August 2024 Newsletter Transcript
Transcript of Video from Newsletter
I’m mixing things up a bit this month and I’d love to hear what you think. If you have a second, drop us a note and let us know if you like this new format or if you prefer the original. I’ve been experimenting with some new video software and I thought it might be more fun and engaging than just me talking to a screen. For the past few months, we’ve been sending out weekly emails, each containing a little AI-generated video. Hopefully, you found it more enjoyable to get information that way. The goal here is to bring you all of the vital topics related to comprehensive obesity medicine care in a way that’s convenient for you. You can listen and absorb the information on your own time.
Regular visits with a trained obesity medicine specialist are fantastic. They offer connection, accountability, and tailored interactive care that’s essential for a well-crafted weight loss journey. And if you haven’t done it in a while, give yourself a pat on the back. By engaging with these specialists, you are approaching your journey in a much more effective way than most people do nowadays. Not surprisingly, the data shows that people who engage in a comprehensive treatment program like what we offer at Heartland Weight Loss lose an average of twice what other people lose when they just take a medication, even if it’s a real FDA-approved medication given to them by a real clinician. The stats on the nonsense being dispensed like candy from Med spas and popup online dispensing companies don’t even exist, which should tell you something.
As part of this experimentation with this new software, I’m sharing an abbreviated version of a lecture I gave recently about metabolism. Don’t worry, it’s designed for non-medical folks like you. So let’s dive in. Metabolism is all of the processes in the body that use energy. You eat food to get energy, but your body can’t use food directly. Our cells can’t use carrots or eggs just as they are. Food needs to be converted into a form of energy that the cells can use, which happens in the mitochondria. Food is converted into something called ATP, the energy currency of the body, allowing us to function, breathe, talk, and think. That’s why mitochondria are known as the powerhouses of the cell.
Mitochondria use two substrates to produce energy: glucose and ketone bodies. Healthy mitochondria can switch between these two depending on availability, like a light switch. Glucose is the default fuel when it’s available, but when it’s not, mitochondria switch to using ketone bodies. This is called metabolic flexibility. Metabolism, the process of making and spending energy, is controlled by hormones, with insulin being the big boss. Energy can only move one way at a time: into or out of the cell. Insulin’s primary job is to move excess fuel into the cell, into the fat cells. When insulin isn’t present, stored fuel comes out of the fat cells. However, if you have insulin resistance, this process is broken. Fuel goes into the fat cells easily but has a hard time coming back out. This means that when your body needs fuel, you’re triggered to eat because you can’t access the stored fuel. This leads to feelings of hunger, the body triggering you to eat, and cravings, the brain triggering you to eat. If you ignore these and you can’t get to the stored stuff, these sensations eventually escalate into a feeling we typically call being hangry. If we ignore hangry, we eventually get to this.
At Heartland Weight Loss, we focus on fixing insulin resistance. Fixing this allows the body to access stored fuel efficiently, reducing feelings of hunger and lethargy. By improving insulin sensitivity and healing the mitochondria, we help you achieve sustainable weight loss. So, key takeaways: traditional weight loss approaches like eat less, move more don’t work well if you lack metabolic flexibility. Fixing metabolism first leads to lasting weight loss and better overall health. Simply taking a drug to suppress hunger is a temporary fix; it doesn’t address the underlying problem.
Now remember, you’re doing something amazing by approaching weight loss with a comprehensive, evidence-based method. You’re setting yourself up for long-term success and better health. So keep up the great work, and don’t forget to share what you know with others. They might just get inspired by your success.