You get told this is what you need to do, you get told you need to diet and exercise, but you don't get any tools of how to do that. And so if you have no clue how to do that, it can be kind of scary, and you can do a diet and then become nutrient deficient, which then you're not going to lose weight.
I have some really exciting news for you. We have added another wonderful practitioner to our clinic here at uplift for her, and today we get to introduce her, Stacey Walker. Our episode today is getting to know Stacey and talking to her about one of the things that she cares most about and is most passionate about helping women with, which is really optimizing their health and weight. So if you're a patient or you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time. You know that at uplift for her, we take a very holistic and functional root cause approach to women's health. We look at hormones, metabolism, lifestyle, stress, gut health, mindset, all of it because one of the things that drives us most is our belief that women deserve full woman care, not quick fixes or oversimplified advice. One of the areas where we see women struggling the most is in weight loss, and so we are talking today with Stacey about the kind of comprehensive support with weight loss that women really need and want, not just diet and exercise, not shame based messaging, not the outdated medical advice so many of us have been given, but truly just understanding how different factors factor into our weight loss and what to do about it, and also when medications can play a role, how they're used thoughtfully, how they're used at the right time and in the right context. And Stacey is going to bring all of that to us, her clinical expertise, her compassion and a really grounded, functional medicine aligned approach to medical weight loss. After years in healthcare and with her own journey in women's health, she has developed a perspective that really looks beyond the number on the scale. She understands metabolic and hormonal root causes of weight struggles. She understands the barriers that women face and the emotional components that go into weight loss, and she understands how to approach these medications like GLP one agonists and GIP agonists, safely and effectively without losing sight of the foundational lifestyle and health pieces that really matter long term. So we are diving into it with Stacey getting to know her, talking all about women's health and what women really deserve in healthcare, and then specifically talking about weight loss and weight loss medications. So we've got a lot to cover. Let's get started.
There's not a one size fits all when it comes to women's health, and you need to be able to look at your own body and figure out what you want and how you want to meet those goals, and then find a provider who's willing to work with you on meeting those goals, and then make sure everything that you do is sustainable, and then you can have it for long term.
Well, here we are with Stacy Walker, hi, Stacy, hi. How are you?
Good, thank you. I am so glad that you are here today. This is going to be such a fun conversation.
Awesome. Thank you. I'm excited. First of all, we are so excited to have you at uplift for her, we are growing and seeing more and more patients, and we're so happy to have you join the team.
Thank you. I appreciate it. The staff is great. Everyone's been so warm and welcoming. It's been a great place to start. So I love it.
Thanks. I'm so glad. I love the team that we built, and I've said multiple times, I truly think we have the best patients ever.
Patients have been great, right? I saw patients on my own this week for the first time, and they've all been wonderful. So I love it, how you find them and they find you. Keep up the work.
Yeah, great. Well, we'll keep going now we get to get to know you a little bit today, and then we're going to dive into some of the things that you specialize in. So tell us a little bit about your journey to become a women's health practitioner, yeah.
So I've worked in healthcare since I was 17. I decided to become a CNA, and I've worked in assisted livings, and I've done medical assisting in doctor's offices, and then I went and became a registered nurse, and I worked in the hospital for 10 years, six of which was ICU, so I did a lot of high stress, yeah, and I loved it. It was great. But then I just decided I wanted to have a little more autonomy and to help guide patients through their healthcare journey. And I decided to do women's health just after watching my mom and everything that she went through. So my mom had breast cancer at an early age. Oh, man. And then, due to that, didn't do any hormone replacement, and I firmly believe that that caused a lot of ongoing health problems for her over the next 15 years of her life, and she recently passed away, and I think a lot of that just had to do with lack of hormones.
Oh my goodness. What a personal journey that's, that's that's heavy, that's a lot, but we're so glad that it's kind of spurred you on to learn so much about hormones and women's health. What are you most passionate about within women's health? Obviously, hormones are a part of that.
Hormones, weight loss, kind of all the things that overall, just help women look and feel better. Yeah, I think when we feel better. Yeah, we can be confident in our own skin, and then you just overall, can do what you want in life and have long longevity.
Yeah, and you have a fun background in esthetics as well. Yes, which tell us a little bit about that.
I worked in a dermatology office a long, long time ago and kind of learned the basics of skin care. It's something that not a lot of women get education on, let's be honest, along with pretty much everything else in women's health. So I got my master aesthetician license, and have learned how to do facials and chemical peels and overall help women's skin. And then I have also done injectable training, so Botox and fillers, all the fun things that can help women look and feel better, along with hormones. So kind of an all encompassing journey. I love
it, because one of the things we talk about a lot is Whole Person Care, Right? And I think it's a little bit, you know, some people may not put much into esthetics, but most of us are aware of what we look like, and we want to feel good about what we look like, and so to be able to understand the whole person like this is the part that I care about looking a certain way. I'm not going to put all of my you know, concentration there, but to understand there is an esthetic part of what we do, and you and I both want to look a certain way, and combining that with all of the foundational holistic approach to nourishing and nurturing the body, like it's all part of it. So I love that you have that back then.
And a lot of people don't realize how much hormone health actually impacts your skin as well. So estrogen and testosterone can impact your collagen and your elasticity, so overall wrinkle appearance, everything. So it plays a big role and just ties all together really nicely. Absolutely.
That's a really good point that you bring up. Well, tell us a little bit more. We'll kind of fast forward a second, and then I want to come back and talk a little bit more about your expertise. But tell us, as you've gone through your own, your own personal women's health journey, and then the journey that you watch the people, the women close to you, go through their health journeys and then being in health care for so long. What are some of the tricky parts about women's health in our health care system? And then also, where, where could we go? Where? What are the goals that you have in sort of supporting women in their health in the health care space,
there's a lot of lack of research within women's health, I feel like I think everything kind of gets lumped into just one general category for both men and women, and I think more so leaning towards men so women just, we just get told that we're not normal. And I don't think that's fair, but that's just kind of how things are, unfortunately, and I think I want to see research aimed more towards women, and I want us to have better opportunities within healthcare so that we can better understand what's going on within our bodies and overall be healthier for longer.
Well, I'm glad that you shared that story about your mother, because I think that's an example of where research is needed in healthcare. And also, you know, breast cancer is such a good and terrible example of where a lot of women have had the experience of going through breast cancer and being told, Well, aren't you glad you don't have cancer? And when in response, they say, like, well, I have hot flashes and I brain fog and I have vaginal dryness and my sex drive is gone, and they have all of these big, big problems that are really affecting the quality of their life. Yeah. And instead of kind of looking at, how can we safely address these symptoms and these hormones, very frequently, they're just told, like, aren't you glad you don't have cancer? Like, deal with it. Like, be grateful.
It almost seems like you either you have to have one or the other, you have cancer or you have the hormones, when, in reality, that's not how it should be. Just because you've had breast cancer doesn't mean you can't have the hormone replacement after. And that's I think we need a lot more research and development on that and just so that we can help women
and those nuanced conversations of what circumstances could we help in and how and all of that. Yeah, I love that. Well, we want to focus a little bit on at least one of your specialties within women's health, and we'll expand from there, if we have time. But one of the things that you're focusing on most within our practice and in general is hormones, but also especially metabolic health and weight loss. Yes, tell us a little bit about your own journey with weight and experience with weight loss, and why it's something that you've become so excited about helping women with.
I as a teenager, felt like I always kind of struggled with weight, and so later in life, I learned how to do counting macros and went to the gym and worked with personal trainers and kind of really focused on becoming healthy, and, you know, using diet and exercise, which is great, and it's a great foundation. And so I felt better doing that, and I loved it. But then you get to a point where there's only so much diet and exercise that you can do without, or when you need to lose more weight. Yeah, so when the GLP ones came out on the market, it was. Is a huge thing for everybody, and they still are. I have definitely used them, and I found them very, very beneficial. And I've used them kind of on and off a couple times. It's not something I've stayed stayed on long term, just but for my own choices. The first time I did them, I would say that was the time I lost the most weight, and I loved it. I felt good while I was on the medications, I had a good weight loss response. The thing that I noticed when I did start them is the place that I got them from, they didn't really monitor me. It was, here's your medication. And then it was kind of my own trial and error, yeah, and figure out how to do it, which I didn't love, but at least I have my own health care knowledge that I was like, Okay, this, this part doesn't seem quite right. I could trial and error on my on my own time. So fast forward, I got to where I wanted, came off the medications, and I have been able to keep the weight off, which is, I think the hardest part with a lot of the GLP ones and people struggle with is they get to their weight that they want, but then they come off the medications, and then they gain all the weight, and then some back. So I want to be able to help patients not have that problem, just through, you know, my own experience and what I've seen works and what doesn't work.
I'm so glad you shared that number one, because we so badly want to remove shame, you know, from really medication use in general, like, there's, it's just a medication, and it's a problem that we struggle with, and there's a medication that can help with it, of course, where possible, we want to avoid medication too, and this is where I hope that we can bring, through our clinic, can bring some nuance to women's health. Is saying so much of social media and marketing around these medications are they make it seem so black and white that either you believe in diet and exercise or you believe in a shortcut, you know, like, how about both? Like, how about we work on all of it, and so that's one of the approaches that we really focus on at our clinic. Is, like you said, the opposite of your first experience, instead of just giving the medication and being like, see you later. Good luck. Yeah, we're really guiding people through it, and we're I want you to tell us how you're approaching it, but we really offer that support so that people can achieve their goals and feel good about their body, but at the same time, their energy is better and their habits are better, and their their you know, maybe their sex life is better because we're also addressing hormone health. And, you know, we get to kind of address the whole person all at once, and the medications can be a really reasonable part of that. But also, you mentioned learning about diet and learning about movement and learning what works for you, and understanding when maybe you needed to call for backup too. So explain a little bit more about your and our clinic's approach to weight loss, how we address the lifestyle factors and the foundational factors, and then when we might bring in backup medication support.
That's a great question. So when patients come in and do a consultation with me, or an appointment, whatever you would like to call it, I really delve into their lifestyle. I want to know all about your nourishment, your exercise routine, your sleep habits, your gut health, so how often you're having bowel movements, what your bowel movements look like, and all of those things can be an indication of how your overall health is at this point in time. And then, based off of that, we will typically always order labs, and those labs are, as you are aware, very comprehensive panel. We want to look at if you have infections, we want to look at for signs of anemia, we look at your cholesterol levels, we look at inflammation markers, nutrient deficiencies, thyroid health, because thyroid is a hormone that a lot of people don't realize actually is a hormone, yeah. And so we look at all of those things and how it impacts that person directly. It's not just a you check this box, here you go. We want to make everything very personalized and for you. So we look at all of your labs and we address underlying issues before we really delve into a lot of the weight loss. I mean, we can do the weight loss the same time, but it gives us a good understanding if your body has the tools it needs to actually lose weight before we start the medications. And the medications are a great adjunct to the lifestyle factors, and you have done a really great job of having those five pillars of health. So it helps patients really kind of focus on those areas. And if we know those pillars are functioning the way they should, then overall, you should be able to lose weight, and if you can't, then there should something underlying even then some people become almost weight loss resistant. Their body just does not want to shed the weight, so they need that little extra support of medications and GLP ones are a great option for that. They're newer on the market, but they also have such great results along with added health benefits, that it's kind of my go to medication to use when appropriate.
I'm often asked exactly what items I use and recommend. So I have a little get. For you, I have gathered my go tos in one spot on our Amazon storefront. If you need deeper sleep, you'll find the light blocking sleep mask that lives on my nightstand and that I use every night. If you're working on your bone density or your posture, check out the weighted vest I recommend for walks and workouts. We've also added the magnesium body lotion I reach for to calm the nervous system, my favorite laundry, soap and cleaning products, and even the cast iron skillet that's currently sitting on my stovetop. All of these and more are organized by category, so you can browse trusted products without the overwhelm of trying to figure out what's the best thing to buy. You can head to amazon.com backslash shop backslash uplift for her, or tap the link in the show notes or from our website to explore the items I personally use and love. I hope this makes your life just a little bit easier. Now, back to the show tell us just what are some of the other medications when we talk about medical weight loss, what are some of the other medications and maybe some of their downsides? Because for a long time, I mean, weight loss is not new in the in the United States, right? In the American culture, this is not something new that we're talking about. And there hasn't really been a lot of leaps and bounds in terms of success with weight loss over the last several decades. You know, you'll get a little spurt with the Atkins diet, with intermittent fasting, and they'll kind of come into the public eye for a little bit, but because of downsides, they're not really that sustainable for the general public. And this seems to be a little bit different. So tell us the other classes of medical or the other medications that we often would use before.
So I would say the most common one that people know is phentermine. It was part of Fen Phen. It was fenven, was a double medication, and it was most people know it has the reputation for heart problems, that's why it's not used anymore. But phentermine is the safe drug of that combination, and that is still used for weight loss. And how it works is it actually stimulates your nervous system to then suppress your appetite. So a lot of the time, people feel jittery when they're on it, but because of that jitteriness, you have the appetite suppression, and then you burn more calories. Yeah, the weight loss. Success with that is not the greatest it's only about like nine to 11% weight loss in the study groups versus the GLP one medications, where they can be anywhere from 10 to 20% Yeah, instead, studies,
and these medications are the only thing that we've had with successful long term keeping the weight off of that percentage, so 10 to 20% of the body weight, whereas some of the surgical interventions can have that kind of weight loss, but there's a high incidence of weight gain. So it really has been a game changer. Are there any other medications that we should know about?
There are a couple other ones you can take. There's even an a GLP one that is a daily injection. So the most common GLP ones that people know about are tricepotide and semaglutide. There is one called liraglutide, and that is a daily injection, where the other ones are weekly injections. So if you have someone who really doesn't like injections, that's not a good option for them. And then again, it doesn't have the greatest weight loss result. And then there are different medications. A lot of this one was kind of in the limelight as well. It's called ally. It's a light paste inhibitor, so it just makes it so your body doesn't absorb that. But then the side effect of that is you had leaky, greasy pipes.
No nice way what's
no good way to say this. Yeah. And then again, there, the weight loss was only about three to 5% with those
medications, pretty miserable side effects, yeah. So it really has been a game changer. I would say, the culture of our clinic, a lot of women come in saying, I actually don't want to take medication, and I love that for them, and you love that for them, because that allows us to really dive into their foundations and say, how are your hormones, how is your stress level? How is your sleep? How are your other metabolic markers? Like, what's the problem here? Like, why are you not losing the weight that you want to lose, yeah, and also helps us establish do you need to lose weight, and how much so? Do you have type two diabetes? Or do you have baby borderline insulin resistance? Or do you have just a little esthetic, you know, a little extra five to 10 pounds, because people are coming from for all different reasons, right? And, and, like I said, the culture generally would be people who want to do other things. They don't want to show up and be given a prescription and sent away with no further education. So we typically get the right patients, but when you're talking to them, how do you decide and understand when it might be the right time for them to consider medication? Obviously, we're not deciding that it's the right time. But how do you help them come to that idea of understanding when it might be the right time for them? So I think
the most important thing is just having an open conversation about things. What are your fears with the medication? Why? Why are you hesitant towards it? Is it you don't know much about it, and we just really need to get into a better understanding of what the medications do. And how they work. But there's also, I find a lot of stigma with the medications, and I see it all over social media. Personal Trainers say, oh, it's the easy way out to use these medications, when in reality, it isn't. If you have the lifestyle under control, meaning you're going to the gym, you're exercising the way you should, you're eating healthy, all of your foundation is being met, and you're still not able to lose weight, sometimes you just need a little extra help. Your body just needs that little push to then lose the weight. And that's when I really kind of talk to patients about that. Say, look, your lifestyle is great. You're doing everything that you need, but because you can't lose weight, maybe we need to look at adding something else.
I love that you bring that up, that it's not the easy way out, because you and I have studied this for a long time, so we know a lot about the body at this point. And to the the number of small details that need to be in place for some people to lose weight can be a little bit absurd. You know, I think a lot of the medical community makes it seem like we'll eat less and move more, yeah, just go eat less and move more. I don't have very many patients who have not tried to eat less and move more, right? Like, yeah, they've done that. It's not a matter of people being like, what could I do besides eat less and move more? Because I'm not going to do that. You know? Yeah, that's just not what's happening. I think so many people are coming in saying, I've dieted, I've restricted, I've done all these things. I'm exercising daily. Now, sometimes we get people who are saying, Help me do that, which is great, but so many patients are saying, I'm already doing that, and nothing's budging. There are often other detailed things that we can do, and that's what you and I can specialize in helping them understand, are you eating enough? Are you eating too much? Are you exercising enough? Are you exercising too much? How's your sleep? How are these little things? But that takes a college degree. It does. I mean, it's essentially a college degree to understand all of these little minutiae that go into weight loss, and we can go through that. But also that's where sometimes medication, it can be a really nice augmentation to say, can we just nudge your body to do what it needs to do, in addition to doing the lifestyle changes that that most people have already put into place?
And that's great. And one other thing with the GLP ones that are so great is a lot of people don't know, but a GLP one is actually a hormone that is already in our body. It's the natural hormone that helps with appetite suppression. So all you're doing is adding that hormone back in. So it's almost, in a sense, hormone replacement therapy. You're just helping your body along to then fix the underlying cause of why am I not able to lose weight? Yeah, and then the goal is to then not be on it long term. Some people have to be on it long term, and some people like the way they feel on it. So it's, again, a conversation that we can have of, do you just want to be on it short term to lose the weight you want, or is it something that you feel really great on and you have the anti inflammatory benefits that come along with the medication that you just want to keep so that you can continue to feel better.
It's interesting. I've had, I'm hearing more and more about it being used in rheumatology, in joint pain and autoimmune diseases, and seeing good effects there. So it'll be really interesting to see the data coming out on that. That's something that will you explain how we use that in sort of a microdosing approach to get some of those anti inflammatory benefits. Yeah.
So the conventional dosing is like 2.5 milligrams, which for most people, is pretty high, and they can have side effects from it. And the main side effects that people experience with GLP ones are GI upset, which isn't a fun thing to experience, because if you're nauseous, you don't want to eat, you don't want to exercise.
So we are we winning? If yes? How we lose weight Exactly.
So if we start at lower doses, make sure that you can tolerate the medication and then increase the dose as you tolerate and with weight loss, then you're going to be less likely to have those terrible side effects, and you're going to be more compliant with the medication. So the term micro dosing comes from starting lower than the conventional dose, I would say the average microdose is like half a milligram to maybe one and a half milligrams, and then, depending on the person, some people can tolerate it once a week. Some people you have to do twice a week, and some people it can be even once a month. There's not a lot of data behind the benefits of microdosing. I think it's just because it's so early on that we're still in the process of getting that data and doing the trials. But when people feel really good on the micro dose, why not just continue it? If you're not having side effects, you're having that overall inflammation benefit, you feel better,
you can just continue it. Yeah, yeah. And it can be really game changing for a lot of people, yeah, what would you say are patients biggest fears around starting these medications?
The biggest fear people have around these medications is, are they going to be able to come off of the medication? And then I would say the side effects. You hear a lot of the horror stories, as with everything, people always share their bad experiences more than they do the good experience. Experiences. So you hear of things like gastroparesis, which is when your stomach essentially stops working, it kind of becomes paralyzed, which can be terrifying, and something that can happen and impacts your life forever. But it's a very rare side effect. It's something that your body, I mean, the medication in general, does slow down your gastric emptying. That's that's how it works. That's why you don't feel the need to eat all the time. And so just being able to talk through those and say these side effects are rare, but if you do have side effects, let's work through them together and try and figure, Figure out ways to overcome those side effects without adding more medications. And then just talking through we can come off of them if you want to, and how to do that appropriately.
One of the questions I get asked all the time is, what supplements do you recommend Now, whether this is for daily essentials, sleep support, gut health, what to take during pregnancy? I know how overwhelming it can feel to choose the right products. I have spent hours myself combing through these brands and ingredients, trying to make sure that I can find things that I'm comfortable taking myself and that I'm comfortable recommending to my family and to my patients. I'm then able to get feedback from my patients and family to see, did these supplements actually accomplish what we were hoping that they would accomplish, and this is why I created a curated, fullscript storefront with the brands and supplements I trust most. These are the same ones I use in my clinic and in my own home. When patients say, what do you recommend for magnesium, or what do you recommend for fish oil, or what do you recommend as a fiber supplement, all of these supplements are listed in this storefront. If you're curious, just visit the link in the show notes. There's also a link on our website and through our Instagram account to explore all of my favorites in one place. When you purchase through the link, you get 15% off. Now back to the show the biggest part of what we do around weight loss is education, and it's something that I'm really proud of in our clinic is we get to be the voice of reason, and we get to be the voice with as many tools as we can. I think so many times patients are they go to a personal trainer who's like, there is one way you're going to lose weight, and it is, x, y, z, right, yeah. Or they go to their doctor, and their doctor may, may push the medication. And our job is none of that. Our job is just to say, let me make sure that you have the most accurate information that you can have, and as much of the information as you need to get to where you want to be. And there are some people that I'll review all of the options of weight loss, right? Because people come in and they say, and I'm going to ask you to talk about it a little more is, what other options for weight loss are there, of course, besides the medications, yeah, but part of what we do then is go through all of these different approaches to lose weight, whether it is maybe trialing intermittent fasting or different ways to calorie restrict, like working with a coach to teach macro counting or, you know, there's lots of different ways that we can help a patient. Obviously, we're going to do like you mentioned, the hormonal assessment, and we're going to help with estrogen, help with testosterone so you can build muscle. We're going to help with insulin resistance. We're going to help with gut health so that the body is really ready to lose weight. We're going to help with stress and nervous system regulation so the body's ready to lose weight. But at the same time, we get to give all of that information. And I've had patients at the end of that who say, I don't want that medication. I want to learn how to count macros, yeah. And I've had patients who say, I don't want the medication. I want to try a fasting mimicking diet. And then I've had patients who say, I do want to do that, but I think I want to get started on the medication because my knees hurt so bad I can't exercise. And what's really exciting? Sorry, I'm taking over. Oh no, you're fine. So exciting. I love it. What's really exciting is that sometimes, like, I've seen success every every which way, and that's awesome, because then it empowers the patient to choose what's right for them. And I don't have to gatekeep or have some algorithm that says, I can't help you with that until you've done X, Y and Z. Obviously, I'm still pushing lifestyle. I will endlessly push lifestyle, but I can also help them at the rate that they need the help with. And I've had patients who come back with the medications who will get decrease in inflammation, and they'll say, my knees don't hurt. And ever since I started taking the medication, I've been at the gym regularly. I've never been able to go to the gym regularly before, but now that I'm on the medication, I can, and that's what's like. That's the point of a medication, right? Is to say, can we help you bridge whatever gap your body may have. And for some people, that might be pain, that might be inflammation, that might be food, noise or or, you know, being able to have the stars align for their for them to lose weight, and we get to just give them information, yeah, and then ensure that they're doing it safely and not haphazardly. Yeah, no.
And I love that you've said that, because it's so fun to have patients who. Come back excited and when things are working the way that they want. That makes health care fun, in my opinion, and that's what I that was, again, back to why I became a nurse practitioner. I wanted to be able to help patients with where they are. And I think that's something that, like you said, kind of to go off of that lacks in medicine. It's you get told this is what you need to do. You get you get told you need to do diet and exercise, but you don't get any tools of how to do that. And so if you have no clue how to do that, it can be kind of scary. And you can do a diet and then become nutrient deficient, which then you're not going to lose weight. You can start exercising, or your hair is going to fall out, or you're going to be tired, or, yeah, and start exercising and not know how to properly lift weights. And then you can injure yourself, which then is going to set you back even more, and then you just get more discouraged because you weren't given the proper tools of how to achieve these goals. So really talking with patients, finding out where they are and what their goals are, is going to be huge for them. And that's another thing I love with women's health, is not every patient is the same, and I think a lot of times, providers try to put everybody into the same bucket. You need to sit down and you find out what's going on with each person, because they're going to be different. And that's, again, what makes health care so fun, because you can it's kind of like a little detective game of, let's figure out what's going on with you. And oh, you have similar symptoms as this person, but yours are completely different. And there's so many options that we can do to help patients.
I actually love it. Sometimes we get patients coming in who will say, like, I tried a, b and c, and at first, sometimes I'm like, Oh, shoot. What are we gonna do? You know, like, you already tried all the things. But it's actually really exciting to say, Well, where are you at? What can we do? How do we make this work for you? How do we, you know, find those baby steps? I've had patients who, you know, will come to me and say, I'm able to walk up and down the stairs now, and before I couldn't. Yeah, I had a patient the other day who's, who is, has been struggling with weight, and she said, I can tie my shoes now. And we both cried, you know, because these are really big deals, and these are not people who take weight lightly, who are not trying. I mean, these are people, well, it's all across the spectrum, but there are definitely some people who have struggled for so long, and with what we get to do in our clinic, then I get to prescribe these weight loss medications. They get to see the wins, but also they're saying So what was I supposed to eat, and how was I supposed to move? And how do I make sure that my bones are healthy, and how do I make sure my hormones are healthy? And so it's a lot for for us to navigate with our patients, but it's so exciting to see them make these big improvements, where they come back saying, I don't need my afternoon nap, and I've been walking on the treadmill regularly, and I can reach over and tie my shoes, and I can play with my grandkids on the floor. And, you know, all of these good things that are so important,
yeah, and they couldn't do because of the weight. And just having a provider who takes the time to listen and meet you where you are and help you achieve your goals is huge. And I don't know about you, but I love being our patients cheerleaders. Like, yeah, I want to celebrate the little wins with you. If something happens, send us a portal message. We love to hear about it. Absolutely.
I love that you said that, and that's one of the things that we get to be. Is that positive sounding board of like, stay with it. This is going great. Or, you know, let's try something else. What do you feel like we haven't mentioned yet in in your approach to weight loss, is there something that we've skipped over or something you want to emphasize? I do think it's obvious. Probably you and I are both excited about these medications, because they really have been a game changer and and I think will continue to be a game changer, and they are not enough on their own?
No, they aren't. You need to have the lifestyle, and I think the lifestyle is actually going to be the most sustainable part of these medications. These medications are just going to continue to grow, and there's going to be a new one every few years, I think, and the new one's going to be bigger and better than the last one, as everything is with the pharmaceutical industry, but being able to utilize the medications and then fall back on the lifestyle is going to make it everything sustainable.
Now, I guess the next question would be, can you over utilize these medications, or can you use them incorrectly?
Yes, you can use these medications incorrectly, and when they're used incorrectly, I feel like that's when majority of the patients have terrible side effects. And again, back to some of the side effects that aren't widely talked about is you can have things like pancreatitis, where your pancreas gets really swollen and inflamed and causes a lot of GI issues and abdominal pain, which we don't want for our patients. So just making sure patients are aware of those things, and you have a provider who is going to work with you and monitor you is, I think, a huge thing. Yeah, and a negative thing that can also happen with these medications is rapid weight loss. So I prefer low and slow, then that way the weight loss is more sustainable. If you start on really high doses, you're going to have rapid weight loss, and then when you come off the medications, you're going to have the rebound weight gain. And. Um, along with that rapid weight loss, you see a lot of the people, people that will say they have the O face, where they just lose all like collagen and elasticity in their face, and then a lot of the sagging skin, and then it impacts your overall bone health. And we don't want any of those things. We want to do weight loss in a way that's going to help your overall health for long term benefits.
How are you approaching that, then, as a healthcare practitioner, to help a patient use it the best way, what we think is the best way possible,
I set clear expectations at the first visit. I want them to know that we are going to do this low and slow. We don't want more than five pounds, I would say a month on average, half a pound to max, two pounds a week. If you're losing more than that, then it's not going to be a healthy, sustainable weight loss. Sometimes you do see that weight loss with inflammation. When people have really, really high inflammation throughout their body, they start these medications, and they will have some drastic weight loss. But that drastic weight loss is only for the first few weeks. Afterwards the body kind of stabilizes, and then you have, you see the normal, healthy weight loss.
And usually I think that's water weight. I mean, people will come and say, like, my rings fit differently, my face is less puffy, my feet are less puffy, and those are the people who might lose 10 pounds in the first week. Yeah, and that's not fat loss. That's not a true change in body composition, but they feel much better within when
you're carrying around even just that extra water weight, it's still extra weight that's you're carrying around on your joints, and it's just hard, hard on your body.
And so you're setting that expectation of, we're going to aim for lower, slower weight loss in this what are the other things that you might be tracking along the way to make sure that they're they're getting to their goals safely?
So we're going to do periodic blood work. We want to make sure that we're not causing nutrient deficiencies. We don't have one of these in the office, but I know it's potentially in the talks of DEXA in body scan. So just watching muscle loss versus fat loss, if these medications are used incorrectly, patients can actually have muscle wasting, which is something we don't want. And so being able to watch and make sure the weight you are losing is actually fat versus muscle. But another thing that helps with that is if you have the proper exercise habits. So strength training is going to be a big one, and then making sure you're hitting your protein goals.
Yeah, exactly. So we're trying to kind of do a body composition exchange where we're exchanging fat for muscle. Yeah, we don't want to lose muscle and fat. We want to lose muscle and gain Nope. We want to lose fat and gain muscle so that you're winning at the end of this, one of the things I emphasize with my patients is if you lose weight rapidly, and that has just been muscle and fat, and then you come off the medication and you regain weight rapidly, you just put on fat. You didn't put on any muscles, so you doubled the fat. Yeah, you just changed your body composition significantly for the worse. Yeah. So if you're not ready to do something long term, whether that's the medication or what we prefer is a lot of the lifestyle changes, you will do more harm than good by going on the medication then then just continuing with lifestyle. So we have to make sure that we're we have a long term strategy in place, and that's where I think some clinics who are just doing the medications willy nilly. I think it can be it can be harmful if it's too high dose, because of the risks like you talked about with pancreatitis and gallstones and gastroparesis, but they can also have negative effects with losing losing muscle too quickly. We want to be talking all along the way and reminding them along the way of, what are we doing long term? How are we making sure this is safe for you long term?
And I'm glad that you actually brought up the body fat composition. When we have too much fat in our body, it actually is really, really inflammatory. And that's I think a lot of people don't realize how unhealthy just having excess fat can be. It's very inflammatory, it causes hormone disruption, and it increases our overall disease risk factors. So maintaining a healthy weight can actually help decrease overall disease risks, not just cardiovascular, but hormone related disease and then even some cancers.
I think that's so important, because I think there's so many people who are giving these medications a bad rap, that are like you're just cheating, or like you lost weight the easy way. The fact is, as a as a doctor, it's my job to help you be the healthiest person possible and to decrease your medical risk, yeah, and and risk of chronic disease, and that's the these medications can play a big role in that, that now they're not the only tool by far, yeah, and we want to use all the other holistic tools as much as possible. But one of the things we get to do is to say we can decrease your risk further with these medications in some people, and that that's not insubstantial. I mean, those are substantial risks that having excess body fat can can predispose some. To and if we can decrease that, that's a really good thing. And if we can then replace that with building muscle, teaching someone how to nourish their body, teaching someone how to improve their microbiome, like, that person is winning, like, that's a really good outcome. And something that I, and I know you are very excited to be a part of, is there any one thing kind of backing up just overview that you want to like shout from the rooftops to women. Is there one thing that you want women to hear when it comes to their health?
There's not a one size fits all when it comes to women's health, and you need to be able to look at your own body and figure out what you want and how you want to meet those goals, and then find a provider who's willing to work with you on meeting those goals, and then make sure everything that you do is sustainable, and then you can have it for long term.
I love that, and I'm so glad you you've joined the team, and you're you're part of the crew now, because I think women need more practitioners like you and and I'm so grateful that you do what you do well. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their insights and time with us. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her calm YouTube, Apple, podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only, and not intended to be medical advice. You.
