Full Transcript 0:00 First of all, we need to understand you cannot exercise the kitchen, right? 0:03 So you're not gonna be able to out-exercise a diet. 0:07 However, when you look at the research, exercise helps you sustain your weight loss. 0:11 And one, it makes you feel good. 0:13 It also can, real interesting research showing that it can kinda counter the poor sleep habits that you may have right now. 0:20 As you start eating better, moving more, you'll start sleeping better. 0:24 But movement is such an important piece, and how you can get started is just start small. 0:29 This is Dr. 0:30 Talks. 0:37 Well, thanks so much for joining us today. 0:39 Today, we have an excellent guest. 0:42 We have Dr. 0:42 Lori Marvis. 0:44 Dr Marves is a family physician as well as a lifestyle medicine physician, and she's been using food as medicine since 2012. She has a license in all 50 states, 0:56 so she can help people throughout the country with behavior change and nutrition change to improve their health, improve your weight. 1:03 Thank you so Well, thank you for having me. 1:08 I'm excited to be here. 1:10 And Dr. 1:11 Marvis today is going to talk with us about sort of her five tips for healthy weight loss. 1:16 Is that right? 1:17 Yeah, I'd like to definitely talk about the levers that we know we should pull, but we struggle to pull. 1:24 So yeah. 1:24 Yes. 1:25 Oh, that's a good way to say it that. 1:26 We know, we shouldn't do, right. 1:29 Cause a lot of us kind of have a sense of some of the things we. 1:31 Should be doing, how do we make it happen? 1:35 Right. 1:35 Especially in today's fast-paced modern world, it's very hectic and stressful and yeah, we need all the help we can get. 1:43 Well, let's start with the first one. 1:45 So when it comes to nutrition and balanced diet, can you help us understand how a balanced diets contributes to weight loss and what are the key food groups 1:56 that we should be working to achieve to have that balanced nutrient-dense diet? 2:03 Yeah. 2:03 And I think we kind of talked a little bit about this before we started recording today and is understanding everybody's coming to a weight loss journey 2:11 from different beliefs and traditions and cultures and all sorts of, you know, maybe there's some mental health components, 2:17 there are some unhealthy relationships with food. 2:20 So everyone needs to understand that their journey is unique and we need to address it as such. 2:24 However, in the United States and across many places the world, we are fiber deficient. 2:30 And so I typically lean towards a whole food plant-based diet and I will speak to the benefits of eating more plants. 2:38 However you want to engage with fiber in your life, that's completely up to you. 2:43 But I do know I've been eating a Whole Food Plant-Based Diet for 12 years and have only seen wonderful things in regards to my I've always been pretty healthy, 2:50 but I'm in my mid-50s. 2:52 My daughter's a doctor. 2:53 I am not exactly young these days, But I feel pretty good. 2:57 But it's some incredible benefits to patients, including one patient up to 350 pounds weight loss. 3:02 We've had multiple with over 200, loss of 100. And so there's... 3:07 Such an important element here. 3:08 Yeah, absolutely. 3:10 So what happens when you start adding more fiber to your plate? 3:13 A couple of things. 3:14 Number one, we understand weight loss is a calorically balanced equation, right? 3:18 You have to have some type of caloric reduction to actually see weight-loss occur. 3:24 But how do you do that and not feel deprived and walk around hungry? 3:28 Well, there's some mechanisms that can occur when we eat a whole food plant-based diet. 3:33 on the physiologic level, but also what happens is you're starting to really improve things like chronic disease. 3:40 Maybe you'll be able to also stop certain medications like insulin or something if you are an uncontrolled diabetic and you have high doses of insulin. 3:48 which of course we need insulin, it's a very important hormone and medication, but it can be weight promoting in some places. 3:54 So here we are looking at one, we're going to be improving how you feel, then you'll start moving more, you sleep better, 4:00 and all of this kind of feeds upon itself. 4:03 This is a anti-inflammatory diet. 4:05 So when you combine the phytonutrients of fruits, veggies, beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds, you're going to find that, 4:12 again, the fiber will fill you up, right? 4:15 So you will be eating much less chlorically dense foods. 4:18 That in and of itself is where the chloric reduction occurs without you even trying not having to look about counting your calories and feeling deprived 4:27 and white muffling it through the next meal because you're like, I can only have this much. 4:32 But when you start thinking about all these amazing foods, now nuts and seeds can be obviously very calorically dense, but these are a good source of healthy fats. 4:41 And you certainly need to consume those on a great basis, especially walnuts are amazing benefits to not only longevity, 4:48 brain health and heart health. 4:50 You have chia seeds and ground flax and hemp seeds, great sources of protein. 4:55 Again, the ALA, these short chain omegas. 4:58 So with all of that, you can think about also if you have hypertension. 5:02 I just finished the Hypertension Summit. 5:04 Wonderful nitrates and different things that occur in those dark green leafy vegetables. 5:08 And then you start thinking about the resistant starch that occurs in your beans, and we're talking about improved your health, 5:16 your gut health. 5:17 When you get the butyrate production by the little bacteria, they're just going at it, reduce risk for things like colon. 5:24 cancer and rectal cancer, things like that. 5:26 So again, we are a fiber deficient nature patients. 5:29 But I would say probably on average, if you look at the research, 12 to 15 grams of fiber per day per person. 5:37 And they include like french fries and potato chips. 5:39 Like that we're currently getting. 5:40 That's all people are right now getting on a average. 5:42 I was like, that's low. 5:43 Yes. 5:50 Yeah, they do recommend 25 for women, 35 grams for men. 5:54 Even that I think is an anemic recommendation. 5:56 That's the minimum, right? 5:57 That was, that's them minimum. 5:59 And when I am looking at my dietary intake, when they actually charted, I'm hitting upwards of 75, 80 grams per day. 6:07 If you look at the Paleolithic poop and see what actually our ancestors ate, they were eating 100 grams plus of protein, 6:16 of fiber per day. 6:17 And it's utterly amazing to think we live in this world of this ultra processed food and so many people are deficient. 6:26 So regardless of what camp, those who say eat whole foods, The number one thing is get rid of those ultra-process foods. 6:34 They're nothing but trouble, pro-inflammatory, very chlorically dense, and really just lead to malnourishment on the micro level and macro level. 6:42 So yeah, absolutely. 6:44 Yeah. 6:44 And gosh, what a wealth of information there. 6:46 I heard a few things. 6:48 Eating fiber, will push other things off your plate, right? 6:51 So if you're eating leafy green vegetables and you are eating beans and lentils and fruit, then you don't have to worry about not eating, 6:58 say, potato chips because you full from hopefully eating something else instead, it pushes the other thing out of your diet instead of coming from this 7:06 place of I can't food, these are foods that I could eat without having to stress about a whole ton, so I love that. 7:12 And that most of us are eat at best half of the minimum we should be eating. 7:19 But like, there's not really, like it's hard to overdo the fiber, would you say? 7:25 Yeah, well, it depends, right? 7:28 So if you have someone who is just starting out and they've been very fiber deficient, they might have some struggles in the GI area. 7:37 They might notice that they're feeling bloated or very gassy. 7:41 Those are just the microbiome coming back online and going, Oh, I have fiber. 7:46 Let's get down and start chomping. 7:48 And so the bacteria just doing what they need to do is really chomp down on this fiber and creating an environment that really decreases your risk for many, 7:59 many things. 8:00 your health really, if you think about your gut microbiome, it is such a wonderful place to start thinking about how can I improve my health? 8:08 How can i improve My gut Microbiome? 8:09 And it starts with fiber. 8:11 But yeah, so you can get in a little bit of trouble if You go for the black beans and you know, two cups a day and everything. 8:19 You might want to Start with lentils, but again, cooking your food, blending your Food that will help. 8:23 but other than that, you really are going to struggle to overdo anything on the fiber If you do feel some little gut adjustments, 8:31 that maybe that microbiome sort of growing, getting active, and getting healthy, hopefully with time your body will sort-of adjust to that and get used 8:41 to it. 8:41 It will, yeah. 8:43 I would say anywhere between two weeks to six months, depending on the individual. 8:47 Now if you have someone who has inflammatory bowel disease or something and they're like, yes, I'm going to eat a whole plant-based diet, 8:54 they'll cure some amazing case reports of people reversing certain autoimmune diseases. 9:00 Remember medications are required. 9:02 We got to put out the forest fire first. 9:04 Don't just abandon your current treatment protocol with your doctors. 9:08 You need to speak to them. 9:09 Say you may want to start incorporating certain foods and now those type of foods may need really being paying attention to easily digestible forms like 9:19 starches or something like that. 9:20 Really thinking about how you can start incorporating some of those foods in certain circumstances. 9:26 Yeah. 9:27 And then I also love what you said about, you know, focusing on those whole foods and backing away from those processed and ultra processed foods, 9:35 right? 9:35 The things that come in a package, the thing that you really can't recognize what the original food even was, has, 40 ingredients on the back of the package. 9:43 Those things are designed for us to overeat right some you know company that's making millions or billions from this product has made it so we will eat 9:52 and eat that product but it's hard to over eat black beans right you can only eat so many of them they're delicious they are good but at a certain point 9:59 you do feel full from them right. 10:02 Right, right. 10:03 And it's not the food that your mind goes to when you're stressed out or lonely or, you know. 10:09 It's like, hmm, I'm gonna need a can of black beans or some broccoli. 10:13 You know, your going to the ultra processed foods that have the high sugar, the fat, and the salt. 10:18 which just wreaked havoc on your poor body because we weren't made to be consuming these foods. 10:24 We didn't evolve to eat ultra-processed foods, so it's a very important message that if that's the one thing someone will do is remove the ultra processed 10:34 foods their health alone would improve. 10:36 Yeah. 10:37 One action. 10:37 Okay, I love it. 10:38 So reduce ultra-processed food and then start integrating more of those fiber-rich foods, our veggies, fruits, beans, lentils, 10:47 nuts. 10:49 Right. 10:50 Exactly. 10:50 Okay. 10:52 So the second habit I think we were going to talk about for improving our health and our weight was around physical activity. 10:59 Can you tell us about how regular physical activities can help the weight loss process and maybe some suggestions on what sort of activities people can 11:09 get started on? 11:11 Yeah, absolutely. 11:12 So first of all, we need to understand you cannot exercise the kitchen, right? 11:15 So you're not going to be able to out exercise a diet. 11:19 However, when you look at the research, exercise helps you sustain your weight loss. 11:24 And one, it makes you feel good. 11:25 It also can really interesting research showing that it can kind of counter the the poor sleep habits that you may have right now. 11:33 Hopefully as you start eating better, moving more, you'll start sleeping better. 11:37 But movement is such an important piece and how you can get started is just start small. 11:41 I had a patient, there's an excellent example of how starting tiny can really build into a wonderful snowball effect over your across multiple dimensions 11:51 of your life. 11:52 Number one is she She didn't see me. 11:55 I was seeing her regularly, and I just was trying to get her to start a walking habit. 11:58 She was, Dr. 11:59 Marvis, I don't have time for a walk habit." I said, well, tell me, when are you outside? 12:03 She goes, Well, outside when I go to my car and get in it to go work and then I'm driving back and exhausted. 12:09 And I get out of my card and go into my house. 12:11 and she's basically trying telling me is like, i don' care what you're saying. 12:14 i dont have the time. 12:15 Okay, you are outside, parked in your driveway, open the door, walk to the end of the driveway and back. 12:21 Can you do that for me? 12:23 Are you serious? 12:24 I'm like, yes, I am serious. 12:25 She goes, okay. 12:25 I was like so I really made her pinky promise in my clinic. 12:30 And she, it was really funny. 12:32 she's like all right fine I'll do that. 12:33 As like you got to make it something that you absolutely can do. 12:36 and she said I can absolutely do it. 12:38 So she walked to the end of her driveway and back and by the few days she was just like this is ridiculous I could walk around the block. 12:44 Before you know it, she's walking two to three miles, lost 60 pounds, and reversed her type 2 diabetes. 12:49 So this is literally starting with walking to the end of the driveway, cursing me the whole way, I'm sure, then walking back. 12:56 But then the point here is that tiny habits make a huge difference. 13:00 Another one that's really kind of fun to share was a more recent patient. 13:05 And we were talking about her exercise because I'm just so busy. 13:08 I mean, okay, tell me one habit that you do every day that I don't care if you were in the middle of the jungle or in a New York sun, 13:14 you know, rise tall building or the Middle of traveling. 13:18 What's the one have it that your dishes I drink my coffee in them where you make okay. 13:22 Wherever that The habit is occurring. 13:24 I need you to do something. 13:26 Can you do push-ups on the wall, push ups against a counter, squats? 13:29 What could you? 13:30 She was, I could do a pushups against the counter. 13:32 And I was like, okay, i want you start with two. 13:35 and she's like while the coffee's brewing, and you need to two on a calendar. 13:39 She's, like okay I can do that. 13:40 So she started, well I kinda let it kinda slide. 13:44 i didn't follow up about it regularly. 13:46 It's two months later, she was Dr. 13:47 Merce, you haven't been asking me about my push up. 13:51 Well tell me your pushup. 13:53 Well, I'll tell you I can do 60 now. 13:54 I was like, really? 13:56 And she goes, look at these guns right here. 14:00 And I'm like this is some pretty pipe and hot guns. 14:02 This is a woman in her mid 60s. 14:04 We're building confidence. 14:05 we're getting stronger. 14:07 Now we need to push the envelope and start maybe some knee push-ups on the ground. 14:12 What other physical things can you do? 14:14 So certain types of activities, what exercises should you be doing? 14:19 One, some type of cardiovascular exercise where you're gaining your heart rate up a few times a week where maybe you have enough time to finish a sentence. 14:26 Next. 14:27 Resistance training is such a critical, critical piece, especially as we get older, trying to really prevent sarcopenia, 14:33 which is literally loss of muscle mass, making sure you're eating enough protein to make sure your maintaining that muscle, 14:39 most especially, as you get old. 14:41 And so resistance training at least three times a week, 20, 25 minutes where you doing big compound movements, you know, 14:47 squats, deadlifts, things like that. 14:49 really think about. 14:50 And if you have been injured or you had things like osteoporosis, make sure you speak to your doctor about a physical therapy referral so that they can 14:58 create the plan that's appropriate for you. 15:00 Then finally, I think some flexibility and mobility is really, really key here. 15:04 So you might actually be doing all the walking or the running or swimming, biking, and then you're doing resistance training, 15:10 but you still struggle to maybe touch your toes or doing some rotational motion and really struggle at the end of a moment movement for a particular joint. 15:20 That is really important to pay attention to because that will really speak to longevity, falling, activities of daily living. 15:27 A great test to do is a sit, sitting and rising. 15:30 Can you lower your body without using your hands or knees to the ground and then bring your back up? 15:36 So if you're over the age of 55 or so and struggle to do that, that is something to pay attention to. 15:41 And that doesn't mean you have to be able to that perfectly, but can you make some advancements? 15:46 and doing that. 15:47 And so just seeing where your weak spots are, because as the body ages, which it will, that's just the reality of the world in our life, 15:55 you can make some big differences by, again, just paying attention to a few things and seeing what you do. 16:00 But yeah, those are the most important things, I think, when it comes to physical movement, for sure. 16:06 Those were really powerful stories. 16:08 And Dr. 16:09 Marvis, I think I have like the same patient. 16:11 I had the patient with the walking where she actually physically could only walk to the mailbox, the end of the street, because she was so short of breath. 16:21 She started doing that every day. 16:23 she started getting on a treadmill and she would start with one minute on her treadmill. 16:28 Over the course of several months, she got up to an hour of walking on the treadmill day and ended up losing. 16:33 about a hundred pounds and it was just amazing. 16:36 And like you said, it all snowballs, right? 16:38 Like you start with that small change, but then it easier to eat healthy, like it just all started going together for her. 16:45 So I think that was such a powerful message, start somewhere. 16:49 We used to think you had to do a lot of exercise to get a benefit and you do get more benefit from more exercise, But we are starting to realize that so 16:59 much of us sit so small amounts of movement are actually really powerful too. 17:04 Yeah. 17:06 You can just move movement, little bites of it, right? 17:09 There's some interesting studies on like running upstairs, up or down, or doing jumping jacks for like 20 seconds, you know, 17:15 a few times a day. 17:15 That alone will have some improvement. 17:18 It's a really interesting thing. 17:20 Any type of moment you can. 17:22 And it's the 10,000 steps per day started as a marketing boy. 17:26 But if you look at the research, even just around the researcher of Alzheimer's, What they actually found was around 9,800 steps per day and decreases 17:35 your risk of Alzheimer by 50%. There's correlation here as far as causation can go into the intricacies. 17:41 But again, it gets back to movement and really seeing the benefit of moving your body in whatever capacity you can at this current time. 17:49 Let's move on to habit number three, which is about hydration. 17:53 So can you tell us about how hydration is important for weight management and how much water do you recommend people should drink in trying to support 18:02 their weight loss efforts? 18:05 Yeah, so I think so many people walk around dehydrated. 18:08 One, we're drinking things that dehydrate us if you're taking highly caffeinated foods, or maybe you are on medications like diuretics for hypertension control, 18:15 things like that. 18:16 We're walking around in a state of dehydration. 18:19 And so really, if your having fatigue, headaches, difficulty sleeping, and you just don't know what's going on, try increasing your water. 18:30 You can do—I like here, you can see I like La Croix. 18:33 You could do the sparkly water if you want, but just plain water, right? 18:36 You might want to put it through a water filtration just because, I don't know if your city water is, or if we're doing well water. 18:42 But again, that's outside of this conversation. 18:46 Making sure that you're drinking enough fluids throughout the day. 18:50 So I would start maybe eight to 10 ounces per hour during your waking, first eight hours awake. 18:57 Now, if you have a history of heart failure where you had renal issues, you might want to speak to your doctor again. 19:03 You might be on a limited protocol for fluid just because if your heart's failure and things like that, then you need to be very mindful. 19:09 But again, for the majority of humans, we want make sure we're drinking our 8-10 ounces per hour of the first 8 to 10 hours you're awake and you will probably 19:19 do okay. 19:19 Of course, If you are a smaller person, you might be, oh, we can't drink that much, but if you're a larger person or you exercise, 19:25 you may obviously need to increase that, maybe paying attention to electrolyte balance and stuff as well. 19:30 However, sometimes people really struggle with your night time urination. 19:35 This is where I think it's important, sip don't gulp, because the rate at which we actually consume fluid can actually affect our ability to pee more often. 19:44 So paying intention, may be two hours prior to going to bed and Try not to gulp later in the evenings, avoiding the caffeine foods or drinks. 19:54 That will help with your nighttime urination needs. 19:56 It's a good point. 19:57 Yeah. 19:58 So if it's keeping you up at night, like, you know, stop drinking maybe two hours before bed. 20:02 Don't, don't try to catch up right before bedtime. 20:05 Is not the time to ketchup on all the water you missed out. 20:08 Start again the next day. 20:11 And some people are like, well, maybe I'll just drink a gallon first thing in the morning. 20:14 Please don't do that, right? 20:15 So if you're rapidly drinking water, remember, poison is the dose. 20:21 So when you think about water or anything, you can get too much at once. 20:25 Water, if your drinking seriously like a full gallon in less than five minutes, Sodium will decrease very rapidly and that can put you your life at risk. 20:35 So again, try not, that's kind of like the weekend warrior syndrome. 20:38 You're like, I'm going to do it all at once. 20:40 Well, let's slow down the horses here and, you know, kindof pace yourself. 20:44 It's a marathon, not a sprint. 20:46 And, but you do need to pay attention to your hydration and you'll feel better. 20:49 you think better, You'll be more awake. 20:53 Yeah, I like your idea or your suggestion of, you know, your eight ounce glass, like every hour, because it kind of gives you a little metric, 21:01 a check off. 21:02 And some of them, some water bottles and things now even have like a timer on them or something like that. 21:07 So if you don't naturally remember to do it, using some those tricks to help remember, to get your hourly glass of water in. 21:16 And it's important to remember that with any behavior, you need three things to occur. 21:20 You need a prompt and you the ability and motivation. 21:23 So if you have the motivation to stay hydrated, great. 21:26 But you also need to prompt. 21:27 That's where maybe putting your water in front of you or setting it there or a project at the time or exactly. 21:33 on your phone or your watch. 21:35 That'll allow you to, and then if it's nearby, you have the ability to do it. 21:39 So if you look at BJ Fogg's work, it is amazing. 21:42 But when you put those together, motivation, ability and a prompt, that's when a behavior will occur. 21:50 do something or create a behavior or an environment that will support a behaviour and really, you know, promote, allow you to do that. 21:57 Think about what you can do to employ, like I said, the prompts to trigger the ability to it and the motivation, so. 22:07 I love it. 22:08 Okay, perfect. 22:08 So water, but evenly throughout the day. 22:11 And I think that's an important thing that maybe some people don't naturally do. 22:17 So habit number four was going to be around sleep. 22:21 So let's discuss that relationship between the quality of sleep and weight loss and what are some of those practices that we can do to help our sleep? 22:34 Right, so when you look at the data, those who have less optimal sleep will be at higher risk for obesity for a variety of reasons. 22:42 But number one, when we think about your sleep, if you are snoring or you're waking up fatigued or someone's saying, oh, 22:49 I noticed you were gasping overnight, please, see a sleep specialist, get a Sleep Study. 22:54 Let's not ignore the fact that you might have sleep apnea, you may need some type of intervention to make sure that we're not putting your risk at higher 23:03 risk of, you know, heart attack, stroke, things like that. 23:05 So when you look at the science, also people who are sick deprived live shorter lives. 23:11 Sleep is really important. 23:12 If you think about it, we spend about a third of our life asleep. 23:16 Well, there's a lot of things going on, right? 23:19 even just speaking in the brain, your metabolic health of your brain. 23:22 Think about high-rise building, right? 23:24 And if you see workers during the day and they're doing their thing and then the lights go off, well, then someone comes in around 11 o'clock and flip 23:32 on the light, they are cleaning. 23:33 Your brain is doing the same thing, so the cleanup crew is coming in, cleaning up the metabolic waste, setting those memories away into the storage data files. 23:42 And really, that's an important thing to remember, especially between the 11 PM and 4am. 23:47 I will have patience. 23:48 He said, yeah, I sleep fine. 23:50 Let's talk a little bit more about your sleep habits. 23:52 She goes, well, because maybe they're tired, right? 23:55 I was like, but I don't, sleep okay. 23:57 They're going to bed at one in the morning and getting up at like seven or something. 24:02 This is not good sleep behavior. 24:03 Let's dive a little deeper. 24:05 Or maybe they're on their phone or iPad or watching TV right up until the moment that they go to sleep. 24:12 Our brains are light sensitive, right? 24:14 There's a pineal gland in the brain. 24:17 Even those who are blind will be affected by the light. 24:20 And so early morning sunshine tells the brains, yo, wake up. 24:25 Right now, in 16 hours, you're going to be ready for bed. 24:28 So the getting ready to bed actually starts in morning. 24:31 So think about it that way. 24:33 Getting some early morning sunshine, 10, 15 minutes, and then maybe even getting some evening as the sun is starting to settle, 24:41 there's different intensities of light will make an effect on your brain. 24:45 Maybe trying to get rid of the overhead glaring lights in the evening will be helpful as well. 24:50 So you want to avoid any type of large meal about three hours before bed. 24:55 You want make sure also that you're avoiding caffeine. 24:58 probably at least 8 to 10 hours before bed, especially if you're very sensitive. 25:02 There's some adenosine issues there that will keep you from being sleepy. 25:07 And then again, the piece here is, are you waking up multiple times in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons? 25:13 Are you stressed? 25:15 you know, kind of the monkey chatter brain going on at one or two, three in the morning. 25:19 You know there's some stress techniques, there are things like meditation, mindfulness practices, yoga nidra, which is kind like a body scan practice. 25:28 There's tons of things you can do to improve your sleep. 25:31 Exercise will help your And then, in addition, ask your doctor if there's any medications that you might be taking that could be disrupting your sleep 25:38 as well. 25:38 I think we really neglect side effects of medications. 25:42 Doctors are really, really busy and there is such a polypharmacy that's occurring right now. 25:48 I don't even know. 25:50 It's the interactions and medications, the side effects of medications. 25:53 We absolutely will maybe need some medications but at the end of the day, let's pay attention to potential side-effects. 26:00 Sleep is really, really critical. 26:02 Even when you think about hypertension, there's a natural, what we call nocturnal dipping that occurs overnight that if you do not have that happen because 26:10 you're awake or you are stressed, you may be at higher risk for hypertension and people are like, why is my blood pressure not dropping? 26:16 My weight's good, I'm exercising, but they have horrible sleep. 26:19 Well, it very well might be related to that. 26:21 So again, at the end of the day, the mental health piece is also very important, especially in regards to weight loss. 26:28 There's a lot of feeding of emotions and not necessarily feeding your actual nutritional needs for your body, right? 26:34 And so If we can sleep better, we feel better mentally. 26:38 We're probably more likely to exercise and eat and make healthier food choices, which will all again, all encompassing help with your weight loss. 26:46 Yeah, it all goes together. 26:48 And sleep is like both directions, right? 26:50 If you get poor sleep, It affects your mood. 26:53 But if your mode is not in a good place, that's going to affect your sleep. 26:57 and then like that underlying thing, Which is a great segue into the next thing to talk about, Right? 27:04 So how does stress affect our ability to lose weight? 27:07 And what are some effective stress reduction techniques that people can use in their weight loss plan? 27:14 Yeah, so I think I'm being in my mid-50s and having patients, I tend to attract that audience. 27:20 They're mostly female, you know, 45 to 65-ish, somewhere in there. 27:24 Many of them are going through perimenopause, menopausal. 27:27 There's a lot of, thinking about the physical component here, there's some hormone fluctuations that are occurring that could be stress-related because 27:34 you're like, what's going on with my body? 27:36 It's causing sleep disruptions. 27:37 I am more moody. 27:38 We also live in a very Intense modern culture, especially in the United States. 27:44 There's so much stress and I think almost self-induced stress as well, right? 27:48 We try to stack so in our lives that there's no space to allow ourselves to actually breathe and, you know, recover. 27:56 from everything that we're dealing with in our lives. 27:58 We're very busy humans, but how much of that do we really need, right? 28:02 And then we also then, I call it doomsday scrolling, you scroll through the Instagram feed and the Facebook feed, and you're comparing yourself to someone's 28:12 highlight reel of their life. 28:14 I guarantee you, their live is not what you are seeing on Instagram. 28:16 That's just the realities of the world. 28:19 But unfortunately, that's kind of how we are. 28:21 We're never feeling quite good enough. 28:23 So first of all, I would say, look at where the stress is coming from. 28:27 Is there anywhere you can create space? 28:30 And space is really important. 28:31 That's the place that you find a point to breathe and maybe connect with nature, maybe go for a walk, find time to exercise, 28:39 connect to loved ones outside of technology. 28:42 maybe sit down and have dinner without your phones, actually listen to each other and to have conversations and create those very important social ties 28:51 for longevity and just a healthy, thriving life. 28:54 And so when you think about it, there's an interesting I have it here actually because I just did another live interview right before we talked and it 29:05 was really speaking to stress management. 29:07 There's some really interesting things you can do and just monitoring your own stress. 29:12 You're like, yeah, I'm stressed, but I better because i'll ask and take questions for patients and they're I deal with stress great, 29:19 but when I do like, I'll do this a little short to question, like how are you dealing with this? 29:24 Do you find yourself anxious or do you yourself, you know, worried most days? 29:28 They're like off the charts, right? 29:29 But then they'll turn around and say, But I handle stress well, even though they're worried about everything every day, multiple times a day. 29:36 So there's a really interesting thing you can actually use. 29:38 It's called the perceived stress scale. 29:40 And it's at 10 or 14 question scale, Like you could say one of them is some of the questions. 29:46 Let me pull out some here for you. 29:48 is in the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly? 29:53 How often do you feel that you were unable to control the important things in your life? 29:57 And anyway, so you score it, and then that is a great starting baseline because it's yourself answering. 30:03 Nobody else needs to see it. 30:05 You don't have to report it to anyone, but if you want to use this information to talk to your doctor about what they maybe need to do for you, 30:13 that would be fine too. 30:14 But when we think about dealing with the stress We really got to create space and finding things that we enjoy. 30:23 And remember, it's okay to say no. 30:25 You don't have to yes to everything. 30:27 I think that is directly to me. 30:37 Yes, you're taking on the summit. 30:39 It's one of those things. 30:40 I totally appreciate that. 30:41 So the factor here is just to know that nobody's going to come to save you. 30:46 You have to do this yourself. 30:49 And that at the end of the day, when you are at end your life, what are you going be wishing for that you Did that one last thing at work and answered that? 30:57 One last email and that. 30:59 One less text or there you're going to be so thankful for taking time and space in your life to enjoy your loved ones and building those memories and affecting 31:07 their lives and potentially generations and beyond. 31:09 So really important factors here to really, maybe you need to do a radical shift in. 31:14 Your life. 31:15 Maybe you. 31:15 Need to rethink about a few things. 31:17 With that being said, we're going to sell all of our properties and actually start living full-time in an RV and travel the United States. 31:24 All my kids are across the united states. 31:26 We're gonna go see each of them, my husband and I, and go harass them for a bit and enjoy hiking and nature, which is where our, 31:33 this is, that's my nirvana, is like being out in nature. 31:36 And yeah, so I'm like, there's no time, like they're present. 31:40 That seems very radical to many people, but man, this is what we're ready to do it and we can, and so let's go. 31:46 And so that's what I say. 31:48 If it's a little go, if it is a big go whatever your go is, just go because the last thing you want to is regret and next week will not be the perfect time. 31:57 Next week may not here. 31:59 We are not promising anything but this present moment. 32:01 So please, please please understand mindfulness is such a key. 32:05 Living in the present will decrease stress to such an amazing degree. 32:09 And I didn't fully understand that till I really started practicing mindfulness techniques. 32:14 So, yeah. 32:15 Powerful stuff. 32:16 I think the big take home I got from that is that some people may not identify that they are living in a state of stress, 32:24 right? 32:24 It is so much a part of our modern world and sometimes even like encourage, that we should all be so busy, so productive, 32:34 and that that pressure and stress may be a normal feeling in our society. 32:38 So I love that idea of that stress scale. 32:40 Can you say the name of it again? 32:41 So people, if they want to try that out. 32:44 Yeah, so it's the prestige stress scale. 32:47 The prestige press scale, yeah. 32:51 Yeah. 32:51 I think that's good because sometimes we don't have insight into those things, right? 32:55 Like we think this is normal. 32:56 Everyone around me is like this. 32:58 And if stress is really this underlying thing, it is going to wear on you. 33:02 It is gonna make it hard to lose weight. 33:04 Its gonna affect sleep. 33:05 So you may not even realize that you feel like you were under stress all the time. 33:09 it may just be part of such a normal to someone. 33:13 Yeah, I think so. 33:15 If you are always feeling like this discontent or unease or feel like you're always complaining about things and you just always like, 33:23 man, nothing's ever going my way, there is absolutely some underlying stress that needs to be dealt with. 33:28 And it may not be to the point that you like man I'm got major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder that maybe require medication. 33:36 Although I'm sure if you'd ask your doctor, they would prescribe you something, but that's not getting to the root cause, 33:42 right? 33:42 Because those stresses will still be there. 33:44 We build on top of each other. 33:46 But we really need to go to their root causes. 33:48 And honestly, most of the time it's our thoughts and how we're constructing our thought and we can start speaking differently to ourselves. 33:57 It's such an amazing thing, this little three pound organ between our ears. 34:01 It really can make, you know, your cup is either half full or half empty. 34:06 And I can't even tell you that sounds like, yeah, okay, whatever. 34:10 That is a very powerful statement to think about living in this present moment and seeing things in a more positive light. 34:17 it will rapidly change the quality of your life. 34:20 I guarantee you're going to see markers of health improve like your heart rate variability and different things that you can measure even on a physiologic 34:28 level with stress. 34:30 And yeah, it's powerful and I would wish everybody could find living like this because I think we'd have a different world. 34:36 I love it. 34:37 Well, thank you so much, Dr. 34:39 Marva. 34:39 I loved your five tips for weight loss habits. 34:43 That was really helpful information. 34:45 And if people want to find you or connect to you, or get more of your resources, is there a place they can do that? 34:52 Yeah, they can just go to drmarvis.com. 34:55 It's D-R-M-A- R-B as in boy A-S dot com and everything's there. 34:59 I've got a podcast. 35:00 They do a free newsletter of a for YouTube. 35:03 And I blabber on there all the time about different things. 35:06 So you may or may not find it helpful, but if you want to check it out, feel free to. 35:09 Well, I could have talked to you forever. 35:11 Or so I bet there is lots more gems on your on, your site. 35:16 Thank you so much. 35:20 Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. 35:22 We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. 35:27 Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. 35:32 For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com. 35:41 Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on DoctorTalks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.
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