When GLP-1s Don't Work and What to Do Next w/ Alex Mufson

Some women aren't losing weight on max-dose GLP-1s — and the fix is dosing down, not pushing harder.

Ana Reisdorf, registered dietitian and GLP-1 user, sits down with Alex Mufson, LCSW and founder of Canary House, to unpack why high-functioning women show up as non-responders on Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound. They cover the labs traditional medicine misses, why under-eating sabotages results, and how regulating the body — not suppressing appetite — is what actually moves the scale.

IN THIS EPISODE
- Why some non-responders lose more on a microdose of tirzepatide than on a maximum dose
- The ferritin, fasting insulin, and Dutch Plus markers most GLP-1 prescribers don't run
- The glucose-insulin mismatch behind weight gain that "doesn't make sense"
- Why appetite suppression isn't the goal of GLP-1 therapy — and can stall fat loss entirely
- How epigenetics, survival mode, and high-functioning caretaker patterns block GLP-1 response

ABOUT THE GUEST
Alex Mufson, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is the founder of Canary House, an integrative healing practice specializing in high-functioning individuals living with persistent exhaustion, pain, and unexplained symptoms despite normal or inconclusive labs. Her work focuses on nervous, immune, and metabolic regulation for people whose lives appear stable on paper but feel increasingly effortful from the inside.

CONNECT WITH ALEX
Website: https://www.canaryhousehealing.com/
Substack: https://alexmufson.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-mufson-lcsw-96146b29/
Instagram: @alex.mufson, @canaryhousehealing

 
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*The content of this show is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The goal of this show is to provide various points of view about GLP-1 Medications. The personal and professional opinion of the guests and their content does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Ana Reisdorf or GLP-1 Hub.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Food noise, I think, is really interesting from a mental health experience. I think that there's sometimes not an understanding of what the difference between healthy hunger and intrusive thinking is about. And I I do think there is intrusive thinking around food. If it's preoccupying you even though you've just eaten, that's probably not an indicator of like food noise about your appetite. That's probably an indicator of some other dysregulation.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome to the GLP1 Hub Podcast. If you're on a GLP1 and doing everything right, barely eating and still not seeing results, this conversation is going to give you a very different way to think about what might be happening. I'm Anna Reisdorf, registered dietitian and GLP1 user. And today I'm joined by Alex Muf Moofson. And today I'm joined by Alex Moofson, integrative healing strategist and founder of the Canary House, where she works with high functioning people who are not being served by traditional medicine. In this episode, you'll hear why some people may be low or non-responders to GLP1s, what labs and patterns can be missed when everything looks good, how stress under eating, gut health, hormones, and mental health can all connect, and why appetite suppression is not the same as true regulation. And as always, if you're enjoying this podcast, please make sure you leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share your thoughts in the comments if you're watching over on YouTube. Now let's get on to the episode. I want to welcome Alex Muffson today. We are going to talk about a lot of different things, particularly around GLP1 nonresponders and how to take kind of a little bit of a different approach to this whole GLP1 thing. So, Alex, can you introduce yourself and tell the people what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Hi, thank you so much for having me. This is one of my favorite topics. I am an integrative healing strategist and my firm is called Canary House, and we work with high-functioning people that are not being served by traditional medicine. So when you mention non-responders, a lot of our clients come on, for instance, a high dose of GLP1, but they've had no success in losing weight. And so it's our job to figure out what's going on and why they're not responding in a way that, you know, we would expect would be typical for their level of intake and their level of commitment to their protocol. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Interesting. So there is a percentage that I'm seeing of people who are non-responders. And this can be quite devastating because you see the stories on social medias about I lost 200 pounds or whatever. And if you try this expecting a miracle and that doesn't happen, that can be really hard. So you said you mentioned you want to share maybe a couple of stories of your current clients who are experiencing this. So what are you seeing out there for this non-responder situation?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

It's such a good question. So a lot of people who have come to my firm usually have actually tried a couple different GLP1 options. So most have already been on semaglutide, trazepatide. They've kind of gone on that normal escalation protocol. That I do want to be clear from the science perspective, those protocols are meant for maximizing weight loss in a very certain type of person. There's not a lot of nuance in the typical trajectory. And so we're seeing people who, like you said, followed the rules. These are women who are really compliant. They're doing everything. And in fact, usually they're under-eating even prior to the GLP1. So though they might be from a BMI perspective and a visual perspective, overweight, they are under consuming. So that's number one is this little tidbit that we ask about what your consumption habits are before the peptide came into your life. And then what happened when you when you were escalating? Did you, were you able to maintain your normal intake? Did that intake drop really quickly? What did that look like? What we typically find is that people who are at, for those of you who already speak GLP1, like if you're on trzepatide and you're at like a seven and a half milligram dose, maybe even higher, and you're not losing weight, those people are usually also reporting that they have very significant appetite suppression. And that even prior to the GLP1, they weren't big eaters. And they would often express that they gained all this weight in a way that didn't really feel like it made sense because if anything, they felt like they were more likely to skip meals or have one meal a day or rely on coffee. This is a very common story for really high-functioning go-getter women. And they they often kind of know this is weird. Like, why did I gain so much weight in the first place? And then I'm doing everything that they say, and I'm eating even less now on the GLP one, and I'm not losing. So that's kind of what sets the stage. The first thing that we like to do is one, talk about those eating habits. And then two, we take a really good look at both the blood work and often we'll order some what they call functional health testing. And that is because a lot of the time we won't get the answers we need in the traditional health markers. I will say one thing that is very common that you can look for is if you have a very depleted ferritin level, which is iron, but usually you're gonna see hemoglobin listed as your iron. But if you gotta ask for the ferritin, you gotta make sure that your doctor tests that. And so that's like one little alarm bell that often goes off. But then what we're doing is usually trying to find, okay, why did you gain all this weight if you're more likely to skip meals than you are to have what the experts call binge eating disorder or things like that? Like if that's not you, why did you gain this weight to begin with? Because not all weight gain is the same. Sure. Some weight gain does come from excess calories, but other weight gain comes from insulin and glucose mismatch. It can come from hormonal mismatches, it can even come from your body believing that it's in a crisis mode, that maybe it learned from a traumatic experience, from being overworked and busy. I mean, that's like every woman that I know. Maybe it was inherited your exposure to stress when in your mother's utero. Like that can even affect how your certain systems, and if you guys are really into science, Google the HPA axis. But if you're not into science, all you need to know is that what you're exposed to in your mother's womb can actually carry through your systems. And as we get older and and our body is a bit more fatigued, it can get easier and easier to throw these regulatory systems off track. So the regulatory system would be the thing that's saying you're gonna release the right amount of glucose to the right amount of insulin, or you're gonna release the right amount of testosterone and the and then your estrogen is gonna take the correct pathway into utilization. That doesn't always happen. And so sometimes you can be in a caloric deficit, moving a lot, and on a GLP1, but if the function that the GLP1 requires, which is the regulatory systems, that's how GLP1s work, is a very specific regulatory system. If that's out of whack to begin with, the GLP1 can't do what it needs to do. So sometimes we have to go and create an environment in your body that the GLP1 can then thrive in. Most of those women then only need a fraction of the GLP one that they needed before to get no results, to get big results. So I'm talking for those who like numbers, they're at seven and a half, maybe 15 milligrams of trzepatite. We're bringing them to between 1.5 and 2.5 milligrams of trzepatide and having more responsiveness once we've created a healthier environment for the GLP one to work.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

So what so you said a lot of things. So I'll start from the beginning. I was trying to remember. So what are some of the labs that you look at? You mentioned ferritin, but like what are some of those other functional labs that your regular doctor might not be checking?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Well, before we go to functional, we want to make sure that we have your lipid panel. We want to make we want to understand what's going on with your cholesterol. We want to get a fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and we do want to do a beautiful check of your thyroid. Most people who are on GLP1s have checked these things. However, what can sometimes be missed is that the numbers look good, but those blood tests don't take into account how hard your body was working to create those results. So sometimes we'll see okay results, borderline results, the dreaded everything looks good, but there's a couple weird markers, but like they're just outliers. We'll see those sorts of things. You rolled your eyes appropriately. Thank you for that for those who are only listening. So once we see that, we might say, okay, so her glucose and her insulin separately are actually okay. But if we look at them relative to each other, maybe instead of not having enough insulin, which is what people often think of in like diabetes, maybe her insulin comes in so fast that she's not actually getting enough glucose because now she's also on a diet. So she's not eating a lot of carbs, a lot of fruits, and so, and definitely not a lot of sugars. And so, oh man, we have this big mismatch between the insulin and the glucose. So we're looking at it proportionally a little more than just what the actual result is. Once we get through that, which sometimes is enough, sometimes we can see that just by looking at the traditional testing from a different lens. But then often we're ordering two things, and we're ordering a microbiome evaluation. So we're looking to make sure that you have the right bacteria in your gut to actually be processing food. We're looking to make sure that the, if you think of your gut as kind of like a balloon that's supposed to hold all the food in and process it, you want to make sure that that balloon is sturdy and there's no holes in it because the nutrients will go right into your bloodstream and you won't feel good. And a lot of the time when people are under-eating, they don't realize that they're under-eating because food actually doesn't feel that good to go in. So we want to make sure the gut environment is really, really positive. And then we also want to take a look. It's actually we do this through spit and through urine, but it's more of like your brain and your adrenals. And we do a test called a Dutch plus. And that is commonly known for checking hormones, which is great. But sometimes I will have non-responders will show good hormone levels, like that'll that'll seem okay. And they might even already have one of these tests done that was, oh, this looks great. But when we look a little more granularly, we'll find that there's some specific markers, like maybe the estrogen is not taking an ideal pathway to utilization. Maybe it's taking one that's more inflammatory, or maybe, you know, tryptophan, like when you eat turkey. Yeah. We can actually test which route like the tryptophan goes. You're supposed to have some. And sometimes we'll see little markers in your urine that says your body is actually not using that to like feel good and relax, and you know, like post-turkey, like serotonin, melatonin, you know, you're you're feeling good. It's actually taking a different pathway. And when it takes that other pathway, we know that your body feels like it's in crisis, and so it's going to hold on to fat. And so these are the things that we can look at that are a little bit deeper. And then we also want to understand what's happening with your mental health because these are all not separate. And a lot of the time, non-responders are focused outward, they're taking care of everybody else, but they're not that great at taking care of their own needs. And we can see that in the testing, but then we can also spot that in our interview. So that's another thing that if the GLP one doesn't have an environment that is focused on safety, your body will use other cues to keep the fat on, to keep you safe. So we're looking at that whole big picture.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

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SPEAKER_01 13:05

How do I think it's a great question? I actually wouldn't separate them. Okay. And actually, I'll give you an example in myself because it's a fun example. Yeah. Well, it wasn't really fun to live, but it's fun to tell. So you all know you might be one of the like girls who wakes up hangry, like, I gotta eat, or like if you skip a meal, it's like somebody get her a lollipop, she needs some sugar. I was that girl from infancy. My parents report that even in my nursing patterns. I just thought that was how it was. I didn't understand people that could just skip a meal. Like, I would just become not so good. At the same time, one of my previous struggles that I would have shared if you said, like, how's your mental health? I would be like, oh, it's great, except I have this recurring fear about finances, like kind of that scarcity loop of like, oh, I'm not gonna have enough money, I'm not gonna be safe. And that didn't really line up with the bank account. Didn't matter. Make more, make less. The feeling, the thoughts are still there. Kind of like commonly would be called like a little OCD loop. Like it just keeps going. So I have these two things. I'm hangry if I miss a meal, I'm you know, really unstable blood sugar, and then I have these recurring thoughts. Didn't really think they were connected. That's until because I knew that my glucose and insulin were mismatched, that was something that I was aware of. I started treating myself with a low dose of trzepatide. So 1.5 milligrams, super low, no intention of escalating. The thoughts went away. Not just the thoughts, but the entire compulsion and the entire worry went away as soon as my glucose stabilized. So that tells me, okay, what was my body trying to tell me with that thought? It was actually correct. It was telling me something is scarce. It was telling me what gets sugar in our world, money. It's probably some sort of like inherited trauma from past famines or poverty in generations past. But you know, money gets sugar, and sugar solves the lack of glucose that my liver's producing. Well, you bring in the GLP1, it helps the liver produce the right amount of glucose, it balances that out, and the thought goes away. Now, that thought wasn't not a thought, it was a mental health anxiety, but it also had a physiological reason for expressing. And so if we can stop looking at these things as separate and start thinking, like, what is our body trying to communicate to us through the only language that we speak, which is thoughts, it can really like alleviate some of this pressure to be like, is this a mental health issue or is this a physiological issue? Like it's probably both because probably everything is both.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Sure, sure. No, that that makes total sense. I mean, our we think of our brains and our bodies as not connected, but they are they're the same.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

I mean, there's no way doesn't do well without a body, body doesn't do well without a brain. But we all live up here, I think, or many of us guilty. Yes. Yeah, to feel like, oh man, my liver is creating a thought. Like I had done a lot of therapy. I am a licensed therapist, and that it wasn't the thought wasn't touched by that.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Sure, sure, definitely. So really loved a GLP one though. When you get someone who you figure out what might be off, let's say the blood sugar or the gut microbiome or something like that, and what do you do with them to help them respond? Because some people really their health really needs to improve in order for them to like lose weight. So, what are what are some steps that you take to help them become a responder?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Typically, when we have a total non-responder, we have to go in stages. So the first stage will usually create a supplement stack that's very non-invasive to quiet the system and get it so that it's ready to receive more interventions because a lot of non-responders are also highly sensitive systems. So maybe they have dysregulated cortisol or, you know, things that are kind of hyped up. You can probably understand that feeling. So we're gonna do that. We're also going to have, I have a complex trauma specialist and a bioadaptive regulation specialist on my team. They're gonna do some of the heavy lifting work to get you to reconnect with your body so that you can connect those thoughts and those feelings. Because if we make your body feel better, but you don't know how to attach those mental health thoughts to it, it actually won't do much for your quality of life. So we kind of take a whole, a whole wraparound approach to that. Then usually we're once we have those functional tests back, we're either, well, it could be both, but we're either doing a full gut protocol to make sure that we're healing your gut. That can look like usually it's a few different phases to try to get, you know, the bacteria correct, make sure that your gut is holding food in well, not going into your bloodstream, all of that. And then oftentimes for those low responders, and this is not a prescription for you, not everybody takes this, but often we are introducing a different compound called low-dose naltraxone. And low dose naltraxone is a very, very small dose of a compound that is not uh widely used by traditional medical doctors, but it's highly supportive of uh what's called neuroimmune regulation. It gets the brain to start knowing there's no stress right now. You don't have to send all the inflammation out, you don't have to pack, you know, the weight on, you don't have to hold, right? Because when you are in when you're stuck in threat mode neurologically, your brain isn't going to allow things like a GLP one to release the fat in the same way. Already know that the person is non-responsive to the GLP one. We're often going to the neurological features that will then allow the GLP one to be in a safer environment, all the while doing all of the work with our, you know, specialists about, you know, how your body got this dysregulated, how the anxiety got here, right? Right. You can't avoid the hard work of talking to a specialist, but at the same time, we can be supporting kind of the rewiring of the receptors in your brain. And then often we're able to reintroduce the GLP1 later on, sometimes even at like a tiny dose, like 0.5 milligrams, just to regulate that system well enough. And then we see a completely different response. Now, trexon is the medication people use for alcohol. Correct, at a very different dose. Okay. So when you think about alcohol or you actually hear about it through Narcan, like if someone's in an opioid overdose crisis, that's like the Narcan is like 55 milligrams or something really, really high. I am often starting this profile at 0.25 or 0.5 milligrams, and we're usually not getting above maybe three milligrams, maybe 4.5 if you're really low responder there, but usually we're in a very low, low range. So we're talking microdoses. And the reason that it works, and the reason that it works at higher doses for a drug and alcohol is because it one of the things it impacts, we won't get too nitty-gritty, but one of the things it impacts is the opioid receptors in your brain. And it gives them a break at night. It basically puts them to sleep for a few hours, which is what they're supposed to do. But for a lot of us high-functioning go, go, go girls, they've been wide open for years. And when they're wide open, they're usually sending out kind of like I think of it as like little inflammatory soldiers that are like, where's the thing I have to fix? So they their brain is sending it out. And sometimes they're fixing things that don't need to be fixed. So you might have sore feet for no reason, or floating pain, or tingling, or fatigue. Like these are things that often non-responders are also feeling. Random panic. That's another thing that a lot of non-responders will feel. Um, so when we look at a mental health intersection, this is literally your brain. And so when we give that brain a little bit of a rest at night, when it opens back up, it gets a beautiful, like healthy endorphin uh rush in the morning, and it slowly starts to teach your body that it's safe. And we usually see a lot of the inflammatory systems, the anxiety, the weird pain that's like, I didn't actually hurt myself. Why do I hurt here? All of that kind of dissipates. And when that calms down, then if we reintroduce the GLP one at a low dose, it's highly effective because that person was actually a hyper responder, but their body was getting flooded and shutting down.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Right. One of my concerns about GLP one's use, just especially the widespread use, is just widespread malnutrition. And that is very stressful for the body, too, you know. So can you talk a little bit about that and why we should maybe be concerned concerned about that and how that could actually make you become maybe a non-responder? Like all that stress.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

I was gonna say the first thing you want to say is like it might actually make you not lose weight. Right. Which everybody on the GLP one wants to lose weight. And if your body thinks it's in malnutrition or thinks it's in a famine, it will not release the fat. So the whole picture of what I'm talking about from the the specialist work with the trauma specialist to low dose naltraxone is to create a World where your body believes it's safe. So the issue is that people are, I think, are associating GLP1s only with appetite suppression. And appetite suppression is actually not necessary for GLP1 weight loss or any of the other beautiful things it can do for someone if they need it. Appetite suppression is kind of a side effect that I actually try to very strongly avoid in my patients. It's important that we know that there is some level of appetite regulation if that person has something like binge eating disorder. But most people should have a reasonably normal appetite at a correct GLP1 dose. And if they do not, that can inadvertently send the body back into crisis mode, which there are people who are not hyperresponders that still lose the weight. They're usually the ones with the side effects, like they'll have the hair loss or the sagging skin or the things that we're trying to avoid because they're only losing weight by lack of calories. And there's actually a lot of ways to lose weight. Caloric deficit like that is in a literal sense of like you've put in less food than you needed for the day, is only one of them. By regulating all the other things, including your mental health to make sure that you feel safe, you actually can lose weight and eat more. I will say I personally am on trazepatite again at a microdose, below where they usually start. People, I eat more than I ate off of it by a lot because my glucose and insulin get to work together. And that is something that I think is not spoken enough about that if you're doing this as a regulatory drug, not a suppression drug, there are different results. And who doesn't want to lose weight and eat more? That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

There's a lot of fear wrapped around eating. I see that in Facebook groups and things, you know. Oh, it's not suppressing my appetite today. I'm hungry today. I have food noise today. And I want to say, like, that's good. If your body is telling you to eat, that's not bad. Like, stop trying to tamp it down, you know?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

So food noise, I think, is really interesting for a mental health experience. I think that there's sometimes not an understanding of what the difference between healthy hunger and intrusive thinking is about. And I do think, just in the way that I was having those little loops about not having enough money, there is intrusive thinking around food. If it's preoccupying you even though you've just eaten, that's probably not an indicator of uh like food noise about your appetite. That's probably an indicator of some other dysregulation, whether that's glucose, like I mentioned, cortisol, hormonal, lack of dopamine, or and or those usually express as some sort of whether it's trauma or anxiety disorder that you can approach from the mental health side. But the the idea of just silencing that versus understanding why your body was tossing off unnecessary cues can sometimes jump the gun a little bit. On the flip side, you really, really want to get hungry because you really want to eat enough. That's really important. And you will actually lose weight more sustainably and reduce the risk of rebound if you are eating enough protein and fat. And so one of the very first with a non-responder, the first thing we'll do, especially if they're already off of the GLP one, we're not like, they're not at suppression, we'll say, before we go back on, we have to increase your fat and protein. And they go, Oh my God, what are you saying? More fat? And we're like, yeah, girl, you get to eat. We want good quality fat. I would prefer you not to go to McDonald's because that's not healthy food. But do I want you eating lots of beautiful butter and raw cheddar and all the yummy stuff that we maybe sacrifice? Yes. And I want you to introduce that before there's any chance of disrupted food noise because the food noise might go away on its own if you satiate with fat before the GLP one shows up. And then the GLP one gets to come in and do what it's supposed to do rather than just you know quieting and suppressing your appetite.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Sure, definitely. So you mentioned a few times as high functioning women, high functioning women, how did we get like this? Oh man. How did our bodies get like dysregulated and you know, all of this stuff? Like, where does it all come from? Like, I think in a more philosophical way.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Well, there's philosophical, and then there's also just like what we're exposed to. Because really, if we think about what our mothers went through, what their mothers went through, there's a lot of great science that demonstrates that our actual genetics change depending on what three, four generations before us went through. That's called epigenetics for the people who want to Google this. And then there's also a lot of us were carried. Let's let's say your parents are baby boomer mom, right? And she was balancing her own generational stress, whether it was, you know, the first person to try to work and have a baby. She had no modeling for that, perhaps. And all of these things are stressors, and so our little bodies are exposed to those chemicals and hormones in utero. Then we come out, and most of us are in the age group where over our lifetime we saw more synthetics and toxins in our food, in our air. We saw more and more pressure financially. We saw a lot of shifting dynamics in our relationships and like what does a good relationship look like? And so, and not to mention just the world events, we're in kind of a stressful, I mean, I don't even know what period of time to put it in, you know, last 40 years. Yeah. And so, and so this actually does have physiological changes. And there is a there's a certain type of person who their physiology and their personality and who they are, they jump into being the caretaker, right? The one that everybody else goes to, the strong one. That's not everybody, but probably if you're a GLP1 low responder, it's probably you. And if you're someone who identifies with a lot of the stories I've told, it's probably you. Like, are you the one that all your friends go to for advice? You know, always has the family together. Like these are things that are reinforced, especially in women in our society. And that like self-sacrifice gets reinforced. And that actually lives in your body. That's not just personality, it's not just skills. It changes the actual biochemistry of your body because your body starts prioritizing things other than self-care and saying, we don't need to deal with that. We don't need to deal with that. And like it will maybe slow down, say, your sex hormones earlier than it should have, or things like that, which can impact weight gain. And it's just doing that to try to like help you be the person that you're trying to be. But that's where the complex trauma work really helps because it can again help create an environment where the GLP one can do its job rather than all of us bad babes running into the fire and saying, No, I've got this, and just pushing through. And the body's like, okay, I'm gonna store a little fat just in case uh this really goes sideways because something seems amiss.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Yeah, our attitude is I'm just gonna try harder. I'm just gonna eat fewer calories, I'm just gonna eat more protein, I'm just gonna like never eat a carb again or a piece of cake ever again.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

And then I have no energy, energy because I haven't had carbs in three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Right. Or I I need to run 10 miles, you know, there's just so many stories that we come up with that are probably the opposite of what we need to do.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

I mean, it's so hard because that makes sense in our minds. We're like, oh, if I if I do more and put more effort in, I will get the response. The the problem is your body doesn't actually know that. And so it's gonna say, well, she needs energy to run 10 miles. She doesn't have any carbohydrate energy available to her. She also has to do a lot of other things, work, take care of the kids, take care of the family. Okay, well, what should we not do today? I'm gonna give her a lot of cortisol and not a lot of, you know, testosterone, right? Because who needs testosterone right now? We need cortisol. And then, and then maybe I'm gonna like take away some of her access to dopamine because she doesn't need to actually feel good. She just needs to get this done. Get it done. Yeah. And so the body has to reorient until you create a body that is in survival mode. And I think a lot of high-functioning women, though we might not like to admit this, are kind of frozen in survival mode. And then when the GLP1 doesn't work, the instinct is to like take on radical responsibility for that. When really it's kind of the opposite. It's actually surrendering into what your body needs and starting to center your own body again that will then allow the medication later on to work.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Alex, you're speaking my language and the language of all the people. This is so such valuable information to like really take a step back and see what's really going on here. Because I think a lot of us are still in the diet, push harder, try harder. You know, it's some of it's American culture too.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

I was gonna say it's really hard to break that. I mean, the fact that I lose weight the more fat I eat, like my 90s babies. I mean, I was born in the 80s, but I was a kid in the 90s. Like, I that hurts my brain to think about. Yeah, you're supposed to eat more snack wells cookies, don't you know? You mean the full you're supposed to get the full fat dairy? What are we talking about? Anyway, where can people find out about your work and and connect with you online? Uh, my firm is called Canary House. I have a free publication on Substack called Everything Looks Good, which is the thing none of us want to hear when we're not feeling well. Um, you can look up my name or you can look up Everything Looks Good there. And Canary House, we have a full team and we specialize in people who are not getting the results that they want from a traditional medicine. And we start with a full circle evaluation to try to figure out the why. So the why isn't the GLP one working or why don't I feel well on it? That would be our first question. And we do a deep dive. Cool. So canary like the canary in the coal mine? That's exactly right because that's who we treat. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

The people who speak up first. Well, thank you so, so much. I really, really appreciate it. And I'll be sure to put all that in the show notes. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank you for listening to this episode of the GLP One Hub podcast. I loved this episode with Alex. I have also sometimes felt that traditional medicine hasn't given me the answers that I'm wanted. And so it's wonderful to have different practitioners who can maybe look in a different way to see what might be going on. So I hope that you found this interview valuable and gave gave you a little bit of food for thoughts. So today is Thursday, and it is our question of the week. And this week comes from one of my follower followers over on Facebook, and she asks, I am at a healthy BMI now after losing 70 pounds on GLP1, and I still have stomach fat. Should I lose more weight? The answer is no, you should not lose more weight because the stomach fat probably is not related to what you weigh. People have different genetics in that they simply put fat in certain areas over others. That is not really something that you have a whole lot of control over. But you want to look at other factors that can influence abdominal fat or how your stomach looks. And so these are things like strength training, digestion, which can make you look more bloated, um, age. Obviously, if you've been overweight for a long time and you lose weight, you're gonna have more skin on your stomach that can make it look bigger. Cortisol levels and stress play a role in where you hold onto your fat, your sleep. So these are all different factors you have to consider for why you might be holding on to abdominal fat. But what I also want to encourage you is to celebrate your success. So you've lost 70 pounds. That is an incredible success. Your health is so much better. And I know we always want some type of body project to work on, but I want to really encourage us to focus on what we have done so well already, and not so much on the small things that might still be around to bother us. I am coming out with a YouTube video in the next week or so about different ways you can reduce abdominal fat. So that will go more into detail on these recommendations. But in the meantime, love yourself. You deserve it. You've done all of the hard work to get here. And I'll see you in the next episode.