The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Researching The Livy Method with Professor Ruth Kane - Winter 2024

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

In this segment, recorded on March 28, 2024, Gina discusses the research going into The Livy Method with Professor Ruth Kane from the University of Ottawa.If you are in the Winter 2024 Support Group, you can check out the full video here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2024Topics covered:Introducing Dr. Ruth Kane and her connections to The Livy Method.If you are here at Week 11, you are a success! Tell us about your experience in the upcoming survey!The Livy Method and clinically significant weight loss.Checking in daily and participating in the community are strong determinants of success on The Program.What makes The Livy Method different from other weight loss programs?Differentiating The Livy Method from current diet trends and other diets out there.The Livy Method is the only healthy way to lose weight.The Livy Method asks you to pay attention to YOU and listen to the messages of YOUR body.Some of the reasons people may not be successful with the Livy Method.Ultra-processed foods are driving the overweight population.The problems with food labelling, ultra-processed foods, and the industry driving food addiction.The impact of fibre eaten from whole foods and leafy greens on The Livy Method.Whole foods versus their low-fat counterparts - there is no comparison! It feels good to feel good!Yes, you can lose the weight! Maintenance is about using what you learned and feeling good about your choices!As you live your life after weight loss, the tweaks don't continue but the principles of The Livy Method do.Big takeaways from studying Maintenance include the magnitude of the roles stress and sleep play.You have to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy.Perspectives on weight loss medications and surgeries.We've unlearned how to listen to our bodies.We can influence others by the impact of our choices.Listening, learning, and unlearning are important ways to work with our body.When a potato chip is not a potato chip.Next steps: Take time to fill out our survey coming on April 1st.Ruth's final words: apply what you have learned and lean into the community!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. 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 weight loss so hard? What does it take to lose your weight finally and forever? Does the Libby Method work? Is it sustainable? What's the common denominator between people who are successful at losing their weight, people who are not, people who are successful at maintaining, people who are not?

Those are all the things we are going to discuss with one of my favorite people, Dr. Professor Ruth Kane is joining me today. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi. Ruth is fine. Dr. Professor is a bit over the top.

Hi, Gina. Great to be here again. I'm excited to have you. So, you know, many people who have done, you know, many rounds of the Libby Method obviously know who you are. I talk about you a lot. There are a lot of new people though, like we have with every group who may not be familiar with you, although I do tend to talk a lot about you around here. So maybe let's do a quick introduction, Ruth, of who you are and maybe your experience with the Living Method. Okay. I'm Ruth, Ruth Kane. I've got a funny accent because I'm a Kiwi. I'm a New Zealander, been a professor at the University of Ottawa since 2006. I started the Livvy Method in 2019 after seeing a colleague walking across campus and thinking she looks different in some way and she graciously let me know about Gina's program. I have to acknowledge and I've told Gina this before that I went on to the

website and I thought what is this skinny blonde streak of lightning going to teach me dumpy 200 pound plus Ruth about losing weight so that was my first reaction so I did three full groups and lost the first one was a bit hit and miss um or maybe the second I can't quite remember but I lost over 60 pounds from 216 to 150. And I found it quite remarkable. And to be honest, I found it quite easy in that the program, the method just fitted into real life. And I was fascinated. You'll recall, Gina, you were hiring your first staff. You only had one staff member, I think, at the time or two. And you were hiring people and you put out a call and I wrote to you and Tony and said, I don't want to work with you at the moment, but I would love to research the program.

Because what I saw in your approach, I'm a teacher educator, I'm an educator, I'm not a health researcher. I just couldn't believe that you kept a community of at that time, gosh, probably only 3000 members, you know, two and a half 3000 members, but you kept them engaged for 12 weeks. And like we teach 12 week semesters at university and to have our students attend and be engaged for 12 weeks is considered quite remarkable. So, and we don't have that many students. So I was fascinated about how you built a community first of all, but then of course, over the the years I've become more interested in the weight loss which or the success and the health benefits that people seem to enjoy and so it's coming up on two years ago that we won the Sherp Grant to investigate the program and so we've been running

surveys focus groups and the weight loss but as you know we've sort of moved to a focus on maintenance although we're still going to maintain the survey and the weight loss program. So it's a bit of an unusual situation because I'm a researcher, I'm a professor of education but I'm researching something I'm really passionate about. So you have to be quite careful that you don't only listen to the data that tells you, yeah, it's great, it's great, you know, and you ignore all the other data.

So I'm very mindful of the fact that people could say, oh, yes, but you've been through it. So you're not going to listen to the negative data. But we do we do click. We do pay attention to everything. And I feed it back anonymously to you and Tony and your team to if there's advice or if there's anything that you need to attend to. So that's where we started. Yeah. And I think it's important that you, you do work independently of what we do here, weight loss by Gina and Ruth tells me the good, the bad, the ugly of all of our feedback. And I think we are both on a mission to really figure

this out, to see how we can truly best support people. And Ruth has done probably hundreds of focus groups with our members. We've done so many surveys. She won't be doing the focus groups with our weight loss members this time around because she's busy doing that with our maintenance members right now. But the data collected is just as important. So on Monday, we're actually going to post a survey and you'll have the opportunity to take part in giving us feedback about what you have learned, what you love, maybe what you don't like about the program. So if you can take time to fill out that on Monday, that would be amazing. Let's talk about, I mean, where should we go with this? Should we talk about what we've learned about the Libby Method in general?

Should we start with that? So from the survey, just especially for members who this is their first time in the survey, and congratulations to you if you're still here in week 11 because that is one of the determinants of success. The survey shows very clearly. Now, bear in mind we could have 10,000 members in a group or 20,000 members, and they don't all answer the survey. But we get very good response rates, and we would appreciate even greater response rates.

So statistically, we get very good responses, response rates. But of course, the people filling out the survey are the people still there in week 12. So they're usually the more positive ones about the program. But people, the evidence from the surveys consistently shows that there are a large number of people, a large percentage of people who answer the survey, it's up in the 90s, who lose weight. So that's the first thing. There is 80% of them lose what we call clinically significant weight loss. And clinically significant weight loss is 5% of your original body weight over six months. Now the program is only three months and the clinically significant is deliberately over six months because it's very, we all know that there's a

lot of quick fix diets and you can dramatically lose weight by starving yourself or doing something wacky, stupid that we've all done, we've all done. But the clinically significant is a measure over six months. And typically members who lose consistently clinically significant weight loss are those who, and this is sort of the cross tabulations we've done on the data that show that one element is significantly related to the other element so checking in regularly every day or three or four times a week listening to the check-in the little genus check-in lives every morning. And those people who participate in the Facebook group regularly, every day, have a higher satisfaction rate with the program, which is not unexpected.

However, you also have to recognize that there are people that never check into Facebook and still succeed so they their personality their characteristics what they're that they need from the program they find through the app and that's it they don't go to Facebook they use the Livy AI they they check the five minute check-in every morning on the app. They may listen to the lives live, but they may not. They may listen to them only as recordings as they go for a walk or drive home in the afternoon. And so that's all checking in.

It's all keeping yourself part of the wider community, even if you don't post questions and answer. And that's a strong, the highest determinant of whether you're going to be successful with your weight loss. It's consistently making this your new behavior every day that you anchor your day. And a lot of people use that word. I anchor my day with Gina's checker I listen to that every day and that's a real determinant it's of how successful you are in the program yeah I mean I kind of knew that I mean I did know that because you and I've had conversations about about this now Ruth you've been to the you know in you're not just keeping

eyes on what we're doing here but you you did any presentation at the Canadian Obesity Summit last year you are you know keeping your eye out for what's going on out there what do you think makes the Libby method different than other diets that are out there I think I know what makes it different. It's finding the, and some of this, unfortunately, in the health professions research area, they're really interested in randomized controlled trials. And you can't do those on diets unless you lock people up in a hospital and you, which there have been some remarkable ones like that done but what makes it different is every diet we've ever done they tell you exactly what to eat or how many ounces how many grams how many points how many grams, how many points, how many calories, all that.

And you do that for a number of weeks for a time, and then you stop, you've lost your weight, and then what? You go back to living the way you did that put on all your weight. So that's the sort of, I don't want to say the secret sauce or anything like that, but the thing that the members have told me over and over again in focus groups and what comes through the research is in this program, you learn about nourishing your body. You learn how to eat. There is so much knowledge available to you and you take what you need when you're ready. And this is why evidence suggests from the surveys,

et cetera, that the more programs that you do, the more likely you are to keep the weight off. I don't mean that you have to do programs forever. You don't. But to do one program and lose 20 pounds and not have learned all the strategies you need to go on with your life in a different relationship with food because we have to be honest with ourselves someone like myself who struggled with a weight all her life went on yo-yo diets paid a fortune to try and lose weight in the wackiest way possible, and I know a lot of members have done this, we can't go back to that. Something we were doing in our life, and it's different for every one of us, we're individuals, something we were doing over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, was leading to the weight gain,

was leading to us being more overweight than we were comfortable with, whatever that weight is. And so the Livi Method, if you take the time to learn the strategies, to learn how to re-listen to your body, because a lot of us have stopped that many, many years ago, and that is very, very difficult. As somebody who was in that position and talking to so many of your members, I always ask them when I was doing focus groups in the weight loss, what do you think of the four questions?

Have you mastered them? And many, many people will not understand the four questions or be able to make them a habit until they've done three groups, four groups, and it's that that will carry you through maintenance. It will carry you through the rest of your life knowing, oh, I'm satisfied. I can walk away instead of just mindlessly eating. So it's more the mind stuff, Gina, that we need to pay attention to. And that's what makes this program different.

I love that you mentioned that because as you know, we're winding down the current group and people are wondering, should I sign up again? You know, I even, I even, or someone like someone the other day said, am I brave enough to go on my own? I'm just like, it's not about being brave enough to do it on your own, or you should know this already, or you could do it on your own. It's, it's really putting that time in. There's such a benefit to, to showing up every day, focusing on yourself and, and putting that time in like you, you can lose the weight physically, but what we've learned is it doesn't mean that you are done mentally doing the work that you're going to need to do or work through the things that you need to do in order to be able to sustain and maintain your weight. Um, that was a huge, huge thing for me when you mentioned that originally, that it wasn't really like, it's not how, how, how little or how much you have to lose that,

that, you know, dictates, are you going to be successful in maintenance it's the time that you put into working working on the habits that are going to sustain the new lifestyle i've never asked you this um but you know you went to the obesity summit you've been studying the living method you kind of you got a sense of what's going on in the diet industry right now where does the where do you think the living method fits fits like where does it fit I don't quite understand where well where do you like with what's going on in the diet industry weight loss medications all the other diets that are out there when maybe this how would you differentiate the Libby method than from any other diet? Uh, I think it's the only approach to weight loss that I have tried myself and that I've ever heard of, which is healthy,

which is good for your body rather than bad for your body. Because I grew up, I'm 67 next month. I grew up in the, I remember I had injections at one stage when I was at university. What was that? It was banned. It was actually speed or something they were injecting. Like, give me a break. I've had cabbage soup. I've had this.

I've had that. Like, none of those are good for your body. Low fat diets are bad for your body, like low carb, all of them. This is the only approach to losing weight that actually nourishes your body, that actually, and what I've said to you before and to reassure the members that there's a lot of what is in the Livy method that science is just in the last decade catching up with and saying well yeah you should do this you shouldn't do that like it was lowfat for a while, and now it's very, very clear that all those low-fat foods that we used to eat, and for a lot of us it's very, very difficult to make the change

and buy a full-fat yogurt off the shelf rather than a low-fat yogurt. And those low-fat yogurts that's been demonstrated now are so full of chemical fillers and gums and sugars and everything. And those things drive your appetite. So it's, I mean, I think the Livvy Method is the only healthy approach to losing weight. And to reassure members of some of you are a little bit discouraged because you hear other members say they lost 30 pounds or they lost 40 pounds. And Kelly was on the other day as your special guest, and I forget how much she had lost. The average weight loss on the Livy method is 12 pounds a session. So it's, and every survey

we do, we get the same figure, 11 point something, 12 point something. So it's a pound a week. That is so healthy. Even the Heart Foundation will tell you, Di heart foundation will tell you diabetes canada will tell you a pound a week is excellent and so when you see colleagues or members losing 20 or 30 pounds just remember they have that to lose and you may not and to lose 30 pounds one session means the next session they'll probably lose 10 because their body has to adjust and you've got to even that out. And losing a pound a week, I mean, imagine that. That's 52 pounds a year, isn't it? 52 weeks.

God, I'll get myself a bit worried there. Yeah, so slow and steady is the way. Like I was reading an article by an Australian health researcher or diet researcher recently, and he's advocating for this crazy, it's sort of, I sort of understand what he's trying to do, but he wants his clients to lose weight, and then he deliberately plateaus them for so many weeks and then lose weight.

But again, every other diet is manipulating your body. And maybe this is the difference Gina the Livvy method asks you to listen to your body because my body is different to yours is different from Tony's is different from Sonia's from everybody and we're going to respond differently to your tweaks so So our job as a member, it is like a course, it is like taking a university course, is to pay attention and listen. Because when you go on to finally and forever, it's you and your body that have got to do it it's not Gina it's not Kim it's not others within the group it's you so while you've got the community around you like a big blanket pay attention to your body ask all the questions you need and learn and it takes time it takes time yeah I love that you mentioned

that because people will be like I only lost you know week five I've only lost five pounds that's amazing you know week 10 I've only lost 10 pounds that's amazing you know and to your point we've had heard so many people who don't even lose any in their first program because it takes their body time to adjust to the changes. And then they go and lose 30 pounds their next program. Or some people lose 30 pounds their first program and maybe 5 pounds their second program. And everybody is different. Some people lose 10 in their first group and 20 or 30 in their second group. Everyone is different.

I love that. Listen to your body. We're not trying to manipulate it, control it, moderate it. We're trying to get in tune to it. And I love the living method because it systematically, you know, lays out everything for you to do to help your body specifically focus on fat loss and highlight and bring up all the things that you need to work through. Okay. So I want to transition and talk about maintenance then. But before I do, we talked about the common denominator of people who are successful with the Libby method.

What is the common denominator of people who aren't successful? Why are people not successful with the Libby method? Let's talk about that. I think the reason they're not successful is there's lots of reasons they're all individuals life happens for one life happens but um there have been the a handful of people i've interviewed or i've talked to in the focus group who say they're doing everything and their body's not moving and they really look to me to give them the answers but I I don't know like I'm not a doctor apart from getting your blood work regularly so you can see the internal changes that might be happening even people you know i don't see if people are following the livi method as it's laid out for them unless for some read well even that wouldn't work i was going

to say unless they're eating eating enormous portions but even that wouldn't work I was going to say unless they're eating eating enormous portions but even that wouldn't work because if they're following it and they learn how what being satisfied means their portions will be right for them so I think it's they don't put in the time I think they don't put in the time I think we're conditioned and I think for most people they're super super stressed like we go through life young mums people who hold down a job have children I think from the research and this is not the livingy Method research, but from the nutrition research worldwide, what's driving, and it's quite well known, but it's difficult to do anything about it. What drives the overweight and the need to lose weight is processed food, ultra processed food, not just processed food,

because milk is processed and yogurt is processed, but ultra processed foods. And unfortunately, ultra processed foods are incredibly efficient for people. They're cheap, they're easy to buy, they're accessible, they're easy for mom or dad to throw together a meal for children for the family they're easy to grab on the way to sports practice or on dropping your kid off for music lessons or what have you yeah sure and that is what's full of chemicals that is what's got no nutrition in it, very little nutrition. And unfortunately, there is very little regulation in North America on how foods are labelled. So you can walk down a cereal aisle, which you should never, ever walk down again in a supermarket,

and they all proclaim to have added fibre, you know, added vitamins, healthy. It's all lies, really. Most cereals, most commercially made cereals are full of sugar. They're very, very bad for you. They've got lots of additives and what have you. And the original grain that they may have been made of has been so ground down and reformatted that your body just absorbs it so quickly and doesn't have to do any work. Whereas if you took the original brain and

you ate that, your body would have to break down the fibers and everything, and it would take time for it to be absorbed. And by the time you've finished all that hard work of breaking it down, chewing, swallowing, you'd recognize you were satisfied before eating your third bowl of cereal because you can almost drink the cereal. It's very clever what they've done, but it's caused a lot of problems. That's one thing we don't talk a lot about is the environments that we live in and were raised in, especially when it comes to food. Someone asked me yesterday, or I saw their comments from the live yesterday about, well, what about food addiction? And you

and I know from when we were at the obesity conference, the people would not admit to food addiction. They're like, we cannot say that food addiction is a real thing. But of course, you know, I do believe that there are all types of addictions. Maybe it's different than alcohol and drugs, you know, but and people feel like they're addicted. But what is true about it is that they are manipulating our foods to make it very difficult for us to just have that one bite. There are food scientists who are trying to figure out how can they get you to, and marketers, how can they get you to buy the food, get you to eat the food, and then make it in a way that causes you to eat

more of it than you need and continually want more of it. So, I mean, that's a huge, that's a massive beast. That's a massive beast.'s a massive beast but i love that you highlighted that because we don't factor that in a lot yeah i mentioned to you last time which you don't talk about much but which the livy method makes people do is we increase our fiber intake. Apparently 95% of North Americans don't eat enough fiber. And it's because of processed foods, because processed foods are really broken down and the fiber is really broken down. And so by asking us or telling us vegetables, leafy greens,

whole foods, whole grains, you're increasing our fiber content, which slows down the rate at which the food is converted to glucose into your bloodstream. So it dampens the sugar spikes, the glucose spikes. It dampens them down and evens their mouth. It makes you feel full. Or because everything's slowed down, you recognize when you've had enough or are satisfied. Whereas the study's done, and you're correct,

industry pays a lot of very, very smart people a lot of money to develop foods that and they test them on people they test them they bring people into their um industry places and feed them all different bowls of cereal yeah to find out which one do they go back for a second bowl. And that's the one they put on the shelves because that's the one that people will buy and they'll buy more of. And it's just a business model and it's not right or wrong. It just is.

And so what we have to understand is how to read labels to avoid additives and fillers. And like I showed your staff when I did a session with them, the back of the pack label of a natural yogurt is milk and bacteria culture, full stop. The back of the pack label of the same brand of low-fat yogurt has 18 ingredients because they take all the goodness out, the fat, and they have to fill it to make it feel the same in your mouth. And so I guess it's just being mindful i guess our grandparents didn't have to because they didn't have ultra processed foods they had natural foods so there's and that's what i mean about the the livy method can carry you through life if you pay attention to what you learn and if you unlearn things and

the people who have successfully maintained their weight loss have done that and they can say that very clearly to me when I talk to them I eat differently than I used to be. Used to. I have a different relationship with food. And you know the amazing thing, and this is what's ahead for your members who are in the weight loss group. This is what is ahead if you do take the time and you invest the time in yourself and in the learning. What's ahead for you is that the members who have

maintained their weight, who I spoke to, who have maintained their weight for over two years, their weight loss, and there was only a small group of the focus groups that were over the two-year mark, they said to me, it's got nothing to do with my weight anymore. Anymore. That's not a factor. They eat the way they eat because it feels good, because they feel healthier, because they have more energy, because it just feels good to feel this way. And so it's not the way once you get through to that stage.

And that's a great thing to look forward to. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that because you're right. There are, and I'm so, I mean, I love that because there are so many people here and they're focused on losing weight, obviously. And you got to, you got to do that first. That's step one of the living method is lose your weight, then solidify, maintain, and then live your life the Libby way, mindfully move on and live your life. So let's, okay. So what have you learned about maintenance then specifically, you know, obviously we want to prove that the Libby method not only works for weight loss, we've done that. Would you agree that we've approved, we've proved that Libby method? I mean, to members who may have been looking forward

to perhaps doing focus groups and the weight loss group, and the reason I'm not doing them anymore is because in a way, like the surveys are important because we've got to maintain that data and people's stories are important. And I'm sorry, but I just don't have the time but it's not like you lose weight in the living method but you lose weight on many many diets and that's what the obesity summit told us they said this is very interesting come back in two years when you can prove that people keep their weight off and we said okay we'll be back and we will be and um so you keep their weight off. And we said, okay, we'll be back, and we will be.

And so you can lose weight because many of your members, many of us have lost weight. We've put it back on, but we've lost weight. So how you maintain your weight loss is by taking what you've learned in the Livi Method into your life, into your life, and what you're doing this week and next week. It's personalizing the plan, isn't it? That is a practice.

It's just two weeks, four weeks if you're coming into the next program. It's how can I live my life with all the busyness or with the grandchildren or the children or whatever, how can I make this Livvy Method work for me in a run-of-the-mill week, an ordinary week? How can I make choices that help me get to where I'm going? And in this case, for those of you in the weight loss group, it's still losing your weight. In the maintenance group, personalizing the plan is, how can I make choices? This is from your members who have done this, how can I make choices that keep me getting up every day feeling this good?

And that means maintaining some of the practices or whatever suits you, whatever was a good fit for your body from the Livi Method into the rest of your life. If that's drinking lots of water, that's drinking lots of water. If it's eating protein for breakfast, making sure you have lots of leafy greens, making sure you have lots of veggies and fiber, making sure you get some protein in, eating nuts in the afternoon, if that works for you, that works for you that works for you but all of those strategies without the weekly tweaks

like feeding the metabolism or doubling down and cutting your meal in half and eating half later the tweaks don't go into the rest of your life but the principles you've learned do and that's eating till you're satisfied not till you're full so those things continue through your life and you choose them you're not on a diet anymore people tell me they choose them because it feels good and they look in the fridge and they choose leafy greens not because Gina told them they had to it's because well when I eat I don't know whether I can ever associate how I feel with leafy greens but when I eat well I feel well so that's why they do it and so it's what you learn carries you through maintenance why are you laughing Gina it's dissociating to leafy greens i know what you mean

but yes it feels good it feels good to feel good um so the the maintenance group and you know i spoken to this a lot like i was really surprised like i didn't think anyone needed a maintenance group and now i'm working on an actual maintenance program where i'm going to it's going to actually make a structured maintenance program to help people guide through that. But I didn't think I've learned so much. What's the biggest thing that you have learned through all the research and focus groups and everything that you've done? Oh, I think it's easy for me to now to tell you the biggest because, like, I lost my weight a couple of years ago. It was 2021 when I got to 150 pounds, and I'm higher than that now.

Like, the last couple of months, the last six months have been pretty stressful in my life. Stress is huge. Stress is huge. Like, I've gone up i've i had no problem keeping it within five pounds for a couple of years and just in the last six months it's gone up sort of at eight pounds or something but i've recognized it and i'm getting it back down just by going back on track basically for a week or so. But stress is huge. Sleep is massive, something I never realized.

I thought I was incredibly virtuous by carrying on my life with six, seven hours sleep. So those two things are big, and they're big from your members too but I think for people like myself have been yo-yo dieters have really struggled with their weight and like I'm 67 so for 40 50 years have struggled with their weight 60 years 50 years um that you have to eat to lose weight. Like that to me is mind-blowing that I eat more now than I ever did when I was struggling with my weight. I eat more regularly, so every few hours.

For the first time in probably three decades, I can say, and I did yesterday to my partner Marcel, I said, we need to stop somewhere. We were out buying showers and baths for our new bathroom. I need to eat. I have never known when I had to eat before. I said, I need to have something. I forgot to pack some nuts. There's an IGA. Stop. I'm going to rush in and get some almonds. You know, it was three or four in the afternoon. It was longer than I thought we'd be away. I would never have recognized that in the

past. I would never have recognized that feeling in my body previously. I'd have just said, no, I can tough it out. I don't need to eat. I can go all day without eating sort of thing. So the mere fact that I've learned that in order to be healthy and keep my weight off and lose weight is I need to eat regularly. And some of your members in maintenance that have struggled to maintain their weight one or two of them in the focus group have said what clicked for them when they were putting on a few pounds was that they had fallen back into going five, six hours without food. They'd fallen back into that habit.

And so they stopped themselves. What is it? Checked themselves before they wrecked themselves, started eating more regularly. Yeah. You have to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy. Yeah. It's the same with

maintaining your weight. Um, yeah, that's why I love it. So out of that conversation that we had with you a couple of weeks ago in the maintenance group, you know, we already talked about this too. It's about, it's about, you're not just lose your weight and off you go. You're taking what you've learned and you're living the living way is what we came up with or mindfully living, right? There's losing, there's solidifying, there's maintaining, and there's mindfully living your life, right? What is next, Ruth, for the Livvy Method? What do you think? What's next for us? I mean, bearing in mind, you asked me before about the diet industry and the sort of conversations around ozempic and all these other things

like i find that quite sad that we have drugs i know that they're necessary for some people. I know that people may need to lose weight very quickly in order to have surgery, in order to save their lives or give them a life that they're comfortable living. And I understand that. And heaps of respect for people who take the very difficult decision to use a Zempik or to have surgeries for weight loss because I know it's a difficult decision.

People don't allow people to do surgery on their bodies lightly. But I think it's very sad that we've come to that, that when we watch little children who are offered real food, not highly processed food, that they know when to stop eating. They know when they've had enough. They know when they fancy a cookie or they don't fancy a cookie. Like it's something that we've unlearned how to be connected to our bodies and how to feed our bodies the way we need to, and it's been a massive social experiment basically,

and it's never going to stop. Industry will never, there'll never be standards brought in that stop industry processing food it just can't it's too far now so it is an individual decision and for those of you with children i i feel for you because it's much easier to draw on the processed food. It's just being mindful of what's in what foods and trying to plan how. And, you know, I do feel for you, but I feel it's sad that we've done that as a species or as a society because it's much, much worse in North America than it is in Europe.

If you go to poorer countries, should I say, or less, like Portugal, their consumption of ultra-processed food is about 10%, whereas 10% of a person's food intake is about ultra processed food whereas in north america it's something like 80 80 so it's very different in europe i've got stricter rules in europe they do but they're catching up to where we are i remember back in the day someone even wrote a book about being like paris skinny When I was young, I remember people talking about Europeans and how they were so skinny, how to be like a European woman, you know, besides smoking cigarettes. I can't generalize like that. That's really interesting because the diet, this is where the diet industry has really perpetuated that disconnection,

right? So you add our environment, the foods available to us, people trying to, you know, stuff processed foods down our throats and get us, you know, somewhat, for lack of a better word, addicted to them, or living with the convenience of them. And then you add dieting to that, where you you are purposely starving yourself, depriving yourself, you know, neglecting yourself, berating yourself, not eating when you're hungry, not sleeping when you're tired, not drinking when you're thirsty, even water, we were told like eight, 10 glasses of water. That's it. That's all you need. Yeah. To barely survive, you know? So, so it makes sense that here we are in this place and you're right. It's not like we're going to

go back and rewind it. Um know, and hopefully my hope for the living method is to see a decline in obesity rates. But I've also talked to enough parents who are looking to lose weight themselves, but also concerned about the impact on their children. And that's what I do love about the living method. It is for adults. You know, I definitely don't want to get in there and start, you know, suggesting that children should be doing the program, but what they can learn from you by you being in tune to your body's needs, by you taking time to eat nutrient rich whole foods by, you know, you making the choices that you can make to be as healthy as possible. They will see that without you counting and weighing

and measuring and talking about how I ate that. So now I have to exercise or I hate that. So I'm not eating today. You know, all that kind of diet dialogue there. I hope that there's hope for us that with the impact that we can make and the impact that people are going to make on, like, look at their family. What's amazing about the Libby method is that it's not just one person who does it. It's that person who tells their friend, that family member, that, you know, it really, I think, do you really think,

are we helping anybody here? Yeah, I think you're changing people's lives. Like Kelly said that in her Spill the Tea the other day. I mean, she had lost weight successfully on another program. I think it was Beach Babes or Beach Bodies or something. But that, she was told eat this blue i didn't quite understand but a blue box a green box again like you can't live your life like that you have to learn what your body needs and and be able to recognize that while you were on the Livvy Method, if you were following the Livvy Method for weight loss,

and if you really reflect on it, you were eating mainly real food. You weren't eating a lot of reconstituted foods. Like if you take a food like Pringles, the chip, Pringles, is it a potato chip? Potato chip. It's got very little potato in it, by the way. That is made by, you know, those perfectly formed little chips. They're made out of a batter.

So it's like a pancake batter. They make a pancake batter. And so if you're addicted to something like Pringles, you just need to roll a whole lot of Pringles under a rolling pin so they're very, very fine and taste them and you'll think, oh, yeah, they taste like Pringles all mashed up. Then add some water and take a teaspoon of it and it tastes like a chemical slurry.

So it originally was a batter made of all these different ingredients and now it's shaped to look like a potato chip but it's not a potato chip like it's not apparently and this is new to me too because i've got fooled too i love you guys know i love my chippies i love my chippies. I love my chippies. And Pringles are awesome and they taste amazing, but they're not even allowed to call themselves a chip anymore, I heard as of recently. They're not. Or a potato chip. It's made out of a batter, like a pancake batter,

and they've just fine-tuned the taste that it does a zing in your taste buds and you like it. But I swear you'll never eat another one if you mix it with water. Well, I saw there's a company, I won't say which one, where I bet you can't just eat one chip. And I saw the commercial during the Super Bowl, I think, where they literally invited a bunch of people in and they had chips and they were going to give a million dollars to whoever could just eat one chip or like one kind of chip and nobody won. And of course, and they knew they had this in the bag because they've been studying and they,

they knew a hundred percent that people weren't just going to eat one chip. They, they knew there's no way people are just going to eat one chip to the point they gave a million dollars. Okay. Ruth, I adore you. Um, you're one of my favorite people. Um, not just because you are a fan of the Libby method and you are studying and researching it, but you are really honest and real about it. And I've learned so much from you, you know, the questions, um, to ask. So everyone, please fill out the survey at the end of the program. If you want to be a part of changing ask so everyone please fill out the survey at the end of the program if you want to be a part of changing the diet industry fill out that survey it's really going to help it's also going to help us help you to figure out how to best support you what you

love what you would like to see us do maybe what you didn't like if you if you are listening to this now or watching it and you haven't been following along or you think I'm horse shit or you know it's not working for you we still want to hear from you we love you we still want to hear from you so please take time to fill that out um Ruth I'm going to give you final words final words to our members today okay be kind to yourself take the time it needs to work through the Libby Method. It may take multiple programs depending on how much weight you've got to lose. If you can afford it, and it is one of the most affordable programs or the most affordable, take the time you need because we do need

to change the habits that got us to a space where we weren't happy. So we do need to build new habits and we do need to learn how to connect with the body and how to feed our body. And because you're taking this body on past the Libby method and that's what you want to keep healthy. And from the members I speak to in maintenance, it's the knowledge they learned in the program that they've applied to their life after the program. So learn as much as you can and lean in on the community.

The community is huge. And sort of let it carry you forward when it's difficult because you will have crappy days. That's life. That's life. And somehow I think in your maintenance program, Gina, we have to find ways of dealing with stress because I think that's, it throws people off. It creeps up on them.

You know you've had years. Last year was extremely stressful for you. And it throws you off. You have to have strategies to be kind to yourself during stress. But don't worry about that if you're in the weight loss group. Just focus on your weight. That's for the later. We'll deal with that later. Okay know jenna wants to go i don't i could talk to you all day thanks everyone i know we'll be talking we'll be chatting ruth and i get together quite often to

talk about everything that she's learning um thanks everyone who's taking the time to join us live today watching thanks everyone who is listening by way of our podcast. This is going to be available as a podcast. I highly suggest that you share, share, share with anyone you know who's doing a diet. Because beyond just the Libby Method, people need to know what it takes to really lose their weight in a healthy, sustainable way. And we really want everyone to know because we want everyone to be successful. We want everyone to move on past their weight loss journey at some point and get on with just living their lives. Um, thank you, Ruth. Thanks for thanks to everyone joining us today. Uh, until next time. Thanks.