


Imagine if everything you had been told about weight loss was wrong!
Welcome to the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast where you get real advice from real doctors to help you lose weight and revolutionise your health, not just now, but permanently.
We are here to bust through some myths and give you actionable advice.
Real health and weight loss is a journey and we, your hosts Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns, from Real Life Medicine are here with you every step of the way.
You can change your future starting now!

Podcast Episode 1
Overweight Doctors
Meet Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns have both been overweight and metabolically unhealthy. Listen to their stories of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Insulin Resistance. Dr Mary and Dr Lucy share their insights on their individual paths to lose weight and reclaim their health.

Podcast Episode 2

Podcast Episode 3

Podcast Episode 4
Myth Busting High Fat
Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss the red list and green list. These are the foods they recommend for long term sustainable weight loss. They are Low Carb Real Food which will help you lose weight, reduce inflammation. They also discuss the health benefits of good fats and why we fear of fat.

Podcast Episode 5
Yo Yo dieting is not your fault
Calorie counting in all its in forms is the backbone of the dieting industry and does not work for long term weight loss. Be ready to unlearn everything you were taught. Weight loss is chemistry, not maths.

Podcast Episode 6

Podcast Episode 7
A deeper dive into psychological hungerDr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss non-hungry eating and explain how our emotions can drive the desire to eat.Understanding the thought model is the first step to conquering emotional eating.

Podcast Episode 8
Too much on your plate
Long-term, low-grade stress is one of the mechanisms of fat storage.
Dr Mary Barson breaks down this concept in an easy-to-understand way and discusses fight and flight as well as rest and digest.

Podcast Episode 9
Healthy sleep, healthy living
Do you get a good night’s sleep? Many people don’t – and that affects the way they function, and it can also affect their craving for food.
Dr Mary and Dr Lucy discuss what you can do to ensure you receive the restorative health benefits of proper sleep.

Podcast Episode 10
Fasting: A powerful strategy for weight lossFasting, combined with a proper diet, is a liberating and purposeful strategy to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. But don’t confuse fasting with starving! You don’t want to starve yourself. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss what fasting means and examine research undertaken from cell biologist into auophagy.

Podcast Episode 11
Reflect for success
Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss why setting new year’s resolutions often fail. Wishing, wanting and waiting are not weight loss plans.
Setting intentions with clarity, commitment, courage and compassion is the real way to lose weight and improve your health.

Podcast Episode 12
Habits form the basis of any change
It takes 21 days to form a new habit, right? Actually, there is no science proving this. It takes a lot longer than 21 days. Applying the 4 C’s – courage, commitment, consistency and compassion – are the keys to forming and maintaining new habits.
Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson take a deeper dive into habits and give you some practical tips.

Podcast Episode 13
Healthy habit hacks: Work with your brain to form long-term healthy habits
Get great habits for great health and weight loss.
Medical doctors and weight-management experts, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns show you how to work with your natural human psychology to make healthy habits fun, attractive and achievable.

Podcast Episode 14
Health at any size...but not any serum insulin level
You can be healthy if you are carrying extra weight, provided your metabolic hormones are healthy and in balance. Medical doctors, Dr Lucy and Dr Mary, discuss what it is to be metabolically healthy.
Elevated insulin and insulin resistance are at the heart of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, strokes, and heart attacks.

Podcast Episode 15
Heal your gut simply
We discuss the simple, yet powerful changes you can make to improve your gut health today. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss the key lifestyle changes we can all make to improve the health of this most vital of organs, our gut.
Our gut affects the health of every other organ in our body. The modern lifestyle of processed food, stress, and poor sleep damage our gut and microbiome.

Podcast Episode 16
Save your gut health in 4 simple steps
Take action today to heal your gut. Come along with medical doctors, Dr Mary and Dr Lucy as they talk through the first two steps of their four-step process for improving gut health. Our gut health is of major importance. Gut function is inextricably linked to our overall health and wellbeing. Modern Lifestyle (processed food, antibiotics, stress, and poor sleep) can damage our gut lining and disrupt the gut microbiome. But there is good news! There is plenty to be done to improve our gut health with the choices we make today.

Podcast Episode 17
Save your gut health in 4 simple steps - part 2
Heal your gut with these simple and powerful strategies. Medical doctors, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns continue their discussion on the 4R Framework for healing your gut.
This podcast focuses on the role of fermented foods, probiotics, and how finding balance in our lives also rebalances our gut health, helping us achieve and maintain good health lifelong. Gut function is inextricably linked to our overall health and wellbeing.

Podcast Episode 18
What is the perfect human diet?
Are you confused about what to eat? You are not alone. Join medical doctors, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns, as they cut through the dogma and get down to the basics of healing your metabolism and losing weight using real food. For years, the food industry and other vested interests have muddied the water and sent out confusing and contradictory messaging. One day eggs are bad, the next day eggs are good. One minute red meat is evil, the next it is healthy. Plant-based is best, or is it carnivore? The truth is there is no one perfect human diet.

Podcast Episode 19
Don't be a victim of diet culture!
Are you one of those people who seems to have tried everything to lose weight? You’ve been on so many different diets and nothing has worked. Perhaps you now feel that diets just don’t work for you.
But wait! You don’t have to be a victim of diet culture. In this episode, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns help you transform from diet culture victim to weight loss victor. It’s about building trust with yourself and following their simple guidelines.

Podcast Episode 20
You can't hate yourself thin!
Self-kindness is the secret weapon in weight loss. Self-kindness is proven to help us stay track with healthy behaviour change, and yet many of us find self-kindness very hard to do. Have you ever felt like giving up your weight loss efforts after slipping and eating just one piece of cake?
Luckily, self-compassion is a learnable skill. Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss three simple steps to building and maintaining self-compassion. You can learn to change your eating behaviours without self-hatred, and without giving up.

Podcast Episode 21
What does a dead chook have to do with weight loss?
Are you drawn to the fridge when you are feeling down? Do you use food to suppress or soothe stress and negative feelings? You are not alone! Emotional eating is a very common problem, so often infused with guilt and shame. Emotional eating is not your fault, it a conditioned response. There is hope! Dr Lucy and Dr Mary light the way to overcoming emotional eating. You can learn new tools to deal with negative emotions, you can even learn to tolerate negative emotions. Listen to this episode and start breaking free from the negative spiral of emotional eating today.

Podcast Episode 22
Overweight people are not big thin people.
Have you ever struggled with your weight? Has the standard weight loss advice let you down? Medical doctors, Dr Lucy and Dr Mary, explain why the old advice of “just burn more calories than you eat” is wrong. The treatment of obesity is not the same as the prevention. People who are overweight or obese generally have insulin resistance and high insulin. As insulin is our master fat-storage hormone, elevated insulin is at the heart of unhealthy weight gain and metabolic disease. Overweight people have different metabolisms to lean people. If you are overweight or have metabolic disease you need to get your insulin down. Let Dr Mary and Dr Lucy show you how.

Podcast Episode 23
Dr Mary ate the icecream and woke up Fluffy.
We can’t be perfect! Slip-ups are a natural part of life. Dr Mary shares her ice-cream-related stumble and shares her tips for getting back on track. She ate some sugary ice cream but did not let this lapse derail her healthy eating lifestyle.
Let Dr Mary and Dr Lucy introduce you to Fluffy. Fluffy is a metaphor for your inner sugar and carb cravings. Fluffy lives in your brain and is your carb-craving monster. Keeping your sugar and carb intake low keeps this carb-craving monster asleep. Eating carbs wakes Fluffy up. Putting Fluffy back to sleep is a vital skill to learn. Listen to this episode to learn how.