The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Research Behind The Livy Method with Professor Ruth Kane - Spring/Summer 2024

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

In this segment, recorded on July 9, 2024, Gina discusses the research going into The Livy Method with Professor Ruth Kane from the University of Ottawa.If you are in the Spring/Summer 2024 Support Group, you can check out the full video here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspringsummer2024Topics covered:IntroRuth Kane’s experience with The Livy MethodWhat makes The Livy Method different than any other diet? - Understanding a community of practiceThe benefits of reading the Program Guide with each round you completeWhat the surveys have shown about being successful with The Livy MethodClinically significant weight loss = 5% of your body weight over 6 months - over 95% of survey participants have lost weight with The Livy MethodDr Ruth’s presentations at The Canadian Obesity Summit - the focus moving forwardHow The Livy Method is different than weight loss drugs like Ozempic when it comes to maintaining weight loss The differences between traditional dieting and The Livy MethodWhat we work through on The Livy Method - issues and associationsMaintenance - the missing piece from other dietsHow survey participants have consistently changed the way they live their livesWhy some people may not lose weight with The Livy Method - what the evidence showsWhat the research and data are showing about obesity rates and where medical practitioners fit inThe value of community-based weight loss support Ruth’s final takeaways - a new survey is being launched soon. It is work - but it’s for you. You only have one life - to live your best life, you need to be a little selfish. Where to find Ruth’s research Meet Dr. Ruth Kane at the Menopause Conference in OctoberTo 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. You're going to have this ability to now reframe. Allow yourself time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. The thoughts and the feelings and the behavior cycle can start changing. Why is the living method successful? Does it actually work? How does it work? Does it work for maintenance? These are all questions that my guest today, Dr. Ruth Kane, is and has been uncovering over the last couple of years. Today, she's here to share what she has found through her research of the Livi Method, focusing on the weight loss program,

and then now on the maintenance program. I couldn't be more excited. I was raving about you, Ruth, last night because I was telling everyone during my late night live how I had the opportunity to chat with you during the day, which is always so exciting. First, hello, welcome, and thank you for taking the time today. Oh, it's great to be here. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Gina, for inviting me every session. session and as I said yesterday this is this research is like I'm near the end of my career and this research is the most fun research I've done the whole time and hopefully potentially the most impactful so I enjoy it and my team really enjoys it yeah so I want to get into that

but maybe um for the thousands of new members that we have that aren't familiar with you, maybe just a bit about your experience with the Libby Method, your background professionally, and then maybe why you decided to study the Libby Method. Okay, so I'm Ruth. I'm Ruth Kane. I'm a professor at University of Ottawa. I've got a funny accent because I'm a Kiwi. I'm from New Zealand. And I've been at the University of Ottawa now nearly 20 years, which is just a long time for me to be living in Canada and away from my own country, which I love. But I fell in love with a Quebecer and I ended up here. And thankfully I'm still in love with him, otherwise there'd be a wee bit

of resentment there. So I'm Ruth. I've been at the Faculty of Education at the university for 20 years and I happened to find, stumble upon the Livvy Method just like most people through seeing a friend or a colleague. And I noticed a colleague had changed. And I told her she was looking amazing and what was happening. And she introduced me to this program. And that was in 2019, I think.

Wow. And so I dabbled the first couple of sessions and thought I got to the, and I've said this before, I got to the mindfulness section where you ask yourself the four questions and, Gina, you used to constantly sort of look down and talk to your stomach and I thought this woman's a bit crazy, I'm not sure that's for me, only to discover later that that's one of the core foundations of the program and it's probably one of the things that sets it apart and so once I took the program more seriously I was very successful over three sessions I lost 70 pounds and just threw out

every piece of item of clothing I owned and this was all through COVID. So basically bought a whole new wardrobe when I flew to New Zealand and lived there for four months, five months, and haven't looked back since. But during that time, you were just hiring. You only had Andrea and a couple of other staff at the time. Yeah. And you were posting to hire people and I wrote to you and asked you whether I didn't want a position,

I didn't want a job, I had a job, but would you be willing to let me research the program? So I did that for a couple of years on my own. I'm grateful for access. We designed surveys and we had focus groups. And then we put in a funding bid and we got funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada to research it, mainly as an online learning community

support program rather than the weight loss because I'm not a health researcher so weight loss is not my jam in terms of scholarship but we can't get away from the weight loss so we've brought on research assistants from psychology and health studies to help us actually delve back down into the weight loss itself. And we've discovered lots of stuff and lots of good stuff, but also some challenges. I must admit, there's always challenges, but we've got an awful lot of very, very positive data. And so that's sort of how I got into it and why I'm still passionate about it. I think it, and I've heard many people say this, Gina, and you and I have discussed it, it is transformational in terms of health. I don't really care what the number on the scale says anymore,

but because I lost that 70 pounds, I stopped using a sleep apnea machine. I stopped all blood pressure medication that I'd been on since I was 35 years old, and I'm now 67 so I lost my weight in my 60s after um being what many of your members are a cyclical dieter never eating till two o'clock in the afternoon things like that yeah yeah well we were sort of talking last night how it is kind of social, right? Like what makes the living method different than any other diet? Let me ask you that. Well, there's an article that we're just about to send to publication that we believe that it's been constructed. I don't even know whether you know this term. I've talked to you about it previously.

Something called an education, a community of practice. And it's a way, it was a term coined by Laven Wagner to, it's Laven Wagner actually a couple, and he studied way back in the 90s, apprentices. He studied tailors and shipbuilders and butchers because he said there's a way of learning in situation, learning on the job, that is unique. It's different from learning at school. And your group runs as a community of practice because it's like there's

people on the periphery who are the new members and they come in and you've used this term in the maintenance they're testing the waters they're checking you out they're checking the scene out maybe they don't ask any questions but they sit around the edges and they listen to other people's questions and they watch and they watch and they watch and they read the resources. And gradually, if you imagine a circle, they get more confident and move towards the center where they may ask questions. But what you've done as the person creating this community of practice is you've put together experts, but you've curated a range of resources.

Experts are one resource. That's the medical practitioners, the naturopath, Dr. Paul, et cetera, Dr. Beverly, the hormone experts, that's one resource. All your posts are another resource. So they're all written posts. Your staff are a resource. They're an expertise level who have lived the program. And so you've connected all these people in this intricate sort of web where we can engage with these resources at our own pace,

at our own convenience. We can cycle back and recheck a post. we can listen to podcasts. And that's the way a community of practice works. But the thing about a community of practice, it's not about losing weight. It's about learning. So the unique thing, I believe, one of the unique things about the Livi Method is it's a process of learning, that we, as a member, I have the opportunity to interact with others going through the same learning experience.

Some of them are more experienced than I am, and so I can learn from their modelling, from their experiences. When you have the guests, the spilled the tea guests, we can learn from them. We can learn from the staff. But we also learn from each other at our own levels of membership. And we interact with the resources that you've curated this whole suite of different ways of engaging with new knowledge and new experience. And it fits the model of a community of practice just perfectly, which is about learning, but it's about practice. It's not just cognitive learning. It's not just

learning and memorizing facts. It's about learning that you turn into practice. So the practice is the understanding the richness of food, understanding the nutrient-rich food, understanding how to know when we're satisfied and putting that into practice so that's i don't know whether i've ever explained that like that to you actually but it's very much a community of practice and it's i mean this is why as an educator it's so exciting because it at our own need, at our own place, and we can make it personal. We can take what we need and we can take it when we need it.

Like some of the posts, I know you've said this before, but you may have a post. You had a lady on, Sharon, who had lost a lot of weight a couple of programs ago. Yeah, Sharon Burton-Robb. I think she's 163, probably more. Yeah, and she had a stack of her livy loser books and one of the things that is such an important takeaway from sharon's experience for everybody is she bought every book and she read and she highlighted what spoke to her in the moment and And if, as a researcher, I examined all of her books,

like her 10 programs or seven programs, I don't know, what she explained is she highlighted different things each time. So those resources, those books were very similar in text and content, but the content spoke to her differently in session one, in session two, in session three. And so she was taking from the content what she needed in the moment. And I think that's important for people to remember. There's lots of resources in your program.

There's lots of text. And I know in the beginning members get overwhelmed. But you take what you need in the moment and you cycle back. And next time you do the program, if you've still got weight you want to lose, something will speak to you differently. And so it's one of the reasons I think it's different I love it so I want to get I want to get into numbers I want to get into your thoughts about ozempic where the diet industry is that but first of all we have so many people who are listening right now they're week 11 of the program they want to know

what like what do you want people to know about being successful on the Livi method from everything you've studied and you learn, like what's the secret sauce? Obviously learning, practicing is really huge, especially how that factors into being able to maintain your weight. And I want to talk about that as well, but specifically for weight loss, what can you share with our members that is going to help them be successful? Okay. So the evidence that we've got from multiple surveys over multiple

years now with, like, I think the most people that answered one of our surveys in a session was around six and a half thousand. It's more or less the average of 4,000 a session I think we get. So we've got a lot of data. Every session, the average weight loss is about 11, between 11 and 13 pounds. So basically a pound a week. People lose a lot more than that because some people are in their second session and being a bit casual

or their body is wanting a bit of a break and needs a rest. And so they don't. You had a guest last week who had lost consistently every program, which is quite unusual, I find, in the data. Most people have a really good session, then perhaps one that they only lose, say, five pounds instead of the 20 they lost in the first session, and it all evens out. So about one to two pounds a week. It's a really steady, careful way of losing weight so so ruth i did the number on that she lost 111 pounds but over the course of a year so she did

lose pretty consistently group over group over group and in between groups but if you take the average of that it did average out to like two pounds a week like one to two pounds a week right and I think between 50 and more weight to lose they could lose a pound a week two pounds a week over the year people with less to lose are not going to lose that quickly you know they're not going to lose that so over the years I'm looking at another screen here over over two years, 2022 and 2023, so six different programs there, the gold standard for weight loss research is can you lose 5% of your body weight over six months? So that's what's called clinically significant weight loss in the obesity research. Now, your programs are only three, 95.6, 97, 97.6. So always above 95% of the people who were there at the end and answered the survey lost weight.

Now, you can say as a researcher, well, of course, they answered the survey, one, because they were still there at week 12, and two, because they lost weight. If they didn't lose weight, they wouldn't answer the survey. But, no, there were people who answered the survey who didn't lose weight. Often they put in their notes, this is my second time round, or this is my fourth time round, drop the ball, super stressed. I know why I didn't lose weight. So they often make that comment.

There are some people who don't lose weight, but it's a very small minority. What we found was if you're there in week 12, you've got a huge probability of losing weight. And so if you continue to follow and show up, 97% of the people report weight loss. And many of them, like in 70% and above, consistently over those six programs had clinically significant weight loss. And people had more than that. Like they had 10% of their body weight, which is really, really remarkable, to be honest. Well, this is where, you know, you have these drugs coming out, Ozempic, you know, even

gastric, like people are losing a lot of weight with the Libby method. It works. To Ruth's point, so 97.6% of people who fill out the survey are losing weight. But so if you think about how much we focus on the people who don't, right, so I want to put this in perspective, those of you who've been showing up and listening to the lives, especially, you know, we go through those four reasons why your weight might be slower to move with Dr. Paul, right, those hormones, inflammation, digestive sensitivities, gut issues, and whatnot. And I just really want to put that in perspective for you because this is how much we really care about every single

person get across that finish line. In some circumstances, there are a very small percentage of people who aren't seeing much movement on that scale. They tend to be more vocal and we tend to really focus on them because those tend to be the people who need the most help. But at the end of the day, this is where I mean, most people at the end of the program are like, Oh, that was easy. That worked. That was great. Like, you know, lost weight just fine and whatnot. So those are huge numbers. I also just want to indulge in what Ruth was talking about. So the gold standard of weight loss is 5% lost in six months. People are seeing that in three months of the living method. So the program works. We can say, I mean, we know it works. Yeah. So we went to the Canadian

obesity summit and you shared, you did an e-presentation, you shared this information. So where are we at now with it? Where are we at now with it? And what's the focus moving forward? Well, the focus moving forward is to answer what the experts at the Obesity Summit asked us to do, because they said, yes, that's very impressive. That's really good. Congratulations. You've got a program, people lose weight. But, and it's a big but, because I could do the same surveys with a lot of diet programs and people would lose weight. Like diets make you lose weight. They said, come back to us.

It happens every two years. Come back in two years with evidence that people have kept it off. So the challenge is maintaining your weight loss. And that is the thing that, and even with the new drugs, which I know some people need for health reasons to lose weight um or for whatever reason when you stop taking ozempic you will start putting the weight on because ozempic is a manufactured hormone that increases your satiety levels so it makes you feel full you don't want to eat it's as though you've already had dinner.

And so you basically get signals in the brain that, no, you don't want to eat anymore. You're satisfied. So it's your satiety hormones. One of the things that I talk about the Livvy Method as a learning experience is, you know that mumbo jumbo that I walked away from in week three or four when you asked us to talk to your stomach yeah that is learning about satiety and yes it is learning

about your own satiety yeah those four questions and getting the handle on, is it different when I have a nutrient-rich meal with lots of avocado, with healthy fats, with nuts and everything, than have what I used to have as a dieter, a bowl of lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber and celery? celery and is it different when i eat full fat yogurt instead of that low fat rubbish that i used to eat but so learning that is turning on your satire i don't know whether you can turn on hormones i'm not a medical person but basically that is what you're learning. Yes. And so even if you do, and they're possibly members, there are members in your group who are on Ozambique or Wagovi or one of the drugs because I've talked to them in focus groups.

But even if you're doing that, your best bet to get double bang for your buck is to follow a nutrient-rich program of eating, and you learn to do that on this program. So they would complement each other if your doctor has advised you that you need ozempic or you need wagovi that's that's fine but this will enable you to learn along the way what it is to nourish your body the best well it's learning it comes back to the the platform of learning it comes you know all of our gas this is about making changes rewiring, your body physically and your brain and the way you've come to think around foods. And we were talking last night about how it's so important to empower people and teach people to do that because this is sort of like, there's limited access to healthcare professionals and in sort of empowering our members to be able to do the change, the things, do the things they need to do to see the change that they want to see, um,

is, is a big part of this. This is, this is not just following a diet. In fact, the what to eat and when is the, such a small part of it. Yes part of it. Yes, there's a rhyme and a reason to all the different tweaks that we're making each week, both physically and mentally. But it's really about the person learning to make change that's going to support the weight that they've lost. Because you're right, it's one thing to lose your weight. Although we do have to talk about the Libby method. There is no downside to it. So it is different than other diets and that people are actually getting healthier while following the program. So there is that differentiation between just losing weight and losing weight, but we want you to maintain it. And this is why I say to people, losing weight is one thing. Everything that we're doing when following the program is

feeding into your ability to be able to maintain and sustain your weight. So what are you learning in maintenance? Because it's great. Like if you want to lose weight, I hear some people saying, I only lost this. I only lost that, you know, with where we're at in the program right now, we've had these conversations, right? Four reasons why your weight might be slower to move. There's maximizing, post your 20 questions in the group, reach out for help. But I want to talk bigger picture than that. I want to talk maintenance. Let's assume every single person in here right now reaches their goal and is ready for maintenance. What do they need to know about maintaining their weight? Okay. I think perhaps people took, sometimes people misunderstand the finally forever, the terminology finally and forever and go off and live your life.

Because it doesn't mean like at the end of a different diet, whether it was counting points or keto or Bernstein or any of those other diets, you do go back to living your life because those diets are unsustainable for a lifetime. And so, but when you go on finally and forever from the living method, you have to take your learning with you. You can't just say, gee, thanks, Gina. I've lost 80 pounds. Love you. Often do. Live the life that you used to live. You are a different person. You are no longer a dieter. You are somebody who feeds your body healthy food so there are certain i like you've always said i don't want people following the program in 10 years time and i've sort of challenged

you on that and said but there's principles underpinning the program yes that we must keep following. And we want to keep following because that's what makes us feel good. That's what gives us the healthy body that we've worked so hard to get. And they're just simple principles that they're almost there and the people that have maintained their weight loss, that's part of their life now. They eat protein for breakfast. They keep themselves hydrated. They notice when they're hungry. They notice when they're satisfied. They eat vegetables, they eat fiber, they eat leafy greens, like they make sure they have healthy fats. They don't go back to eating low fat products that are full of chemicals and emulsifiers and fillers. So principles of the Livi method, It is like there's no downside to doing the Livy Method. You don't have children looking at mummy like,

why are you only eating cabbage soup? Like there's nothing wacky about the Livy Method and science is catching up with it. So science is now saying, especially if you begin to work out, you begin to do resistance training, which I've discovered at my age, is critical. And it's actually critical at all stages of life, but especially if I'm at 67, if I want to be independent

like my mother at 94, I need to be able to pick up my own suitcase. I need strength, and you can only get that through resistance training and eating protein. Yeah. You know, eat protein for breakfast. And, like, I don't eat meat anymore, so I really have to focus on where am I getting my protein and pay attention to that like if I want to maintain my weight maintaining my muscle mass

is critical maintaining muscle mass means that you have to eat protein. And so I never ate protein for breakfast before the Libby Method, and now it's a sort of it's a principle I live by. So to maintain your weight, you still have to pay attention. Yes. You do. It's your body. Like you can't, I guess you can't lose all your weight, take the time to solidify it and then say, well,

I'm just going to eat whatever I like. I'm going to go back to having mac and cheese and I'm going to go back to, and it's not having a mac and cheese or a hamburger that's the problem. It's having them multiple times in a week. And then say, well, this is bullshit. You can't maintain your weight. Not if you feed it crap. No, sorry.

Well, yeah, I mean, I've had, you know, I've had, you know, I've ar, you know, I've had, you know, I've seen some people come and go through the program and, you know, someone who's gained weight back now, that program is bullshit. You know, Gina and her finally in forever. And I say finally in forever is not a magic pill. It's what you've learned. It's what you've learned and the changes that you've made. And, you know, to be so in tune with your body that you know, if you know, if like, like you said last night, when I was talking to you, like, do you not notice when you're gaining that weight back? And what are you doing about it? And why is it happening? Like

situational change, stress, something, you know, extreme happening in your life, not being mindful of the choices that you're making falling back into old habits. And it's not me blaming the person, but one of the things that like, there's a couple of things, the way you lose weight on the Libby method is a healthy, sustainable way, you know, trying, focusing on lowering that set point, which I want to talk to you too about. Um, but really it's what you're learning. You're learning to work through your issues, your associations, how you cope with food, your beliefs, your habits, like your traumas for some of you. And that is really the sustainability. When I say like all the things that you're solidifying your weight, which is really important, but to learning what maintenance looks like and feels like to you, testing the waters, learning to trust yourself, um, you know, understanding what your new why is for managing your stress and trying to get better sleep and going from chasing the number on the scale to

just living your life. So it's a whole other beast. It's a whole other can of worms. This is why I've been, you know, I do suggest that when people are done losing their weight, they really join that maintenance group. And when I'm, you know, when I have it ready to go, the maintenance program, because that is going to be a game changer. Ruth is saying how the diet industry is catching up to me in the sense of the science. So this is the same shit I've been saying for 30 years and the science is finally there and I love that. But I feel like with what I'm doing in maintenance,

this is where I'm ahead of it again. But the conversations that we've been having about weight loss in the last few years, people are just having, they're just starting to have. No one is talking about maintenance in the way that we talk about maintenance in the maintenance group. It's such a big conversation. So a couple of things I want to know about maintenance. So what, why, why do people gain their weight back? Cause you've talked to people who've gained their weight back. So how do people not like, what's your

perspective on that? Why do people gain weight back back how do they feel about that when they're from the conversations you've had yeah we had focus groups earlier well late last year with people in the maintenance group and half of them have gained their weight back that that were in the focus group and so in talking to, the underlying common pattern was stress. Yeah. So like we do live in a very demanding, stressful age. Like I'm privileged. I can step outside of it. I live in the country.

I can take time for myself but people with young children and jobs that require them to travel or drive an hour and consume it and commute to traffic and like that's stress like driving to work makes you stress so there's developing ways of coping with stress is a huge one. And the people I spoke with who had put it on, put weight back on, they all understood why, which is an enormous step forward. So they understood what they'd done to lose the weight. They were annoyed. They were pretty cross with themselves for putting it back on.

But if they took a minute and reflected, as we did in the focus groups, they could recognise why they'd put it back on. And so that is good to know, and it does resonate with what the research says. The people who had kept it off basically said, well, I live differently. I have a new identity to what I used to be. I'm still the same person. I'm still Ruth, but I don't identify as somebody who's trying to lose weight.

I'm no longer a dieter. What I am is I'm Ruth. I'm active. I go to the gym most mornings. I move my body. I enjoy every single morning. I get up well before my partner. We've got a different sleep schedule. He stays up late. I go to bed early and I sit outside on a rock and have my cup of tea or

cup of coffee and I just sit there, usually listening to podcasts, but sometimes not even doing that. I make sure I've got an hour before I have to go to the gym. And I used to get up. I still work in the same university and I'm still one of the leadership team. I'm head of graduate studies. I used to get up and I used to sit at my computer and catch up on work because I thought, I've got to get it done. I've got to get up and I used to sit at my computer and catch up on work because I thought I've got to get it done. I've got to get it done. I've got to get it done. But somehow the work is still there when I come home from the gym and start at nine in the morning and I get it done. And I stop at five and I get it done.

Somehow I get it done somehow I get it done but I live my life differently and I have to say I was raised a fairly strict in a strict catholic family and I was told putting myself first was selfish my whole life and so it's I'm selfish now like I look after myself but I still do my job I'm high performing as a professor I'm very good at what I do but now I just don't do it at nights and weekends and first thing in the morning I do other stuff and so you live and every woman I spoke to and there were mainly women on the focus groups who had successfully maintained their weight loss for over two years spoke like that. I live a different life than I used to. And they all follow the basic principles of the program. They don't weigh

themselves anymore, but they make sure every meal they have is full of as much nutrients as possible they haven't gone back to low-fat foods they haven't gone back to grabbing a high dense calorie snack they they think they've taken what they've learned into their life they they're a product of the changes that they're making just like you can't go back to what you were doing before because the way you look and felt before was a product of how you acted before, how you lived before, how you thought before. And this is why if you find yourself

falling back into old habits, you gain that way back. I have so much respect when you are back because you learn from that. The setback is the set up for success. And this is where, when we talk about with Dr. Beverly, for example, you know, or even Dr. Dina about learning, unlearning, relearning, learning new things, you know, or who am I, or we talk about visualizing who you want to be, that person who loses that weight. What does that feel like? What does that look like? What, what is what is your

day as that person? What what does that look like? Like your the Ruth, for example, old Ruth, get up, go to her computer, work all day, do whatever, drink coffee, you know, not eat nutrient rich versus the 70 pound lost Ruth now, who has a totally different routine. And this is why it's like so much bigger, so much bigger than just losing the weight. And this is why it's like so much bigger, so much bigger than just losing the weight. And this is why I hope this conversation brings you the appreciation to understand all of the work that you're doing and why it fits in. Let's talk about why people don't lose weight. Why don't they lose weight? So you've talked to people. I see a couple of people here. I've only lost six pounds. I'm having a hard time.

I could go into the four reasons why your weight might be slower to move. I can go into all the things that people, you know, can do, you know, to support themselves. But why do you, in the experience that you've had, I'm sure you've talked to people who haven't lost weight. What, what's happening there? Any advice for them? Well, for the, for the member who just wrote in and said, I've only lost six pounds and is really discouraged. And, yeah, you can be discouraged like you were hoping to lose more. However, there's a lot to be said if not this what. Like the six pounds you've lost in 10 weeks if you hadn't been doing this

perhaps you could have put on six pounds if you hadn't changed your eating and been eating healthy nutritious food and like there have been people who didn't, we used to ask, we're changing the survey, as you know, Gina, talking to you and your team yesterday, but we used to ask, in which week did you start losing weight? And seriously, people, there are a lot of people that don't start losing until week 9, 10, whatever. I don't know why. No idea why. Yeah, I do.

Their bodies take time. Yeah. Yeah. So only losing six pounds, I don't know how to encourage you and give you the encouragement to keep going but the evidence suggests that you will lose on this program like if you stick with it and you cannot you're not hurting yourself by doing it there's no no negative health outcome from doing the living method. You're getting the nutrients you need. You're getting the food you need. You're learning how to read your body's

cues. Maybe if you've lost six pounds and you are hoping to lose at least 12 or more maybe your portions are still too big i don't know but your body will tell you that if you learn to listen to your body and um and six pounds it sort of depends how how much you've got to lose because somebody who's only got 10 pounds to lose six pounds may be what they lose in one program yeah like someone with 60 pounds to lose six pounds disappears pretty quickly we're all different so so let's talk about it's just something occurred to me because you know I think sometimes people think well if this doesn't work for me I'm going to do ozempic I'm going to do I'm going to take the weight loss meds I'm going to go do this I'm going to do that I mean but it's it's not any less work and you know again it comes down to maintenance it comes down to maintenance. It comes down to, sure, they can help you lose weight, but if you're not doing the kind

of work that you need to do or that you are doing with this program, you're going to gain that weight back. You're going to gain that weight back. The whole conversation is maintenance. Everything that you are doing to lose weight, feeding into your ability to maintain and sustain your weight. Last night, we were just talking about obesity rates and, you know, the benefits of that.

What do you think the Libby Method is going to do for the world? If we end up getting it out there and, you know, to millions of people, what do you think it's going to do? Well, I think from what I understand from the research and the data, over half of North America is overweight. That's a lot of people. And what the research is clearly showing at the moment, like the new drugs, Ozempic, Wegovi,

there's new ones coming through the pipeline that will be available in five to ten years. Yeah. Like there will be drugs for weight loss. Not everybody can afford them we cannot at the moment in Canada which is so different from the USA a lot of us can't get appointments face to face with medical practitioners like we don't have doctors anymore and I live in Quebec and it's quite serious here

in the lack of medical practitioners. Medical practitioners are critical for you to test your blood, to make sure your medications are correct, et cetera. But weight loss is not going to be solved by medicine. It's medical practitioners because we don't have enough of them to meet with us all to help us one on one. We don't have enough dieticians. We don't have enough health professionals. I believe, and there's research coming out of the UK and United States, is with community-based medicine, like the Livvy Method, it's not medicine so much as community-based support.

That in the Livvy Facebook group, and there's others that work just on the app, and I appreciate there's different preferences. But the actual Facebook group serves as a community of practice, and that's the community you can turn to for support, to see someone and understand somebody else's journey. And in the United Kingdom, they're beginning to invest in this as a treatment, not for obesity at this point in time, but they've done it for diabetes. They've done it for new mums. They've done it for chronic pain.

They've done it for all different metabolic diseases or conditions, doctors will prescribe that you join a group. And you join a group for 12 weeks, and it's not led by a doctor. It's led by a diabetic, type 2 diabetic, who reversed their diabetes. And you put a group of people together and you support each other it sounds like how can that beat medicine but it's working it's working there's chronic pain groups there's diabetes groups there's there's incontinence groups there's there's all these different conditions that people are helping each other navigate through the illness or the condition and come out the other side. And they check in with their doctor just for their medications to be adjusted. But the doctor is not a member of the group.

This is why working with your health care professional is not a member of the group. This is why working with your healthcare professional is such a benefit. Yeah. But at the same time, this is like, it's not, it's not the food. It's not, yes, the food, like what to eat, when, the food plan, all of that. Of course, the guidelines, try not to go too long without eating. All of that is so important. But that is not, like you, this is why you get A-type people, A-type people who are like, oh, just follow the guidelines, try not to go too long without eating. All of that is so important, but that is not like you, this is why you get a type people, a type people who are like, Oh, just follow the, follow the guidelines done. Lost my weight, follow the guidelines. But for most people,

it's all the rest of it. It's, it's needing that support. It's when life is smacking them in the face, it's working through their issues, associations, feeling like they're not alone, feeling like there are people there to support them. It's the social part. It's the learning part. It's all the rest of it. That's what the diet industry has not been talking about. They don't talk about it in relation to dieting, weight loss. They don't talk about it when it comes to maintenance. And this, I believe, is the secret sauce to the Levy method. I know there's a lot of working parts, the method itself. I know it's me,

the resources, our guests, our community, but really it's everything else. You are not going to find the secret sauce, sustainable, maintainable weight loss through the food plan, through what you are eating and when that is not it. That is not it. Um, okay. I've, I've used up a lot of your time at pretty much almost every minute. Final takeaways, Ruth, final, like, I, I just, I love this conversation and I love that people are listening to it in week 11 of the program, really reflecting back on all the struggles, everything you've been working through, every time you fall back into old habits, you know, every time you're like,

oh my God, am I ever going to get there? That's the work. You are doing the work. That's the important work here. The final word and takeaways, Ruth? Just that we'll be launching a survey in the next couple of weeks. We're just adjusting it so it's not too long for you

because we've got so much data. The other thing, like it is worth, but it's for you. It's for you and you're worth it. You're not doing this for anybody else. And like people I know at the end of the program, and I've expressed personally to Gina on a number of occasions that encountering the Livi Method has transformed my life. It's probably extended years onto my life because of health benefits

from it and getting off medications. But you only have, depending on your spiritual beliefs, you have one life. This is the life you're living now. To be your very best self, you've got to be a little selfish. You've got to take time for yourself. It enables you to care for others and to to shine sort of love and gratitude to others but yeah you're worth it you're worth it like don't I was so thrilled and I told Gina

I was so thrilled for your guest last week who has gone through all these programs over a year and a bit. She's lost 100 pounds. But what thrilled me was she's only 49. Like, many of us, we were in our 60s when we encountered Gina's program. For those of you in your 30s and 40s, you have got such rich lives ahead of you. And so have we in our 60s and 70s and 80s. Of course. You know, to get healthy and to be able to make the most of whatever life you have is a huge privilege. It's a huge privilege.

And nobody's going to do it for us i'm sorry we have to do it we can use all the resources and use each other but we have to do it and um yeah that wasn't really about research that last one i i love it this is why i love you because you are actually truly passionate about not just the living method, but really trying to understand and find out what actually is going to help people to truly live their best lives. I mean, that's what motivates me every day as well. You know that it's why I love you. It's why I adore you. And it's why I appreciate you. And the fact that you have so much passion for the living method, which ultimately is about helping people. I just,

you know, I, I, I, that's so special. Um, so fill out Ruth's survey at the end of the program. Right now, she's focused specifically on maintenance. If anyone who's listening right now, you've been maintaining your weight for one to two plus years. Ruth, please contact us. You can just use the contact form on our website or message us, weightloss at GinaLivey.com. Ruth is looking for you. We really want to dive into that. And not only that, but figure out what more we can do to help support people, not just with losing weight, but maintaining their weight and beyond. Because I want to help each and every one of you.

And your feedback is so important because it enables us to do that. On the survey, you can tell us what you loved about the program, what you didn't like about the program, what you would like to see more of, or you would like us to change. I want the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. So if I can have one ask, please take time to fill out the survey at the end of the program. We always get people asking about where they can find your research behind the Living Method, Ruth.

I know we used to have a place on the website, but if they're interested in that, what can we do for our members? I think that you've got, we'd have to check with your team whether you've got our presentations up on a research page on the Livy website. We don't have any published publications as such. We've got presentations. We should have publications within the next six months.

There's three of them underway at the moment. But we don't have, we've got the statistics, like we've got the summaries of all the statistical analysis, which I could give to Drew. If you've got a page, you can have it up. It's not in a form that I can put it on the university websites yet because it's just sort of synthesis of the data. But we could put it up if there's a research page. We were talking about that.

I don't know whether we did it or not. I don know either but i'm gonna get on it drew i know drew's listening is drew here well jody's here brennan's here i'm sure drew is uh drew will hear about it so because i'll just talk to him i have a meeting with him soon so i'll let him know okay you know i i love the fact that you uh take time to come on here um thank you so much uh thanks everyone who's been listening i've been looking at your questions um yeah again our conversations are never what you think that they're going to be and i thought this one was so insightful really people want to know what what have you learned from studying the living method how can they benefit from what you have learned from studying the living method? We know it works. Now we're just going to focus and prove that.

It works for maintenance as well. That's our next step. Yeah, and then Ruth and I are hoping that that next Canadian Obesity Summit is somewhere fun where we can go and hang out. I'm looking forward to hanging out with Ruth. It's actually, I talked to Ruth about coming to the menopause conference in October. So we're going to try to get Ruth to come join us. So

you'll have an opportunity to meet her, speak with her. And I think we're going to do a little like fireside chat with Ruth while we are there. So if you are coming to the menopause conference, you'll have an opportunity to meet Ruth, the amazing professor Ruth Kane. Post menopausal. I'll be there. I'm somewhere in between the pauses. All right, Ruth, thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for listening today.

Bye. Until next time, bye.