Episode 80 Summary
In today’s episode, Dr Lucy and Dr Mary chew the fat dogmatic thinking.They discuss Dr Mary’s recent diagnosis of gestational diabetes and that despite her low carb lifestyle, she may still require insulin.
Lifestyle changes and medications are not mutually exclusive. Good health and self-care are not an either/or situation. Optimising lifestyle may mean a reduction or even a cessation of medications but requiring medication is not a a failure. They discuss the fact that many support groups espouse rigid thinking.. Dietary dogma is rife but humans are not a one size fits all. Many people have felt shamed and marginalised by some support group. Dr Lucy and Dr Mary discuss the principals of an effective support group and the things necessary for a support group to provide help and not harm.
Our very popular 12 week Mind Body Rebalance program is currently open for enrolment. Join here - www.rlmedicine.com/12wmbr
Show notes:
Rigid thinking has no place in permanent weight loss
Dr Mary Barson
Hello, my lovely listeners. I'm Dr. Mary Barson. And I'm Dr. Lucy Burns. Welcome to this episode of real health and weight loss.
Dr Lucy Burns
Good morning, lovely listeners. It's Dr. Lucy here. And guess what? I'm here with the fabulous the wonderful, the most awesomest person in the world. Dr. Mary,
Dr Mary Barson
Thank you so much. That is by far the best introduction I've ever received.
Dr Lucy Burns
Oh, good. Well, you know, every single bit of it is the truth. How are you darling girl?
Dr Mary Barson
I'm well, we're recording this, and I'm 34 weeks pregnant now. And I'm processing the fact that I do have gestational diabetes. And it's taken me a while to, to accept this. But but also to be honest, it's actually only really just become apparent as well. So it's interesting, because I have a history of polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a type of severe insulin resistance. And I've had obesity as an adult, both of which are gone. And in remission with with my dietary lifestyle changes. But because I have this history, I needed to get two glucose tolerance tests during my pregnancy one early and another one at 26 weeks. And the first one was perfectly normal. In fact, I went into a Hypo afterwards because my body's just not used to processing sugar. And I got quite hypoglycemic as I had to like, pump out all this insulin to deal with his sugar that my body didn't know how to cope with. Anyway, I was fine. Good. Yes. The second one was almost normal. It's just the one hour reading was 0.1 millimoles, above what is accepted. So I thought I really, you know, plus, I'm on a low carb diet. So my body's not very good at dealing with sugar cells just like there. That's not real. But I got referred to an endocrinologist and I started measuring my blood sugars, I got a continuous glucose monitor. And that was back at 28 weeks, 29 weeks, 30 weeks. And my blood sugar's were just perfect, you know, so pristine. Most of the time, they were four point something might go up to six point something after a meal, but then come back down to four point something hours, like, oh, the endocrinologist is going to be bored with me. But she pored over the data really closely. And she's like, ah, yeah, look, they're they're good. They're normal. But they don't just creep up a bit. At night, they just sort of creep up a little bit from sort of four to 5am. And it's like, they're still normal. She goes, Yeah, but that's dunno. And so we kept monitoring it. And she was quite convinced that I do have gestational diabetes, despite having normal blood sugars. And what is happening is that I do, it's really interesting. My blood sugar's they have no fluctuations. Like, because I eat low carb, real food, I don't get high swings in my blood sugar at all, they stay steady. They really do stay steady throughout the day at night, but the baseline is slowly creeping up. So my baseline was 4.4. Now my baseline sort of, well, last week, it was flat 5.5. And now it's creeping up to the high fives. And it is it's fascinating to watch. And I'm haven't changed anything really part from the fact that I'm gestating a baby. And this baby is the placenta to be, I guess, slightly more accurate, is pumping my body full of all of these hormones, which are great for him, like helps him to develop, he's having a great time in there. But they make me more insulin resistant. So my body's having to make more insulin. And this is all like perfectly normal and natural part all women get insulin resistant towards the, you know, the end of their pregnancy, which is one of the main mechanisms why women gain extra body fat during pregnancy, is because of this increase in insulin resistance. But for me, it is spilling over into higher blood sugars. And they're all still normal, like my blood sugar is I'm not having any scary highs or anything like that. But just with this baseline increasing. Apparently this can set the baby up for like epigenetic changes in the future. So that means it's not changing the baby's DNA, but it could be changing. If it gets worse and and isn't treated. It could change some of the genes that are turned on and off now for this little baby and could potentially set this baby up for insulin resistance later in life is sort of the argument but my trading team have put forward as to why I'm going to start insulin. And I probably started today, some very low dose long acting insulin at night to try and bring that baseline down. Which, you know, it just is what it is, I am willing to, to accept where I am, I'm willing to be grateful and embrace Western medicine for the great tool that it is, and not beat myself up for being genetically primed for this and for being 40 and for being pregnant. And for all of these reasons, but also very grateful that I think if I wasn't on a low carb diet, things would have gone much further south much earlier on.
Dr Lucy Burns
Oh, absolutely. And I think, you know, we could do a whole podcast episode, and maybe we are on that's been a while on epigenetics. And, you know, we do know that mothers that have gestational diabetes, their children, their the fetus, the baby is more likely to develop type two diabetes in their adulthood. And the other interesting thing is that if that baby is female, then her children are more likely to develop type two diabetes. And the assumption is that if they basically if they live in a hyperglycaemic environment, so if they're living, you know, if their mother is has high blood sugars, hence the reason that everyone's so obsessed with blood sugar in pregnancy, then that is more likely to change that epigenetic outcome. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? Because a female baby is born with all of her eggs, all the eggs that she's going to ever have she's born with, whereas male sperm is manufactured. constantly renewed? Yes, yes. On Demand. So the epigenetics in sperm is ever changing. And again, it's even. That's fascinating. And that's again, probably a whole nother topic. But yeah, the epigenetics and female baby eggs. There, there they are. Yeah, humans, we are so interesting.
Dr Mary Barson
We are interesting. This has definitely been an interesting journey for me, and I'm working very hard on either not I'm just I'm working hard on feeling fine about it. And I genuinely do I genuinely do. I've got beautiful, you know, people to debrief with, like you, Lucy. And I can just accept this, this is what it is. And I think that this is a good thing to be able to do, you know, low carb, real food can reverse type two diabetes for many, many people. But not everybody. You know, there are some people whose diabetes never completely goes away, despite the most amazing lifestyle changes, and they still need medication. And that's okay. Same with people who might need blood pressure tablets, same controversial in low carb world. But for people who do require cholesterol lowering medication to stabilize, you know, the plaque formation that's already there in their arteries to prevent further strokes and heart attacks. If you need to take these medicines. It's all right, there's still so much that is within your control.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. And I think this is the dangers that people can fall into. It's not one or the other. You're not only lifestyle or only medication, you know, lifestyle changes can make huge differences to people's health. And certainly, you know, the way to to lose weight for most people is to change your lifestyle. There are people that change their lifestyle and still require, as you said, medication for high blood pressure, that that's just how it is. It's not their fault. And it's so interesting. There's I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have seen this meme, it's a picture. And there's people standing at a counter, like one sign above one counter says lifestyle change, and the other side says, pills, and the line with the pills is all really long. And the line with the lifestyle is really short. And the implication is that you can do one or the other, but it's not really true.
Dr Mary Barson
No, it's definitely both you and I are doctors. We've dedicated decades of our lives to becoming doctors and Western medicine. What we've been trained in is it's powerful and it's useful and it's very much okay to use it.
Dr Lucy Burns
And I think probably what has happened is that and again this is in Australia and I suspect around the world is that the the amount of ill health related to current lifestyle can be reversed by lifestyle. So this is in particular process food addiction, if you like to screens using screens to read reduction inactivity, reduction in sleep increasing work. The interesting thing is that you know, there's all these time saving measures that have been invented. And yet we seem to be more time poor than ever. Devices, you know that we are more connected than ever. And yet many people feel more lonely than they've ever felt.
Dr Mary Barson
Yes, and loneliness is bad for you. Which actually brings us to the topic that we were kind of planning to discuss this podcast and it's good to segue.
Dr Lucy Burns
Lovely segue, a lovely segue. And I guess the segue is that we live, we do live in what is called an obesogenic environment, the current environment that most humans are living in is filled with processed food, the food is cheap, where as I said, we live in a busy lives in using transport, whether it's public transport cars, you know, much less general activity. And to change this sometimes feels like you're swimming against the tide. And it can feel quite hard and sometimes quite lonely. Which is why we at Real Life Medicine, you and I firmly believe in community.
Dr Mary Barson
Community is powerful. Yep. It is a high carb world out there. And if you want to use the very powerful tool of low carb, real food and mind management, to get your health back on track, then having supportive, like minded people around you, makes all the difference.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. And this is super interesting, because and it does feed back into our first point, I guess, which is that, you know, you and Mary. We've been in lots of various Facebook groups, lots, I've been in lots, I'm still in lots, I look on my thing. I go, Why am I in all these groups? I can't believe it. But there are many groups that are not very supportive, that for whom people will feel judged. And you hear terms that people use, like the keto police, or the food police or the you know, whatever, there's just varying degrees, I guess, of judging that goes on, which can happen in a group. Humans are inherently judgmental creatures.
Dr Mary Barson
And you are right that people join these low carb groups, keto groups, weight loss groups in the hope to find some community to help them with their lifestyle change to help them with their transition. But sometimes they can be just filled with bickering, they can be filled with sort of rogue individuals that can be very sanctimonious can be full of very dogmatic views, it's my way or no way. And it can harm people. So they're not always a safe place, which is a shame, because if you can find the right community, then it can be very, very powerful, healing and transformative.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. And I think it's really important to notice, and again, you and I, we are in a lot of groups. And I noticed in many of these groups, the diet culture that goes on the weight loss at any cost, the focusing on the scales, the cheering of numbers lost, which I understand, you know, I do get that. But the outcome is congratulated, not necessarily the way in which it was achieved.
Dr Mary Barson
Yes .Our community like our Real Life Medicine community, in particular, the community around our 12 week Mind Body rebalance group. So this is three months programs that we do with lots of beautiful people working on healing their metabolism, changing their mind, and our annual membership in real life momentum, inner circle community. These are two communities of which you and I, Lucy are heavily, heavily invested and involved in and as some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. And we provide leadership and stewardship for this. And we make sure that it is a very supportive place, and a place where people can be, be themselves a place where people can be vulnerable, a place where people can share their wins can share their ideas without that judgment.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. And I think that's your you're absolutely right. I think there are some groups that I feel like ships without rudders. Sometimes the leadership's not there. Sometimes it's not managed and sometimes I'm anxious because I don't want to be judgmental, but sometimes the information given is just incorrect. And I think it's really important that on Facebook is, you know, it's not anyone can be the owner, the administrator that starter upperer of a group, and many people are not qualified.
Dr Mary Barson
We've got communities of people who, you know, they join, usually wanting an outcome of weight loss, and that's great. We are not, we are not against weight loss. We love weight loss, we are very, very pro weight loss and gaining health. Great outcomes are great. But what would you say Lucy is sort of difference to the way that we run the real life medicine community, the way that we encourage it to be?
Dr Lucy Burns
Yeah, I think so I think there's a couple of things one, it is not weight loss at any cost. So the outcome of weight loss, you know, again, this can be achieved in you know, you can lose weight with a severe calorie restricted diet, you absolutely can we never, we would never say that you can't do it, what will happen is it won't stay off. But you will also or you can also potentially cause harm to your body by doing that. So whilst we are happy to celebrate weight loss, what we are happier celebrating is the process. When you focus on the process, and the outcome is secondary, the outcome comes, but it's not at any cost. And I think for lots of us, we have done well, lots of us, I'm speaking certainly from myself as being, you know, expert, ex-dieter, many, many brutal things to my body. At the time, I didn't even care, I just wanted to lose the weight no matter what. So we do spend time encouraging people to focus on the process, knowing that the outcome will come. So therefore supporting them in that concept of patience, because of course, I mean, I've done it, I've been eating well for two days, and I'm still fed what's going on. Look in the mirror, I go watchthis ridiculous. Now we do know that our brains are for up all sorts of stories. So helping really, really helping people with the stories that keep them stuck all the stories that keep them, yo yoing is absolutely critical. And again, not just part of our program, that's part of our community. Yeah, it is that community is it's so powerful and so important. And we don't encourage, we don't discourage, but we don't particularly encourage people to put up before or after photos as well. And again, that is because we are so focused on the process. And the beautiful thing about focusing on the process of of weight loss, the way that we teach it, the way that we coach and encourage it through metabolic healing with low carb, real food and through, you know, kind, compassionate mind management is that you get a whole lot of fabulous outcomes, not just body fat loss, you get normalization of your blood sugars, you know, reduction in your risk factors that are cardiovascular risk factors, you get reduced pain, improved sleep, improved mental well being improved quality of life, and there are so many fabulous outcomes, when you really shift it to the process. And when you shift it to the right kind of process. Absolutely. And I mean, I know lots of groups have, you know, celebrate your wins and those sorts of things. And the majority of those will focus on the scale number. But ours is really celebrating the behavioral changes that then go on to change your identity. And the absolute key to permanent weight loss is to change your identity. So you know, we spend a lot of time encouraging people, and I guess encouraging change of language. So you know, for me, I used to always be a chocoholic, sugar addict, you know, I was an emotional eater, you know, that was my identity, it's no longer my identity. And same for a lot of people that join our program that that is their identity that they think they're, you know, a sweet tooth. It seems harmless, doesn't it to say I'm a sweet tooth. Except every time you say you're reinforcing that there's some sort of thing outside your control that you can't control. It's like, I'm a sweet tooth, I have brown eyes. So interesting to know that actually you can change. I mean, you can change eye color with contacts. But you can absolutely change from being a sweet tooth to a non sweet tooth.
Dr Mary Barson
You can and you do that by focusing on the process and each time that you engage in the healthy behaviors, each time that you have that when that you introduced the healthy habit that you do the healthy habit, every repetition provides this evidence to your brain that this is the kind of person I am. So conversely, if you every time you walk past sugar, chocolate ice cream lollies, you eat it, you're all those repetitions, convince your brain, I'm a sweet tooth. But then on the plus side, every time that you walk past the chocolates and you don't eat them, every time that you make a healthy choice, you are providing evidence to your brain that I'm healthier. I just I just ate well. And that's who I am. And true change. As you said, Dr. Lucy is identity change. And that is what we want for our beautiful people.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. So we do have this thing called wonderful Wednesday. And we encourage people to share some of their behavioral changes. And I thought I'd just read a couple out because they I mean, there's you know, you and I, we always talk about how we've got the lucky you know, we've got the best job in the world because we do get to see people literally change their identity. So one of our members wrote this, we had to work farewell afternoon tea. One of my colleagues bought a passionfruit sponge in his mother had made I'm talking full on CWA, thats Country Women Association, ladies award winning sponge cake. I admired the hell out of it. And my colleagues mother who must be 80 and my colleagues mother who must be 80 plus, but I didn't eat any. I didn't even have a small pang of FOMO the hypnosis showing us how to admire food like you admire flowers really worked. I just went Oh, yeah, beautiful. I know it. And it is It's powerful. It's powerful to change those stories. On the same day, another person wrote, I had an epiphany. I put in the chocolate boundary stuck to it. And on Saturday night had my in brackets dark chocolate. I didn't really enjoy it. I realized that for all these years I've been chasing dopamine hits. And now I don't feel like I need to. I have found food freedom from chocolate. I just love them. And here's another one. I could read out hundreds I think I'll stop soon be good. But it really here. Susan wrote, I can now walk through the supermarket confectionery aisle without being tempted to buy anything. As a former sugar addict. This is quite an achievement. Thank you, RLM. And you know what she's right is quite an achievement, to be able to just go down a supermarket aisle and not even think about it. It's so so wonderful. She's not there, white knuckling her way through it. She is there just with her food freedom going? Yeah. Whatever.
Dr Mary Barson
Right. It's not just outcome focused. It's process focused and identity focused.
Dr Lucy Burns
I know I love it. I know. We are so lucky. So I guess that brings us to the next bit Mares, which is our topic. My buddy Ray balance is starting very shortly. Yay. I know. And we love it. It's so I just feel so lucky that we have such a wonderful job with such wonderful people. And helping people break free from diet culture, from being outcome focused, as in weight loss at any cost is so rewarding. And, yes, you're going to lose some weight. Let's just say you're going to but, the ticket to food freedom. That's the thing that I love that ticket to food freedom.
Dr Mary Barson
It is incredibly freeing to just not be beholden for food. Food doesn't control you. You control food. It is a beautiful, calm and peaceful way to live your life.
Dr Lucy Burns
Absolutely. Absolutely. So do you know what I've got one more thing that's about to just wandered up. And now I've just remembered, I just wanted to mention one thing. I see. And you do too. We see a lot of people in our program, not in our program necessarily, but in our clinics, who have been trying to lose weight for years, years and years. We understand it can be really hard. And interestingly, I see a lot of people have had bariatric surgery. And the promise of bariatric surgery is that you will lose weight forever. But if you haven't changed your mindset or your relationship with food, there are many ways to sneak in chocolate or lollies or ice cream or anything like that. And I see so many people who feel like a failure because they haven't kept the weight off for it hasn't stayed off. And to them I always say it is totally not your fault. If you were promised an outcome, you will given one tool. But not all the tools and managing your mind. You have to have that tool because as humans, we can find loopholes to do anything.
Dr Mary Barson
We are smart. We're a smart primate species.
Dr Lucy Burns
Yes. And, sadly, for permanent weight loss, there are actually no loopholes, you really do have to change your relationship with food. And when you do that, you have freedom forever, not just for the wedding that's coming up or the function that you want to look good for you have it for ever.
Dr Mary Barson
And our 12 week programs a great way to get that the community love the community that we have discussed, as well as the coaching and the content that sets people up for success. Absolutely. So the doors are currently open. The program starts May 14. If you're listening after May 14, you'll have to wait till August. But if you're if you're listening at a current time, then please head over to our website, rlmedicine.com You'll see the signup page and we cannot wait to see you in our community and changing your life forever. Forging food freedom.
Dr Lucy Burns
Lovely listeners. That's it from us this week.
Dr Mary Barson
See you later. Have a great week.
Dr Lucy Burns
Catch you next time. Bye for now. So my lovely listeners that ends this episode of real health and weight loss. I'm Dr. Lucy burns
Dr Mary Barson
and I'm Dr. Mary Barson where from real life medicine. To contact us, please visit our rlmedicine.com.
Dr Lucy Burns
And until next time, thanks for listening. The information shared on the real health and weight loss podcast, including show notes and links provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualized medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
