The Livy Method Podcast - M&M Live: The Research Behind The Livy Method with Dr. Ruth Kane - Fall 2025

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

In this special M&M guest expert episode, Odette sits down with University of Ottawa Professor Dr. Ruth Kane to unpack the research driving The Livy Method’s revolutionary approach to weight maintenance. With warmth and clarity, Dr. Ruth shares what she's learned from years of academic study and hundreds of real-life member interviews. Together, they explore the missing conversation in the wellness world—what it actually takes to sustain weight loss. From shifting your identity to understanding the habits of successful maintainers, this episode offers a candid look at what happens after the scale stops moving.You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/ginalivymaintenanceandmindfulnessTo learn more about The Livy Method and our Maintenance & Mindfulness group, visit livymethod.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 for 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.

Well, it's a great Thursday made even greater because we have Dr. Ruth Kane with us here in the Maintenance and Mindfulness Group. So Dr. Ruth, I just want to say I feel privileged to talk to you here with our members. We have had some conversations behind the scenes, but of course we've never come together to talk about the living method and talk about the maintenance program specifically and how your work and your research and your team. was really a driving force behind this. Of course, our members and what they offer in the group and in the community is so important.

We learned so much from them. But your work has really been pivotal in creating this maintenance program. So thank you. And welcome. So everyone should know you, I think, because you've been around in the weight loss group for a little while. You joined us here in the maintenance group. Oh, gosh, way back when, maybe almost two years ago now. So why don't you just give yourself a quick intro just to let everybody know.

we were. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Ruth Kane. I'm a New Zealander. I've been at University of Ottawa for 20 years this Christmas. I arrived in Canada on Christmas Day, 2005, so I'll have been there over 20 years come next year. And my interest and my research has always been in education. I'm in the Faculty of Education. I have worked in a lot of minority education contexts and teacher education. However, I was a member of the Living Method in 2019, 2020, and had enormous success. And wanted to understand, initially I wanted to understand how Gina's program kept participants engaged for 12 weeks because as a university professor, our courses are 12 weeks long,

and sometimes it's really challenging to keep people engaged for 12 weeks. So that interested me, and then I got really deep into reading about online programs and online engagement, because initially I was interested in learning how I could transfer the strategies GINA used to totally different support systems. I did a lot of work with Inuit in northern Canada, and there are a lot of different issues there, and I thought, well, maybe, just maybe, I could learn from this. But then I got down rabbit holes and ended up investigating the actual weight loss.

Now I'm focusing totally on, although I still, administer the surveys in the weight loss program and do the high-level analysis and share it with Gina and Tony and the team. I'm more interested in maintenance because I discovered through my own research and through the reading of the research literature that you can lose weight on any diet. Losing weight is not the challenge. What is the challenge is keeping your new weight? at a level where you're comfortable indefinitely and what are the factors that enable some

people to do that and why is it that most people struggle with that because the evidence is very clear like you know you all know about gLP ones far the way forward and weight loss now it appears bariatric surgery is the gold standard and weight loss until the way the gLP ones were more widely used and there's diets all three of those people will regain weight in due course the majority of people will regain weight in due course so the really unanswered question is how do we maintain significant weight loss over time so that's what we've focused on for the last couple of years You know, I was just talking to Gina yesterday, as you know, she's down at Obesity Week.

And she was saying that, you know, the overall takeaway there is that there's no lack of tools. There's no lack of technology for people to be able to lose their weight. And the missing conversation from maybe the wellness world or even that week or maybe even from your experience, I know you've been to many obesity conferences, you know, internationally, everywhere is that is that missing piece that conversation around maintenance and and where is that conversation happening and why is it not happening and how does it need to happen and you know we're saying we're having it here we're having it here in this in this group we're having it here we understand that this is where the challenge can come from there isn't support there for for

people to be able to maintain their weight and I think this maybe the support's not there but what does it actually take? You know, who, how do these people that are successful maintainers, how do they do it? What are they doing? Who are they now? And this is where I think your research and your hundreds of focus groups and everything that you together is uncovering that. It's pulling back those layers of who are they?

How are they doing it? And, you know, what does their day-to-day look like? There are certain things. It's not just the conversations I've had with members because I had focus groups with members of the maintenance group about a year ago or more than a year ago. And it's in those focus groups that I realized not everybody was maintaining their weight. A number of people were struggling to, they were gaining weight. After reaching a weight that they were very happy with and then over time it crept back on it. all the research says this will happen.

This will happen to most people. And so after those focus groups, I thought, but some people in those focus groups were fine. They were moving forward with their life. And so we interviewed them. We interviewed 32 people. And before we did that, we went through the research

and really understood Beth. what research is saying about maintaining weight loss because this is a growing area in the international research and those were the pillars of maintenance that I shared with you and Gina when you were revising the maintenance group or in the early years of the maintenance group and then I talked to or we talked to 32 different members who had maintained their weight for over two years. Two years is the time in research and in the obesity world or obesity research and obesity management where we were told when we presented first at obesity matters in Canada four years

ago or five years ago, we were told, come back when you've got evidence, they can keep it off for two years. So that's what we. and what we found is the people who had managed to keep it off did align very well with what the research is saying of the five pillars and it really takes for those of us who have struggled with our weight and lived as in overweight bodies for most of our life like I did it takes a total shift like it's a real shift

a mindset shift it's it's cognitive it's behavioral it's psychological but you really have to shift what you understand by a diet like for a long time now I have not called genus program a diet because a diet to me is all those other methods I used to do where I do them for six weeks, I'd lose weight, and then I'd go back to my life, and I'd put weight back on. So if you reframe what you did in the weight loss group to lose your weight as a learning process, as an introduction to a new way of interacting with food, a new way of caring for your body, a new way you can frame it however you like but it it requires you to see the weight loss group not just to lose weight but to learn a new way of being in the world in relation to food

movement the way you speak to yourself like all of it that you get from dr beverly david from all the guest experts that it's a total shift to you're still yourself but the people who successfully maintain their weight loss clinically significant weight loss over time do take on almost a new identity they no longer see themselves as somebody who's dieting somebody who's losing weight perhaps they now see themselves as somebody who's superactive and goes to the gym regularly or somebody who gets out for a walk every day and they don't think of it in terms of diet or weight loss and most of them make their daily decisions on

what they eat, their daily choices. In fact, all of the people, those people who we spoke to make their daily choices of how they eat, what they do. whether they move, not move, based on how they feel, not on, I've got to do this to lose weight. That's all gone. That headspace has totally changed. And the other research is saying that too. So that's encouraging. We say that, you know, our members in maintenance now, they, I don't want to say they drop the ball,

but they don't focus on as many things as they focused on while they were trying to lose weight. that was the goal. The goal was, I'm doing these things to lose weight. I'm, I have these behaviors and these habits to lose weight. And then they get to maintenance and they're like, okay, well, I don't feel as good. My weight is maintaining. I'm staying at the stable level, but I don't feel as good. And why, you know, why is that? What's happening? And then they realized, oh, I'm not prioritizing my sleep. I'm not having my protein rich breakfast. I'm not, you know, making sure I go, don't go too long without eating. So, you know, just exactly what you said. It's taking those same principles, but doing them not to lose weight, not doing them because you're a dieter, but doing them because

they make you feel good. It gives you, it's reinforcing who you are now, how you want to live now, who you want to be now. And that's why you're doing those things. You're doing them because you want to feel good, not because you're focused on getting that scale to move. Yeah, I mean, you almost have to look at the weight loss programs. Like, ideally, if you, I don't have a lot of experience with people who have to lose 10 pounds. Most of the people I've interviewed have had to lose 50 to 100 pounds. And so for that, it takes time. So it takes three, four, five, six sessions of the weight loss.

You can't sustain that for two years thinking this is a diet because you have to sustain yourself on a program for that long by saying this is the new way I'm going to be. This is, I'm learning new strategies. It's like learning any skill. I'm learning new ways of listening to my body. I'm learning new ways of recognizing when I've had enough to eat. I'm learning strategies to make sure I don't slip back into old habits of not eating. of sort of giving in to cravings or something.

But just as importantly as all the mental or cognitive sort of elements, emotional elements of I'm learning to be kind of to myself when I do make unhealthy choices or when it is a stressful time or when I am faced with difficult situations. situations and I don't have a lot of choice of what I've got to eat so I can't eat what I'd like to eat but I know I should eat so I'm going to eat this. And so the pillars that come out of the research and that were reinforced by our interviews with people who are successful and it's, I find it quite interesting because a lot of it

can be explained by Gina's program. I see Gina's program as a wraparound program and it's wraparound because it's not just this is a food you have to eat like some of the diets I've been on when I was younger. This is the food you have to eat but here's somebody I'm going to talk to

who will talk to us about stress, who will talk to us about sleep, who will talk to us about all the mental gymnastics going on in your head. So she touches on the cognitive, the social, sorry. That's okay. We are live and we keep it real around here. So that's why I see Gina's program not as a diet. And that's what the next thing I want to explore from the latest survey of the weight loss,

program is the experience of members who are on glp ones but also on the diet on the program on the weight loss program how are they experiencing it and is it sort of giving them any additional support is it a distraction is it helpful so that's where i want to go um in the next few weeks reaching back out to them but for people in maintenance like the pillars of maintenance that not only the conversations I've had, but the research says, and it's the research, when we have conversations, we're trying to find whether our members have experienced the same thing as what the international research is telling us. And there's social and environmental factors.

That's sort of pillar number one. So during the weight loss program, we should be creating an environment at a home, at work and socially, that is kind to our goals, that supports our goals. So if you're somebody who you know at this time of your life, if you brought, if you don't take your lunch to work, you will probably be time short and just grab something and beat yourself up about it afterwards. So you've got to curate your environment so it supports you. So you set yourself up for success. So you ensure you have things that will support you. And if you want to change your behaviour, you remove the barriers that cause you to do things you

don't want to do. So, and you remove the barriers to enabling you, like, if you do want to go for a walk every day, what will make it easier for you to do that? Put your shoes out, perhaps, decide, well, let's do it first thing in the morning before the children are up or before I have to get into work. So put your shoes out, set the alarm and go. Don't even think about it. So you've got to create your environment to make it happen.

The other thing, and this is where I think people are a little bit confused because they feel they should be able to go on a diet, lose their weight, and then get on with their life. And Gina used to think that too in the beginning, as she's publicly said, she didn't see why we need a maintenance group. Like, what the heck do we need a maintenance group for? Yeah, what are we going to talk about? But I don't think Gina remembers what she might have gone through when she transitioned into maintenance, when she, like, it's a long time ago, but I don't know whether she consciously recalls exactly whether she had reinforcing behaviors or different things.

But we've got the benefit of the maintenance group. So in order to maintain your weight, you have to change your behavior permanently from when you were living with overweight. And so in order to do that, the benefit of genus program is it teaches you to recognize how you're feeling, get in touch with your body, connect with your body. you can't stop doing that all because you've reached your lowest weight now is the type or all because you've reached the goal weight that you're satisfied with you have to do that for the rest of your life people who live in very slim healthy bodies never have not that all slim people are healthy but who never have a weight issue they do that naturally

since they were little kids they eat when they're hungry they stop eating when they're satisfied. For some reason, we've interrupted that by going on crazy diets, doing different things. So we have to self-monitor. We have to be mindful and notice patterns in our behavior and how our body feels. And we have to anticipate if we've got events. So you have to plan for slip-ups, basically. Yeah.

I just want to say, Ruth, I just want to say to our members that these pillars are, they're available to all of our members. They can see exactly where they are. We have them posted in our maintenance guide under in a post called the program overview. So if our members want to go see what these pillars are exactly and how they correlate to the weeks that we, you know, that we run the maintenance program, they can see that. Like just what you said about social and environmental factors, week 10 is all about that. That's what we're talking about. We're putting that in the forefront. Like when you talk about planning, we're talking about that next week and week nine.

You know, so when we're talking about these pillars and what do they mean and where did they come from and how do we use them, this is really where this program was built from. It was built from these pillars and we work them into these tweaks each week. And even though we say a tweak is never just a tweak around here. about feeding the metabolism and, you know, breaking up those meals and snacks, but what we're teaching you or what we're hoping that you're picking up from what we're putting down is the prioritizing yourself, prioritizing your time, prioritizing your own self-care because this is what successful maintainers do. They understand it's important to take care of themselves and prioritize themselves. When you were talking about, I can't remember what it was

now, shoot. It was, oh, the social environmental factors. Setting up that space that is, that is conducive to the behaviors and the actions that you want to take. You know, we talk all about that. We talk about, you know, setting up not only your, your environment, but also your support system and your community, making sure that that aligns with who you are. So if anybody wanted to see these pillars, I know I just went on off a tangent, if you want to see these pillars, they are posted in the group for everybody and how they align for each week. And maybe, maybe, that'll give our members a bit more of an understanding of why we do the things we do or why we're talking about things that we talk about. Yeah. And I think at the bottom line, we have to,

each of us have to really reframe, get rid of our old way of thinking of a diet is to lose weight and think of how do I want to sort of live my life? Who do I want to be? Most of the members who are successful in maintaining their significant weight loss, say they're totally, it's hard. They're totally different people. Like, I am a different person now than I was pre-2019. I'm a lot healthier. I'm a lot more active. I have a lot more energy.

I really value getting outside. I value for the first time. in my life, I value getting a good night's sleep. I used to be one of those people who used to be quite sanctimonious about how little sleep I could survive on, never knowing that I was actually hurting myself. I didn't understand. I've learned so much about these contributing factors to a healthy body. And with all this, though, the other diet thing we have to get rid of is that somebody can tell us what to eat, how much to eat, et cetera. It's so personalised.

It's how your body responds to what you're doing, which is important, not what you eat. So it's really making a decision about how you're going to interact with food. And the last couple of weeks, I believe, of Gina's weight loss program, or the last week, is personalizing the plan. How do you make the plan work for you? How do you tweak it, adjust it a little bit, so it suits your lifestyle, so it suits your, well, basically your lifestyle, your day-to-day life. If you've got kids, if you're retired, what have you. and that's a real that's where I say there's so much learning in the weight loss program that you need to carry with you and to maintenance yeah I wanted to read this comment that came through

because I wanted that is exactly the point that we want to make about the learning and taking the learning with you so this this comment came in from Anna and it says I'm realizing that if I don't follow the program at least 75 percent I don't feel as well in the weight creeps back. So this is so pillar six here in in the these pillars that we have is living the liby way and taking the learning with you. So what we mean by that is it's you're taking all of these principles, all of these core guidelines and you're taking that with you so that you're not necessarily following the program. You're not following a program. You're following your own personalized plan, but those core principles and those foundational guidelines that you've learned

along the way, that's what you're taking with you. That I think is what the program is after that. It's your own personalized plan. So it's things like, you know, all the learning that you've learned about how you cope with stress, how sleep affects you, you know, how certain foods affect you, what happens to you when you go too long without eating if you don't move your body, you know, if you're not having breakfast, it's taking those core learning principles and taking those with you. So that might be what your program looks like. It's your program. You are the program. Yeah. At that point, really, you're not following a program specifically. You're following, you are the program. You're following what you need because you've taken all of that learning

with you. And I think that's such an important part that I wanted to highlight. Yes. I don't think about it being the white most program. Mm-hmm. Think about its principles. When you're talking about the food, when that member who made the comment says, if I don't, oh, it's 75%. So she's talking about the food.

Think about the principles you learn during weight loss. One of them is eat protein for breakfast. That is based on like every nutritionist will tell you to eat protein for breakfast, that you have to have protein at every meal. You know, eat leafy greens and vegetables. Every research project on nutrition will now tell you that have a plant-focused or plant-forward menu for your daily eating habits.

A lot of people don't eat anywhere near and perhaps you didn't either, and this is why you're not feeling well if you go off, that sort of basic place. plan is I think it's something like 85% of North Americans have way below the required fibre in their diets because processed food, ultra-processed food has very little fiber. And so, Gina's program, if you're eating veggies with every meal, vegetables, leafy greens, veggie snack, you're having fiber, adequate fiber for perhaps the first time in many years.

And so, of course, you're going to feel better. The body desperately needs fibre. So, yeah, it becomes, you may not have the snacks still when you say if you don't follow the program. But maybe what it is is you've learned how to feed your body well. And that's what you continue. You don't need to go through the tweak where you cut your meals in half or go through the tweet where you but you've learnt

what your body needs that you don't need that you feel like crap well you know that sort of that's why I see Jesus weight loss program as a course as a learning experience of how

we have learned better how to interact with our bodies how to feed our bodies and there's new skills about sleep, about stress, all these things that we've also learned, which typically would have no role in a diet whatsoever. And so we've learned those to help, like you said, recreate our own program from maintenance onwards. But you will, I mean, I'm going to be really

We will never maintain our weight at a reasonable weight. Like I'm assuming people are trying to maintain a reasonable weight, not a scary, disordered weight. So at a reasonable weight, we'll never maintain that if we decide to take back the habit, which Marcel, my partner, still does. every night but he doesn't have a weight from eating right through to 10 o'clock at night like eating a bowl of chips a bowl of cashews a bowl of chocolate um i could never do that i'll never be able to do that if i want to maintain my weight and that's okay that's my body and my body needs

to stop eating by 7 o'clock at night and give my body time and that's life i'll never be able to go back to that. I'll never be able to, what was Gina's old saying, eat chips in bed. I'd never do that. I couldn't imagine it. Yeah, crumbs. But, you know, that's life. I can do other things. You can do other things. And I think that, you know, this comes, we love to never talk in all or nothings or an absolutes, right? And we also talking to Gina again yesterday, we were talking about this concept from James Clear where you don't let it happen twice. You know, you don't let the same thing happen twice. So maybe one night, I am going to have, you know, chips at 9.30 at night while I'm watching a show.

But what we want to remember is that that doesn't become one night, two night, three nights. Because what happens then is that becomes the new habit. And that doesn't leave room for the habits that you've created that actually align with who you are and where you are at this point. So it's not in these absolutes where you can never do that. You can never, but it's having that awareness. You've learned about yourself that, like you said, you know that you couldn't do that because that's not how you feel good. That's not where you're able to maintain your way. It happens once in a while here and there.

But it's having that awareness and that learning and that trust in yourself and that confidence in yourself that you're not going to let it. happen twice. You're not going to let it happen three times. You're going to do it and you're going to move on. It's not the one-offs that are the problem. No, it's not the one-offs, of course, if you're having a party or something, but it's things becoming habits again, slipping back into bad habits and repeatedly, say, eating at night or snacking on unhealthy foods. Or one of the ones, Now, be aware people, this is really important. When we had the focus groups of the maintenance group, the people that were struggling to maintain their weight had gained weight.

One of the most, there were two things that were most common in those people. And these were just focus groups. I didn't do one-on-one interviews with them. I'd started eating at night again after dinner. I'd started, and it had become a habit. The other thing they did is when they put on weight, they stopped eating. So they went long, we fell back into our old habits of not eating. I've put on weight, I'm not going to eat.

I've put on weight, I'm not going to eat. So, yeah, it's, so those two habits were the most dominant of new habits that are, of old habits that drop back into. And we, you know, we talk about habit stacking in a positive way. You know, if you're brushing your teeth, do some squats. If you are waiting for your dinner, maybe do some counter push-ups while it's cooking. We talk about habit stacking in a positive way. I think there's a way of habit stacking also that doesn't work for you.

You know, so you go back to eating at night, then you'd be right yourself the next day. Then you don't eat all day. Then you are starving. So then you go back to eating at night. night, and then you don't sleep well, and then you berate yourself again. So those are also habit stacking in the other way. So I think that's, you know,

when you say that, you know, eating at night and then not eating at all, it's this cycle, right? It's a cycle of habits and how they can just, you know, push you back into those old ways. And you sort of have to be prepared. I took our neighbor to the hospital the other day for what we thought was an appointment

at 12 o'clock. and we got there at 11, and we were going, she was taking me to lunch afterwards. So I didn't even think. I took water. She had made, there was a mistake. I don't know whether she made it or anything. It doesn't matter. Her appointment wasn't talked to.

She was already in her gown for her procedure. So we sat there from 11 till, I sat there from 11 to 3. I had no food. By the end of it, I was so cranky. I had to drive her the hour home, hour and a half home. And I don't know what I ate when I walked in the front door, but I don't think it was vegetables. No, I can, yeah, I can, I can.

I should have been better prepared. I should have anticipated this could be a tricky situation. Mm-hmm. You know, well, let's make sure you have nuts. In fact, no, we had her car, so there were no nuts in the car. So, you know, it's being prepared, but recognizing when you get home that, yeah, this was a rough day, make sure you eat a better dinner and move on. And move on, yeah. Underneath all of this is your mindset, you really.

And there's a lot of things that Gina had talked about during the program that would help. Like make sure what you do, your behaviours are in line with your goals. During the program, it's to lose weight. During maintenance and for the rest of your life, it's to lead as healthier life as possible with as much energy and longevity and health span as we can have. And so recognize when you're making choices that aren't aligned with that and reflect on them, why, and try and do better the next day. Like, that's all that is, yeah.

You know, it's that famous saying, when you know better, you do better. And I think here with our community and our members, we're trying to help them know better. We're trying to help them, you know, have the tools. have the skills, get the learning, so that they can do better for themselves long-term. Ruth, I just in the interest of time, I know I'm just trying to stay at half an hour, but I could talk to you forever. If there's if there's one thing that you want our members in maintenance to know, and you only have like two minutes.

So I'll let you think about it for a second. If you want it, something that you want our members in maintenance to know, about the work that they're doing here about following the maintenance program about, you know, changes, whatever it might be. What do you think that that would be? It would be I'm quite clear on this because it's

the thing I struggled with the most during the program and I have to relearn again those four questions that if you were like me and went through the program, the weight loss program and did as you were told.

And if you didn't take the time to really get a good sense of those four questions, whether I'm satisfied or not satisfied, I think that's the sort of foundation of going on with your life food-wise, like in order to not eat too much food. because even though we never want to count calories or do anything, overconsumption of food will lead to overweight. So you have to get in touch with your body, and those four questions are critical, I think. They'll become automatic in time, I'm sure.

But if you haven't done that, don't hesitate to go back and keep training yourself with that. Yeah. And well, on that note, this is the perfect week for it because we are splitting those meals and snacks. So you have double the opportunity to, you know, follow those four steps of mindful eating. But like you said, it's part of the mindfulness. It's, you know, yes, it's your physical body, but it's also that mindset.

It's that mindfulness. Yeah. Ruth, I'm so, I'm just like I said off the top, I'm so privileged to talk to you. I think our members are, and us, the team, we're so fortunate to have you to hear from you, to learn from you. And we love that it's always real talk. right it's we don't we don't we don't try and sugarcoat it no we've got to be real about it you know we're we're doing real work we're having real conversations at the same time so i think it's important we want to make change we want to make permanent change and i think what that needs

to come the real conversation so thank you so much for joining us um we won't we won't see you again this this time around but maybe we'll see you in the next round we'll see how it goes and you'll have some new information for us or just like i said said to come back and just doesn't have a chat. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

Bye.