WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT
IN 5 YEARS
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Episode 281:
Show Notes
Dr Mary Barson and Dr Lucy Burns celebrate five years of podcasting. Reflecting on their evolution as weight management and metabolic health experts (November 2020 – 2025)
Evolution of Their Approach
Dr Mary and Dr Lucy began their journey firmly rooted in the low-carb world, believing that ketogenic diets were the ultimate solution to obesity. Dr Lucy even named her original clinic Epiphany Medical Weight Loss, reflecting this conviction.
Their early success stories were remarkable—one patient’s HbA1c dropped from 11 to 5.5 in just 12 weeks. However, over time they realised that nutrition alone wasn’t the complete answer.
Across five years, their methodology expanded to include:
- Behaviour change coaching
- Medical hypnosis
- A broader recognition of multiple metabolic health pillars
- Protein-prioritised low-carb nutrition
- Gut health
- Stress management
- Circadian rhythm alignment
- Sleep optimisation
- Intermittent fasting
Key Learnings
Diet Culture Awareness
Dr Lucy developed a deep understanding of how diet culture victimises women, creating a minefield of shame around body size and conflating thinness with health. Their new philosophy reframes this narrative:
Be a HOTI — Healthy On The Inside — rather than focusing solely on being thin.
Trauma and Weight
Dr Mary recognised that obesity can be a trauma response, not simply a failure of willpower. Addressing these psychological layers, rather than dismissing them, empowers individuals to heal from the inside out.
Rejection of Dogma
Both doctors moved away from rigid nutritional dogma, embracing curiosity over certainty. They now champion flexibility, humility, and continual learning over absolute rules.
GLP-1 Medications
Initially skeptical of pharmaceutical interventions, they now hold a balanced view of GLP-1 medications. While acknowledging concerns about predatory marketing from “big pharma” and telehealth companies, they recognise that these medications can support metabolic management when used responsibly—at the lowest effective dose and alongside meaningful lifestyle change.
Program Development
Their offerings have evolved from the early Spring Reboot to the current 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance and Momentum Circle membership.
Their guiding principle:
Measure experiences, adapt accordingly, and never continue just because “you started beating that drum.”
Looking Forward
For the next five years:
- Dr Lucy’s guiding word: Easy — Streamlining programs to address time poverty and information overload.
- Dr Mary’s guiding word: Curious — Continuing to learn, question, and practice self-compassion.
They plan to refine their 2026 programs with an evolved understanding of insulin resistance that goes beyond dietary factors.
Milestones and Gratitude
Their podcast now ranks in the top 1% worldwide, with nearly 973,000 downloads.
Dr Lucy and Dr Mary express heartfelt gratitude for their partnership, community, and loyal listeners who have joined them on this transformative journey toward better health and wellbeing.
Episode 281:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.
Both (0:16) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!
Dr Mary Barson (0:21) Hello my lovely friend, welcome to this podcast. Dr Mary here and joined by my beautiful, very smart, very fabulous colleague Dr Lucy Burns on this very special podcast episode. Lucy, what are we celebrating? I just can't quite believe it, it seems strange.
Dr Lucy Burns (00:43) I know, it does sound strange but we're celebrating our fifth year of podcasting. So the 11th of November 2020 was our very first podcast episode and obviously it's, you know, round about the 11th of November, give or take, 2025. Five years. Five years, I know. Five years can either seem like an eternity ago or like, you know, it happened last week. Time is so interesting, isn't it? Like if we think back five years ago, you didn't have a baby, who's not a baby anymore. Not a baby anymore. No, Max, Max wasn't even nothing. He was no matter in the universe. You know, you didn't have your dog, Shadow.
Dr Mary Barson (01:31) No, didn't, bless her. No, I did not. Yeah. And you, you had a house full of children.
Dr Lucy Burns (01:40) Yeah, I still had. So a child at high school, one child just doing her first year of your second year of uni. Currently, right at this minute, all my children, all my children, all two of them. But all the, all the children, but more importantly, all the pets have left home. So five years ago, I had two children, four dogs, four cats, the bearded dragon, three frogs, four horses, a goat and a cow. Now at the moment we have one, one miniature cow and one goat. And that's it. It's bizarre.
Dr Mary Barson (02:17) Yeah. And look, humble brag time. Here we are five years later. We've got this top ranking podcast in the top 1% of podcasts worldwide. And we've managed to keep it going for five years. I think it will keep it interesting. It's a, it's, it is a really, really hopefully keep it interesting. It is a great landmark to celebrate and to reflect on. And so today in this podcast, we're going to be reflecting on the last five years and think about what have we learned in the last five years? And we've have come a long way. I think that we have, well, obviously we've learned a lot. The world has changed a fair bit too. And things are different. Think back to those early days. And our listeners can do this if they listen to, you know, episodes, you know, one through one, two, three, four, five onwards. We were really in low carb world when we were very strongly in low carb. We thought that low carb and even to an extent, a ketogenic diet was the solution. And that's, that's where we started.
Dr Lucy Burns (03:22) Yeah. So I guess, I mean, I actually even think, so I was running and you were running clinics, like in-person clinics. And my original clinic was called Epiphany, Epiphany Medical Weight Loss, because I thought low carb was like the epiphany. Oh my God, the holy grail. And look, to be fair, it was for me, it felt like that because for the first time eating a low carbohydrate diet meant that I wasn't hungry, that I could still lose weight. So therefore I thought, oh my God, this is like a miracle. All I need to do. So my brain translated, all I need to do is tell everybody about this and we will solve the world obesity problem. You can't unsee what you've seen though.
Dr Mary Barson (04:10) That was your epiphany.
Dr Lucy Burns (04:13) That's right. That's right. Yeah. That was my epiphany. So I thought that was that. So yeah, I was pretty sure that was true.
Dr Mary Barson (04:20) Oh, my clinic that I was running in my weight loss clinic that I was running back then, it was full of those aha moments and those fabulous success stories, which are still really valid today. People whose diabetes went down, I remember this one guy, he was a health professional and his HbA1c went from 11, which is really high, very poorly controlled diabetes down to 5.5 in just 12 weeks. It was amazing. I was seeing these changes and I was so fired up and I still am fired up. I am still loving it. It's just that I've learned a lot more since then and I have learned that nutrition isn't everything. The food isn't everything, but still so fun. You know, fatty liver going away, people losing weight, reversing diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome symptoms, going into remission, just amazing, wonderful, fun things, helping people with their diet, eating low carb, real food. It was amazing. It was amazing. But as time went on, we learned that it really wasn't everything, was it?
Dr Lucy Burns (05:21) No. Well, no. So we first of all went, oh, okay, yes, right. There are some people that can't do the low carb. They, you know, to use a diet term, fall off the wagon. How can we help them? So that's when we went, oh, well, okay, we'll learn all about coaching. We'll harness our previous knowledge in mental health and psychological and behavior therapy and we'll help them with it. So that was good. We'll do hypnosis. Yep. We, yep.
Dr Mary Barson (05:45) We learned hypnosis.
Dr Lucy Burns (05:47) We learned, you know, like dozens and dozens of skills around behavior change. And that is still, I think the cornerstone of the way we help people.
Dr Mary Barson (05:58) So we were doing this in our clinics before we met. We were both low carb doctors. We had both learned about mindset. We had both gone and done medical hypnosis with the same hypnosis course, the same hypnosis mentor, but separately. And we were doing this in our booked out weight loss clinics as GPs. And then we met one day at a low carb medical conference.
Dr Lucy Burns (06:28) Exactly. We met and it was like chemistry. So, you know, and it was good because we were chatting about the issues, I guess, when with the one-to-one model where you're seeing, you know, people individually, we're saying the same thing over and over.And so, yes, that's when Real Life Medicine formed. I rebranded, I got rid of Epiphany Medical Weight Loss and yet we just became Real Life Medicine. So that was great. And, you know, forming our programs, you know, the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance initially called the Spring Reboot. So again, iterations, refining, constantly refining what we've learned over the time. And I think the key, and this is the key actually for, you know, a life, just a life lesson is that you, you have to adapt. So you do something, you do what you think is the right thing, and then you measure the experience and then adapt whatever it is that you're doing based on your experience, if that makes sense. So you can't just keep beating a drum because you started beating that drum. And for a lot of people who are listening, you know, if you've gone back and listened to the start of our podcasts, you will see that we were pretty much in camp keto. We really believed that ketogenic diet was the absolute way to reduce insulin, open your woodshed and, you know, that's the only way. We're still happy to support people with a ketogenic diet. I still like being in ketosis myself, but there are, to use a phrase that is a very Australian phrase, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Dr Mary Barson (08:14) Yeah, there is. That's right. Yeah. We've broadened, you know, our outlook based on data, based on what we were learning, based on what we were seeing. And so now we know that you don't necessarily need to be in nutritional ketosis, but for the low carbohydrate diet that prioritises protein is still key to metabolic health and metabolic health is still key to good health, to weight loss, to longevity, to energy, to all the things that we want. But we also, we broadened the lens even more because food is not the only important part of metabolic health. We also focus on gut health and on stress management and our circadian rhythms, you know, getting our sleep as good as it possibly can be. Intermittent fasting is a really useful and powerful tool. And so in our programs and in our membership, these are the pillars that we keep coming back to. And we have learned all of these different ways to help people support their metabolic health. And again, that has changed over time with learning and refinement with measuring. And we learn so much from our beautiful members that we have evolved and we do continue to evolve. And I hope that we will always continue to evolve. We need to evolve as knowledge changes. We need to evolve as new information comes to light. We need to evolve so that we can just continue to be better and better.
Dr Lucy Burns (09:43) Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my biggest learnings in the last five years is the understanding around diet culture and that I hadn't realised what a victim I was of diet culture and what a victim of women in my cohort and age cohort and particularly older even. And again, the initial counting of macros and following a strict ketogenic diet can be part of the diet culture issue and that the whole guilt virtual cycle that comes around perfectionism of dieting. So, you know, I think we now focus a lot on our favorite mantra, one of our favorite, one of our favorite hundred mantras, which is to be a HOTI, to be, yes, to be a HOTI and be Healthy On The Inside, rather than being thin. So you do not need to be thin to be healthy. And in fact, many people who are thin aren't necessarily healthy, but that's the lens through which society views people's bodies is all about being thin or lean. But actually we know that healthy is so much more than that. And that having some, particularly some subcutaneous fat on your body, you might not like it, but that's a construct of society. That's not about health.
Dr Mary Barson (11:09) Yes. Yes. And that we, we really are health first, health first and weight loss can come along as a happy side effect. But what we want for everyone is to be HOTI, to be Healthy On The Inside. You're a HOTI. I'm a HOTI. We want everyone to be HOTIs.
Dr Lucy Burns (11:27) Yeah, absolutely. So, so yeah, we've certainly learned about that. And so that to me, again, that's, I think one of the other things I didn't realise going into this was the kind of minefield, which I know is like a colloquialism, but the minefield of weight loss, like I hadn't actually understood diet culture at all. I hadn't understood the concept that women have really been shamed for so long around the size of their body. I hadn't recognised that there are people who, you know, have disordered eating and eating disorders who can get swept up in trying to be healthy, but actually mixed up with trying to be thin. Like that's all, it's all tied up into it that, that I had completely under appreciated, which is okay, because again, you don't know what you don't know. But I think what we need to do is be humble in that idea and recognise that you don't know everything. So we want to be open-minded, not so open that your brains fall out, but open-minded enough to be open to other ideas and then be able to analyse them critically without, and again, it's impossible to say without bias because everybody has a bias. I don't think that it is human to not have any bias, but to recognise that you have bias and then go, okay.
Dr Mary Barson (12:53) Try and be aware of it. I think probably one of my biggest learnings, like an unknown unknown that has opened up for me over the last few years is the role that trauma plays in weight gain and that weight gain and obesity to use that rather loaded medical term, it can be a trauma response and that helping people safely unravel that is an important part of their health puzzle. I think that is not something that I recognised initially. I thought that, yeah, people emotionally eat short. Yeah. People have problems with sugar addiction. Yeah. You know, people need a bit of help cultivating the grit and balance with self-compassion, but the psychological layers can actually go quite deep and that, you know, it's been a beautiful privilege to see this and to help people unpack that for themselves.
Dr Lucy Burns (13:51) Yes. Yes. I totally agree. I totally agree. Yeah, completely. Yes. And this is the whole thing. When you see that you're missing a piece of the puzzle or missing a skill set that it is important, I think to either go and get yourself educated around it or, or refer off to someone else who has more education on it or more skills on it, or bring somebody into your team. If you're, you know, a clinic or something like that, who, who can help people, because I think that the mantra still of eat less and move more. I physiologically, it's way more complicated than that. But B, if you just keep telling people to do that, and they can't do it because of their trauma, because they don't understand why their brain works the way they do, or because of their neurodiversity, which is another thing we learned about.
Dr Mary Barson (14:47) Totally.
Dr Lucy Burns (14:48) Then, then all you're doing is disempowering them and making them feel worse than ever.
Dr Mary Barson (14:54) Yes. And I think that we have really moved away from dogma. Not that we necessarily were extremely dogmatic to begin with, but we did start this little journey, you know, in our little, you know, embryonic little kernel of keto, that's where we started. And we've grown and changed since then. And our views have, have softened with time because in, in face of the that we've been presented with, and we really actually like to reject dogma. If people are absolutely certain that their particular weight loss, you know, approach is going to suit everyone all the time, you got to be aware, you know, be wary of that and replace certainty with curiosity, be open-minded, and be humble. That's extremely important and be willing to learn, to learn from people, to learn from experts, to learn. So yeah, I think that I have gained, you know, more skills in being flexible and more skills in critical thinking, I think over the last five years.
Dr Lucy Burns (15:55) Oh yeah, absolutely. I would like to think, and again, we're modern, we're, you know, middle of the road, which I know doesn't get you thousands of hundreds of thousands of streamers on YouTube or millions of followers on Instagram, hence our measly following, but thank you, grateful to all of you.
Dr Mary Barson (16:15) Please keep following us.
Dr Lucy Burns (16:16) But I think that another thing I've learnt, so when I, when we came in, again, we were very much lifestyle, everything's lifestyle, recognise, and again, eyes opened to some of the marketing and predatory tactics with the big pharma have employed, some of the ways they've manipulated various guidelines, you know, again, having your eyes open to that is like, oh my God, oh my God. And so you're, the temptation is to, to diss all pharma because, you know, clearly they're just money-making moguls who don't care about people. And that may be true, but I think we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There have been many things within the pharmaceutical industry that have revolutionised people's lives that have helped cure them of conditions that have helped manage conditions so they can stay living. And so we, we want to, again, using the critical eye workout within this pharmaceutical juggernaut, are there any things, anything in there that could be useful? And so again, for us, you know, weight loss medications are the GLP ones. And again, I actually think that I use this term a lot, but I often think I'm, I'm actually being a bit reductionist in the weight loss medication because it's not really, it's not just about weight loss. They can be really helpful for people who, for their entire metabolic management. But we have been able to look at these medications with both the open, but skeptical hats on and recognise that the data that the pharmaceutical companies have presented is not entirely accurate, but by the same token, I don't think the media hype around the dangers of them is entirely accurate either. And I think what we need to do is judicious use.
Dr Mary Barson (18:19) Treat them with respect and in a very individualised way and always, always with the absolute best lifestyle changes and lifestyle management that you can do, because that is going to help you in a plethora of ways, as well as help you be on or help people be on the lowest effective dose, which is what we would always want. When we started off the first weight loss medication that was around was Sexander and that was underwhelming. It was very easy to ignore because it just wasn't all that good, but you know, the landscape has changed and we have had to change with it. And that's a good thing. It's a beautiful thing.
Dr Lucy Burns (19:00) Yeah, absolutely. And I think in the same camp as, you know, big pharma, of course is big food and sometimes big food and big pharma are actually the same people, which is also disconcerting. So the marketing machine of big food companies is massive, like so unbelievably massive that I don't think people can really comprehend how potentially predatory they are. And so, and so I am very, I am still very, very skeptical of the marketing around GLP1s. But having said that, I have also seen the benefits for some people in their use. And so, yeah, they definitely have a place. But again, it's not just big pharma, there's big telehealth, whatever we want to call that, big tech bro, big something, big venture capital platforms that it's not, and they're not just exploiting GLP1s as a use, you know, there's big companies that have now got, you know, medical marijuana all sewn up where you can just like get online and it's all delivered. You can't actually stop it.
Dr Mary Barson (20:13) It's like, it's, it's, it's hard to stop. Yes. I've seen that with patients.
Dr Lucy Burns (20:15) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They don't even want it. It still just arrives. So yeah, there's a whole heap of unregulated and unscrupulous practice. And I guess, you know, you and I hopefully may as just keep our, what we'd like to think is that, you know, ethical hats on and just keep delivering what we think is good quality medicine. It may not meet the efficiency standards that some of these venture capital companies do, but I don't think that medicine should be reduced to efficiency.
Dr Mary Barson (20:48) No. And sometimes you have to slow down to go faster. And I think that slow medicine is good medicine. So I, my reflections looking back over the last five years of podcasting and the last, you know, five and a half years of real life medicine with you, beautiful Dr Lucy is I'm proud. I am proud and humble. I am proud of the beautiful community that we've created. I am proud of our momentum in a circle membership. I'm proud of our 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance. I love the people that we get to meet who do these programs. I can reflect that I've become more skilled at public speaking and coaching at even more skilled at critical thinking. And also I've got lots of gratitude to our beautiful listeners and to all of our supporters out there.
Dr Lucy Burns (21:38) Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Me too. Me too. I am extremely grateful for people that share our content. You know, if you feel like popping in a little podcast review, this would be a great episode to do.
Dr Mary Barson (21:51) Oh, we'd love a podcast review. Yes.
Dr Lucy Burns (21:55) Yes, that would be good. So I am, I'm always really, really grateful for that. I think that, you know, I'm grateful for you, Miss. There's no way. Well, I don't think there's any way that we could do this in a singular capacity. Like it is a lot of work. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I know people, I'm assuming people know that there is a lot of work, but it's also medicine is a place where we hold a lot of emotions, a lot of people's emotions. We hold a lot of distress for people. You know, we hold a lot of responsibility and to be able to share that with somebody like you Miss is just so wonderful for me, because when you have co-responsibility, you need absolute trust in your partner. And I, you know, and I think we both have that mutual trust. So, you know, that makes it great.
Dr Mary Barson (22:51) Oh, absolutely. Likewise. I have that trust in you and I'm so grateful for your drive. This podcast was your idea and, you know, it used to be edited and I just sort of hopped on for the ride and I'm so glad I did. It's been absolutely wonderful. Yeah. Yep. It has, it has. Yeah. So what's next? Do you think, what will the next five years look like for Real Life Medicine?
Dr Lucy Burns (23:17) Well, again, we've just been tossing up and we'll, we'll have a think about it over the next couple of weeks about, I think, refining, always refining. Like it's always around, what do we do? You know, if you speak to a business coach or a business guru, their big thing is, oh, you know, rinse and repeat, do it once and just keep repeating the same old thing. And I see merit in that, but I think you also need to evolve all the time. If you're not evolving, then you're just, you know, delivering stale information. So, you know, we might do a little glow up for some of our programs for 2026. So, you know, that's a little whisper, some might be some changes afoot. So, which again, is all about being able to deliver what people need in that's, you know, contemporary to, to 2025 and things have changed from 2020 to 2025.
Dr Mary Barson (24:12) It is good. Yes.
Dr Lucy Burns (24:13) You and I have learned a lot more around insulin resistance. It's not, it's not just the food again, where our programs reflect that, of course, but, you know, I think there's probably some refining that we could do to be able to deliver information in a way that is also helpful for people that are, you know, we also know there's time poverty, time poverty is a huge issue. And again, for us, when we started this business in COVID, and I mean, that was it, that's a whole story in itself, because everyone said, Oh, you can't just wait till COVID's finished. COVID's finished. Can you imagine? Yeah. And nobody, you know, anticipated all the lockdowns and all of those things. But what that meant was that people had time to really consume an in-depth, really thorough program, which we think particularly at 12 Week Mind Body Rebalances, it's really, it's really in depth, but maybe we just need to look and go, well, let's, you know, again, information overload is a big problem for people. So we just need to simplify things and make it easy. I mean, the whole thing is to make the right thing easy. Maybe streamlining. Yeah. Streamlining, making the right thing easy. That's what we want to do. Just make it easy. So, yeah. So I love that. So my word for the next five years is going to be easy.
Dr Mary Barson (25:31) Easy. I love that. I love it. I'm going to keep learning, keep questioning, keep being kind to myself. So I think my word for the next five years might be curious.
Dr Lucy Burns (25:43) Yeah. Good. I love that. We're going to make it easy. We're going to keep curious and, you know, keep doing what we're doing. You know, here's this little niggle that I have, and I've got a, it's so interesting. Again, this is a perfect example of human psychology. So we're at the end of our, you know, just hit our five year anniversary. And in my brain, I wanted to have had a million downloads. I suspect unless something has happened radically in the preceding few weeks, we're going to fall a bit short of that target. And so there's this little kernel of disappointment in my mind. And I think it's really interesting to reflect on that, isn't it? Because I mean, it's just, it's a random number. It really means nothing. Like when you objectify it, it means nothing other than the fact that it's a number. And my brain's going, five years. So it wants to focus on the bit that we haven't achieved. Like it really wants to go there. And I really have to pull it back and go, that's not important. Like it's just a number. It's a constraint. It's an artificial constraint. Some random person, you've just invented it. Like it really means nothing, but it is interesting to note.
Dr Mary Barson (26:57) Yes. And being aware of our human psychology is really interesting. And I hope that you can focus on all the fabulous things that this podcast has achieved, even if we have fallen slightly short of that particular milestone this time.
Dr Lucy Burns (27:11) Indeed. Indeed. Well, I guess, you know, the reframe being, okay, well, we get to celebrate twice, once now for five years, and then in a few, I don't think it'll be very long, maybe a few months, we'll be celebrating the million downloads.
Dr Mary Barson (27:29) Excellent. Stay tuned for that one. Gorgeous people. Stay tuned.
Dr Lucy Burns (27:32) Indeed, my lovely friends. So again, celebrating your milestones, it is important. It's important to, you know, look back. What's your thing? Measure backwards. Yep.
Dr Mary Barson (27:40) Yep. Measure backwards. Look how far you've come rather than how far you have to go. Cause look how far you've come is going to be a much better measure of your ability to keep going than being daunted by how far the goal is ahead of you.
Dr Lucy Burns (27:52) Absolutely. And again, you know, if you wanted to use the million, you know, if we'd started and we said, well, we want to get a million downloads, you'd be going, oh God, right. Well, we've got a thousand. Oh, we've got a thousand and 12. We've got 1,972. Oh, but, and now I don't know what we're at. Like something like 973,000 or something like that. I've got no, it's, it's close. So yeah, it is important to reflect for success as well so that you can, you know, reflect back, change, alter, modify if you need to. But if it's not, if it's not broken, don't, don't fiddle. But if there's something that's not working for you, then yeah, be adaptable. Be open.
Dr Mary Barson (28:34) Be curious.
Dr Lucy Burns (28:35) Be humble.
Dr Mary Barson (28:36) Yes. Be kind. Yes. And thank you for our beautiful journey. It could not have done it without you. And we are so grateful and humbled that you have come along with us.
Dr Lucy Burns (28:50) Indeed. Indeed. All right, friends, we will see you next week. Take good care of yourselves.
Dr Lucy Burns (28:58) 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.
