Latest / Doctor Drop It with Dr Barbara Hessel / Weight Loss Can Actually Be This Simple

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Weight Loss Can Actually Be This Simple · Doctor Drop It with Dr Barbara Hessel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Weight loss can actually be a lot simpler than most women have been led to believe.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to keep jumping from keto to fasting to calorie counting to another workout plan, hoping that this is finally the one that works.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't necessarily need ozempic or zep bound either.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because before I tell a woman what to eat, how much to exercise, or whether a weight loss medication makes sense, there's one thing I want to know first.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's making her hungry?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Hessel.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm board certified in obesity medicine and gynecology.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And once I started looking at weight loss this way, it completely changed how I treated women who told me that they'd already tried everything.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've lost weight and gained it back, you're doing all the right things and still stuck, or you're wondering whether GLP1 medication is your next step, this video is for you because I'm going to show you how I simplify weight loss down to one starting question and how that answer tells me what should happen next.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the real problem.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here is where weight loss gets unnecessarily complicated.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: A woman wants to lose 20 pounds and immediately we start talking about solutions.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Should she cut carbs or try fasting?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: How many calories should she eat?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Does she need more cardio?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Should she start a GLP1?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we've skipped a step.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's imagine four women sitting in my office who all want to lose roughly the same amount of weight.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now one tells me she can eat a huge meal and still never really feels full.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Another gets full easily, but two hours later she's looking for food again.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Another one says she barely eats, exercises constantly, and the scale will not move.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth can follow a plan all day, beautifully, but the minute she gets stressed, overwhelmed, or exhausted, she starts eating.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: These women should not automatically get the same plan, yet that is essentially what happens in most weight loss programs.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: We pick the diet, the calorie target, or the medication, and then hope the woman fits the solution.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I do the opposite order.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: First, I figure out what kind of problem we're actually dealing with.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most useful ways I've found to do that is something I call your hunger code.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's your hunger code?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your hunger code is the pattern behind the way hunger and eating actually shows up for you.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: There are four patterns to look for.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: With hungry brain, you eat more food than you would expect before your brain registered that you've had enough to eat.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: You need to eat a lot before you feel full.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: With hungry gut, you can get full, but the fullness doesn't last and the hunger comes back quickly, usually within an hour or two.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: With slow burn, hunger might not even be the biggest complaint.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Years of dieting, hormonal changes, low muscle mass, or repeated weight loss can leave your metabolism working differently than it used to.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of calories that you used to eat to lose weight doesn't work anymore.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And with emotional eating, food shows up when you're stressed, bored, even celebrating, or exhausted or trying to change the way you feel.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most of us can recognize pieces of ourselves in more than one of those, and that's normal.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The important question is which one pattern is creating the biggest obstacle for you right now?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because once I know that, weight loss becomes much easier to think about.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer asking what diet is the best.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking what does this woman need first?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the plan starts to simplify.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So step one, get the food right for your body.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I look at is nutrition, and I'm not talking about whether you eat clean.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have women come to me eating salads, smoothies, low-carb snacks, protein bars, and practically no dessert, but they're still completely stuck.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're eating far less than they realize.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're nowhere close to getting enough protein.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're skipping breakfast, barely eating lunch, and then wondering why they can't stop eating at night.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're following macros that came from an app and have absolutely nothing to do with their hunger pattern or their body.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the first part of my metabolic momentum method is what I call master macros.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We figure out how much food you actually need, how much protein you need, and how to structure your meals so you can lose fat without living in a constant battle with hunger.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is not to see how little food you can tolerate, it's to give your body enough of the right things that fat loss can happen without sacrificing your energy or your muscle.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But getting the numbers right is only part of it because if you're constantly thinking about food, fighting cravings, or getting hungry an hour after you eat, eventually even the perfect macro plan falls apart.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the next step is appetite.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Step two, make hunger predictable.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I call this creating a happy appetite.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is very what I mean by that is very simple.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want hunger to stop surprising you.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You should be able to eat a meal, feel satisfied, and get on your life without spending the afternoon wondering what you can eat next, or arriving at dinner so hungry that any plan you had disappears the second you walk through the door.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this is exactly where your hunger code becomes useful.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you have a hungry brain pattern, I might make different choices about meal structure and satisfaction.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you have hungry gut, I care much more about how long your meals are holding you and what happens between meals.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: If emotional eating is the biggest issue, another food rule is not going to help much.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if your appetite is being strongly affected by biology, this is also where medication can become part of the conversation.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I use GLP1 medications, and for the right person, they can be incredibly helpful.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the medication should never replace the plan because suppressing hunger tells us nothing about whether you're eating enough protein, maintaining your muscle, getting stronger, or learning how to manage your appetite long term.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings me to the third piece, because the scale can be dropping while something you desperately want to keep is disappearing with it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Step three, lose fat without losing your muscle.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I call flipping the metabolic switch.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of the areas I pay the most attention to, especially in women over 40, because losing 20 pounds is not automatically a success.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what those 20 pounds were.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you lost fat, that's what we want.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if you lost a significant amount of muscle with it, we need to talk.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Muscle helps keep you strong, it affects your body composition, and it regulates how much energy your body uses.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So once a woman begins losing muscle, especially through repeated dieting or very rapid late weight loss, keeping the weight off becomes harder.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I care about protein and strength training.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And why I do not necessarily celebrate rapid weight loss simply because the scale is dropping.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather have a woman losing weight at a reasonable pace while getting stronger, losing incredibly fast and feeling weak, exhausted, and unable to maintain it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: One of my clients, Emma, is a great example.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what it looks like in real life.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Emma had tried everything.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: She exercised five days a week, tracked calories, cut carbs, tried keto, and eventually turned to a GLP1 medication.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And initially it worked great.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: The weight started coming off, but then she became exhausted, dizzy, and weak.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now she's a software developer, so being unable to concentrate and function throughout her day was becoming a real problem.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: The medication was reducing her appetite, but she didn't have the support around it that she needed.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't tell her to stop the medication.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: We changed the plan around it by working on her nutrition, protecting her muscle and rebuilding her strength.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Emma ultimately lost 31 pounds while getting her energy back.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, compare that with Paige.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: When Paige hit menopause, the things she'd always relied on stopped working.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: She cut carbs, gave up wine, did work cardio, and her doctor eventually suggested weight loss medication.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But Paige didn't want to start there.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So once we identified her hunger code and looked at what her body actually needed, we built a different plan.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: She lost 20 pounds in 12 weeks without needing to be on a medication.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now both women wanted the same thing.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to lose weight, but they needed very different routes.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: One was already using a GLP1 and needed a better plan around it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: The other one didn't want medication and didn't need to start there.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly what I mean when I say weight loss can be simple.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: You identify the problem first and then choose the tools, not the other way around.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need more random weight loss advice.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the part I wish more women understood.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You already know a lot about weight loss.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know protein is good and strength training is useful.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know eating fewer calories can help you lose weight.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you've heard about intermittent fasting.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: You certainly know what Ozempic is.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is not that you're missing one more tip.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is knowing which of these things applies to you and what order to do them in.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why two women can follow the exact same program and get completely different results.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's why your friend can love intermittent fasting while you feel miserable on it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And why one woman can take GLP1 and thrive while another loses weight but feels terrible.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else might finally start eating more protein and lifting weights and see her body begin responding again after years of trying to eat less.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: The tools are not the hard part.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing the right tool for the right woman is, and that's what I help you figure out.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your next step.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening to this thinking, okay, but what is my hunger code?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or which of these things should I actually work on first?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly where I created the hunger code assessment.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: During this one-on-one conversation, we look at how your hunger behaves, what you've already tried, what happened when you tried it, and where I see the biggest mismatch between your body and the plans that you've been following.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: We identify which hunger code patterns are showing up for you, and then we start mapping out what we should prioritize first.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: That might mean changing the way you're eating, protecting or rebuilding muscle, or getting your appetite under control.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It might include a GLP1 medication.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you're already taking one, it might mean figuring out what needs to happen around the medication so you can lose fat without sacrificing your strength and energy.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if I think you're a good fit for the metabolic momentum method, I can explain what working together would look like.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not, that's okay too.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, the goal is that you stop guessing because weight loss does not need to be another endless cycle of trying harder, eating less, adding another workout, or jumping to the next thing you see online.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It can start much more simply.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Figure out your hunger code, build the plan around what your body actually needs, and then use the right tools in the right order.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you want help doing that, click the link below and book your hunger code assessment.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we start.