Outsmart obesity with Dr. Stewart Lonky

Introduction

On episode 659 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Dr. Stewart Lonky and discuss his book, Outsmarting Obesity: A Doctor Reveals Why We Gain Weight, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It.

Episode Notes

Allan [00:03:07]:
Hey, Raz. How are you?

Rachel [00:03:09]:
Good, Allan. How are you today?

Allan [00:03:11]:
I'm doing alright. It's been busy weeks, Busy weeks. I just you know, because, I've I've done a few things. We did the, the workshop last week, and so that was that was really, really good. I enjoyed doing that. You know, of course, did a ton of promotion for it to get out there that I was doing this. You know, right now, looks you know, we've got great turnout for it. So it was a, you know, really good event.

Allan [00:03:35]:
I'm I'm glad I was able to do that, and that's probably I don't know if I'll do it live again like that, but, I'll definitely save those recordings, and I may make a product or something out of that to go forward. Cool. Definitely share it with all of my clients because it's it's one of the best things I've done to date. And then, yeah, I've launched, and I'm in the process of a launch for my new program. And, it's kind of interesting because I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking, you know, I've got these ideas for the new program and what I want to incorporate. And I'm like, but I've always come up with these names, you know, like 8 weeks to Wow and to shed the fat and all that stuff. And I'm like, Well, but here's the problem. The way I'm coaching now is so different than the way I was coaching for those, especially for the 8 weeks to Wow.

Allan [00:04:21]:
It's a totally different way of coaching. And it's now almost all custom. So when I'm coaching someone, you know, like, if if I were coaching, your program would be Rachel's program. It wouldn't be some wonky name that I decided I wanted to call it. It's your program. I'm writing it for you almost on the spot. And so I said, well, what do I name something that is unnameable? Mhmm. Until I know the name of the client that I'm coaching, and I that's it.

Allan [00:04:48]:
You know? It's the your name here moniker thing, that, you know, that when you're gonna get a form and, you know, you this is just where you're gonna insert your name, your name here, program. And I'm like, so that's what I'm gonna do is when I'm talking to people about it, their program, it's their program. And that's what it's gonna be named and that's what it's gonna be is their program. And and, you know, generally, I'm I'm still targeting 12 weeks. That's, I think, a solid way to look at it to start. Mhmm. But, you know, just look at it and say, what do you need? What do you want? What do you what are your goals? And then from there, build out their program right there on the, discovery and planning call. That's what I'm launching right now, and, I'm taking applications for it because I can't obviously get on the call with with everybody.

Allan [00:05:33]:
Mhmm. So there is an application. That's 40plusfitness.com/apply. That'll take you to the application to let you know if that my approach is appropriate for you. But that's generally what I'm doing this week is basically that launch. So I've been really, really busy with that. And it cuts off on 15th. So anyone that hasn't applied by 15th, you'll miss this round and there's some pretty significant bonuses in this round that include some bonus weeks, some freezes, which I've never done before.

Allan [00:06:04]:
So this will be interesting. But if they sign up, obviously, we've been going through the holidays and some people do want to take a week off. And so I'm like, well, if you want to use a freeze week, you use a freeze week, and we add that week to the end. I've never done that before, but I know people want to need to take detours from time to time. So they can take a detour, and I'll pay for it.

Rachel [00:06:27]:
That sounds neat.

Allan [00:06:28]:
Yeah. And there's some other things that I'll throw in there as bonuses for folks that come in for this particular launch because, like I said, it's a new way that I'm going to put us all together. So, while I'm doing this launch, which will go into 15th, this is this is your time to apply. So

Rachel [00:06:45]:
That sounds great.

Allan [00:06:46]:
You can apply for it. So how are things up there?

Rachel [00:06:49]:
Good. Warm and toasty even through the end of this summer, bare getting into fall. But I'm I'm just gonna say I'm glad my camper has air conditioning.

Allan [00:06:59]:
Well, you you know, again, you only have a couple weeks, a few weeks, I guess, until, until we get to the actual fall. So it it it'll cool down. It'll cool.

Rachel [00:07:08]:
I can't wait because fall makes for the best running season ever. So, yeah, I can't wait.

Allan [00:07:14]:
Especially, like, you you get a lot of color change up there with yours.

Rachel [00:07:17]:
We do. Yep. That'll be coming. I I don't know when our peak is this year in my area, but I think it's mid to late October is what they're predicting. So

Allan [00:07:24]:
I always thought it had something to do with the temperature and the rain.

Rachel [00:07:28]:
Mhmm. Yep. Yep. 2 BD. Yes. See what happens.

Allan [00:07:32]:
Alright. Alright. So are you ready to have a conversation with doctor Lankey?

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:07:36]:
Sure.

Allan [00:07:38]:
Our guest today is a double board certified physician and expert in medical toxicology. In his new book, Outsmarting Obesity, he challenges the status quo about weight gain and obesity. With no further ado, here's doctor Stuart Lankey. Doctor Lankey, welcome to 40 Plus Fitness.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:07:57]:
Well, thank you. It's great to be here.

Allan [00:07:59]:
So, you know, as I as I go through and I read books to prepare for these conversations, typically, I'll sit down with a piece of paper, and I'll start writing down a note. You know, like, oh, this is an interesting thing. And so it's one thing. And then it's so it ends up being like a list. And I'll end up I might end up with 4, 5, 6, 7 things. And then when I see a study, I, like, I'll follow that study, and I'll go read the study because that was interesting. And I end up over there. And so I'm gonna show this to you, and there's very few people are gonna see this.

Allan [00:08:27]:
But this is more

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:08:30]:
Looks like my looks like my desktop.

Allan [00:08:32]:
Yeah. But it's literally, it's a word cloud. It's like I sat down. I started writing all this stuff down. Like, okay. This and this. And then I'm trying to tie them all together. And so, you know, I'm like, okay.

Allan [00:08:42]:
This goes to this, and that's over here. And I it was like I was trying to solve a big puzzle. And then you put it together and, and literally solve the puzzle for me in literally one sentence. So all those words I wrote down, they came down to one sentence, which I thought was just brilliant. Obesity promotes systemic inflammation, and inflammation promotes obesity.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:09:07]:
That's an excellent conclusion to come to because that is kind of the secret of obesity and why it is medically a challenging situation for physicians, particularly we learned that lesson with the SARS COV 2 pandemic. People wondered why obese individuals didn't do as well. And for me, it was pretty straightforward. They were already in an inflammatory state, so their immune system was being overtaxed on a daily basis. Their ability to cope with a virus that was novel, that was unlike anything they'd seen before, they were not going to do well when the cytokine storm happened.

Allan [00:09:57]:
Yeah. And and there were other things to us. Like I said, I it was it was fascinating. And I I enjoyed I enjoyed that. I enjoyed going through that and really diving into the science of it. One of the things, you know, obviously, of course, we all hear this. It's kind of a common thing. Okay.

Allan [00:10:13]:
You're overweight. You're obese. Just stop eating crap. Eat less. You know, the whole individual agency. You're a grown man. Just just stop.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:10:24]:
I gave some examples with a patient of mine that's a real patient. It is very commonplace for people to look at, morbidly obese individuals and state that, boy, that person should stop eating so much. And that individual agency being responsible for the obesity epidemic doesn't make any sense, first of all. And number 2, it's it's erroneous. What we've learned and what I've learned in 10 years of doing this work and talking to people, reviewing articles, going through the literature is that, unfortunately, the die is cast fairly early. And if we if if we wanna be smart about this, and that's why I named the book, Outsmarting Obesity. I named it that because if you're not smart and you don't know what the root cause is, you'll never understand why when we diet, we can lose weight. I mean, you can restrict your calories and lose weight.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:11:23]:
But the minute you stop that crazy restriction or whatever it is that you're doing, you're gonna gain it right back because you haven't addressed the real issue, which isn't individual agency. It is, unfortunately, as I like to say, it's it's a chemistry set within the body. It's chemical things that are happening and that have been happening now for generations.

Allan [00:11:47]:
You know, a lot of times we'll we'll talk about fat, and there's a kind of a thing in in my industry that they love, love, love to talk about. They're like, well, add muscle because that's more bioactive than fat. And from a from a calorie expenditure perspective, that's that's true statement. But fat's pretty busy.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:12:07]:
Yeah. Fat, I you know, it's interesting. I started medical school. And to me, fat was just you know, it was there. It was insulation in a sense. Got into dissections and realized, very early in my 1st year of medical school, it was not of a mental fat. There was fat throughout the body. And I happened to be in a medical school where one of the leading researchers, a fellow named, doctor Scott Grundy was, a professor.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:12:37]:
And Scott really taught us how fat was really an active endocrine organ, And it was just becoming understood how fat really is very important in communicating with the brain, secreting a number of different, hormones that tell you are hypothalamus, stop eating. You're full. Or eat something. And communicating with other organs like pancreas and dealing with glucose metabolism, insulin secretion, all of these things are the general in charge, sort of the catcher on the baseball team who's the really the captain of the team on the field is fat. So fat's a very active biological tissue. Don't wanna eliminate all fat. It serves a real purpose, but too much of it is obviously what we're talking about.

Allan [00:13:35]:
Yes. And so, yeah, it, you know, it'll tell you your if when it when it's functioning the way it's supposed to, which is a very important part of this whole conversation, when it's doing what it's supposed to, it's telling you that you're full. Go ahead and stop eating. We've got plenty of fat. We're good. It's it's kinda running a lot of other endocrine functions, communicating throughout the body and kinda helping like you said, it's a perfect analogy, the catcher on a on a baseball field, you know, making sure everybody's where they're supposed to be and doing the things they're supposed to do. But every once in a while and the way I've heard it before, it was really in the context of insulin resistance and and dealing with die you know, diabetes, prediabetes is okay. So we're eating, and the body has more blood sugar more than it needs, and it's gotta store this somewhere.

Allan [00:14:25]:
Can't store it in liver. Can't store it in the muscle. So it's gonna try to store it in fat. And then at some level, it begins to try to force the it has to almost force the fat to take this energy. And so it keeps forcing it. And then and then what happens then is this the fat cells, because we really aren't making a whole lot of these things where that we have what we have, They get bigger and bigger. And even though they're fighting back to say, no. No more.

Allan [00:14:48]:
No more. They get overstuffed. And and the way you said it here was, it was sick fat.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:14:54]:
Yes. And I, you know, I think that fat cells becoming larger is a real problem. And I go into it discussing something that, you know, I've never seen anyone discuss before and you understand my subspecialty in internal medicine is pulmonary and critical care medicine. So I think in terms of oxygenation always and oxygen has to diffuse into a fat cell and it can't diffuse. There are elaborate studies showing how far oxygen can diffuse into the fat cell to nourish it Plus the fat cell needs oxygen just like your brain needs oxygen and your heart's muscle needs oxygen. And as the fat cell gets bigger and bigger, that diffusion of oxygen can't happen. And so the fat cells endocrine function becomes disturbed. Add to that something I think we're gonna talk a little bit more about, and that is the fact that many chemicals that are in our bodies are not water soluble.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:16:00]:
So if we talk about heavy metals like lead and mercury and cadmium and so on, they're water soluble. So we get lead in our body. We try to excrete most of it. Some of it will store because we can't get it all out, and tomorrow we get exposed to some more. And that's how lead toxicity or mercury toxicity happens in industry, in people that are exposed to high levels, etcetera. But most of the organitins, all all of the organic molecules that were exposed to it, you know, I need to tell you that there are 85,000 chemicals that are currently used in the United States. Eighty 5,000 different chemicals approved for use by the Federal Trade Commission, not by FDA. And that's what most people don't understand.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:16:49]:
Those chemicals have never gone through any testing at FDA. And if they do, it's maybe a handful of them, but they are not water soluble. So they require the liver to break them down into water soluble pieces. There's only once you're in the body, once a chemical is in the body, the only way out is through the urine or sweat. So that's it. There's no other way out. You're either gonna urinate it out or you're gonna sweat it out. And sweating is very inefficient, but it can help.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:17:23]:
The fact is, is that the liver is sometimes quote, otherwise occupied, close quote. You're taking a pill. It's gonna break that down. You're drinking some alcohol. A lot of the liver says, Hey, you know what? Come back later. Go someplace and hide. Well, it's not water soluble, but it's fat soluble. So the fat cell becomes occupied.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:17:46]:
Not only not only is it getting bigger, not only is it not getting enough oxygen, but now it's got bisphenol a sitting in there. It's got fluorochemicals sitting in there. It's got a whole lot of other organic molecules that don't belong there. And that screws up the fat cell communicating with the hypothalamus, getting signals. That is the definition of a sick fat cell and obese individuals have sick fat cells. That's the problem. Too much time with the accumulation of these different chemicals, too little oxygen, And that's one of the many reasons. If there's something that you learned if you've gone through the book, Allan, is and your readers and your listeners too, as they go through it, they realize what I said at the very beginning.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:18:41]:
It's a highly complex issue. And what I've tried to do in the book is make it simple so that people understand a sick fat cell. It's not normal. It's not communicating. It's not serving its function. That's one point against you. That's a negative. You know, there there's nothing good about a fat a fat cell that's too big and that's toxic.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:19:05]:
But there are other factors too, which we'll talk about.

Allan [00:19:08]:
Yeah. And I think that was what was kind of the the shocking thing. As we we're gonna go through the process that you have here to solve this problem. Obviously, that's the promise of the book. But I wanna talk about the 2 core things that are that are kinda behind why we are where we are and and how why what you're gonna tell us to do is gonna work. But it was the toxic exposures, and, you know, I think we know some of them. You talked about chemicals, and some of it might be viral, and some of it's the artificial life. So there's a lot of different things that are going on that are disrupting our our system, the way everything else works.

Allan [00:19:47]:
And then we start you start talking about again, you got deeper into obesogens, which, again, are the kind of the the things that are making us get fat. I was really surprised, you know, as I went through well, not I guess I wasn't surprised because I'm I'm a eat real food kind of guy. I talk about that all the time. And people will say, well, okay. I, you know, I'm going to cut my calories. I'm going to drink diet Coke. And I'm going to eat the low fat yogurt. We talk about, you know, just even meeting meat, buying it in a grocery store.

Allan [00:20:16]:
Some of these things and then personal care products, household all this. So all this stuff is not it's not like this occasionally or we're just accidentally finding it here and there. It's, like, everywhere.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:20:28]:
Everywhere. Read a label. My wife is is my number one, proponent of everything. If there's a chemical name on it, she hardly ever buys it. You know, even even for my dog, which is another thing I talk about in the book. You know, I talk about the fact that something's going on here besides calories in and calories out. It it can't be that. It's got to be, as you were just mentioning, these chemical obesogens and and how they affect how a gene expresses itself.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:21:02]:
And that's the key. The key message of this book is our genetics are our genetics. They haven't changed. It's not that there's a fat gene. There are probably 200 genes that are involved in obesity, maybe more. It is whether the gene is being expressed or not and whether it's a favorable gene. For example, the developing fetus has a what we call a pluripotential cell. Plurium meaning that cell can become a fat cell or a muscle cell.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:21:40]:
There's a gene that directs it to become a muscle cell, But if it's turned off, it's gonna make a fat cell. And these obesogens create changes on the surface of that gene that are unfavorable. And so we have statistics, which I quote in the book, you know, John Kennedy, when he was inaugurated, we had a 14%, 11 to 14% obesity rate. That was it. And he was aghast. It's now 47%. 47% of our population is clinically obese. 70% is overweight, are overweight or obese.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:22:25]:
That's frightening. Talk about a pandemic, and it's not just here. It's everywhere. And and the thing that that stimulated me years ago was looking at the obesity epidemic and saying, what is it? Why are we getting fat? Guess what? It's not just us. It's our pets. It's marmosets. It's wild mice. It's monkeys.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:22:48]:
Everything that you can think of. Newborns are getting fatter. Children are obese. That that number is frightening. It's over 20% of children are now obese, and people wonder why this is happening. And it's happening because of these quote, unquote, obesogens in our environment. You see, if you go back to John f Kennedy's days, we didn't have Teflon. We didn't have nonstick cookware.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:23:19]:
It was just beginning. When I was a kid, you stay in the couch, it was stained forever. Now we have stain repellents and everything else and all of these are we didn't use hormones to this extent that we use them to feed chickens, cattle, and so on and so forth. And so all of these chemicals get into our body. They create these epigenetic, that's what it's called, epigenetic surface of the gene, changes that unfortunately are transgenerational, which means they're inheritable. That's how that happens. This is why it's an inexorable climb into, I think, medical bankruptcy, treating complications of obesity. But there was just an article in The Lancet.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:24:12]:
I I read it yesterday about the increase in, cancers now in young people that was just in, in Lancet just came out yesterday. There's a tripling of the rate since the 1980s, Tripling. That's pretty scary. So young people are getting cancers earlier. I mean, obviously, at a rate that is much higher, including pancreatic, testicular, colon, and it's linked to obesity. And that's what the conclusion of The Lancet article was. And if you look at the complications of obesity, they are diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. So it's a long winded statement to say how these obesogens, they're everywhere.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:25:04]:
They're in all of us, and we have to come to grips with that. And that's part of what I realized as I was saying, well, how do you solve this? How do you begin to solve it? And that was the question that I asked myself and, a couple of my advisers that were working with me on the book said, you better have an answer. Otherwise, you don't you don't you don't really have

Allan [00:25:28]:
promise. Hey. Hey.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:25:30]:
You gotta be able to say something here. And so it took a while to take a look, and see what what what what are the steps that people would have to take, but we'll maybe getting ahead of ourselves.

Allan [00:25:42]:
Yeah. We'll we'll definitely get there because that's I think that is you yeah. You you can you can do a study and and and not give them an answer, but you can't you can't write a book and not not tell us something. And, yeah, you can't be on this podcast and not not tell us something too. So we'll we'll get there. We'll definitely get there. Okay. The the other side of this was was our behavior.

Allan [00:26:06]:
But the the nature of our behavior is is not one of, as we mentioned earlier, individual agency where we're saying, you know, okay. This is what I'm gonna do, and this is why I'm gonna do it is it's much more complex than that. Can you talk about toxic behaviors and how that's a part of this problem?

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:26:27]:
Yes. And and it took me a while to get there. I got a lot of prodding from my advisers, to look at the behavioral literature. You know, it was interesting, but what really pushed me into it was why how can we change and reverse these epigenetic changes? Are they reversible? Because although what I'd like to do is prevent obesity from happening in the next generation and the generation after that, No. In other words, reverse the trend. I realized people also who are struggling with weight want to find out what I can do to at least stabilize, lose, and stabilize, lose, and stabilize. And I realized that that behavior must play a role. And the thing that stimulated me is very interesting.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:27:21]:
We I just talked about epigenetic changes and that are unfavorable. And I looked at some data on this may seem a little off off balance with the question, but people who undergo gastric bypass surgery reverse their epigenetic changes. And I said, wow, you mean a surgeon's knife and doing a gastrogegenostomy, which is what it is, reverses epigenetics? That's strange. And then I said, well, what else does it? And looking at the animal studies first, it seems that consistent behavior, changing toxic behaviors, let me mention some toxic behaviors. Eating when you're not hungry. You have your fat sends out a signal. There's a normal signal that goes out to tell you you are hungry. And that doesn't mean that if somebody puts a plate of pasta in front of you and you're a pasta fanatic, you know, you're not hungry, but you're gonna taste it.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:28:30]:
Tasting it is one thing. Eating the whole plate is another thing. Ben, as I say in the book, we we are good finishers. We are really good finishers.

Allan [00:28:38]:
Yeah. Starving kids in India. Yeah. Right. Right.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:28:41]:
Our mothers told us that. Right? But the fact is those kinds of eating when you're not hungry, eating really late at night, eating the wrong types of foods on a regular basis. And there is where we come into not only densely processed foods, but those that have 37 different ingredients, plus the chocolate, which is what you thought it was. Right? Yeah. But, you know, it's got stabilized or it's got this. Those toxic behaviors using skincare product in excess that are not really, should I say, for your internal environment, they're not safe. They have things like parabens, which are known obesogens. And, you know, we we wanna decrease the amount of sunscreen that we use that has parabens.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:29:39]:
And and there are places you can look and you can find, and I list some of them in the book as references to go to, to buy those products that work just as well. And those kind of toxic behaviors are what we need to attack. The problem with most people, Aaron, is that they try to attack them all at once. Yeah. And you can't do that. And I tell my patients that the first thing I want you to do is make a list of those behaviors that you think are really bad. Bring them back. Let's look at them.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:30:18]:
Okay? And we'll go over that. Then I want you to tackle 1 at a time. I want you to master 1 at a time. I want you to find a substitute or reverse that behavior, but here's the key. You have to be consistent. So what do I mean by that? Studies show that occasional exercise over a 1 or 2 year period of time doesn't really have an effect on your weight loss program. But consistent exercise actually changes epigenetics. That could be you set up your body is now gonna be messaged that you do your cardio workouts at the gym or at home on a on a on a elliptical trainer 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the mornings.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:31:14]:
Your body actually recognizes that. And that consistency for reasons that you and I will never understand, probably at least not during our lifetimes, that that changes your epigenetics favorably. So consistent behavior, a part of that is not getting depressed, staying positive. You're gonna have a bad day. You're gonna eat some dessert. You're gonna have something that's, you know, 4 French fries, whatever. A whole bag of French fries. You're gonna do it.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:31:56]:
What happens to dieters is they get depressed. What do they do? They eat more. And that because the fat, the salt tastes good. The sugar stimulates parts of the brain that says you're okay. And so people start to feel better. So behavior modification becomes a critical point to anyone who's gonna do weight loss. And that's one of the things that became extraordinarily important. And I dedicated a whole chapter in the book to this whole behavioral thing, this whole behavioral aspect of weight gain and weight loss and how in that case, the only agency that's important and is taking personal responsibility is not beating yourself up.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:32:54]:
It's really important that you stay positive. And, you know, think of Tony Robbins in a sense. I mean, just stay positive, you know, picture that picture. I mean, he wasn't wrong. He's not wrong. Yeah. I mean, if you can do that, it turns out you favorably affect your own epigenetics.

Allan [00:33:14]:
Yeah. I appreciate that. And one of the things you got into in the toxic behaviors that I think is really, really important, I wanna highlight this, is I think a lot of times we want we wanna do something. Okay. So I wanna lose weight, and we go into this thing. And we're like, okay. You know, I think the patient you had, it was it was ice cream. But I see this sometimes with clients with alcohol.

Allan [00:33:37]:
I wanna I wanna I wanna quit, but I I don't wanna quit. And I wanna wanna figure out what my my moderation, my line is. But sometimes we're not the kind of person who's going to play by the rules all the time, you know, even when we made the rules. And so you you called it negotiating with food. Right. We try to set a rule for ourselves. Okay. Well, I can I can have a couple drinks on a weekend or I can have ice cream on these days for these reasons?

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:12]:
It's like the the everything in moderation, you've heard that term. Right?

Allan [00:34:16]:
Yeah.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:16]:
What's moderation for you is not moderation for me. And that's the problem. So it's important to realize going in that you can't negotiate with the donut. You just, you're not gonna have, you're gonna lose. So I think I said a cookie. You can't negotiate with a cookie. I mean, you know, I'll just have the top half of this Oreo. Now you won't.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:34:39]:
You'll come back and get to a bottom half later. Don't kill yourself over it. Okay? Recognize that everything in moderation doesn't work. It's not, it's not a workable solution in reality. And studies have shown that over and over and over again. The interesting study sometimes in young kids, in young, you know, in kids, really youngsters, kindergarteners, 1st graders, they will choose healthy foods a lot of the time before they're inundated with TV and all the ads for all the Cocoa Puffs and whatever it is, that's out there. Remember, and I talk about this in the book, the food companies are not your friend. Okay? They're in they're in alliance with the diet companies.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:35:29]:
So together, they they make a a cabal, if you will, as far as I'm concerned.

Allan [00:35:34]:
Well, you can throw in the pharmaceuticals and much of the medical establishment as well. So they're they're they're all making money off the same thing.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:35:42]:
I think that my my colleagues are really not as well informed about obesity as they should be and as they want to be. I believe that there are a number of physicians who are perplexed and tear their hair out over the fact that no matter how much they admonish their patients, their patients continue to fail. And we talk about that in the book a little bit. But I wrote this book, Outsmarting Obesity, because I I really thought that it would appeal not only to the public, and I wrote it at a level that, not to to mean you, but you picked it up and read it.

Allan [00:36:25]:
I read it.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:36:25]:
And that's and that's great and probably enjoyed it and chuckled a little bit at it because I tried to add some humor. But, I I did also write it for the medical profession to to at least pick it up, read a chapter or 2, and and and think about the fact that they're battling maybe they're fighting the wrong battle with patients. I get the question all the time. Doctor Larkey, what do you think about GLP ones? What do you think about, you know, Ozempic and Wegovy and all of this? It's it's like a diet. It's gonna work as long as you take it. I think if you're not a diabetic and you're taking it, you're you're playing with fire. You know, you you if you don't need it, why would you take a chemical? And some of the people taking it with the people that say, woah. I don't wanna take this, COVID vaccine.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:37:16]:
I don't know what that is. Injecting it into my body. Maybe it's a and here they are injecting with Ovi to lose £5 to fit into that dress for the Oscars or whatever it is. And the fact that Chris Talley, who worked on this book with me, and he's a sports nutritionist, and a Hollywood nutritionist. So he, he really is dealing with all the professional sports teams. He's the guy. And, these are problems that, for example, athletes have when they stop playing. I mean, here, talk about regular exercise.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:37:55]:
Alright? I I have a grandson who plays hockey. He's now 16. He's playing travel hockey. He's looking to college. He wants to play college hockey. There isn't a moment in his life that he isn't active, but, you know, you get to be 40 and 45 and you're not out on the ice and playing hockey every day. You can't eat the same way. He could he could eat 3 people's meals for lunch and then dinner.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:38:24]:
And he's too thin. His coaches want him to put weight on. He's gotta eat protein, protein, protein. So our behaviors have to adjust to where we are in life. And that's the important message of the book, having Chris involved putting vignettes in every chapter.

Allan [00:38:45]:
Yeah. I I think that was that was fascinating to have him involved because you don't really I mean, yes. I I know Hollywood actresses and actors, they wanna look a certain they need to look a certain way for a part, and they need to do certain things. And some of it's some of it's okay, but some of it is just you shouldn't lose that much weight that fast. You shouldn't put on that much weight that fast. But you wanna give me $10,000,000? Okay. I'll put on $50,000,000.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:39:08]:
But I but I think the point I'm trying to make is that whatever plan you come up with has to be well thought out. It has to be smart, you know? Okay. I'm going to I I'm I'm morbidly obese. I need to do something. I'll start with with GoVy for 3 months. That will be the kickstart I need to lose 11, 12, £13 and know that I can do it. And now that I've read this book, I know step 2 is my behavior is gonna change and my relationship with food is going to change. Now people say when they're on the GLP inhibitors and so on and so forth, they they change their relationship with food.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:39:51]:
But basically, it makes you nauseated. That's what it does. It fills your stomach and, it makes you feel full. And, it does a lot of other not so good things. And I I see a lot of side effects now, with this. But any plan that you have to re restrict your calories for a 3 month or 6 month period, I wouldn't go longer than that because you're gonna be disappointed. You're gonna lose £25 and stop, and you're gonna gain 30. That's what's gonna happen.

Allan [00:40:23]:
Yeah. I think most of us have actually that that lost wanted to lose weight, started losing weight, experienced that that very thing. We lost the weight. We gained back more. And you you even explained in the book that yo yo dieting, yo yo weight loss is probably the worst thing we could do for ourselves from a health perspective. But, I want to dive into the process that you've put forward as the solution of what we can do to outsmart obesity. And the acronym is AIPE. And I want I look at that, and I and my head wants to say AIPE.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:00]:
Well, that's what I say. So you're okay.

Allan [00:41:02]:
It's ape It's okay. But I don't want we cannot ignore the I because

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:07]:
Right. So AIPE is accept, identify, prevent, and eliminate. And think of it in terms of toxic exposures, first of all. First of all, you've got to come to the acceptance that you're carrying a toxic burden. If you don't accept that, none of this means anything to you. Every one of us is carrying a burden of toxins, probably in the neighborhood of 2 to 300 different toxins if you did the entire blood panel, which would cost a fortune because we only do it for research purposes. But when they have done it, for example, newborns have over 200 toxins in their blood. A newborn baby is born with over 200 toxic chemicals in their blood.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:41:55]:
Well, they got it from mom. Okay. So they cross the placenta. The rest of us are just accumulating toxins. So accept the fact that you are carrying a toxic load. And on behavioral side, accept the fact that you have toxic behaviors with food. You have a toxic relationship with food. The second is identify, and I gave you a little insight to that with the behaviors.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:42:21]:
Make a list. Where are you getting exposed that you can do something about? You wanna change your cookware? That would be good. If you're using nonstick cookware that's chemically coated, they're perfluorochemicals. And, you know, those are chemicals that are obesogens. You cook an egg on it and it's going to get into your food. So identify, are you storing your cleaning goods in the kitchen? Don't, don't do that. Simple things like coming home from the dry cleaners and people that use a dry cleaner. If it's not a, a, a new wave green dry cleaner, and it's the old, you know, perchloric, perc cleaners using chemicals, you know, that that plastic covering on it be before you hang it in your closet, take the plastic covering, you know, outside.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:43:24]:
Let let it air out. Don't put it in your closet because those are chemicals that are getting on your other clothing. Try and avoid, you know, as many of these pitfalls as you can. Some you can't escape. And I tell people we eliminated all of our non stick cookware. I mean, they make good cookware that doesn't get screwed up and and works without chemical coating. But if I go to a restaurant, do I know what they use? I have no idea what they use. Go to Starbucks.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:43:54]:
Did they use a nonstick pan to make those muffins? Probably. So you're you're never going to be free of these chemicals, but you're gonna decrease your burden. So identify where things are going wrong. And I give lists of things in the book to identify and identify the behaviors as well. Now the next becomes interesting because they're different. For chemical exposures, you wanna prevent the absorption of these things that you can't get out of your life into your bloodstream. We should state for most of us, 80% of the chemicals get into our body because we put them in our mouth. We eat them or drink them.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:44:45]:
Those that use skincare, maybe it's 70% and more comes from from, the skin. We absorb them. The rest we inhale, but the inhalation part is not that important as it is eating. And so I tell people, if you wanna prevent the absorption, then the regular use of absorbance for the gut, in other words, to take along with your food so that these chemicals are bound in your gut and they go out the back end, so to speak, and they never become absorbed. They don't get into your bloodstream in the first place. Those are good products to be on your shelf for all of us because we are exposed no matter what happens. So this is the prevent absorption. That's what the prevention was all about.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:45:44]:
The prevention for behavior is once you have that list, tackling it one step at a time in a logical sequence. And we go through some examples in the book of how that could work. And the last is eliminate. There is the rub. So you have chemicals in your body. How am I gonna get them out? Well, it turns out there are a couple of ways. We talked about obviously sweat and using infrared sauna because you can stay in the sauna longer. That's the only reason infrared works.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:46:23]:
You know, any sauna, anything that makes you sweat a lot will obviously take it out of the fat because that's where that sweat is coming from. It's coming from fat cells, much of it. And so you can sweat out some of these toxins. Otherwise, we have to look at certain molecules. There are some unique molecules that you can take by mouth. You know, you you can obviously have them infused intravenously, but they have a lot of different complications. But taking them by mouth, they absorb into the bloodstream, and they will help solubilize these insoluble chemicals. Certainly, those that are heavy metals will go out immediately.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:47:12]:
And I I did a study, in coal miners, that looked like, you know, the these guys had lead levels and mercury levels and cadmium, and they just we gave them this this one concoction and it just woo. It poured out at the urine. It just and their levels came down and down and down because it's a chelator. It chelates the metals and doesn't chelate the ones you need, which is cool because you don't wanna do that with calcium because you need that. You don't wanna do that with magnesium. You kinda need that. Yeah. You don't wanna do it with potassium or sodium.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:47:49]:
Those are big molecules. They don't fit in there. But the smaller ones like mercury and and and and cadmium and the bad stuff, lead, they're smaller molecules. They fit right into the matrix and they're eliminated quickly. But because these chemicals, this this, compound has a net charge on it, it also attracts a lot of these organic molecules to stick, and they get eliminated too. Is this the only thing out there right now? It would appear that there are a few other thing, and this is a zeolite. It's it's it's called clinoptilawite, and I mentioned it. There are some that are absorbed into your body and others that are not.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:48:39]:
There's really, really good ones and really, really bad ones, so on and so forth. But even the bad zeolites, if you take them, by mouth, they will at least bind these toxins in your gut. So eliminating these toxins, it doesn't happen overnight, can make your fat, and it draws it out of the fat, which is cool. And that's really nice. So really, basically, what you're doing is looking at a system where, okay, I'm going to detoxify myself. It's not a weekend detox, you know, weekend at Bernie's, whatever it is. It's not that. It's continual and you use it.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:49:26]:
There are people that are putting it in drinks. There are people that are talking about putting it in haircare product because it can be absorbed. It it would be a a tremendous advantage for people to have their hands on this. From a behavioral standpoint, obviously preventing and eliminating kind of go close together. You're preventing the behavior. You've kind of once you've eliminated it, it's really it's really great. It's a great feeling. I'm one of the people that the ice cream thing.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:49:58]:
I I mean, I you put I I can't say no to ice cream. I don't know why. So I don't keep any in the house. That was my solution. There's none in the house.

Allan [00:50:09]:
Yeah.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:50:10]:
You know, that's and that was my solution. It may not be your solution, but I can't negotiate with with a pint of ice cream. I'm sorry. I just I lose that negotiation. Well, just it was in Italy, and every time they had dessert, everybody had gelato. I didn't have any. Do you wanna know something? I don't crave it anymore. It's a funny thing.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:50:33]:
I used to, but now I don't. For my wife, it's that toffee. Oh my god. She's if it's toffee in the house, she'll eat the whole can. So we don't allow it in the house. That that was her solution too. But everybody the AIPE approach is not an overnight lose a lot of weight. It is AIPE means I'm going to lose weight.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:51:00]:
I'm going to consistently exercise. My behavior modification is gonna be such that I'm gonna set up a schedule. I'm gonna stick to it. I'm going to eliminate some of these toxic behaviors that I have, and I'm going to go on a calorie restricted diet for 90 days. You can buy a plan. You could do whatever it is. And once you've done the plan and you've lost your 7, 10, £12, now you're going to put in place AIP. You're going to say, okay.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:51:37]:
I know now that I don't wanna gain the weight. My goal right now isn't more weight loss. It is to prevent the weight gain. And I have to be smart about it because I understand that my genes are telling my body to do something, and I need to try and reverse that as much as I can. And that combination of limiting the calories in and understanding why you're obese in the first place and why you're gonna gain it back if you don't do something, Modifying your behavior, eliminating these toxins from your body, doing all of this stuff, that is a prevention of the regaining of the weight. That was what the plan was all about.

Allan [00:52:22]:
I really, really wish that our government would be a big part of the solution for eliminate on this, but, I'm not gonna hold my breath. So this is something that we need to do. One of the core things I did wanna say is, like, okay. Because we're storing these things in our fat, when we're losing the fat, our basically load that's live at this given point in time in our body is there. This book is coming out. So having a good process through this whole thing and, you know, preventing more from coming in, eliminating it as it's being released, I think that's really a a great way to go through this. But, again, it's acceptance and and it's identification. So it is 8, but don't don't forget any one of these because all 4 of them are really, really important to get to the solution.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:53:14]:
Well, I'm glad you went through that. You know, I think it's important for the listener to understand, that, you know, forearmed is forewarned. That's the way I look at it. If you understand what's going on with your body, you're not gonna be so afraid of the fact that that that, you know, okay. I I went on a diet. I lost £20. I gained 1 or 2 back. You're not gonna exercise the rest of the way.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:53:41]:
You're going to have to have a better strategy than that. And that's what, you know, I wrote the book partly because I wanted to really help with people who struggle with this. So many of my patients just struggle with it. And, it is a source of tremendous anxiety and and it promotes abnormal behavior, not to mention, obviously, all the diseases that go along with it. And I wanna mention something quickly because I know we're running out of time, but I I would like to mention the fact that when you hear these people talk about healthy at any size, there is no such thing. You could be physically fit at any size. There's a big difference between physical fitness and health. All of the data point to the fact that obesity leads to a shortened life and obesity leads to illness.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:54:43]:
And days lost from work, days lost from your life, not to mention diabetic limb loss and so on and so forth. It's just it is not there is no such thing as healthy at any size. Physically fit at any size? Yes. Some of these people are fairly stable. That is they they haven't yet gotten diabetes, but they will. They will. And if you take a look at these large populations of people who feel that they're healthy, that is size, and they do all this, if they're obese, study after study, whether it's in the US, Great Britain, China, all these studies show they have a shortened life expectancy. They have a higher cardiovascular risk profile, and the cancer profile is at least twice what it is for non obese individual.

Allan [00:55:36]:
So doctor Langhi, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are 3 strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:55:46]:
From me from my point Yeah. Of view?

Allan [00:55:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely. That's why I'm asking you.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:55:50]:
First of all, accept yourself. I think that's the most important thing. People who don't accept it. So okay. I'm I'm I'm overweight. I'm personally overweight. I'm not obese, but I'm overweight. I would love to get rid of more pounds.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:56:09]:
Am I gonna go on a diet? No. I'm I'm going to continue to use the strategies that I mentioned. So be happy with yourself. Number 2, diminish the number of chemical products that you consume. And I mean, read labels, not the calories. Look at the ingredients. All those chemicals. If you can't yeah.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:56:36]:
Sodium chloride is okay. That's salt. It could be too much salt, but that's that's that's the number. The number 2 thing is read labels and understand that these are chemicals that really don't do anything great for you. And, number 3, I think that eating fresh food from, you know, to achieve wellness and having a a plan, an exercise plan that goes together for me. And that's how you achieve that happiness and wellness.

Allan [00:57:13]:
Thank you. Doctor Lonky, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your book, Outsmarting Obesity, where would you like for me to send them?

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:57:22]:
Obviously, it's it's available on Amazon now for preorder. It will be out on the on 10th September, in bookstores. They can go to my website, doctorlarke.com. That's probably the best place to go. I'm on Twitter and I'm on Facebook. There's Doctor Lonky. I'm all on, LinkedIn, which is more professional, but still fairly active. But I would ask them to go to the website first and, that'll link you to all the other all the other places, and you can order the book there.

Allan [00:57:55]:
Excellent. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.comforward/659, and I'll be sure to have the links there. Doctor Langhi, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Dr. Stewart Lonky [00:58:07]:
Allan, thank you for inviting me. Been a pleasure.

Allan [00:58:11]:
Welcome back, Rachel.

Rachel [00:58:12]:
Hey, Allan. That was an amazing interview. I mean, there's just so many big things that we could talk about. I can't even imagine reading his book. I'm sure it was incredible to get through. But my goodness. I mean, so much has changed. The obesity rate's going up.

Rachel [00:58:28]:
We know more about fat as a working for you or against you. I mean, just it's just overwhelming.

Allan [00:58:34]:
Yeah. Well, this is this is the book where I I learned that there's a 1,000,000,000 obese people on the planet, which I just thought was you know, when it first hit me, I'm like, well, that's insane. And then I It is. Think, well, the United States has probably 20% of them, which is true. And it's not just an adult thing anymore.

Rachel [00:58:52]:
No. Younger and younger. Yeah.

Allan [00:58:54]:
And so, yeah, this is a problem. And, you know, a lot of people will just say, well, it's just calories. You know, if you just do the do the things, if you just do the things, and they don't recognize that there are all of these other aspects to why we're carrying this extra extra fat that have absolutely nothing to do with what we're eating or when we're eating or how much we're eating. Some people are just going to have this propensity to store more fat because of the other things that are going on, that they haven't addressed yet. But a core thing I wanted to get into with you. We were talking offline a minute ago, is that I think a lot of people, like, look at fat and say, oh, fat bad. You know?

Rachel [00:59:38]:
Right. Yeah.

Allan [00:59:39]:
You know, insulin bad. And it's not that simple. Fat is an organ. It has specific purposes in our body, and so we need some fat. We need an amount, a healthy amount of fat. So it we we can't go out at that. And then, you know, they for a while, they're well, they they still did. There are 2 basic types of fat.

Allan [01:00:00]:
There's brown fat, and there's white fat. And so we know, like, babies are born with more more of the brown fat, and that helps them stay warm, and it helps do some other things for them. As we get older, we end up with, you know, more white fat. And so that's the fat and the visceral fat. So, you know, they're they've labeled fat to try to lead us down the line of saying this is the good fat and that's the bad fat. But the point that's the point being, though, is I think people just say fat is fat is bad.

Rachel [01:00:26]:
Bad is bad. Yep.

Allan [01:00:27]:
Yeah. And and and it's a little bit more complex than that.

Rachel [01:00:30]:
It is. Oh, it is. And we were talking about the chemicals all around us. It's not simply what you eat or how much you exercise. We're exposed to all these different, chemicals in our environment that, you know, it's it's they could play a big role as to how healthy we are overall or how much fat that we manage on a day to day basis. I mean, it's concerning sometimes how many chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis and what role it can play.

Allan [01:01:00]:
Yeah. I mean, you know, something as simple as as buying a new couch, Mhmm. And and the chemicals that they use to make it flame retardant. Are are off gassing in your in your house or apartment. Mhmm. Those could potentially be chemicals that will cause your body to want to store more fat. Mhmm. And one of the things that happens in the body is that the liver, which is primarily responsible for dealing with these chemicals that we're intaking, it's a pretty smart organ.

Allan [01:01:30]:
And so it can clean. It can do its job. But when it's overwhelmed, it has it has a bypass. And the bypass is to store the stuff in fat. And so for it to do its job, you may need to store more fat, to store more chemicals, because the liver's overwhelmed. And so it's just this balance of saying, okay, yes, nutrition is important for weight loss. We know movement is important to aid in weight loss. We know sleep is important to aid in weight loss.

Allan [01:02:01]:
And we know stress management is important for managing weight loss. And now there's a whole nother list of things that are also important. You need to be, Look at what chemicals are you and hormones and things you're exposed to. What's in your household cleaners? What's in your personal care products? I mean, you might love, love, love that face cream. Mhmm. But what's in it that could be a problem for you? And then that's when you kick in his his Ape acronym. So you accept that that face cream is bad for you.

Rachel [01:02:33]:
Mhmm.

Allan [01:02:34]:
Okay. You might love the way it looks. It makes your face look, your skin feel. But if it's causing you to put on body fat Mhmm. Then you have to come to terms with that, accept it, identify that that's what it is. Mhmm. Stop using it. You know? Yeah.

Allan [01:02:51]:
Find a find a face cream that doesn't have that ingredient in it, and, you know, maybe it won't work as well.

Rachel [01:02:57]:
You know? But Think about all the things you're exposed to on a daily basis. I mean, from your toothpaste in the morning, soaps, your shampoos, the makeups, of course. If you're cleaning the counter with whatever product you're cleaning the counter with. If you happen to have a nickel allergy, you probably shouldn't be drinking out of those really expensive insulated metal cups because then you're could be exposing your not just your lips and your your mouth, your palate, but also you're exposing your your insides to the nickel and and those metals. Plasticware, I drink I drink out a lot of plastic bottles when I'm on a run. I mean, just all day long, there's just all these things that you may not consider, as having an exposure to a chemical, but they're there.

Allan [01:03:44]:
Yeah. And so one of the big takeaways from the book, and, you know, because, again, he's a scientist. He's he's looking at this from a very specific point of view. Mhmm. And he's recognizing that this isn't it it is, but it it isn't just an individual problem.

Rachel [01:04:00]:
Mhmm.

Allan [01:04:00]:
There's going to have to be global, solutions to some of these problems like plastics and personal care products. And you see some of it. The European Union and Canada are a lot more stringent on what it allows to exist, for their people. United States is a little bit more lax in what's out there, so we're exposed probably to a lot more.

Rachel [01:04:26]:
Yeah.

Allan [01:04:27]:
And so it's just recognizing that this is out there. You can't totally eliminate all of it. We're just Mhmm. Any individual be impossible. But the more of those things that you're able to knock down and, you know, of course, do the do the core four first, your nutrition, your your movement, your sleep, and your stress. And then if that's not moving the needle enough for you, then you wanna start looking at other things that might be going on, like chemical exposures, hormone exposures Yeah. And the quality of, you know, and the quality of a lot of the foods and things that you're doing. So For sure.

Allan [01:05:02]:
You know, if you live in a city and, you know, there's lots of cars and you're running around, there's a lot of, you know, chemicals that are in the air that you're just running through. Oh, for sure. I used to hate running in the city. I I much prefer to run-in the country. Mhmm. It's it's it's nicer.

Rachel [01:05:18]:
It is.

Allan [01:05:19]:
But, you know, you are where you are. And so there are things that are gonna be outside your control, but then True. A lot of this is. And so this is this book's an opportunity for you to kinda go through and start doing that research that you can know. Okay. This is in this thing, and I should not be eating this. This is in this thing. I should not be putting this on my skin.

Rachel [01:05:39]:
Sure.

Allan [01:05:40]:
And then you can begin to eliminate some of those things or get filters to address some of those things so that it's not such a huge problem for you Mhmm. And you're gonna be better off for it.

Rachel [01:05:51]:
That sounds really great. His book is aptly titled, Outsmarting Obesity, because it is not just the easy things. It's not just anything. It is definitely a little complicated at times.

Allan [01:06:03]:
It can be. But start start with the big four. Mhmm. And then when you're when you're getting into this and then you wanna take it to the next level, this is a good book to get you primed on how to start that investigation.

Rachel [01:06:15]:
That sounds great. Amazing.

Allan [01:06:17]:
Alright. Well, I'll talk to you next week. Take care. You too.

Rachel [01:06:20]:
Thanks.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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