The Livy Method Podcast - Maintenance & Mindfulness Live with Dr. Paul Hrkal, ND - January 26, 2024

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

In this special edition of Maintenance and Mindfulness Live Gina Livy talks with Naturopathic Doctor Paul Hrkal. This is the live recording from January 26, 2024. You can find the full video hosted at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ginalivymaintenanceandmindfulnessTopics covered:Do we need to keep taking supplements now that we are in Maintenance?Let's talk about the basic supplements that can be helpful when in maintenance.Vitamin D - Are you taking enough or deficient? Get tested to really know your levels.When it comes to calcium, here's what you need to know.Thinking about adding in Vitamin K2? Here are some ways to introduce this into your supplement routine.What about taking Magnesium and the different types of magnesium available?Omega 3: In maintenance, you may want to look at the type and amount to get the desired effects.Omega 6 (GLA) and Evening Primrose - Dr Paul breaks down the nuances of using this.Wondering about seed oils? Let's discuss sources, processing, and benefits.What about using prebiotics and probiotics ongoing?Genetics, early childhood, and the predetermination of our microbiome over our lifetime.In Maintenance, you want to get more personalized about your supplements based on your new goals.Now that you've lost the weight, do you still need to be on those medications?Life happens: Know the obstacles that set you back.Health is not a checklist: we need to stay on top of health, not just check it off a list.If you missed the conversation with Dr. Paul on Tuesday, check out the Weigh In with Gina Podcast.Where to find Dr. Paul Hrkal - http://www.paulhrkalnd.com/ and on Instagram @drpaulhrkalTo 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. Dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. My guest today, Dr. Paul Herkel, who's no stranger to our weight loss group. You've been with us for a while now. We've had numerous conversations about supplements that can be beneficial when you are trying to lose weight. Today, we're having this conversation in our maintenance group, and we want to talk about, do we keep taking those same supplements now that we've lost our weight? I think, you know, people are nervous to make a change. They're so nervous about gaining weight back and they just want to keep doing what they're doing. So hello, first of all, hi. And we see each other so often because we just saw each other on Tuesday. It's like, let's just continue the conversation. I just want to get right into it. Yeah, it's great to see you again.

It's great to see everybody in the maintenance group. I love chatting about this because the people in this maintenance group here, they are veterans of the program. They've gone through it. They know the what, and now they've mastered kind of the how, and now it's a matter of like, can you

maintain that and there is a role to play with supplements in the maintenance group. First of all, what I will say is that there is no harm in you continuing to use the supplements that you have the success with the main group. So let's get that right off the start. So if there's any sort of hesitation of being like, should I am I going to overdose on something? You know, vitamin D, there's some common questions I'm sure we'll get to because I did take a look at some of them already. Yeah, we can talk about all that in a second. Yeah, I mean, we can start with those basic supplements we talked about on Tuesday. So it was vitamin D, magnesium, omega three, what am I missing probiotics, prebi uh, omega-3, um, what am I missing? Probiotics, prebiotics. And now everyone wants to

talk about bees now because we had that conversation about B vitamins. Let's talk about the vitamin D. Um, like, so if someone's metabolism is higher and they're healthier, having lost the weight, 20 pounds, 60 pounds, a hundred plus pounds, would, would there be, would it be, could you say that they would need to adjust the dose? Or if vitamin D, it doesn't matter, regardless of your body size, the dose is the dose that you need? The most correct way to answer that is, you know, after you, you know, you're taking it, you've hopefully repleted your levels, the dose to kind of maintain your levels is around 2000 IU to 1000 IU, somewhere in that one to 2000 range. You know, in general, in Canada, we make assumptions,

most medical doctors will make assumptions that most people are deficient. But if you've already heard me have this conversation, go get tested to see if you need extra because 1000 IU may not be enough. Now, if you've never gone ahead and got that testing done, you've always just taken your doctor's recommendation by doing 1000 I use you actually may be well below the chance of you being way over Gina, like actually causing an excess, I think is is very, very, very slim. It's actually quite difficult to get into vitamin D toxicity because I've had patients that have had very high levels on blood work, but they have no symptoms.

The negative effects of excess vitamin D is over calcification. And so you'd see calcium levels go up. So it's like too much of a good thing. But even people that have had levels that are way beyond the 250 range that you see on labs, they had no evidence of calcification. So we just stopped their supplementation and they went back to normal. Okay. All right. Great. Anything anyone would need to know about vitamin D when they're in maintenance? Yeah. So what I would really say, and that's what's great about the program is that vitamin D goes hand in hand with magnesium.

There are still some people out there that are recommending vitamin D just by itself. And I think we've kind of moved past that in the research and that's being published. So I've talked about vitamin K before. I've talked about magnesium. So magnesium and vitamin D, everyone thinks about calcium and vitamin D, especially when it comes to bone health. But magnesium makes vitamin D do its job better and actually be properly converted in the body. So, of course, in the summer, a lot of people think about maintenance. You know, during the summer, if you're getting sun, if you're getting kind of like think about bathing suit bikini type of like exposure, then you assume that you're getting vitamin D. Going out and walking your dog and having your palms exposed or your forearms exposed in your face, that's not enough to make vitamin D. Sorry to say that I've had lots of patients like, Oh,

Dr. Paul, I'm outside all the time. And I'm like, Okay, so what are you doing? They're like, well, I'm walking my dog, you know, my t shirt, I'm like, sorry that you need about 50% of your body exposed for about 10 minutes. And it's got to be in the in the in the summer. So either in on vacation close to the equator, or in the summer, and even on vacation close to the equator or in the summer and even then uh it may not be a guarantee that you have perfect levels so if you wanted to do maintenance as we're talking about maintenance from october until kind of like april may it's safe to kind of do your 2000 1000 iu now the i also want to say that health canada increased the minimum kind of dose that they were

recommending to 2500 IU. So now you can actually have supplements in Canadian health food stores that'll say 2500. So Health Canada is now slowly evolving. They're always like 1015 years behind the research. So it's good to see that. Yeah, that's a couple things. Vitamin D has gone up, omega three dose has gone up, you know, I guess as they learn more, they make their adjustments. You mentioned calcium. You know, I mean, I don't factor calcium in as like, you know, the basic supplements are specific to weight loss when you're deficient can cause issues. They do all work together. What's your, should we be talking about calcium? We should be talking about calcium only really in the context if somebody has osteoporosis or a known calcium deficiency.

The reality is it really comes from dietary habits of people in more developed countries. They generally are getting more than enough calcium through dairy products. Again, unless you have some sort of major genetic issue with calcium metabolism, rickets, for example. Doctors will know about this, this is not something that you'd miss, or osteopenia, which is kind of like the pre version or the pre step before osteoporosis, which is a decrease in the density of your bones, and that predisposes you to fractures. But I do want to make a little caution here with calcium, I just had this conversation earlier with a patient that asked me the same question. Their doctor said, hey, I should increase calcium. Calcium by itself is a problem.

That's why for many years, this was about 12, 13 years ago, there was a research paper that came out saying calcium increased the risk for heart attacks and strokes when only taken by itself. The reason is because it calcified your soft tissues your arteries the blood vessels that promote blood flow that you want to be nice and flexible now we've evolved from that by taking calcium with some vitamin d and now really what prevents the calcification is magnesium and vitamin k2 that's different than what's found in leafy greens that's vitamin k1 so getting spinach that kind of affects more clotting and vitamin K2 affects calcification. So hopefully that gives people some insight. So if you really want to optimize

and level up your vitamin D supplementation, you want to optimize your bone health, maybe your post-metaposel, that's the type of sometime that you kind of think about, I should maybe do a little bit of extra vitamin K2 and magnesium and vitamin D, and then talk to my doctor about calcium. Maybe you're lactose intolerant, and you're one of those people that avoids all dairy products. Well, that would be one of those reasons that you should be thinking about a bioavailable form of calcium. Yeah, because calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, they all go together. I think you can buy products that have all of them together. How does the K fit into there? Well, K is a fat soluble vitamin. And it kind of like, again,

came out maybe a decade ago that this was actually a really important part of that kind of like trinity that you just mentioned, the calcium, magnesium and D. It just helped vitamin D do its job more effectively in terms of making sure calcium gets to the right spot. So it was just kind of an evolution of the research, Gina, that people started realizing this is what we've been missing physiologically. And you can find vitamin K2 in diet, butter, for example, some cheeses have vitamin K2, some more traditional Japanese foods like natto, so some fermented foods, not very common, but that might be more relevant to people that are consuming that style of food. Would it does it does it is it is it a do you

would you buy a vitamin K pill? Or does it come in drops? Or does it normally come in your D drops? Like how would you all of you can find it every way. So actually, now what I do, and this is actually I'm really glad you're teasing this out because from a maintenance perspective, let's assume you've been taking vitamin D all this time. You've gone through the program. You might've even gone ahead and asked your doctor to check your levels and your doctor said it was fine. So that's, those are two big check boxes. You're taking the vitamin D in the winter, maybe positive in the summer. I think that's a reasonable maintenance plan. Now you can evolve, you can progress to taking a vitamin D3 with a K2 combination. So you're going to still get your 2000 IUs of vitamin D, but now you're

going to add in maybe 120 micrograms of vitamin K2, or maybe double that depending on the amount that's per capsule. And that I think is a very reasonable, good maintenance plan. So if you're trying to get your levels up quickly, Gina, I would recommend doing vitamin D by itself and then transition to a vitamin D plus a K2 because again, it's just better long term. Okay, amazing. Magnesium. Yeah, I know you're a fan. I'm a fan. You know, I suggest the the calm, I still take my calm. You know, the citrate, but you should people move to a different type. I'm a fan. You know, I suggest the calm, I still take my calm, you know, the citrate, but you should people move to a different type. I have the this glycinate here. So should they should they be moving? Is there any benefit to moving to a different type of magnesium?

Once they're made? Yeah, a lot of people have gotten into the kind of ritual of using magnesium calm before bed, they do have noticed that it helped them sleep. I would say most supplements, if a person is really deficient, they'll notice a difference right away. So if you've started the program, you kind of remember in your mind be like magnesium really helped me with sleep. And you've continued that supplementation, most likely you've repleted your levels, and you're probably not going to notice the huge difference if you don't take the magnesium because magnesium takes about six months of consistent supplementation to build up. A lot of people don't know this, but majority of your magnesium in your body is stored in your bones. Over 50% of it stored in your bones, which goes to show you again,

how important magnesium is for bone health. But think about it more so as it's your reservoir for magnesium. So historically, if a person when they were younger, they didn't really eat a magnesium rich diet, probably lots of calcium, not enough magnesium, because there really isn't a lot of foods that are rich in magnesium, maybe some leafy greens, maybe some pumpkin seeds. And so now you've repleted levels. Now maybe you can switch to a more, I would say like a divided divided dose throughout the day and maybe now start looking for a form of magnesium, like a magnesium glycinate, which the glycine molecule has a more calming effect or magnesium malate. Again, we've talked about these different forms

of magnesium. Malate is more specific for people that have fibromyalgia and muscle pain. So now I would say if you really want to go to the next level, you can start curating the type of magnesium you're taking for your particular needs. Don't be afraid that you're stopping the call mag that all of a sudden you're going to go into some major like, you know, deficiency state, that's not going to happen. And there's no rebound effect of not taking magnesium. And you're somehow going to be, you know, have that withdrawal effect. Yeah. I love that curating, right? Like these, these supplements helped you while you were doing all these other things to reach this goal of weight loss. Not like if you stop taking them, you're going to gain your weight all back. They definitely are factoring into your health. So now

taking a look and curating, okay. Like I took the magnesium, the citrate, maybe I want to look into something. I'm feeling good or, okay, I love this. That's right. What about omega-3? Because people talk about doing high doses of omega-3. Yeah. So we touched on this just very slightly in our Tuesday conversation. So if a person's listening to that, then I touched on it there, indicating that the dose makes a big difference. So the general omega-3 that you find in most health food stores in Costco, for example,

and pharmacies, they're kind of your cardiovascular prevention dosage. So maybe it might be 350 EPA, which is one of the acocetopentanoic acid. That's that like active anti-inflammatory component. Just so you know, the EPA is more anti-inflammatory. The DHA gene is more neurological. That's why pediatricians and doctors will recommend pregnant women to take a DHA supplement. So just so, and this is something I don't, maybe this is something that's unique to the maintenance group. And I don't get into that nitty gritty detail, but you can actually look at and play with the type and the amount of the active component to dictate the

effect. So for example, if you might be concerned about your brain health, then you should maybe look into switching from the one you've been taking throughout the whole program, which is a more balanced, maybe three EPA to two DHA is the ratio, to a high DHA, where it's like almost four or five DHA to one EPA. The ratio, based on the research, Gina, seems to make all the difference when it comes to the therapeutic effect. On the flip side, if you're suffering from more from maybe a low mood, so a little bit of depression, seasonal affective issues, or inflammation, it seems like the opposite, which is high EPA compared to DHA makes a big difference. So that's like a five to one ratio. So again, I don't I wouldn't throw this out there to the full group,

because they're just like getting their feet wet with supplements. But these are the veterans here that we can talk about, okay, how do we level up? And maybe if inflammation is your main thing now, start looking at the high-dose EPA. Maybe that's the one. You'll probably see it right beside the one you're buying and maybe make that switch. The nuances. Yeah. We're just really scratching the surface, Gina. Like there's so many, like, for example, people have heard about evening primrose oil and GLA.

And maybe they've heard of benefits for the skin. I mean, we can talk about this at length because there is a lot of specific research with specific types of omegas. I carefully said omegas, not omega-3s because GLA and evening primrose oil are actually omega-6s. And so that might be confusing for some people because they're like, hold on, Dr. Paul, I thought I read that omega-6s are bad for you. Aren't they like pro-inflammatory? Well, not exactly because again, like with all things,

there's a bit of an oversimplification on social media. There's an oversimplification. Sometimes when people just read kind of omega-3 is good, omega-6 is bad. There are some types of omega-6s like in seed oils, like think of vegetable oil, cotton seed, corn oil, soybean oil. These are like high, kind of like found in high levels in processed foods. These are omega-6s that are unhealthy. They kind of go down the more quote unquote pro-inflammatory pathway. But there is a type of omega-6 called gamma linoleic acid or GLA, which is what eating funerals is. And it actually has an anti-inflammatory effect unique to the one, the bad ones I just talked to.

So it has an effect in its own right. So without making things confusing for people, there is a case for, for maybe getting some instruction from your healthcare provider, maybe your naturopath to say, Hey, I got some hormonal imbalance issues. I got some skin issues and I have some joint issues. GLA or that specific type of omega-6 actually might be beneficial for you. I do use it quite a bit in my practice. So there's this unique, again, there's that next level of nuance, Gina, that I think hopefully people are starting to understand when it comes to supplements. It's not for at this point in this conversation, if you want to level up, I think it's not just at face value. Yeah. I mean, this is great. We want people to have takeaways, but it's really more awareness,

right? And I mean, that, especially that seed oil, everyone's like, well, seed oil, I'm like, you know, just try to use olive oil, avocado oil, like whatever. It's like, unless you're like, I don't know, like everything you eat has seed oil on it, but this is where, you know, then you get people saying it's seed oil, like omega-6 is fine, but then it's not fine. It is confusing out there, right? Because people are oversimplifying, obviously a more complicated conversation. Yeah. And one point about seed oil, just to make sure that I hear your, I hear your point about clarification and not, not getting stuck in some of the weeds. Yeah. Seed oil could be considered almost like a barometer for how much processed foods you're eating. So if we're saying

try to avoid seed oil, where do you find seed oil? Well, exactly. That's my guess is that so if you're worried about seed oils, and you do, I do encourage you to read your labels. But the more processed the food is, even if you find it in the gluten free section, or even if you find in the health food section, you still can find some of these more processed commercial seed oils. And it basically just says under the surface, actually, after reading the word, is that it's more processed because those seed oils, what they do is they increase shelf stability. On the contrary, omega-3s are unsaturated fats and they actually can become rancid really quickly. So there's a difference in terms of how well these seed oils, what they do in the body, and what they do in

terms of packaging. So that's why omega threes can become rancid, and you want to keep them in the fridge. That's why we recommend that. Can you give me some examples? So what did you just say there? Omega threes should be kept in the fridge. And that's another reason to show you how sensitive they are. You don't want to keep them on your shelf, on your window shelf, in front of your sink. You don't want to keep them in a place where you're going to be exposed to air and light. They damage the omega-3s in it, the actual structure. Where something like a Twinkie, which is like always the poster child for the worst food to eat, poor Twinkies have been picked on for

two decades now. But that's because they have a lot of this like shortening, which is a saturated fat and then some of these seed oils. And what those seed oils do is that they basically prevent it from decaying. And, and it doesn't become as oxidized so it really comes down to stability and not health and that's why the least processed diet that you eat is going to be automatically lower in those oils ah he used to crush the twinkies back in the day you're making up for it now g, with all the good omega-3s. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in.

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No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Just quickly examples of seed oils. I know people are going to be like, what are you talking about? What are seed oils? What are these seed oils everyone's afraid of? So one of the big ones is going to be vegetable oil. So that's just like the kind of catch-all

phrase. Canola oil, there is some controversy a little bit about canola oil, because there could be some benefit to canola oil based on some of the research that has been done by the canola industry. Of course, it's a huge one. Things like, as I mentioned, soybean oil, corn oil, peanut oil. These are foods that generally speaking, these oils are going to be going down the more inflammatory pathway and are found in more processed foods. Yeah. Okay. Probiotics, prebiotics. I mean, can you make your microbiome, like is it a point where it just gets healthy and you're good? Or can you forever be improving your digestive system and your microbiome and all that? I think the answer that I have to give hasn't been fully sussed out in the research. I'll say that.

What we know about probiotics is that they temporarily modify your microbiome, but they don't permanently modify your microbiome. Think about it this way, just from an analogy perspective. Probiotics are like seeds, but it's like as if I took a handful of seeds and I threw it in my backyard and it just scattered everywhere. It's not really going to change my yard. It might change a patch that has been dysfunctional. Like for think of like you add some antibiotics and it killed off a patch of your grass, if we're going to use that analogy. So we could see that area. But then once your microbiome was kind of gone back to, I'll call it its steady state,

then the research doesn't show that you can continue to take probiotics and it will just constantly modify. What that'll do is that it'll continue to give the signal that if there is an issue that those probiotics are giving you a benefit for, then it's going to continue to have that benefit until it stops working. And it can stop working. I have seen probiotics like work initially, and then they stop. It is meant to restore you back to baseline because majority of the microbiome we have is going to be determined by your early years in life. A lot of the research shows if you know, for example, if you're born with cesarean section,

or you're born vaginally, if you have lots of antibiotics when you're young, and when you're not like, there are those types of changes, because the microbiome forms in the first five to seven years of your life. So the only way to seismically shift your microbiome really is like actually a poop transplant, which is like maybe people have heard about this, but that actually is on a research level that's being done. And that's substituting somebody's from a healthy microbiome to a ill person's microbiome and having some incredible results. However, trying to do that with a probiotic, I think you can change it to the positive, like a plus or minus, but you're not going to go from an A to a B over here, I think.

I think it's important to understand that because if you don't have any gut issues, if you're feeling good digestively, then, you know, I get asked this all the time. You've even asked this to me, Gina, before, do you still need to take probiotics? And I would say, I probably have to say probably not sorry i'm just a bit i'm just thinking like this whole thing from this age five to seven i'm thinking everything from like exposure like with my kids like i remember my sister would like wipe everything so high clean and i was like my kids were eating dirt probably eating poop too i don't even know and then they were never sick so i don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm thinking people like IBS or Crohn's or like digestive issues. Like,

is that because they didn't get enough of those good things when they were younger? Is that a systematic breakdown? And then I'm a little bit like, ah, so do I have to like, can I ever, can I change what I got? Or I just, I got what got. And that's it. Like, I have to take the probiotics just to like, have it function. Like, barely, like, well, I think I think you said a lot of really good things there that that are true, where they're, you know, just like your genes, we can't control the genes we have from our parents, right? That is set for us. But that's a blueprint. But that's not your destiny. But that is the direction that your life is off. And there are some people that have a predisposition to autoimmunity or IBS, and that partly genetic, and that's partly their upbringing. And microbiome is a huge part of that.

It's partly stressors that they've experienced throughout their lives. So I don't want to paint the picture to say that you're screwed over if you've had a bad, you know, upbringing from a microbiome perspective. But I do think that it is set the table for you and that those people may have just a predisposition to have gut issues everybody if you really take an honest look at yourself will have an area of weakness metabolically some people is like they get more headaches some people they have more gut issues some people have skin issues and we can go down the list there's lots of different predispositions of areas of weakness and i think a lot of that has to do with this multifactorial influence early on in life and then throughout the life that we have. So like bringing it back

to weight loss, you know, what's the influence on yo-yo dieting and intensive starvation dieting on your microbiome? Just think about that for a second. Massive. It's huge. Especially women. I just had a number of them this week that have started dieting early in almost like prepubescent age. They had eating disorders.

So that we know, research is so clear that if you had that, then there's negative influences of that in terms of deficiencies, in terms of predisposition to having fluctuations in weight. Like a lot of people are going through this now, but it could be to do with that. So full circle, Gina, if you have ongoing gut issues, those are the people that need to stay on that. And if it's getting you benefit, stay on that. But if you're like, I never really had gut issues. And I did it because all my friends that were doing the

program did. And my gut's feeling great. And I'm in maintenance now, maybe that would be the person that may not need to do the prebiotic and probiotic because all signs point to your gut is doing great. And you might eat something and not feel good. But then the hope is that your body will rebalance itself. And it just, you can often think that the worst case scenario, like my gut microbiome is fried. If I take one dose of antibiotics, hopefully that's not the case because you have this inherent built-in flexibility. But some people, do you know, they have that weakness

and they're going to have to stay on those things. Yeah. So I will like, I'll take them. I'll feel amazing. My digestive bitters, my probiotics, my prebiotics feel amazing. I just feel so much better. And then I'll go drink some wine and then not take them. And then I just feel bleh again.

And then I got to get back on them again. And so really I should just consistently take them. And obviously. If we're going to use that example that you just gave of yourself, I would say that would be a good idea of finding the combination of prebiotic and probiotic that works for you. And instead of going off and on, I would say that's your little insurance policy

that you're going to be doing. Yeah. Okay. We just covered the basic supplements and just cognitive time. What like, cause we're going to have some more conversations with you in maintenance.

Cause I think this is where people, I mean, losing weight is one thing, right? But maintenance is a whole other. And if people can put the energy into losing their weight and imagine just putting that into their health and wellness moving forward, what conversation do you want to have? What kinds of conversations do you want to have? Is there supplements that you're dying to share with us? Like what's, you know, I think that, uh, I think that probably the most productive

conversations, uh, after like, of course, course like this one i think this is a really good one because people are wondering you know what should i be doing supplementally and i think the short answer is that you need to start getting personalized because like remember people that are starting the program are getting the the the the drinking from the fire hose, all this information, you got to do all these things. And this is a great way to start introducing you to supplements. But now you've gone through that. And and that is, I would say, kind of basic and elementary. So the next level is okay, what do you really need? And then so take a good look at your health. You've hit some of your weight loss goals, you're in maintenance. So what other health issues do you have? Do you want to talk about preventative health from a mental health

perspective? Maybe it's cognitive health, and you have some dementia in your family. So I'd be changing up my omega threes to the DHA, for example, I might be switching my type of magnesium to a type of magnesium that's more specific for the brain that is such a thing. You know, I'd be looking at things like supplements like lion's mane, which is a medicinal mushroom, which has some research showing benefits for brain health or maybe ginseng. So are you predisposed to things like stress and fatigue is your big issue? So, I mean, I could go down the list here. I'm not going to,

but I think this is the time that we can have conversations around, you know, what are the most common issues that now in maintenance people would want to hear about? I'm talking about like, I want to hear about getting my energy up, or I want to hear about getting better and deeper sleep, because there's supplementation strategies around each one of these areas. Yeah, it's so exciting, because people work so hard to lose their weight in such a healthy way. And maybe they came in with thyroid issues, or they have diabetes or heart issues or blood pressure, whatever. Okay, so maybe you're off your blood pressure meds or cholesterol meds. But that's like, just because you lost weight doesn't mean

that you stop, right? And that's where you have like so much opportunity to level up in so many different areas. This is actually where this conversation gets exciting. I you know, I took the words right out of my mouth. I was actually like, you just gave me two other ideas in terms of, you know, you're finishing the program, what about medications that you are currently on, or that you want to get off or you were on in the past, those are that's a great, like place to start for you to be like, okay, so I'm on cholesterol meds. Okay, I lost weight that usually will have a beneficial effect on my blood pressure and cholesterol and diabetes, those three big things. Do I still need to be on this? That's now a conversation, even though your doctor probably told you at some point, you're going to be on this for the rest of your life. Yeah, wellness.

And then you go back and have that conversation with the doctor, then you go back to say, Okay, you know what, are there some nutrients that help lower cholesterol, that maybe I don't need to be on such a high dose, maybe I don't need to be on this medication at all. That's a great conversation to have. You know, there's there's so many ways I can I can go with this. But the one big takeaway I want to share with everyone today, before I would say we wrap up Gina is that I would really want people in this program. Maintenance is one of their biggest concerns is that they want to stay in there at their weight. They want to maintain. Right. And I think a lot of people get in the mindset of being like, I'm just going to like freeze everything.

I'm just going to like do exactly the same because I'm petrified of doing something different. But the reality is life happens and that I just had a patient this week, part of the GINA plan, lost 40 pounds, felt great, was looking to me to get some maintenance. I didn't see her for two years. She came back to me and put on 20 pounds. So she gained half of the back and she was saying, why is this happening? So we started troubleshooting. But one of the big messages I always have to a patient like that and to everyone listening is

it would be really worthwhile now while you're in your good state to look back at your weight history and be like, what are the things that really set me back? What are my obstacles? When you gain weight or when you don't make it through a program for whatever reason, what happened there? Like get, get, get diagnostic about it. And people will get, come up with something like, you know, I came up with a huge, it was a huge family stressor. And I just like went off the rails. Just looking at that, unpacking that Gina, it's, it's obviously a mental emotional component, you still have to eat, you still ate, you just ate the wrong thing. So there's nothing preventing you from continuing on the plan when stressors come up, but we didn't. You have to ask yourself

why. So there's, there's, there's habits that kind of creep back in and it could be stress. It could be a vacation that comes up and it's a positive thing that it's could be a birthday and I, and you just person can't recover off that. Yeah. It could be the health of their, a loved one that really just threw them for a loop and they just couldn't cope with it. But I think the evolution that I'm really trying to encourage people that are listening and even my patients especially is I want you to be proactive. So you know what to do. So that does not happen. Yeah, because it doesn't stop. You can't just stop, like you said, and freeze everything. That's

not how it works. You don't have to, you can you can't stop, um, being aware and, you know, doing the things that you need to do and, and continuing to level up your health and wellness. And I, yeah, I love that looking back, like what was the trigger there? What happened? Okay. Stress was a big one. So your, your food probably in your stress, and then you're probably your digestive system took a hit and then your sleep took a hit and then this took a hit. And then, you know, it's a big snowball effect. So just cause you've lost your weight. Isn't like a, okay, you're good. Like we're trying to evolve on a, on a mindset and kind of a mindfulness level. And we just, we think of health sometimes. And you know, I'm, I'm sometimes guilty of this too. It's like, I just want to like, almost like check it off and not think about it again,

but that's actually the opposite of what we need to be doing. We don't have as much heavy lifting to do, but we have to be even more mindful because now that is the definition of being, in my opinion, this being successful in the Libby program and being in the maintenance group is that you are now uber mindful.

And you are now looking at the little things coming in in real time, and listening to your body in real time, instead of before it took you two months to realize, oh, shoot, I was yeah, because my boss was yelling at me. And I'm eating that sugary snack in the afternoon. Yeah. And it's the nuance to you might not have to do these big sweeping things that you did before. Right? So it's but you have to stay on top of it and make these little adjustments to meet yourself where you're at and all the changes that your body's made. Oh gosh. I love you. I love you. And I love this conversation.

Feelings are mutual Gina. Feelings are mutual. Thank you so much for having a great convo again. And, um, hopefully that was helpful. I like to throw in some of the practical stuff when it comes to supplements, but then come back to like the root where it's like, you know, getting people healthy is a body mind connection here. And I hope that that was what people take away from the end of our conversation today. Yeah, stay mindful. I'm looking forward to many more of these conversations with you. Now, if you are listening to this conversation today, and we referenced the conversation we had on Tuesday, you can find that in the maintenance group also over on our podcast as well, where Dr. Paul went, we had a more extensive conversations about supplements in general, and the basic supplements as well. I know there's a lot of them that we didn't get into CoQ10. I don't know MCT,

there's a whole bunch we didn't get into. There's collagen. I mean, there's like a bunch of them, right? I mean, I think we hit the highlights though. And I think we got the questions from a lot of people who were submitting. So hopefully that was helpful. Yeah, and you'll be back. All right, thanks for joining me again. Another amazing conversation. Thanks everyone.

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