Episode 19: The GLP-1 Game Plan with Heidi Skolnik, MS, CDN, FASCM

The one thing that Shannon and I really try to focus on with our clients is if we can get them in before they actually start so they can start to understand nutrition, right? And then we can be with them for that journey.

But the idea is really to teach them how to eat, right? Because a lot of times...

someone feels so much pressure around weight or they feel so hungry all the time, they can never put that pause in to think about like, you know, why am I hungry, right? Is this really, is this really, you know, an appetite thing? Is this, you know, a behavioral thing? Is it an emotional thing? And so, you know, I think this medication gives someone the ability to put in the pause to think about like, Why am I going to grab for the food, right? And do I actually want the food? Is that what I'm looking to accomplish right now? Am I looking to nourish myself or am I looking to comfort myself or am I looking to, you know, just find something to do? But I do want to go back to this whole thing about willpower.

And, you know, today I believe you posted on Instagram about like weight stigma and, um, willpower and this is great and first of all your shirt what did your shirt say let's talk about it uh you were

some kind of wonderful

or something like that there's some kind of like fabulous or something but it was something it was so freaking cute um it was just really great for weight stigma it was like a shirt that was just like saying how awesome you are um But the one thing I think that we've all known is that this isn't a willpower thing, right? And so, well, you know, I think in a lot of the research that Shannon and I have done, you know, whether it's on PMOS, formerly PCOS, or just, you know, on the endocrine system, is the adipocytes produce...

you know, cytokines and androgens and these things cause inflammation.

And then there's a domino effect, right? And we eventually become leptin resistant and or insulin resistant.

And that's where these medicines are so helpful because they do actually help to target some of the insulin resistance, right? They do help to target shrinking, shrinking the adipocyte, right? Like shrinking the fat cell, right? which again, we know our body fights.

It always wants to keep increasing the size of the fat cell.

So there is a metabolic effect of the medications in addition to decreasing the appetite.

And so I do think it's important for people to understand they're not at fault, right, for these people that constantly feel hungry or never feel full.

Like, there is a biological reason, and these medicines can help with that.

You know, for people who don't understand, it's easy to say it's all about discipline when it's something you don't desire, right? So...

It's that, you know, walk in my shoes, you know, for people with food noise.

And I think this idea we can do a whole podcast.

I clearly we're going to there's so much that we can unpack here.

Right.

So I don't know how much we want to get through.

But, you know, this idea of hunger is there's so many different kinds of hunger.

But you really it is hard to get at that when you have the physiologic hunger, the biological hunger.

Right.

Then it's hard to unpeel that onion to get to.

And it's always and somebody can have many different types of hunger and be struggling with that.

So whether it's comfort, whether it's from under eating hunger and restriction, whether there's trauma, whether there's right.