Weight Loss must be managed Individually- One Size Doesn’t Fit All!
You are what you eat, and you use what food and drink you eat based on your genetics.
Weight loss requires professional advice, direction and oversight. Combining receiving the best advice on what you should eat and drink as well as tailoring it to your metabolism and medical condition is what you should receive from your weight loss program.
Before you embark on a weight loss program you need to know the following lessons.
Lesson #1: All Calories Do Not Create the Same Energy/Heat/Weight Loss in All People.
You can put a gallon of gas into a Maserati and Ford Fusion and they do not provide the same performance (different acceleration or speed, pick up and ride) different MPG or speed because these two engines are not the same. The Maserati burns fuel (calories) faster than the Fusion; it operates at a higher level of speed and performance, and it uses more gallons of gas per distance. Just like the difference in cars, the difference in our bodies is VAST!
I explain this truism every day in my office. One of my female testosterone replacement patients returned for her first follow up consultation. The blood levels were ideal and all the symptoms relating to testosterone deficiency were gone! However, the only thing she could think about was the fact that she did not lose weight (although she did gain muscle and lost fat) and her friend lost 15 lbs in the first 4 months!
Even though she and her friend were the same age their metabolisms were very different AND the fact that her friend did everything I told her to in regard to diet, limiting alcohol, taking supplements and exercise, but she did not, tipped the scales to cause her not to get the same result as her friend…in other words, her friend had a genetically faster metabolism, AND she put Premium “gas” into her metabolic car, changed the oil and took care of her car so it ran faster and better than the patient sitting in front of me who used regular gas, didn’t care for her car
and drove too fast and hard. Two people the same age with different metabolisms, diet, exercise, supplementation, and stress level have widely different responses to weight loss.
Therefore, medical weight loss advice must be individualized to fit just you!
The individual variables include:
- Genetic programing
- Current weight and diet
- Length of time you have been overweight
- Age
- Blood type (also genetic need for certain foods)
- Medical history/current diseases
- Medications you are on
- Supplements that you take or need to take
- Exercise and physical movement
Fad Weight Loss diets are a fraud to sell books or to get attention. If it takes a 300-page book or a Social Media fad to sell a diet that is supposed to be good for everyone…it is a lie and may backfire!
When the cabbage soup diet was a fad many of my GYN patients did it. I had access to their blood types and knew that cabbage was bad for A blood types and slowed their metabolism. Despite my advice they still did the diet, and you know what happened? They gained an average of 10 lbs!!!! Their blood type determined whether this particular diet would work for them. This is an example of how important your genetics are to weight loss.
What are the genetic variables that affect your approach to weight loss?
Inheritance how our body burns calories—are you a Fusion or a Maserati?: there are many genetic variables that make you as an individual require specific foods and exercise programs to get to your ideal weight and be healthy. It is the job of your medical advisor to determine what these are for you and tailor your diet accordingly.
- Your Blood type determines the best and worst foods for your metabolism and the number of days you should exercise.
- Do you burn calories at rest, or does it take active exercise for you to burn more than the baseline of calories? If you are warm while you sleep, then you burn calories at rest and therefore will burn more calories than someone who does not, even if you eat the same things and expend the same active calories a day.
- How much of each type of food do you eat? Protein/carbohydrates/fats.
- Protein takes more calories to metabolize than carbohydrates, and a lot more than fat, so the most calories are consumed by eating a high protein diet.
- Mood Determines your Mindless Eating: Genetically are you more apt to eat when you are anxious or worried? This is a behavior that can be changed by counselling, behavior modification, or even just making you aware of your inherited problem.
- Genetically do you always feel hungry? Genetically are you never full? These are genetically inherited qualities that affect the amount you eat and how often you go back for seconds. There are medications and behavior modification that can counteract this genetic reality.
- Genetically does exercise or dieting result in the most weight loss? Believe it or not some people just have to diet without a lot of exercise to lose weight, others are programmed to exercise only for weight loss and then most of us have to use both methods to lose weight. Let me say that exercise does use up more calories, whether you are built to burn more with dieting.
- Genetically how much lean muscle mass do you have? The more the better! Weight loss is aided by weight training three times a week, and the replacement of testosterone when you become deficient. Both of these muscle building methods increase muscle and decrease fat. Did you know that your muscle mass burns 80-90% of your calories. More muscle means more weight loss, but your muscle metabolism must be turned on with testosterone, insulin sensitivity, good blood flow and more metabolic factors.
- The more fat you have the harder it is to lose weight because body fat doesn’t burn many calories. High muscle mass burns a lot of calories even at rest! The more muscle you have compared to fat the faster your body will lose extra fat. Weight training is helpful to building muscle and losing fat.
- What percentage of food should you eat of each food type? That is genetically set.
Your ideal % of Protein, Carbohydrates and fat are genetically determined. Many of us have discovered our ideal food chart through trial and error, but a weight loss genetic test can tell you as well!
Your Age: The older you get the lower your sex hormone testosterone is. As you age testosterone, growth hormone decreases while estrone increases all of which cause and cause weight gain.
- Testosterone stops being produced from women’s ovaries between 40-50 years of age. Men never lose all of their T but the level decreases from age 35 on to hit a clinically symptomatic level between 50-55 years of age.
- Estrone increases as Testosterone decreases and causes both sexes to gain belly fat.
- Do you have your sex hormones or not (particularly Testosterone)? Without T your muscles stop growing and burn fewer calories every day you go without T. This is why people tend to get old and fat as their T stops being produced (in women) or becomes clinically too low a level of free T at a certain age in a man’s life.
- Growth Hormone decreases with age—adding nonoral T replacement increases Growth Hormone.
- Menopause immediately makes women who don’t replace their estrogen and testosterone to gain up to 20 lbs without changing diet or lifestyle.
- Osteoporosis occurs and worsens with age because estrogen and testosterone in women decrease over time. Testosterone in men decreases in men which thins bones. Loss of bone causes loss of muscle and both cause weight gain. More importantly, osteoporosis decreases the activity level of affected patients.
Lifestyle impacts your ability to lose weight:
- How much water do you drink? You need sufficient water to lose fat. You should drink ½ your weight in pounds, in ounces of water to be able to lose weight. That volume of water you should drink increases to ounces of water = weight in pounds if it is hot outside or you are doing work that makes you sweat.
- Do you eat cleanly- do you eat whole foods? Do you eat one salad a day? Do you turn down sugary foods and desserts. If the answer is yes, then keep it up because it is helping you lose weight!
- Do you eat fast food cereal, cookies desserts and or doughnuts? If so, stop! All of these foods are massive producers of blood sugar, metabolic syndrome and obesity! These foods are literally bad for everyone!
- Do you eat a balanced diet? Humans are built to eat a varied diet with some fruit vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, butter, healthy fats (non-meat fats), with some grains and we were NOT built to eat sugar!
- Do you eat a lot of carbs? A Low carb diet can allow you to improve IBS, prevent cancer, and Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, avoid bacterial and viral infections, high cholesterol and heart disease, diabetes, obesity….all the diseases that cause us to be sick and age are related to too much carbohydrate in your diet! In Japan, Alzheimer’s Disease is called Type 3 Diabetes!
- Do you sit all day or exercise and move your body –taking 10,000 steps actually helps you lose and maintain our weight as well as exercising your heart!
- Do you take vitamins and supplements to prevent deficiencies in your diet? If not then you need to write down everything you eat for a week and have your medical professional review it….My bet is that everyone in America needs supplements ! The minimum daily requirements on a vitamin bottle is the MINIMUM AMOUNT OF A VITAMIN THAT MERELY KEEPS YOU ALIVE! These levels are not the amount of a nutrient you need to be healthy!
- I bet you think alcohol is a food? It isn’t! Alcohol is a toxin, use it with care. Just because your friends drink a bottle of wine a night doesn’t mean it is healthy…bad habits always want company!
Diseases that you currently have affects your ability to lose weight.
- Are the glands that set your calorie burning rate healthy? If your thyroid is low, you will have to work harder at exercise, and you will have to eat less calories to lose the same amount of weight a person your size who has a normal thyroid. If you have sick glands you are bound to be “over-fat”
- Diabetes and insulin resistance (abnormal your pancreatic gland) cause weight gain and an inability to lose weight if it is not treated. Metformin recreates insulin sensitivity, as does Mounjaro and Semaglutide medications.
- Liver and kidney disease your ability to get rid of the fat you are burning and you store up toxins that also slow your weight loss. Follow the directions of your doctor and get the healthiest liver and kidneys you can! Fatty liver is secondary to Metabolic Syndrome, so treatment with Metformin, Semaglutide and Tirzapetide can cure this disease!
- Heart disease—high carbs not high protein diet causes arterial plaque! You have been lied to because statins make money! Stop eating carbs and eat all the animal proteins you want! One of my patients has only eaten fruit, vegetables, grains, sugar and alcohol his whole life and he has severe atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) before he was 60! Avoiding animal products does not prevent heart disease.
- Endocrine disorders like overactive adrenal (high Cortisol) and hypoactive thyroid, pituitary adenomas can cause an imbalance of the metabolism and they can cause weight gain and fatigue that make it hard to lose weight.
I will talk about Medications that cause weight gain—beta blockers, blood pressure medications, Statins, and others in a future blog.
