Transcript EP 313 – Understanding Your Weight Loss Type

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Dr. Taz: There’s really not a day that goes by in practice where someone doesn’t ask me about weight loss, how to lose weight, what’s the easiest way? Should they go on medications like Ozempic, Moderna, Tirzepatide, or the Semaglutide receptor medications. I know you guys have heard of it. They’ve been trending all over the place, and it makes me stop and think every single time, why is weight loss so elusive to so many people? Why is it such a struggle? Why is it so difficult? We’ve got young people struggling with weight loss, but oftentimes once they put their head to it, they’re able to lose it. It becomes more and more difficult with time and age and adds a few imbalanced hormones into the equation. And weight loss feels like this hill you just can’t get over. I don’t want it to be like that for any of us.

And look, I’ve been honest with you guys, I’m not a skinny mini. We’ve got a lot of curves in our family, so I have to stay on top of it. I don’t know if I’ve shared with you the story of going to India when I was 10 years old. That’s the first time I’ve ever been there. And my mom, maybe she was partly responsible for some of my interest in integrative and holistic medicine, but she was always a little bit of a health buff, reading the latest article, trying to find the latest exercise trick that would work for her, and always in a little bit of a war with her own body. Mind you, she was not overweight at all, just curvy. But when we land in India, we get off the plane and waiting for us are our relatives. And wow, they, God bless them, we’re incredibly large, overweight, probably obese to be a hundred percent honest, and I just remember thinking, and it’s stuck with me since, “Wow, those are our genetics. That’s what my mom’s fighting.”

So weight loss, may be in your, or weight issues, I should say, might be in your family. They may be something that every member of the family has always dealt with, or it may be that you in particular are having this issue. But here’s what I’ve learned after 14 years in practice, almost 15, and probably having seen about 20,000 patients. Who’s counting, right? But that’s what the data says, that everyone does have a formula for weight loss. It’s not something that can’t happen. But sometimes the chemistry lands in a place that is overwhelming, difficult to move past and incredibly demotivating. So what I’m hoping to do today as we talk a little bit about weight and we start setting goals for ourselves and plans, first of all, I don’t want us to set any of ourselves up for failure.

I want us to be thinking about a plan that’s going to last, that’s going to have longevity and won’t send us on this yo-yo of I’m good and I’m bad and I’m great and I look good, and all this psychological drama that we play with ourselves when it comes to weight. I think the founding principle of weight and weight loss really needs to begin with getting your head wrapped around it and understanding what it’s going to take in this journey ahead of you. Because, like many journeys, it’s the daily constant habits, the rituals, quite honestly, that make the difference. Not the grand plan, not the grand scheme, not the lofty visions, but the one step in front of the other, the consistency that ultimately shifts the numbers. So before we even talk about your weight loss type or where you need to begin, let’s think about your mind and your emotions and your heart and make sure it is wired in the right place for you to be successful.

If you’re coming into this podcast or into my exam rooms or anywhere feeling stressed and anxious and not sleeping, you’re not going to be able to carry forward any type of weight loss plan. If you’re coming in after a major trauma or loss or sense of loneliness or longing, following a weight loss plan is the last thing that you need. So the first thing we really need to do, if we’re going to talk about weight loss, is understand where you are on the emotional spectrum. There are different levels of emotions and they all drive our behavior. Ultimately, every decision you make is driven by your behavior. If you’re in a lower emotional state, you’re going to choose behaviors that make you feel good in the moment. But when you’re in a higher emotional state, you’re going to be able to have some restraint, some foresight, and choose behaviors that are going to last a lifetime.

So as we’re talking through this episode, take a deep breath in and out and maybe think through, where am I emotionally? The tip of the scale is joy, love, happiness, bubbling with enthusiasm and excitement. You’re ready for a weight loss plan. The bottom of the scale is depression and anger and hatred, especially hatred of yourself. And if you’re there, you’re not ready. So I urge you wherever you are between those two bookends, so to speak, try to bring yourself at least into the middle so that you’re in a state of calm, peacefulness, you’re collected, and you can make those decisions one decision at a time.

So the first job for all of us is to get emotionally right. Figure out what makes you feel good, figure out what makes you feel good longer, right? Not just feel good in a moment, but feel good for the whole day, the whole week, the whole month, the whole year. Not just a fleeting passing second in time where what makes you feel good is suddenly gone. So that’s where we begin. And then after that, if you think you have that emotional body where it needs to be, well then let’s move on and talk about the weight loss types. I know you’re rolling your eyes, you’re like, “Wow, it took her what, like five minutes to get there?” Sorry about that. But I think it’s important to set these realistic expectations.

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Now, here’s what I know about weight loss. There are about three types of people. There are liver people, there are gut people, and then there are adrenal people, is what we’ll call them. I hate calling people by organs, they’ve got to have better names. In Ayurveda, maybe those equate to pitta, vata, kapha. Not exactly, but it’s close. And then I have my weight loss types and my power types, and they fit in there somewhere as well. But let’s keep it simple because I know you don’t have all day and you probably don’t want to go through my entire book right now. So the liver types, let’s begin there. Liver types are those who have very high insulin levels. Remember, insulin is the blood sugar hormone. Usually you’ll see a lot of belly fat. You’ll see a lot of sluggishness in general, trouble with chemicals, high toxic load.

For those folks, they will need a specific plan. That plan is all around insulin, bringing insulin levels down and keeping insulin and blood sugar stable. If you’re a liver type and you feel like you’ve had issues with medications, with chemicals, with hormones, with belly fat, with visceral fat, you look at your tongue and you’ve got kind of like that purple-ish look to the tongue. Hopefully you’ve been following me and you know how to do some of this stuff by now. Then you’re a liver person when it comes to weight loss. Liver folks need a high protein diet, need to eat every four hours and need about a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast. They also need to move two or three times a day because it’s all about blood sugar and managing this blood sugar intolerance.

Other ways you know that you might be a liver person, your liver enzymes are high. You historically have high cholesterol markers. You may also have those little red dots over your stomach. We call them little hemangiomas. And if you have a lot of those, we know that those are liver people. And in addition to eating at the right intervals, getting the protein you need moving, removing toxins and supporting your liver becomes incredibly important. And so what does that look like? So that looks like adding in maybe a green smoothie every day, adding in apple cider vinegar and water because it cleans out the liver. And maybe doing things like dandelion tea, parsley, or cilantro that further helped to detox the liver. One of my favorite sorts of supplements, so to speak for a liver person, is milk thistle or calcium glucarate because it’s cleaning up the liver and helping that particular patient deal with estrogen dominance. Some of those symptoms where you build up estrogen and store it and that makes this whole fat storage issue so much worse. So if you’re a liver person after the emotional body, this is your next starting point.

But you might be thinking and listening as you’re hearing me talk, that, “Hey, I’m not sure. I don’t think that’s me.” Well, you might be a gut person. So gut people have issues with weight because of chronic inflammation, and you’re inflamed because your joints hurt. You’ve got a lot of rashes, you’re losing hair. You might have some acne. You have a lot of digestive issues, constipation, belly pain, reflux, IBS, you name it, you’ve got it.

Well, you are probably a gut person. Got to think of a better name, but you’re probably a gut person. And as a gut person going on an anti-inflammatory diet, bringing inflammation down is key. So you probably need to be gluten-free, dairy free, sugar-free, you’re going to kill me now. And even getting rid of some of the sub-in inflammatory foods like corn and soy and processed food is really important. Cleaning all that out brings the inflammation down, allowing the gut to act in a much more cooperative manner. So that would be your first step is following an anti-inflammatory diet. And we’ve got a lot of those resources on my website. If you go to doctortaz.com to help you understand what your starting point is.

All right, let’s move on to the last type. The last one is we are calling them adrenal folks. These are super stressed out people. They’re not sleeping at night. Might be you. Most superwomen, right? Wink, wink. And you’re just having a lot of issues with cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone, right? Cortisol is the stress hormone. When cortisol is high, insulin gets high. And from an adrenal person, you can turn into a gut or a liver person because of the mechanics of the chemistry at place. So what does an adrenal person do when they’re trying to lose weight?

Well, they focus on bringing cortisol down. What does that mean? It’s deep, consistent sleep at night, getting at least seven to eight hours of sleep every single night. It means bringing stress levels down by self nurturing a little bit more. Acupuncture, yoga, Pilates, swimming, any of these nurturing activities that bring your cortisol levels down. What it is not, it is not necessarily running more, doing hiit workouts, doing things that stress the body out further. And then from a dietary standpoint, it’s a focus again on protein and fat to nourish the nervous system and complex carbs from vegetables to keep blood sugar and insulin stable. So weight loss has so many nuances to it, right? So many little pieces to that puzzle. Think of it as an autoimmune disease that you’re chipping away at to improve not just how you look, but how you feel, how you present yourself into the world, the energy you have in a relationship or in a job and so much more.

Start with your emotional body. Where are you? Where are your emotions? How are you feeling? And if you’re not feeling good, bring that emotional scale up a little bit higher to where you can be calm enough to make the right decisions for you. That’s the starting point. Then decide if you’re a gut liver or adrenal person and then lay a plan out with these initial steps. Now we can get into a whole lot more around weight and weight loss in my Superwoman’s circle. It will be the theme throughout the month to talk about this and to really dive into it further, there are, I know there’s so much more, like we haven’t talked about the thyroid. We haven’t talked about food allergies or food intolerances. We haven’t talked about what type of workout works for what body. All of those things are important too.

And only when those things have been addressed along with hormone imbalances, are we really ready to decide if you need a bandaid or a booster. One of the B words, as I like to call them, in the form of a medication or even peptides or things like that, to really take you over the line when it comes to weight loss. But start here. These are things that make you feel good longer and feeling good longer is the ultimate win. All right, I hope that’s helpful information. I could go on forever. I don’t want to put you guys to sleep in your cars or wherever you’re listening or watching this episode of Superwoman Wellness.

I hope you enjoyed it. Remember to rate, review it and share it with your friends. I will send you a free bottle of boost if you rate the episode, email me hello@drtaz.com. And one other quick thing, if you want to share your journey, your health journey, whether it’s a weight loss journey, whether it is a health journey of any kind or an inspirational story, please reach out to me. Email me hello@drtaz.com. I’d love for you to get on air and share it with me so we can empower others and give them hope no matter what they’re going through. I’ll see you guys next time.