Dr Chalmers Path to Pro - Weight loss / Fat loss
A lot of people focus on losing weight without realizing that what really matters is losing fat. The number on the scale doesn’t tell the whole story sometimes weight loss can mean losing muscle or just water, which isn’t helpful in the long run. Real fat loss depends on more than just cutting calories; it’s about getting your body into the right state to burn fat, and that means looking at things like insulin levels, inflammation, and nutrition.
Common diets often fall short because they miss the bigger picture. By focusing on simple things like cleaning up your diet, supporting your liver, balancing hormones, and building a little muscle, fat loss becomes more effective and sustainable. It's not about extreme restrictions it's about making smart, lasting changes.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 - Weight Loss ≠ Fat Loss
00:41 - The Problem with Calorie-Based Diets
01:41 - Importance of Insulin in Fat Loss
03:42 - Fix Inflammation First
05:11 - Liver Health = Fat Metabolism
06:11 - Hormone Balance Matters
07:50 - Stop Counting Calories – Focus on Macros
09:26 - Sustainable Dieting Strategy
10:50 - Muscle vs. Scale Obsession
12:38 - Key Steps to Start Proper Fat Loss
13:41 - Build Muscle for Long-Term Health
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right, so we want to go through some weight loss, fat loss stuff. So first of all, when we're looking at this stuff, the first thing you got to remember is weight loss is not always what you actually want. So you know, people come through and they're like, Oh, I lost 10 pounds doing this thing. Okay, that doesn't mean much. The reason I say it doesn't mean much is because Did you lose fat? Did you loose muscle? Did you lose bone? Did you lose water weight? Did you lose inflammatory weight? What'd you lose? That matters tremendously. If you look at people and they're like, well, it's a lot harder to lose weight the second time. The reason it's harder to lose weight the second time is because very often people are using calories as their as the way they figure out their diet, which is horrible. Uh and what ends up happening is they cut back on the chemicals our body requires to feed and fuel their muscle tissue So some of that 10 15 pounds they lose about 40 to 50 percent of its muscle Well, so here's the thing your metabolism lives in your muscle And so what ends of happening is that you lose the 10 or 15 pounds And then because you're on a diet that sucks because it's a calorie based diet. That's nothing to do with anything You're just starving yourself and destroying your body And then, okay, you get the weight down there. Okay, we're gonna go back on my original diet, you get fat again. And then when it's happening is that you try to lose that extra 15 pounds you just gained. The problem is, is that the first time you had an extra five, seven pounds of It was helping your body oxidize all this stuff, it was helping move out. Uh, all it was helping you to burn the fat and utilize it and get it out.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:41] The second time you had a lot less metabolic metabolic function. So you gained a lot more fat than you did muscle. And so the second time working with less furnaces, you're trying to burn a higher amount of fat. That's why it's harder to lose the fat the second. Plus just starving yourself of nutrients isn't a great way to lose, to lose or trying to lose, which is fat. So. When we start talking about weight loss and fat loss, it's important that we understand that aspect first. A lot of people when they start, you know, changing their diet and stuff like that, they'll lose a little bit of water weight and then they'll lose a bunch of muscle mass and they're all excited about it and that is not at all what you should be doing. Plus, weight is a really terrible way of measuring your health. So. So anyway, so when we're looking at fat loss, one of the big things that I think is holding a lot of people back that they don't know about is their insulin resistance and their high insulin, fasting insulin. So real fast off out of the gate, what ends up happening inside your body chemically when we're trying to lose fat is. What happens literally is that your body has to shift into a fat burning state. Well, in order to do that, it has to have lower insulin. So what normally happens in the body is your body is using sugar as a fuel source. And so what ends up happening is that it's using sugar, using sugar and then you start you're running out of sugar. Your body goes, Oh, we're almost out of sugar. And so what ends up happening is that the insulin starts coming down.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:13] And the sugar starts coming down, what ends up happening, is that your body releases glucagon, glucagone starts turning that whole process around. Well, the the way that is what ends of happening is it releases glucagone, your right creates more sugar through gluconeogenesis. And it's burning fat the entire time it's doing that, because it's shifted over from burning sugars, because you're almost done with them to burning FACT. That's how we get fat loss. Well, here's the issue. High insulin levels will suppress that from ever happening because what ends up happening in the real system is that. You know, so sugar starts to come down, so insulin starts to come down as well. Your body recognizes it produces glucagon and your goes through the process of glutenogenesis starts creating more sugar. As the sugar in the blood starts coming back up. The thing that shuts off glucagone is when the sugars get high enough, the body goes, Nope, we're good. We've made plenty, we need to move some of this into the tissues, and it produces insulin. As it starts producing insulin, it shuts off glucose. And so that's basically what's going on. And so when you look at somebody who's having a lot of trouble losing extra fat, if you pull their fasting insulin and the fasting insulin is high, the primary thing you've got to do before the body will start burning any fat is decrease that fasting insulin. The same thing you do for type two diabetes. Well, the way that the big, one of the biggest things you've got to be for type 2 diabetes and for fat loss is you have to detox the body to the inflammation goes away. As soon as the inflammation, and remember, inflammation, the easiest way to think about it is, inflammation is chemistry gone awry.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:42] So if your chemistry is not working right, obviously the chemistry to burn fat is also not gonna be working right. And so the first thing we gotta do is we gotta start fixing all the inflammation. Kill the parasites, kill the yeast, go through the, we do it through what we call the kill and refill. We kill the parasites. Kill the yeast. Kill the bad bacteria. And then refill the body with nutrients. Because again, you're asking the body to do a very specific chemical process, which is utilize fat as your fuel source. Well, your body has to have specific chemicals in order to get all that done, specifically liver bile. And so your bile actually breaks down fat and its usable components. And so that's one of those things where we're like, Oh, why do you spend so much time fixing the liver? Well, because the liver is your primary. Metabolic organ. It's where all the stuff happens. It is where we have, we create, you know, we go through gluconeogenesis there, so we create sugar there, we burn fat there, like a lot of your very important chemistry happens through your liver. And so we have to make sure the liver is ready to go. Pull the parasite out, get all the things that are keeping it from operating perfectly, get those issues out, and then fill it with the chemicals it requires, the nutrients, it requires actually function. The other thing that we get into is that if you want your body to run efficiently, you've got to fuel it. And so look at your hormones, testosterone, D3, estrogen levels, all those things matter. And so estrogen holds water on you really, really well.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:11] So, for instance, one of the big things we see with men who are on testosterone, they're taking either too much or they're not regulating their estrogens. They're coming in like, man, I'm all puffy. I feel like I gained a bunch of weight and I'm puffy! You start bringing their estrogen levels down and all of a sudden they'll shed all this extra water weight the body doesn't need because they had too much estrogens and it was trying to buffer that. So that's one of those things. So when we start looking at, you know, oh, you it's hard to lose the fat. It's hard lose this. It's harder to lose that. It has a lot to do with your chemistry. It has nothing. It has very little to do the actual calories you're eating because again, calories are pointless calories aren't real like the idea that because the calories this is what the calorie system teaches the calorie system teachers that sugar fiber and protein work exactly the same way as far as getting you fat or making you less fat because they're all worth four and in the calorie systems you add up the calories and if you're at a calorie deficit you lose. Well, that's the thing. So sugar turns to fat. Easy pathway. Protein helps burn fat. Fiber never gets in the body. So saying all of those are equal, they're all four, they are all equal to getting you, you know, fat or not is absurd. So if you're running a calorie-based diet and you're having problems, it's probably because the entire structure of your diet is wrong. So that's another piece we get into. So typically when people come in and they're like, hey, look, I want to lose some fat. Cool. Cool things you got to keep in mind. One. Where's your inflammation? Okay, we got to get that knocked out. You know, parasitic infections, all that stuff. Two, where's where your hormones at, we gotta get that reset.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:50] And then three, we have to create a diet that is not based on calories that is based on macros that is beneficial for you. And they went to make it out of a diet, that you would be happy eating, because the vast majority of the diets people go on to lose weight are not sustainable at all. And they'll tell you that going into it. They're like, well. I'm going to cut out alcohol for a couple of weeks to lose some weight. I'm gonna cut out sugar for a couple of weeks, just lose some weight. And then what you're gonna go back on it. Once you go back on it, you're going to gain the fat back. And again, if you haven't done it properly, you probably lose some muscle along the way, making it significantly harder to lose the fat the second time. So the best option would be, and this is the way that I always taught it is figure out how to macro set your diet so that you're eating, you know, you're looking at fats. If you're really running it fancy, you looking at saturated and monounsaturated, all that sort of stuff, or let's me else do that for you. And you're looking at this is really important when you break your carbohydrates apart into fibers and you need to make sure that's happening. And then you look at your protein. I will often look at protein digestibility function. So how quickly it breaks down the amino acids for people. But that's a little bit more advanced than you want to do. And when you're looking at your sugars, you've got to look at, you know, the glycemic function of them. Are they really high glyceamic? Are they low glycematic? That's going to tell you how your insulin response is going Okay, ciao. That's kind of how you put the diet together. And it's not that hard. We have people who are eating, you know, pie and cookie dough and steak and brisket and pizza and pasta and all sorts of stuff all the time. But.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:26] The reason they're able to do it is because they're basing it off of macros. They're actually looking at the chemistry. They're not eating, you know, they're not even these, this pizza. They're eating this pizza, not eating these high inflammatory foods. They're in these low inflammatory foods and a lot of them are really, really good. In fact, I like most of them as good or better than the trash alternatives. So if we're looking to lose weight and you can't get the weight off. First of all, remember, weight's not your goal. Fat loss is your goal, in fact, I would tell you not to worry about your weight at all. If you can swap five pounds of muscle for five pounds fat, that's keeping your weight exactly the same. That's what I would recommend you do every single time. You know, it's always funny, because we'll get women in. Who will technically gain weight, because they gained a bunch of muscle over the course of, you know, three, five, six, 10 months, and they'll weigh 140 instead of you know 130. And they will look and feel so much better. The only thing that bothers him is the scale. Like, you look 10 times better, your clothes fit better, you're actually smaller than you were, you have tone so you're not soft and flabby. The only thing on this whole thing that you're not happy about is that the scale went up because you've been taught your value as a person has somehow tied to this magic number of the amount of force you're pushing down on the ground with, which is absurd. So, you know, there's a lot of education in here that is set to, I don't know if it just came about naturally and it's just all wrong or if it was specifically designed to break you mentally and keep you from achieving your goals. We look at slightly more stuff. I don't know which one it was. But that's kind of where we're at.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:08] So let's look at those type of things. Again, inflammation, detox, all that stuff out properly. Get your hormones reset. And then figure out a diet that's based on macros that you can live with. And here's the thing. When I go through this with people, everyone kind of we set up everyone on their own. You know, some people have, you know, they end up doing better with a little plant heavier diet. Some people are full carnivore. Some people or a lot of people, I'd say 80 percent of people are somewhere in the middle where, you know, they're eating vegetables that they like or eating fruits that they like. They're eating, you know, a lot of meats and some cheeses. The one thing that we do pull out of every single diet is we try to get as much processing out as we can. Because again, what you have to understand is that every time man touches something, we screw it up. And so if you want to get healthier, if you want to feel better, if you want start getting more in the direction where you want to go. Less of the stuff man has processed, man has changed. You know, if we go back to the idea we were designing, created to have specific nutrients, to do specific things, and this is how we base physiology, the study of life, then we've got to go back to original design. How were you created to do X, Y, Z? What foods and what chemicals were you designed to have? What chemicals were you not designed to? Make sure the bad chemicals are out of your body, the good chemicals are in your body and you'll do a whole lot better. That's a big thing on the weight loss, fat loss stuff. We're going to talk a little bit about GLP-1s and phlegobium stuff the rest of this week.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:38] But this is the big place to start. If this is one of the things you're like, oh, I haven't looked at detoxing, or I haven't pulled my fasting insulin, or haven't pull my testosterone. Yes, men and women both need it. Women just need a lot less than men, usually on the order of 50% to 70% less. But that's kind of where all of this is. If you haven't done those things and you're struggling with your diet. You're struggling with your fat, you're struggling with where your body looks and feels, that's it. And the other problem we get into, and this is really important, we might touch on this later, is the type of fat your body is putting on. So if you've been eating a lot of processed foods and a lot trash oils and all the seed oils and stuff, they have a higher, you know, you're gonna have more of that type of fats on you. Again. You are, you know, you are what you eat. And so if we have higher linoleic first, you know, acids that are built in the body, that's going to create other issues we're going to deal with. And some of that stuff is more difficult to process than other things. So it's going to take you longer to lose that fat.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:41] And So what I always tell people to do is spend this time building the muscle tissue. Because the healthier you get your mitochondrial function, the healthier your metabolic function, which is typically the more lean muscle mass you've got, the easier it is to burn fat, to radically change your lifestyle, to radically improve your health and to safeguard stuff. I'm working with my 85 year old mother-in-law who tripped and fell and broke her arm and had she had more muscle mass that wouldn't happen. So. This is really important for now, but it's critical as you age. So keep that in mind and we'll go through some other stuff this week. But those are some of the things you guys need to check on and make sure of. Unfortunately, your medical doctors aren't going to be able to do that because they don't know how to look at the labs that way. They don't have to order. They're not taught to do this. So if you guys are looking for somebody else, you can hit us up. But I would really, really, really work on getting those three things accomplished. So you guys have a great day. Thanks for your time.
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