Healthy Eating Diet But Still Can’t Lose Weight? – Podcast #56

Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand discuss about exercise and diet including the stress hormones and the thyroid connection. They talk about sleep and how it can affect blood sugar and insulin. Find out what are the things you need to get dialed in to get the results you want for fat loss and weight reduction.

Discover how functional medicine lab tests and blood sugar markers play an important role for burning fat in his podcast. Also find out why  Dr. Justin recommends getting reverse osmosis countertop filters as part of his water filtration system to get rid of fluoride.

In this episode, topics include:

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Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Hey there, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani and welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio.  Feel free and head over to beyondwellnessradio.com where you can access our full podcast transcriptions.  While you’re there, you can also sign up for our Thyroid and Female Hormone video series.  This series goes into the root cause of why your hormones are out of balance.  While you’re there, you can also schedule a functional medicine consult with Dr. Justin, myself, where we’ll dig deeper into the root cause of your health challenges.  Feel free and think of sharing this podcast with at least one person.  This podcast grows by people sharing it.  Sharing is caring.  If you can think of one person that can benefit from this information, please feel free and share it.  If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you subscribe on iTunes.  You can also click below the video or podcast where you’ll see the iTunes review button and leave us a review.  You can also sign up for the newsletter at beyondwellnessradio.com where you’ll updates before anyone else.  Thank you so much and enjoy the show.

Hello, ladies and germs.  This is Dr. J here.  I’m with Evan Brand, the one and only.  Evan, what’s going on, man?

Evan Brand:  Hey, not much.  Did you just say ladies and germs?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I did.  I’m sorry.  It’s Friday.  I’m actually heading out to Vegas tomorrow, so I’m feeling pretty good.

Evan Brand:  Awesome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Feeling loose.

Evan Brand:  Awesome.  You gonna have some fun down there?  What are you gonna do?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Actually, when I go to Vegas, I like to eat really good rib eye steaks.  I don’t gamble.  I don’t stay out late.  I go see really good shows and like sleep 10 hours a night.

Evan Brand:  That’s awesome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s super boring.

Evan Brand:  You know I used to live there, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I know, you did.  So Evan, today we’re gonna talk about diets and we’re gonna talk about people that have finally, you know, got themselves on a really healthy diet but they’re not losing weight.  And again, I see this a lot more in my female patients.  What’s your take?

Evan Brand:  Oh, yeah.  It’s very common.  Yeah, men don’t seem to have as much of an issue which may be we get into why that’s the case.  But it’s always the women, whether it’s a patience issue.  Not patients as in people, but patience with C-E at the end.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Evan Brand:  Or it’s some hormonal stuff.  I mean, there’s so many–there’s so many that, well, you know, we get to break down some of those today.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I get a lot of patients that come on, you know, come under care and they’re going on Paleo or they’re going autoimmune Paleo or GAPs or SCD, and they don’t quite lose weight off the bat and the question is why?  And what I find is that–great quote from Dr. Diana Schwarzbein in her book, The Schwarzbein Principle 1, 2–but she talks about you don’t lose weight to get healthy, you get healthy to lose weight.  You get healthy then you lose weight.  And that lag time between getting healthy and losing weight can vary a lot from person to person, especially if there’s a history of excessive exercise, starvation, lots of food allergies, chronic infections, it could be months or it could potentially even be years because of the damage to the metabolism via the thyroid, via the adrenals, and there can be a lot of delay or time gap in how that responds to you going on this new diet and to that weight actually coming off.

Evan Brand:  Yeah and actually, you know, I’ve actually had some people at the other end of the spectrum where they started losing weight in the very beginning and actually have one lady right now who I’m trying to help train for a triathlon and it’s really tough for me as a coach to–to support that type of exercise wondering what her hormone test look, you know.  It’s hard for me to say, “That’s okay for you to train that many miles,” and now she’s hit this weight loss plateau and it’s like, well, you cannot have cake and eat it, too.  We kinda have to make a compromise together here if you wanna get results.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  So some of the big things off the bat, I can see patients–we get our patients literally lose weight off the bat and we get some that do great, and then we have some that flounder a little bit.  I had one patient just the other day.  She was about 2 months or a month and a half into her parasite-killing program.  She–blasto–H. pylori and a month and a half, they’ve lost almost 20 pounds.  So we see that time to time, could be inflammation thing–when we see it all just stress hormones, cortisol–resistance–with the cortisol levels, if it drops–the thyroid issues, all these things can be made issues from a hormonal perspective and just because you changed the diet, it doesn’t mean the hormones go right–if it were that way but if we do specific programs that push the adrenals and support the adrenals, support the HPA axis, and support the thyroid, we can promote healing fast.  So that’s the goal of these.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and there–there is some variability with the speed, you know–one here, well, what the number–few weeks, how many months does it gonna take for me to lose those 20 pounds?  My answer is always, it depends.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Absolutely.  And I see some people actually gain weight until FYI, I did my blood sugar during the show, that was due–today I’m at 93, so pretty good.  You know, under a hundred.  I can feel adrenalin go through and I’m about ready to eat lunch–just a bit–5 hours from last meal so right on that blood sugar throw there.  And blood sugar is probably the talk that we should go into, we did a whole podcast on it recently into weight loss.  So we know blood sugar is really important because the higher our blood sugar is, the more insulin we make, and we know insulin primarily a fat-storing hormone, and when we make insulin, we also typically pump out leptin, too.  So if we have something known as insulin resistance, we typically also have leptin resistance, and that can basically allow us to store more of our calories into fat and it can also keep us hungry.  Keep from feeling satiated so we overeat.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and then kind of the–I don’t know if you’d call it the ozing hormone so to speak but then you have ghrelin, your hunger hormone.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  And if you look at studies in people’s leptin and ghrelin levels when they have sleep deprivation, ghrelin is elevated significantly.  So think of ghrelin as growling, like your stomach–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, that’s ghrelin.

Evan Brand:  And you’re gonna have, I mean, and I–I totally feel this, man, the nights that I try to–if I stay up too late for some reason.  I–I usually never do but if I do, I regret it because the next day, I’m starving and no matter what I eat, I just can’t cure my appetite, you know.  And so, I say cure it like appetite’s a disease or something, but–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, I know what you mean.

Evan Brand:  I can’t satiate myself.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right, and we see that a lot with sleep, right?  You also have blood sugar issues with sleep.  You actually become more insulin resistant.  They took college students and they had them stay up, I think only sleep 4 hours a night for 2 weeks and within a couple of days, they were pre-diabetic regarding their blood sugar.

Evan Brand:  Oh.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So if we do that, right?  Sleep, that’s also gonna cause us to be more insulin-resistant, meaning we’re gonna store especially our carbohydrates more efficiently to fat and then number two, we’re gonna be over hungry which when we’re over hungry, what are the food we typically reach for?

Evan Brand:  Probably the carbs, the quick–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  The carbs?

Evan Brand:  Burst of glucose.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, probably the carbs.  So insulin-resistance, leptin, ghrelin, those are really key things.  I don’t focus too much on the leptin because I find that like the first domino that knocks over is gonna be insulin resistance.  So if you focus on the insulin resistance, it typically gets the leptin resistance dialed in.  And simple thing like I’m doing right now, you can see on video, blood sugar test your fasting blood sugar.  Test 1, 2, 3 hours post meals.  See how your body’s dealing with sugar, also get a fasting insulin in the morning.  Ideally, less than 7 should be where you be, ideally under 5 but less than 7.  That means that your body doesn’t need that much insulin to soak up that sugar.  Less insulin means less ability to store as fat and more ability to burn fuel and burn fat for fuel.  Because insulin automatically blocks fat from being burned.  So just kinda keep that in mind.  High insulin means you’re a sugar burner, lower insulin’s gonna mean you’re a fat burner.

Evan Brand:  Yeah, and I want to kinda repeat that in a different way just so people really get that through because I have to go through this explanation and if we can refer someone to this podcast instead of spending 20 minutes on a topic explaining it to a patient–you cannot burn fat when insulin levels are peaked.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  If your tank of insulin is full, fat loss is not going to happen until that insulin gets in check.  I wish I could say it like 3 other ways or something–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Evan Brand:  But I think that’s hopefully helpful for people, is that if insulin’s high, if you%