The Livy Method Podcast - The 4 Main Reasons Why Your Weight Might Be Slower to Move Part 1 with Dr. Paul Hrkal - Winter 2025

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Struggling with the scale? Frustrated by weight loss roadblocks? In this Guest Expert episode, Naturopathic Doctor Paul Hrkal joins Gina to break down what might really be going on with your body. They're talking about inflammation—how it affects weight loss, why pain doesn’t always mean inflammation, and what testing can reveal. Plus, they cover the impact of ultra-processed foods, food sensitivities, and even how men and women experience alcohol differently. And spoiler alert: the thing you don’t want to do is probably exactly what you need to do.Where to find Dr. Paul:Instagram: @drpaulhrkalwww.paulhrkalnd.com If you are in the Winter 2025 Support Group, you can check out the full video here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2025To learn more about the Livy Method, or to sign up for the Spring 2025 Program, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livi and welcome to the Livi 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 relisten 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. This is an opportunity to become curious. To learn some things. How do we help you feel less overwhelmed so you can continue on your journey? Keep believing in yourself and keep trusting the process. Just be patient. Why are you having such a hard time losing weight? That's the very real conversation that we're going to have today. And here to have that conversation is the perfect guest,

Dr. Paul Herkel. Hello, good morning. Good morning, Gina. It's great to see everybody. So when people come to me and know it, we're going to start off for assuming people are following the Libby method, right? They're following the food plan. They're doing the things. We have this conversation now. Still not too nervous about people not seeing much action on the scale, but we want to get ahead of it. Whenever I've spoken to anyone who is just so frustrated with the scale, and they're like, I'm doing all the things, I'm eating the stuff, I'm drinking the water, it's never that. It's never that. It's never the things they name.

To me, it's always something else that they have going on that's preventing them from showing up in the way that they want, or something deeper health-wise. It's never the food. It's never the food when they're following the program. What's your experience been? Of course, we're gonna talk inflammation, food sensitivities, gut issues, hormones,

but in general, what's the main factor when people come to see you, why they're not losing weight? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing that I see, because I've seen, again, hundreds of people that have gone through the program, is that there is some sort of life obstacle that prevents them from kind of completing a full program or really being all in. And I think most of the people that have gone through this multiple times, and there's many of them that are repeat livi losers, they're going to, they're going to tell you from their experiences that the times the sessions that they were really all in the ones that they got, you know, they were doing all the water they were listening to the lives, I think there's something about showing up I love what you said about that is that there's something about engaging in the community, engaging in the information that is being presented, what you're talking about.

And then that keeps people on point and accountable. So I think that's the first thing. It's, it's rarely that, Oh, I'm not eating enough salad or broccoli. You know, in the first session, that's not really what it is. It really is, is that, am I, am I committing to this full on and a wholeheartedly? So that's kind of like the first session, that's not really what it is. It really is, is that am I am I committing to this full on and wholeheartedly? So that's kind of like the first layer. And then what we're going to talk about today is the second layer is like where where are the other things that if you're doing all that, and maybe you've done it before in previous sessions, what else

could there be that is limiting your ability to lose weight. And I'm just gonna preface this to say that this, there isn't, we're gonna talk about four or five things, but there isn't, there's many things that can influence and there's many sub points of each one of these things we're gonna talk about Gina. So it's not simplistic, but we're gonna try to make it as understandable as possible.

Okay, before we get into the conversation, there's gonna be some people this is gonna resonate with and they're gonna be like, oh my goodness, okay, I'm never gonna be able to lose weight. What do you say to that? Well, I think that's BS. I mean, I think that's a story that we tell ourselves. I think if there's ever a thing that we,

and this is on a psychological level, that we say, I'm never gonna do this, then you already have kind of adopted a defeated mentality. And so like, I really believe, and I do this with my patients, I do this with my brain recovery courses, the mindset is the first place to start. When someone has an issue, a health issue,

or any issue in life for that matter, if their mentality is like, I'm never gonna get out of this, this is going to be something that is going to be with me for the rest of my life, it's going to impact me, this is too big for me, then that is one step that they're not going to be able to overcome. And it doesn't matter if they do all the things, take all the right medications, see the right doctors. So that's so important that you said that because whenever I'm having these conversations, I just said this to, we had Dr. Jennifer Zelavitsky on,

she's an MD menopause expert. And someone says, oh, this is so depressing as we're having this conversation. She's like, oh, I'm so sorry I made someone feel like that. I said, no, every conversation that I have with my experts, rather than people getting excited about the information, they become resistant or they're like, oh my goodness, this is depressing or feel overwhelmed.

The whole point of these conversations is to bring awareness, to highlight some of the things that might be going on with you. I mean, especially if the scale isn't moving, which to me is very exciting because there are always things that you can do about it. And yes, does it suck if you're dealing with inflammation or have food sensitivities or gut

issues or hormonal issues where you have to dig a little deeper, level up even more? Absolutely. But that's your way in. And there's just, there's no way around it. You're going to have to, and you're going to not just have to address these things. You're going to want to address these things just for your basic health and wellness Well, and I'm really glad you said that thing right at the end there is that you know This is my approach with my patients and it's my conversations with you. I share this My core belief is that Your body this is goes for everyone that's listening right now your body's set point is health the right now. Your body's set point is health. The current state that a person may be in right now

is their body's telling them lots of different symptoms, they're feeling pain. These are all signals the body gives us. And here's a big one. Being overweight is a symptom of a metabolism that is not ideally functioning. And it's a combination of all those things that lead into that. So there's a combination of your inflammation, all the things we're going to talk about now, but then there's also your health history, there's past experiences, there's your psychology, there's family history, there's a genetic component. All that is brought into where you're currently at right now. But your, I believe the symptom, our set point is health and there are symptoms that we have to address.

And ultimately addressing each one of those symptoms is what's gonna bring us to the point that their body is going to just lose the weight naturally because the set point is being healthy. Yeah. Okay. So inflammation, food sensitivities, gut issues, hormones, where do you wanna start?

You know, I'm gonna start with inflammation because I think that it's a good segue into all the other conversations. Inflammation is a broad topic. It's an umbrella term that basically tells us there's a signal going on in the body that something isn't right. Something is activated.

So your immune system, your immune cells, will create inflammation in response to some danger signals. Something that the body's interpreting as like, you know what, this is not something that I want to have in the body. And so this is a really good thing because if you do get sick, for example,

if you get the cold or flu virus, you're going to want to create inflammation to combat that if you bump your knee, you you hurt yourself, I damaged some structure, you're going to want to repair that the body is very intelligent. But over the years that we've that we've kind of been living is sometimes those repair mechanisms get hampered. And then you get what's called chronic inflammation. So I want to differentiate number one, Gina, between acute inflammation, which is really good, and the increasing of inflammation and

the resolution. I'm specifically using that term resolution because in chronic inflammation, which is now being understood as the one of the key root causes of almost every chronic health issue that a person has, including things like depression, which as you think, oh, that's something wrong with my neurochemistry. No, it has to do with inflammation as well. But it's the chronic inflammation, Gina, that is unresolving, that's problematic. And this is one thing that's going to make your metabolism, not focusing on weight loss, but trying to constantly be in the state of like repair, but never quite get to the end.

So that's not able to resolve. So that's kind of the understanding of inflammation that I want to set the tone of understanding. This could be one of the things, one of many things that could be contributing to this inflammation, but the umbrella is inflammation. Well, this is where people want the scale to move so badly, but your body is like, okay, can you just, I'm dealing with a lot of other things going on. And that's why with the program, the first few weeks give the body what it needs

to address why it's feeling you need to store fat to make it feel like it doesn't need to store the extra. Now we're into specifically helping the body focus on fat loss when it has all these other things to focus on and inflammation is one of them. What, why is inflammation like how does it mess with people's weight? Well I think you said it really well there is that if your body's trying to process an inflammatory response and it's kind of stuck in this like you know spinning its wheels, it's not really resolving. Well the metabolism is focused on that. So your cellular energy, your cellular machinery,

it's focused on producing the trying to resolve this inflammation, but it can't. It's so sometimes we have to figure out what's causing that inflammation. And so that's a perfect dovetail into food sensitivities. But there's also other things like, for example, autoimmune type of inflammation. I just saw a patient yesterday, part of the program, and she had autoimmunity of the thyroid. So Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So that is a double whammy because you have inflammation

and you also have an organ that's being affected by that inflammation that can make your metabolism even more sluggish. So this is one example of an autoimmune process meaning your body's attacking a particular tissue and is doing it unfortunately in a way that's not ideal because we don't want to be attacking our own tissue. We want to attack stuff that's external. We want to get rid of damage, but in this case autoimmune is attacking itself. And so there's a whole bunch of reasons why that happens. But that's what I kind of do with patients is we troubleshoot, see like why is this inflammation happening? And it could be a whole host of reasons, Gina, but the first step is to figure out,

do you have that inflammation? Okay. Cause I want to ask you, what are some known health issues that would cause inflammation? And then what would be some issues where people are walking around not even knowing they have inflammation? Yeah. So, you know, I think it's good for us to kind of step back here for a moment because I think a lot of people listening right now, they're all saying, oh, Dr. Paul is talking about inflammation. I have inflammation.

The right are we going to put their hand up? I hear it a lot. Even in my patients, our first visit, they'll put down on the intake for me and like, I have lots of inflammation. And in brackets, it's like, I think where if you have pain, if people have, for example, joint pain, osteoarthritis, which is a degenerative type of arthritis, that's not necessarily inflammation. So I want to make the point here that just because you have pain doesn't mean that you have inflammation. Okay, so this is an important thing to understand. And it's probably

the biggest misconception that I hear over and over from living members. But there could be types of joint pain that is to do with inflammatory reasons. I'll give you an example. I have patients that are eliminating food sensitivities. These are foods that a person's eating, that the immune system is looking at and saying, you know what, I'm creating an immune response. That part of this has to do with your gut microbiome. Part of this has to do with your genetic predisposition. Part of this has to do with some health history. But your immune system is attacking this food protein

and that is a type of allergic inflammation. So it's trying to deal with that. Now that inflammation, Gina, can get crossed its wires with tissues in our body. For example, our joints, for example, our brain tissue, and it can cause things like headaches. It can cause things like changes in blood flow. I see it all the time.

People eliminate certain foods and sometimes symptoms that are totally far away from the gut, like for example, in your brain or even hot flashes or sleep, it gets better. So there's this really elegant interconnectedness between our bodies. And this is why like inflammation, food sensitivities and the gut,

it's like kind of like one A, B and C. They're all so connected. So yeah, yeah, go ahead. I'll let you. Well, I was going to say, I'm going to, I don't want to sidetrack the conversation to also hormones and the conversation we had yesterday, where does estrogen fit? Because estrogen is anti-inflammatory, but as our estrogen levels are dropping, when we're going through the stages of menopause, that also can cause inflammation. Well, it's going to cause more pain, but that is an example of something that is not inflammation actually because it's stiffness.

So estrogens, one of estrogen's roles is making connective tissue more supple. It's the perfect thing around menopause. A good example is that women just generally will feel more stiff. That doesn't mean that their inflammation is high, it just means that their connected tissue is not as elastic, it's not as flexible. If I tested the menopause women, just because they're kind of achy and stiff, their inflammation markers actually probably will be quite low. So that

is not an example of inflammation, but that's an example of pain. So you can see just in that one example, and then there's food sensitivities and there's autoimmunity. There's a little bit of overlap here. It's not that every single painful achy condition is going to necessarily be inflammation, but there's a lot of the conditions that sometimes are under the surface, like a food that a person might be eating or an imbalance in the microbiome or some sort of repeated trauma. You know what, I'm glad you brought up hormones

because inflammation is actually connected there too. We've all heard of the hormone cortisone, right? We've talked about cortisol and cortisone, but you also might've heard of cortisone as I go to my doctor if I have a chronic pain issue and I get a cortisone injection, right? So one of its main jobs is to lower inflammation. In fact, one of the most powerful things that it does, cortisol and cortisone lower inflammation and it's produced by the adrenal system. Now, if you're under a lot of stress and that's been your history, then you're going to be predisposed to having more inflammation in your body

because you don't have this helpful beneficial hormone being produced at the right amount and the right time. Again, this is one possibility. Now that I'm thinking about it, inflammation is interwoven into every single one of these categories, Gina, and you can't really talk about Hormones or food sensitivities your gut without talking about inflammation. I mean, I I could just get I could get going I'm just getting warmed up here with how connected this this is but people just need to understand that Inflammation is like that umbrella that really covers off all the other reasons And so when you start checking these reasons off in your life

We'll talk about strategies at the end here. But if you start checking these reasons off in your life, you will start seeing, okay, these are areas that I have obstacles in that this could be a source of metabolic sluggishness. You can replace even the term inflammation with metabolic sluggishness. Okay, I'm gonna, I wanna do an overview of symptoms

then what you can do for testing. And like I said, this is gonna be like a two part series, we'll get into what you can do about it. But I just want everyone to know the things you are doing on a living method, right, eating good nutrient rich foods, being in tune to your body's needs drinking water, not eating after dinner so your body can work on repair and rebuild, focusing on getting better night's sleep, moving your body, managing your stress. These are all things that are going to help address these things. And this is where time is really important. Sometimes you can be doing all the things, but what your body needs is just that time to address these things. Oh, so, so rich there, Gina. We could talk about so many things. You know, first of all, the time factor. I think we have, we have this expectation

and this is I think driven by the immediacy of our current society and culture where like if I want to get something, I'm going to get it right away. I can order it into my door tomorrow. We kind of have that same mentality bleeding over into our health. But if we just take a step back and this is where my patients that are really kind of level up to that mindful state where they start realizing all the different things in their lives that are impacting their health, they start realizing that these changes do take time. And you, I think, really astutely talk about detoxification.

Now that's something that I've never heard another weight loss program really talk about it in that same way, because what detoxification is doing is it kind of gets a dirty rap because it's about, oh, you're taking some sort of like laxative, right? And some sort of like pill on the health food store. No, that's not what we're talking about. Your body is eliminating and detoxifying all the time. There are things that in the past have accumulated in our body, changes to our tissue, deposition of certain inflammatory molecules

and proteins that take time to be eliminated or detoxified. And when you change your diagena, when you start hydrating, this stuff starts having to be removed. And so I know this is a little bit outside a lot of people's understanding, but I want people to think about if they're not seeing the changes on the scale, like in the last week or the last month, think about how many years it's taken you to kind of get to this point. And it's just maybe about perspective. And that's not meant to be something that's kind of raining out on anybody's like excitement.

It's really meant to be as a perspective to say, okay, you know what? I need to stay the course. Yeah. I am. I have people talking about how they did one program, they lost weight, a couple of programs, and then they just, it doesn't seem to have the same effect. What is happening? What is happening there? Yeah, I hear that a lot. And you know what, there's, there's a lot of factors. I share this with my patients, I tell them, listen, the first program, when you think about it, how the

first program go and almost everyone to a person, Gina will say, it was amazing. I was all in and you know what, that's called novelty. And so when you. And you know what, that's called novelty. And so when you're in a new program, they're like, oh, Gina's so cool. She's so hip. She talks about it. I love how she like just is real and she swears like I do.

And so like, these are things that my patients tell me. And so I think that thinking back, if they really are honest with themselves, they were really committed to the first program. And then in second program, they're like, I kind of heard this already, and I'm not really showing up as much. And I just really think people don't show up

as much in the subsequent programs. And I'm not saying for everyone, so I think that's part of it. I think that's definitely part of it. I also think that all the years has taken to, let's say a person needs to lose 50 pounds. And in the first program, they might lose half of that. Let's just say, this is a hypothetical patient,

hypothetical person. They lose 25 pounds and it kind of came off pretty easy because they were all committed, they were all in and they probably thought back, they're like, I didn't even really exercise. I just like did the program and then just melted off, right? You probably heard this story a thousand times. And then the second program, they're like, I didn't even really exercise. I just like did the program and then just melted off. Right? Yeah. You probably heard this story a thousand times. And then the second program, they're like, I only lost five pounds. And then a third program, I only asked three pounds. I hear the story really, really often. And I think what happened,

what's happening here is that the initial inflammation that they cleaned up because the program is anti-inflammatory, all those low hanging fruit was really improved. And now what they're left with is the metabolism that unfortunately for the last 20, 30 years, they've got because they yo-yo dieted, because they didn't take care of themselves, their stress hormones are off, they're in menopause. Now you have to start working on those underlying things, Gina. That's where you're gonna break through to that next level.

And I've seen this over and over with my patients. We correct those things and then they have a breakthrough. Love that. Okay, great. Before I just wanna wrap up inflammation, I know it's a big one we're gonna probably gonna revisit because everything is connected,

but what would symptoms be and is there testing for this? Yeah, there is. So there's some simple blood tests. Your family doctor can run it. Unfortunately, most family doctors and nurse practitioners don't because inflammatory markers are really reserved for is a person in an incredible amount of pain. Do they have some sort of really obvious inflammatory condition? But there are blood tests that I do with my patients. One of them is called C-reactive protein or CRP.

And that tells us just the general inflammatory state of your body. And if you have high levels of that, it will say that, okay, there is some sort of inflammation going on, but what it doesn't tell us, it doesn't tell us where that inflammation is coming from. So this could be food related. It could be just kind of like, you got to clean up your diet if they haven't done that already. It could be autoimmune related. So we're ruling out those kind of like big inflammatory things. Now there is local inflammation and systemic inflammation. It's important to differentiate that. So not every type of inflammation is able to be tested and this CRP marker is going to be elevated. There's a whole bunch of other markers. These are other liver enzymes, for example, white blood cells, immune cells that are done as part of kind

of a complete screening test that give me a picture to tell me, you know what, there is inflammation happening, but it's maybe not the big autoimmune type, but it's kind of this subliminal inflammation. I'll give you an example of this because people might be wondering what I'm talking about. I see a lot of people that are overweight. They have what's called fatty liver. They have non-alcoholic fatty liver. And this is what you can see on liver enzymes. And this is a type of inflammation. It's an inflammation of the liver. And your liver is creating a lot of really important proteins for your body.

It's going to be really instrumental in detoxification, elimination, and talking about hormones, all your estrogen has to be run through the liver, Gina, in order for it to be properly metabolized. All your hormones do, testosterone for the guys out there. So if your liver is not working well, that's an area that we have to focus on. So I'm just giving you an example that there are patterns

that I look at in blood work that'll tell us inflammation. And then there's the obvious CRP marker, which unfortunately I find is not really often run. And I end up having to run it for my patients. Okay. Someone's asking, how do we now support a fatty liver? Again, doing the things that you're doing on the program and plan and Dr. Paul is going to go into. You're already doing so much. That's the beauty of the program. Your program is anti-inflammatory, Gina. I think I've said this before.

I mean, I think I've said it when we had all the experts on too. Like it's, people enter the door because they wanna lose weight. That's a huge sticking point for people. But I think they leave the Libby program and they're in the Libby program because they realize it's not just about weight. It's about you being healthy. So whether you have blood sugar issues and diabetes,

well, the Libby program is applicable to you. If you have chronic pain, well, the Libby programs, you know, you can go down the list and there's going to be benefits. Following the, uh, a really optimal diet is the strongest anti-inflammatory thing you can do. Yeah. It's interesting because I talked to Ruth Kane, you know, Ruth, who's been studying the program for the last couple of years, and she's like, one of the

things that you don't focus on is processed foods and I'm like yeah I know because we focus on what you can eat and do want to eat and you know okay we could talk about processed foods and how foods are created to be addicting and everything they do that cause a lot of inflammation in the body and she's like you're getting people to eat healthy foods without them even realizing And she's like, you're getting people to eat healthy foods without them even realizing the impact of those processed foods. So really switching your diet to something where you're eating whole foods, good, healthy, nutrient rich foods. It's a game changer, game changer.

I would say probably the most evidence based thing about following a diet like the Libby program is the elimination of what are called ultra-processed foods and replacing them with whole nutrient-rich foods. And so that's simply what's happening. Now maybe you're not calling it out, but I would say if you're talking about inflammation, that type of inflammation that happens when you eat a food that's high in refined grains, refined starches and carbohydrates, ultra-refined process preservative ingredients, and ultra-refined fats, and specifically the combination of seed oils and also some of these fats that are highly, they can be highly

inflammatory. There's, there's no shadow of a doubt that ultra processed foods are inflammatory. However, it's not something that's not an inflammation that you could go in and test on blood. That is going to be something that's just going to be low grade causing cellular disruption. And that is really the inflammation I really focus on. Let's take a minute to hear from our podcast sponsor today because this new year, why not let audible expand your life by listening kind of like what you're doing right now. So you can explore

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Maybe you didn't, you know, like, but you had some and that signal that goes into your body is going to tell you is going to tell the body, you know what like, but you had some and that signal that goes into your body is going to tell you, is going to tell the body, you know what, I got to deal with this ingredient, you know, I have the, I have this battle with my kids all the time because I have five kids, as everyone probably knows that looks at my Instagram. And, uh, and of course kids are seeing what their friends are eating and we generally eat a really healthy diet, but you know, of course they're like, I want to have that snack. I see that fruit roll up. I see those.

And then when you start looking at the ingredients, Gina, and you start reading them, you start realizing that's, these are perfect examples of ultra processed food. So not only are they devoid of nutrients, but I think the ingredients in that synergy really start causing inflammation on a real cellular level. And the final thing that I'm going to say about this is that there's a huge neurochemical component that comes into this.

So there's research showing that people that have eaten these foods, especially people that have had sugar addictions and excess sugar intake in the past, you start reintroducing some of these foods, Gina, and those same neurochemical pathways, just like a drug, get re-stimulated. So it takes like, takes about two weeks to stop the cravings. It takes about four weeks to kind of balance that neurochemistry. And I'm talking about like, let's say at the beginning of a program, that's why those first four weeks are so important. But then the research shows that if I just, you know, go on a bender and have a super super party, it re stimulates those same neural pathways in the brain that are like, I want more of that food. And

so that's why if we kind of like, I'm following the plan, like pretty good. But then on the weekends, like I have things, so I had a piece of cake here. That's okay, but just understand that it's just gonna make it tougher to stick to it because it stimulates a lot of those neural pathways. So I think that's one of those things that I, get back to that original question,

like why did I lose the most weight in the first session? I think my patients have shared with me, they were hardcore the first session. And then now second session, they're like, well, you know what, I can kind of have it a bit. And I just think that that is a difficult thing for a body that's really trying to reprogram itself on every level to try to handle for some people that it's sluggish to lose weight.

Just bringing that awareness to how your body's responding and like really going into that to just have it really recognize how your body's responding to it. I think some people don't correlate though, that they had something on Sunday and they still might not be feeling great. Thursday, Friday, they think I get over it the next day. And this is where I want to run into food sensitivities. Cause whenever we talk about this, I talk about there's a difference between food sensitivities and

allergies, right? Yeah, there's three different kinds. Intolerances. So I have a, I don't know if it's a sensitivity or intolerance to corn. So whenever I have corn, I find I can eat popcorn. I don't get an allergic reaction until three days later, and my hands are all blistered and whatever. So I wanna talk about that delayed effect. Before I get into that though,

is there a difference between men and women in this conversation? Because it's different for men as it is for women. Yeah, for sure. I mean, on a big picture, Gina, absolutely. There's a difference. And a lot of that has to do with some of the hormonal aspects of things.

We'll talk more about that when we come to the hormones. But when it comes to food sensitivities, when it comes to inflammation, I think it really pretty equally affects both men and women. Now, the one point to remember is that women have a predisposition to have more autoimmunity and men have a predisposition to have more autoimmunity, and men have a predisposition to have more kind of cardiovascular issues. So these are the two

differences on a big picture front. And so it does play a role when it comes to things like inflammation. But again, that's a very specific subset of inflammation. I think eating ultra processed foods is going to be detrimental to both to both sexes. One final thing that I just remembered, and has to do with alcohol. This is one that you know, a lot of ladies get frustrated by because they're like, you know, why can a man drink more than I and have a very different response? alcohol is inflammatory. There's no there's no if, buts about it.

And all the research shows, sorry to hear this ladies, but that alcohol is more detrimental to women than to men and has a lot to do with body size, but it also has a lot to do with things like hormones and hormonally sensitive issues. So like, for example, alcohol can be quite stimulating to estrogen and your liver and the way that estrogen is metabolized. So the research is really clear on that. So that's just one example of the differences,

Gina, between them. Well, alcohol is, you know, I love my wine. Oh, gosh, I love my wine. And then I also love the old fashioned and I love it. I love it. And but whenever I take it out and not and people I think are, they start taking it out for a little bit and be like, Why am I not dropping like 20 pounds? But to me, it took at least, it took about six to nine weeks without alcohol in my system to really start to notice like huge, significant changes. And now to the point when I added in, man, I can really tell the effect, not just the next day, but it takes me about a week, a solid week to recover,

not just from getting sloshed, but from one glass of wine, from like one, one, uh, old fashioned. It takes me about a week to recover. I mean, I'm so glad you're having a real conversation about this. I know everyone listening appreciates this, Gina. I think we have to pause here for a second because we're talking about alcohol,

but there's also, it's a perfect connection to food sensitivities. A lot of the food sensitivities that people have are associated with foods they really love. So the top food sensitivities are dairy, gluten or wheat products, corn, eggs and soy. Those are the top five that continually come up on testing and on elimination. And alcohol is in a bit of its own category because you're not actually sensitive to it, but your body has to process it. And some people are very sensitive to it and more than others.

But what I want to state here is that a lot of people are like, well, you know, Gina has a glass of wine and I want to still have a glass of wine, but I'm not losing weight. There's a difference between I'm a person that has 50 pounds to lose and I'm really all in on trying to do everything possible versus someone that's out of maintenance weight and they're like you know what I'm now maintaining and I you know I know that if I have a couple glasses of wine it's going to affect me but I have reached my goal and if I'm still on that journey I don't want anything that's going to limit me on

that. So I kind of have this, I kind of share this with my patients. I say, we kind of want to have like everything in moderation when we're still trying to like get to our goal. I think that's a good mantra when we get there, when we're in maintenance mode. Yeah. Right. We can't think that we're still going to like, like I'm gonna have a gluten here and there. I'm

gonna have a little bit of cake and get a little bit of alcohol and I still I love the program because they're gonna have all those little things that you're gonna get away with that in the first session. But in the in the subsequent sessions, again, I'm just speaking for my many, many patients experience here that have gone through the program. If alcohol is something that is a problem, if you suffer from sleep issues, if you suffer from anxiety or any mood issues, those are two, three huge reasons

that alcohol should be totally eliminated. And you don't notice the benefit, just like you said, Gina, until about six to eight weeks. So I know, yeah, I know that's a bit of a Debbie Downer on that because I know a lot of people are like, well, I kind of like having a little bit, but it's kind of like, I kind of say, you know, are you going to give your body the best shot? Are you going to go all in on this? Or are you going to, are we going to be in the fourth

or fifth session and we're having the same conversation over and over? Definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. So I think we have to look at what can we do to level up. And often the times the things that we don't really want to give up like, Oh, I just love my like, you know, my little snack here and I love my little, those are the things, you know, that are really what we need to work on. And I know this is a big psychology piece. I don't know. Are the comments

blowing up? Are they all hating on Dr. Paul? You know, everyone has their thoughts, but I love that from you. It's probably the things that you don't wanna do, right? And that, again, this is like, I'm allowing people to have the feels this sucks. It sucks when I was like, there were so many situations where it sucked

that I didn't drink, and I'm so glad I experienced that, and it was difficult, but now I know my body's true reaction, so I can say without a shadow of a doubt, I can't really drink it really messes with me. Physically, mentally didn't know does that stop me from having a drink every now and then? No, I don't put a hard rules on myself. But I know full well, especially when my stress is out of

control. I'm not sleeping my I don't feel good in my body like that. It's a big massive factor for me. And again, people are like, I'm doing all the things, but they're not doing all the things because they're they're still doing the things that they probably know are. And this is like, again, this is not to be a long time you can ever drink. But while you are trying to reach your goals, definitely alcohol can impact that for some people, it't. Some people lose their weight just fine. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that's the mindfulness that I think we're all calling members to kind of level up on is that, you know, you can't look at the person beside you and say, wow, they lost 70 pounds and they were doing whatever they wanted still. Yeah, that sometimes, those are some of those really kind of extreme stories. But most people are

what we're talking about is that there are things that are still in their lives that they still want to that they're really fixated on. And at the end of the day, they're not really bringing them closer to their goal. In fact, they're probably holding them back. So if there's something in your life, this is a takeaway for everyone. If there's something in your life and your health, if you're like, you know what, this is something they really, really don't want

to go, I don't want to talk about it. It's it's it means a lot to me. I would suggest that that's what you reflect on is, is this really bringing me closer to my health goal, or taking me further away? And this could be so many different things, Gina, this could be, you know, Netflix, This could be that food that I don't wanna give up. This could be double doubles that I don't wanna give up. It could be anything in the health realm. Okay, let's talk about our cheese then.

A lot of people don't wanna give up their cheese, their dairy, they don't wanna give up, or they don't understand how gluten is in everything. Let's round out with this conversation. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So you know what? I feel like we're hitting all the low points for people because these are the pressure points. All right. So let's first explain the difference between, you know, dairy or insensitivities, intolerances and allergies. And I think dairy is a good example here.

So a lot of people will say, Dr. Paul, I don't eat dairy. I do lactose free. And I'm like, you're still eating dairy because you're still getting the protein. So lactose is a sugar, just like glucose, lactose. And that falls under the category, lactose intolerance is under the intolerance category because what it really is,

is your body can't break down that sugar and it causes almost immediate gas and bloating and stool changes. So this one usually pretty obvious and usually it's something that a person's had as they've been growing up and sometimes they can kind of like grow out of it and they can take a digestive enzyme with lactose in it

and it does get better. So literally is the the breakdown of sugars. Then there is allergies. So allergies are what's called like an immediate reactivity. There's a type of immune system, the IgE immune system, and that's like rashes, hives, anaphylaxis. So the people that are sensitive to peanuts, they need to carry an EpiPen. That's an extreme allergy. Now, you can be sensitive to lots of different foods, but they're usually uncommon and they're usually

pretty immediate. Like I eat a nectarine and my tongue starts to feel fuzzy. Those are the types of like reactions. And then the so so far, people understand the first two. But then there's a third one and this is probably the biggest category and it's the hardest one to figure out. These are called sensitivities and there's an IgG immune system and IgA immune system. Now these immune systems Gina, they are slower onset. And this is why when you eat corn,

you get a reaction days after, but not minutes after. Because there's a slower onset. So when you eat that corn, your body sees that protein, it goes down to your gut, and it starts creating a low grade immune response. And once it gets absorbed in your bloodstream, your immune cells start saying, alert alert, this is something we don't want to have in here. And they start creating an immune response.

Now those things are traveling throughout the whole body. It's not happening right at the point that you're necessarily consuming it. And that's why these food sensitivities can impact your gut, can cause gas and loading and stool changes and reflux, absolutely. But it can also cause a whole bunch of other extra intestinal symptoms, headaches, increase in hot flashes, joint pain, skin issues, eczema, all those types of bigger but more like vaguer type of symptoms can all be connected. Fatigue is a really common one that I see very often that is connected to these sensitivities and it's more so like I just feel like I'm foggy after I eat like gluten or if I eat bread and so

this is a slower onset. So hopefully that gives everyone an understanding. Does that make sense, Gina? Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Now you probably are wondering how do we test for some of these things? That's probably the next question. How do I figure out what I have? So within tolerances, that's something that you can definitely get a lactose tolerance test. Usually it's done when you're younger. That one's pretty obvious. You could also take the lactase enzyme and that usually makes symptoms go away. Or consume lactose free products and minimal symptoms, minimal gut symptoms. Allergies, you go to an allergist and you get that finger prick test where you have those

little like little needles and then you look for little red reactions. Those are little food proteins that are put in the skin and you're creating an immediate reaction. And so if you have a really strong reaction, depending on how severe it is, you might need an EpiPen and mild reactions usually just kind of benadryl or this go away by themselves. And then the third category, food sensitivities, there's two ways of doing it. One of them is a blood test that you can do either by dropping blood on a collection card or actually going to the lab and getting your blood drawn. And that's gonna tell you,

do you have reactivity to the protein? So the technology is that they're looking at if there's in your blood, if there is antigens to corn, if there is particular antigens to gluten. And so you can do a test anywhere between 90 foods to 250 foods, and you can look at your IgG and IgA. And that's the type of testing that I do most often with my patients. The range is anywhere from $250 to $550, depending how big the panel is. And then lastly, the second option, and this is kind of the more cumbersome one is you can do what's called elimination or introduction. So you're like,

okay, I'm suspecting all these foods, I'm going to cut out corn for two months, or I'm going to cut out corn for a month. And then I'm going to reintroduce it back in because your body eventually will decrease the immune response. And then when you reintroduce it, it will have a fresh response to it. And if you eat it, you're going to get symptoms. Okay. This is what I love because this is what I love keeping along with your journals about,

you know, all the other things that you're checking and journaling is how your body's responding to certain foods. Because people will be like, I'm more sensitive now to something when I ate the way I ate before. I'm like, no, you just felt more like crap. And now that you've had an opportunity to feel good, you're more sensitive to eating things that make you feel like crap.

So keeping a journal and tracking these things is really helpful. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because it's an important point that a lot of times people will say, well, I used to eat all this stuff and why am I reacting to this? First of all, there's a couple of factors that can change your reactivity. For example, a well-known cause of food sensitivities is viral or bacterial infections of the gut. So if you get an infection, it can change the permeability of your gut.

Also other viral infections like, for example, COVID or even brain injuries like a concussion, which is a lot of what I do with my patients, it can cause an immediate permeability of the lining of your gut. So now more food proteins are getting in. So your immune system is now saying, whoa, what is all this stuff? And it's starting to react to everything. Do you know that one stressful event right away can cause within minutes, Gina,

you're gonna cause this permeability that happens. So if a person is under a chronic state of stress, this is why so many of my patients say, when I get stressed, my gut blows up. My gut, I get bloated, I get crampy, I get all these symptoms. You may not actually be sensitive to some of these foods, you just may be having a leaky gut.

So there are other factors, Gina, that can predispose us to be overreactive. So the first step is follow the livy plan, clean out the crap out of your diet, because that's messing things up. And so when that clean out the crap out of your diet, because that's messing things up. And so when that happens, the dust kind of settles and you're left with some of the food sensitivities that you were born with or you've developed over time.

And then you can now start doing that journal with a process of elimination. But you really are not going to fully know unless you've avoid something for a good chunk of time and then reintroduce it. And that's like three to four weeks. If you're like, yeah, I'm gluten free, but you eat a cracker on Saturdays and then you have like a little piece of a sauce, some sauce that has gluten in it, your body's constantly getting reintroduced to that food engine and creating a low grade response. So you won't actually be able to properly tell. Okay. So it's not just cutting out my wine, cheese and bread for the weekend. And that's not going to tell me. Yeah. Like you said, like you, if you eat,

you eat food that you are sensitive to, you're feeling it till Thursday or Friday of the next week. Yeah. So, I mean, think about that. That's like I'm resetting every weekend. So like I'm on a plan during the week, but then the weekend. I have actually now that you're saying it, I have a lot of patients that tell me that's their issue is that they are so busy with family and they have such a party life that they they really can't stick to it seven days a week. And if you're struggling to lose weight, don't be surprised that that type of approach

is really not going to yield results when it comes to weight. And this is why I don't feed into all those other diets. They make you believe you can have your cake and eat it too. Now I am, if you're obsessing about the thing, have the thing, but then it's a learning opportunity to recognize what is your physical reaction to the thing that you think is bringing you joy, what's happening mentally and what's happening days later. What's happening on the scale, what's happening with how you're feeling. So yeah, have the thing, but make it a learning opportunity. You said leaky gut and we should do a segment on like, you know, all the root cause the insulin resistance, the leaky

gut, the adrenal fatigues, all of that, between because you know, those used to be pseudosciencey words. Now science is caught up. And these are actually real things. A lot of these terms can be like catch all terms, a lot of people really use them improperly. Yes, 100% without really explaining what's going on. Um, but I digress because we don't have time for that now. We have four things to talk about and we got to two. I'm happy with that. We're going to, you're back tomorrow, right? You're back tomorrow. Yep. Yep. Yeah. We're going to revisit. We're gonna, you're back tomorrow, right? You're back tomorrow. We are, yep. Back tomorrow. Yep. Yep. Yeah. We're gonna revisit. We're gonna talk,

we are gonna talk the two that we didn't have an opportunity, gut issues, like that's more microbiome-y stuff, I'm assuming. Yeah. Well, we did touch on that here at the end, right? Like I think that, you know, the food sensitivities, it's a perfect, like I said, perfect segue. If you have inflammation, if you have the predisposition of stress, again, that's the hormone component, you're gonna have intestinal permeability. If you have inflammation, if you have the predisposition of stress, again, that's the hormone component, you're going to have intestinal permeability. If you have food sensitivities that are continuing to be introduced into your diet, your gut is not going to be as tight and it's going to be more permeable and you're going to create more inflammation. So you can see those are the three things working together.

I recently did a presentation in Europe at a couple of conferences all about the gut-brain connection. And so I've done a deep dive into the research, into the literature. And what is really clear, Gina, is that the microbiome, which is the bacteria that's present in our intestinal tract, and in fact, in almost every tissue of the body, sinuses, vaginal tract, skin, it's all microbiome. When that gets disrupted, the ecosystem, the structure also gets disrupted. So these bugs, these bacteria and even some fungi,

they are playing a key synergistic role with maintaining the functionality of our body. There's lots of research being poured into looking at what type of microbiome do people that are overweight versus people that are not overweight. There's tons of research being looked at that. And we're just scratching the surface. There's so much we don't know. But what I can tell you is that things like probiotics, they decrease the stress response that causes that permeability of your lining of your gut. So I actually because of this research, I've totally changed my tune on probiotics and prebiotics. Before I was

like, hey, if you have no gut symptoms, you don't really need a probiotic. I changed it. And this is an example of research now informing practice because we're here. And we're at the point that we have this evidence. I now believe that probiotics are one of my five core things that a person should be taken all the time. And many of them are in the introductory primary supplement list. Yeah, well, I'll start the introductory primary supplement list.

Yeah. Well, I'll start the conversation with that tomorrow. This is what I'm saying. So someone who's like, my weight isn't moving, my weight isn't moving, they're waiting for this conversation. They think like, okay, well, I might have this, I might have that. What do I do about this? This is where those basic supplements come in in the beginning. We already suggested a probiotic, prebiotic, all your omega-3s,

your vitamin Ds, your magnesium. I'm not going to get into your five things, I'm going to save that for tomorrow. What's interesting, what you said about the microbiome though, is that comes down to messaging as well. The messages your body is sending, receiving, this affects hormones. And there's a lot of conversation on what's going on in your microbiome, your hormones, these new GLP-1s, weight loss medications, all of that. So I'm really interested to getting into this conversation. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about gut issues. We'll continue the microbiome,

the five things that Dr. Paul suggests. We'll also touch on hormones, and then we'll get into the things that can help, like supplements and whatnot. Obviously you're doing so much on the living month that can help. We have that whole secondary supplement list. Before so much on the living month that can help you have that whole secondary supplement list. Before you look at that, though, check out the first one. Final words before we go today. I'm

just I feel like we're on a cliffhanger. Well, I know I was gonna say I feel like we've primed and bigged up tomorrow's session like we I'm excited just thinking about what we're gonna talk about. Everyone listening. I hope you come back Wednesday morning at nine o'clock. I'll be here. We'll be talking about some of the things that we've started today. If people are feeling overwhelmed by this conversation, if people are feeling discouraged by some of the things in this conversation, sit with that. That actually I think is an

okay thing for people to be feeling right now because when you're a little uncomfortable, you're motivated to change. And if you're, if you're a little uncomfortable, you're motivated to change. And if you're comfortable right now and you're not achieving your health goals, that's a problem. So my goal today was to maybe push you a little outside your comfort zone and maybe just a little bit of knowledge. Knowledge is power. That power is now hopefully going to inform someone to make that change. I have lots of people that come in, Gina, that tell me, listen, when I listen to you, Dr. Paul,

there was something that clicked. And for me, when they tell me, it was like the most random thing. It wasn't like this like epic, like, you know, oh, Dr. Paul dropped like the biggest clinical pearl. I mean, no, it was like the connection between alcohol and this. And then patient comes in and they're like,

that was just a game changer for me when I heard that. And so I hope there was something today that Gene and I said that resonated with someone out there and motivated them to look at one of these four things that we've talked about as one of their obstacles, maybe challenge them to look at one of these four things that we've talked about as one of their obstacles, maybe challenge them to look at one thing that they maybe needed to change that they were holding on to. And if you're not ready to change it, I challenge you to reflect on it and meditate about it and think

about why am I doing this? Is it serving me? Is it serving my health? Is it serving my health goals? And if you can do that, then I think you're progressing in the right direction. Love it. I love it. And I love this conversation. So I mean, we have this conversation every time.

It just gets better and better and better. Doesn't it? I feel like every time we have it, it's refined a bit. But then we kind of expand it. We're pulling it out just to the edges a little bit more. And there's always something that I think excites me and excites people in the combo.

Like this one especially never gets old for me. This is, I mean, this is really what I, this is where I really work my jam. All right, so for those of you who are like, who is this Dr. Paul guy? You can follow him over on Instagram, Dr. Paul Herkel, D-R-P-A-U-L-H-R-K-A-L. We'll add some more information on how you can reach him,

like going to his website, paulherkelnd.com. He's gonna be back tomorrow though. So thanks for everyone for joining us today. Or anyone who's downloaded and listened in. Until tomorrow, have a fantastic day and we'll see you then. Thank you. Hey everyone, have a good day. Woo!

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