breathe if you're allergic to pets and you were around pets all of a sudden your eyes start watering that people understand that very simply but the same

thing can happen if you eat a food that might be good, like almonds, dairy products. Again, I'm not specifically picking on all these things. But if you eat that one food, Gina, it's going to create local inflammation. And that inflammation is going to be hard for your metabolism to process. And so this is personalized medicine because it's a little different for everyone. It's not like everyone needs to be avoiding gluten or dairy. But a lot of people are sensitive to those things. And if you're sensitive, I've seen, Gina, this is the last thing I'll say,

so many symptoms that are not even related to the gut. Headaches, fatigue, bloating, joint pain. These are things that you don't even think about are related to our gut, but our gut is regulating them. And are those then also leading to inflammation? Exactly. Well, Gina, also leading to inflammation? Exactly. Well, Gina, you can start talking about this. This is exactly the point. Yeah, this is amazing. See how it's all connected?

It's all connected. It's like a web. You can't just look at these things in isolation, Gina. And if you do, you're not having a full proper conversation about it. Yeah, which is why, again, the Libby Method is a holistic approach. W-H-O-L-E.

We're doing all the things in combination. Something I just had an aha moment there because when we were allergic to a cat or we're allergic to the grass or our eyes puff up, we're all itchy, we're all snotty. We're like, I'm allergic, right? People think food sensitivity is allergic reaction, like a peanut allergy or something where I'm going to die. But there's different, you know, variations to that where if you are having gluten, that's obviously a big one people talk about and gluten free or not. Like if you're people are always like, well, I'm gluten free, am I going to be able to lose weight? That's it's a non issue we your body probably prefers if you limit the gluten. So that's only a benefit. Gluten,

obviously a big one. Dairy is another big one. And people don't really understand. They think, okay, maybe it makes you constipated. Maybe it gives you the shits. Maybe it gives you a headache. Maybe it makes you not feel great. But how is it affecting people's, if I do have a food sensitivity, how is that affecting my ability to lose weight well you said it yourself right at the top it's a source of inflammation so we'll use that we will use the analogy of the runny eyes and itchy itchy eyes and runny nose so these are very obvious symptoms like if you have hay fever or if you're allergic to pet dander you're gonna have all these symptoms now translate those same symptoms,

which are inflammatory symptoms. They're red, they're painful, they're itchy. Now translate that to your gut lining. Same thing's happening there. Now the immune cells that are now exposed to this, let's pick on gluten since you just brought that up. It's called food sensitivity. Gluten is a protein. It's not lactose, which is a sugar, which is in dairy. There's other proteins that are found in dairy products. You can have an immediate reaction like, you know, my tongue is itchy or my throat's swelling up. That one is diagnosed by an allergist. So you go to an allergist and they do like the skin pricks, you know, those little like needles. And then they look at the little circles around them being like, yeah, you know what? Flaxseed is really is high for you because you

have a big immediate circle. That's an immediate reaction allergy, but you can have an allergy. That's a slow onset. There are types of immune systems, like in what's called an IgG immune system, which is, it takes about a couple hours to, uh, to turn on. And then it takes a couple days to get rid of. And these are more confusing for people, Gina, because they eat a food, and then they're like, yeah, you know what? I just don't feel good. I kind of feel like bloated, but then I kind of feel really sluggish after I'm eating certain meals. And then they start trying to, like, tease out what foods you're actually sensitive to.

Sometimes they might go to their naturopathic doctor and the naturopath might say, well, get rid of these four foods because that's what I see all the time. Or they might even do a food sensitivity blood test, which again, it gives you some sort of place to start, but it's not a perfect solution because there's multiple tests. It's very confusing for a lot of people. So if there's a certain food that you suspect or you're eating and you're like, you know what, I'm getting these signs of inflammation, we're going to use that term again. And it could be skin issues. It could be fatigue, could be brain fog, could be tiredness. If you don't have an explanation for any of these things, joint pain,

headaches, then you should start thinking about, could it be a food sensitivity? You don't always only have to have gut issues. Like you said, Gina, that was really, really, I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of people get focused on food gut, but we just established food, immune system, entire body, any symptom possible with it. I remember I was working with a client, this has got to be like 25 years ago. And she was like, so the epitome of health, she ate healthy, exercising, really managing her stress, whatever. And weight just didn't move, didn't move. And then she got to a point where she just didn't feel great after certain things.

And I remember she would like have a treat of a cookie and she'd cut out sort of really all gluten. And then she went and she realized it was gluten that was causing an issue. Then she did the whole test or she had to eat all the gluten and then test her. And then when she eliminated it, it was a game changer because even though she was only having it like once a month or every now and then, it was causing a huge reaction. So is gluten and dairy an inflammatory food themselves,

or is it the reaction that we're having? Yeah, great question. It's the reaction, Chita. So there is no one food that is just inherently bad. So there's no whole food. Like, of course, there's processed ingredients like red dye. You'll never convince me to say that it's healthy because it's artificial synthetic. However, a whole food, so like we'll talk corn, eggs, dairy, gluten, these are four of the most common sensitivities that I see in my practice. However, I have lots of patients that can tolerate

them just fine. However, the reaction that people get, the immune system, Gina Gina has a memory of it for up to three months. And if you eat that one food only once a week in a small amount, I'll just have like a tiny little thing, you know, at my in-laws or whatever, it's resetting your immune system's inflammatory pathway. So nothing is inherently inflammatory about those foods per se. However, they happen to be the more common inflammatory foods. So therefore, the reaction the body has against them is going to create inflammation for a lot of people. But it could also be something like, you know, oranges or cranberries or apples or, you know, things that are still what I would consider lower allergenic foods, healthy. But that's, you know, and that's the thing with this. You're trying to do a program that is going to be addressing as many different people as possible. However, we're here to say you're unique and you want the cookie cutter result. But the reality is, is that you may need to be on a journey to figure out personalized medicine.

And that's why I preach this all the time. The future of medicine is personalized medicine. Medicine that is generic, like, hey, you have this, I'll give you have high cholesterol, I'm going to give you this medication, like cookbook, it always falls short, never works. That's why we start with the most logical and evidence based approach. Let's say that's the method for our conversation today. And from there, everybody, you to level up have to then look at what's my issue. For some people, it might be their sleep. For some people, it might be food sensitivities. For some people, it might be the pain and joint inflammation they have is living in their body, the body's ability to move. And that's the thing that's holding back. I could be here

listing 20 other common obstacles that I see with my patients day in and day out. But at the end of the day, Gina, it's personalized. So we're here to give you a little flavor to kind of prompt you to be like, okay, now I got to go work with that person to really figure that out. Yeah. These conversations about helping you figure out what you need to do, what's going on with you. That's why I love journaling too. Like journaling, not just like what you're eating, but how you're feeling and how your body's responding to that. Okay. We take 10 people who are doing the living method, having a hard time

losing weight. How many of them are, have an issue with gluten or dairy? I'm going to say, yeah, it's, it's common. Uh, I can't, It's hard for me to give a number exactly. I would say, I'll say this. If you take a group of people that are struggling to lose weight, in my experience, at least 50% of them have some issue with some food sensitivity. That is, I think, holding them back. Wow. So I'm not going to say gluten and dairy. I will. I have been on record saying in many podcasts and presentations that the most common food sensitivity for most people,

and the evidence is very clear on this, is gluten. It is the most common. And it's the one that has the most often non-gut issues. So what are called extra intestinal issues. I talk about this with my brain patients all the time. We talk about neurological, we talk about chronic pain. Certain, in my experience now, what I've seen is certain food sensitivities are related to more kind of like groupings of symptoms. So for example, dairy products are a lot related to the digestive system and chronic congestion. And if you're if you're stuck with chronic sinusitis or you're constantly blowing your nose you're constantly clearing your throat just had a patient recently like i just have like burning reflux and they went to all the experts i

can't find anything it's all normal but then they we we did some food sensitivity testing or you can do an elimination reintroduction again by the way if all this is confusing for you in terms of like how to identify this, this is one of the times you go and work with an expert, go and work with a naturopath to really go figure this out. This is what we do is we guide people through. If I need help changing my will, I need a lawyer that's expert in wills and states. And so that is an example. We do this all the time, except when it comes to the health, we think we can MacGyver it all the time. And we just DIY everything. That's a great place to start. However, identify me like, yeah, you know what? I need help with this. So if you feel like this is resonating with you, this is an obstacle, then don't go in and guess because you will lead yourself down a path of possible frustration. But I do think it is an obstacle, Gina, to people leveling up in their health in my experience.

Okay, I hear that. Gut dysbiosis and hormones. Oh my God, this is like, we need 14 hours for this conversation. I always feel like the hormones get the sugar out of the stick because we always like have such a great combo with all the gut stuff because I could just keep like talking about it and talking about it uh okay let me just let me just wrap up the gut dysbiosis thing and then I want to spend about 10 minutes on the hormones here at least okay yeah so um what I've learned in my in my in my years of practice and also presenting uh this topic to people from all for all around the world is that we still don't know a lot

about the gut. But what we do know is that it has massive impacts on your entire body, including your metabolism. So we also know that your metabolism and your microbiome are heavily influenced by your early childhood. Your your we'll call them formative years for your health. Like, for example, we've all heard the term like, you know, your bones are formed up until 20, 25 years. And after that, it's like you're kind of you're stuck with all your bones. So if you had a really poor, inactive lifestyle when you're young and you didn't eat well, then that's going to impact your bone mineral density. It's just the way it is. The same thing I think applies to your gut. We don't, we haven't come out to say like we know the exact time because history of crash dieting,

poor diet, antibiotic use, abuse of antibiotics. Even now, my family doctor's like, I don't want to give antibiotics because there's a lot of detrimental effects of that because we know how important the microbiome is, Gina. Microbiome regulates things like appetite. It regulates things like I'm feeling full. It regulates mood. It regulates inflammation. We just talked about how all those factors are playing a huge role in that equation of your weight. So if your gut, it has a lot, it has a lot of symptoms, gas and bloating, and you can't figure out what foods are doing what to you. This is a great opportunity for you to try to figure that out right now, because that is a possible obstacle. And an imbalance in that microbiome, Gina, could be the difference between I'm always stuck on sugar cravings, because your bugs in your gut, Gina, are going to start demanding a fuel that they love. And the

quote, unquote, bad bugs love sugar. They just want to be fueled by sugar all the time. And so part of what we now know is that those inklings towards certain foods will change your microbiome. But then your microbiome also sends signals to your brain to say, hey, I want more of that. And that may not be a good thing. So that's where I think a balance in the microbiome is helpful. So probiotics are a great start. Prebiotics are a great start. We talked about that a little bit. We'll talk about more about that next week. Sorry, on Thursday. It's not like I take a probiotic and like, you know, like my microbiome. So there's a process that has to happen. And sometimes you need help from a naturopathic

doctor to kind of navigate that. Yeah, because there are specific strains that you want to get specific if you have real issues. We did talk earlier about probiotics, prebiotics, there is some information that first secondary list, Dr. Paul is going to be back on Thursday and talk more specifically about things that can actually help with these types of issues. Okay, hormones. It's such a big conversation. Yes, I love this conversation because I love this topic specifically

in this conversation because I think it's a good intro for this. And I know Dr. Olenka will come in and talk a little bit about menopause and women's hormones specifically. So I'm not going to really leave that. Let her talk about that because that's a whole, you know, hours long conversation if you want. But I do find in my experience, if I was to say, what's the most common avatar of a person that comes in and sees me, it's the 45 to 55 year old female that is now struggling

to lose weight when historically she was able to lose it very easily. And that is, I'm sure that's your main demographic as part of the group, because that's just, you know, if you think about it, we do a health, a history and a decade by decade review and we go through you know how active were you in your 20s what did you what were your stress levels like and all those factors play a role in your metabolism now currently were you yo-yo dieting were you starving yourself but there seems to be a point between like 30s and 40s kind of the year before there's a huge menopausal hormonal shift is that in my experience, you see that women focus so much on their kids, they lose themselves. Their own metabolism and their own hormones are sacrificed

because of that really, really great nurturing instinct. But I always say, if you're listening to this and you're in your thirties, I really encourage you to, there has to be a semblance of balance there because prevention is so much easier than trying to cure anything. So what I always encourage is that stress levels, anything you can do to balance those things are going to make your menopausal transition so much easier because they take over those that adrenal system those glands that sit above your kidneys that produce the shock absorber hormones cortisol dha are the two main ones they're going to be trying to pick up the slack for those times when we're kind of like ignoring ourselves, not really focusing on taking care of ourselves. And now you hit a time where maybe you can focus on yourself a bit more, your kids are a bit older, but then you hit a menopausal transition. You hit a huge watershed moment for a woman's life where their hormones change. That's where your adrenal system genome, your shock absorbing system

that produces cortisol becomes so important. And so in my practice, what I would say, the biggest X factor that makes that makes all the difference in the world between a successful treatment and not is that if we can help a person's adrenal system do its job better, that's a game changer. Well, we have so many women who are older saying, I wish I would have found you when I was 20, 30, 40. And the program works really well for everybody. But we tend to focus on the people that are having a hard time. And it is that demographic. I'm the same. There's a lot of research that I've been doing into menopause and changes in hormones. And a big part of it is

the state of your body when your body is transitioning. And you come off years of starving and depriving. I mean, I think anyone as they get older, I mean, as I get older, I was watching this morning. There's a new documentary about these women in South Korea who are diving, 80 years old, diving into the sea every day. And I'm just like, Oh my God, this is, you know, amazing. It's not just about getting old and how long you live. It's about being, being healthy and being able to live your life when you're older. And that systematic breakdown of our bodies, because we prioritize stress and everything else above our own needs. And you roll dieting into that, which has been so detrimental years of literally starving and depriving and disconnecting it's gonna fuck

you up and then you add environmental factors you add in other factors like um antibiotics into you know all of these things it's really messing with you it's really it's stressing your body out stress you know i think in the future we have to have a conversation just about this for a whole hour because there's so much I want to say. Just as you're talking, like you're hitting on so many amazing points. Yeah. You know, one point that I want to make here, and it's a really important one, is so many people listening to this are thinking, I can't change the stress that I was under. There's things out of my control.

You know, like what you're saying is, you know, yeah, easier said than done, Dr. Paul. Cool. However, I'm here to say stress is not always a bad thing. These women in Korea, these divers, they're not immune to stress necessarily. However, what they've done is that the type of life that they live, and this applies to things like the blue zones, which we've talked about before. These are the people that live the longest in the world. They're not immune to stress. In fact, they have a lot more, I would say, fundamental stress, like food scarcity. They don't have the amenities that we have. We often are our own worst enemy when it comes to stress. We put more on our plate. Yeah. We think more is better.

And the things that people, and specifically these women that are, are, are, are thriving into their seventies and eighties, they are really good at being resilient to stress. And that doesn't mean because they put themselves in a bubble and didn't do anything. They just were able to fuel themselves and recharge themselves in a way to keep themselves balanced. It's okay to be stressed, but how do you cope with that? How do you deal with that? Is it in a healthy way? Or do I go and try to like, you know, five years of my life and I'm trying to get to this next level, this promotion and I sacrifice my health to get there. And then when I get that, I spend all the money that I make to try to get all that health back. Yeah. Yeah. So like when you, when you look at that equation, Gina, it's set up,

we're setting ourselves for failure. So the message of hope that I have, because I don't want to just be Debbie Downer right now, is you can start putting those things in place now. You can start putting the same things to build resilience. Now we're going to talk next on Thursday, a little bit about adrenal health. We're going to talk about adaptogens,

my favorite kind of herbs that are helpful for helping your body deal with stress. But at the end of the day, they're going to kind of plus or minus a little bit, but they're not going to be like, I'm going to just revolutionize and rehabilitate your adrenal system from zero to a hundred. We still have to put the things in place, Gina, to build that resiliency. And, um, that, that, that, that conversation around resiliency, I think is, is so multifaceted. It's being addressed in the sleep topics. It's being addressed in the psychological topics. So I'm so glad that's being the case, but I could probably just chat about it for a

couple hours because I think it's, I think it's really the foundational thing that that's making the difference between someone surviving and thriving. Yeah. I'm all about really digging into that conversation stress deprivation right like stress and deprivation whether that deprivation is sleep that deprivation is nutrient-rich foods you know yeah it's really done a number I would love to go down that down that rabbit hole for lack of a better word of a conversation with you for sure um I know we are running out of time insulin resistance and artificial sweeteners.

Yeah. Insulin is a hormone. So, I mean, it's worth talking about here. It is, its main job is to suck up sugar and put it in the right place. That's very, very simple. However, there's a lot of things that make that job harder. Like, for example, when you're not active, your insulin has to do double time. But when you're active, when you're moving your body, now your muscles have an insulin-independent pathway to suck up sugar. So it's just like so much easier. And if you constantly, your body keeps pressing the insulin button, your pancreas, which produces your insulin, is just taking a heavy load. And so it constantly has to do that, especially if you have a really highly processed, highly sugar diet. Now, eating the Livy method, now all of a sudden the demand on the insulin goes down. Insulin resistance goes down and sensitivity goes up.

You want it to be very sensitive and you want resistance to go lower. And the best way, the easiest way to do that is to decrease the need for it to constantly being secreted into these large amounts artificial sweeteners now we know uh including things like even stevia so if you're just replacing you know sucralose or aspartame with some of these uh non kind of more natural sweeteners they still are going to possibly change your microbiome that's the most research and that still has a detrimental effect to insulin sensitivity that could still has a detrimental effect to insulin sensitivity. That could still have a detrimental effect to things like cravings and like feast and famine mentality. So our human nature on a metabolic cellular level was used to, I had a feast. I had like, for example, Thanksgiving we just had in Canada, a huge kind of like splurge because of harvest. They're thankful. There's an

emotional, there's a family side of it. And then they're eating a diet that's very kind of like plain and it's very foundational and nutrient rich, fiber rich, but they're not feasting every weekend. They're not feasting every day. That's the problem is that we're doing this. We're living in the Thanksgiving every day of the year type of thing where our metabolism, our genes were designed and evolved in a state of, Hey, I'm going to have all this, I'm going to have this real big enjoyment, but then most of my time is going to be spent in kind of a state of less. And that's one of the things about blue zones is that they don't over eat, they eat 80% full. A lot of the things, the rules, the training that we're trying to put into the

Libby program is really manifested through these types of like longer term longitudinal studies. I love that you just said that. Cause I was just, I followed this neuroscientist and she was talking about, um, this dopamine hit. We're constantly like feeding into our dopamine with like food and how your body just gets wired to that. And you got to get used to being bored. Like, just like you have to get really used to just being bored and not having that. When you just said that we're used to that feast or that famine that we do indulge, but most of the time we are just kind of like, you know, just doing what we needed to do in order to just keep our lives going. That's really interesting. Oh my gosh.

We didn't even talk about thyroid, Gina. I mean mean like that's another thing that i i'll just 30 seconds just say it's if your thyroid is off it's your body's thermostat it's directly connected to your stress levels and your adrenal system so they go hand in hand it can really be influenced by other hormones like progesterone during menopause a lot of people have thyroid issues that are leading to sluggish metabolism. It literally is the thermostat of your body, where the adrenals are kind of like your shock absorber and your lean muscle mass is like your furnace. I like analogies, as you can tell. So thyroid is super important. A lot of times it gets mixed, diagnosed. Even if people are on thyroid medication and you still have all the symptoms of having low thyroid or hypothyroid, Gina, that can still be a limiting factor to your weight. So we often like give thyroid, you know, oh yeah, you know, my doctor's

taking care of that. Most of the time they don't do a full assessment. They're missing the Hashimoto's markers, which are the autoimmune markers. They're not looking at how well is it being converted from T4 to T3. There are things you can do to optimize your thyroid, even if you're on thyroid or if you're not, to really even identify it. And so it is probably the easiest thing in the kind of family doctor, primary care provider world to be tested and assessed. But I often think it's not properly assessed. And then of course, all the other underlying hormonal connections, as we just talked about, like the adrenal system, which are are totally ignored there's no good test in blood for adrenals like blood cortisol in the morning is the the closest thing to that and it almost always is in normal when a lot of people have these adrenal issues because it's kind of like shades of gray the medical doctors look for like are you

going to die on me type of tests yeah that's really what it's looking at. And a lot of people are like, I feel like I'm going to die, but I'm not there yet, but I feel really tired. I feel sluggish. My weight won't move. I brain fog. Um, I, my, my blood pressure is all over the place. Uh, you know, there's so many symptoms related to adrenal dysfunction. Uh, and I just touched on some of them and, and thyroid plays a big role also with, with the relationship with those two. Anyways, I know I just touched on some of them. And thyroid plays a big role also with the relationship with those two. Anyways, I know I just dumped there. That's called a door knocker. Like right at the end of the visit, patients say, by the way, by the way. So sorry about that, but I'll be back.

You know, I love that. I'm going to ask you in a second what your summary of this conversation is. Again, for everyone listening, this is just an awareness conversation, right? That's what we're doing is letting you know, hey, there could be something else going on. So I know on Thursday, we're going to talk secondary supplements. Let's just have it be a continuation of what we're talking about today. I'll take your lead on that because I mean, there's universal secondary supplements that can be beneficial for people to take. Yeah, we have a list of those. People can read those. Why don't we do a continuation of this conversation and be like, okay, what's the takeaway today? And what is the conversation for the next day?

Let's start. Yeah, a lot of those secondary supplements, Gina, which we will touch on next week, are actually in the vein of like stress balancing, like theanine and adrenal function and curcumin with inflammation. So we're going to tackle all that. So we will indirectly address it. in the vein of like stress balancing, like theanine and, you know, adrenal function and curcumin with inflammation. So we're going to tackle all that. So we will indirectly address it. But I love that it's kind of a part one, part two. In summary, I hope that this conversation

leaves you empowered with, okay, I think I know what some of my next steps can be. Part of this requires you to be curious and to be introspective, to really kind of constructively evaluate where you're currently at in your life in a way that's non-judgmental, but in a way that also doesn't let you off the hook to say, oh, I'm doing everything and the program's wrong. I'm making excuses for everything, the single thing. Sally's losing more weight than me. And, you know, my life is less stressed than Sally. So, you know, wrong. No, I want people to walk away with this conversation, even though it's probably the toughest conversation that we have, Gina, because it's, it's just so complex. If you go down these rabbit holes, I hope that I've made

it more simple for you and given you maybe four or five key areas. Maybe it's multiple for some people to be like, hey, this is something I need more help in. This is an area that I need improvement and I need to seek out an expert or I kind of know what I need to do and I'm just going to go ahead and do it. And maybe you've just been avoiding it because you just love dairy or you just love gluten. And you're like, but I know it doesn't make me feel good. This is my little kick in the butt to say, hey, go and try to get this step done and level up. Because oftentimes the step that we don't want to do, the thing that we've been avoiding is really the thing that we need to do. So if you loathe it and you hate it,

it may be the key linchpin for you going to that next level. So I'll leave it at that. You know, you just know, you know, you know, that you're not doing a Dr. Paul Hercule.

I know people always like to ask where they can find you. You are over on Instagram. Also, they can reach out to you at Dr. Paul Hercule. They can also to you at dr paul herkel they can also find you at paul herkel nd my website for sure yep but you will be back on thursday so join us for part two of this conversation uh thanks for everyone joining us live and thank you dr paul always you're welcome thank you so much for listening, everyone.