Full transcript of “Doctor Reveals: How I Lost 68 lbs When Nothing Else Worked [Not Ozempic]”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 So, when a doctor struggles with their own weight, despite supposedingly knowing better, something isn't right. I'd proven myself more than capable in many areas of life. But I found myself in my late30s, significantly overweight, and it wasn't through lack of trying to lose it. But in 2016, everything changed and I lost 66 lb of excess weight in just over 6 months. And I've kept it off ever since. I didn't have weight loss surgery. I didn't start running marathons. I didn't starve myself. I didn't suddenly find an endless reserve of willpower that I didn't have before. And it was a long time before these new weight loss jabs came about. It started with the strangest thing I'd ever seen someone do with their morning coffee. So, back in February 2016, I was on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, and I'm sitting at the breakfast table
0:46 getting fueled up for the day on the slopes when I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. You see, we were sharing the chalet with a group of guys we didn't know, and one of them was sitting opposite me, and he was probably mid-40s and clearly in good shape. He poured out a cup of black coffee and then got a big spoon of butter and began stirring it into that coffee. Now, some of you watching this will know exactly what he was doing, but I was confused. And the doctor in me started thinking, "Wow, that is a heart attack in a mug." There's years of medical training buzzing around my head. butter. That's pretty much pure saturated fat, right? Saturated fat clogs arteries. And this guy was basically mainlining cholesterol at 8 a.m. in the morning. But the thing is, he was clearly in better shape than I was. Yeah, I was the medical
1:32 professional who knew better, weighing in at 240 lb, having just bought new ski trousers because the ones I wore last time I went skiing didn't fit me anymore. So, I asked him, "Why are you putting butter in your coffee?" Luckily, he was as nice as I was curious and he was very happy to share his knowledge with me. Now, to understand why this moment mattered so much, you need to know something about who I was at that point. By this time, I'd been a fully qualified GP for about a year and a doctor for about six. And I had a not so secret. To use a medical terminology, I was obese. Not overweight, obese. Look, the irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was giving patients advice about their health whilst completely failing to manage my own. But I knew the theory
2:18 inside out. Calories in, calories out, eat less, move more. I mean, you don't need a medical degree to get your head around that stuff. Yet, every time I followed this advice, I had initial success for a few weeks before the same old pattern got the better of me. Just feeling crazy hungry all the time, feeling too tired to hit the gym and move more. basically a complete failure. Each time I'd end up heavier than when I started. I remember desperately trying to lose weight for my wedding. Yes, I dropped a few pounds. And I'm definitely not at my heaviest weight in this photo, but it still haunts me. In every picture of this special day is that double chin that I tried so hard to lose. And within weeks of the honeymoon, every pound was back on again. And the worst part, in my
3:03 clinic, I had patients sitting opposite me, swearing they were cutting calories and not losing weight. And I didn't believe them. "Are you absolutely sure you're tracking everything?" I'd ask, thinking they must have be lying or deluded. Because if they really were in a calorie deficit, they would be losing weight. Except I was living proof that the conventional advice didn't work. But I was too blinded by my medical training to see it. It was easier to blame my own lack of willpower. Which brings us back to that breakfast table in France where the stranger was about to connect the dots I'd been too medically trained to see. So over a glass of wine that evening, this guy walked me through something that should have been obvious to any doctor. His question was simple. What happens when you prescribe insulin to your diabetic patients? And I knew
3:50 the answer immediately. They gain weight. Whenever we start someone on insulin, we always warn them that they probably will gain weight. And then what happens to type 1 diabetics who can't produce insulin? Well, they lose weight regardless of how much they eat. And he let that sink in for a moment. So, if insulin makes people gain weight and a lack of insulin makes them lose weight, what does that tell you? And the pieces suddenly clicked. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. When it's high, you store fat. When it's low, you burn fat. And every time we eat certain foods, especially carbohydrates, we trigger insulin. The more insulin that we trigger, the more fat we store. I sat there, wine glass in hand, feeling like an idiot. How would I miss this? I'd been prescribing the evidence for years
4:35 without even thinking about it. I got home from that skiing holiday on the 14th of February, 2016, Valentine's Day. I finally understood I'd been trying to outwit my hormones with willpower. But you can't win a battle against insulin by counting calories. You have to stop triggering insulin in the first place. It was time to put it to the test. If insulin really was the key, then managing it should produce completely different results than my previous attempts. I dove head first into reducing the carbs to manage the insulin. In the first couple of weeks, I lost quite a significant amount of weight, but I'd seen this before. Water weight, I told myself, don't get your hopes up. The next few weeks went well. The weight kept coming off week after week, but again, nothing that hadn't happened before with a calorierestricted
5:22 diet. It was week 10. Usually when I'd be climbing the walls with hunger, ready to quit. I felt incredible. I had all day energy, no afternoon crashes, no desperate need for sugar or caffeine to get me through my afternoon clinic. For the first time on any diet, I wasn't hungry. I wasn't fighting my body. My body was finally working with me. And that actually felt like something that I could keep up with. And I did. And just over 6 months after getting back from that ski trip, I stepped on the scale 85 kg. I'd lost 30 kg or 66 pounds, but I was at a normal BMI for the first time in my adult life. And this wasn't some superhuman willpower effort. This was simply addressing a hormonal issue. And
6:09 that's when I realized why so many of us fail. We're not weak, we're metabolically broken. And in the months after that ski trip, I became obsessed with understanding exactly what had been wrong with me. And I discovered what might be hard for some of you to hear. You see, here's the uncomfortable truth. When you've spent years eating processed food, snacking, spiking your insulin multiple times a day, not exercising, and all those other bad habits you know you should stop, something breaks. Your cells stop listening to insulin properly. They become resistant to its effects. It's like being constantly exposed to loud noise. You become deaf and your cells become deaf to insulin. So your pancreas, which is where insulin is produced, then has to shout louder, producing more and more insulin to get
6:56 the same effect. So when insulin is always high, your body is stuck in fat storage mode. You literally cannot access your fat stores for energy. You can have 500 lb of stored energy on your body, but if insulin is elevated, you can't use it. And that explains why overweight people feel hungry all the time and keep eating despite having so much stored energy. It's not gluttony, it's biology. For middle-aged men, especially who are the group that I work with, decades of desk jobs, stress, poor sleep, convenient processed foods create the perfect storm for developing insulin resistance. So, if you've been thinking of yourself as overweight or lacking willpower, you might need the same shift in thinking that I did. You see, you're not overweight. You're metabolically
7:43 unhealthy. And unlike willpower, metabolism can be fixed. Now, I'd love to tell you that fixing my diet fixed everything. And yes, nearly 9 years later, I've kept the weight off, but that would only be telling you half the story. You see, weight loss was like peeling the outer layer off an onion. Underneath, there were more layers I didn't even know existed. For example, when I tried to start exercising seriously, I quickly realized that I was struggling in certain areas. I'd spent most of my life sitting in lecture theaters or studying. Entire muscle groups had almost disappeared. And thing is, these weaknesses needed addressing before I could exercise without putting myself at risk of injury. And then I realized that I was pretty bad at developing good habits like exercising regularly. Another area that needed
8:29 work. And when I'd sorted that, another layer revealed itself. And this happened several times over. And just when I thought I'd got through all the layers, another one would appear. Some kept me stuck for a very long time. But this has come to an end now, I think, because it's only in the last couple of years or so that I feel like I've got all the missing pieces of the puzzle together now. Now I'm at a point where I feel really confident with it. Now I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't really have to worry about their weight anymore. And I even exercise regularly, too. And not because I know that I should, but because I actually enjoy it. Now, I'm not saying it's always easy all the time, but I can basically move on with the rest of my life without this stuff worrying me anymore. But here's what I want you to understand. It's rare for people to just fix the diet stuff at
9:15 the beginning, lose the weight, and that be the end of it. It often runs much deeper than that. Now, not everyone has the same issues that need addressing, but I don't want you to have to spend this next eight years figuring out what I've had to learn for myself. And so that's exactly what this YouTube channel's about, helping you get all the pieces in place, hopefully in months, not years. So make sure you're subscribed. That said, with all my clients, I always start by addressing the metabolic health side of things. It's the foundation for everything else. Helping them shift from I need to lose weight, which is the goal they want to achieve, to I need to improve my metabolic health. because when you fix that, the weight loss just happens. But it's important to say that not everyone
10:02 who is overweight has insulin resistance. It's a major factor for many, but it's not the only cause of obesity. That said, for those who do have it, addressing your insulin levels is such an important part of the process. So, the first step you need to take is understanding, does any of this actually apply to me? Am I actually insulin resistant? It's the first question that really need answering for you to be able to move on with this. But here is the annoying part. You can't just walk into your doctor's office and ask for an insulin resistance test. It just doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. You need to approach it much more like a mystery that needs solving. You have to turn into a detective and go looking for the clues. So, what I've done is I put together a guide that will help you do
10:48 just that. Think of it like your detective's handbook to solve the does this apply to me mystery. The link is in the description down below this video. You just need to go down there, click through to my website, and you'll be able to get access to that for free straight away. And then in about 10 minutes, you'll have a really good idea of whether this actually applies to you or not. So hopefully now you realize that losing weight as a man in your middle years isn't about finding more willpower or trying harder. It's about recognizing that you're probably metabolically damaged and that can be fixed. The conventional advice isn't wrong because it the science is bad. It's wrong because it ignores the hormonal reality of insulin resistance. And once you understand that, everything changes just like it did for me back in 2016 when that stranger put butter in
11:34 his coffee and accidentally changed my life. Just remember, weight loss is the start of the journey, not the end. And if you want to learn more about that, then make sure you subscribe to this channel. And hopefully I will see you in the next video.
