The Livy Method Podcast - Maintenance & Mindfulness Weigh In Wednesday - March 13, 2024 feat. Ruth Kane

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Gina Livy's Facebook Live from the Maintenance & Mindfulness group hosted on Facebook. This is the live recording of Weigh In Wednesday from March 13, 2024.You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/ginalivymaintenanceandmindfulnessTopics covered:Introducing Dr. Ruth Kane from the University of Ottawa.Ruth speaks about surveys and focus groups and some of the patterns that have emerged so far.Past triggers and old habits that tend to creep in while in maintenance.Ruth talks about the power of the community.The impact of following the basic principles of the Livy Method can't be underestimated.The benefits of managing stress and what works well for a person in maintenance.Intentions are different when losing weight versus being in maintenance.Making choices based on how you feel in the moment as an important skill to build on in maintenance.Mindshifts and building off a new relationship with food.Fibre as an important component for success following the Program.The importance of not going back to ultra-processed foods.Livy Losers speak favourably to how much they learn about themselves and food while following the program.Discovering your purpose and motivational WHY can change in Maintenance.The importance of creating and owning your new identity as a way to continue with your success.Ruth poses the question "After weight loss, how do you fill that space you used to give to worrying about food and dieting?"Finding ways to continue to listen to the body and work constantly toward feeling good.Why it's detrimental to fall back into old patterns.We need to give ourselves time to lose the weight, adjust to the loss, and settle our minds. It takes as long as it takes.Redoing another round of the Program is beneficial in Maintenance.We want to cultivate a capacity to grow and take the time to solidify the weight loss in maintenance.Member input is helping us create a powerful maintenance program.Far from perfect: we are always levelling up here and appreciate each of our members providing feedback.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. New year, new me. Season is here, and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Hello, welcome. So here we are on Wednesday in the maintenance and mindfulness group talking all things maintenance. And I am super excited for

today's segment. So we're gonna get right into it. So today, of course, we have Kim, our weight loss group manager. Hello, Kim. Hello, everyone. And of course, we have today Dr. Ruth Kane from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Ruth, we are so happy to have you here. I know we're happy and excited to have you here. Our members are equally, if not more excited to have you here. So I just want to, like I said,

get right into it. You know, earlier this year, we had a survey for our members maintenance to complete. From that, you followed up and did some focus groups, which was also an exciting time for our members. People were signing up like crazy. I know a few of the sessions sold out really quick. So I want to get into it. But first, I do see that Gina is here. So we are going to pop her in. So we'll just get her up and going. Here we go. I'm here. I'm here. Oh, I'm here. Hi, Ruth. Hello. Hi, Odette. Hi, Kim. Hi. Hi. We were just saying hello to Ruth, introducing her, talking about earlier this year we had the survey for our members in maintenance, how excited everybody was for that.

And then she came in with these focus groups and our members were over the moon, ready to get in, selling out like crazy. So we just want to get right into it and get right into um getting Ruth talking about it and filling us in and and uh yeah getting our members well I get to talk to Ruth all the time so you go for it Odette I will let you take the floor with this one yeah awesome so Ruth I mean let's get talk to Ruth let's get right into it so survey it came out and um yeah so we began the research a couple of years in the weight loss group and as gina has said and on her um sessions often that we presented at the obesity summit and they they were impressed they said because we showed that the weight loss program

worked it worked for sort of answering the surveys. It worked for 90 something percent of members. They lost weight and they lost significant, clinically significant weight, most of them. However, the research community said, yay, that's really great. Come back in two years when you can demonstrate that they've kept the weight off. And in a way, that's fair because people do lose weight on diets. They do on many, many different diets. They often lose weight far too quickly. And so what we switched last year to focus more on the maintenance to find out, well, how is maintenance working for members? What is their experience of maintenance? Are they going on happily to maintain their weight

loss at a weight, at a fluctuation that they choose? Not that somebody tells them, but that they choose. And we actually asked them that in the survey. And overwhelmingly, the people who had lost a lot of weight as in pounds, like that they were comfortable with of up to typically most people said one to five pounds but those people who had lost less weight who had less weight to lose and had gone into maintenance after losing say 10 pounds or 15 pounds they were more comfortable with a narrow margin, which is probably a bit more stressful on their day-to-day life. Like some of the ones I got to talk to them were more into, if it goes up a pound or two pounds, I worry, even though they know that our weight fluctuates.

But people who'd lost a lot of weight over a longer time were more comfortable with a weight range up to 10 pounds but usually one to five pounds and that's what they identified as being comfortable to them. Now the survey did show a mixed sort of experience of how people had maintained their weight or not, had maintained in that self-identified barrier band. But what it did point to is that people who had entered maintenance way back when, like beyond a year ago, were able and were able to maintain their weight. Those were the ones that I was particularly interested

in speaking to in the focus group. However, you know what happens. We launched the focus groups and people sign up for them really quickly and most of the members who answered the survey and participated in the focus group had really only identified themselves as being in maintenance in the last six months to a year. So that's pretty new and we'll be sending them. We've got their emails.

We've got 300 people who we can follow and we will pick up others along the way so we can follow them over another six months and another six months. So really the richness of the data, the survey gives us some data, but the richness is really in the focus groups because my goal was to talk to members who had been in maintenance, who had self-identified as being in maintenance. I would love them to have been in maintenance for a year or longer, but that was the minority, but some of them participated, and to understand in conversation what is it you're doing

because some people are struggling to maintain their weight loss. So what is your story? What is the story of the ones who are struggling? And, you know, every focus group had a mix and every focus group had some real lessons to be learned. And it was very interesting interesting the patterns that started to emerge from the focus groups because that tells us how people are navigating real life after weight loss and what are they drawing on and yeah there's some really good patterns coming out and I think that you know one of the most

important parts is is seeing those patterns and having our members be aware of those patterns and picking up on it and I was listening to an older talk we did with Dr. Paul a while ago it's always a good idea to go back and re-listen to those and I was listening to one that he said and it and he said you know for those for those people that have been successful in maintenance and know that they don't want to go back to where they started, really taking a look back at what past triggers had been or what past things have happened that got them to a place where they felt like they had to lose weight again, or they had been unsuccessful. So being able to recognize those patterns, you know, as time goes on, you know, where every opportunity we say this is a learning opportunity.

And did you find that in the groups? Did you find that people were saying like, oh, I noticed this was my trigger, or this is my pattern. Yeah, some of the patterns that are the real challenges for people is people are falling back into eating at night time. If there's one bad habit, bad habit, one habit that people say, oh, you know, I've started having a bowl of chips at night with my husband as we watch TV, or I've started doing this and I've started doing that. And when that came up in conversation, I did speak to members about, like Gina, when you discuss in the weight loss group why it's not a good idea to lose weight, you talk about well you don't need the energy like you don't you're going to bed shortly you're not hungry it's a habit but the latest research

is actually showing that it's detrimental to have food in your system when you go to bed you really really need your gut to have time for the different microbes to do, I know this is very simplistic, but to do their job. And they can't do that with food in your digestive, especially food in your lower colon. So it just helps all your body do what it's meant to do. And some people, when I told them that and sort of directed them to links for that, they said, I can. So scientifically, it's not good for me. That's going to help me sort of get into better habits. And they shared habits and strategies of dealing with it. So that's really interesting because yeah, like, can you eat chips and drink wine at night? Sure you can. But like you said, it's, it's more than just falling in that bad habit. It's then the snowball effect of doing

that. And then one night turns into two turns into, you know, then all of a sudden you're trying to not eat one day to make up for the chips you have the day you're falling back into those old diet habits and then yes then it's affecting your sleep and affecting your sleep is affecting your hormones and so can you have chips at night yeah of course you can every now and then and then that's why back on track is so important right that's not like that's even after you you know i've lost my weight 30 something years ago, if I still indulge, I'm mindful the next day to help my get my body recovering from that indulgence. I do want to say, well, first of all, Ruth, I had an idea. And maybe what we can do is, is go back into our old email list. I think what's happened is a lot of people who've done previous programs are off living their

lives. And maybe not checking into the maintenance group, people who've been maintaining for a year or two years. So we can go back into those old emails and like send them out to everyone who's ever done the program because we had people doing the program who've been maintaining their weight like far before we started this maintenance group. So we can do that. I also want to say that I have conversations with Ruth all the time, and she's very honest in sharing her information with me. And we're always factoring that in to, okay, so members are struggling with this.

What can we do to help better support them, better advise them? And so Ruth works independently, although, yeah, she received funding to study the Libby method. We don't pay ruth we try to pay her and bribe her and she won't take our money um so next year i might need money so so as much as we try to bribe her she won't take our money so she really is giving us her honest assessment and so i'm like give it to me the good the bad the ugly because we take her information we're like okay in knowing this how can we better

help our members because let's face it although i've been helping people lose weight for 36 years maintenance is really something that i've just been focusing on for the last couple years so there's a lot to be learned here there's a lot to be learned here. There's a lot to be learned here. And members are very grateful for the maintenance group because they like the structure of the weight loss program, but they like the safety net of the community if they need it and when they need it. And they just find it a very safe, friendly, supportive community. And where do you get that sometimes in day-to-day life

in the society we live in? But there are things that are triggering, like there are things, how do I put this? One of the things, Gina, you often say in the, go on and live your life. Like you don't want to meet people in 10 years time who excitedly say to you, I'm still doing your program. And you go, what? You know, get out of here, go and live your life. However, and this is sort of a nuanced sort of thing. The people who are doing super well at maintaining their weight loss, who have not a care in the world about food and their relationship with food

and will go on a holiday and eat all the things and everything, are people who in their brains have adopted the fundamental values or principles of the program. And by that, I mean they eat protein for breakfast. At mid-morning, they might have a fruit snack. Might not, but might. They eat lunch and they eat veggies and protein. They eat a snack in the afternoon if they're hungry.

They eat nuts and they eat dinner. So they're following the basic principles of choosing what to eat. And some of them have not brought back in pasta and bread as an everyday occurrence because, and this is the key, when they do, they don't feel good. And the people who are maintaining their weight without a care in the world are people who have totally changed the way they eat. So they're eating almost according to those four, five principles,

the daily sort of plan. They're drinking water. They're trying to manage their sleep, and they're eating regularly. And one of the women sort of had an aha moment recently because she couldn't understand why her weight was creeping up a little bit. And she realised without even thinking she had been getting stressed, sitting at her desk and going back into what you call old diet habits

and not eating for five or six hours. So it's that eating regularly and so in that way they're sort of following the plan. And that's okay because it makes them feel good yeah so sorry i just want to add here so we talk about we have this conversation but in a different way where members are no longer chasing the scale and they're like but i don't it's great i'm maintaining but i'm not feeling as good as i felt and they're realizing there's a benefit to managing their stress and their sleep. I think Ruth, what we need to do is tweak the messaging here. And when I say go off and live your life finally and forever, it is bringing forth the principles and sort of it's beyond continuing to be mindful, continuing to understand what works

well, that protein for breakfast is always going to be a benefit because it's beneficial to the body, not just in weight loss, but for your hormones and for your metabolism and not going longer, you know, than three and a half or four hours is still basic principles. So I think, and this is why I love having conversations with you. I think this is where we could tweak the messaging. It's not just look, wait, good, look, look good, feel good. It's being mindful and continuing those good habits, continuing those basic principles that you've learned when losing weight, right? Making sure you're staying hydrated, manage your stress, manage your sleep, move your body. Now, no longer looking to lose weight, but in managing weight and feeling better, those are key principles

in maintenance. See, aha moments, game changer, watch your verbiage moving forward. Thank you, Ruth. And it's so true. Like Kim and I were just talking about this last week and we were, you know, going back and forth and I was saying that so many members in maintenance are saying, you know, I'm following the program, I'm following the program. But in diving deeper and talking to our members, they're actually just following the principles of the program, we just had to put that put those words to it. So they're not necessarily following the programs and the tweaks and,

and, you know, tweak as they did when they were losing weight. Now they've gone beyond solidifying, they really are in this place of testing the waters and being back on track. And so what they're doing now is they're remembering the principles, I need to stay hydrated, just like you said, Gina, stay hydrated, get sleep, manage my stress, you know, indulge once in a while, but then get back on track. That's following the principles. But I think we're saying the program and the plan where we really try to follow the guidelines and the principles of that, of what we've learned. Well, the intention of it too is different because when you're in weight loss, you're doing all those things because you want to lose weight.

When you're in maintenance, you transition into, I'm doing this because I don't feel like crap if I do this. It makes me feel good. And, you know, switching over that mindset from feeling like you have to do certain things when you're trying to lose weight because that's how you're going to lose your weight versus choosing to do it when you're in maintenance because you love the way that you feel. It is all about how people feel. And that's the shift in conversation when you're talking in the focus groups. The people who are only been in maintenance for six months, they're still nervous.

They're still finding their way. They're still weighing themselves every day, and many of them are probably still getting a little bit anxious when the scale reads higher than they'd like. The people who have been in maintenance for a year and are now sort of rocking along but still following the principles of eating well, they don't weigh themselves anymore.

They only weigh themselves once a week if they think of it or as a check-in every now and then. They judge everything on how they feel, everything. They don't eat. If they choose not to eat bread or pasta it's because they brought it back in and they felt like crap and they don't want to feel like crap anymore they want to feel good i've had this taste of if i feed my body, I mean, I'll never forget a woman in a focus group in the weight loss program said to me, Gina's teaching North America how to eat, how to eat well. And I learned how to feed my body. And if they continue to do that to the best of their ability. There are things that you do speak to all the time,

and perhaps if you were, you've talked about perhaps a maintenance program. The biggest thing is stress. The biggest, like we have to learn because that impacts the sleep it impacts that i forget to eat for three or four hours i do this i do that it sort of gets you off focus and so you know any sort of program or or people that or strategies for dealing with stress, I think, would be something that people in maintenance really, really would benefit from. Well, we just touched on this in the weight loss group,

really this group with the sleep discussion that we had with Dr. Beverly and Alana and Dr. Alinka. And then I think the missing link to that is the stress part of it. So we touched on it a bit with Dr. Paul and then Dr. Alinka. And then I think the missing link to that is the is the stress part of it. So we touched on it a bit with Dr. Paul, and then Dr. Alinka in terms of hormones. But really, I think that's we could do a whole week just on stress, whole week on sleep, whole week on stress, you know, really whole week on movement, whole week on, you know, all of that. And yeah, I think that's a that's a big piece. But I think even, you know, as Ruth, you're doing a lot of research, like I'm, I don't also know everything. And this is where

we never talked about stress. Stress didn't really factor in, I think now think back to when I had gained my weight. And I think really, it was I was high stress, university pulling all nighters, over exercising, right, I was barely eating anything. So you know, and probably not sleeping. And so you know, when I got out of university, and even when I would look back and think about developing the Libby method, I wasn't factoring in stress and sleep. I just thought, oh, well, I'm eating more often and I'm exercising less and I'm losing all this weight. It actually wasn't until that sleep segment that we did and conversations I was having about stress where I was like, huh? Yeah. Like I think that not being stressed, not pulling all nighters, you know what I mean? Actually eating food and, you know,

being able to get sleep again probably played a big role into my ability of losing over a hundred pounds. And, but no one talked about that then. And stress didn't really factor into the living method until the pandemic hit until 2020. And then all of a sudden, no, we did not discuss stress. Stress was not like, even the stress and sleep post was a one pager that I created during that pandemic grew and then we've only really recently expanded on that conversation can I ask for like what is the common denominator of people who are successful in maintenance versus people who have a hard time in maintenance are there like I think they've gone through a real mind shift. Like they've really developed a new way of living with themselves,

living with food. They look at food far differently than they used to. And they say, I look at food as something that I can curate to nourish my body and they do not have this thing in their head of, I just want to lose this weight and go back to eating how I used to. They're quite comfortable saying, no, I have to eat differently. I have to interact with food differently and that's okay. And they're not lamenting what they've had to give up because they know they can choose to eat whatever they like on occasion

and because they feel like crap when they do. And so they prioritise feeling well. And I think part of it is that they never, people, or we never realised how badly we used to feel all the time, especially someone who's a long-time cyclical dieter, sort of go, lose the weight, go back up, lose the weight, go back up. You know, that's been our identity. And so to feel good, to be actually able to live your life and participate is something

that they value more highly than, I don't know, eating hamburgers and McDonald's whenever they want. And so they just decide, they reframe the way they live their life. The women that I spoke to and some gentlemen in the focus groups don't feel deprived. Like it's not that they're controlling themselves in any way to do this. This is how they now live their life. They eat veggies. And, like, without a doubt, Gina, your approach to eating, your program, I don't like calling it a diet.

I don't think it's a diet. Your approach to eating, your program, gets people eating more fiber than they've ever eaten, and that is a really, really, really good thing because 95% of North Americans do not eat fiber. So that in and of itself makes members of your program so much healthier. Sorry, Odette, just quickly because I know I already cut you off.

We need to talk about fiber more in the program we don't we don't talk about fiber enough I was just gonna say like we're we have people eating fiber and they don't even know it but as soon as you say you need to up your fiber you need to take more fiber what do they think of they think of dry rand buds or whatever those like crunchy things are there's like like chalk dust in your mouth right that's what you think when you think fiber you don't think all of these veggies and fruits and all of this yeah whole grains that they're putting in that's fiber as soon as you call it fiber they're like oh no no no i don't want that yeah i think like part of this, I always try to identify and I don't think you can identify what's the secret

of the Gina Livy method to eating. And apart from it being real food, you can identify it. But one of the things you do is just following. That's why I have, I'm quite sort of comfortable with telling you, Gina, I follow your program. I follow it in maintenance. That's what I have, I'm quite sort of comfortable with telling you, Gina, I follow your program. I follow it in maintenance. That's what I do.

I make sure I have protein for breakfast. I have spinach with practically every meal I have. And I know that that fiber or that way of eating stops me eating any processed foods, ultra-processed foods, and we never talk about those either. But that's critical in maintenance, to not go back to ultra-processed foods. I think that's critical. It stops people doing that, and it gives us fibre. We eat fibre at every meal.

And you don't discuss that in the weight loss program because I think when you and I've chatted about it before, it's sort of too much. Well, I like to focus on what people can do and need to do, not what they're not doing. But you know, I just wrote down again, you know, this conversation, like you said, about informing people about, okay, now that you can eat at night, why it's beneficial to not eat at night. And now that you can have processed foods again, why it's beneficial to not have processed foods. And maybe Odette, like I was in my whole brain is just going, I know. I'm like, I'm like, look at all these things I've got written down here. Because we are working on creating a maintenance program. So rather than doing another round of

the weight loss program, they would, they would go from the weight loss on creating a maintenance program. So rather than doing another round of the weight loss program, they would, they would go from the weight loss program into a maintenance program, which would be same, same, but different. And this is where we would have an opportunity and room and space to have those conversations. And we're like, yeah, you know, once you've lost your weight, sure, you can have chips, you can do whatever, but it's still beneficial to not eat at night because of this, this, and this, and that, you know, it's, you know, and same thing with processed foods. Okay, yeah, is it a big deal if you have this or that processed foods? Not really. But here's why those foods are addicting. Here's why you want to minimize your, you know, eating those types of foods. So maybe that's that

next level of education. And not that people don't already know that. But I think having it no, like understanding it with where they're at, and everything they've done and wanting to move forward and easily maintain their weight. minimizing the eating at night helps you easier maintain your weight, right? And not because again, is what you have, it's because the snowball effect that it can have next thing you know you're not eating all day again or you know whatever you're doing so yeah and it's also i mean one of the things that is very clear from the focus groups and maintenance the focus groups and weight loss people who embrace the livy method learn a phenomenal amount it's like was it Sharon you talked to who'd lost an awful lot of

weight 160 pounds 163 yeah she speaks about how much she learned every single program and most people speak like that they learn a lot if they're open to it. And so maybe it's when you're ready for the next learning, when you're ready and maybe maintenance is that. You're comfortable, you've lost your weight, and perhaps helping to understand if there are challenges maintaining your weight. Well, let's look at how you've changed your behaviours since you lost the weight.

Have you started sort of buying processed food for lunch every day? Because ultra-processed food, like a lot of food is processed, but ultra-processed food with all the fillers and the additives. Or have you sort of backed off eating veggies and leafy greens? Well, fiber is super, super important. And we've never called it that in the weight loss group. But that's part of the reason the weight loss group works. 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 felix is redefining weight loss for canadians with a smarter more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals is here losing weight is about more than diet and exercise it can also be about our genetics hormones metabolism felix connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X.ca. Let me ask you this, Ruth, because I'm thinking about like, it's one thing to lose because you're motivated and you have that goal, right? And then maintenance is like, okay, you want to maintain

your weight. And does this come into a conversation of are people wondering and then what? Like, okay, you lost your weight, you're maintaining. Is there a then what that people are talking about? Are they a bit lost in what's the whole point and purpose moving forward some of them are but we had a really good conversation in a couple of the focus groups about the difference between having goals because we all had a weight loss goal and it was i don't think it's in james clary's book atomic habits but it's in something else of his. Maybe it's an article of his or a podcast of his. He says once at certain stages or for certain behaviours you want to achieve or habits you want to achieve, it's not so much setting

a goal as setting yourself up a new identity. So you're not, you're somebody who goes to the gym. You're somebody who eats really healthy. You're somebody who moves your body every day. Not the goal of. So you actually think of yourself and your new identity. It is a podcast with him that I was listening to, and he speaks about the importance of seeing yourself as this new person, whoever this new person is.

And it's not visualizing. That's who I am. I'm no longer a dieter. I'm somebody who loves working out every day, who loves hiking, who loves to take care we get myself yeah and how do we get them to feel comfortable saying i'm not a dieter anymore i am this new person you know i'm still me but this is who this is who i am now yeah you can be those things before you even reach your weight loss goal like yeah i am somebody who goes to the gym can be something

that you can say even before you get there. This conversation came up with Tanya when she was in the group, when she did her talk in the maintenance group from yeah, yeah, if anyone in the maintenance group listening right now remembers, where she is that that concept of imposter syndrome who am I to fit into these pants now like who am I if I'm not the person who's always on the latest diet or who am I if I'm no longer the fat friend or who am I if I'm no longer you know what I mean like there's a lot to this is really owning your new identity like you've made made change. We talk about it all the time. You're, you're changing physically, you're changing mentally, you really are changing. And it catches a lot of people off guard where they're not even really accepting themselves.

Like they don't really realize what they've done until, oh my God, they see themselves in the mirror or they hold up their new pair of jeans. I'm like, who the hell's pants are these? They can't be mine. I wonder if there's something more, again, when we're creating the maintenance program, that we can do to help people embrace, like, meet themselves where they're at or really accept. Do you have any thoughts on that, Ruth? Well, I know that unfortunately over these past few months

I've stepped back into a super stressful role, but prior to that I was thinking a lot about what you've raised, actually. I mean, you know, I've listened to so many of your sessions because I've been engaged with this for a while now, but like what do you do with all the space in your head when you're not worried about weight loss? What do you do with that space? What do you want to fill it with?

And what do you give yourself permission to embrace? And like for some people, and I'm not suggesting everybody who struggled with their weight and had to lose 60, 70 pounds went through the same life experiences as me, but you did used to worry all the time about what you weighed in that. So what are we going to use our headspace to do now? How are we going to ensure we sleep better? Or what strategies can we think through or learn to deal with stress

and things like that? Like I think some of the women my age, I know my partner would tell you this, or maybe it was just the way I was raised, like I took a lot of pride in the fact that I didn't have to sleep till 9 o'clock in the morning, that I'd get up at 5.30, 6 o'clock, and I was super virtuous. He tells me I was anyway. And, you know, and he will very comfortably sleep a full eight hours,

nine hours, whereas I thought I was kind of, I don't know, clever or virtuous because I'd get up at the crack of dawn. I love the early mornings, but it's giving yourself permission to learn that, well, sleep is actually really critical. That's not being lazy. I was raised in a family, we were told we were lazy if we weren't out of bed doing chores by 6 o'clock in the morning. So, like, understanding that those sorts of things,

so instead of worrying about weight all the time now, perhaps give our attention to things that can give us a longer and richer and healthier life. How can we fill our head with those things? And, yeah, so I never realised how important sleep was never never and um i still struggle with that um but you know i think the people who are who are doing well with maintenance are finding ways to adhere to some of the basic principles of the program they're welcoming them they're embracing them are listening to their bodies so when they feel bad

they think about why that might be is it sleep is it water is it food that I've eaten or stress? And they work towards getting back to feeling good, whether that means taking care of their stress, their sleep, or eating in a more nutritious way. I think that's the gift of the Livi method, that they've got that ability to recognise when it's going wrong. Yeah. And part of that is recognising when you're not eating enough, like because you unconsciously sort of think,

oh, I pigged out yesterday, maybe I can back off today. So you do fall back into the women. People are telling me you do fall back into that. It's, uh, yeah, it's like, it's, um, it's appealing, right? Like, Oh, especially cause I've lost the weight. So I'm good now. So then I can go back to doing those little quick fixes where I overeat. And then I'm just going to starve myself for a day or two and then I'll get back on it, but not really realizing that that was part of why you gained so much weight in the first place. And you spent so much time getting your body to trust that you're going to continue to give it what it needs. And that overeating and then under eating combination, man it's such a bad combination for what you are

the message you are sending to your body you are overeating why are you overeating you must be trying to gain weight and then why are you under eating oh that must have been why you overate last night because now there's not enough today and that just both of those signal weight gain and so falling back into those that old old pattern of starving, depriving, punishing, over-exercising, under eating that, like, I don't think people really realize. And maybe again, that's part of our education in, in maintenance and knowing people are doing that really try to educate them into understanding why that's so detrimental and help them understand that that's probably factored into why you needed to lose this weight in the first place yeah yeah that's interesting yeah so wow there is there is a lot

that's coming through there i mean there's clear evidence that the longer you take to lose the weight so i know people want to lose their weight quickly yeah but the longer you take to lose the weight the more odds there are of you keeping it off so the pound a week is a really average steady way of losing weight and you've had guests that have said well i lost 25 pounds round one, but then I only lost eight pounds in round two. So your body will adjust. So it's important not to get too freaked out if it's going slowly because it's your body likes it to go slowly. Yeah. I mean that one to two pounds is ideal. If you lose more than that, great, but also expect, I was talking about this morning on the live equal and opposite reaction. If you lose a big chunk quite quickly, expect a longer plateau at some point, your body has to adjust. And I think this is where also Ruth, where you say that

people who have a larger amount of lose to weight can be more successful or have an easier time in maintenance. I think it's twofold. One, they've spent time helping the body solidify the weight that they've lost. And then mentally, each time they do another round of the program, they're continuing to work through their issues and associations and habits and coping mechanisms and beliefs. So, so it's almost like if you lose a lot of weight real quickly, and maybe you do a one and done and you lose all your weight in one program, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easier for you to maintain your weight because you lost less because you had less weight to lose. There might be actually more work for you to do in maintenance. The work might be in maintenance that you need to do. You took three

months to lose your weight, you might need to take six or nine months in order to be able to sustain and maintain your weight and actively put time into that to solidify that. That's really interesting. Without a doubt. I think it takes time and it takes time for your body to adjust and it takes time for you to adjust your patterns and behaviours and make new patterns and behaviours the norm, like Dr. Beverly and others are more knowledgeable about that.

So that's the way you now live your life. And, you know, listening to your body and being connected to your body is extremely difficult for people who have been on roller coasters of weight loss because they've spent an awful lot of time squashing down, like whether they feel hungry, whether they should eat or anything. They've been actively working against their body for so long. So to learn that, the four questions of that, with the focus groups that I used to do in

the weight loss group, I used to ask about the four questions and people typically would not master those until their third session. You know, it takes time for that it takes a lot of time to be able to do that automatically so and that carries you through maintenance but that carries you through because that's connecting your stomach your mind and your body well there's a comment here i think maintenance should not be for people who still want to lose weight and focus more on maintenance. Well, you know, that's, that's kind of like complicated because people can think that they've reached their goal and then change their mind later on. And they want to go back for more. I don't think we should follow the tweaks unless we need to. And I totally, this is where I totally disagree. This is where redoing another

round for the sake of maintenance is so beneficial because it helps you to get even more in tune to your portions. It helps you to deal with your issues about food waste or food scarcity even more. It helps you to solidify those new habits even more. Those tweaks were designed not just to help you focus on weight loss, but to bring up a lot of the fields and stuff that you need to work through. And that's why we're going to structure the maintenance program to have the exact same tweaks. It's just that the focus is going to be different. So you're no longer chasing a weight loss goal, you are working to solidify the weight that you have lost, but continue to level up, continue to learn, continue to work through everything that you need to work through in order to maintain your weight.

And I think this also becomes an issue of not an issue, but a point of capacity. Sometimes when we've lost our weight, and now we're still trying to to solidify that mind body connection, we're still trying to solidify these new habits, having a program to follow with its tweaks, it's almost this comfortable place to be because you almost know what to expect, right? So that little bit of capacity of like, what am I doing today? Or what am I doing next week? We're going to help you figure that part out. So you can really spend the time working on that mind body connection, working on solidifying those habits. So you can put the capacity there if that's where it needs

to be. Yeah. Well, thanks, Ruth. Odette and I have a lot of work we got to do I would like to send the next survey out to all the members we've had Tony and I did discuss that once but we we sort of went with what we had we didn't go follow that idea through. So that's a really interesting way to perhaps capture the experiences of people who did your program two, three years ago or years ago. Because most of the people I spoke to, there were some that had been in maintenance for two years or more, but most of them were in the last year that they've come into maintenance, that they self-identified. And some of them were sort of still straddling both.

There was, yeah, there was some that, oh, I really shouldn't be in this focus group, should I? And I said, that's okay. You can hang out here and listen to the people who are sort of down the track ahead of you. Well, I really think that what we are learning from you and the way we want to restructure an actual maintenance program that people will do when it comes to solidifying their weight. Of course, then they'll phase into that third stage of maintenance and testing the waters before they move on to that just kind of mindfully living, using all the guidelines that you've learned. I think that will really help people. And I wish that we would have

had that before, but we didn't. And you know, but all the feedback that we get from our members on a day to day basis are helping to really create a maintenance program that I think will be a game changer when it comes to helping people actively solidify their weight. Like to be fair, everybody says, like no other program or diet, whatever you call it, has this space, this maintenance space

where people can gather, they can reach out for support, they can ask questions, is this happening for you? Is this happening to you? Like, we all know that most programs or diets, you do them and you go, or you come back and you repeat them and you leave, but there's no aftercare. And people see this as aftercare. Aftercare, yeah. They don't want you to,

they want you to come back and sign up again. And we don't want that. We truly want to prove that the Libby Method is a sustainable, maintainable way to lose weight. And that's, I mean, that is our mission. Because I really think that's what sets us apart from other diets. Yeah, we don't count weight and measure. Yes, it's a guided program,

but really we are out to show that you can lose your weight in a healthy way and be able to maintain it and move on with your life. And that's what the research community, the health community is challenging us to do. Like they said, come back. So next year in the obesity summit, we'll have the data and say we came back and this is the evidence so i'll buy those plane tickets right now ruth for all of it it's already in bc so or wherever they have it i think they have it every other year don't they the canadian every three years and with your luck it'll be in Toronto. Sorry. Just for the sake of time, I do know that we have to go. Ruth, you know I adore you. I think it was so great to bring Odette and Kim. They don't have the luxury of hanging out

with you like I do and hearing this from you. And I think it's so great. And I know our members have been, they're thanking us for, one of our members, they're like, I'm in, I'll pay my own way. Yeah. We'll let you know. We'll let you know where it is. Um, but you know, this is why, again, I, I love you, your passion for the program, um, you know, for the mission of really, truly helping people and your honesty too. Like Ruth lets me know, you know, what's going on and where people are at. And I really appreciate that because we really want to know how we can better help and support our members. We, you know, we're doing our best over here. We're far from perfect.

There's a lot more that we can do. And I think we're well on our way to doing that. That's good. Thank you. Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to people. We'll see you next time. All right, Odette, you got a final word there? Yeah, I mean, this has just been like you said, I don't have the privilege of sitting with Ruth and listening to her. And you know, we really try and listen to our members and listen and see what's

going on in the group. And I think what what Dr Ruth is able to offer just really takes it to the next level. You know, we can see bits and pieces of what our members are saying, but, you know, Dr. Ruth, you can come here today and you can really give it to us in bulk and really help us see what we need to do to help support these members. We've always said, you know, we have a special place here, but we want to make sure that, you know, we want to keep this place special, of course, but we also want to make sure our members feel that every step of the way and feel like they're supported, that they can do this and they can see themselves as that person. I think that's what we're going to take from these conversations. And I also want to say, I hope you all get your 30 squats in today. I'm off to do that right now.

Okay. Odette, Kim, Ruth, thanks ladies. Thanks for everyone joining us. Until next time, everyone have a great night. Thanks. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X.ca.