Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns explain inflammation in the latest instalment of their “Complicated Basics” series. 

Inflammation is one of the most significant drivers of poor health.

It is complex, and Dr Lucy and Dr Mary untangle this knotty subject, making it easy to understand so you can be empowered to reduce your chronic inflammation and take control of your health today.

Weight loss plateaus are common.

It is extremely important to remember that weight loss is not a straight-down linear process and that there are many other important indicators of health that we should focus on beyond the simple number on the scales.

If you are having a weight loss stall, there are many things you can do about it. Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss the best ways to break through weight loss plateaus for continued permanent weight loss, so that you can reach your goals and live your very best, most healthy life.

As humans, we often look for a clean slate to “start again”.

If we go off track with our healthy eating (like eating the Tim Tams after a stressful day at work) we will often tell ourselves: “It’s OK, I’ll just start again tomorrow/Monday/next week/January”. However, it is actually possible to start again at any time.

Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns discuss how our brains work and how you can change your beautiful brain one thought at a time and be empowered to take control of your health and your life.

Dr Mary Barson is joined by the fabulous Nicole Mitchell. Nicole has had life-long struggles with body image, and her relationship with food. As an early developer, she can recall feeling deep shame about her body from a very early age.

Despite finding success in many spheres of her life, she has persistently struggled with her weight and with self-acceptance. Having a trusting doctor-patient relationship with Dr Mary, Nicole took the plunge and did the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance Program in September 2021. Her results were nothing short of transformative.

Not only did she lose a significant amount of weight and normalise her blood sugars and lipids, she also transformed the way she treats and views herself. Nicole shares her powerful story of finding the all-important self-love and self-compassion that is key to long term health, weight loss and well-being.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with Monique, a super high achieving woman who has spent years on the diet rollercoaster. Monique was on boards, committees and even climbed to Everest base camp!

She shares her story where as a busy mum of five, working and studying full time, she lost herself. As menopause approached, she found herself overweight, overwhelmed. She was pre-diabetic, suffered intense joint pain and reflux. She had social anxiety and decreasing self-esteem.

By a chance encounter she heard about the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance. She has turned the clock back and reclaimed both herself and her health.

We almost, but not completely, align with the intuitive eating and health at any size movements. These movements put forward many wonderful and healthy ideals that align well with our philosophy.

We are very strong believers that self-worth is not dictated by the number on the scales. We believe that tuning into our bodies and treating ourselves with kindness is key to long term health. There is, however, more to this story.

Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss how they have found total “Food Freedom” and improved mental and physical wellbeing (as well as permanent weight loss) through their system of healing the metabolic hormones and managing the mind with kindness and compassion. You can also get your ticket to “Food Freedom”!

Nothing ever changes if nothing ever changes. Challenging our thoughts is key to changing our behaviour. And of course, it is the behaviour change that ultimately leads to long term weight loss.

Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns discuss how to cultivate a growth mindset and how doing so is the most important change we all must make if we want to reclaim our health for good.

Embracing our failures, lapses and slips is a key part of learning a new mindset. When viewed with kindness failure is our best teacher and driver for change. Let’s start celebrating out failures together!

What are food cravings? Why do we get them? What can we do about them?

Medical doctors, and weight loss experts, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns, break down the physiology and psychology of food cravings in easy-to-understand terms.

They discuss how you can deal with cravings, reduce their frequency and intensity, and simply get on with your healthiest life.

Join Dr Lucy in this week’s episode as she chats with the most fabulous Tracey McBeath. Tracey aka “The Health & Healing Coach” is an expert in mind management and creating space to be able to see things differently.

Many of us have knowledge but implementing that knowledge is where we get stuck. Tracey’s new book “You Have Today: 100 Insights that will change your life” is a beautiful resource that can shed some light on our thoughts and allow us to change the way we view things.

As you know, if we want to change, then we have to change something.

Dr Lucy Burns chews the fat with nutritionist Aaron Day.

Aaron is a low carb practitioner from Brisbane. He helps people bring carbohydrates back into their diet after they have been low carb and like us is a fan of busting through the “all or nothing” mentality.

He shares some great tips on how to increase your carbohydrate intake without fear of regaining all the lost weight. Join us to learn how to safely reintroduce some carbohydrates back into your eating plan.

Do you use food or alcohol to reward yourself after a hard day? So many of us do! This is often a learned response since childhood. Just think of the children getting lollipops after vaccinations. Do you ever restrict food as a punishment?

Often this is something that happened to us as children. Using food as a reward and food-restriction as a punishment can keep us trapped in unhealthy patterns.

In this episode, medical doctors and weight loss experts Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson unpack the ways you can overcome the reward/punishment cycles with food and alcohol and start living your best most healthy life.

Many of us are waiting for the right time to start a lifestyle change.

We have a story in our head that it has to be perfect, or we can’t do it. “The diet has to be perfect or it's not going to work”. “My life has to be perfect - I can’t have any distractions”. These are some of the “reasonable stories” that keep us stuck.

Join Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns this week as they unpack some of the “reasonable stories” that our brain offers us that may no longer serve us. Unpacking these stories and then working out if they are helping or hindering you is crucial for long term heath and weight loss.

Do bubble baths count as self-care? Does buying those expensive shoes mean you are looking after yourself? What about wine, chocolate and watching TV on the couch?

Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson examine the difference between self-care and self-soothing.

To truly care for your mind and body now and in the future, you need to engage in self-care not just the self-soothing.

How can you navigate the over-abundance of chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and sugary high carb food available during Easter? How do you deal with the social pressure to eat unhealthy foods?

Medical doctors, experienced mindset coaches and weight loss experts Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns share their highly-skilled advice to navigate Easter festivities without “falling off the wagon”.

They share their brilliant tips that will empower you to manage Easter in a way that best serves your health and happiness.

Despite its long-standing use and strong evidence base, hypnotherapy is often cloaked in mysticism and myth.

Weight loss experts and medical doctors Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson are both trained medical hypnotherapists. They frequently use this powerful and safe tool to empower their patients and clients to lose weight and gain health.

As skilled hypnotherapists they harness the power of the subconscious mind, enabling helpful and healthy choices that facilitate great changes including permanent weight loss. Join Dr Lucy and Dr Mary as they debunk hypnotherapy myths and explore this powerful tool.

What is the difference between hypnotherapy, mindfulness, and meditation? How can these tools help you gain health and lose weight?

Continuing on from their discussion on hypnotherapy last week, Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns talk through how you can master the powerful tools of meditation and mindfulness to improve your health and empower your weight loss journey.

Although not necessarily easy, these tools are learnable, and when practiced regularly open up a world of good health, improved mindset management, easier weight loss and improved quality of life.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with one of her mentors, Emma McQueen. Emma taught Dr Lucy and Dr Mary so many things that they now incorporate into their lives as thriving women!

Emma McQueen is a business coach, an author and runs a wonderful program empowering female business owners. Dr Lucy and Emma chat about how many of the things people need to do in business are also the things we need to lose weight and live a happy and healthy life. Emma has been the inspiration for Dr Lucy’s fabulous fancy teacup addiction!

Emma gives some wonderful tips on mindset, meditation, and habit formation. She has a fabulous book called Go-getter where she busts some myths that women believe about themselves…. (Hello perfectionism!)

At Real Life Medicine, we strongly believe in not just giving you the highlight reel. Too often, weight loss stories are curated and shared as success stories but rather than inspiring us, they can just make us feel bad for not being able to achieve the same results.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with Raelene Stratton, a real woman who, in her thirties, found herself staring down the barrel of a life of chronic disease.

Rae is a successful career woman and a mum to two young boys. She shares her journey with Real Life Medicine, the highs and the lows. She truly embodies our philosophy that permanent weight loss is more than a meal plan. It really is a journey of self-discovery. 

In today’s episode, Dr Lucy and Dr Mary chew the fat on dogmatic thinking. They discuss Dr Mary’s recent diagnosis of gestational diabetes and that despite her low carb lifestyle, she may still require insulin.

Lifestyle changes and medications are not mutually exclusive. Good health and self-care are not an either/or situation. Optimising lifestyle may mean a reduction or even a cessation of medications but requiring medication is not a failure.

They discuss the fact that many support groups espouse rigid thinking. Dietary dogma is rife but humans are not a one size fits all. Many people have felt shamed and marginalised by some support groups. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss the principles of an effective support group and the things necessary for a support group to provide help and not harm.

You have heard us say time and time again that many people have the knowledge but implementing that knowledge is the sticking point. This is all about understanding how your mind works.

It is only once you know the stories in your head and the thought processes that lead to those stories, that you can truly change the way you think and the behaviour that follows.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with mindset expert and coach Michelle Johnson. Michelle is an impressive woman and has achieved an enormous amount through the balance of calm, focused thinking.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “just look on the bright side”. Whilst this phrase is often said with well-meaning intent, it can make us feel unheard and that our feelings aren’t valid.

Dr Mary and Dr Lucy chat about this today. They explore the difference between toxic positivity and positive psychology. Using some of the tools that fall under the umbrella of positive psychology can be extremely health enhancing but denying our feeling by looking on the bright side can be harmful.

Denying and suppressing some of these more difficult emotions is associated with overeating and binge eating as we use food to “medicate” them. Learning to sit with and process your emotions is why we always say, “weight loss is more than a meal plan."

“The Fat Ginger Nerd” is the title of a book written by Brendan Reid. This is a book of inspiration and hope written by someone who was overweight his whole life.

Join Dr Lucy Burns as she chats with Brendan about his weight loss journey. Brendan has lost 50 kg and maintained his weight loss for 5 years by eating low carb.

This podcast is full of emotion as Dr Lucy discusses the stigma and bullying Brendan encountered as a child, his retreat from society and now his glorious re-emergence.

Dr Lucy and Dr Mary chat today about the very popular practice of juice cleanses and juice detoxes. Many people think that doing a juice cleanse will help them lose weight.

They challenge some myth-information on this topic and explain why juice detoxes are in fact not a detox. They also explain why for many people drinking large quantities of juice is in fact harmful to our bodies.

With so many players in the “health” arena, some with a hugely vested interest, we think it is important to bust through the hype and sort out the facts from the fiction. 

Dr Lucy chats with another lifestyle medicine doctor today about the importance of habits. Dr Orlena Kerek is a habits expert.

They chat on the importance of habits and how forming good habits make your life easy!

Habits become automatic and then there is no decision fatigue. Just like brushing your teeth, they happen without any internal discussion. 

Is it possible to overeat healthy foods? The short answer is yes! It is possible to overeat any food.

In this episode Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss the definition of overeating. They chat about the reasons that we can overeat and the reasonable stories our brain can give us to enable overeating.

Whilst it is much easier to overeat hyperpalatable processed food, we can indeed overeat real food, even low carb real food. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary share some stories about their own issues with overeating and give you practical tips to overcome this, so that you can continue your journey to real health and weight loss. 

In this wonderful episode Dr Lucy chats with Brian Keane, a leading nutritionist and personal trainer in Ireland.

As you all know, one of Dr Lucy’s favourite things to talk about is mindset. Brian has a wealth of experience in this area, has written a best-selling book and you are sure to fall in love with his beautiful Irish lilt.

Brian and Dr Lucy chat about self-care, weight loss and of course ways to manage your mind! 

Do you find night time eating a problem?

You’ve been “good” all day but after dinner you find yourself on the couch eating chocolate or ice cream or even both! Every day you tell yourself you’re going to stop but it’s just too hard.

Join Dr Lucy and Dr Mary as they discuss this very common scenario and give you practical tips to overcome this issue and achieve your health and weight loss goals. 

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with another low carb doctor. She is joined by Dr Alex Petrushevski from Sydney Low Carb Specialists.

Alex has a wealth of knowledge and has a particular interest in nutrition and cancer. They chat and debunk the myth on red meat increasing the cancer risk.

They also go on to talk about the mechanism behind obesity and cancer and most importantly what you can do to decrease your cancer risk. 

Today is Dr Lucy’s Birthday! For many people birthdays and celebration can cause them to go off track and lose their way. The story for our society is that birthdays equal cake and lollies. Dr Lucy shares with you her strategies on celebratory eating. She gives you 3 options on how to manage your celebration and goes through the pros and cons of each strategy. She breaks through some of the myths including some of her favourites such as “If you don’t eat junk food, you are not fun" and of course her famous one on food wastage-"Your body is not the bin".

The majority of people want to make other people happy. This is of course, the beautiful, kind and empathic part of human nature. 

However, many of us do this at a cost to our own health. 

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with business coach Donna Hann. Donna helps women find balance and reduce overwhelm and burnout so they can achieve the things they want to do in their businesses. There is so much parallel to what we do helping people find balance in their lives so they can achieve their health goals. 

Donna shares some practical strategies so that you can implement to reduce overwhelm including a downloadable time planner.

This week Dr Lucy chats with US based surgeon and carb addiction specialist Dr Robert Cywes. Dr Cywes treats hundreds of patients with carbohydrate addiction and sees obesity as the result of addiction not the actual problem. Like Dr Lucy and Dr Mary, he is really interested in helping people get to the root cause of their relationship with food. In his practice he treats obesity and metabolic disease by using an addiction model rather than a diet model. Interestingly, in addiction medicine, we use a range of medications, many of which are now being used in obesity.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats about her favourite topic, sugar. This topic gets a fire in her belly and she discusses her two pet peeves. One is junk food and the other is “health” food. She talks about the dopamine effect of sugar, food engineering and the billions of dollars the processed food industry puts into advertising, all designed to get us hooked from a young age. 

Dr Lucy then chats about the underhanded tactics of the health food industry who use health-washing designed to trick us into buying their products because we think they are good for us and good for our kids. 

Finally, if you want to have a break from sugar then come and join our 7 day No Sugar Challenge.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with a real woman, Lisa-Marie. Like many of us, she grew up thinking she wasn’t thin enough, that her body wasn't good enough. She spent her life dieting. They talk about traditional dieting and the emphasis on weight loss at any cost. They chat about the processed food that is encouraged by many of the big dieting firms. Finally, they chat about Lisa-Marie's experience in the 12 week Mind Body Rebalance and the mind changing experience she encountered in the coaching calls. 

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with another real life woman. In 2018, Louise was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She discovered low carb and  lost 35 kgs (over 75pounds). Unfortunately she found herself highly stressed during covid as the manager of an aged care facility and put it all back on, plus a bit more. She became extremely unwell with very bad type 2 diabetes and extremely high blood pressure. Listen as she tells her story to Dr Lucy about her recovery and what she did differently this time around to lose the weight and reclaim her health.

Dr Deepa Mahananda is an expert in women’s health. She runs the Sydney Low Carb Specialists Clinic with her husband and helps many women on their low carb journey. Today she shares her story with Dr Lucy. Deepa discusses her diagnosis of severe endometriosis at the age of 23 and how by following a low carb real food diet, she has had 2 children and now lives symptom and medication free. Deepa shares her passion for nutrition and some of the reasons why a real diet may be helpful in this chronic condition.

Join Dr Lucy as she chats with physiotherapist Trisha Cashmere on the importance of the common problem of knee pain. They chat about ways to not only prevent knee pain but also on how to manage it without surgery. 

Trisha Cashmere is a physiotherapist and the owner of The Healthy Body Company. She and her team have designed a wonderful 12 week recovery program so you can rid yourself of knee pain and live your life without the need for medications and surgery.

Despite it being discovered many years ago, lipoedema – a build-up of fat, normally in the legs and arms – is widely misunderstood. More than one in ten women worldwide have the condition, which can be painful, affect mobility, and lead to social stigma. Megan Pfeffer, specialises in the treatment of lipoedema through a tailored keto diet. She discusses with Dr Lucy the signs and symptoms of lipoedema, and some of the ill-informed, counterproductive advice given to those who live with the condition.

Managing the inflammatory load of Lipedema is important. This is done by  focusing on nutrition, sleep and stress management. Getting an accurate diagnosis is important. This can be done with suitably qualified healthcare workers like a doctor, physiotherapist, or physical therapist who have an interest in lipoedema.

Join Dr Lucy Burns as she interviews Clarissa Kristjansson, a menopause and mindfulness coach. Clarissa was a high-powered executive until she found her whole world crashing down in her perimenopause phase. She discovered mindfulness and went on to become a mindfulness practitioner. In this episode they discuss the enormous benefits practicing mindfulness can have on health in general. Clarissa discusses the changes that happen to women as they go through “the change” and the positive outcomes she found by developing a mindfulness practice. They also chat about ways you can bring mindfulness into your life and it doesn’t involve meditating for hours cross-legged on a cushion.

Join Dr Lucy Burns as she chats with Dr Bret Scher, a wonderful low carb cardiologist who now has the fabulous job of being the medical director of the world famous “Diet Doctor” website. In this episode, they discuss all things heart health, do some myth busting around cholesterol and also chat about the somewhat “unsexy” path of being moderate, over being an extremist.

Join Dr Lucy Burns this week as she interviews two wonderful women Louise Reynolds and Jackie Fletcher about their own weight loss stories and the life changing discovery of low carb/ keto. They talk about the different ways they approach keto and how what works for one does not necessarily work for the other. They chat about the concept of being a moderator or an abstainer and that yet again you have to know and understand yourself well to be able maintain long term weight loss. Dr Lucy also chats with Louise about her weight loss surgery and unpacks the concepts of shame and stigma around the tools we use to self soothe and the tools we use to get healthy. 

If your blood sugar is fine, then everything is fine, right? Not necessarily. Dr Mary Barson (she's back!) and Dr Lucy Burns discuss the often misunderstood link between the carbs we eat, the sugar in our blood and the role of insulin. These medical doctors explain insulin resistance and what to do about it in easy to understand terms.

Abso-freakin-lutely! 

For many of us, the all-or-nothing mindset does not serve us well in this environment. We can find ourselves eating everything in sight with the promise of a new year’s resolution. It doesn't have to be this way. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss the concept of identity and recommend James Clear's technique of embracing your new identity with small steps every day that confirm who you are as a person. They have a special and fun twist on the advent calendar that helps you cement your "low carbetarian" identity.

Dr Lucy chats with Belinda Fettke this week, sharing how she was inspired into action by what happened to her husband, Dr Gary Fettke, a practising orthopaedic surgeon in Tasmania, Australia. She shares with us Gary’s own health battles, the court battle resulting from Gary’s eagerness to help his diabetic patients save their limbs and how she became an incredible voice of truth. She also brings to light some of the buried secrets she has unearthed.

It is important to understand the influences behind the guidelines, as many people fear challenging them. In this episode Dr Lucy and Belinda Fettke discuss marketing propaganda from processed food companies and the vested interests of religious ideologies in influencing diet globally, unpacking the complicated motivations driving these interests.

We are all familiar with Santa’s jolly belly but is Santa’s belly actually healthy? In this episode, Dr Lucy Burns and Dr Mary Barson discuss the causes of visceral and abdominal fat storage and why a beer belly is so harmful to our health. They chat about the relationship between belly fat and inflammation and give you 3 things you can do to reduce belly fat.