Is GLP-1 the Shortcut… or the Trap?

In this episode, we dive into one of the most talked-about topics in health right now: GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

Kate opens up about her own struggles with weight, stress, and trying to find something that actually works. With expert insights from clinical nutritionist Kylie White, and leading voice in metabolic health Grant Schofield, this conversation goes far beyond quick fixes.

We unpack:

- What GLP-1 actually does in the body
- Why “just eat less and move more” doesn’t work for everyone
- The reality of weight regain after stopping the medication
- The role of stress, environment, and modern lifestyles
- How to approach weight loss in a sustainable, long-term way

This is not about shame, blame, or shortcuts. It’s about understanding the bigger picture and finding a path that actually works for real people.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or like nothing is working… this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Massive things would have to change. And that's true of people's health in in this world. If you want to live a long, healthy life, then you'd have to say to yourself, what has to be true? And the thing is that that in the way that we live at the moment, you'd have to make a massive effort to change your diet and expose your ultra-processed food, including booze. You'd have to have a massive effort to spend time where you where you're off devices and sometimes you were bored.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome to another episode of the Falking Good Podcast. Kate Fenwick and myself, Simon. Joining Kate and I today for this really interesting conversation where we're going to dive into obesity, weight loss, willpower biology, and where GLP1 fits into all of this. So we have Kylie White. Welcome, Kylie. Kylie is a registered clinical nutritionist, naturopath, founder of Nourish Clinic. And she's working with people every day on exactly this stuff. And we've got a Professor Grant Schofield. Welcome, Grant. He is one of New Zealand's best known voices in metabolic health and public health. He's been in this space for years, written a heap of books, published a huge amount of research, and he's never been afraid to challenge the way we think about food, weight, and chronic disease. He is the founder of Precure, which is all about training health coaches and pushing a more preventative lifestyle-based approach to health. So I tell you what, between the two of these incredible people, we've got someone working at ground level with patients all the time, and Grant bringing the wider science to the big picture and the view, which is exactly what this conversation really needs. I guess before we get into the science of it all, GLP one. Okay, it's your turn. What's going through your head right now? What where are you at with it all?

SPEAKER_05 2:46

Well, we had a conversation about this a while back, Simon, when I think you'd talk to a to a pharmacist, and I so me being me, went to my doctor to talk to her about it. And I have to say she's a brilliant doctor, but I said to her, look, I'm thinking about GLP1. And she said to me she wouldn't recommend it because of the risk of I think it was uh pancre pancreontitis or something with the pancreas and something else. I can't remember what the other thing was, but basically she said, I don't think that that's a great idea. She didn't say I couldn't, she just didn't recommend it. So I'll and and I must admit from my point of view, from a a health, like I I'm I want like I'm seriously, like I put it out there publicly, I want to lose weight and all of that, but I'm I'm finding it really hard. I've got a meeting with Kylie to talk about it, but I yeah, it's with with crazy routines and all like my lifestyle is this mental. I thought it might be an option for me, but then I sort of felt like my doctor was like, no. So I I'm really excited to hear what Grant and Kylie have to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Grant, GLP1, what is it?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

So it's it's a peptide hormone. So there's a lot of talk about peptides in in health at the moment. So, you know, example, they're just signaling molecules. Uh so people inject peptides into their joints, and you know, that could tell the body to produce more cartilage or whatever. These ones are called incretin hormones, which stands for intestine secreted, so you naturally secrete this GLP1 when you eat things like vegetables, and that travels into the bloodstream, and then in the body it signals hair there and everywhere, it signals in the pancreas about producing insulin, it signals in the brain about your fullness and and satiety. It's tied up with food and hunger signalling. So, so of course, you can get this stimulator by eating vegetables that still exist in their unprocessed form, which is an interesting thing for a start. Uh, but the GLP1 agonists have called, they actually last longer in the body than vegetables do. And so they have this sort of long longer signalling, and they what a lot of people describe them as doing is turning off the food noise. So, yeah, that that that's something that people find incredibly disruptive. You know, they're constantly feeling quite hungry, uh they're they've got this drive to eat, often particularly in the evenings or when they get upset, and this really quells that. Um but it doesn't come without side effects. So, yeah, one of the reasons that you don't feel like eating so much is you can feel a bit nauseous, takes a a bit of the pleasure side away from eating, you know, which which stops you doing that, but it's also slightly perverse in in that sense. So, yeah, that that's what they are, they occur naturally, but this is the drug form. They're on their sort of third generation, so the side effects are a bit less than they used to be, but they still exist. You can lose between 10 and 20% of your body weight pretty reliably on these things. That's why they've been so hugely popular. On the other hand, when you stop taking them, most people, so four out of five people, will put all the weight back on plus some. But you'll eventually get sick of the side effects and the cost, and at the two-year mark you can expect to be back to the weight that you started at, most likely with about a few kilos less muscle mass. So, so that's a really important thing to think about. If you you you if you don't have any other strategies and support, when you finish up on these things, you'll put the weight back on, and because they help you lose not just fat mass but lean mass, then you'll be actually worse off than when you started. So, so that's my worry, is it that people go into these things, they lose some weight, it goes back on, the the the same weight that they started with, but less muscle. That's a net bad outcome.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

My tips would be if you are taking a GLP one, is prioritizing your protein intake. So looking to get 20 to 30 grams of protein with your first meal. I want to mention that because what's happening all of the time now is it is the latest sort of buzzword trend that every highly processed food is now high in protein. Those are not the high protein foods we want. We want to look at our meat, our eggs, our cheese if you tolerate dairy. So getting a good dose of protein in, getting your fiber and your vegetables in, because food intake does cut down so drastically, I always recommend using a really good multi-nutrient, like good green vitality, something like that, to top up those nutrient stores so you're not becoming nutrient deficient. And then as you're able to start building in some weight-bearing exercise to further help hold on to and prioritize that lean body mass. So, from a lifestyle perspective, that's what I would be really looking at alongside sleep, sunshine, all of those things, and then really shifting your environment and your identity to align with the long-term life you want to live.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Great advice. I agree with everything. But my the other thing I would say is I would advise going down to the minimum effective dose immediately.

SPEAKER_06 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

You don't have to dial it up to the point where you lose the most weight possible. Because because while you're losing a lot of weight, at the maximum weight loss rate, it's you know, nearly forty percent of that's gonna be lean muscle mass, and you don't want to be losing that weight. I'd rather if you lost it a bit more slowly, you're gonna avoid some of that. And you're gonna have to find an exercise that you love and can keep doing. One, you know, like people got some people can get up at five o'clock in the morning and go to the gym. Like, I'm not that person. It's it's not in me. Literally I I'm literally physically incapable of doing that. You know, it it would destroy me. So so that's not for me, but you know, I can do other things. So yeah, find the exercise that you love because you have to do it. And yeah, and and find an accountability buddy that when you exit this, because you're gonna have to exit it, that that you can be accountable to. If that's a health coach, that's great. If it's your partner, that's certainly plausible. Not in my world, but you know, in other people's worlds, that's plausible. You know, if it's your brother, your sister, your cousin, whoever, a friend, you're gonna need an accountability partner. So those are my top three tips.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Yeah. The dosing one is a really important one. You will get different trains of thoughts from different doctors that will prescribe it or pharmacists that can prescribe it. But some of the people that I've seen that have been quite successful, they haven't just every four weeks gone up a dose. They've kind of got to sort of one 1.7 maximum. And my opinion of it is why do we need to increase the dose if someone is losing weight? Because the more we completely shut off food noise, which is just hunger, like that's all it is, is that hunger signaling. The more you completely shut that down. When you reduce or come off the medication, that is gonna come back with vengeance. So we want you to feel like eating. We don't want you to be repulsed by food and enjoyment of most things in life. So I'm a big advocate for staying as low as possible and bringing that back down. Because there's people that will just say, I'm just gonna take it for life. We've got to consider, I mean, just look right now when we could be facing supply issues, a whole lot of different things going on in the world. It's not guaranteed that you can have this medication for life if you're a certain age and you then want to go and have a baby. That data about pregnancy and GLP one is not there. So we've got to consider all of these things that taking it long term is not going to be possible for everybody. So really building up to support that it's just a tool in an otherwise bigger picture is really important.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

I can hear lots of people out there thinking or saying, you know, just stop eating, have more willpower, move more. You know, obesity is, in my view, it's a chronic illness, it's a disease. You know, they have people that are overweight have it like a food noise in their head. And those that aren't overweight, and there's less of them in the world, there's more people out there carrying too much weight, but they feel guilty for it. And I heard somebody saying, you know, oh, GLP1's cheating, it's a shortcut, and you put all your weight back on. But I think what we need to understand first is that, you know, obesity comes, you know, with the environment, the stress, the ultra-processed foods, the calories are everywhere. Biology hasn't changed, but the world we live in has gone bonkers with all this stuff, you know, stress, wars, you name it, it all adds up. But the people out there that over are overweight, you know, it's not their fault. You know, it's you know, genetics have something to do with it. Would you guys agree with that? That you know, people that are overweight get beaten up. I just hear all the time, oh, I do know move more, eat less, you know, go to the gym, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Yeah, I don't understand. I would I would definitely agree with that. And I think my perspective and your perspective, Simon, probably come in a little bit different because we've both been overweight. We've both lost quite a bit of weight and then kept it off. And then initially, my thought about GLP ones was why would someone need them? You know, like you look at us, Simon, we've lost like 40 kgs and kept it off. So I was really in the camp of it's unnecessary. But then that's really, I've changed my perspective a lot working with people because you see, there's some people that try everything and they just get absolutely nowhere. And I think we just really need to consider the fact that over the past 20 to 30 years, we've had more access than ever to information, to gyms, to healthy food. You have to put a little caveat in there because we also are now in a in a time where there's so much processed food that really is disrupting our biology and allowing us to know when we are full and when we're hungry. So I think that even though we've had all these additional things come in, it has not curbed the obesity epidemic. So to purely lay that on someone having more willpower and putting it all over to personal responsibility, we really need to take a step back and think how can these tools are going to be used regardless of if we agree with them or not. But as health professionals for myself and Grant, how do we become a voice out there to allow the people that are going to use them in a more ethical, safe, and informed way?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

You know, Serena Williams, right? There's somebody who's an elite athlete who was in the gym every day, struggled with her weight, and she says, if only this GLP one was around when I was competing. She is taking GLP one, says she moves better, her joints are better, she's more motivated, she's a new person. Oprah Winfrey, same thing. You know, there are people out there who are singing its praises, but it's it's a little bit like you know, you take a tablet to keep your blood pressure under control. When your blood pressure comes under control, you don't suddenly stop taking the tablet. And I guess that's the problem with GLP1, right? You go.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Well, I mean, hang on, first of all, a few things. Follow the money with Serena Williams, her husband's on the board of that company, they've got stocks in it. Really? Yeah, so same with Oprah. So, you know, like, okay, grain of salt. But I think there's three, three second, I don't think taking a blood pressure medicine for the high for high blood pressure is is really the right idea. Because it's not the root cause. I I I I find it a little bit like you know, driving along with your car and the oil light coming on, and you think, okay, how am I going to sort this oil light out? Okay, I'll get some black duct tape out and stick it across the dashboard. Oil light's gone. I th I think, you know, I think blood pressure medicine fits into that category, frankly. There's the you know, the root cause is ultra-processed food, sitting around all day and you know, too much stress. Those need to be sorted. So I've got I've got three competing ideas here in this, and and they don't match up, but I think they're all true. So the first is we make what I call an ontological error with obesity. Like it's the root cause of poor health, and if you just sorted that out, then your diabetes would be alright, you wouldn't get this, you'd be your life would be better. But I it's just completely round the wrong way. You know, putting on too much weight is is a result of a world that mismatches the human evolutionary context. We come in all shapes and sizes as well. So so we end up in the situation where the whole of medicine thinks that overweight and obesity is a problem, and they focus on that. And that has a perverse outcome of pushing people down and making it like their fault. Oh, if you just lost weight, I'm in shape, you know, what's wrong with you? Like it's some sort of personal failing, and I think that's tragic, frankly. And yeah, so so so body weight would be the last thing I would focus on, but I would focus on diet and activity and stress. The second thing to think about the analogy is I I drive along the Auckland Motorway, and they're constantly doing these road works in the southern area. They've been doing this for a decade, and we are slow and useless in infrastructure in this country. So you go, what would have to be fundamentally different for us to be good? Well, you know, you'd have to actually change some big things. You'd have to change the Resource Management Act, you'd have to have workers that were prepared at a workforce that was prepared to work 24-7, you'd have to have locally available cheap materials. Massive things would have to change. And that's true of people's health in in this world. If you want to live a long, healthy life, then you'd have to say to yourself, what has to be true? And the thing is that that in the way that we live at the moment, you'd have to make a massive effort to change your diet and expose your ultra-processed food, including booze. You'd have to have a massive effort to spend time where you where you're off devices and sometimes you were bored. You would have to spend a massive amount of time scheduling in exercise, which is really just a post-World War II invention. So that's the second thing. The third competing thing against us, though. I just want to talk about a young man, we'll call him Flynn that I saw a few years ago. Flynn was 14 and he was 165 kilos, and his parents were in a bitter divorce, and Flynn was caught in some of the fallout of that. His mum said to me, I want you to help Flynn, but I don't want you to talk about his weight. I I I don't want him to that to upset him. Anyway, she's the other room. We did talk about his weight, and I said, Flynn, do you think much about your weight, mate? And as tears started to run out of one eye, then the other eye, he said, Yeah, a fair bit. And I was like, Well, what do you mean a fair bit? And he goes, Oh, 99.9% of the time I'm awake, and you're like, Oh, it just breaks your heart. Is this awful?

SPEAKER_06 19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

And he tried everything. So, you know, if you were the and and oh yeah, and so the other thing is his mom said, Oh, yeah. No one's talked to Flynn at school this year. And I was like, Oh yeah, you know, it was like June. And so, you know, sometimes the harms of being in that shape are just so brutal that you know, if I was a parent, I probably would choose a GLP one for Flynn, but try and pair it with you know, some of that sort of behavioral support that you can get that's really gonna help you make some of those bigger changes that have to happen. It's naive not to think those don't have to happen. They have to happen. And this might be a a uh this might be an entry point. You might be able to do things at lower doses and you might be able to actually make some progress. So, yeah, th those are sort of competing ideas.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

Well, can I just jump in and just say like because I I find maybe I'm a little bit like Flynn. I think nowadays, like for myself, I've found like I've had an incredibly stressful couple of years, which is when I've put the weight on. I was not long ago, I was about 70 kilos, and now pretty much 98. So, you know, that's a huge amount, and it's impacting my knees. My knees, I've already got bad knees, and so I'm having those issues. I've just recently had a CT angiogram. It took me four, I think it was seven months from I was in hospital last year until I actually got the CT angiogram, and it showed plaque, so I all this stuff is I'm trying to learn plaque, and then I my doctor told me beginning last year I was pre-pre-diabetic, and then I'm also in the throws of menopause, and I think you know, there's a lot of women out there who we're going through the same sort of thing, like the amounts of stress that I've had is just uh unreal. And then it's really hard because I'm in this situation where I actually can eat reasonably quite like quite well, avoid processed foods, I do all the the right things for a couple of weeks, get absolutely not nothing, no change. And it just it it starts, and then on the internet. Like all of a sudden you've got, oh, do this and you'll lose 10 kilos. Do this, tie cheese, something, and you'll lose 30 kilos. And do like, and it's really hard as because I I for me personally, I feel like I need somebody to say, this is the plan, this is what you're doing, this is what you eat, and because I'm away and I'm busy and everything else, and then I feel like I'd have control, but I just feel so out of control all of the time that eating becomes just a like I just need to eat to survive, but I'm I can avoid everything and still put on weight.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

But is is is eating the is eating the problem here of, you know, when you look at that motorway building analogy, it's like what would have to change for all this to sort out. And to me, I'm hearing a lot about stress.

SPEAKER_05 22:46

Yeah, stress is my biggest issue. And then that creates that whole that whole circle of I'm so stressed, I don't and I'm busy, I don't have time to walk, or I don't have time to because I and then my knees are so sore I can't walk. So you've got this whole thing that's going on, and then you take supplements and you do all this stuff thinking that you're gonna, you know, h somehow get h hit healthy, and yeah, and it's it's really hard.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

This is something that I hear all the time. This is really common. Have any of you seen the picture of the two fish bowls, one fish in clean water, one in dirty water? And like they say, we wouldn't say the fish is the problem here. We would clean the environment, the fish would get better. And I like to explain that little analogy to my clients as well, because whether you're going on a diet or you're using a GLP one, if your environment doesn't change, yes, you might get some short-term wins and see some changes in body weight if that's purely what you're focusing on. But if you want sustainable change, we've got to completely change the environment. And I think as for the people that have been successful with GLP ones, they're using it a little bit differently to how it's medically meant to be used. So they're using things like smaller doses for longer. So I would say with my clients, once you get to about one milligrams, that's when that gastrointestinal distress, so feeling nauseous, having diarrhea or constipation or a mixture of the both really starts to kick in. My view on it is is it worth it to reduce body weight and feel awful all the time, or can we use a lower dose where that food noise is ramped right down so we can match hunger and sati satiety to your environment and then use that time to build in these habits because it's the habits that are gonna make it successful long term, not the medication.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

I agree, 100% agree. There's one other thing to pull on that stress thing at the moment. And you know, one often it helps for people to think about not humans, just to show you the size of the effect. And so we're gonna talk about male baboons right now. Uh so there's a famous book by a South African anthropologist called Why zebras don't get ulcers. But it's really about baboons and a baboon troupe that he's studied for years and observed their hierarchy, social hierarchy, especially in the males. So the baboons at the bottom of the hierarchy basically get the shit beaten down and them have got no choices. And and they're overweight, they've got low muscle mass, and they actually eat less food than the baboons at the top of the of the pyramid. Um now what happened in this baboon troop is one day all the alpha baboons went out and ate some meat that had T D in it, and they all died. And so you were just left with the females and the the fellows at the bottom of the of the hierarchy. And they didn't put in a hierarchy of themselves, they just kept it pretty flat, so they're all pretty chilled, and they all became lean and muscular and happy. Yeah, so I guess the what I'm drawing at is the is the the the problem of chronic stress is I think hugely underestimated in health. Yeah, I think that you can you can cost around on food all you like, but if you haven't got that sort of good luck with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

I think it's an enormous amount of people in the same boat as Kate. They've kind of tried everything, they know that they're stressed, they know all these things, but they need support, you know. It's not their fault, it's the environment. Everything's changed in the environment over the years. I mean, you know, we didn't have ultra-processed food years ago. You know, we're surrounded by calories no matter where we shop. And, you know, when you're in that poor shape of being overweight, there's a lot of food noise going on up there. And those that are not overweight probably have no idea what food noise is. But you know, it's like I'm walking past the fridge, I'll open it and see what's in there. You're thinking about dinner. It doesn't stop. And it just adds to the problem.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

So yeah, absolutely. Stress, I so you'll find out, Kate, when you come and see me tomorrow. But part of my initial consultation, one of the main questions I ask about is specifically your stress levels out of one to ten, and then what your strategies to deal with the stress is, because you'll often find, particularly with my perimenopausal woman, there'll be a lot of talk about wine, chocolate, all of these types of things. So it's about building different strategies too, because you have to disrupt the behaviors that aren't allowing you to achieve your health goals and put something positive in place. You can't just kind of take everything away without building in strategies and just hope that that will last and work for you long term. So would you would you tell us about how you deal with stress here if you're comfortable doing that?

SPEAKER_05 28:04

I don't mind. I'm being open about the whole thing. See, I'm not one thing that I don't do is I don't really drink. Like I'd be lucky if I had, like, I don't drink wine because it keeps me awake. I don't it's terrible. So I like I'd be lucky if I had on average two, maybe three drinks a week maximum, and some weeks I never touch it. And I don't, because alcohol is not a coping mechanism for me, so I don't need to have that. Maybe I should, and then I might cope better notistically. But yeah, my levels of stress come from like some of it is un I'm unable to control some of the stress that is cut has been coming in for the last two years within some business stuff, and that's created probably the fundamental underlying stress of everything. Then you've got I'm very busy, I'm on the road. And if I didn't have one stress, then I'd actually probably cope a lot better. But it's just the constant for me, it's there's a lot to do. There's and I mean, just as an example, like I've been on the road for pretty much, I don't know, seven uh six, six weeks constantly. Like I had in two weeks, I had one day off, then straight home, and then into Simon and I did a live, so and and then I had like a trip to Hastings the same week for some more work, and then the next week I'm training educators, which are like all these different projects, all a different time all the time, and I've got great stuff, but a lot of it falls on me, and that makes it and then I've got all the other stuff that's adding to it on the outside that I can't control. And so I actually was doing, I've been doing a bit of CBT therapy as well with this great guy in Totonga, and I've been managing it a little bit more around like, can I control it then no, then don't worry about it, which has sort of helped, but it still like doesn't help that overwhelming like you sit down at night and you're like there's just a million things going on and half of them I can't control, and that's I'm really struggle with, but I try to get massages, I try to like I've got a spa pool and I sit in that whenever I can, but it doesn't it doesn't stop the noise. Like mine's not, it's not really food, like I can go a whole day and not eat and I I've changed my portions, all of that. I don't really eat a lot of processed food, but it's just yeah, it it drives me nuts because it doesn't matter, even if you did it for like, you know, two weeks, three weeks, still makes absolutely no difference.

SPEAKER_03 30:41

Hmm. And for your perspective, if I was saying, well, I'm gonna be seeing you as a client, what I generally would want to see is blood results first, is your thyroid functioning? Do we have any blaringly obvious nutrient deficiencies that we need to write? What's your metabolic health like? I think you already mentioned your pre-diabetic, but looking at that alongside triglycerides and everything to sort of build up a picture of what's going on in the body instead of jumping straight into a GLP one, because there might be something going on there that we just need to work on a little bit, would be my kind of perspective on that. What about you, Grant?

SPEAKER_02 31:20

Yeah, I mean, I you've got the whole demographic of someone that would typically have quite elevated cortisol or adrenaline or both. And you know, in many ways you can do everything you like about food, and and it'll help a bit. But you know, the question is what you know, what would have to be true for you to to to sort those out? Then you sort of talk about parts, or you've got some you know, coronary artery disease and vascular disease, you know, that's reversible.

SPEAKER_06 31:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

A sort of combination insidious combination of stress and and and whatnot is you know that causes that. So you go, what would have to be true? You know, it's um my question to you be what given you want to work and make a difference to the world and live, what what would an ideal work week look like for you and how different is that from now?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Yeah. That's a great question. Sometimes you just get so in it and you can't see the way out. I mean, I can identify with a lot of what cake is. You know, I mean, I'm in a business. I mean, you know, everybody said to me after COVID, aren't you glad you don't have a restaurant anymore? And I said, well, try having a business that supplies restaurants. So, yeah, since my life has been, I I've never had stress like it. I've never worked harder, I've never worked for less. And, you know, I totally get where Kate's coming from. It's like you just seem to be doing something every point of the day, because if you don't do it, nobody else will do it. And you've got people that need to be paid, and that stress is very hard to deal with. Because everybody says, you know, my mum says to me, start saying no more. You need to say no, every tell me. But if I say no, then the people don't get paid. So that's a that's a little stressful to deal with, so you keep going. And finding a way out from that tunnel can be really hard.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

That is a reasonable idea.

SPEAKER_06 33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:37

Yeah. And Simon and I have had this chat quite often around like both of us are just manic. And you know, it's it's it's some days you just like I I quite often have people who go, I I just don't know how you do what you do, like there's so much going on. But I think part of it is also I'm I'm a creative a bit like Simon and and the new stuff excites me. That's the stuff I really want to do. But you've still got your you still got your stuff that you need to do that pays the bills. You've still got the, you know, there's all of those things that and I think as business was exactly COVID. COVID shut us down pretty much for two years because we do in-person education, and so there was no people that we and and there I remember the first one we went back and everybody's chairs were distanced and and it was really odd. You know, it took us for basically two years. We worked, I think it was five weeks and two years, which was quite, you know, that's been quite an impact on me financially to then have to try and get back on top again. You've got to take everything. You can't just be, you can't say no. So I'm totally on Simon's thing with that.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Like it's like, I mean, I sorry, go, go on.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Well, I'm putting it in this factor. The first day I met Kate, we did a podcast in Takapona between four and five pm on a Thursday, and I was like, Oh, that's been a good day, great, see you later. Simon's like, Yeah, yeah. And Kate's like, well, I'm you know, I've still got you know two more you know activities, one in West Auckland and one in the city or something, and I should be finished by 10.30. You know, I was like, holy.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

Yeah. But Kate, I think Grant's question was great, and it's probably gonna be a really important one for you. Is what would your ideal work day week look like? How different is that from right now, and what do you have the power to change? Because if we're talking about needing to change environment to achieve these health goals that are important to you, something is gonna have to give.

SPEAKER_04 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

Which is often how people want to hear. We can get really stuck in the busyness of being busy too, where if you take some time to step back a bit and even write down what's going on, what's important, and what little shifts you can change. Because we often think of change as having to be these big one-off events or these huge things in our lives, but just little changes here and there compound, and they actually make big change, and that has a really positive influence on your house, health, not house, versus just thinking it needs to be something big and drastic.

SPEAKER_05 36:16

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for me, for it's hard because we our work is booked like a year in advance. I already know where I'm gonna be in November this year. So, and and we try to manage it so that it it it it's a manageable schedule. But one of the things I did realize last year, which was like I hated being away from home so much, because it's just gets to a point where you just like I it's crazy, like I'm at the top tier of of hotel places because I spend so many nights in the in the hotels over a year. Just and people are like, oh wow, that's cool. And it's like, well, not really. That means I that that just uh indicates exactly how much I'm away. You know, it's like your tear of your airpoint still isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 37:08

And you just like, oh that's not great. No, and you just look at sleep as well, how that is then gonna affect your blood sugars, your hunger, your satiety, and everything. We don't sleep as well in hotels, so we're really gonna have to build some strategies for you.

SPEAKER_05 37:26

Yeah, yeah. I'm the I'm the chat the ultimate challenging case, because I I can be uh like I've got a trip coming up where I'll I'll be in a different motel or hotel every night for six days. So you don't even have a base, so and it's really hard because you can't take a lot of fresh food, you can't because you've got nowhere to store it because you're out working all day, and then sometimes at night, and then you get to your hotel at 10:30 at night, and then you're like trying to fall into bed. Yeah, it's a really it's a really interesting dynamic, and I mean uh don't get me wrong, I love my work. That's one thing that I absolutely love is the work that I do. There's not a lot I can cut out at the moment from a work aspect, and that's a really hard thing, is uh my husband and I always talk about routines. My routine is can change from one week to the next. I'm home all week this week, then next week I'm you know, could have three flights or four flights and five workshops at night, and then I'm not working in the morning, but then you know, it's just it's uh yeah, I'm gonna be a challenge. I I'm high I'm I'm happy with being everybody's challenge.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

But but it sounds to me like there's a few interesting things going on there. And I think, yeah, one good thing is like you love your work. It's not the work's not the work itself's not not destroying your soul, it's nourishing it. So, you know, that's a really important thing because actually, you know, there's a whole lot of people that's not the case, and that's much harder to do something about. And I know that, you know, if I think about myself with that, if I travel by myself, I find it it just sucks the life out of me. If I go with someone else, like me and Simon and Louise are going on this tour around the country doing their speaking gigs, because it's the three of us, I'm gonna draw a ton of energy from that. It'll be just bloody good fun the whole way. It'll be a huge adventure and and it'll be uplifting. But if I had to go and do that by myself, it's something it's interesting. The same work, but without the other people is a completely different thing, right?

SPEAKER_05 39:31

Yeah, yeah. And I do travel with my staff most of the time. So I always have people, but then they get tired of traveling too.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

So And then you go and do it on your own, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, they're at home with their families, and you know, that pays a toll. But if I reverse back 11, 12 coming up 12 years ago, when I was in a situation of being grossly overweight, being made fun of, not really knowing how to deal with it, working all the time. If somebody had come along to me and said, hey, you can try this GLP one, that and it wasn't around then, right? But that would have been pretty attractive to me. You know, and when you hear the likes of Serena Williams, who I found out is you know owns the goddamn company, so you know, how many other people have instantly watched or read that taken down that path? But my change was incredible in that I actually had to take some time off. And I'd never ever taken I took eight weeks off. I've never taken eight weeks off in my life. And when I sat there and I had and I went, I removed myself from New Zealand, went to a place where I actually did have a gym that I could go and the time to go to. And you know, I learned how to do burger and meditation, all the stuff that I thought was a load of bollocks. And, you know, I did it, immersed myself in it. And I'm sitting there one day, and this lady says to me, write down your priorities in your life. And of course, at the top was family, and then you know, obviously work and you know, a little bit of hobbies, because I like to fly airplanes and things like that. And I wrote this whole thing down. Then she said, Could you draw a pie chart of how much time you spend on all these different things? So I did the pie chart, and of course, work was this massive section of the pie chart. Family was nowhere near as big as it should have been. And then she says to me, I don't even have health on your list. And if you don't have your health, you don't have any of this. You can't do all that work, you can't spend that tiny amount of time with your family. And that's when the penny dropped with me. And that was, you know, she said, Do you like I was a judge on MasterChef at the time, do you like doing that? And I said, I love it. Is it good for you? No, it's terrible for me. I'm eating all this cold food, and I have at that stage nobody knew that I had diabetes. Yet I was soldiering on, and you know, that's when I decided, you know what? Master chef's gone. And I resigned from doing that. And you got until I made those changes and the penny dropped, that's when I did start to affect some change. But I tell you what, if there'd been GLP one at the time, and my if my doctor had said to me, I think it would have been pretty tempting. And the world is going nuts on this drug at the moment, right? When you got hope for Winfrey and Serena, who obviously own it, as you say, bang and on about it, that gets attention, right? Because they get more views than this podcast does, right? And by the way, everybody, we'd love you to subscribe if you're finding this interesting. Follow that subscribe button so we can make more content like this, which is all extra work for Kate and I, and we're doing this because we love it. You know, we're not getting paid for this. This is because we love it. So, yeah, what do you guys reckon? How does how does Kate move forward? And you know, is GLP one as bad as or good? What what you know, really, where does it fit? Is it suitable for some people?

SPEAKER_03 43:28

I think it it definitely has its place. Um it's still a very contentious subject out there, and even I feel conflicted within myself of I wouldn't go out and recommend it to someone. I think that's a personal choice. You need to consider if it's something that's going to benefit you because there is a huge financial cost to it as well. It's not cheap, it's anywhere from I think four to five hundred dollars a month. So it is a it is a huge expense. And it's also I think considering is the food noise a problem for you? Because the people that it works incredibly well for are the people that really do have this uncontrollable food noise that they just cannot look at changing the food they're eating and they're kind of consumed by that. So when I work with clients like that that are really overweight, they've struggled, I would go as far as saying they're really depressed about the state that they're in. Getting something like a GLP one and allowing them to use that to bring the food noise down. First of all, they generally just start eating less, but that little trigger of eating less and seeing some positive changes in the scales and how their joints are feeling and being able to move, that's just enough to build some self-efficacy. Then we start to work on actually implementing the behaviour changes that are going to allow this to be successful long term. There is a lot of conversation around the rebounding. It's definitely more pronounced in people that lose more weight and at a quicker rate. But there's also people that have used GLP ones that have come off it and they have maintained their weight loss. I think when if we're talking about weight loss purely right now and not the health perspective of it, is this is not unique to GLP ones. This is unique to this is what happens with weight loss in general when you follow an intervention that is just a diet that is purely about bringing body weight down. A high percentage of whether it's GLP1 or a diet, people will regain the weight. So what I tend to do, and my perspective of this is let's look at the people who are successful, whether that's through changing their diet, using a medication, what are they putting in place that's allowing them to be really successful? And it all comes down to behavior change, changing your environment. That's what's going to allow this to stick. And I think we've done, me and Simon have worked together in a health and weight loss program with people where we really pushed for them to fill out our visions and values workshop to really boil down why making this change is important to you. Because if it kind of just rests on the numbers on a scale, that's not that motivating long term. And as soon as you don't see that weight trending downwards, you kind of think, what's the point? I'm going to throw it all in. So it's more about the focus being how those deeper why's of why making these changes are important. So when it does get hard and when things aren't shifting the way you like them to, you can go back to that and then reassess and build in more of these positive changes.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

So actually, I think most of this rests on you know most of this is not about health, it's about philosophy and the meaning of life and what what you want to get out of life. It's interesting, virtually everyone on their top three list puts health there, but in order for that health to be true and a real thing on that top three list, then then there will be things that have to change to allow it to happen. Like Simon resigning from the thing that probably made him most famous and he was awesome at and loved, is quite a big thing to tuck out for the sake of his health. And I'm not asking you to do that, Kate, but I'm just saying that I think I think i eventually what this comes down to is the meaning of life and i in many ways uh one great way to look at there's a a book called The Five Regrets of the Dying, and it was read written by a palliative care nerd. Um I know everyone's probably heard of that, but it it is a little reminder of what most people say at the end of their life. They don't go, I wish I'd worked more. They they they say a whole bunch of other things which will resonate. And and I you know, I I I I actually think health is a philosophical and and meaning of life endeavor, primarily. And then it gets down to the technical aspects of you know what you might actually do, but but but it's actually a philosophical question about what you want out of life. I I d I think that and we spend no time talking about that, we just go to to the scales or to to the scam or the pill. It's primarily a philosophical question.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

If I if I sort of think about it now, if I go back to when I had this problem, my previous doctor, before I changed doctors when I was grossly overweight, said I should get some stomach surgery, you know, a gastric bypass or bariatric surgery. And I went along and met with the doctor. And I guess it was a little bit like being offered GLP1 now. That was sort of a solution. But all the people that I've seen have the surgery, they will put the weight back on. All the ones I've met anyway. Is it would you s agree with that, guys?

SPEAKER_03 49:49

That there is a high percentage of people that do. And what I'm finding really interesting now is I have I have a great relationship with some of the GPs here. So they refer their patients that are on GLP ones now is how just how many people on a GLP one now previously had bariatric surgery, and that's just further showing that there really has to be an identity change and a change of environment, just shutting off hunger or surgery to reduce hunger. It doesn't work if your co and if your coping strategy is food. We've got to shift that because that's you're gonna move to something else, and that needs to be something else that is healthy. So you can see with people that have bariatric surgery, there are people that then end up doing things like gambling or other things that are beneficial to their life because there is something going on, there's needs that aren't being met, there's the whole psychology of why that happened in the first place. And you've got to really take it back to the basics and look at all of these things. I've worked with women that are survivors of abuse, and that's a whole topic in of itself where they gained weight as a form of protection because they were abused and they didn't want the attention of men. Like it when you look at obesity as a whole, particularly in New Zealand and some of our people that are really struggling, there's some really deep reasons why that weight's happened in the first place. And that's why I get so angry about the weight bias we have in healthcare or how we just judge it as a moral failing. There really should be no moral value placed on food or somebody's weight.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

100%. But there is, that's the problem.

SPEAKER_03 51:41

But there is, and that's why we we're all need to be the people that help change that because it's it's just not helping.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

You know, you get I I remember never forget being going up for an award, hundreds of people in the audience, and Mike Hosking just made an absolute joke about the fat chef winning. You know, it you know, he's neck clearly never had any food noise or any problems, right? Lucky guy. But we've got to look after our people. These are our families, our community, and understand that some people really struggle with weight. And it's not something they flicked a switch and said, I want to be big.

SPEAKER_02 52:24

You know, they don't want to and No, although Kylie did have a good point there with the bariatric surgery. I mean, what's really telling there is I think what you see is people who lose weight on bariatric surgery, their depression actually goes up, suicide actually goes up because some of those issues were were resolved with a bit of comfort eating. That's no longer happening. They've still got the same issue. And I hope I get the statistics right, but something like 50% of people with bariatric surgery develop a drinking problem because it's the one thing they can still do and derive some pressure from. And so so there's these other issues that sit behind that, and some of those can be pretty deep, or some of them are just you know, as I think philosophically related about what what actually you know, all things that have happened to me, what what do I want my rest of my life to look like?

SPEAKER_01 53:12

So how does how do you flip the switch so you make that change? Because we all know nothing changes without change, and generally from what I see with people is suddenly they get sick, it's almost too late. Now they want to do everything. You know, they they get a heart problem or they have a heart attack or whatever it is, but it's too late. For me, it was when the doctor said to me, Do you want to walk down the aisle with that was the one sentence that had that got me that was like I have to do something about this? I really do have to do something about this. I I always wanted to, and I always tried. I did genie craig, I did diets, I mean, Christ, I was a fighting chef, you know? And I wasn't eating bad food, I was just eating all day. But anyway, that's a whole other subject. It's like how do we get that switch to flip for people? How can we help them flip that switch?

SPEAKER_05 54:15

That's what we I think there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of confusion now, Simon, and I certainly find that myself, like I said, like on the on in on the internet, whether you're on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, there's a million pieces of advice. Um, like I've been hit with that apparently Tai Chi's gonna, you know, if you do that every day, you know, you're gonna be amazing. And it's just, I think people, it's overwhelming, like the whole social media. And I mean, I get, you know, I get fat shamed constantly on my social media accounts, like, you know, like it and the the things that people say are just out the gate. But I really I I don't like for me, I I suppose I've got a bit of a leather skin when it comes to social media. I've been in it for so many years, and people tell me to shut up and tell me I'm fat and tell me all sorts of stuff, and I it doesn't, it doesn't affect me because I I I have a moment where I'm like, do I feel like replying? Because sometimes I can just be a bit of a smart ass, but other times I'm just like nah, you know, my community will back me up. But I do have to say, like that that part of it has, that's the one thing that has been, as I've seen my weight go up, or felt my weight go up, it's it it it starts hitting, and then you and then it's just like you know, you Google one thing on weight loss, and then it's just like bombardment. So yeah, but I think that's a lot, a lot of people going through that same same thing as what I am at the moment, you know?

SPEAKER_03 55:52

There is absolute information overwhelm, and I think I really limit my time on social media, which can be hard because from a business perspective, you want to be there, you want to be all over that. But the the information overwhelm, I generally say if someone's really extremist in a view, stay away from them because what it takes to be healthy isn't actually all that extreme. It's going back to the basics, it's going back to eating mainly whole, unprocessed foods, doing things that you love. So even if you look at fitness, we think of fitness and movement as joining a gym and going to these really hard classes and doing all of these things. It doesn't have to be that. It can be going for a walk, it can be gardening, it can be doing whatever you want. It's just getting out there, moving your body. If you can getting out there, especially for women when we're talking about menopause, but we'll talk about that at another time. It's about building and maintaining that lean body mass. That does not have to be done in the gym. The main thing is doing it in a way that you enjoy it so that you will continue to keep doing it. If we make these changes with things we really hate, we're not gonna keep doing them. The the caveat in there is you do have to do some hard things. You can't shy away from discomfort. You have to be okay with being uncomfortable in the beginning of making these changes, but then building on that just with things that you love to do. So even from a food perspective, one of the first things I get my clients to do is to write on a piece of paper all the foods they love. This can include, I want it to include the healthy foods they love, everything. Then we're gonna remove some of the things that maybe shouldn't be in there for some times. And then what you're left with is this list of foods that you absolutely do love and enjoy. That's what we want to stock your fridge and your cupboards up with so that when you are really stressed, when you've worked till 10:30 at night, you're not purely hoping that you will just make the right choice. You want to set yourself up for success and make it easy. It needs to be easy, it needs to be obvious, and there just needs to be that identity shift there, not to go straight to whatever it is that you would generally go towards. But it's about setting that environment up for success.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

Yeah, it's not easy, right? And no, no, I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. And that's and it's making that first step, and then like you say, making it sustainable. I say to everybody, you know, life shouldn't be about eating twigs and berries, you've got to enjoy what you eat, but we change it to the things that we like and take off the things that we know are not so good for us, and they become treats. And I don't know. This is why I'm going to do grants course with pre-cure, because I want to help more people, you know, we've all and I need to learn more about it.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

And yeah. But I Simon, I think part of that the approach I you know uh is all the technical aspects, and those are important of the how-tos, but that layer before that is that's part of the coaching process, but it's also part of thing, and it does sound a bit woo-where and it's the opposite of what happens in health. You don't go into your doctor and they go, Well, what's you know, what would your best wife look like? No doctor does that. But but it's a fundament it's fundamental, and every single word of Simon's journey is based on that. And you know, like it might not have anything to do with white with with Kate then. I mean, you're already a beautiful woman, you know, like that's not a that's not in question. And you know, but but what is what is your life from now on to whenever it finishes look like and what what would be what would be meaningful about it? And I think all this other stuff drops away at at the point and becomes very clear, but that that's that's also work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:00

Yeah, exactly. And I think sometimes we're looking for the quick fix, you know, like the because you're just so busy, I think we're like, oh, what's the quick fix? But then, you know, it it we I I know, you know, deep down it's like quick fix doesn't fix, it just it just stops it from getting worse right now, you know. And yeah, but no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think good health coaching and good health professionals are asking people what their life what their best life looks like. I mean, good to smoke. But you know, if that's not elf what if that that's not what we're after in in a in a wealthy society, then what what are we? Yeah, like like surely that's the question.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

So putting the goal out there, this is what I'd love my life to look like, and then working backwards from that, how am I going to get there? What am I gonna do? Yeah, what needs to what needs what needs to be true.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

Yeah, because how many people can't even answer that question when you ask? A lot of people don't know because they've never even sat with them themselves to understand what they want their life to look like. Our society and how everything is currently, we're all so stuck in being busy that nobody just actually steps back and looks like and and considers we have limited time, we have resources, let's really step back and figure out what's important and build on from that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

So I'm gonna sound like a real party pooper now. So buying a lotto ticket is the life equivalent of taking GLP ones. It's like, oh shit, my life would just be sold if I had all this extra money. It's and and it not only is it is it is it magical thinking, but it's it's actually not true from the data because the people who win the lotto are less happy than when they started. Yeah. So it's actually, you know, it's it's actually a complete exercise in in moral stupidity. Yeah, yeah, most of us do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

So sorry, party pooping.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

What I take away from this conversation is that taking GLP1 is going to be something that you would have to do for the rest of your life. Otherwise, if you come off it, you're just going to put all the weight back on in most cases. And from what I've heard from the pharmacist that I'm talking to, because I always love chatting to him because he's a science nerd, and I and you know, his problem is the people are getting prescribed it, and he's saying now, now you've got this little helper, you have to make some change. So you've got to prioritize protein, you need to get increase your fibre, you need to do something to do some exercise, whether it's working to walking to your gate five times instead of once a week, you know, and you need to make change. But what they're doing is going away, and they want to go to the he said, the the big dose as quickly as possible, and then they get side effects, they feel crooked, they don't eat anything, all they do is have toast because they're not hungry anymore. And they're nauseous. They're just digging themselves this great big hole. And some people that it does work for, and like you said, Cloudy, some people don't come off it and keep the weight. So which way do we go?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:26

It's it's from my perspective, it's really individual. I wouldn't want to go out and demonize using a GLP one because for some people it is that slight advantage that they need it, that they are then now at the gym, they're loving life, they say that everything is better, and they and and we've gone back down to like what would be considered microdosing, and they're doing incredibly well. There's a lot of people that it doesn't work at all for. So there's people that will take it for months with no weight loss and then won't want to give it up still. And then I'm like, why are we still taking this? It's not working. So there's like real I think everyone considers if I take a GLP one, it's gonna work and I'm gonna lose 10 to 15% of my body weight. That's absolutely not true. There is plenty of people that lose little to no weight on it. There's people that have really positive outcomes, and then there's people who I would put into a category of never should have been prescribed it in the first place. They barely overweight, say, maybe a BMI of 27 with some something that's categorized as a weight-related problem like high cholesterol, and they want to lose, say, five kgs, not much, and they're given GLP1 to do that. That's then setting them up for rebounded weight, all these side effects. So I get really stuck in the middle of one, it needs to be used ethically, two, when it is used in cases where it should be used and it is the right fit for the person, it needs to be done with education, with more informed consent of what they're signing up for, and just a real understanding that it's not a silver bullet if you use it purely to feel nauseous 24-7 and not eat. You can't sustain that long term. You're gonna end up nutrient deficient, you're gonna end up losing your lean body mass. For our perimenopause of women who are really wanting to go on GLP ones because weight becomes even harder, they then get constipated with little to no thought about the effects of not pooing every day and what's happening with the detox pathways in the body and the estrogen highs and lows. So there is so much to consider that I think if you want to take one, really get informed about what it's doing and understanding that you need to make. These changes if it's going to be long term. Otherwise, there's potential for financial harm and harm to your health.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:08

Yeah, because this thing's expensive too, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

So th there's five categories you can fall into, right? The first is you just take it, you don't do anything else. Don't be in that category. It's unethical to prescribe to someone in that category because it just won't end well. The next person is they take some small doses and they've got some behavioral support and they didn't have really too much else to sort into their life, they just need to get going again. That that that's the next category. The next category is the people who take it, they don't just need behavioral support, they need to to have a look at their life, and and it's like the Auckland motorway building thing. Something big has to change for for New Zealand to m build motorways again. And so so if you're in that category, you're gonna have to think about you know quitting Master Chef. Yeah, that was Simon's category. Yeah. And then there's another category of people which is even harder, like shit's happened to them, like a lot of shit. Could have been when they're kids, it could have been, you know, marriage breakups, it could have been, you know, sickness and death and financial collapse and god knows what. And they haven't actually ever worked through that, and that trauma is just sitting there, and that that's that's another whole category of person. And that you're gonna have to do some work if you're in that category, because y you know, to move forward in your life, you're gonna have to move past the past and start to look forward. And you know, that that's actually another whole category. So those are sort of types of things that we've got to deal with.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

Working out the categories. Yeah, what what category are you in? But Simon, yeah, we're looking at the second hardest category, you know? Like and you and you sorted it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Yeah, but I think uh you know, there's more people out there with this problem than there are without. And you know, like Kate always says to me, I'm gonna have a job forever. Because there's rubbish everywhere, and that's her speciality, right? And it's not going away. But the same thing with health. We have more obese people than we have well-managed people. The number of people that say to me, Are you okay? You know, politely trying to say have you got cancer? And at the moment I don't, right? But it's because we're so used to seeing bigger people now. We look at TV 40 years ago, everybody's way slimmer, you know? There weren't so many people. So now we've and it's the food, it's the processed food, it how it has just ruined us. Yeah. But it's like how we help and how people listening take something away from this that flicks that switch for them like it did. Do you want to walk down the aisle with your daughter? And God help me if I don't, for all the bloody work I've done. Terrifies me. But I support Kate because she's a bloody good bird, and and I enjoy her company immensely. And, you know, I'm one of those people bleating at her that she's saying, you know, there's noise everywhere about it. And I'm trying to help, and I want to support one of the reasons why, you know, another reason why I want to do pre-cure, because you know, I've been through it, but I want to help people, like what Kylie does, you know, and what you do, Ruff. It's so any pointers out there for right now for how we can get Kate to flick that switch and other people listening there. Could we talk about that for a moment or three?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:50

Yeah. How do we help you, Kate? How how do you envision that I can support you?

SPEAKER_05 1:09:58

Well, I need to I need to know. Like I've got a meeting up with you tomorrow, so maybe we have to do an update in a wee while. But realistically, I sometimes feel like I just need somebody to say, I need accountability in a little in a way. Like I'm accountable in my job to councils for my performance, for my education, and all of that. And I always want that to be perfect, you know. So maybe it's more around accountability. And I've done it before, but before I wasn't menopausal, which I really that's the bit that I really have struggled with with hot flushes and not sleeping and all of that. Um, and Simon and I have been working on the sleeping, and it tends to really help. But, you know, it's just like my overall picture needs to change. And as Grant said, you know, like what in and from my work perspective, what can change there? And that's a really good question. I need to sit down and and answer. And we and it is something that I have discussed even with my team around, you know, how do we move away from being so under the pump? But yeah, there and i i i it's a real tricky one, you know. Yeah. Looking at the I mean, ultimately, I want to get down to 70 kilos, be able to get out and walk, and I play golf and I haven't played golf for a year because my knees can't help, can't, can't cope with swinging a golf club at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:22

Yeah. You know, when I decided I was going to do the pre-cure course, I needed to have one day off a week. And I was terrified going into all my team, going, you know, I just decided one morning, as of when I'm starting, I am off every Wednesday. And do you know what? They were all so positive when I told them. They're like, you bloody deserve that. Yeah. And I was terrified. I was thinking, oh, you know, they'll think I'm slacking off or whatever. I got the complete reverse of, and you got and I said, and you guys are gonna have to pick up the slack because I ain't gonna be here on Wednesdays. This is something I'm doing for me. And I was surprised by the reaction. And you know, the other thing is, Kate, like, you know, you want somebody to keep you accountable. It's like, who's that person? I think you got you know, if it maybe it's Kylie. I mean, how many times did I ask you, have you taken your measurements yet? Like roughly how many times did I ask you, you know? Because I thought probably 10 stars, right? You know, take your measurements everywhere, because in time that's gonna be the bit that's different, and you go back, and you know, I can show you photos of me from 11 years ago, and it's like, holy moly. And I look at them and go, Oh my god, that was me, you know. I and you don't see it until afterwards. You look in the mirror and it's you, but it's you, it's you, you that's how you look. But when you actually make some success and you look back, and that is one hell of an incentive to keep it off. Yeah, it's actually like I'm in the public eye, but if suddenly I turn into old fatty Simon again, you know, that's that's a uh pretty much an epic fail, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

Yeah, well, that's a huge motivator for me, Simon. Like in my life, I want to help. Like, I'm really interested in the science and practice of living a long, healthy life. It's like it's my whole job, it gets me up in the morning, I'm really excited about it, I'm naturally curious about it. Can you imagine if I couldn't stay in shape? Like that would be s like like I I you know, I I the pressure, I I have I feel the gentle positive pressure of that. Like it's a it's a big thing. I I actually you know have to. And you know, I like a salt of vegan chips and a chocolate fish and a six-packer beer more than anyone, I can guarantee you. I love those things virtually more than any of you do. But I I do have that big goal in my life, like it's really meaningful to me. I like I really live for this health stuff, and it and it's just not compatible. It's not like I you know, I do come and weight goes up and down and yeah, I fall off the wagon and do this, that, and the other thing, but in the long run, I I actually have to. But I and it's a it's a pressure on me, but it's I I don't find it negative, I find it positive.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:35

I would say it's positive, I'd say and I think when you look at some of the research too around keeping a keeping healthy and keeping a healthy body weight, there is some auto-regulation that goes on there, and people generally have a roadblock there, whether it is weighing yourself once a week or the size of the pants that you're fitting. Because I know for me personally, so if you rewind back about 15 years ago, I weighed 40 kgs more than I weigh now, and I was a chef back then, so being a chef is not great for health, but I got an I got an autoimmune disease, so I got a really awful autoimmune disease after my son was born, and the and I was so shocked that seeing the doctor, it was just like, here you take these immunosuppressants and this is what the rest of your life looks like. And I was like, no, like I took prednisone, all these different things, and couldn't sleep and felt awful and just kept gaining more weight. That I was like, absolutely, this is not the trajectory of my life. I don't accept this. So obviously, when you're faced with something like that, it forces you to change. But then now that I work as a nutritionist, it's the same thing. Like you get how to a different regard, as if I was to even gain a bit more weight back. You know, you think, will I be judged as a nutritionist? And all of those things from society, they're quite horrible, but then also they do help me to stay where I am to keep understanding why it's important to me. Because my whole life, my hobbies, my everything is kind of all around health span and health and how to help my children be healthier, but it's become my entire identity, really.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:26

Yeah, that's an important word. Identity is an important word.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:31

Yeah, whereas my my my identity is just rubbish. And I'm constantly, constantly working on people's waist lines, but not my own waistline, you know, like it's just that's that's that's my because then people like the old elevator pitch, they're like, what do you do for a job? I'm like, I literally just talk rubbish. Um it's it's that's my identity, a recycling lady, you know. You're on the plane, and I had a ear hostess the other day, and they're like, Oh, you're the recycling lady. Now my flat, I've got this whole situation going on, my flat, and I'm trying to, you know, and so you're like this one-on-one consultant on on rubbish. And it's maybe that's where I need to change my like everything is rubbish. But no, I I I think, yeah, it's I did like I I I don't identify as a and I I've seen a lot of people, you know, those those memes that go around. I don't identify as an ob obese person, but I am, and I and that's what it needs to change. And so yeah, I think sometimes it's just and for me, I think I need to shut out all the somehow get Instagram and Facebook and that to stop showing me all these things. I mean, I'd love that, like, you know, to stop showing you all these things because I have to be on there for my work, but yeah, it's just frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:00

So you've obviously scrolling in it now's it's got you, right? So it's like we're gonna keep showing this stuff to Kate. I think the most exciting thing is that you're going to see Kylie at Nourish Clinic because uh amazing Kylie is for a long time, and I think that's gonna help a lot. I'm here to support you, and hopefully we'll get Grant on another podcast, and you know, he's on board too. I know that.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:29

So we we've got to and as Simon's health coaching skills, you know, Bible and being an absolute behavior change weapon, you know, they're gonna be asking a lot of questions and just sitting there in silence and you know, saying things like, Tell me more, and what else? You know, it's gonna be a whole different thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:50

You're gonna wonder what's it sorry, watch out. I I need a subject cake for this call.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:59

Oh, you've got your first subject.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:05

Oh, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:07

Um I'm looking for I mean it's we're sort of said about this in January, and it's been just a crazy few months for me, and I actually feel like this as bad as it sounds, I've got three weeks at home, and I'm like, right, now's the time to sort of start getting into making a plan for the rest of the year, because I I just want to get into it, you know, but I need a real clear plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:32

And a boot up the ass from me every now and again.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:35

Well, you know, you're booting up the ass all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:40

I mean, I'm I'm more meta than that. I'm thinking about Walks I love the sunset or Sandra, I was thinking about the meaning of life, you know, like that that that's the great thing about being at heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:48

Maybe we want to end Fridays off, Kate, and playing golf every Friday, and we'll do our podcast from the golf course. That's how we're going.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:00

Yeah, well, then you'd be taking Wednesdays and Fridays off. So, yeah, we're gonna you're gonna have to discuss that with your team, but I like that idea. Golf in the coromando on a Friday sounds bloody good.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

And there are quite a lot of side effects, possible side effects from the GLP one, if I misstand correctly.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:22

And some of those are some of those are just damn serious, to be honest, like non you know, optic uh nerve neuropathy, it's like blindness. You know, while it's a small percentage, it's still someone. And you know, and and also just just bear this in mind to be completely negative about these things. Novo Norisk, the the the the company that assumed that companies is currently under three billion dollars of litigation in the US from from side effects just from the blindness thing alone. And and it's also worth saying, no diet drug has survived long-term FDA approval because in the end, they all end up causing harms that are intolerable. So, yeah, and we don't know the long-term effects yet of these these medicines. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:11

I've noticed uh uh just having seen it since I've been talking about it with Simon, as your phone listens to you, seeing all these people with like real gaunt looks, like celebrities who are taking it, who look all of a sudden that like they've lost all the weight out of their face and they just look like skeletor. And so I mean that's I I suppose that's where losing it fast, all of a sudden they've got all the saggy skin and they look horrible. I mean, is that something that you know that that that high dosage would would create that would a quick drop in weight?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:49

I think what we've seen here in GLP ones, I think a lot of the stuff that was causing an even higher percentage of weight loss is Monjaro, upset a name, which has only just arrived on New Zealand shores. So we've had the other type predominantly until now. Now we're seeing the other one, which is seeing, I think it was like 20, around 20%, I think slightly higher in weight loss. Again, we want to make sure that people aren't losing their lean body mass. So we don't want you to be starving. We want to just reduce down energy intake to match energy balance so that you're getting the nutrients you need, the macronutrients and the micros. So if you're gonna starve yourself, you're gonna look gaunt because you're losing as we age, we lose some of that adipose tissue under our face anyway. That's why women go and get fillers and all kinds of things, but you're losing muscle mass as well. So that's where the movement, keeping moving, moving the body, not being in a horrifically high energy deficit is gonna be really important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:00

People who want to lose weight always want to lose it as quickly as possible. And I would say people, you know, slowly catch the monkey. You want it to be sustainable. You need to just use it, lose a little bit of weight every week until you get to your goal weight, and you know, you've now cemented some change that is sustainable and you can keep going, and you'll have your secret weapon. You know, my secret weapon is eating in that eight-hour window most of the time. But everybody's different. But don't be in a massive hurry. And I'm sitting here with two incredible experts, so hopefully I've got this right. You know, don't be in a massive hurry to just slowly catch the monkey a little bit every week. That's the key to long-term success.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:50

Yeah, and you've got another thing there that's important. Like that eating window is a tool for you that works, and you know it works for you, is super powerful, right? Like that that that's one tool, and that's a particularly good one, actually. Yeah, really effective. But you've got to work out, and so for some people that just doesn't work at all. So you've got to work out what the other behavioural tools are. If Simon's got them, if you haven't gotten them, good luck with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:15

Yeah. And I think one one opinion that I see thrown out there all the time is that eating for fat loss is not the same as eating for health. And I really challenge that shitty view, if I say anything, because I think you absolutely can improve your health and weight loss be a byproduct of that. It's reframing that and reframing that approach that yes, you can do both. And that it does not need to be one or the other where you're purely focusing on low-calorie crappy foods with a few ingredients touted as the solution to your problem. You want to eat as much diversity of fruit and veggies in different colours as possible. We want to get all of that in to support health versus purely just thinking I want 300 calorie meal options that are devoid of nutrition and are not building my health in any way.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:10

Yeah, counting calories. I hate that thought.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:14

I think understanding energy balance in calories is important because there's a lot of people that say, I eat really healthy foods, I can't lose weight, something's wrong, it's my metabolism, it's my thyroid, it's menopause. So I don't like to encourage people to count calories. What I generally get them to do is to keep a little food diary in the software that I use, okay, and I will go and calculate the calories in the back end to actually have a look of what is going on here. And you'll often see there is a surplus of energy coming in, but we don't want to focus down only on calories. So I tend to look at more crowding in. We're gonna crowd in more vegetables, we're gonna eat meat. We're not gonna be scared of red meat because we shouldn't be, and we're gonna eat nutrient-dense whole foods that allow us to feel fuller because I guarantee nobody says I was so stressed out last night. I went and ate like five bowls of broccoli. So it's just changing those foods, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:23

Well, that's awesome. I think this has been awesome, and hopefully we can do catch up again after Kate's There's some ultimate accountability, Kate.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:33

Oh, yeah, now you're publicly accountable. Jeez. Yeah, well, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:40

Everybody listening out there, definitely follow us for Kate's reveal coming up in the future episodes of Talking Good Podcast. So thanks, Grant. Thanks, Kylie. Your insights are you know incredible. Incredible. And I'm really looking forward to doing the tour with you, Grant, with a pre-cure. It's gonna be fantastic. It's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:08

Yeah. People get it, I want to see about that. So future of medicine, so just google up the future of medicine New Zealand, type in Simon Gold, he's the most famous of us. And you and you'll see, it's gonna fill up pretty quick, both.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:22

Yeah, it's gonna be cool. That's awesome. Thanks, Kylie.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:26

I'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow. Good luck tomorrow. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:32

Uh make sure you subscribe, make sure you follow us, and um, yeah, you'll be able to see where we get to with this conversation as we'll keep having it in the future. But thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you to our guests. That's it for this week's Fork and Good podcast. I'll talk to you later, Simon. See you guys.

unknown 1:28:00

Yeah.