#401: Personalization Is EVERYTHING: The New Science of Weight Health, GLP-1s, and Building Lasting Longevity With Ashley Koff

Welcome to Longevity. I'm your host, Natalie Knidham. I'm a nutritionist, a human potential and epigenetic coach, and I created this podcast to bring you the latest ways to take control of your health and longevity. We cover it all, from new technology and ancestral health practices to personalized interventions and a very special interest of mine, peptides and bioregulators. Enjoy the show. Hi, I'm Natalie Knidham, your host, and we are back with an incredible guest today. If you've ever been told just eat less and move more and wanted to hurt the person saying those words, you are going to love my guest today, Ashley Koff R.D. She's a registered dietitian, author, and longtime advocate for personalized, realistic nutrition that actually works in the real world. Ashley explains why so many of us are chasing weight loss while completely missing the deeper issues, digestion, hormones, inflammation, and our body's actual ability to use the food that we've given it. We also unpack the GLP1 hype, where these meds help, where they don't, and what absolutely must happen first if you want real lasting health. Next, I'll thank two sponsors, and then we're off. There's a process that your body relies on to stay resilient as you age. And if you listen to this show often, you have heard about it many times. As we get older, the body's ability to recycle damaged or inefficient cellular parts does slow down. And that process is called autophagy. And the way that I support it every single day is with PrimaDine. This is a food-derived spermidine supplement that gently signals your cells to turn up the cleanup and turn the renewal systems back on. I take it as part of my nightly routine, no fasting required. And guess what? It's even good for your sleep. Now, there's even research showing that the body needs sufficient levels of spermidine in order to activate autophagy during fasting. Wow. Now, PrimaDine isn't synthetic spermidine. 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Seven forms of magnesium plus the exclusive passport delivery system that actually gets it into your cells where it works. It helps you sleep deeper, calms your nerves, and recover faster so that you can show up strong for everything 2026 throws at you. Most magnesium supplements use one or two cheap forms that don't absorb. Magnesium breakthrough uses seven real doses you can feel. I love it as part of my bedtime stack. During their New Year New You event, you get up to 35% off select magnesium breakthrough ritual bundles. All you have to do to check it out is go to bioptimizers.com forward slash bionat and use code BIONAT. Start 2026 rested, not burned out because resolutions require real rest to execute. Ashley Koff, welcome to the show. It is such a pleasure to meet you and to have you here today. Thank you so much. I'm such a big fan, so this is really, I really appreciate it. Well, I'm a big fan right back at this stage of the game because when I saw your book and I saw the title, I was like, Oh, what's she talking about? What does that mean? You know, and I mean, your best shot. So does that mean that we all need a shot or does that mean and as I got into the book and it took me about two minutes of reading your book going, Oh, I like her. So yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's a nuance I want to bring into the conversation right out of the gate that I think will resonate for you. And we talk a lot about weight loss. And I'm at this point starting to really think about we need to talk about building. Yeah, what are we building? And if we build the right things, the weight will get displaced. It'll get moved out the excess weight, the fact, because it's not about weight. If we're heavy in muscle and bone, we're in good shape. Well, I'll tell you that I in 2004, I stood at Cedar Sinai and told everybody there that we needed to rename and they were like, what? And I was like, Yeah, we shouldn't call this weight loss surgery. We should call it health gain surgery. And everybody was like, you know, and I'm a marketer. And I was like, Okay, I know that doesn't quite land. But like, but still, like, you know, we're in that space. And it's just there's every, every problem in our society, I'm willing to literally is tied to this idea of weight loss that we have put weight, this idea of if you just lost weight, if you, here's what weight loss, here's how you do weight loss, here's what you take for weight loss, here's what you don't do for weight loss, all of that stuff. And we, you know, starting with me, my, my own story. And personally, I was always had a weight problem. But I was never ever deemed having a health problem. And I was on antibiotics every single month in certain years, every you too, right? Every, like, we're just like, Are you kidding me? And so, and then I was on birth control for heavy periods. And then I was had a stint of acutin for my skin, you know, and you're like, my head health problems, I had to go off because my liver enzymes, you know, went up and you're like, I had it, you know, you turn in, you look at that, and you're like, if somebody, and I also will say that by being told that I didn't have a health problem, I developed a mental health problem, which that mental health problem was how I perceived myself and, you know, and just really the negative self talk and even the poor choices, you know, that I made. So thank goodness, we are in the weight health era. And we're here, I'm, you know, I'm staking the claim as like, it's not weight or health, it's not weight loss. And to your point, it is about building, we are here to build healthy, resilient bodies at every age. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. I feel like we should stand up and cheer at this point. Because you know, like all the things you talked about the, the antibiotic exposure, the all all those, those issues that lead to an accumulation of adipose tissue. And yet here we are just obsessed about you losing the fat and taking no care of the damage that's led to this situation. Well, you've even made it smarter by saying losing the fat. I mean, most people just lose weight. Like when the, you know, when you see reports on, and I see this all the time on Twitter and other places, LinkedIn, all of these studies that are coming out on like all the new medications, the GLP one agonists, and now the ones that are non peptide, etc. And it's like, this one's better because they lose more weight, this one, they lose weight faster, they lose weight, they lose this. I'm like, literally, they're so tired of me, I wish there was a way to automate it. I respond back and like, could you tell me if the weight was from fat or from muscle? Could you tell me if there's a benefit to faster weight loss? Could you tell me if their digestion is in a worse case or in a better case? You know, I'm just like, hey, studies, like wake up call, like we, it is 20, it's 2026 at this point, we no longer want to hear about that you like are high fiving us for weight loss. And by the way, that is not at all to dismiss that somebody who has excess fat, or inappropriately allocating fat as visceral fat, that is a huge health signal for us to decode, you know, but it's not one for us to just, you know, celebrate a loss. Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%. And so we're here to talk about health. Bottom line. So I want to back up a little bit because you started your, your start was in the big brand marketing world. So what the heck happened? I mean, I'm, you know, because you should be out there marketing Doritos or something. I've been there, done that. All right. Well, and for those of you that are listening to me and not seeing me, I have like big curly hair. It maybe has a little bit of blonde in there. That's fake. You know, it's a brown brownish curly hair and growing up when I had my belly. So first I looked like a cross between, I would say like looked and acted like a cross between Shirley Temple and Spanky from Little Rascals. Like I was bold and brash and fun and, you know, a little bit of a performer and all of that. But I decided with my belly that, and I didn't just decide at society informed me that it would be much better if I had long straight blonde hair and also if I was tall and thin. And so I started watching that TV show, Who's the Boss? And I decided I really wanted to be Angela Bauer and she worked in advertising and so did my grandfather and others. And right. So, and I just became obsessed with, and I think I'm really good at, you know, I was a young entrepreneur. I can sell anyone on anything. So that was my path. My path was to go sell, if you know anything about sports and especially college sports. I actually sold advertising at UNC for Duke. Like, I mean, what I would just go into places where it was like, you know, I mean, pretty much other than Ohio State and Michigan, I don't think there are many rivalries that, you know, rival those. So I loved selling stuff. And I was like, okay, I can do this. And I went to work in advertising and my client was Kellogg's and my first assignment was Raisin brand crunch. We were trying to modernize Raisin brand and Kellogg's had paid millions and millions of dollars to this guy who basically gave a four slide presentation that said the morning is really stressful. And what people want is they want to feel like they're getting more energy in the morning and less stress, right? And so for Raisin brand crunch, we also realized they wanted it to be crunchy, not soggy, but everything else was like, okay, so we figured out that if we could actually legally say that our cereal provides you more morning energy that that was going to be the platform for us. And guess what? Legally, we could and I actually this is when I first met dietitians, because our cereal had more sugar than any other sugar. Now, keep in mind, Raisin brand crunch, like there were sweets, there were sugared cereals out there, we didn't fall into it, we fell into it, we were American Heart Health Association approved because of our fiber in there, right? Because of the raisins. So, but because we had sugar on our flakes on our raisins and then the natural sugar in the raisins, we had more. So we were able to say that. So very early on, I learned how to, you know, how we market that. And the other part about marketing that I think has led to our total demise in our brains today is we also said we are going to not just sell you sugared cereal on a commercial that you're watching, we started something called 360 total branding. And the idea was from the moment that you wake up, literally the moment you wake up in the morning, we want you thinking about our brand at every point. So we're like, okay, billboards outside when you get into the grocery store, there's that like now on our phones, not like, I mean, and this whole idea of let's come at you with marketing messages all the time. And that has led us to a really, really big problem in terms of infobesity today. You know, we are so much of the messaging that we're taking in is information that is marketing messages under the guise of being educational, you know, on that part. So I did my dear, I did my deal with the devil for sure on that part. Yeah, I think when I sold advertising outdoor advertising, my first client was Wrigley's. Yeah, there you go. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, I never sold cigarettes. That was a line, but you know, I may as well have if I'm selling sugared cereals. Yeah. Yep. Well, and raisin brand was that thing, right? It's wholesome because there's raisins and there's brand like, anyway, but we're not going to talk about raisin brand. We all know this. But I mean, so what was the moment when you are like, oh my God, the way we're talking about food, I mean, never mind the moment that I'm selling people poison, I need to change my ways. Yes. But there probably was that moment. Yeah. And then the moment where you realized we're crushing people with information and we are doing anything but empowering them. Yeah, I would say there's probably three or four pivotal ones. And I tell my whole story in the book, hopefully in an entertaining way. So I won't go through all of that. But her book's really entertaining. I can hear it from her voice now. Needless to say, you know, like, so, you know, after eight, like being chubby was no longer cool or cute. And I was teased for being fat. And so I really started to I was good at everything else that I tried. So I'm like, I'm going to be good at losing weight. And I just wasn't. And so I tried every diet under the sun. And, and, you know, lucky for me, just kidding, very sarcastic, there was a new diet or a new program, you know, and exponential numbers every year. And so in terms of trying all of those, I tried things healthfully. And then I tried things really unhealthfully, you know, in terms of college and after that time period. And there was a fateful event for me in New York, where I had gone and had basically like gone through everything that I thought could work. And then I met someone, and she was a healer and she promised me that a goat smoke cleanse, if I just did goat smoke for seven days and drink 40 ounces of it, that I would heal the worm that was making me fath inside of me. And I went for it. And it sounds like I'm a lunatic. And by the way, that is lunatic. And I think that was my rock bottom, maybe I still, you know, wonder, but I read that in your book. Yeah, it was, it was tough, you know, like, you can think you're crazy, like that, that I went to do that. But, you know, when you've tried everything, like, so the one of the biggest myths in this full weight space is that people who have a belly or who have, who are in a larger body are non-compliant with dieting. Are you kidding? We have tried everything. Like the things that I have tried, including going and getting like private lessons with mishi okushi to learn to be a macrobiotic vegan, like I was, I mean, I was so far ahead of my time in certain things, you know, and all this other. Anyway, when it didn't work for me, I did what every 20 year old who was a non-drink, you know, does at that point in time. And I went into a bar and I just got drunk. I got really drunk. And in that bar, while I was drunk, telling the story, deciding that I was going to be a, I said this to myself, I'm just going to, if I'm fat, I may as well be a standup comedian, which was kind of my debate of what I wanted to be in life. And I'm like, I'm going to do that because I can be successful. My weight won't matter. And while I'm doing that, this guy walks up to me and he says, I'm just wondering if you ever took antibiotics. And I was like, okay, that's the weirdest pickup line I've ever heard in my life. And I was like dying. And I was like, and you know, I'm so funny. I was like, are you kidding? I was born in the eighties. I freebase them. You know, I'm born in the seventies. I freebase them. And he turns to me, it turns out he was an early days integrative gastroenterologist. And so he said, I take your insurance. Why don't you come see me? We had a conversation. And he said to me at that moment in time, it's not what you're eating or you're not eating. It's that your body doesn't have what it needs to run better. He's like, you have a broken system and we have to fix it. That was my first point. So that was when I realized that digestion, the first I was starting to connect the dots between weight and health. And so it was like, ooh, digestion and health like is important in that. I went on to become a dietitian and I saw my first bariatric patient in 2000, about 2004. And at that moment, I literally was blown away by literally overnight post surgery, that person saying their brain, how they thought about food. And over the course of the next two weeks, totally changed. Like not only their blood sugar literally change overnight, but how they're their food noise for lack of, you know, and their cravings and their appetite. And the doctor kind of flippantly said to me, oh, like, you know, when we do this surgery, like we change their their incretion hormones. And I'm like going, we didn't have Google back then, I was like, what's an incretion hormone? None of us were taught that, by the way, none of us were taught that. And that was my first introduction to GLP one. And so at that moment in time, I was like, wait a second, I was just like, you cannot wait, you are telling me that weight health hormones, I now call them weight health hormones, GLP one, GIP, PYY, CCK, they live in the lining of your digestive tract, they're regulated that their ability to work is is dependent on at minimum optimal digestive health. And here's how they work in the body. And I was like, wait a second. So I went about while while pharma went about creating GLP one agonist, you know, because Lyroglutide was sort of being invented at that time period, I was like obsessed with these hormones and going like, if I optimize people's digestive health, and then if I start to work on their vagus nerve, and I work on these others, like I can actually optimize weight health. Because prior to that, we had only thought about like, starting with insulin, you know, if I was looking at blood sugar, or starting with like, how can I like fake your ghrelin until you make it? You know, like, what could I do? And I was like, there are hormones that actually regulate appetite, satiety, what we went on to learn is that they regulate hydration, they regulate, you know, blood sugar, they're we now know they they're on the receptor sites are on the heart muscle in the endothelial tissue, the lining of our, you know, so now we're like, hold on a second, they're like as prolific in the body as it can come. And most of us today have suboptimally functioning because they're also designed like a motion detector. So they were designed for a pre industrialized body where, you know, they stay on for two to five minutes. And that's all that was needed, you know, on that part. So those were my big wake up moments. And then when, so I started working with patients on Lyroglutide, you know, what the one of the first agonists that they only used on a daily basis, when I saw, you know, diabetic patient came to me, they're like, I'm on this thing, Lyroglutide, you know, what do you think? And, you know, I just didn't see the we didn't see the weight side of things, but we saw, you know, some really good benefits of it. And, you know, I was the one that like everything else that we were doing, we're seeing the weight side of it. And so when these medications started coming about, people just kept asking me, they're like, what, actually, are you pro or you against them? I said, Well, wait, they're biosimilar hormone replacement, they're peptide hormone, our body makes them, why am I like, I think we just have to understand how to use them and understand when something's biosimilar versus bio identical, there are very significant considerations for us to understand. And here the, you know, the big one is, if something's designed to stay on for two to five minutes, and it now stays on 24 hours for seven days, we're going to have a difference, you know, on the impact in the body. So long answer to a very specific question. But those were my big aha moments for sure. Yeah, those are big aha's. So you're big into, I mean, you've, you've bought into or come into or been thrown into this whole idea of personalizing. And because, you know, I, you know, I'm a nutritionist, I'm not a registered dietitian. But at the same time, everybody's telling you, look, all everybody needs to do is, and then they give this stream of information, protein, right now, more protein, just more protein, cut the sugar, cut the processed foods, eat, drink more, and move more, you'll be fine. And so at what point did you kind of go, well, what, back it up? Yeah, this generic information is crushing people. Yeah, we need to personalize. Like what, what, what, what happened? Like, what made you kind of come to this? Yeah, my, I was so just like, we acknowledge that, like my own failures, like literally, I was like, how can I be like on the treadmill on the, it was a stair climber. My, my friend at school was on the stair climber with me. I'm like, how can I be on the stair climber as much as she's on and eating less than her. And I'm gaining weight or not losing, you know, so there would just be these moments, right? You know, in that part, I think that when you go into patient care, and this is for me, the beauty of having a conversation with you, as a nutritionist, nutritionist or dietitian doesn't matter to me. It's too much of the information today, these people that are saying it are actually ones who have literally never worked with or who have stopped working with actual individuals. And so you can make a statement, like just do this, right? Like you can create materials and say, like, oh, you know, be good, eat this, not that, or, you know, here's, you know, this, this amount, like our in the US, like the really dumb amounts that were our RDA levels, you know, like, you know, when you look at the RDA for magnesium or now, you know, the DRI. And so I think personalization started off really popping for me when I first moved to LA. Someone said to me, they're like, you know, hey, like, everybody here has a thing, like it was like, you know, LA is like just everybody markets and built, like, what's your thing going to be? And one of my patients had said, you know, like, my thing is I don't eat any orange foods. And I was like, okay, this is weird, let's have a conversation. But we, you know, dove into it. And I said, you know, I don't really have it. I'm like, I guess my thing is personalization. And I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to say that I was like, Hey, what I really need to do is personalize. So I actually stopped marketing myself. I just, I had so many doctors that were referring patients that I didn't need to be out there. And I was doing TV when no one else was doing TV. There was no such thing as an influencer. So it was like, you know, easy, like my practice was full. I had no issue. And then what I started to realize was my job in the media was to work against the impersonalized information. So anytime I would go on TV, I was, I was a regular on Dr. Oz show, I did a regular segment on Good Morning America, you know, et cetera. And as I was doing these things, I would go on there and they would say, they would try to dumb it down into like, and they'd always say, Ashley, you're so complicated or like, it can't be like, well, yes, and, and I was like, Oh, it is yes, and, you know, because for everything you're going to tell me, my book opens with a story of Mr. Pizza Pop and Mr. Pizza Pop had failed at every diet. He was a failure. And I went on to prescribe for him a diet. He was eating a large pizza, basically starting in the, you know, it was an early on intermittent faster, right? He was starting at about four or five o'clock and eating a large pizza. And I literally just took the pizza and said, let's have three slices every three hours within two hours of waking and game changer, you know, for, for him, where everything else had failed. And so in that regard, like people are like, wait, what? And I was like, so I'm not telling anyone to go start eating pizza. But oh, by the way, if you're going to eat a large pizza, it's going to work better for your body, you know, if you do it this way. But then what's better, even better is to understand your body. And that's your point about personalization. Yeah. Well, and can we just say that another person might have said, Oh my God, this is the thing. We're going to call the pizza diet. And you're going to go out there and market the pizza diet. He wanted to market it. He wanted to market it. Yes. Yeah, totally. That's missing the point. You know, I think with the power of that first story in the book, yeah, is the power of personalization. Because what you did is you met your client, or in your case, your patient, where he was. Yeah. And you knew that Mr. Pizza Pop was not going to start eating five servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit and three servings of this and however many servings of protein a day. That was not going to be in his wheelhouse. And he was going to fall apart at the seams if you, well, he wouldn't get a far apart of seams, you would have lost him. Yes. Yeah. Right. Well, and I was the Hill Mary. I was the last one, right? He was going to die literally because so this individual needed weight loss surgery, you know, so he needed the what I call he needed to lose weight. Bariatric surgery. Right. Right. Yeah. He couldn't get it. Anyway, I just think that's such a powerful story because there's so much embedded in there. Right. So for those of you who are scoffing, listening to this going, well, this is garbage. I mean, she's telling us that eating pizza 10 times a day, you know, everybody knows you shouldn't be eating every three hours. Everybody knows that pizza is bad for you. Everybody knows. Yes. And consider what we're the starting point. Yes. And that is the power of personalized nutrition. Did you suggest to this man that his most healthful way to proceed in his life was to continue doing this? Probably not. But you had to get him to that surgery so he would live long enough to be able to even think about changing his right. And my bigger win from that is, I mean, they made so much fun of me because he was drinking diet soda all day. And so I had him stop drinking diet soda. But it's funny not because I said it to him at the time, like at the time in my gut, I knew that drinking diets, I was like, we didn't have the data. I didn't have any way to say, I think this isn't better for your microbiome, your oral, your gut microbiome. I think those amping up your sweet taste buds, like, you know, at all these different things. And I said, but in my head, I knew for a bariatric patient, you can't have bubbles after surgery. So I was just like, let's like just start a behavior change, you know, in here. They made fun of me, they being the surgeons, all the physicians all publicly made fun of me in the lunchroom at Cedars and said, like, guess what Ashley did with our VIP donor patient, she put, she told him to keep eating pizza and get rid of the diet soda as everyone in there was pounding, you know, diet soda. And so, and I was like, okay, like, sorry, you know, I'm embarrassed or whatever. Meanwhile, not like it was like, instead of him losing 50 in the six weeks, he lost 51. He also went off his diabetes medication, you know, like, and his gut was like, in a better shape. And, you know, like all this other stuff, they sent me 12 boxes of pizza, but of like, like a dominoes or like not a great pizza. And I was like, he was eating mozza, like I want good pizza. But the bigger thing was I made them all publicly apologize to me in the lunch at the hospital. And I had dietitians that were like, blown out of their mind. And I was like, Oh, I was like, I'm like, let me be clear, you know, who remembers the pizza pop story, all of those surgeons. So like that piece for me was like, you know, yes, they're the pizza diet, but like when you're listening to this, and you're if you've ever been in that space as a disempowered patient, where you feel like your doctor is telling you something, and you're like, but this doesn't seem to align with like, like my why or like what feels better for me, like, can't I be vegan and be pregnant? Yes, absolutely. But just like any human, we have to optimize your body. So let's, you know, let's look at that. So I think that's the power of personalization is it also really empowers an individual to have a relationship with a practitioner that weans into their why and their choices. Yeah, I love that. So maybe what we should do, I mean, I've got all these crazy questions on the side here. But what I want, what I would like to help the audience understand a little bit is why did going from eating a large pizza night, which is an OMAD plan, one meal a day, which a lot of people would say is optimal, right? There's this whole storyline out there, we were not built to eat three meals a day, that's a fabrication, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, well, maybe to eating a food that is ostensibly not a healthy food, and multiple times a day, which again, there's another story out there. And frankly, I'm guilty of it too, I would say to someone you should be able to not eat for four to five hours in between meals without killing somebody. But in this case, you took a suboptimal food, and then you took it from one meal a day where he was essentially fasting all day. And you got him to eat every few hours, a little bit of that food. And not only did that help him to stay alive and make it to surgery, but it corrected his blood sugar issue. So before we get into anything else, you want to talk a little bit mechanistically about what was going on here. And it's actually what the playbook that's outlined in here, and I borrowed the pizza. So there's an analogy for pizza, the analogy that I use in the book for pizza, the playbook, my recommendation for you, the protocol I help you, that you going through the book can develop is the crust is digestion and hydration, the sauce is better nutrition, the cheese or lifestyle choices, and then the toppings are the toppings and that they get all the attention, right? Supplements, medications, surgery, you know, that kind of thing. So what I will start with is none of this worked in the way that I did heat the one of the questions that nobody had asked him. And this is like a constant why I asked was what's going on with your digestion. And I kind of knew because he was on medication, he was on a proton pump inhibitor, he was on some other stuff. So I was like, okay, your digestion is a mess. So we added a probiotic, we added glutamine, we added, and I think at the time it was asked off, which we may have had bifidobacteria, I hope, but I don't remember the timing. We added glutamine and I added magnesium to help because he said if I if I don't do these other things, I don't poop at night. And so I was, you know, I don't poop the next day. So we added that. So number one, foundationally, we took care, we did that. And we were, we didn't have the type of electrolyte supplements that we had then. So, but I do believe that shifting from the diet soda to something that was water based was helpful for him because we were, you know, we were supporting a better hydration and we were having him have water with the pizza. The other thing about the pizza was it was great quality pizza. So I want to be clear, one of the pillars of better nutrition is quality. Yes, quantity matters. We're going to talk about timing, nutrient balance. When you look at a pizza, you're kind of in a realm of some proteins, some fat, some carbohydrate, you know, we've got some vegetable, you know, we do have some, and again, depending on the quality. So this place in LA like made, I mean, it was amazing quality pizza, you know, he actually, and there was, he liked to put some oregano, I think it was, I can't remember, it was like rosemary oregano, but you know, he's like some spices on top, you know, whatever. It's good. So when I look at this, I was like, okay, like, yeah, I don't have a meeting a salad, but you know what, his digestion wouldn't have tolerated a salad if that, like, there were so many other pieces. He wasn't going to go grocery shopping. There was no delivery, you know, even at that time period, he didn't, he was so embarrassed. He wasn't going to use his assistant for this. By the way, I also have to be clear. This is one of the most successful entertainment executives. Like we all know them. We all know their movies. We all know, you know, all of these pieces. So the fact that he was such a failure in this one area of his life, and he was just like me, he tried to laugh it off. He'd be like, I'm the sloth, you know, I stay at home, I do all my meat, you know, all this other stuff. And I was like, Hey, let's stop this. Like we are no longer, we're judging things in a different way. You're not a failure. These things have failed you. And you know, we started to work on that. But to your point, digestion had to come first. So we worked on digestion and hydration. And when we came into nutrition, I was looking at, okay, he's not a hot mess. He's not killing it. He's not bad on quality. And especially if you got rid of the diet soda, I'm like, you're doing great on quality. The quantity at one time was overwhelming and already irritated digestive system and blood sugar and all of that stuff. So if we can have him have better quantities. And one of the terms that I just hate under in all places is portion control. Because again, like willpower, it assumes that we have some random muscle in our body that we just don't have like portion control is not something like, you know, that we're like that matters or we're designed with what we should be thinking about is our body has a need for an amount at a time. And if we give it too much, like we put too much gas in the gas tank, it's wasteful. And it's also dangerous. And that you know, that was what was happening. Great analogy. So the quantity piece was key. And then we were nutrient balance. And then the timing part of it was, I needed him to actually have like some energy in the morning and give his body some fuel. And if for I honestly, when we started this, thought we would do this for maybe like three or four weeks, and then we would move on to something, you know, and kind of, but we were in a short window. And I was like, if you already have a whole system where you're getting the pizza, it's going to be there. You know, I'm like, you know, you're gonna you have three slices in the morning. I asked him, I said, will you eat this? He's like, yeah, it's delicious. I'll wake up, I'll eat it. I don't have any problem. And we went through it. And also, he had zero hope. He was like me post goat's milk cleanse, like he'd given everything away. So when I went to that doctor, I was like, if you think you can help me, like, I'm just here to basically like on my insurances dime, like laugh, because there's no way you're going to have something new. He was with me is like, I get it, you're the Hail Mary they threw in, they want to make sure they get another building built next year, you know, or whatever. And so he didn't believe me. And I was like, that's great, like low expectations or no expectation or perfect. So he went through and he did this. And what was crazy to me was within two days, he's like, I literally feel better than I've like felt in a long time. And it wasn't like there's nothing about this. It's not like he went like started exercising or any of that. But for someone who literally had spent all of his day, like just sitting in a chair, like he was like, I was getting up and moving, like the act of getting up to go get the pizza, like do, you know, do these other things. So that's like kind of how we built on these pieces. And look, we're splitting hairs in a society, if we talk about, is it better to, is it right to eat every three hours or four to five hours, you know, on that part, right? Pre-perimenopause, I probably could have gone for maybe even four and a half hours and still been nice to somebody if like, if I'd fueled myself properly, whatever. Perimenopause hit. And if I do not have something every three hours, oh, and if I decide to have, if I was to have coffee with nothing else in the morning, good luck to society, like nobody wants to be around me. Right? Like, I'm just like, I am a scary, like I'm scary to myself. I'm scared to others. So when we realize that part and we look at it, it doesn't matter to me if it's, you know, I say three is showers, I wear a sweater, it says better, not perfect. Like think about these as like just kind of the notion of pit stops is leaning into the body's physiology that it, that says one core piece is our body is designed more like race cars than a street car. We are not the fill up in our gas tank at any one time and then can just use it whenever we need it. Our body, if it gets excess, it's going to hopefully store it as fat. And if it doesn't, it's going to create problems, you know, elsewhere in that. And the other part is when our body has too much to do at one time, that's problematic to the digestive system and other work doesn't get done and you know, all these other pieces. So when anybody tries to come at me for this like three hour, you know, actually like, you know, meals and snacks, I don't even use those words anymore, I use pit stops, you know, I'm just like, we need to pit stop and kind of do that. I think that that's where when anyone who's listening, you know, you want to think about if you've tried one or two things and you've said like, Oh yeah, but I tried that didn't work. I hope you haven't tried to go to McClellan's or Mr. Pizza Pop plan. But you know, if you were like, Well, I tried the every three hours and it didn't work for me. Okay. And I point this on the book, you might have tried the every three hours, but you also didn't do that where you proceeded and focused on building your crust and your digestion was rocking, right? Like your digestion was optimal. Or maybe you tried the every three hours, but you also didn't have something that was delicious to you, or you also didn't have something where it was nutrient balance or you also didn't. So I think that's the it's the ands and ands and ands that us nutritionists are taught to look at, you know, I don't know how many people you see it like for me, like every day where somebody is like, literally, they're here's my food and here's my supplements. And I was like, can we please talk about total nutrition? Like what are you know, when we look at it, what I'm understanding is how much total calcium are you getting or how much total magnesium are you getting? You know, and it includes fortifications. So I think all of this is where we've been wrong, where people have been getting these like very prescriptive. And again, it's coming from a doctor driven, a diagnosis and prescription society as opposed to one that's, you know, what we tend to what we do in our zone of genius is coming in and looking at, let's put a whole recommendation together, a whole person recommendation and look at that, you know, as a system approach. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I love the the Crest idea that the starting with digestion, you're just never going to go wrong, right, even not fixing the food. And, and I, you know, for me, when I'm I haven't been seeing clients in a while, but when I was seeing clients, everybody believes that they're on a healthy diet. Most people do. You get a couple of people who are like, look, I eat crap. And you get those people. But the truth of the matter is that most people are trying really hard. And they're shocked when you have them keep a food diary. That would be my thing is I would for I would ask them look just for five days, I just need five days of you and they would come back with their eyes wide open saying, holy crap, either they had no idea they were eating so much. But in many cases, and you mentioned this earlier on, even with people that are very, very overweight, they're under reading dramatically. Yes, they're barely. Yes, the system has shut down to save them because this system is convinced we're in a famine. Their digestion is not working. So whatever they are eating isn't getting broken down, which means it can't be absorbed, it can't be assimilated. Like you have all these things going on. And they don't nobody knows, you know, we think we know, we imagine like we, we have an image in our heads of what we think we're doing. Yeah. But that often doesn't translate into reality. And I found like giving people that clarity is the first step if you can have a client go, oh, yes, yes. And if you can also turn around and again, like I was I felt like I was this was my day job in the media, but to turn around and be like, we are high fiving people and saying like, yay, you ate kale or your what you ate wild salmon, you're so healthy, you know, you eat chia, you're so healthy. And the body is not high fiving you it literally isn't giving you a high five until it gets what it needs, which means it has to break it down. It has to have it be able to be absorbed. It has to have it be able to be delivered. It receives it. It's able to use it. And then it goes ding ding ding, I'm going to grow your hair. I'm going to grow your nails, you know, or whatever it is on that part, we now have the resources. Yeah. And so I think that like that's one of those things where like again, calling foods healthy, like, you know, this food is healthier. This is it's like, yes, there are things that are like not healthy because they are not going to resource the body in any capacity and they may actually irritate, you know, overwhelm or disrupt its efforts. But when we look at that and we come in, it's like better nutrition is only better when it actually gets where it's supposed to go and your body's able to use it. So anything that doesn't come in with a pizza crust on that part is going to be problematic, you know, in that way. I think that I was right. It like to to glom onto and be so excited in those early years that, you know, that I could help everyone, you know, accomplish their their weight health goals by starting with digestion. It was just the then, you know, where do how do we nuance that and what it's led us to with, you know, GLP one agonist is to also then come about and realize that if the two to five minutes that our own hormones are supposed to be activated, their job there is going to delay gastric emptying in that time period for about two to five minutes. Well, if I'm now delaying gastric emptying for a week, and you know, maybe in a declining amount, but for a solid week, because I'm on something, then we shouldn't be sitting there and saying a side effect of these medications is constipation or a side effect of these medications is an effect. It's exact to medication working exactly as intended. We need to be careful with dose, but also recognize that it's going to exacerbate. It might create in some people, but it's definitely going to exacerbate anything underlying. So if you were already constipated at sometimes in the month or ongoing, if you already had reflux, if you already had, you know, any of the if you're on a proton pump inhibitor for goodness sakes, like, you know, like, don't do more protein, like, like, let's fix the underlying issue, right? You know, because we're going to leave you in a worse space, you know, with the medications and we like, you know, this blame of the medication then is just, it's just become ridiculous in that place. Well, and, and this is why I was so excited for this conversation, because you have this position of a, these medications are phenomenal. And b, we don't necessarily need them. And here's how and why. So let's talk a little bit about that, because, you know, what I love, one of the many things I loved about the book was, it's this whole everything you may like you're saying, look, a GLP one could be the thing for you. Maybe the thing that you need. But guess what? If we just slap a GLP one on top of crappy digestion, poor nutrition, bad hormones, acid reflux, all the things you just said, you might get smaller, but you're sure as hell not going to get any healthier. And that's where we're seeing the fallout of everybody saying, Well, look, you know, this person, they lost all their muscle and their bones turned into, like, dust. And now they're worse off, which so can we just yeah, and I think we have a little bit yeah, and we have a great analogy, a great understanding of this if we look at diabetes. So I'm going to come in on another one because I really want people to take away that the medications, the set that we're talking about today, semi-glute, trizepatide, that's the only like or lyrical tie originally, that's the only ones I want us to reference for a moment, their biosimilar hormone replacement therapy. So let's just look at like in let's think of this. If you are a type one diabetic, we know that your body doesn't make insulin. So you will die unless you have insulin. And so we have we thank goodness, we have synthetic bio identical. So that's different, but we have a synthetic hormone replacement. So for that individual, they need it, they need it for the rest of their life. They they but they also eat and live their life to manage it. And there are some caveats or some people that are, you know, using other things like I just want to but for the most part for the broad strokes, this is what we're talking about. Then we have type two diabetics. And some type two diabetics actually do need insulin. And some type two diabetics use other medications and some type two diabetics manage or even resolve their diabetes using diet lifestyle and like basically being able to figure out how to optimally resource the body, right? This is the exact same thing that is a play here with our weight health. There are and when I went in and I looked at sub optimal function and I figured out how we can actually assess the function of these hormones because remember they only stand for two to five minutes, we cannot do that with a lab test. So I created a clinical assessment. It's in the book, it is a lot, but you can go through it or you can go through it with a clinician and do that part. And when we look at that, some people their function is completely, it's completely dysfunctional. So sub optimal has dysfunctional delayed or suppressed. And if it's dysfunctional, I don't know that we have the ability today to actually find out, do you just not make any of this hormone? But if it's so dysfunctional for you and your body's whole system, the whole ecosystem is demonstrating such sub optimal function that we come in and we use this and we say, you know what, right now, let me start with a weight health hormone replacement for you because it is going to help us help you make all those other choices just like we do with insulin with a diabetic. But we also then talked to you about, Hey, I'd rather than instead of apple juice, you eat the apple, I'd rather that you don't have unprotected carbs and you have your apple with almond butter or you and we start to do the teaching and the stuff that maybe they even knew before, but didn't feel like it was possible. We're able to do that. It wasn't working. It wasn't working, right? Because it wasn't working, right? Because working on that part, that's right. You didn't have it to begin with. Like you don't, if you're lacking the GLP one functionality in your body right out of the gate, that is part of the nothing is working problem. That's that's exactly. And there's a genetic component. There's the, you know, like me, you're on antibiotics, there are all these other, you know, pieces in delayed, it might be that your body's producing them and it may be like a little bit of two things. It could be, you know, having a motion detector in a world where there's a stampede running in front of your motion detector is just like makes it difficult. Having a world where I don't have access to some of this, you know, it's two things that help me be healthier. Living in a body where I have, you know, a lot of earned trauma and my Vegas nerve function, you know, and some of these other pieces. So there may be reasons that there's a delay here. And in that person, maybe a lower amount, maybe starting on the agonist with a lower amount, or maybe using a supplement, like, you know, an americade or something where it's giving us, you know, a little bit higher amount of like, maybe that's where we're going to be on that part. And for the person where it's suppressed, meaning that yours is operational, but your other choices are dampening, you know, you're, I'm not sleeping or I'm drinking alcohol, I'm doing other things. And I'm not, you know, able to let my hormones, you know, or I'm eating food that's not delicious to me, like, you know, whatever it is, in that person, I might say, I don't think you need this, you know, and what I will say is the, I'm so happy for the medication, because those that are in the dysfunctional space right now with the, they are not dysfunctional, their hormones are suboptimally dysfunctional. You know, that might be as much as 25% of the population. Okay, but we still have another 60 or 70% of the population that is in the delayed and in the suppressed. And if we have a conversation there that we only tee up the, a GLP one agonist as a solution, it's ridiculous in that part. It is, even in someone where they're having, where it's dysfunctional, it is not the solution. It's the enabler for the personalized plan to work for them. And in somebody where it's suppressed or delayed, yes, you might experiment or you might benefit and you might use the agonist, but we absolutely have to do with all the other optimizations, you know, on that part to help you build that more robust system, because if we don't do it, we're not going to see the outcomes be like, I was kind of like laughing the other day. I don't know if this is going to sound bad. I'm not laughing at all. I want to be clear. I'm not laughing at all about anyone's hopefulness that GLP ones could slow the progression of Alzheimer. What I was laughing at was that the belief was if we don't do anything else and we just put someone on an agonist, can we alone slow the progression of Alzheimer's. And in my, like both of us are like, our brains are blowing up right now. And in that space, on the one hand, on the one hand, amazing things could be happening because if we're optimizing blood sugar regulation, if we're reducing inflammation, if we're helping somebody's brain actually be less saturated with food noise and with all these other things, what goes across the blood brain barrier may actually be less problematic. But here's the other piece. If we're shrinking body fat, we're releasing a heck of a lot of toxins. And if the body isn't eliminating those toxins and isn't able to and you know, we're slowing elimination or we don't have optimized detoxification, that's not better. If we're not giving the body to your point of building before, if we're not giving the body resolvents and glucoraphanin or so, you know, what it needs to make sulforaphane to upregulate, you know, healthy blood brain barrier and upregulate glutathione and all these other things, we're not promoting the body to repair itself from an Alzheimer's brain. So I think in that space where we are with these medications is can we please throw away the messaging that they are in and of themselves a solution? Yeah, that's so. Well, didn't the study just declare that the GLP ones were a failure? Yeah. For treating Alzheimer's? That was just. That was just. The study didn't, but the media, the headlines. Out of it. Yes. Which was insane because actually, yes, they contribute to a better environment. That's exactly. But is it going to reverse Alzheimer's by all by itself? Like on what planet is Alzheimer's that simple? Yes, I know. I know. And you same with cancer, same with cancer where we're out there being like we really hoped it was going to be the cure for cancer. And I was like, okay, like I've a bridge to sell you like come on people, you know. So and I and again, like I also I'm the one who did the goat smoke cleanse. I understand that I would have bought that bridge. Like I get it, right? So we want to try those things. But I think that it's the, you know, the fail. So one of the things, I mean, we don't have to dive any deeper than this, but one of the failures in this whole space is looking at how bad the science around what works and what doesn't for quote unquote, weight loss. Well, anytime you make weight loss, the destination, you know, as so many of these drug trials are doing of just being like, we get faster weight loss, we get more weight loss, we get, you know, and you're just like, Oh, my gosh, stop, like, that's not like, you know, again, I'm like, did you lose muscle? Did you lose fat? Let's talk about, you know, yeah, there's so many different questions I want to ask you. But but now that we're on the topic of muscle and bone. Let's, because you talk about muscle and bone, bone, right? It's, it's like that bone thing that bone thing. And it's all calcium, right? It's just 100% calcium. And the only thing we need to do is drink milk for bone. I mean, what about collagen? Like, what about all the other things? Because if your bone is stiff and not bendy, right, right? You can do that with a drug, actually, then you'll just break your spine while washing the dishes. If you've accepted bloat cravings and that post meal crash after eating is your new normal. I'm challenging you to feel better. And I'm giving you the cheat code, the just thrive gut essentials bundle. It pairs two clinically proven superstars, just thrive probiotic and digestive bitters. Just thrive probiotic is the only probiotic clinically proven to arrive 100% alive in your gut. 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See the difference for yourself or get a full product refund. No questions ask. That's just thrive health.com forward slash Nat 20 code Nat 20. So let's talk a little bit about we were telling people okay, stop focusing on the loss. We need to focus on what it is that we're building. Right, so how do we help people to do that and in a world where you said something earlier that was so great where just eating more protein, I mean, you can get fat on protein. Now you can't get fat on protein when you're on a GLP one because guess what? You can't eat enough protein when you're on a GLP one to get fat and there's lots of other stuff going on. But how do we help people to really lean into and understand this this kind of message that's I think it's starting to break through of what do we eat like what is the concept of a nutrient dense diet while we are using these levers right while we have if we if it if it happens to pass to be that you need the GLP whether it's at a small dose to help you along or it's at a functional dose to replace something your body just lost the ability to right right access right yeah yeah and I and I do I mean I created the definition for better nutrition giving your body today what it needs to run better while reducing what can irritate overwhelm and disrupt it so it's two fold on that part it's what you take in and it's what you don't take in. We have those four pillars you know what when we look at that and it is a discussion you know for someone on an agonist it might be that we lean in a little bit more to supplements in some places where hey I need you to be able to get this in and I don't know that you're going to be able to it and you know get in as an example like yeah I might have somebody do liquid nutrition with green vegetables as opposed to eating you know trying to eat the four portions of it because it might be harder you know or I might I have some people that I lean into chlorophyll I love chlorophyll I also love it for for the oral microbiome you know maybe there's a way there or like what is the role of spices to help you get a little bit more of some of the you know in addition to making your food taste delicious you know to get in a little bit more of those nutrients so I think some of the other pieces is really leaning into the personalization so the the amount at any one time is going to be a really important part so one of the things that I see when somebody doesn't have nutrition guidance or is not is maybe for some reason not following what you know what those recommendations would be is I see a lot of back loading they're not eating all day and then it's just like oh I'm finally hungry in the evening because for the first time in their life they're they're they're being told like pay attention to your hunger cues like to your appetite no when you are on this medication it is turning that off like you you should not be sitting there going like I'm going to wait until I'm hungry so I literally have people with that three hour alarm that's going off yeah on that and what I've noticed is the first two days typically tend to be an extreme degree of delay regardless of dosage but certainly as you go up on so those first two days and also depending on whether or not your strength training where you are on your cycle am I getting on an airplane like anything else they may not be the days that you lean into more fiber on that part they may be the days where we don't do your fiber supplement that day or we don't do you know something that's more fibrous or we again do liquid nutrition something that's easier on the digestion because digestion is more slowed you know on that part and then as the week goes on we may start to lean in more to you know making sure that we've got the fiber but again fiber at every eating occasion or every one of these pit stops and not looking at it and saying you know oh I get my fiber and I take 30 grams at dinner like no you know it's really about giving the body the amounts that you know that it can use when it comes to the nutrients you know I don't think we're at a place where it's affordable or accessible to test all of your nutrient levels and and I also don't think the blood levels actually give us all the information right to our conversation before about you know your body it we're like we need to know what's in the tissues we need to know what's you know in all of these different places so one of the things that we want to look at is you know and this is where I'm giving you all the tools for assessment I will just say sometimes it can be difficult to do it on your own that's why I made human coaches and you know we and we have the option for people to see clinicians available with the book like anyone who has the book can opt in ask a coach a question on that part sometimes the question mark is you know hey in my effort to you know to optimize my hydration I'm adding electrolytes but maybe my electrolytes are giving me more sodium and I also am eating sodium so like how do I adjust for that so a lot of it right now you know what we want to do is looking at adjusting it but here's one that I think gets no attention as we talk about nutrients and needs so much attention I give you a quiz in there it's one of the first quizzes presented it's a test a little experiment it's called the delicious to me or the delicious to me right now test and I want you when you take a bite or a sip I want you to stop and actually just rank on a scale of one to ten with one is the worst tasting or maybe zero is the worst tasting food I've ever had and ten would be the best like I could write a sonnet about it you know for me it's Stracciatella gelato in in Venice or equally the sardines and the gnocchi there I remember the meal like it's just like that's my ten right and so I want something to be a seven or greater and the reason for that is I'm trying to teach you to reconnect to satiety we have receptor sites for glp one on our tongue we are meant to taste and they're meant to to satisfy all the different flavors salty and sweet and bitter you know and all of this and so when something isn't delicious we tend to either eat more or be unsatisfied and when we're unsatisfied we tend to go and look for something else on that part so one of so some of the behaviors that I'm you that I'm helping people to lean into with glp ones is to actually look for for deliciousness now you can't look for deliciousness and throw out the other pillars of better nutrition someone said to me the other day I love your deliciousness test I forgot how much I love Reese's Cups and I was like okay we're gonna have a chat and they said you know what I'm actually so I was like totally yeah and I was like you know what I'm so glad but you know what I had her do the test and I and I proved myself and I said sorry having one or two and she goes oh I'm having two she's like this literally I don't know if I ate anything else yesterday and I said okay I was like so you think you're playing when I'm pulling one over on me like I'm gonna play back all right I was like what I'd like you to do next time is do the test right when you bite into it um and do that on the scale one to ten it was like and then after you've maybe gotten through your first one and you're biting into your second one do it again and she goes son of a gun she's like it was like a four or five like I don't even remember and I was like yeah you're kind of done at that point same thing with french fries same thing with a pint of ice cream now remember the problem is those foods in their fat and sugar combination or in their salt fat and sugar combination are designed to override your body's ability to feel satisfied I know I did it I did the marketing I'm clear I know yeah been there done that so I was like so it doesn't mean that you are going to be able to stop I just want you to know that it is no longer pinnacle deliciousness you know on that part and so what I said in that space is I was like so what you're doing is you're using a medication right now to stop you from eating um you have tried and we went back because we talked about her history I was like remember the what happened last time you stopped eating your hair fell out your hormones your thyroid went nuts your hormones tanked you struggled with your for like I was like your skin looked bad I was like if you like that's all that's that's what's gonna happen with the medication we've already seen that picture and she's like I know I know it was a really bad day here's all that stuff and I said okay what I'm hearing from you and I sent her over to our coach and I said is we need a plan for what to make available for you that will be delicious for you to have with you or for you to have home and when when you hit that three hour you know pit stop and sometimes if it's not delicious when you're on the medication and we just need to get something in then at that point I'm okay with it like I don't you know maybe if you have a protein drink and it's not delicious to you in the moment but you you feel full because you're like that's all that I could have that's okay just try to lean into you know the next one so what we're doing here and what you're hearing is the the like this is the this is personalization in action but anyone the impersonalized or the mass part of it can take away it still comes back to the pillars you still have to look at quantity quality nutrient balance timing you know on that part we still have to optimize digestion and we have to recognize when digestion might be more challenged and lean into you know choices on that part and then as it relates to nutrients you know things like vitamin D and vitamin k you know in these other ones we may need for a time period or ongoing to be more foundationally supportive to prevent gaps or to address gaps with supplements on that part yeah yeah I think at this stage of the game you know I did an experiment this summer where I pretty much stopped all my supplements and I did a test a very you know one of these tests that's it's a big money test but what it looks like is all the downstream metabolites of all those nutrients we're trying to get through our food I was a disaster the doctor and I did this on an interview so people will have they have already heard this interview and the doctors laugh and he goes look at that Nat the longevity expert you're tanking dude you have no glutathione your NADs in the toilet like all these things and he said like so here's the news you know when you're over 60 maybe there's some supplementation that's kind of foundational that may not have been foundational in your 20s in your 30s yes so we need to I do think we need to to stop demonizing supplementation and start understanding what's needed for the person and it may be that you need more than you think yeah it may be that you're doing the wrong things for you and when it comes to to when you're using GLP ones I think most people most of the time are going to need some supplements because they can't get it from like I will flat out say if you are on a GLP one agonist and you're not on glutamine and I know everybody loves creatine and I can say amazing things about creatine so let me just start there but they're like you have proven my point if you're on an agonist and it's working for you you've proven my point that your hormones were suboptimally functioning they're in the lining of your digestive tract now I'm not telling you have to have like massive amounts of glutamine but I don't think like and I know they call glutamine conditionally essential and it's like you know I'm like okay the conditions that you are in it is essential for you right now you know that yeah we need that and so you know and there are a couple of those it's like you need polyphenols we've got to feed your acrimacia like we like there are just certain things that you know we come in and it's like this is so important but I love what you said there and I wish like I just want to double click on it and share it for the world on that part you did an experiment and you had evidence so you were like it was a time span time stamped I'm going to go off of my supplements I'm going to keep eating the way that I do and I'm going to test this and I'm going to be able to see this and that's the kind of like that's the part of biohacking that I really align with and feel like it's so great and the part that I don't align with is then getting on a podcast and listening to a biohacker and deciding to do what the biohacker did you know like without doing the experiment I was like people like now I'm blaming you you know the person not the the the podcaster um yeah but I think that you know when one of things that you know I'm obviously with my book coming out at the start of the year I've been saying you know um people are like oh what you know well what would you tell someone who's making a new year's resolution I would I will be a blunt new year's resolutions are dumb like anything other than a smart goal is going to be a problem for you it has to be specific it has to be measurable actionable relevant and time bound and you know we have to come in on that part and then look at it again and you know in the states our modern healthcare is anything but smart you know it's the get an annual physical go in and see someone and what like next year just hope that your blood sugar is a little bit better like or maybe like a month before do some things to try to like you know cheat the cheat the blood test come on you know we're better yeah we yeah yeah yeah no 100% so let me ask you a couple specific questions here digestive enzymes because we keep talking about digestion yeah talking about optimizing digestion okay great but how do we do that we can't think I mean most people are coming in with bad digestion yeah yeah and the glp one is going to make it work particularly yeah I mean ozampic please don't sue me for this yet ozampic in particular really slows down gastric emptying for whatever reason tersepatides not as bad yeah probably because of the dual and cretin thing but yeah but I'm the only practitioner I know who has patients who I'm always taking patients off tersepatide and putting them on semi-glutide I have people that have the worst times I mean it's just been crazy you know on that part so we see it but I but I hear you okay so digestive enzymes differentiated from proteolytic and you know on that part so their sole purpose that the body creates them you know starting with our saliva and creates them to break down food into usable nutrients which makes it then be better absorbed etc on that part so I like to call them their personal assistant for the digestive tract so are they an agent to help us with this with you know when we're on it absolutely one of the things that will happen because you know I'm being on the medications I have people who will have dry mouth I also have people who are mouth breathers I also have people who are newly using invisiline I have people like all these different things you know where like it's not you know it's all that other stuff but with also with reflux it can dry things out so if you have less saliva or if that it's less with the salivary amylase we're going to not be breaking those down I think strategically they can be great I'll tell you where I think they're found a fabulous agent they are great for if anyone's on a proton pump inhibitor or and or as you're trying to increase your intake in particular a protein so if I've said to you hey Nat you know I saw in your breakfast I think we're like you know you're maybe at about like six or seven grams of protein you know at dinner you're killing it you're doing like 50 I might want to pull back a little bit on dinner and I might want to increase breakfast on that part as I go to increase breakfast I'm probably going to have you use it you know a digestive enzyme there and there are really unique digestive enzymes too you know there's obviously the sort of foundational you know when we look at amylase and proteases and stuff but there are some that are also really like demonstrating their ability to help with protein with breaking down protein you know etc one of the things I think is a problem though excuse me I'll take I'm going to just take a sip of my cold fill water too yeah yeah yeah um we look at that um one of the things that is you know important for us to look at is because they become popular we also have we see them in things like protein powders and in beverages and stuff and they're in like tiny microscopic amounts and they're not better quality so that's not going to do anything for you and the old um you know just eat pineapple or have some you know like kind of get it from food I felt like helpful yes like I love that that's in the foods but I also don't think that's going to be strategic and then the other one absolutely if you are getting on a plane or if you are you know anything where you're stressing your butt like maybe after a workout high stress you know that kind of thing anything that's going to already put the body in a disadvantage you know on top of the agonist in addition to the advantage or even or not on an agonist use that there because that's where your body could really use that personal assistant I like that yeah yeah yeah no I think digestive enzymes are our big deal I wanted to say earlier when you were talking about the person who's new to the GLP one and now all of a sudden doesn't eat until the end of the day I think for them also if we think about it it's this sudden release it's a freedom right yeah they've gone from being having a voice in their head every minute of every hour of every day going well what are we gonna have now you know we I just saw an apple in the fridge yeah I think we should have another apple or a chocolate bar or protein whatever it is right and all of a sudden the voice is quiet and they're free to go about their days yeah and and it's it's really an interesting thing like you walk by Starbucks and you're like wait I actually don't want that like I don't need that feeling yeah yeah I don't need it whereas before it's like ooh I get to go into Starbucks and so I think that it's important to acknowledge people's release because one of the things I hear the most from people is oh it's it's almost like they're like oh my god the voice in my head finally just shut yeah I had a woman calling me yeah I had a woman call me and she said I was just at a concert for someone like you know we were all young I think it was a Katie Lang or something and she was like and I just cried the whole time and was like that makes sense you know I'm like she's like no I'm crying about my daughter and she's like I just I want to help her daughter was like 17 18 because I just realized that I have until I went on this medication I have spent 30 years of my life not being present at the dinner table not being present when she's asking me questions not being present at work not being present even sex with my partner because I was thinking about my body I was thinking about my and it all came back to me thinking about eating like it was you know it's this the side of peace and I was like yeah I'm like and that's where when people like again because of the weight bias that exists out there there's this thing of like well you know those people that suffer from food noise are you kidding me they did a research study that showed that people who were sitting around when you sit around in front of donuts are thinking that almost everybody is thinking about the donut regardless of your body size right that like you know within that space and so when you get distracted and what that's what we've done in our modern society with instagram and with starbucks everywhere you know and all the and I love all of them like it's fine you know but it's all in front of us and so the relief that people are feeling I also believe it's part of the outcomes you know it's part of the my brain is like I am actually having for the first time in my life some empty space and that empty space actually that ability to breathe and not be thinking about this is actually a positive for my vagus nerve and my digestion on that part so I love that you brought that up I think it's so important to lean into so let's go back to the premise of the book which is that not everybody needs a glp one some people it can be super helpful some people really you don't need it because if we fix your microbiome if we optimize your digestion if we help you to tweak what you're eating when you're eating how you're eating all the things and you're able and willing to do that work that's not to say that the person that uses the glp one is lazy but if you're if it's not necessary for you in this way and it works how do you just how do you help people to understand because it's not about you deciding how do you help yeah how do you help people to understand which camp they're in if they're in the dysfunctional system here's the beautiful part about that so three things to consider the first is that with weight health we now understand our but with weight health is the goal which is a goal like longevity weight health is a goal in that space we never get to fix your microbiome we all your microbiome is constantly changing overturning and dealing with everything that's coming at it so optimization it's why I love the word optimization is it it infers ongoing activity right we have to always you know be thinking about this so what I always say straight up to anyone anyone listening is I don't have a crystal ball I literally don't know what's going to happen in your life I don't know I hope that it's going to all be wonderful things I don't know if you're going to go through cancer treatment I don't know if you are going to have a good experience with perimenopause and menopause or one that that is challenging I don't know if you are an athlete and you are going to end up in the olympics like I like all of these different things and because of that I can't make a statement about whether you will ever use as a tool weight health hormone replacement or not what I can tell you is shot or not if you don't do weight health hormone optimization as your foundational approach to your health ongoing whether you are on a shot or not you are negatively impacting your longevity you are keeping yourself from health span so I think we want to look at it in a different place I am so excited about the you know Nobel Prize worthy invention of these agonists primarily because they are teaching people about the human physiology where I'm able to have a conversation about how your body actually works because of that I now can tell you that you know like something like when I say endothelial you now will know that your blood vessels have this endothelial lining and in there are these receptors and I want to be able to share with you that it's not just about taking a statin to optimize your cardiovascular health and in fact that doesn't work that way that you know plaque accumulation one of the issues with plaque accumulation is it's going to disrupt the endothelial tissue which means your GLP1 receptors here you know so all of this stuff we can have this whole conversation so what I did do was I created the first ever assessment of weight health hormone function this clinical tool and it's five parts it asks you questions about your lived experience it looks at some labs not a whole bunch of them some labs it invites you to do things like wear wearable maybe a continuous glucose monitor maybe measure heart rate variability but it allows you to do things like breathing you know and looking at your bolt score and it allows you to we need weight composition so maybe we have a DEXA a BIA scale maybe we use you know the one that you can now measure with your phone or maybe we use waist circumference and waist to hip ratio you know but it tells you that you have to assess your digestion and your hydration and when we look at all of that it maps you to suboptimal or optimal and then the secondary part is within suboptimal what type and one somebody said to me that's so cool Ashley I'm so excited isn't there an AI version because I don't want to do all this can't I just enter this information and I said the reason I actually want you to do it is you're also going to see where you're suboptimal it's going to tell you so if you if for anyone if you go through the digestive assessment and your digestion is suboptimal in any capacity that's where you focus like that's it you know even if everything else is is great on that part if you pick up a couple of labs are off and we also notice that you're breathing is off like that's going to give us okay now hey let's look at this and say how are we actually supporting your body's recovery or maybe you've been taking more of like an anti-inflammatory approach to your nutrition and to your food choices but you actually haven't been resolving inflammation your body doesn't have those resolvents it doesn't have the ability to do that maybe that's part genetic maybe that's part you know your nutrition on that part so let's lean in over there so we have this we have the ability now once we've done that to be able to come in and then here's the part remember we said optimization you reassess so then you reassess you know and it is that this is our life's work like that's the work of longevity means that you know one of the pieces everybody's like well I want it and I was like okay do you want to do the work for it like you're you just said you know it's like I want to give up my supplements or I don't want to pay for this and you know I'm like hey if you don't want to do the work of it okay but then don't expect the outcome you know what I mean there there is nobody that is just I mean I shouldn't say there's nobody maybe there's somebody that's gifted with longevity and they're just going to live but I feel like in modern society I don't believe that you're going to live healthfully throughout all of that time period even if you even what you were gifted with it just there's too much coming at us you know that that is a challenge there's too many toxins around I agree with you and toxins can be physical or mental or whatever the case maybe people yes exactly yeah yeah that's great right now we could keep talking four years later we decided to stop talking we saw that all exactly but I like let's do a couple of quickies that I know are pain points for people yeah so someone let's say someone is using the GLP one and they're shrinking and they're going down sizes how do they tell is there a way for them to tell ideally like and I don't care you know somebody said to me like what's the best scale and I was like the best scale like the best exercise is the one you use we should probably use it once a week you could probably get away with using it once a month I think it's a little better if you own it in your own home because I do think it's smart for you to be able to do it on waking after you've moved your bowels and and you know naked to give us but the idea is really repetition you're trying to reduce as many outliers as possible so like how can I do it kind of the same way all the time and we can tell and it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if like it says like 70 pounds or 80 pounds is your starting point like the accuracy of your amount of muscle what matters is the trend on that part just like with the arrow going up or is the arrow going down right exactly yeah and if we don't have access to that can we use waist to hip and waist to hips or conference we can and waist right we can but it's not going to tell me about inside on that part so what I do in that space is and I look I run I run this program at a local ymca and you know people have varying access and different um but I have them carry things and so if it if you are noticing that you can carry more you're stronger if you're noticing that you that things feel heavier than you know then uh then we will that you know we just do like some these are very inaccurate but they're like at least some assessments yeah yeah well there's for for people who have a little bit of means there's a scale that came on the market I think a year or two ago called the Hume scale yeah I work with them there I'm not an affiliate yeah but I would say that they've really up the game because for the price for the price point which is pretty reasonable I use the at home in body so like I personally like it's funny you say that like there's a body too yeah and like because I hate their metrics like for some reason with the Hume one I like get it and I was like I just I I found like whatever the the way of my patience tracking it and screenshotting it I haven't loved it but I've seen like 70 like the withings like I've seen all these different scales and I'm like okay so any of them to your point like they're just better they're better yeah yeah and the ones that you hold out like that you actually like lift up and hold something out yes yeah same um I think there are a bunch of those now that's going to do a little better um because especially for women versus men um what what's going on our upper body is is going to be disproportionate like we want to have it included but men and women it's important yeah yeah but I just think like that that world that space has come along it's just like a wearable space yes yes yeah and your dexa scan should be like is a good one to include especially for bone health and I know there's also new scans for bone health where they've said yeah the rem scan yes and that's what I was going to just say so I think that's also really interesting um you know on on that part and then for people who are getting full body MRIs we can also go in and we can see really like you know greater detail things like your visceral fat but I also don't want you doing these things like you don't have to do them like you're not going to do an MRI too often there's no hopefully once a year you know like it's like on that part it or even you know less frequent you know on on that part another big pain point for people and I just actually had a call with a physician this week about this like she was super worried like how am I going to titrate people off of these things like what do I do yeah on the other side and I'd love you to speak to that a little bit because I think there's a world where some people may always use a small dose or for a long you know for the foreseeable future and then other people we can we can help them ease off and if they need to come back in a year that's okay like for a little touch up totally totally yeah um and I think that's like I love that piece I think the the one there are very few things I can be firm about the one that I can be firm about is if you go on this and you don't do anything else you cannot come off of it like that if you are replacing it at an exponential amount I mean it's like instead of having a teaspoon of sugar if you have five packets of Splenda like you're at this exponential amount of you know the intensity of it and it's overriding your own so in the time while you're on it you're also and I think this is important for physicians and practitioners to understand the longer somebody is on it the less their own hormones have had to work because of those particular ones so we need a whole restarting plan so that restarting there's two ways to approach it you can extend the duration of time that some between somebody's you could say instead of doing weekly I'm going to keep it the same dose and I'm going to do it every two weeks and then I might move to every three weeks or I might move to every four weeks and that's where also your nutrition or adding in something like an americade or others or you know changing your fiber or whatever as you start to notice maybe like a creeping in of whether it's food noise or creeping in of some of the other stuff like you want to work in that space but that that can be very helpful the other one is you can go to a lower dose and do the lower dose on a weekly basis and yeah and you know kind of now the the one that I think is really important in there for the physician I'm so glad like I just like it just makes me so happy when it's like a physician and a nutritionist we're having a conversation it's like the start of a non-joke it's like the way society should our medical system should be designed to work so you were having a conversation about this and you're like okay great what are we going to monitor so number one I always start with a patient I go okay here's what has been working for your body right now right like so for the next 90 days let's see if you're able to keep doing that so that food journal that you mentioned or maybe it's a continuous glucose monitor maybe it's an aura ring maybe it's like just a calendar that you know goes through and is like I strength trained at on these times or I did you know whatever it is on that part we want to see are you able to do that and if you're doing all of that but then we retest your let's use your hume scale and we notice you know what you gained three pounds of fat and you lost one pound of muscle or you gained you didn't gain any muscle and you know whatever it is on that part if we see that then that's the place where we should be like okay so either we went down too low of a dose or either you weren't you for some reason in the last month you were or last two weeks or whatever you weren't able to keep doing this thing and we need you to keep doing that so we need to go back and we need to refine the plan and this is where I have no love zero no love for anyone who says or blames the medication and says yeah but when my patients go off of it they regain all of their weight and then some or anyone who stupidly does a looks at data like I literally am calling it stupid which I know is not a nice word the five-year-old time right now so somebody lost 60 I heard somebody lost 120 pounds and the and the doctor came back blamed them and blamed the medication and said you not only did my patient gain that 120 pounds back but they gained more fat than muscle and I said you know what I'm blaming you you scripted the medication you know if somebody ghosts you and goes away like and you know and forewarned you know whatever so my friends the other part of this is you know it may when you're budgeting out your access because the other thing that we're talking about is not necessarily somebody might get to where they are weight healthy and make the decision that we want to start weaning what we have today is they may get to a place where it's not available or it's not affordable and if we're worried about that in any capacity we should be having a plan already where we're weaning and we're getting you to we should always have you on the best dose for you but what is the best dose for you and then the final one that I think often doesn't come into the conversation is what's the best dose of all of your medications at your new weight at where your weight is hopefully somebody has been working with you on your medications and your supplements and changing them as you're going through the process but if they haven't you know if you if you started off at 350 and you're now 180 and hopefully a 180 with a good amount of muscle your your statin should have been changed your SSRI should have been changed your blood pressure medication like all of the you know all of these different things and so that adjustment should also be part of the the weaning and the titration conversation but it really I mean the key takeaway here is doing this without a collaborator to support you in the monitoring of it is so important you know we get cut out of the cost anytime somebody's trying to figure out like the number of conversations that I have with the online virtual providers of these or the local the locations that are selling them and you know they're like well we have the doctor session but you know what we just we can't we can't build in we can't afford you in that part and I was like you know what we shouldn't afford you like I mean you know I think in that space you can't not afford that's right I think that's the key piece yeah yeah well and the other thing that you said that I think is so important is is regular monitoring I mean you said once a week might be okay I think less than once a week is a disaster because you have someone coming in back in a month and they've lost two or three pounds of muscle yeah it's not going to take a month to get it back so here's the conversation what is accessible and what's affordable what can they do in terms of their own monitoring one of the reasons we in my you know the better nutrition program everything is open unlimited messaging with coaching and available throughout that month because and we want you track and we have that come back in and you know we do that but there the person that loses like the if I know something is coming up and you have said to me I am going to have to be sedentary this month then or I am going to have to significantly change what has gone on you should not lose two to three pounds of muscle with like with like if you're if you're in a maintenance mode in any capacity you're not going to build but we shouldn't be seeing muscle loss right so by that point in time and it kind of depends like I think I agree with you I think maybe like one of the pieces is also like sometimes in the beginning we might not track as much like as frequently or I have some people where they have such a bad relationship with the scale they're getting on there and I'm like put the number put literally I have them put a tape over it they do not look at it it goes into their app and they send the app and from it we're in the app and they send it in there so I think that's a really valid point which is yeah we want to look at that but but no longer than like no longer than a month and most of the time you know one or two weeks is going to be is really where we should be I agree with that yeah that's a good take um okay let's get into a couple of quick fire questions so that we can let people go although I think I'm gonna have to move into one of those two to three hour format there you go yes I love it I love it to dive in yeah tell us about a time you changed your mind about a product category after seeing new data or patient outcomes oh my gosh this is a really big one I got my ego oh wow everybody I have an ego so when I did my residency at county hospital I saw a bariatric patient and and this was a teenager a late late stage teenager and very complicated family situation etc but died had bariatric surgery and died oh didn't die during the surgery um but ultimately died so I at that point like put a stake in the ground and I was like bariatric surgery is the worst thing on the entire planet what everybody really just needs is Ashley like just like I can help anyone like oh boy I wish this guy would have come to me I could have helped him lose 100 pounds I could have helped 200 pounds I could have helped his mom do I could have done like and I was like I can do it all and I can do it all for everyone in any capacity and then I had this like lucky weird situation where um the woman who was the bariatric dietician was going on maternity leave and somebody reached out and for some silly reason they chose me and they were like oh will you come in and be the dietician and I thought they had brought me into the minimally invasive surgery center so I was like yeah and I'm like surgery is my jam like before surgery after surgery and they're like okay great I'd accepted the deal and they're like you're going to be covering the bariatric and I was like what and like oh my gosh and I was like and literally I still at that point thought that well they'll come in thinking they're gonna have bariatric surgery they'll meet me I'm gonna start working with them I'm gonna mix them I'm gonna mix every one of them oh my gosh but what I will say is um I went to battle I battled with the the inpatient team because they were um they felt in hospital people could have juice and I was like yeah but you're then like after surgery you're sending them I mean like all these just like ridiculous things and I was able to optimize our bariatric protocols you know based on on my experience but um bariatric surgery done um in a proper ecosystem you know in a better way with the right person gosh it's an incredible is an incredible incredible tool okay off script now yeah don't you think that the GLP ones have really changed the game though because I think that there's a whole lot less bariatric surgery going on doesn't mean it's not necessarily I mean I don't know maybe there's use case for it. Total game changer and boy like talk about an uncomfortable room to be in at the obesity medicine conference like which I'm just gonna I'm gonna just gonna leave there that we have an obesity medicine okay we need to change things because obesity in this country at least at this time by definition is still really just about your BMI right like your weight on that part okay but the between the bariatric surgeons and the one scripting GLP one agonist there were some really fun conversations and very awkward moments and a lot of like the stumbling here's what I would say I think that bariatrics is going to like just like when anything else comes in is going to have to up its game because the rate of of failure and the failure being attributed to the people just still not being able to be compliant with bariatrics was very high um there is still a very high rate of failure with people who are on agonist because they go off of it after a year not having had change you know whatever so what I would personally say is both of them are going to be a wake up call to each other and um let's just note that like nothing has changed for my 20 20 year old ego they all need me they all need to just come in on the way to health hormone you know side of it and just turn around and say this is the answer so there you go yeah yeah yeah I did but not yeah what about women's hormones during pair of menopause and menopause how important is that oh my gosh I mean just two women and men but like I mean come on our hormones so I think what to me is the win and ties this together is your sex I hate calling them sex hormones because they're sex they're neuro they're neuroendocrine they're all of this but when your sex hormones decide to leave us um and and as they decide to leave and also um they like to peaks and valley it you know like uh like a high blood sugar yeah exactly exactly yeah they're like an EKG machine and then they flatline you and so like when they go and they do all of that they're they're directly they they are interrelated interrelated with your weight health hormones so noting that that's such an important time for us to understand that as your hormones are shifting as your sex hormones are shifting your weight health hormones are going to be shifting as well and so and we see that play out we see that play out in bone we see that play out in muscle we see that play out in fat we see that play out in cognitive function hunger appetite crate like etc so we do have to look at that um hormone replacement therapy needs to be looked at just it's all hormone replacement therapy weight health hormones sex hormones one of the big differences though is our weight health hormones are peptide hormones our sex hormones are steroid hormones the body cannot eliminate them without them being broken down converted into a form where they're eliminated so that's our detoxification system so whereas weight health hormones if they're shrinking our fat cells are causing toxins to be liberated that need to be eliminated what we do need any woman to know same for men but we'll just leave it there any woman to know that if you are using hormone replacement therapy you to reduce your risk of cancer to reduce your risk of disease of everything on that part you need to now make sure that your detoxification system is optimized and i think that's been the missing from the conversation i think there's too much of a everyone should be on estrogen testosterone and progesterone and nobody there's almost no conversation of hey how's your digestion and detoxification prior to that because um and quite honestly with the women's health study that was so bad you know that with one of the things that i've always been curious about if we went back if we could have and slice the data for who was somebody who either genetically had um you know efficiencies and inefficiencies in their detoxification or who presented where their detoxification was was suboptimal who their got cancer and i think we would have a very clear answer in that part okay rapid fire build your sack one daily protein target you like to set relative to body weight and your favorite travel proof way to hit it okay so um i uh probably like i can never at a pit stop have less than 15 grams of protein so it's the minimum for me if i don't um no one likes me and um i uh for 13 years have worked with perfect snacks i love a perfect bar i am just like such a happy fan i just discovered them oh my god i know i'm sorry too because like sometimes i like sometimes i go through periods where i'm like i shouldn't have them in my home but um the other thing that was so crazy cool just a little bit of a sidebar of my five-year-old nephew at four years old was diagnosed with um type one diabetes and we in the beginning especially because you're like before they can even get the pump and you know do all this like it is it's so hard because we're trying to dose insulin according to me so your packaged food it packaged food's your savior because you know what's in there and you're doing the mini perfect bars were like we found out were absolutely perfect for his blood sugar and it was like the greatest thing like just to you know so that was a second degree of endearment you know for me on that part but yeah that's what i would say a perfect bar all right one fiber have it that most effectively nudges glp1 and satiety without destroying digestion oh i love that who and you said fiber because originally i was going to go to green tea on that part um i think you know so um i'm a really big fan of ground flax seeds i think i'm going to go with that one the most um one of the other reasons is i love the cardiometabolic benefits of it and we were just talking about detoxification you know etc on that part so i try i think that you know getting that in there um is going to be like as a form of like the the the fiber that can just be so helpful in that way um i think there are you know i like people getting in resistance so eating a kiwi if you like or having blackberries i mean i can go on and on but i think i'll hit ground flax seeds yeah well one thing i'll say about ground flax though and that i think is really important is that it it spoils really easily if your ground flax smells like paint thinner it's gone off yes so keep it in the fridge be careful when you buy it give it a sniff if it smells like paint thinner take it back yes it's just one of my pet peeves yeah that and rancid nut butters drive me nuts yeah okay one supplement you stopped recommending as a default and why the evidence changed your mind is there one one supplement that i stopped and by the evidence okay so i can i can honestly say um there is nothing that i would have stopped based on the evidence so that's the because the evidence doesn't evidence isn't personalized enough for me so it would need to be you know not just based on research coming out i think one that many of us should do a much better job with is fish oil i think there is so much really crappy fish oil so i could go into on that space and one that i've added is resolvance pro resolving mediators and it's separate from fish oil you know when i'm when i'm looking at that but i i think we could do better with our fish oil but i haven't there i don't think there's anything that i've stopped because of the evidence yeah yeah there's a couple of good brands on the fish oil but yeah definitely yeah it's another one if you have fishy verbs it's crap yes that's it yes also your digestion probably bad but still usually it's totally crap one sleep tweak that most improved your patient's next day hunger and training readiness hmm well for me it was the mouth taping like i you know i i think on that part um and i think what i didn't understand and this is what i've shared with my patients is um that our mouths are like the design of our mouths so as an example you'll never believe this because we're like two hours in um i like i want a t-shirt that actually says i was diagnosed with a small mouth but i was diagnosed with a very small mouth right so i was like like and by the way that's only structurally you know i'm never but i have a normal sized tongue and so what i wasn't right you know it's one of the reasons i needed to have dental work but i didn't actually learn that it that one of the negatives of that was actually how it was affecting because i it wasn't a snoring thing it was just a mouth breathing you know while you're sleeping so um i think mouth taping has been incredible for me personally i have to say that it really depends on the patient because some of my patients the biggest game changer was the eye mask of putting that on and you know on that side yeah i also think with mouth taping the thing that people forget is make sure your nasal passages are open so i have to be i have my husband wearing a nasal expander yeah and it made all the difference in the world the man is the man no longer asphyxiates well oh my gosh bless yeah good good all right last one what problem in weight health are you most obsessed with solving in the next 12 months and how will you measure success oh i think the problem is that we aren't in weight health like that we're like teetering on the side of it so i will measure with success if next year at this time everyone has like and in our weight health and how we're doing weight health and hey what actually what can i do for weight health so um i you know i think in that and i suppose with that the other one will be for people to understand that glp one is not a medication that it's that it is a weight health hormone you know yeah it's a replacement hormone it's like the yeah that's okay i was going to launch into another thing and i'm not going to closing this podcast ashley this has been beyond a pleasure thank you for your time and taking the time thank you for writing this book thank when can people expect it i'm not sure when we're going to drop the episode but it'll be right around then so how people where they can find you where can they find the book where they find all the should be january 6th everywhere where books are sold make sure when you get the book to click on the qr code that's in there um or if you buy it early head over to the better nutrition program where it says ashley's book um we have so many bonuses but one of the key bonuses is a 30 day how to do this um you know program that's that's curated that you can go through with it so um i just think that's so highly valuable um and then you can find me i think anywhere that my name is although somebody said to me the other day you got to be careful because now there are these deep fakes and whatever and i was like i i can't even acknowledge that so find my name find the better nutrition so ashley cough ashley cough approved the better nutrition program um if if it's talking about basketball or dogs it's definitely me and then it maybe if you see something about the book then it's it's probably me as well on that part yeah thank you thank you this is great thank you so much thank you hey folks just a quick reminder that all of the information presented in this podcast is for information purposes only no medical advice no diagnosing no treatments suggested here before you try anything that you hear about or learn about here make sure that you check with your medical provider