Episode 157:
Show Notes
Semaglutide is an injectable medication developed for people with type 2 diabetes but has also gained popularity as an off-label option for weight management. It works by tapping into the power of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), which our bodies produce naturally. GLP-1 hormones play a crucial role in regulating blood sugar, curbing our appetite, and reducing fat storage.
And here's the exciting part: we can actually boost the production of these weight loss hormones without relying on medications. By embracing the wonders of a low carb real food diet, by fueling our bodies with wholesome, low carb meals, we unlock the potential to supercharge our metabolism and unleash those natural GLP-1 hormones leading to reduced cravings, a satisfying feeling of fullness, and fat loss. It's truly remarkable how a shift in our mindset and food choices can become an absolute game changer on our weight loss journey.
It's time to challenge the stories we tell ourselves, the ones that convince us life wouldn't be worth living without bread or that we absolutely need our nightly fix of chocolate. We have the power to rewrite those stories and discover a whole new world of possibilities. With the right mindset skills, we can unpack these stories and replace them with empowering narratives that allow us to embrace a delicious, easy, and fulfilling low carb real food lifestyle.
The root cause of weight gain lies in an imbalance of metabolic hormones within our bodies. Over time, our diets, heavily influenced by the USDA food pyramid introduced in the 1970s, have become overloaded with excessive sugars, starches, carbohydrates, and processed foods. This shift in dietary habits has led to a rise in metabolic disorders, particularly insulin resistance, which is now the most prevalent chronic disorder of our time. The consequences of these dietary choices have resulted in a crisis of escalating weight gain and declining metabolic health. It is crucial to recognise this connection and take control of our well being by reevaluating our relationship with these problematic food choices. By embracing a healthier approach and making mindful changes to our diets, we have the power to reverse this trend and pave the way for a brighter and healthier future.
True success in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight lies in addressing the root cause of excessive weight storage - elevated insulin and insulin resistance. When our bodies struggle to cope with the amount of sugars and starches in our diets, these metabolic imbalances occur. By reducing sugars and starches and instead focusing on delicious whole foods, you can create incredible, flavourful meals that nourish and heal your body. The best part? You can eat like royalty, indulging in a variety of scrumptious options fit for a King, Queen, or Empress. Alternatively, low carb real food can be super simple if you are time poor. Rest assured, even with simple meals, the taste is still divine.
Low carb real food has the power to heal your body, addressing the root cause of metabolic imbalances that contribute to excess weight gain and a range of chronic diseases. Weight gain is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the detrimental effects of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance causes heart disease, ischemic stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, neuroinflammatory conditions, and polycystic ovarian syndrome, among other health challenges. These ailments steal our health span and diminish our quality of life.
But here's the secret: by simply reducing sugar and starch in our diets, we can still live a joyful, fulfilling life while allowing our bodies to heal. It's time to take action, embrace this knowledge, and witness the incredible transformation that a low carb real food lifestyle can bring.
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Episode 157:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson: (0:11) Hello, my lovely listeners. I'm Dr Mary Barson
Dr Lucy Burns: (0:15) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. Welcome to this episode of
Both: (0:20) Real Health and Weight Loss!
Dr Mary Barson: (0:23) Hello lovely listeners, Dr Mary here. And it is just Dr Mary here. The fabulous Dr Lucy is off gallivanting around the country with her fabulous hubby in her fabulous caravan, and is somewhere fabulous up in far north Queensland. And me here in the much less tropical southern Victoria, I am here on my lonesome talking to you fabulous people. And I am very happy to be here. I am cold, but otherwise very, very well.
Today, I want to chat about weight loss medications. And the weight loss medication I want to chat about the most is semaglutide. You may well know this as Ozempic or Wegovy. Many of you either take this medication, might be interested in taking this medication. And I'm not here to say that it is bad. I'm not here to talk about good, bad, guilt, judgments or anything like that. What I want to do is empower you with some knowledge because knowledge is powerful. Knowledge is not enough on its own, we need to know how to convert what we know into what we do. But knowledge is the perfect place to start.
So let's chat around Ozempic and Wegovy. So these are injectable medications. They're injectable medications that are designed for people with type two diabetes. And they are also used off label for weight management. And you know, they are incredibly popular. Ozempic is an incredibly popular medication and there are extreme shortages at the moment of semaglutide worldwide. It's getting better but it is quite hard to come by which can be very difficult for many people. How semaglutide works, it works by increasing the availability of a hormone, the hormone called glucagon like peptide 1 or GLP-1 hormones in the body. The thing is, beautiful humans, that we make these hormones ourselves. So the GLP-1 hormones help regulate blood sugar levels, they help reduce appetite. They promote this sort of feeling of fullness as they work on our hormonal signals of feeling full. And they can also help reduce fat storage, these hormones naturally and they are an absolutely essential part of a healthy metabolism. In our 12 week Mind Body Rebalance Program, we talk about these hormones and how you can naturally improve them. And they are part of our natural metabolism. So beautiful people, the main point I'm making here is that we make our own weight loss hormones. And of course medications can be extremely useful in the right setting. However, we make our own weight loss hormones. There is a very natural and safe and healthy way for you to increase the production of your own helpful weight managing hormones. And the circumstances in which we can increase the production of our own healthy weight loss hormones is, drumroll please, low carb real food. Yes, beautiful people. Low carb real food increases the production naturally of our own GLP-1 and it does this through many mechanisms. But by eating low carb real food, you are able to naturally boost your own production of GLP-1 hormones, which I think is pretty dang cool. So essentially, this means you can get many of the benefits that a person might get by injecting weekly semaglutide But without the costs and it can be exorbitantly expensive. Without the side effects which can be quite significant for some people. And of course not having to worry about whether or not it'll be available when you go to the chemist.
So low carb real food. We bang on about low carb real food a lot and we're gonna keep banging on about low carb real food because it works. I am completely unable to unsee the extraordinary life changing benefits that I have seen for people when they adopt a low carb real food diet. When their hunger and satiety signals just normalise, when people can have their two or three meals a day and then just not be hungry. For someone who used to be starving, hungry all the time, I just remember being hungry all the time, I'd have my meal and then be like in a panic waiting for the next snack to come around. And especially as a young woman, I could be quite self conscious about being hungry and wanting to eat. But on a low carb real food diet when I found that, that incessant hunger just, it just goes away. And one of the reasons why it goes away is because it allows this natural metabolic healing and part of this natural metabolic healing is boosting your own natural GLP-1 hormones. So it is incredible. Low carb real food lifestyle creates lots of these healthy metabolic shifts. And it is an absolute game changer. It can be an absolute game changer. If you can get it to work for you, and beautiful human, you can get it to work for you with very simple but powerful mindset shifts.
You know, you can learn to listen to the stories of life is not worth living without bread. That's not necessarily true. You can learn to listen to those stories and perhaps rewrite them. I couldn't possibly live without my nightly fix of dairy caramilk chocolate. Possibly not quite true. I have to eat pasta, because I'm busy. Maybe not necessarily true. And with the right mindset skills, you can learn to unpack these stories and learn to rewrite really helpful, beautiful, empowering stories for yourself where you can make a delicious, really yummy and easy, low carb, real food lifestyle work for you.
So there are many benefits to eating low carb real food. And the boosting of your GLP-1’s is just one of them. I mean, I would be quite happy to not have to inject medications, that would be something that would be good for me. But I would like to emphasise this point that if you are on these medications, I am not saying that it's wrong. I am not. This is a decision between you and your medical practitioner. And if you are on weight loss medications such as semaglutide, then still having a low carb real food diet will really help amplify the effectiveness of these medications. So it is still a really, really useful thing to do even if you're on these medications for whatever reason that you are.
Another potential issue with semaglutide is protein intake. So it can, well it reduces your hunger, it can cause problems including nausea and other issues, which can make it difficult to eat. And making it difficult to eat can be a problem if you're not meeting your nutrient requirements, and the main nutrient requirements of which I would get critically concerned about is protein. Yes we need to have a good amount of healthy natural fats and essential fatty acids and we do need to ensure that we get all our vitamins and minerals. That's extremely important. And it is extremely important to make sure that you get enough protein. And it is getting enough protein that can be difficult with these medications. So if you are on these medications, it's really important to get the right advice about your dietary intake and to ensure that you really prioritise your protein. Getting enough protein is important for your metabolic health to an enormous degree and it will help you avoid problems like sarcopenia problems, like even osteoporosis, and you need to make sure that that's really dialled in. And a low carb real food can be extremely helpful for this because the way that we encourage people to structure their meals is that they really do prioritise the protein.
Some of you may know Saxenda. That's another weight loss medication. Its generic name is liraglutide. And liraglutide is closely related to semaglutide. The glutide sharing, that suffix is the clue. So liraglutide is a similar medication to semaglutide, it's injected daily instead of weekly. And it also works by increasing the availability of the glucagon like peptide 1 hormones. And so basically works in a pretty similar way. The daily injections can be a little bit more unpleasant than the weekly injections, but they've got, you know, similar issues with being very expensive and similar issues with side effects. And I think, you know, if you can make a low carb diet work for you, and I really, honestly believe that you can, then you can just naturally, you know, naturally improve your own weight loss hormones, without having to worry. Without having to worry about the costs, the side effects, the availability, the painful injections, having to deal with getting rid of the needles, all of those things. Another medication that has seen a small resurgence in my area, or maybe I'm just hearing a little bit more and my reticular activating system in my brain, the pattern recognising part of my brain is just more keyed into it. But Duromine. I'm hearing more and more people talk about duromine, which is a medication I've very, very, very rarely, probably never prescribed. But it is a weight loss medication that's been around for a long time. So duromine is a prescription medication. And the active ingredient is phentermine, which is, it's in the same family as stimulant medications like you know, pseudoephedrine and and recreational drugs such as cocaine. Basically, it's a sympathomimetic amine. And it works by stimulating the release of certain chemicals in the brain, which can suppress appetite, and can increase feelings of fullness. It also increases our levels of adrenaline, noradrenaline in our body, and that has a small effect on increasing our metabolic rate. And look, it can be effective in promoting weight loss. But it does have a lot of potential drawbacks, which I am concerned about. Legitimately concerned about. You know, it should only ever be prescribed as a short term use, because of its potential side effects. You can get tolerant to it. So sort of, you know, you need more and more doses. It can be also addictive, which is a significant problem. And because it focuses primarily on just suppressing appetite, it means that you might not be getting all of the nutrients that you need, you know, in particular protein, similar issue as with the semaglutide. And that it can result in elevated heart rate, it can cause people to have tachycardias, it could have a whole lot of really quite significant potential side effects. And it doesn't really get to the root cause. The root cause of weight gain, as we have discussed many times over beautiful people, is that metabolic imbalance. The metabolic hormones are not in a healthy balance. You've got a body that is not coping with the amount of sugars and starches that are in the diet. You know, if you've been following the USDA food pyramid that came out in the 1970s, we were told to eat lots of extra carbs, that bread, rice potato, pasta was down at the bottom of the food pyramid. And because we are good little humans, that is what we have done. And ever since the USDA food pyramid was introduced in the 70s, we have become heavier and heavier and more and more metabolically unwell to the point where now, insulin resistance is the most common chronic disorder of our time, like this is an absolute crisis. And it is caused by the excessive amounts of sugar and starch and carbohydrates and processed foods in our diet. That is how we got here. So sprinkling a bit of duromine in there is not really getting to the root cause of the problem. And I truly believe hand on my heart with enormous amounts of passion and vigour, that there is a better way. That although these things aren't necessarily bad, and I would never ever cast shame or judgement upon people who are using them as a tool, that they should not be your only tool.
Because real success comes when you can get down to the root cause of being overweight, of excessive weight storage. And that root cause is elevated insulin and insulin resistance, which occurs when our body is not coping with the amount of sugars and starches in our diet. And if you reduce the sugars and starches in your diet, if you focus instead on delicious whole foods, and man, you can make some pretty amazing, delicious tasty meals with real foods that are naturally low in sugars. I'm here to tell you, you could eat like a King, Queen and Empress if you wanted to. Or you could also do what I do, which is to eat really simply because I'm time poor. And it's still delicious. If you can do that, then your body naturally heals. It naturally heals without the risk and the cost and the side effects and the danger and the inconvenience of medications. It does this naturally. And if you're on medications, then they can be seen as an adjunct to the metabolic healing that you do with low carb real food. So gorgeous people, I cannot emphasise this enough. Low carb real food heals your body. Like it heals the actual cause of the metabolic imbalance that has driven the excess weight gain, as well as a whole host of chronic diseases. Insulin resistance doesn't just cause weight gain. We know this. In fact, honestly, weight gain is in my opinion, the least interesting thing that insulin resistance causes. Insulin resistance causes heart disease and ischemic strokes and diabetes and Alzheimer's and neuro inflammatory conditions, polycystic ovarian syndrome . All of these things that are robbing us, robbing us of our health span, of our quality of life and if you just eat less sugar and starch, you can still have a wonderful joyful life and heal your body. Woo! I really can't, I'm fired up now, huh, really, really, really can't emphasise that too much. Gorgeous people.
So whether or not you take weight loss medications, whether or not you have had weight loss surgery, I haven't talked about that much this time. But it's a similar situation. If you've had weight loss surgery, or you're considering weight loss surgery, those are tools. And they may or may not be helpful for you, they might be. And that's a balanced decision that you need to make for yourself with your own medical advice. And low carb real food either on its own or combined with you know, other tools, if that is something that you feel that you need, that is going to be the most powerful step. It is the low carb real food that's really going to help you. I mean we've got 25% of our beautiful members have had weight loss surgery, and it hasn't helped them long term. It's not to say that it was a terrible thing to do, but it hasn't been enough on its own. You also need to address the metabolic issues. And you do that by reducing sugars and starches and the way that you make your reduction of sugar and starches last for you and work for you long term is by working on your gorgeous brain and doing that fabulous mindset work. That's it gorgeous humans, the physiology, heal the physiology, low carb real food, intermittent fasting and manage your mind. That's the psychology, the compassionate mindset management. You do those two things. Nothing can stop you. Beautiful one, you can get where you need to go. Hmm, well, I have had so much fun chatting to you today. Thank you for listening, gorgeous ones.
A final note, this June, Real Life Medicine has turned three! We are three years old. It's amazing. We got through the terrible twos and now we are three. Can't believe it, that I met this fabulous human Dr Lucy Burns you know not much over three years ago. And I can't believe it's only been three years that we got together, discovered that we had this shared passion for empowering people to reclaim their health with natural safe healthy means. And we got together and we founded Real Life Medicine and three years have flown by and it has been a wonderful wild ride. And to celebrate our third year, we have got a fabulous bonus pack which is only available until June 30. So the end of financial year it ends. And it is all of our some of our most popular weight loss tools all bundled together into one extremely high value pack. So it cost $297 Australian dollars and you get well over $730 in value. You get a four week Introduction to Low Carb Living; The Doctors Complete Guide to Low Carb Living. You get Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss, 31 Day targeted weight loss hypnotherapy and guided meditation program. Awesome. You get our How to Stop Nighttime Snacking program, incredibly useful tool. You get our Doctors Masterclass, this really enlightening package of master classes where we've got Understanding Low Carb and Cholesterol, Understanding Weight Loss and Menopause, Overcoming Sugar Addiction and a Doctor's Guide to Reading Nutritional Labels, incredibly useful information in there. And you get our 30 Day Mindfulness Meditation program as well which is a great way to get started in mindfulness meditation. So all up it's bloody amazing. This incredible package, a huge deal. We don't do this, we never really do sales, we almost never do this. So it's a really rare opportunity to snap up all of these fabulous courses for the one low low price. So go to our website, www.rlmedicine.com/bonus. All the links will be in the show notes and that will be a great program for you gorgeous people. All right, beautiful ones. Lucy's up there basking in the great warmth of you know, as she's so much closer to the equator than I am and I'm right down the other side of this continent, quite cold. I am going to put on a jumper and stand by my fire. I hope that wherever you are, you are just the right temperature and extra comfy. And I look forward to chatting to you next time. See ya.
Dr Lucy Burns: (21:29) So my lovely listeners, that ends this episode of Real Health and Weight Loss. I'm Dr Lucy Burns…
Dr Mary Barson: (21:36) and I'm Dr Mary Barson. We’re from Real Life Medicine. To contact us, please visit rlmedicine.com
Dr Lucy Burns: (21:47) And until next time…
Both: (21:49) Thanks for listening!
Dr Lucy Burns: (21:51) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide, individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
