The Livy Method Podcast - The 4 Main Reasons Why your Weight Might Be Slower to Move Part 2 with Dr. Paul Hrkal - Winter 2025

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Continuing the conversation from the last episode, Dr. Paul breaks down his top five supplements that deliver maximum impact with minimal effort, covering essentials like Omega-3s, probiotics, Vitamin D, electrolytes, and protein. He also unpacks gut health—what it means, how imbalances affect metabolism, and the signs to watch for. Plus, Gina and Dr. Paul get into insulin resistance, blood sugar regulation, and the role stress hormones play in weight loss. If you've ever felt burnt out or stuck, this conversation is for you.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.

Your weight moving. Well, it could be one of these four things or a combination of. Today we are continuing the conversation with my guest, Dr. Paul Herkel. Yesterday we talked inflammation, food sensitivities. Today we're going to get into gut dysbiosis and hormones, but you left us on a cliffhanger yesterday. So that's where I want to start. Good morning, Dr. Paul Hurkle. Thank you for joining us again.

Good morning. You're very welcome. It's great to be back. So you talked about, I think, five supplements, five supplements that you're like your must, your like top five must for weight loss specifically or health and wellness in general. Well, I'm going to say health and wellness in general, but I think weight loss is definitely applicable here. So I've recently been kind of thinking a little bit about, you know, what are, what are the kind of takeaways from my clinical practice in the last 15 years in terms of what a person is really getting the most benefit from? And I've kind of said this before, but I'll

say it again for everyone, 20% of the most important things that a person can do in terms of supplements they can take and dietary changes really give you the bulk or 80% of the benefits. So it's not like some really obscure little supplements. I just had a question from a friend today about chlorella. Like, if I take this once a week, is it gonna make a difference? Okay, no, it's not. Taking any supplement once a week

is not gonna really do anything. So you do have to be consistent. But there's kind of, after reflection, there's kind of five main areas that I really think are absolutely foundational. So I think omega-3s is definitely on the list there as being one of the most important nutrients. Because our cells are made up of fats, Gina, there is a constant competition based on what's in our diet on putting omega-3s into that cellular membrane.

And if you are eating or you have eaten more processed foods, we talked about that term ultra processed food yesterday as being one of the key sources of metabolic sluggishness and inflammation, that omega-3s will compete against those omega-6s and create a more balanced effect. There's also evidence showing that people that have higher levels of omega-6s and create a more balanced effect. There's lots of evidence showing that people that have higher levels of omega-3, so there's an actual test called an omega score. So you can see how much,

what's the percentage of omega-3s that's in your cellular membrane? And if you are below 4%, you're at higher risk for cardiovascular issues, you're at higher risk for brain issues like dementia. And these are two of the biggest concerns that people have. And ultimately, dying is one of those things

that we wanna try to avoid. So omega-3s are helpful on that front. And number two, I would say, is probiotics. So I remember I told you yesterday, I kind of like changed my tune on probiotics a little bit more. I know it's been always part of the foundational supplements and I appreciate that.

And again, because of the deep dive I've done in the research, we'll talk a lot more about this, but I think probiotics, and I'm gonna say slash prebiotics because they're kind of in similar category. Prebiotics are again, as a reminder, the kind of fertilizer. It's going to help feed the microbiome where, and there's lots of dietary sources of that.

So anything with like fiber, especially soluble fiber, and there are certain specific types of starches that are helpful for growing probiotics in your gut bacteria and then probiotics themselves. They help keep the microbiome intact and regulating its environment. A disrupted microbiome equals an environment that is not going to be able to absorb nutrients very well, that's going to become more permeable, it's going to be more predisposed to inflammation. We talked about that yesterday, more predisposed to food sensitivities. So you really need to have an add happy microbiome. So I think that's a good segue into what we're going to talk about later today.

Well, yeah, and not to mention, and so, you know, we do have our set of secondary supplements, Omega-3 and probiotic prebiotic was on our first set of basic supplements. We introduced them a while back. You might've thought they were just like horseshit or hooey or whatever. I'm telling you, I don't want you to spend more money

than you need or take things that you don't need. These are foundational things. What's really exciting, cause I brought it back out today. I'm like, there's two things I want to talk to him about. I want to talk to him about protobiotics. I want to talk to you about fiber. We never ever, ever talk about fiber, although people are getting quite a bit just naturally in their foods following the food plan. There's a lot, first of all, there's a lot we don't know about your microbiome. And there's a lot of new research coming out about obesity and your microbiome,

and there's a lot of cool shit happening with probiotics. So I'm so happy you brought that up today. Yeah, so let's just finish the last kind of three. I'm gonna say as a big category, vitamin D, and then maybe a subtext for that is like other fat soluble vitamins, which would be vitamin A and vitamin K. So vitamin D is the most common deficiency that we have in kind of the Western developed world.

And again, in Canada, you're looking at about 60% of people don't have adequate levels. There are other countries that are in the Northern Hemisphere that's anywhere between 60 and 90. Vitamin D really is related to the sun. If you're getting enough sun exposure and the UVB rays are hitting the cholesterol that's in your skin, it gets converted to vitamin D. The reality is, where we are Gina, it's minus 10 outside right now,

and you're not gonna get any sun exposure. And even if you were outside and people go for walks, that's great for your circadian rhythm. So that's your pattern of wakefulness and sleep during the day, because you're getting a sun in your eyes, but you're not making any vitamin D in the winter months at all.

Even if your hands and face are exposed, it really needs to be kind of like 50% of your body. Think of like t-shirt and shorts. And you have to be asked to be during the kind of like daytime hours from let's say 10 till three, where the sun angle is actually the best. So that's why the deficiency is so, so common. And there really, Gina is no good food sources of vitamin D. There's fortification, that's with vitamin D2 usually,

and that is the inefficient and not well-absorbed form of vitamin D. And that is thrown in things like dairy products and things like that. That's not gonna give you enough in terms of adequacy. And so that's my number three. Number four is electrolytes, and magnesium is the star of this group.

So we talk about magnesium, the primary, but also electrolytes. So like trace minerals, I see you're grabbing those trace minerals there. And this is imperative for cellular function. It's also imperative if you are hydrating more than you were before, because your water will follow your electrolytes. So magnesium absolutely is a standout, but in general, I think electrolytes really are so complimentary to magnesium, potassium, which is found in foods. And following the Libby protocol will definitely get you more of that through diet, avocados, etc. are rich in

potassium. And then last, this one's a little bit, you know, a little bit of a broader category is protein. And so, you know, this is something you can absolutely get through diet, but you can also look at getting it through supplementation and within protein. Ultimately, what you want is amino acids. You want to have enough of these building blocks, Gina. Collagen is part of this too. And so that's where that fits in. Collagen is rich in an amino acid called glycine. And glycine is really important for the regulation of the nervous system.

It actually calms the nervous system down. And so it is helpful for things like sleep. It's helpful for things like anxiety. So that's kind of like the mini hack. I actually, I've started telling my patients to take collagen later in the day because of the effect of glycine rather than in the morning. What do you think about taking collagen before you go to bed as well? Well, that's exactly. So when I say later in the day, I mean like taking it at the evenings

or after dinner because of that glycine effect. Usually you're getting about two to three grams of glycine per dose. And that that may be enough to kind of help with sleep. Some people that need more, the research shows you can go much higher. But again, obviously talk to your doctor, your naturopath, I call them like kind of like, supplement savvy type of providers to guide you on that. Yeah. And you get what you pay for as well. I just want to say

with collagen, typically people just think it's for your hair, skin and nails, there's a lot more science and research people just think it's for your hair, skin and nails. There's a lot more science and research coming out that it's so much more beneficial for a variety of things, including working with your GLP-1 and making you feel more satisfied with your foods. We've talked about all of these, y'all, in our first set of supplements.

I see a lot of questions. What should I take? When should I take it? If you go back into your notes or go into your app and just search it, all of this information also in the book as well. So if you go back into the second week of the program, we outlined all of the I had no idea you were going to list these by the way. So happy that you did

because obviously we're on the same page. It's a good review, right? It's a good review. But yes, we actually are. And by the way, for everyone listening, Gina and I did not talk before, let's say, okay, Dr. Paul, make sure that you talk about the product yourself again, just to make sure you pump, you know what I'm saying? No, no, no, this is like, I came up with this on my own

and it happens to be the core things that are part of the Libby program too. Well, a lot of things too, a lot of the menopause chatter out there, these are like, these are the supplements that must have, these are because they're so foundational that if you're deficient in them, they actually they they hinder your body's ability to function. So in the book, week two, we have the first set of supplements. And now we're going through it's just been posted today, the secondary supplements in which the trace minerals are on there as well.

It talks about minimum recommended doses. It talks about potential interactions. It even talks about food sources. So everything that you need to know. So we're not going to spend time on that today because it's all in written information for you. Okay. What about fiber?

We never talk about fiber. Do you supplement? Yes? No. I have some psyllium fiber here. I've been taking. Yeah. So in some cases, I absolutely do. Ideally, fiber is one of those things that, unlike probiotics, which are again, live microorganisms, those are tougher to find in your diet. Like one serving of yogurt, for example, has about one billion probiotics in it,

where most supplements that are probiotics will have 10 billion. So you're really getting 10x the amount in basic probiotic. I use probiotics that have 50 or even 100 billion for some specific gut issues. The fascinating thing about probiotics, we'll talk about fiber in just a moment, is that there are some very specific types and indications, meaning things, the clinical conditions, like for example, colitis or food sensitivities or allergies or yeast infections, like these are all very specific things that all have evidence that probiotics do help them in some way. So this is where if you have one of these types of concerns, getting that specific recommendation

there even now is Gina, a type of combination of probiotics that are called cycle biotics, which actually help with the brain. It helps with the mood. And that's this gut brain axis. There's this really elegant, um, anti-inflammatory communication pathway between our gut and our brain. We have a whole set of neurons in our intestinal tract, around our intestinal tract that are constantly communicating majority of the information. 80% of it is going from the gut up to the brain.

So the brain is always sampling what's going on down there. And there's, when that system is working well, it is powerfully anti-inflammatory. This is the vagus nerve I'm talking about. And fiber and prebiotics are also a key part of that. They help support the growth of something called butyrate. Butyrate is a substance that is a key fuel for the bacteria, but it's also absorbed into our bodies and there's receptors, Gina, even as far as our brain for this little thing called butyrate. And fiber is helpful for producing butyrate. Now this is fermentable fiber. This is soluble fiber. Now when you're listing, like, you know, let's talk about

fiber in general, we have to also make sure people understand there is insolu fiber. Now, when you're listing, like, you know, let's talk about fiber in general, we have to also make sure people understand there is insoluble. So that's like the Metamucilcilium type of fiber. This is the stuff that gives you bulk. This is gonna help move your stools. It's gonna help bind up certain fats and toxins. It's gonna bind up things that come out of the liver

because a lot of that gets reabsorbed if you don't have enough fiber and it's going to pull it out. This is really helpful, but you need a balance of insoluble and soluble fiber. You can get enough of that through diet. The research shows that you want about 30 grams of fiber a day, somewhere between 25 and 30 grams of fiber a day. Most people aren't getting anywhere close to that. There's some scientists that believe we should be getting even up to 50 grams because that's

some of the cultures that were the healthiest and the most diverse microbiome, meaning they have the most amount of bacteria, which is a good thing. They have up to 50 grams of fiber a day. And so it takes time to build up to that. And obviously there's a strong cultural piece, but I think definitely fiber is so essential. It can almost be called like vitamin F. Like it's almost essential. Vitamin by definition is an essential nutrient. So fiber is really important. Yeah.

And which people are getting a lot through following the program and eating nutrient rich whole foods. You're already, again, a lot of the takeaways are going to be, you're already doing a lot of things that you need to do to address these issues just with following the basic food plan. Okay. So, do we go into the gut dysbiosis and hormones? Yesterday, we talked about inflammation, we talked about food sensitivities, now we're moving on to gut dysbiosis, which we kind of touched on with your microbiome and what's going on there. Yeah.

Yeah. And I want to put this in the context of the conversation we started yesterday, which is like obstacles to weight loss, right? And I think we really want to make sure we understand how that might play in. So just understanding the word dysbiosis, a lot of people, this might be a new word for them. And so dysbiosis is an imbalance in the normal microbiome that should be in harmony with itself, in harmony with the organism.

And when it becomes out of balance, meaning that there's too little of some bacteria or too much of another bacteria, then this is where conditions and symptoms come up. A perfect example of this, then this is where conditions and symptoms come up. A perfect example of this, Gina, is antibiotics. So when people take antibiotics, I'm sure people listening to this maybe have experienced this themselves, they might notice that their gut starts becoming a little off. They might get the runs, they might start getting gas and

loading and changes that can sometimes be temporary after and then resolve. But that's a perfect example of temporary dysbiosis. And that causes symptoms. Now, the trouble with this is that when you have a dysbiotic microbiome, that relationship between the brain, which regulates things like I'm feeling full, it regulates things like inflammation, it regulates things like I'm feeling full. It regulates things like inflammation. It regulates things like cravings, Gina.

So when you have an imbalanced gut, your metabolism and the impulses to eat certain things can become aberrant, can become dysfunctional. So that's why your gut is, researchers finding is playing such a much bigger role than just absorbing your food. Yeah, I mean there's so much we don't know, but your body is so smart. It's all about how it communicates and this is where inflammation comes in because if your gut is off and the signals it's

sending to your brain and then your brain to your gut, it gets all mucky and your body doesn't know what the heck to do with anything. This is why it goes back to inflammation, which is our number one reason. Why your weight might be a slower to move. And then if you having, if you're eating foods that you have sensitivities to that can cause inflammation and if your microbiome is off, okay, got it. Yeah. So you can see they all layer on top of each other. I mean, that's why I said I love this conversation because it just keeps building on each other. So one of the,

I would say deeper root causes of inflammation can be a microbiome that's disrupted. Now let's just kind of step back here and talk to the average person that's listening to this. If a person has no digestive issues and they're going through the program and they may have not be losing the weight as fast as they want, I don't want people thinking, oh, you know, all my gut must be off. You know, there are certain signs and symptoms that might point us towards that our gut is imbalanced. And that usually is chronic digestive issues. That's the most common one. We talked about food sensitivities yesterday, Gina, having symptoms that are gut related,

but then over half of them can actually be outside of the intestinal tract. But with dysbiosis, that usually starts in the gut and there are almost always some sort of gut issues happening. And so this could be constipation, this could be chronic diarrhea. Mind you, hopefully they, they've reduced the magnesium to see if that's doing it. Cause sometimes that's an issue, but, uh, gas bloating, cramping pain, these are all possible,

um, signs of dysbiosis. Another sign is that if you take a probiotic or if you take a fiber or you eat higher fiber foods, they actually make you feel worse because those microbiome, those that bacteria that's dysbiotic is going to start fermenting that stuff. So that's like a key red flag. Okay. You know what? I need to go and work with an antibiotic doctor to try to figure this thing out. Sometimes people have taken lots of antibiotics in the past and that might have changed your microbiome. A stressful event could have changed your microbiome.

Yesterday, I talked about an episode of a gastroenteritis, like you ate some bad sushi once and you had food poisoning that can set you up for food sensitivities and gut dysbiosis. Certain medications like acid blocking medications, which a lot of people are on for things like reflux have a known side effect of causing downstream problems of having dysbiotic gut. And there's this thing called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I've talked about it before called SIBO. And this is a condition where you have too much bacteria in the wrong spot. Most of the bacteria should be in the lower intestines, the large intestine, not in the small intestine. There's some there, but that's really where all the

absorption of most things happen. But if, if for another, the reasons I listed that bacteria creeps up the intestine and starts overtaking the small intestine, you can have a whole bunch of symptoms that I just talked about. What about H.Pi-Lori? Where does that fall in? Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Perfect example of dysbiosis because the stomach has the lowest level of bacteria because our stomach acid is controlling that.

And when our stomach acid, which is our first line of defense, becomes too low, becomes off, stress can do this, acid blocking medications can do this, that predisposes you for more bacterial problems in balances down the line. Now H. pylori is a bacteria, one of the few that can survive the stomach acid. And it's, if it again grows to a level that's not controlled by that stomach acid, not controlled by other bacteria that are present, it can start causing things like ulceration and again, be a quite a problematic thing.

So again, this is a very specific type of condition, usually related to acid reflux, usually pain, but in the upper digestive tract, in more of the severe cases I've seen, people are thinking, people are experiencing, you know, they're losing weight losing, they're losing weight, actually, when they don't want to, they feel ill in general, they feel really tired. So this is something definitely that

requires a involvement of your doctor to treat it. Okay, let's let's just recap that then. How do you know when it's my weight isn't just my weight isn't moving. And this is where a lot of people will say, I'm doing all the things I'm eating this and I'm drinking the water, I'm exercising. I'm like, have you taken the supplements? Added any supplements? No, I don't think I need them.

And I'm like, ah, okay. But how do you know where it's just my weight isn't moving? I mean, that's where you're also not seeing non-skilled victories. How do you know whether it's a weight, my weight isn't moving issue, or I need to make an appointment with a doctor because I got something more going on. Well, I think that the best way to summarize all

this is first of all, take use that diary, use that journal, use the diary that you use and take stock of the symptoms that you have. And really, if you go kind of like system by system, like my energy, my sleep, my digestive system, if you've put a check mark as it being okay in each one of those systems, I don't want to leave people with the impression they should start looking for problems in areas that they don't necessarily have. So that's important.

So really first step for everyone in terms of action items is look at what your obstacles really are. And if those obstacles are, I always am craving things at times, that could be your microbiome that is being fueled by the little bits and bytes that are being put in. So that is one thought.

What is your issue? Is it, I don't sleep well? Is it that I have a tremendous amount of external stress? Then it's gonna be a perfect segue into the conversation around hormones we're going to have next. Do I have an issue with trying to move my body in the way that I want? If you've lost 20 pounds and you have 20 more pounds to lose and you've hit a threshold, so the first session on the Libby program got you down

20 pounds and it was easy. Now you're stuck. What else can you do to level up to get you to this next plateau? And sometimes that is, you know what, my back is really off and I can't move. So all I'm doing is just doing my activities day to day living. Well, maybe that's the area that you need to focus on. So first of all, Gina, take stock and then evaluate what's happening. We talked all about inflammation. So if any of the symptoms I talked about yesterday in terms of food sensitivities, in terms of the pain, go back and listen to that podcast because we went into a lot of detail.

That would be a great place for you to start getting help and maybe work with a naturopath, try to figure out what are some of these obstacles? Yeah, great. Woo, deep breath before we go into hormones. There's a lot there. Hormones, hormones, hormones, hormones. So many people think we're just dealing

with like hormone conversation is menopause specific, right? I would have so many women come in, I have hormonal issues, can I lose weight? I'm like, well, first of all, like what kind of hormones are we talking about there? So many involved insulin, cortisol, hunger hormones. We did have the conversation on perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause on Monday with Dr. Jennifer.

I have a whole menopause add-on that I'm starting up again in the next couple of weeks, which actually I wanna talk to you about. But let's talk about hormones relative to weight loss. And I did a post on this, a pretty extensive post. I think week two of the program, y'all probably missed it. So it'd be great idea to go back and revisit that after this conversation today.

So where do we start? Is it insulin resistance? You know, man, I know I mentioned to you yesterday that we should go over kind of these buds were buzzwords insulin resistance used to be all over my verbiage, like in the program in the book, all of that. And then people just started attacking anyone saying insulin resistance, because it's like, pseudoscience, and now

fast forward five years later, and it technically talk about pseudosciency, can be the root cause of so many things they are finding out. Insulin resistance is a real thing. So do we start there? I think that one's a pretty straightforward one, because you can actually easily test

for insulin resistance. Basically, your body's receptors for insulin gena are no longer as sensitive to the signal of insulin that's produced by your pancreas to absorb sugars, to absorb the fuel that your body needs. So there's something called the Glut1, which is the receptor that insulin works on. But there's also this other receptor called Glut4, and these receptors are independent of insulin, and they have a lot to do with exercise. When you exercise, you open up the back door and all the sugar runs in. So this is why I really believe there's a really important marriage between sleep, exercise, diet, and your mindset. There's like these four

pillars that are really, really foundational, and they all help each other, and your mindset. There's like these four pillars that are really, really foundational. And they all help each other, by the way. So it's not like, okay, now I've got the diet. Great, I'm doing the diet, but I've lost some weight and I'm plateaued. Well, what about those four other things that I just talked about? You know, sleep, is that happening?

And so we're talking about hormones, which I think has a lot to do with all four of those factors. But insulin is one of the things that can be tested by in blood. And in fact, all my new patients, we do a comprehensive lab assessment and we do fasting insulin. We do a marker called hemoglobin A1C. We do fasting glucose. We do triglycerides.

Those four markers that I just mentioned, they all give me information about is a person insulin resistant? And, and are they not if the insulin levels are high, that tells me the body's like trying to ramp up ramp up because the signal is not getting in and it's trying to really increase it. And eventually, and this is where you decompensate into kind of diabetes, eventually the cells will because they're just so saturated by it, they will just stop responding to it. And that's ultimately called insulin resistance. Okay. So hormones in general are like our chemical messengers. They are the ones that

are kind of moving around the brain, the microbiome, tell them what to do. They go do their thing, whatever. So insulin, when you eat your do, they go do their thing, whatever. So insulin, when you eat your foods, your body breaks them down into glycogen, and your body, your insulin is like, where are we gonna put these? Are we gonna put them into your muscle? Are we gonna put them into your fat?

Are we gonna send some to the brain? Like, what are we doing there? So insulin has a direct relation to your metabolism. insulin has a direct relation to your metabolism. It does, yeah. If you have high levels of insulin, Gina, then it's not just about sugar, but there's a whole host of other problems that start happening when you have high levels of insulin.

One thing that I work a lot with people with brain injuries and concussions, post-concussion syndrome and persistent symptoms, and dementia and those kind of more chronic brain health issues are big concerns for a lot of patients. And now we're looking at those conditions, dementias are as almost like a type three diabetes

of the brain. So there's a specific type of insulin resistance that's happening in the brain. And that happens on every cellular level too. If you have specific type of insulin resistance that's happening in the brain. And that happens on every cell cellular level too. If you have higher levels of insulin, which is what happens in insulin resistance, that starts creating inflammation. And again, exactly that. And now you're now you're now there's too much sugar that's floating around your bloodstream

and that starts damaging. It's kind of like a lot of pack of loitering hooligans, it's going to start damaging different tissues. So nerves are becoming damaged. So the signaling pathways are being affected. Your eyes, your kidneys, your blood vessels, these are all becoming dysfunctional. And that's kind of about the later stages of diabetes that that really is obviously shows its face. But even at smaller levels, insulin is huge. So what do we do about insulin? Lower the amount of sugar that we're consuming.

Check following the Libby program. Move your body. Even something as simple as walking can help suck up that sugar. And so again, putting taking the pressure off, pressure off. So hopefully people are doing that. Check. So again, putting taking the pressure off, pressure off. So hopefully people are doing that check. Looking at balancing your microbiome and also with fiber, fiber helps absorb and decrease the absorption of sugar and prevent that from becoming again rushing into our bodies fiber

check we talked we just talked about that. So there's some really foundational things that are really baked into the program that people are doing that should really include insulin resistance. And the final thing I'll say here, I've seen this repeatedly. People following the program have reversed their diabetes, have gone to, you know, their doctor and their doctor's like, whatever you're doing, keep doing it because it's really getting better. Your insulin is getting better.

Your blood sugar is getting better. They're getting off their medications. So this is, I believe, part of the program, Gina. And so that's why I think that's the best place to start. And I don't know if there's even that much more that we have to do about it, because ultimately when you lose weight, your insulin resistance dramatically gets better too. Not just losing weight, losing weight in a way where you're giving your body all this nutrient rich foods, you're trying to address your stress, trying to get better, see moving your body more, you're actually losing weight and, and simultaneously making your body healthier in the process.

I do want to talk. I mean, this is another reason why we say it's good to minimize breads and pastas again breads and pastas Don't necessarily cause you to gain weight But they are they they definitely help when you're minimizing them when you're trying to lose weight and it's not about You know breads and pastas are bad. We're trying to get a handle and lower like your insulin levels That's what we're trying to do. So that eventually your metabolism is high enough that you can add them back in and not have the same effect, right?

So sometimes it's like, this is why we've broken the whole program down into a lot of generalizations and just kind of just trust and follow the program because the extent that we'd have to explain all of this day in, day out, it would be a lot. Yeah, it can be overwhelming. And that's why we really try, at least in my conversations, I really try to like bring it back to, okay, so what can people do? And I think in the conversation

around insulin resistance, the simplest thing is just really all go all in on the plan, avoid any sort of extra really refined carbs, snacks, sugars. And I think anyone that's following the plan is already doing that. Then we talk about things like fiber, we talk about things like sleep. When you don't sleep well, the research shows you eat more the next day.

And that is again, trying to compensate for the fatigue. And so the body's intelligent. There's some incredibly elegant systems that are built in. So it's all working together, Gina. That's why again, sleep and hormones are one of the key pillars of kind of like the four pillars of health that I just talked about. Microbiome plays a huge role in insulin resistance too. Again, we, it seems like we're on a broken record coming back to like talking about inflammation and the microbiome because it all plays a really, really important role together and it builds on each other. And I think this is a good segue into talking about hormones and specifically things like cortisol and adrenal function, because it also has a role to play with sugar, Gina.

So yeah, I'd love to talk about that next. Let's go. Okay. 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 audio books, podcasts,

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Ultimately, it's all about starting good habits and that is where Audible can help. They can help you reach the goals that you set for yourself and you can start listening today when you sign up for a free 30 day trial at audible.ca. So, um, the adrenal probably out of all the things that I've talked about so far, I would say the adrenal system is what I, as a naturopathic doctor, spend the most time on with my patients. And it's probably the area that, in my experience, is the most misunderstood from a conventional medicine perspective. And it's applicable to absolutely everybody because it is ultimately the system that helps us

cope with stress. And stress, I'm using in the kind of big term perspective. So stress could be my diet is poor, my stress could be sleep is not great. Stress could be a psychological stress, which is what a lot of people interpret stress as. Now the body has this really, really, really, again, incredible way of regulating and creating homeostasis. So if we are putting more stress on us, the body is right away adapting. And this system is called the adrenal system. The adrenal glands sit above the kidneys

and they produce a couple of key hormones. The main one that most people have heard about is called cortisol. I briefly mentioned it yesterday. Cortisol does a lot of important functions in the body. One of them is to regulate blood sugar. So while insulin is decreasing blood sugar, that's floating around in our bloodstream, cortisol, when it's too low, one of its jobs is to kind of keep blood sugar elevated. So during the night, if our blood sugar is bouncing all over the place because of snacks we had before bed, cortisol has to come up and do some of that balancing. And sometimes it's the reason these cortisol spikes and blood sugar dips is the reason that people are waking up in the middle of the night, Gina, two, three, four, they wake up, they're like wide awake. It also goes, it's produced

at different levels at different times of the day. So cortisol should be high in the morning and it gives you that kind of like energy. It just turns cells on. It turns your brain on. It has powerful anti-inflammatory effects. That cortisol awakening response is really sets you up for the rest of the day. So if you're feeling sluggish in the morning, if generally your energy's really poor, you don't recover well from exercise, your stamina's really off,

you're getting woken up in the middle of the night, you experience, if you skip a meal, your blood sugar goes all over the place and you get irritable, you might get hangry. These are all little signs, you know, that your adrenal system is not functioning well. And unfortunately, it has probably tried to suck up all that stress from the years past dealing with all the things that we put it through. And now it's starting

to not be able to cope. So I deal with this all the time with patients because stress is such a- Is this burnout? Is this burnout? Is it the same? Yeah, so burnout, again, it's a bit of a spectrum. So adrenal fatigue, we've talked about that buzzword, or adrenal burnout is again, kind of a catchall phrase

that describes the body, the adrenal system that's kind of gone past the phrase that describes the body, the adrenal system, that's kind of gone past the point that it's too high. And now it's actually can't meet the demands. So there absolutely is a thing called burnout and, and, and you can see it in the medical field. You can see it in many professions. I know a lot of people listening to this right now, if you've been in a situation where you felt like I'm just overwhelmed, I'm exhausted, my ability to regulate my external environment is just surpassed my capacity. People go into burnout. Yeah, I've been there before.

You've been there before Gina, where it's like, my stress has been too high for too long. And I and systems just start shutting down. So I'm gonna ask you, Gina, maybe I put you a bit on the spot. Like what did you experience when you went through burnout? Like tell people like what you felt. Well, I'm just gonna say, this isn't something that like a weekend away or you know,

getting a good night's sleep is gonna fix. Like this was an underlying sense of tiredness that I knew couldn't be normal. This was like affecting my brain function. This was like feeling like I was up against a wall and I just am like, I can't, I just, but in my mind, I wanted to do things. Like I've like still my mind, I'm like, okay,

I gotta do this. It's not like I didn't want to, I wasn't necessarily depressed, but it was just like, I felt maxed out and that any extra thing, I just was like, I can't. And I kept saying to myself, I just want a day where I could do nothing, which would help. But then the minute I would go back to doing everything else, because it wasn't really this was part of

the I took a whole year off saying yes to things. I was like, I can't, I said to people, I can't, I cannot, well, you know, that's six months away. I'm like, I can't committing now to something six months away, I can't do it. So it was just, my body felt like I was, it was so taxed that every extra little thing I putted through was just like, no. It was like, fuck off, leave us alone.

It's funny that you say that because a lot of people will describe to me that they just become really irritable. Their mood becomes off. They become like wired and tired. They might get depressed. Wired and tired, exhausted during the day. But then I go to bed and then I'd be like,

yeah, yeah. That's probably the biggest thing. That's the biggest thing. How can I be so tired where I could take a nap at any second? And then literally I was falling asleep places like, like random places. And then I go to go to bed and I'm wired. That was the biggest hell for me. And I'm glad you brought that up.

And that's probably one of the big like biggest, like dead giveaways that this is something that's affecting you. Yeah. And if you feel like your sleep is off, but you're exhausted. And that is because again, that circadian rhythm where normally produces high amounts of cortisol during the day is speaking in the morning and then slowly going down during the day. And then overnight, it should be nice and low because there's no need, you're resting, you're recovering. But that is totally flipped for people experiencing this dysfunction. And now just imagine this.

Now we just set the stage in terms of symptoms. Imagine what kind of havoc this is going to wreak on your weight loss plans, on your metabolism. Your entire hormonal internal environment on your weight loss plans, on your metabolism, your entire hormonal internal environment is going to be set to survival mode, not to, hey, let's rest, digest, recover, and lose weight. That those all fit in the same category. And your body is constantly in this fight or flight mode.

And that's another thing a lot of people will describe. We have this, your adrenal system produces a couple other hormones, adrenaline, which is where the name adrenal comes from, is produced by the adrenal glands. And this is like your emergency hormone. It's going to produce energy to get out of the way of a car if it's about to hit you.

Now, a lot of people listening to this are probably like, I feel like that all the time, because the slower acting cortisol is no longer doing enough to keep you in balance. And so now you're getting these like periods of like, I'm wired at night because your cortisol starts going up, your adrenaline starts going up. This is part of this whole picture. And in my experience, this is a key obstacle to losing healthy fat mass. It's losing and maintaining lean muscle mass. It affects either one of those. You can't gain good muscle mass and you can't lose fat.

Your body's holding onto a lot of that stuff. So I think this is a hugely under discussed and underappreciated effect of chronic stress. And it has a huge role to play in weight loss. Yeah, and it's exhausting, it's all consuming and it is not something like I said that you can address overnight. Yeah, it takes time. Yeah, it takes a lot of time.

It's sometimes months, Gina, six months, 12 months. And so we do some really extensive testing with people using saliva, using urine hormones. The challenge I'll just say about this is that a lot of people go to their family doctor about this, they're like, yeah, I've just been off. I'm exhausted all the time. And so they might get labels like,

you have chronic fatigue, it's just your off, I'm exhausted all the time. And so they might get labels like you have chronic fatigue, you know, it's just your age, your metapausal. So there's these kind of like cop out cancers that people and it's very frustrating. Yeah. And this is where the medical profession is like, okay, fine, I'll test your cortisol levels. And they happen to be okay, there may be a bit on the low end or a bit on the high end, because you can even have high cortisol too. And that causes fat deposition around your waist.

So if there's like a tire around your waist that you can't seem to get rid of, then maybe if you've done all the other things, maybe consider that you've had these cortisol spikes. So when it goes high, that's the first stage. It goes high before it goes to the exhaustion phase. That's where a lot of these, this weight gets deposited around the midsection. And then you go to your family doctor, test you and, and it's normal.

And then that's where it's like, I feel off Gina and, and my, my levels seem to be okay. That's because they're looking for like, I'm in the hospital, which is called Addison's disease. And that is total adrenal failure. We're not talking about that. That is a medical emergency. You got to go to the hospital, get some cortisone.

You got to get that fixed up. We're talking about, I'm just dysregulated. All the things you just mentioned, Gina, I'm can't sleep. I'm wired and tired. I'm super stressed. There are ways you can supplement strategically to help support this. There's tests that you can do that give you a lot more nuance.

And I think this is where, and this is a plug totally for naturopathic medicine in my profession, this is where naturopaths shine, in the gut, in hormones, and specifically the adrenal glands. Similar to menopause, you can't really test for it. You go and you get different tests,

depending on where your hormones are at in each day, whatever, you're fine, meanwhile, you're not. It's like it's very symptomatic. So it's the same, very similar. Here's a couple comments. I felt you were describing me. I've tried to do things to fix it but it gets worse and my weight is too high and it wants to stay there. And then there's an interesting one from Antoinette. I feel I have felt diet fatigue where I'm exhausted from thinking about what to eat and when. This one always like is interesting to me because I'm like, what are you tired of eating good nutrient rich foods, you're tired of moving your body managing your stress, like trying

to get better sleep, like everything you're doing here on the program. You're not counting weighing measure doing all of that. It's going to be work to address what's going on for a lot of you. And for some people, they follow the program and it's like easy peasy. For others, you're probably tired of the fact you've been trying to lose weight for 20 years and it hasn't happened yet, right? Like there is that, and if you feel like trying to think

about what you need to do is maxing your brain, you probably got something else going on. It's not about the diet, it's about where your body is at in the state that you are in. And you know, with all of our conversations, people can be like, oh, I'm so overwhelmed, but this is empowering. This is you want to reach your goal. For lack of a better word, there are there are obstacles or things you're going to need to do, which sucks. But there's no way around it because this is your body and your body is not just going to magically wake up one day

and it's gonna be fixed. These are the things you're gonna have to do, not just to lose weight, but to live quality of life for the rest of your life. For sure. I'm glad you brought that up because I'm sure there's so many people, hundreds of people listening to this right now

that are like, we just described them. This is what they're feeling. But I just want to make a point about the fatigue that you mentioned, that Anson mentioned here. A lot of people have come to this program, or at least come to this point after probably trying to lose weight for the last 20 or 30 years, and usually going about it the wrong way. The point that I wanted to bring up here, Gina, is that these types of extreme yo-yo types diets are super stressful on your adrenal glands.

Yeah. Not only does it screw up your metabolism, not only does it screw up your body's satiety, and it actually makes you less mindful, it makes you mind less, it stresses your adrenal system because you're using some of these adrenal hormones to maintain blood sugar after you're starving yourself.

And so yeah, you're gonna lose weight, but you're also gonna lose muscle mass. And every time you do that, you're actually taking away from the machinery that's gonna ultimately help you lose fat and weight in the long run. So think of the years that have taken to get to this point. So I always say, if it's taking you 20 years of doing these yo-yo dieting to get to this

point now, some people it's going to take months and maybe a couple years of staying on this nourishing approach before your body is gonna respond. And that's the rub there, Gina, is that people want a quick fix because they were used to getting quick fixes at the Atkins, Bernsteins, you name it. Unfortunately, each one of those approaches, yes, they lost weight,

but they actually set themselves back from a metabolism perspective, and they actually challenged and stressed their adrenal system in a profound way. Which is why you just gain more weight and it gets worse. As soon as you stop that, you're gonna gain more weight and unfortunately gonna be off worse So if you're if that's you and you're listening to this right now, what I want to tell you is not to be discouraging and for you to feel

Sad because you you ended up doing that and for you to say, okay well, so what am I supposed to do you You're doing the right thing. Stay the course. And just, you've kind of overridden your body signals for decades. You need to now rebuild the trust with your body. Your body, we might get a little woo here. You have to, you almost need to, there's a cellular neurological connection.

We almost need to recreate that metabolism and that communication with the cells and be like, Hey, I'm actually fueling you. I'm not starving you. I'm not trying to stress you out. Talking to yourselves, even from a meditation perspective, these are the types of internal affirmations and self-talk that I want my patients doing is I want them thinking about, okay, you know what, I'm now going to care and love for my body, rather than I'm now going to impose this very stressful, aggressive approach that is actually in the long run going to be damaging to my metabolism. It takes sometimes months and years to kind of recover. And the kicker here, and this is the menopause piece,

is that when you're in the menopausal age, now there's lots of different changes on the reproductive hormone front that throw a lot of wrenches into, there are a lot more variables, I guess I'll say. And that sometimes is hard to predict, Gina, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So it requires even more patience. So I love what you said. Are you tired of being healthy? Because if you're tired of eating this diet, what a person should consider is, what would be easy for you just to eat

what everyone else is doing? I think that's the mind shift I want people to take from, that is hard because you're going to be unhealthy. And we want to shift to being healthy and nourishing. And that should be the set point. And unfortunately, it's not for a lot of people because everyone around them and what they've done before is I just want to eat whatever I want. Ultimately, what you really are saying is I want to eat like shit and and not Yeah, not care about it. I just want to eat

whatever. And that's a psychological mindset thing. That's not a metabolism thing. And that's more work. And that's more work. What we're trying to do here is meet you where you're at, figure out where you are at and where you've come from, where you're at so you know what you need to do. It's about rewiring your body physically, how it's learned to function, your brain, how it's learned to function, and that should take some. I do wanna also talk about something came up in my mind where, you know, what are your options?

And there are GLP ones out there that you can take, but you still have to do the work. That does not take away any of the work that you need to do because if you have a metabolic issue, if you have a hormonal issue, if you have any of these things we talked about, you have to address those and taking GLP-1s, which can help maybe take the edge off your hunger,

isn't gonna help with that. So this is the work, this is the work. Man, I wanna get into, I wanna talk about adrenal support. I wanna talk about, or what do you call these? Adapogens. Adapogens, yes. But I want to go through some of these really quickly. And I know we're running out of time, but I guess one of the things that, I mean, who talks about this, the importance of that muscle mass, right? Like the amounts of muscle you have in your body is so important and it's almost like it needs to be a prescription for people to build muscle

because, and especially after, not just with aging, not just with menopause, but after years of dieting where you're literally losing muscle, that's really problematic. That's probably the most, the number one prescription you need is to make sure you start doing resistance training And that's why I said in one of my introduction Conversations with you is like what am I most excited about is like we've incorporated that specific type of prescription into my patients care

Where I'm working with someone that is an expert in this, you know a chiropractor that does a lot of these high end evaluations. And what's like I'm giving you, you're getting a diet approach from the Libby program. I'm giving you, you know, what's the key hormonal rebalancing approach, but you also need to have that same approach when it comes to moving your body and exercise that same type of like prescription. And everyone, Gina, is a bit different. And they all have physical limitations. Physical limitations, aches and pains and predispositions,

past injuries, are the number one reason people fall off the plan. Because, oh, you know what, I threw my back out. You know what, it's off, I did this. Every week I see someone like this. So what I say is part of the first step is I wanna be defensive in our approach of being like, what are the things that are,

you're following the Virginia Plan, great. What are the things that are gonna sidetrack you? Well, in the past, I've done three sessions and I've never fully completed one because always something comes up. So there's family issues, emotional stressors, work stressors, and then there's physical stressors. And so we have to address that physical side of things. I believe physical exercise and lean muscle mass is as important as diet. And that

has to be part of the equation, especially if you are in menopause, in any age, sorry, but I mean, especially in menopause, because you're, sorry, but I mean, like, especially in menopause, because you're losing the protective effect of those hormones. And you're losing muscle mass to the tune of 1% every year after the age of 40. And if you were dieting, you're losing way more. GLP one, you're losing muscle mass. Yeah. And years of your life, like in a sense, muscle mass, like 20 years worth of muscle mass. Like it's, it's, it's, it's Okay. We should talk about protein in one whole session because it's like, I remember

I mentioned it's like one of my core five. That was the newest edition because I know that, um, you know, proteins, it's, it's a big category, but most people aren't getting enough to build that lean muscle mass. Most people even know they're getting like, you know, they're, they're, you know, they think like granola, gluten-free, some berries and yogurt is like enough for breakfast. That's like 10 grams of protein. Most people need, um, closer to 80 to a hundred grams of protein a day. That means you need to get 30, at least 30 grams of protein per meal. So you're, you're short 20 grams right off the bat in the breakfast. If you do that, that's just one little example. Yeah, this is why when we say focus on protein

for breakfast, we mean that, right? Like what's gonna give you the most protein? When we say, you know, this is why you're getting those nuts and seeds. This is why with your veg snack, you don't just have vegetables, you can add protein to that. You can add a boiled egg to that, right?

So they're, we don't wanna get into counting and weighing and measuring, but we do prioritize those for a reason. We prioritize them for a reason. Man, we are out of time. What do we do? Because do you want to talk to adaptogens real quick? Because this one is the more complicated one. We have information on the CoQ10, on the turmeric, on the L-theanine, the trace minerals, MCT oil in the notes. But, Okay. Last minute. The last, we'll do the last door knocker here. Uh, Gonda or actual Gonda is a great herb to help balance cortisol levels. It is in the class of adaptogens and these herbs, Gina,

they help our adrenal system do their job better. So it's not, doesn't have any hormone in it. It's not going to increase your cortisol. It's not going to substantially decrease it. If it's too high, it has evidence to show it helps bring it down. There are other herbs that if it's too low, it helps extend the life of cortisol. This doesn't change the fact you still have to do the harder work of getting rid of the things that are affecting your cortisol. You got to sleep, you got to eat regularly, you got to exercise in moderation. Sometimes I've had patients that exercise so much because that's been their like historical like get in a jail free card is that like I eat whatever I want and I just crush the

exercise and I stayed in my good weight. If you over exercise and you're adrenally exhausted and you have HP axis dysfunction, which is that fancy word for adrenal dysfunction, it's actually another stressor. How do you recover after exercise? So ashwagandha really helpful for that. And my favorite, don't want to forget about it, L-thionine. This is going to help decrease the, some of the stress response that happens at the neuro chemical level.

So found in green tea, it's natural, but when taken in a supplemental form, it can be really, really beneficial for coping with stress. And it's not just one a day. That one a day is kind of like the basic introduction. Talk to your naturopath about how to dose these properly, Gina. Okay, we might as well do CoQ10. Cellular energy helps support mitochondrial function. That's your energy power plant inside your cell. So I think that's just a smart idea just to support that. Again, your mitochondria

is ultimately what's producing energy. And if you're tired, then you're going to need extra support there. Could it be adrenals? Could it be iron deficiency? Yes. And yes. Could it be thyroid? Yes. Which we haven't even talked about. But thyroid is another key thing. But coq10 is kind of like fuel for that cellular power plant. Okay. What about cumin, curcumin and MCTL? Anti-inflammatory. It's one of the most studied herbs in the world. You know, can be very helpful for things like joint pain. But in general, it's just, it's the best natural anti-inflammatory along with things like ginger and omega-3s. Okay. MCTO?

Type of good fats helps. It actually helps your metabolism because it bypasses the typical fat absorption pathways and it can be converted into what are called ketones in the body. And that's why it kind of has this brain beneficial effect within mental energy. I want to get into ketones because it's really important that your brain, it's an extra fuel for your brain ketones. And the problem with insulin too is that people are eating so often such high carb, high sugar foods that their body's not producing any of those, which are actually really important. People think ketones, they think keto, you don't have to starve and deprive

yourself and just eat protein and fat. But this is why towards the end of the program, I mean, we are eating often, but we are also not having all those heavier carbs, added sugars, processed foods throughout the day. This is where it is normal when we get into tailoring the program at the end of being more in tune to your body's needs. You don't necessarily need to eat six times a day. There's a benefit to not eating so often. That's definitely one of the things I want to talk about the importance.

People are so afraid to come off the routine of the program thinking, Oh my God, I'm losing that structure when it's that's taking it it to the next level. It's actually really being in tune with when to eat and what to eat. Well, the great conversations, we'll have to save that for another day, Jane, I think. That's like a fast and furious, like get over the line like that. Like to squeak it in last minute.

Thank you, Dr. Paul. Thank you to everyone who joined us. Wow, my goodness. Listen to it again, and again and again. Listen to yesterday's again and again. The two in combination are absolutely brilliant. You can follow him over on Instagram, Dr. Paul Herkel, or you can go to his website, paulherkelnd.com. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Bye, everyone. Have a good one. Bye. 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 audiobooks, podcasts, even exclusive audible originals that are no doubt going to inspire you, but more so motivate you. All you have to do is open up the app, tap into your well-being, and you can hear advice and get insight from leading influencers, experts and professionals, whatever your focus really or interest, there's a listen for you. You can find titles on better health, like personal

fitness or maybe some relaxation. You can hear ways to improve your relationships both in your work and personal life. Or what if you're looking to embark on a new career strategy or maybe you want to overhaul your financial life? You can hear a smart talk about investing for your future because you'll find that too. Ultimately, it's all about starting good habits and that is where Audible can help. They can help you reach the goals that you set for yourself

and you can start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca.