Transcript

Good morning, everyone. And welcome back to the hormone hub. It is great to have you here. We are currently well, and I missed celebrating our [00:01:00] 26th episode. So we are now I think on episode 29, which means that we have done six months worth of podcasts. So every week they are released and, yeah, we’ve gone six months and each week the listeners get more and more.

We get lots more beautiful feedback. So thank you everyone so much for listening, you know, I truly do appreciate it. Now, today we are gonna talk about something that comes up a lot, and I’ve had a lot of these conversations in the last couple of weeks and it is about weight loss surgery. So let’s just, let me just say, you know, it is a massive business.

All right. It is an industry, weight loss, you know, diets and industry, nutritional supplements are a massive money making industry, you know, all of those nutrition warehouses and the crap that’s in those shops, you know, it, it’s huge, it’s big bucks and so is weight loss [00:02:00] surgery. So, you know, let me just say it is not about your health.

You know, those weight loss surgeons are not doing it for your benefit. They are, it is all about the dollars. Okay. So, yeah, it’s been interesting. I’ve worked with quite a lot of women who have had the surgery, and then, you know, we’ve worked with them sort of in the, I guess the 12 months to two years to five years after they’ve had the surgery, you know, they still need help, but I’m gonna talk a bit about why that is today. Now to be totally transparent with you, yes I also run a weight loss program. We have the weight loss wisdom program, which is, you know, a weight loss program designed to shift that stubborn hormonal weight and shift it fast. But a big part of that program is giving you the tools for what we do after the weight comes off.

And that’s a really key point. And also, you know, in [00:03:00] the well balanced woman program that I run, you know, yes. A hundred percent, you know, the women who have weight loss as a goal are losing weight on that program, but we do it in a way where you are supported the whole way through. And I wanna do it in a way that is, you know, sustainable.

So it’s something that, you know, we are losing it in a safe way. And it also In a way that you won’t need to do another diet after that. So there’s a big sort of education process about, you know, what you eat, how you think about food, your relationship with food, and we want it to be ongoing, something that fits in with your life.

 So that’s why, you know, there’s no meal plans. There’s no, you know, prescriptive, program going on for 12 weeks because that’s not realistic and that’s not something that you’re gonna be sustained. And we all know, you know, when you come off a diet, what’s the first thing you do, you know, you put the weight back on, you know, generally, and then some, so yes, I do have a weight loss [00:04:00] program, but it’s, you know, my own integrity is in there as well.

And I genuinely care about you and your long term health, you know, And the weight loss is, is definitely a part of. So I just wanted to kind of like, you know, go, yes, we’re talking about dieting and yes, we’re talking about weight loss and yes, I also have a program, but, you know, I would like to think that I do it in a way that I actually do care with you doing it with a bit of integrity.

All right. So I’m a firm believer that, you know, by creating a healthy body, which means we’re looking at those underlying things. So this means, you know, what we wanna do or what we do when we work with women is we look at, you know, how do we balance out your hormones? So this means, you know, supporting your blood sugar, it means supporting your thyroid.

It means managing your stress hormones, so balanced hormones, we are looking at all of your hormones to support them so they function well. It means, you know, creating a healthy body [00:05:00] means having good digestion. It means you’re absorbing the nutrients from your food. It means you’re eliminating properly.

So it means that there’s no bloating, there’s no constipation, there’s no reflux, nausea, heartburn, all of that sort of stuff. We wanna address that. So your digestive system’s working well. Creating a healthy body also means having effective detoxification pathways.

You know, when we lose weight, we break down body fat, it’s processed in our liver and then we literally poop it out. So, you know, we wanna make sure a, that, that digestive system’s working so we can poop out your fat, which is how it works. And then, you know, if we’ve got a sluggish liver, our detox processes are gonna be sluggish.

So we wanna make sure all of these, you know, underlying body functions are well and weight loss comes naturally as a part of creating a healthier body. So I hope that makes sort of sense. So I just sort of wanna say, [00:06:00] and then, you know, to layer that in with lifestyle and mindset pieces, you know, because we wanna create a good relationship with food and we also want you in the driver’s seat. So, you know, your body better than anyone else. So if you, you know, know your body, you are able to prioritize your own health and wellbeing. Okay. So it, it, it is a process, a hundred percent, you know, of losing weight and keeping it off for good. It’s not easy, but you know, that’s where with the right support, you know, you can do it.

And I just wanna say, you know, having weight loss surgery, you know, or going on, you know, weight loss medications, and things like that. Like, it might seem like the quick fix, it might seem like the golden ticket to weight loss, you know, particularly if you struggled with weight gain, you know, long term or you know, for a good portion of your adult life, you know, it can seem like the magic bullet, but I just wanna [00:07:00] kind of talk about today, you know, some of the, the downsides, which, you know, a lot of women going into this aren’t necessarily aware of. Okay. All right. So let’s have it look at, you know, what are the surgical options being offered out.

So weight loss surgery, it’s often also called bariatric surgery. And, you know, there’s a couple of different versions of it, but it’s all about, you know, making your stomach smaller. And the idea is, you know, you’ve got a smaller stomach capacity, so you can only put a smaller amount of food in there. Now during the surgery, You know, there’s a couple of different ways and we’ll, we’ll sort of have a look at it and, you know, surgery comes with risks, obviously.

 So bariatric surgery affects the stomach and it affects how food’s digested. It’s designed to make your stomach smaller, which causes you to feel full after you’ve only had a small amount of food. Now, the three most common [00:08:00] types of bariatric surgery, we’ve got lap band surgery. Also called gastric banding.

We’ve got gastric bypass surgery and we’ve also got gastric sleeve surgery. And the surgery’s normally done regardless of which type you have, it’s normally done as a keyhole procedure. So just sort of small cuts in your abdomen. Sometimes they do need to do open surgery with a larger cut.

So with lap band surgery, you’ve got an adjustable ring that’s put around the top part of your stomach. So this creates a really small pouch that, you know, increases the amount of time that food remains in that top part of the stomach. Then we’ve got gastric bypass. So this used to be called stomach stapling.

So this is where, you know, they join sort of the stomach directly to the small intestine. And they actually remove some of the intestines. So your food actually bypasses most of your [00:09:00] stomach. So you’re absorbing fewer calories. So it’s going straight to your intestines. Then we’ve got gastric sleeve.

 And this is where, you know, they actually remove most of your stomach, including the part that makes your ghrelin hormone, which is your hunger and your appetite hormone. So generally, you know, following the surgery, you know, the weight loss is quite rapid. You know, you’ve just sort of had this surgery, you know, it’s quite a big investment and you know, you are obviously motivated to keep going.

The weight starts coming off because you are, you know, you’re not eating able to eat very much food, so the weight’s dropping off and, you know, it’s exciting. So you’re motivated to keep going. Now where I, I have seen this work brilliantly and I’ve worked with, you know, Sort of a handful of women who have had the surgery and for them, it was the best thing ever.

They lost the weight and they were able to keep it off. [00:10:00] Now, these women all had one thing in common and that was the fact that they weren’t food orientated in the first place. Okay. So they weren’t emotional eaters. They weren’t big eaters. They were just kind, you know, went down the path of, you know, poor diet, poor lifestyle choices, you know, food was kind of fuel.

So whatever they ate, you know, obviously wasn’t a great choice, you know, and the weight kind of went on from then. Now, these women, because they weren’t particularly attached to food. The fact that they then weren’t able to eat much food wasn’t a, it wasn’t a deal breaker. So these are the women where the surgery has been quite effective.

 You know, they’ve changed what they’ve eaten. Don’t have to eat much food and you know, that worked really well for them. Now I have worked with a lot more women where they’ve had the [00:11:00] surgery, but they enjoy their food, and they also, you know, there’s generally an emotional eating element to, you know, perhaps why they gained weight in the first place or why they had struggled long term with, with weight. So it’s sort of interesting. So these sort of women, the surgery isn’t addressing that underlying cause of why they have, you know, been carrying so much weight for such a long time.

 And you know, this is where it kind of gets really heartbreaking because they’ve gone into the surgery thinking, right, this is it. I’m finally once and for all gonna be done with this issue. And it’s, it’s not that simple. Okay. So first up, just wanted to, to kind of like, have a look like how much money are we talking for these surgery now, of course, you know, I’m just gonna throw out a blanket sort of figure now have got this from, from one of the health fund websites.

So [00:12:00] generally for the surgery and they all sort of, the costs are slightly different, but if you have private health insurance, you are gonna be out of pocket between about 3000 to $7,000. Okay. Now, if that’s with private health insurance, now, if you don’t have private health insurance, you are looking at anywhere sort of between 12 to $18,000, these are Australian dollars, if you don’t have private health insurance, that covers bariatric surgery. All right. And generally the private health cover that covers the surgery is your top cover. Okay. And then you’ve got a few variable factors. So things like your initial consultations and your lead up consultations and your follow up consultations with the specialist or the surgeon.

 So that can be, you know, anywhere generally between I don’t know, say a hundred to $200, for your appointments then, you know, of [00:13:00] course it depends on the type of surgery you’ve chosen. It also depends on the surgeon’s fee. You might have an assistant surgeon, you will definitely have anasthetist who has his own fees or her own fees.

Then you’ve got your hospital fees and then, you know, any medications that are prescribed following the surgery. So, you know, it’s a, it’s a significant investment. So it’s something that you want to be very well aware of, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly before you jump in and do it for sure. 

Now where I see, so where I sort of come into this whole picture is women who have had the surgery and it’s generally like two or three years after the surgery, they’ve lost that weight initially. And it has started to come back on, you know, some cases, all the weight has been regained. Other cases, you know, they’re, they’re well on their way to, to getting this weight back and they’re terrified, you know, they do not want this weight back, which I get it.

Now the problem is when you can only, when your stomach’s own reduced to the size of a golf ball, you [00:15:00] can’t get much food in there, which is the whole point of the surgery, right? But what happens is, you know, you can’t eat, you know, you’re very limited with the protein that you can have. You’re very limited with, you know, the amount of fiber that you can have because you know, you don’t want that fiber sort of going into stomach and then swelling because there’s not enough room and it, you know, it does cause a lot of discomfort. So, you know, you are missing out right from the get go on key nutrients. So you know, there’s a nutritional deficiency aspect happening and this obvious, you know, isn’t always evident. At the beginning, but certainly, you know, a year or two down the track when you’ve been, you know, quite restricted with how much food and the variety of food you can eat, you know, it does start to show up as nutritional deficiencies. 

Fiber. So this is where it gets really interesting. So it starts to affect your gut health because fiber feeds our [00:16:00] good gut bugs. All right. So if we aren’t getting enough fiber, we’re not getting enough prebiotics into our diet. So we are not feeding our good gut bugs and our gut health suffers.

So this then has a knock on effect to, you know, in our gut, we make our neurotransmitters, which keeps, you know, our mental health on on track, it helps support our immune system, you know, there’s so much that goes on in our digestible digestive system and there’s so much that, you know, our gut health reflects in our overall health.

So when we are not getting that fiber it does start to, you know, reflect a year or two down the track in our overall health. And the other thing is, you know, if you are, you know, if emotional eating was sort of like a key piece for you, you know, you might be restricted and you might not be able to eat much protein.

You might not be [00:17:00] able to eat much in the way of fiber, but you know, one of my ladies, she was happy to share that, you know, you can still eat a liter of ice cream. Okay, because that, that ice cream goes quite easily in that, into that, or through that restricted space. Likewise, you know, chocolate, you know, soft drinks.

So all of those high calories, that don’t offer much nutritional value, you know? It still kind of, you know, is an issue. And because you haven’t sort of addressed that, you know, emotional side, you haven’t addressed that lifestyle side, that mindset piece. So, you know, you’re still in that restrictive food kind of mindset because you can only eat a small amount.

So, yeah. So I just sort of wanted to, to kind of go into that a bit today and just sort of say, look, you know, it is entirely your choice, but before you jump in thinking it’s the, the be all and end all, or the magic ticket to [00:18:00] all your problems, you know, it may actually not be. So yeah, so just to sort of, you know, give you the, the upside and also sort of give you the downside as well, that it’s not always the quick fix or the, the ideal weight loss utopia. Okay. So really there is no other, you know, dodging around it and if you want to lose weight, if you want to, you know, make some changes, it needs to be a, a combination of what you are eating. It needs to be a combination of, you know, your physical activity and the way you move your body.

It needs to be those lifestyle and mindset changes. And, you know, in my experience, the women who, you know, we’ve sort of take it, you know, we work on those underneath levels of Sorting out your digestion, supporting your detox, supporting your hormones, balancing your hormones, you know, managing your blood sugar, managing your stress.

You know, these underlying pieces, when [00:19:00] we start to, to tap into those, that is what is going to support your long term health and ultimately long term weight loss. So, yeah, so it’s not just about, you know, losing weight. It’s about improving that overall health and, you know, the key really is consistency.

So the best kind of, you know, diet for you or the best at a way of eating for you is the one that you can sustain long term. So you, rather than going into something with the, the idea of, oh, I’m on a diet, I’m going to lose weight, you know, cuz if we’re on a diet, we’re gonna come off a diet at some point.

So we wanna go into it going, you know what? I am making solid, consistent changes, you know, to improve my overall health. All right. So I hope that makes sense. And if you would like to kind of, you know, explore this further, find out more about what we have to offer and the programs that we have available to support you to make those changes, I [00:20:00] would love to hear from you, so the link to my website is in the show notes. And you can always connect with me via email or via the hormone hub, Facebook group as well. Okay. So I hope this was helpful and I hope that, you know, if this is something that you have been considering, or something that you’ve been through and you’re struggling A year or two down the track, just know that there is definitely support out there for you.

Okay, everyone. Thanks for listening. And I’ll see you next week. Bye now.