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Stuck on the last 10 or 20 pounds? Dr. Barrett breaks down the real drivers of weight loss resistance and five metabolic levers to pull instead of just cutting calories: building muscle, fixing insulin resistance, prioritizing protein and food quality, supporting sleep and stress, and creating daily metabolic demand through movement. He also tackles a growing issue in the GLP-1 era: losing weight while losing muscle, and why that's a worse outcome than the scale suggests.
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Watch the episode on YouTube here!
DISCLAIMER
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Barrett Deubert and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to replace medical advice or treatment from a physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding health questions and concerns. Neither Dr. Deubert nor the Real Health Co. takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All audience members, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle program.
. . .
Watch the episode on YouTube here!
- (00:00) - Intro
- (02:06) - #1: Build Muscle
- (05:14) - #2: Fix Insulin Resistance
- (08:07) - #3: Prioritize Protein
- (10:06) - #4: Sleep
- (11:45) - #5: Metabolic Demand
- (13:47) - Recap
- (14:50) - Closing Thoughts
DISCLAIMER
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Barrett Deubert and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to replace medical advice or treatment from a physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding health questions and concerns. Neither Dr. Deubert nor the Real Health Co. takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All audience members, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle program.
Creators and Guests
What is The Real Health Podcast?
On a mission to share practical solutions to improve your wellbeing, The Real Health Podcast will equip you with evidence-based recommendations essential to achieving a healthy lifestyle. Join Dr. Barrett Deubert as he shares his passion for educating, inspiring, and empowering individuals to achieve “real health for real people”. Breaking down health topics such as: immunity, stress, real food, natural living, and much more to provide you with actionable steps to improving your family’s health.
Today we're going talk about how to build your health to lose 20 pounds. So we're going to be healthier and we're going to be leaner and we're going to have more muscle. Everyone wants that. No one doesn't want that. Well, welcome back to another episode of The Real Health Podcast.
Dr. Barrett:Today is going to be all about the real reason you can't lose your 20 pounds. So the stubborn weight loss resistance issue, why you can't lose that last 10 or 20 pounds. And I'm going give you five strategies to immediately start impacting your weight loss, specifically we're going say fat loss and preserving muscle mass. That's crucial in an era where there is quick weight loss through GLP-1s, yet burning through muscle and fat. It's a big issue.
Dr. Barrett:Today we're talking about how to just shred fat, and probably the top five common mistakes that are made, when it comes to losing weight. And so let's get into it. The real question that I get a lot is, hey, how do I lose 20 pounds in a healthy way? Because you can lose 20 pounds a lot of different ways. GLP-1s is a quick way to do it.
Dr. Barrett:And you can also do it through other means by just starving yourself. But there's a right way to do it. Today we're gonna talk about how to build your health to lose 20 pounds. So we're going be healthier, and we're going to be leaner, and we're going to have more muscle. Everyone wants that.
Dr. Barrett:No one doesn't want that. So, five metabolic levers that we're going to pull on to preserve muscle mass, improve insulin sensitivity, control hunger, and create a metabolism that just rapidly burns fat for energy. So the number one most important strategy if you're trying to lose weight, lose fat specifically, is you have to build muscle. Muscle is a metabolic organ. It burns calories.
Dr. Barrett:The more muscles you have, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. It's really, really simple. So if you aren't losing weight, you probably don't have enough muscle mass, and muscle mass directly increases caloric expenditure, how many calories you're expending daily. And so if I could pick one attribute that people chronically underemphasize during fat loss, that is skeletal muscle. People become obsessed about burning calories and I want them thinking more about how to build metabolically active tissue and that comes from muscle.
Dr. Barrett:Muscle is one of the body's major sites for glucose disposal, so blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity is driven by the more muscle you have. So this is I think why weight loss shouldn't be judged on a scale alone. I think if you just stand on a scale it lies to you. You lost 20 pounds but how much of that is actually fat? How much of it is muscle?
Dr. Barrett:And we see that with the GLP-one issues is that they're losing both fat and muscle. GLP-1s don't prioritize either one, that you're burning both. Unless you're strength training and consuming enough protein, you're burning both and then when you add that weight back on, which most people do, what are they left with? A depleted muscular system and more fat. Actually more fat than when they started, which is the big issue.
Dr. Barrett:And so if you lose 20 pounds of mostly fat while maintaining muscle, that's a great outcome. But if you lose 20 pounds while losing substantial muscle, you're in a very different situation. I wouldn't even say you're healthier for it. So recent evidence reinforces this exact subject matter that resistance training during dietary weight loss helps preserve fat free mass, skeletal mass, while increasing fat mass loss. This is essential to the conversation of, hey, how do I re compensate my body?
Dr. Barrett:How do I maintain skeletal mass and burn fat? Well, you have to do resistance training and this is vital in the GLP-one era. So what is the real health prescription when it comes to building skeletal mass? Lift three to four days a week. You have to progressively overload.
Dr. Barrett:You don't lie to yourself and say you strength train if your weights haven't gone up in the last three months. Okay? Every week you should either add a rep or add a pound at minimum. And if you're not, then you're not progressively overloading. And so if you're not squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, carrying heavy things, you're not resistance training.
Dr. Barrett:And so you're just doing some form of exercise, which is fine, it's great, it's better than nothing. But you're not training, you gotta train. You gotta work usually with someone to help you train properly if you don't know where to start. So your goal isn't to become a smaller version of an unhealthy metabolism, right? We're trying to build skeletal muscle and become metabolically stronger.
Dr. Barrett:Number two, you've got to fix your insulin resistance. If you're not losing weight, you're insulin resistant. You don't have enough muscle and you're insulin resistant. And so this is what we would call unlock stored energy. So when we look at chronically elevated insulin in the setting of excess energy intake and insulin resistance is the problem.
Dr. Barrett:You're not able to efficiently take insulin into the cell which draws your ability to burn glucose, and this is probably the most important teaching point on the podcast because the more muscle you have, the more insulin sensitive usually you are. So when someone becomes insulin resistant, the body needs progressively more insulin to manage the same glucose load and sooner or later that continues to burn out those receptors. And that metabolic environment is commonly accompanied by chronic inflammation, abdominal fat, visceral fat. So if you have fat around your mid section, that is insulin resistance. Elevated triglycerides, we see energy crashes, increased hunger, poor metabolic flexibility.
Dr. Barrett:You can't go without a meal or two meals or a day without eating because you're just exhausted or feel like your energy levels are crashing. You can have completely normal fasting glucose levels while insulin is already in a compensation form. What would I look at? These are things I look at. I had a conversation about it with a patient this morning.
Dr. Barrett:Don't stop at glucose. Look at these other markers. And Function Health is a great lab to do these markers with, but fasting glucose, fasting insulin, hemoglobin A1c levels, triglycerides, HDL, and waist circumference. Those will help you understand if you're prediabetic. And a lot of it boils down to what we call an HOMA IR or insulin resistant number, and that tells you exactly where you're at.
Dr. Barrett:Don't just assume that you're not insulin resistant if you don't have blood sugar crushes. If you have abdominal fat that sticks out more than your belt line, you are at some degree insulin resistant. Okay? So let's attack insulin resistance with the fundamentals. How do we do that?
Dr. Barrett:Protein centered whole meals, three meals a day, no snacking, don't crash your blood sugar levels. Walk ten to fifteen minutes after each meal to help insulin sensitivity, lift weights, move throughout the day, keep your step count high, and stop grazing from breakfast to dinner. Grazing is going to ruin your metabolism. If your body's become metabolically resistant to insulin, simply eating less doesn't address the underlying pathology that got you there. You've got to correct it with your nutrition, not from just avoiding food.
Dr. Barrett:Number three, you've got to prioritize protein, we just mentioned it, and food quality. Control your hunger by consuming enough protein and healthy fats and minimizing your sugar levels. Sugar comes from a lot of different forms, but carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables. So what would I do? I'd consume a lot of low glycemic, high fibrous vegetables with a ton of protein and healthy fats and that's usually going to help you start to stabilize your blood sugar levels.
Dr. Barrett:Three meals a day, no snacking. We want to try to stabilize our blood sugar crashing and we want to become metabolically flexible in between our meals. People dramatically cut calories but don't give the body enough nutrition. So, they coffee for breakfast, a protein bar, a 300 calorie lunch, and then they then they're standing in the pantry at 09:30 wondering why they're just ravenous and craving food. Well, the issue is that they didn't satiate their body throughout the day, so they're craving everything at night.
Dr. Barrett:Don't start by starving yourself. You have to start by feeding yourself and feeding yourself adequately three meals a day, adequate protein, healthy fats, minimal carbohydrates, mainly from low glycemic, high fiber foods. And for most adults, they need 30 to 40 grams of protein a day, high quality protein. You're like, that sounds like so much. Well, it is when you haven't been eating it.
Dr. Barrett:So whether it's eggs, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, chicken, turkey, beef, fish, seafood of any sort. Mean, this is where we're getting quality protein our diet. And adequate protein becomes particularly important during substantial weight loss. So if you're trying to have weight loss, you need adequate protein because it helps preserve your lean mass, your lean tissue, especially when it's combined with a resistance exercise. So you've got to make sure that you are consuming enough protein in a weight loss state.
Dr. Barrett:Number four, if you aren't sleeping and you are stressed, you are not going to lose weight. Some of the hardest patients to overcome weight loss resistance are the night shift workers or the shift workers that go from days to nights. You got to sleep at night. You've got to get growth hormone production. You're like, Hey doc, I'm doing everything right.
Dr. Barrett:Then you find out you're sleeping six hours a night, waking up at 3AM, exhausted all day, drinking caffeine until four, they're chronically stressed, you're burning yourself out. So you got to make sure that you just get adequate sleep. Seven to eight hours a night is essential up to nine for most adults. Consistent bedtime routine, we always preach on this podcast, is essential with viewing the sunlight in the morning. And then make sure you're cutting your caffeine off at 02:00 so the half life of caffeine doesn't disrupt your sleep circadian rhythm at night.
Dr. Barrett:Make sure you're getting a deep restful restorative sleep cycles by cooling off your bedroom appropriately and that obviously you're addressing any sleep and snoring issues where you might be having some oxygen deprivation and sleep apnea. And when you support your stress levels through walking, reading, praying, meditating, cold plunging, sauna, all the things we're gonna be talking about at biohacking workshop on Monday, then your body's in a resilient state and able to take on more load. You cannot chronically deprive the body of recovery and expect it to perform metabolically at its best. You have to support the recovery just as much as you support the teardown. So you can build all day, build muscle, whatever, but you gotta recover it well at night.
Dr. Barrett:The fifth one I think is something that we're hearing more about and you're seeing more of it, and it's just as important as the other four. You gotta create metabolic demand. What do I mean by that? Let's just say you lift three times a week, Right? So the question really comes down to what are you doing with the other hundred and sixty hours of the week?
Dr. Barrett:Right? Well, those other other hundred and sixty hours, you gotta be moving. So you gotta be walking. Get get a desk, stand up desk with a walking tread underneath it and just just get just get moving. Take the stairs when you can.
Dr. Barrett:Park as far away as you can and walk. Do yard work, right? Just move your body. I like to walk ten to fifteen minutes after every meal because it provides insulin sensitivity and it gets you more steps in. There is a reality that I think the Real Health Co prescription with metabolic demand, increasing metabolic demand, is you got to get seven to 10,000 steps a day.
Dr. Barrett:If you're not getting at least seven, you've just got to change that. And maybe today that's the only thing you change and you'll lose weight forward. But you gotta be getting seven to 10,000 steps a day. I think that is an essential component. You need to walk after meals.
Dr. Barrett:So walk after your meals. Even if it's just five minutes, even if it's three minutes the first meal, what you're doing is creating a rhythm and a pattern and a discipline that will help you build to ten to fifteen minutes. And then make sure you're resistance training three to four times a week, doing maybe some zone two cardio to create that metabolic demand where you're just hitting that fat, burning that fat. You're not burning fat in Zone four, Zone five, high heart rate. You're burning fat in Zone two where your heart rate is at 130, 140.
Dr. Barrett:That's sweet spot. So, when we look at the big takeaway, I think the idea here is let's not chase weight loss, let's chase metabolic health. And here is what I would say we wanna be pulling on, the five levers, right? Muscle mass, insulin sensitivity, protein food quality, sleep stress support, and daily movement. So how do we do that?
Dr. Barrett:We lift heavier, we eat better, we move more, we sleep deeper, and we improve our insulin sensitivity. And when we do that, right, I think it's significantly better than any therapy, drug, vitamin, mineral that you can consume because now you've built a healthy life and a discipline. That's how you truly turn weight loss resistance around Is you get your body moving, eat protein, create metabolic flexibility, and you'll start to see the right pounds come off the scale. Not just weight loss, fat loss. And that's way more important.
Dr. Barrett:Hey, I hope this added value to you in your health journey. Thanks for always listening to the Real Health Podcast.