Ep. 94 Natural Ozempic Weight Loss

Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shade Podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. So I've been listening to a lot of newer podcasts lately, and you probably are as well. And you probably noticed that a lot of podcasts start out with a bit of a pre roll of that sounds a little bit formulaic, not to criticize, but I just find that it's a little bit like, Hi, and welcome to the XYZ podcast.

And, you know, this is for, You know, so and so busy women professionals who want XYZ and to have fun too, or whatever it is. And so I will spare you that. But if you are new here, welcome, first of all. And I just want to let you know that you are in the right place if you are just wanting to release weight.

If you already have all the information in terms of like nutrition, you know how to eat, you're active, you know what to do, but you're not doing it, or at least you're not doing it consistently enough to release the weight that you want to and reach what I call your natural weight. So the weight at which feels most natural to you and the weight at which you effortlessly have really the experience of your body that you want to have, and only you will know what that experience is.

Okay, so welcome if you're new, welcome if you have been listening for a while and you've been with me for a while. So let's dive into it. This episode is going to be again on related to kind of how do we create The same results as if we are taking one of these weight loss drugs. Okay. So I have been, I mean, this is just in my world, right?

I think you do one Google search and then you're constantly being bombarded with information about weight loss drugs. So you are probably seeing it just as much as I am. And I've also heard from my clients that this is just in their world. Like you most likely know somebody who is taking some sort of weight loss drug.

So I have been I just want to normalize, if you have considered it, or you are currently considering it right now, it totally makes sense, okay? So, there's no shame or guilt in that, right? Like any I don't know, might be kind of reductionist to call it a quick fix, but, In a sense, it is rather a quick fix, right?

It is desirable. It's maybe for some of us, the most desirable solution for weight loss that we've seen in a long time, when it comes to diets, when it comes to quick fixes, that kind of thing, right? If we are in pain about something, our weight, Our relationship with food and someone's like, okay, here, just take this.

You don't really have to change it anyway. You don't have to do anything. Of course it's desirable. Of course, we're going to consider it. So don't feel bad about that if that's what's happening to you. Okay. This really is not to vilify any weight loss drugs. It might make sense to you. I truly believe that every woman has the right to make her own decisions when it comes to her body, whether that's.

You know, wanting to gain weight, lose weight, maintain her weight, whether that's wanting to eat whatever she wants to eat, or not eat whatever she wants to, you know, not eat. It's body autonomy, right? You have the right to make that decision. But maybe you haven't started them yet or haven't talked to your doctor about it yet because it's kind of like I've been thinking about it this way.

It's almost a difference between working for a year and earning, say 100k, say your salary is 100k, or winning the lottery and winning 100k and then not working for that year. So of course, there's an opportunity cost when you don't work for it, right? Say if it's your own business, or you're working for an organization, In that year, you won't learn anything, right?

If you win the lottery and you don't work, you won't increase any of your skills or your ability to earn again the next year. So to earn another 100k or get promoted to earn even more. So in terms of who you are, you're still the same person at the end of the year. If you say, win the money, right? So maybe you're thinking, well, I could try the weight loss drugs, but either I'll have to be on it for the rest of my life, which Maybe you don't want to do or I'll have to figure this out eventually when it comes to food and weight loss.

So what's the point in, you know, trying it and taking the risk of maybe unforeseen longer term costs to my health down the road. Okay. Or maybe you tried it and now you're ready to come off of it. From my research, it shows that 70 percent of people come off after two years. So maybe that's you or you're taking it now and you're thinking, okay, well, I'm thinking I'm not going to be on this forever.

So how am I going to maintain my weight loss? What will that look like? And that could be really scary, right? If you don't have any kind of backup plan. So I just want to support you wherever you are at. And on this journey, whether you're taking any kind of weight loss drug, whether you are considering it or whether you are transitioning off of it, okay, I want to let you know that it is completely possible to mimic the results without any negative implications on your health to do it in a natural way.

And in fact, to do it where there's no side effects or unknown costs. The exact opposite, where you will improve your mental health and your emotional health. Based on what I have derived from people telling me from their lived experience of taking these kind of drugs, and obviously I know that there are different drugs other than just ozempic, but ozempic seems to have the best name recognition, which is why I chose it for the title of this podcast.

But from what I've gathered, there's three main differences that people experience that I truly believe can be replicated. In my program. Okay. So I know this because I've experienced it myself. So my husband asked me recently, if somebody showed up at our front door and said, Hey, I have Exempic, you could take it because I still am releasing weight myself.

Would I do it? And that was like such a confronting question for me. Like I really thought about like, would I, and For me and again, no judgment if the answer is if your answer is different You have a totally different experience than I do. I would say no only because I really know that it's possible Without right.

So I know that it's possible to have the same results without taking the drug. If I didn't know that was possible, it would seem very desirable to me. Okay, so that's just what I want to plant the seed for here is that it's totally possible. So three things I'm going to focus on today. One is that it significantly reduces hunger.

That is meaningful in terms of weight loss, right? If you are hungry all the time, you're going to be, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. When it comes to trying to reduce your food intake. Okay. So that's one benefit of it that we can recreate. And I'm going to talk to you about how that's possible.

The second is stopping at enough. So not overeating during your meals. Another thing is it helps you become more satiated sooner. So you're not overeating at your meals. Again, we can absolutely recreate that. Okay. And then the third thing is ending all of that food chatter. So this is like. Thinking about food all of the time.

I have somebody in, who's more of an acquaintance, but in my world, who she said, this is the number one thing, right? She just was thinking about food all the time. It was like, it felt like it was like ruling her life. I have thought about this in terms of almost being like in food hell. Like it's just, you just feel like you can't escape it.

It's like always on your mind. If it can reduce that, that's major. And I don't know. I want you to know that it's totally possible to do that naturally. Okay. So that's what I'm going to talk about right now. So let's start with the hunger piece. So to reduce your hunger, you need to eat in a way that is going to get your hunger levels in check.

Did you know that you have an impact on your hunger? You do. Okay. So your hunger or the intensity and how often you get hungry is going to be affected by hunger. What you're eating and when you're eating or how often you're eating. Okay. So when you teach your body to use its fat stores as fuel, what you're doing is teaching your body to make ketones for energy.

So in order to make a ketone, you have to burn fat. Then it goes to the brain and says, you know what? I'm good for energy. And it turns off the hunger hormone ghrelin that makes you feel hungry, right? It tells your body, okay, it's time to eat. It's going to take about 12 hours for your body to do this.

According to Dr. Mindy Pelz. So I was I'm doing a bit of research and I ordered her book. It hasn't come in yet. So I might be giving a little bit more of in depth information on this after I've read the book. But if you have a really hard time going 12 hours without food, then you really want to take a look at another piece of it, which is what you were eating, because that's really going to influence your hormones and the intensity of that hunger.

So like if you ever get hangry, that's also an indication that likely you're eating in a way that's causing your blood sugar to spike and then crash more often than is conducive for how you want to feel in your body and your hunger levels. And there might be opportunity also to support your gut microbiome.

So I won't go into this. Today there's tons of research you can do in terms of learning about your gut microbiome and how to support that But especially if you have a lot of sugar cravings, that's a sign that you've got some bad bacteria in there They're like calling for more sugar Okay, and it only takes a few weeks to change that and see some improvement So I highly encourage you to do a little bit of research there and see how you can eat in a way That's more supportive of that to reduce your cravings.

Okay, and also one note about this is In terms of like fasting in terms of allowing, you know, that 12 hours without eating, it's not wise or really healthy to fast a lot the week before your period. So if you still have your period, you just might want to consider taking that week off of doing it and incorporating maybe three smaller meals that week.

If you're doing two or even one meal and also consider Up in your sleep, you're just going to need more sleep and increasing your complex carbohydrates. You might notice that you're have more cravings or you're just hungrier during that time. And The reason is that your body just needs more. Okay, so don't be afraid of, again, it doesn't mean we need to go to sugar or flour, but you will want to be eating more nutrient dense food with lots of fiber.

So like rice, that kind of thing, complex carbohydrates. Okay. That's hunger. The second one is really stopping at enough. So, the key here is to slow down. Rushing when we're eating becomes a habit. So I really want to invite you to pay attention to your body. during meals. We get so into our heads, whether we're counting the calories, or we're thinking about what other people are thinking about us, or we're 10 steps ahead and we shouldn't be eating this, or maybe this is like right on point, or whatever it is.

I want you to try to get in the habit of while you are eating to really tap into your body. And I thought it just might be useful to go into some reasons why we rush. Because if If you ever look down at your plate and you think, wait, what just happened? Like what happened to all that food? Or you notice when it comes to even like healthier food, like you have your big salad, you just are wolfing it down.

And it feels like it's hard to slow down. It feels like it's hard to stop doing that. When we rush, we tend to one. Eat more than we need and we actually feel worse in our bodies, right? So usually there's not great digestion happening here when we're rushing. Okay. So why does this happen? We know better.

We know not to rush, but we notice that we're still doing it. Why does it keep happening? One is It's possible that you have an underlying subtle belief that you shouldn't be eating. Now, I know that kind of sounds weird on the surface because you're like, yeah, I need, like, I'm a human. I need to be eating.

However, if you have been in any kind of deprivation, restrictive dieting cycle, Any kind of diet history can typically mess with your thoughts about ingesting food, okay? Even, again, it might be like an underlying subtle belief, but it creates guilt. It creates guilt around eating. So your brain doesn't like that guilty feeling.

So it will rush eat to get it over with. Second is you fear hunger. Again, the same thing, it comes from over dieting or deprivation dieting. Your brain is scared that you won't get enough. And to avoid this, you will rush eat to get it all in quickly. Give yourself permission to enjoy food. First of all, be aware of these, for one.

And if you need to work on that, please reach out to me because we can totally work on that. But really give yourself permission to enjoy food. So, food pleasure can be something that your brain has interpreted as something forbidden or undeserved. But we want to deconstruct that, especially again, if you've been kind of in a dieting cycle, then it can be either extreme, either you are like, it's like cheat days.

Like when people say cheat days, that's kind of like what I'm talking about here. So no such thing as cheat days. Okay. It's just food, but you can give yourself permission to enjoy your food. So let's talk about ending the food chatter. So this is constantly thinking about food all the time. This is the most interesting one to me.

And I totally get it. As I mentioned before, if you have ever been someone who was roaming the aisles of the grocery store in debate with yourself about just buying whatever you want, buying a whole bunch of food, maybe your favorite indulgent foods, or you've simply spent a lot of time thinking about what you're going to eat, what you did eat, that you shouldn't be eating this, that you really want to eat that, but you, but you shouldn't, or anything like that.

If you know, you know, right? So if you are thinking about food all the time, or it seems like this is just who you are, I just want you to know that you're not alone. I hear from so many highly successful, attractive, and accomplished women who want to work with me just to stop thinking about food all of the time.

And I will tell you that if that's you and you think, well, this is just how it is for me, like, This is just who I am. You are wrong, okay? So I'm very happy to tell you that you are 100 percent wrong about that. It happens for two main reasons. One, let's call over hunger, okay? So we have natural levels of hunger, and then we have over hunger, which I mentioned earlier.

When you're eating, And what you're eating is creating an over hunger, more hunger than is necessary or natural, okay? That, of course, if you're going to have all this over hunger, of course you're going to be thinking about food all the time. Totally makes sense, okay? If you're having lots of cravings, you're, you're getting signals from your body and that's going to direct your thinking, okay?

Second is over desire. So, again, just like we have a natural level of desire for food, of wanting food, when you have an over desire, then of course you're going to be thinking about food all the time. What is over desire? It's an emotional reliance on food. So it can be extreme. Say you're super stressed and you buy a huge pack of gummies to cope.

Or it can be more subtle. So this is where maybe you're just feeling a little uneasy, a little discontent, you're having kind of a bad day, low energy day, and you decide to have cereal and toast for dinner instead of maybe, you know, the Greek salad and chicken breast that you planned. Just subtle things where we make our food choices based on emotion, right?

Either trying to chase an emotion or escape an emotion. So instead of being able to regulate your emotion, Say that discontent in the moment, which is a skill you can learn by the way. Right. I talk a lot about that in when we coach together, your brain has cleverly devised an escape button. We call food.

Now you have a distraction from your feelings. You don't have to feel them in the moment because you're so focused on thinking about food. It's like such a good distraction, right? So either it's the debate or that internal battle of planning a private food party or that I shouldn't have, I should, all of that kind of stuff, right?

It's such a distraction for their brain. And it's all concocted to avoid feeling. any kind of negative emotion. And for some of us, even positive emotion, right? If we're just not we don't have a large capacity to feel our emotions in general, any intense emotion, positive or negative, can trigger lots of thoughts or ruminating or thinking about food.

This behavior of thinking about food all the time and wanting food a lot becomes a habit. What is a habit? Your brain and body learns it and becomes very familiar with this pattern and repeats it readily without much effort. So it doesn't take a lot of metabolic energy for your brain. It kind of just goes there like a superhighway.

So it just becomes kind of a default way of being. Then, that becomes your self concept. It's who you believe you are. You think, this is just how I am. I think about food all the time. I'm obsessed. Something must be wrong with me. Something needs to be fixed. But nothing is wrong. All we need to do is focus on optimizing three things to begin with, to start changing this.

So it's what you're eating, When you're eating and stopping it enough, we need to start reducing that over hunger, which is like a physiological solution. And that over desire, which is more of a taking a look at underlying reasons, your beliefs, and your capacity to process emotion. You need to get skilled.

And how to do that so that you can literally become a different person and have an entirely new self concept. So I tell you from experience, from both personal experience, I'm a completely different person. Like when it comes to food and my body, completely different. Okay, and also I see it all the time with my clients as well.

So I know I'm not just like this special unicorn. I see it all the time with people. So if, if they can do it, if I can do it, right? If all these different people can do it, you totally can do it too. But knowledge is often not enough. So for many of us, if you're like, well, that's great for them. But like I have all these other problems.

For many of us, who have been dealing with our weight for years or maybe decades. We really need to do some deeper work. We just need to uncover the reasons behind our choices around food, our behaviors. We need to see through some of our current patterns of thinking, the constructions that we're, you know, living in, and blockages.

If we want to see change, okay. So if we want to see change within ourselves and our bodies, client once told me that they wanted to lose some weight. Yes, but more importantly, they wanted to become a different person. So this is about creating internal power. So whether you are coming off weight loss drugs, or you've decided against them, then this is the opportunity that's available to you.

It's creating that internal power. So when you're empowered. It's because you know you can do it, and you know you can trust your body. That's what I have for you today. I will talk to you again soon. Bye.