Anshu Bahanda: When it comes to weight loss, everyone seems to have advice. Cut carbs, do more cardio, try this injection, sit in an oxygen chamber, take a cold plunge. But which of these are breakthroughs and which are myths? The truth is, weight loss is one of the most confusing journeys we face. Research shows that while nearly half of adults attempt to lose weight each year, only a small fraction manage to keep it off long term. Most people regain much of their weight within just a few years. So today we’re separating facts from fads, asking what actually works and what doesn’t. And what if the answers aren’t what you’ve been told all along.
Welcome to Wellness Algorithm, the space where we cut through hype and get to the real science stories and strategies that shape your health. Today’s episode is all about weight loss myths and truths. From injections like Ozempic to cold plunges, oxygen chambers, miracle supplements and the latest diet trends, we’re going to look at what really makes a difference and what’s just clever marketing and hype and TikTok and social media. Joining me are two incredible voices. We have Dr. Sarge Takhar, chief medical officer at Primary MD, who brings medical insight and integrity into the world of weight loss and longevity treatments. And we have Amandeep Khurana, who’s been very open with his lifelong journey with obesity and with the role of GLP1 therapies, bringing raw, lived experience into the conversation.
Together, we’ll unpack the signs, the struggles and the strategies so we can walk away knowing what’s fact, what’s friction and what might work for you. And before we dive in, a quick reminder. Subscribe and share the episode and leave us a comment. It’s free and it helps us bring you more conversations that make wellness simpler to understand. Welcome to the chat, Sarge and Amandeep, and thank you for being here with us today.
Amandeep Khurana: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Dr. Sarge Takhar: Thanks for having us.
AB: You’re welcome. I’m very excited about this chat because this is driving so many people crazy. Tell me something. There is so much weight loss advice out there and it’s so conflicting. People are talking about fasting, they’re talking about supplements, cold plunges, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, injections. From your perspective, how do we decide what’s evidence based and what’s just hype?
Dr. ST: Anshu, that’s a great question. And so much of this is with social media. It’s always been out there. I mean there’s so many things about weight loss that’ve been out there for generations. And now when you look into it, it’s like, how do you differentiate what’s hype and what actually works? It could be really challenging for people because there’s a lot of people with big voices out there. But I mean if you think about it, if the treatment just sounds too good to be true, if it’s fast, if it’s effortless, and of course when people say this is guaranteed, like you think about it, those are clear red flags to me. You know, and it always, it always goes back to the basics. You know, there’s nutrition, sleep, movement, you know, these are the things that actually work, you know, and unfortunately so many people just prey on people’s vulnerabilities and they try to show a quick, easy fix. I mean, I think that’s one of the, one of the most important things to look at is like, who’s going to be really benefiting and if it sounds too, and it’s like that basic concept, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
AB: That’s interesting. Amandeep, would you like to add something to that?
AK: Yeah, I generally agree to what Sarge is saying that there’s actually just no quick fixes out there. If they existed, we wouldn’t have 40 plus percent, metabolic, 40% US adults having metabolic disease and so many people in India and China having diabetes. That’s not the world we would be living in if there were quick fixes available to us. So yes, a lot of us struggle with metabolic challenges and, which makes us vulnerable targets for people who are trying to take advantage of the situation and maybe make some money off, really comes down to getting the basics right. And without that, even those quick fixes don’t last.
AB: So Amandeep, you wrote, and this whole conversation started when you sent me an article you’d written about your journey with GLP1. With, was it Tirzepatide that you took? I think, yeah. So can you tell me what did that help you with and what challenges did you face and what are the things that you weren’t able to solve?
AK: So, since the age of 15 I’ve been dealing with metabolic challenges and tried all kinds of diets and supplements and exercise protocols and got influenced by all the influencers out there, over the years and found that I wasn’t getting much success. I can look back now and look at the different things that I tried and reason about why they may not have succeeded. But I’m not entirely sure that I have it right. A few years ago when Ozempic was coming onto the market, I’d say late 2020, early 2021, that’s when I tried it before it became this big rage.
It was, it made a difference for sure. But I had to stop, in about three, four months because of supply issues. So I lost some weight and then all of it came back in four weeks. There’s multiple ways I can reason about that. That was my first experience with GLP1s, say a couple of years later when Tirzepatide was now more openly available. That’s when I then tried Tirzepatide. But this time I took a slightly different approach. I made sure that I was focusing very, very clearly on the basics that I’ll just talk about, like nutrition and exercise. Sleep tends to be my weakest link in the whole picture. Stress management tends to be my weakest link. So I made sure that I was focusing on those things and I was, I tracked everything as carefully and as diligently as I could just to see what I was getting wrong earlier. Now this is, this is the drug that’s available.
That’s, I thought about it. It’s a crutch, it’s a supporting thing. But the primary thing for me is to make sure that I’m getting my basics right. And again thinking about a lifetime of sustainable havoc for the rest of my life. So that’s what I was trying to find. And Tirzepatide was a way to break through my stalls, my, wherever I was getting stuck and, and then get to the right thing for me. And it made a difference. It absolutely made a difference.
But it’s not something that I would say has solved all my problems. There’s still a bunch of open things for me to work on.
AB: I want to ask you this. Amandeep and Sarge, please feel free to jump in. Is exactly what you said about Ozempic, that you had it for four weeks and then you stopped it and then the weight came back on and then you started on Tirzepatide. Now was that something short term, or was that a lifelong tool for you? Or is that a lifelong tool for you?
AK: My intention is to get off it as soon as I can. I don’t want to be on the drug for life, as it looks like right now. Nobody quite understands whether you can be on these drugs for life or not. Leave aside the cost. Right. Is it even safe to use for the rest of your life? We don’t know that. They just haven’t been around for long enough to have that kind of data available, so that’s one. Second, generally, this is my personal preference and my personality, I don’t want dependency on anything. So I’m very motivated to get off the gut as quickly as I can. Having said that, I still haven’t gotten to that point. So I still have work to do. I still haven’t gotten to a place that I can say, okay, I’m done. I don’t need this anymore. I’ve had a lot of success with it, but I’ve also had my fair share of failures. It’s just the last six months, I haven’t made the progress that I wanted to.
AB: I see, so you’re saying when you get to the weight you want to get to, then you will start getting off it, Is that right?
AK: It’s not the weight for me. It is the bodyguard composition. And that’s a very important distinction. From my perspective. My goal is to get to 20% body fat, not necessarily a certain weight number. Now of course you can’t get to 20% body fat and be 400 pounds. You can, but that’s not what, that’s not what I’m trying to get to.
AB: And what other changes beyond the scales have you noticed while you’ve been on Tirzepatide with energy cravings, mood, sleep? Have any of these shown real progress to you? Because like you were talking about sleeping an issue with you.
AK: So some things have been positive and some things have been negative. My sleep quality has deteriorated. My resting heart rate stays elevated, my HRV has dropped. And I’ve done this experiment multiple times to get off my appetite for six weeks and I actually see my resting heart rate drop down by about 10 points. So just that very example. Yeah, actually more than that. It’s dose dependent. So lower dosages I see, a lower drop. And when it’s a higher dose, I’ve seen up to 50, betrothed drop. So my resting heart rate at night used to be in the late 40s before I started the drug. Now it’s still in the low 60s, low, sometimes even mid 60s. So I’ve had to actually keep the dosage low. And that’s how I knew that my body was having that response when I increased the dose. Because when my resting heart rate stayed elevated and I would not feel rested at all, in fact, I would just feel very amped up all the time.
That is a side effect that I have experienced and I think there’s multiple people who will report this side effect as well. On the positive side, you know, cravings for me were there, but I was able to manage them pretty well even before taking Tirzepatide. Evening time tends to be my weakest, moments where I’ll just start munching and for no good reason. It’s pretty mindless. And again, when I have the awareness or my wife points out, why are you munching? I’ll stop. But it’s pretty mindless for the most part. With Tirzepatide that reduced significantly.
AB: So the cravings did.
AK: Yeah.
AB: Okay.
Dr. ST: Amandeep, I think that’s an extremely important thing that you just talked about, like the effect of Tirzepatide. Not too many people track them, track everything like you do. You’re probably in the top 1% of people who track. And I’ve seen people who’ve gone off of Tirzepatide and have done the exact same calories, the exact same exercise, but they’ve still put on a little bit of weight. Going to what you’re saying about the heart rate, you know, the mechanism of it, we don’t know all the mechanisms. You know, it’s not just a GLP agonist or a GIP agonist, but it probably does something else to metabolism as well. And so those have been clear evidence in other ways as well. And I also do see people who want to lower their Tirzepatide dose, but they really don’t want to because when they do, they said, oh, then I want the cupcake at 11pm at that time. And when I don’t, it’s like that craving is gone. Different people do respond to it in different ways.
Like we track people’s heart rates as well, like through the office. And some people don’t change at all and some people do go up. You know, I often don’t see an uptake of 10 to 15, you know, 5, 10, a little bit. And then, you know, when the heart rate goes up, then you often do see a drop in the HRV as well. You know, that often, that often does tend to go together. But it’s a challenge. And like you said, we don’t really know the long term side effects. But it’s been clear in the studies of Tirzepatide, when people have stopped it, the weight has often come back from for most people.
AB: That in itself is a big deal, isn’t it? On how to get off GLP1 drugs once you get onto them.
AK: Absolutely. And the only system is sustainable habits, good habits. So there’s a couple of different things here. Again, as I think about it for myself and Sarge, please provide the medical and more of a scientific explanation here. As a patient, consumer, as a user of these drugs, this is how I think about it. For myself. There’s two pieces that are relevant. One is just having my insulin levels and my sugar levels in control. So let’s say if I was diabetic, these drugs solve that as a problem. So that’s one component of it. And then the other component is, the appetite management, which is cravings, the amount of food and so on and so forth.
AB: Right.
AK: I never had a problem with the former. My A1C levels were in a good range. Tirzepatide didn’t necessarily make any difference on that front. And maybe the drop by 0.1, but that’s kind of it. They were treated around the same number, same level. But what did happen is that my fasting insulin went up and that hasn’t come down, which generally prevents weight loss. So that’s a separate topic. But that’s one aspect of it. Right? Your, the blood markers and the serum levels. Then the second is the cravings. If I stop Tirzepatide, the cravings will probably come back. But if I can build habits to counteract that, that is probably my only long term shot at it.
AB: So you’re saying build habits where the reward is not food, where the reward is something else. Correct?
AK: Absolutely. So I had to break out of that cycle. Right. So there’s a habit of every, every night, 11 o’clock, I want a cupcake.
AB: Maybe you need to put on some music and start dancing every night at 11 o’. Clock. That’s your reward. Or, do you not have anything sweet in your house? Yes, but also for me, my reward is chocolate. We all think of reward as food, as dessert very often. So that’s what we need to change. Sarge, I want to ask you about something that I read in one of your articles. You’ve cautioned against hype in longevity and weight loss medicine. What are the biggest red flags that you think that people should look for when considering trendy treatments like the oxygen chambers of the world or the GLP injections or the cold plunges? What would you say when you see this run?
Dr. ST: I’m going to start with, the GLP agonists have been a game changer. They truly are a game changer. I mean, prior to them, the most reliable way of weight loss was actually surgery, bariatric surgery with gastric bypass. And that was a miracle surgery for many people. And clearly that’s not a small procedure when they do that. And people with gastric bypass lose 20 to 25% of their weight. And often it’s sustained. And when you look at other ways of, other diets of weight loss is people lose weight, but it’s rarely, it’s rarely above 10% in studies. 5%, 10% is what you often see. And these are in medically controlled studies where people are given high quality food. And that’s one of the key things here with this is like not processed foods. The macros didn’t matter so much. But we didn’t see weight loss like that. But now when you’re looking at the GLP agonists, we’re seeing weight loss in 15 to 20%.
And the new agonists that are coming around, the triple agonists, are approaching the weight loss that you’re seeing with, with gastric bypass. So, they’re really quite amazing. Additionally, we’re seeing cardiac benefits on GLP agonists. Additionally, we’re seeing people who have orthopedic issues with osteoarthritis. Now we know people lose. You have someone with arthritis, like for me, I have fairly bad knee arthritis as well. And you know, I notice when my weight goes up, my knee hurts more. And there’s clear studies showing, Tirzepatide in people with osteoarthritis, their pain scores go down. You know, this might be in the realm of, what statins are for longevity and health benefits for somebody that actually needs them. It’s unfortunate that we often need to be on them for life. You know, sometimes they’re going through more difficult times, they want to try something and we experiment.
AB: Right.
Dr. ST: So these are clearly, clearly helpful. Now, when we’re starting to look at other things to back your questions about cold plunges, I mean, cold plunges could be great for some people’s mental health also. You know, like, it could be, they could be very, very rejuvenating. Now when you get to the ideas like, are they going to help you lose weight? You know, that doesn’t make sense. I mean, cold plunges will do one thing for sure if they’ll make you cold, they’ll make you cold and then what’s the effect of being cold? You know, like sometimes it could be, it could be very refreshing. It could be a great way to start. It could be a great way to start the day. But is it a weight loss thing? Almost certainly not. Unless for example, if cold plunges change your stress level. Doing cold plunges help you with these lifestyle things that Amandeep has been very clearly talking about. If when you cold plunge, you lower your stress, you like to exercise more, it decreases your cravings of some things, then maybe it will help. But just doing a cold plunge in itself is not gonna do, is almost certainly not gonna do it. And the way I like to think about it and please, if you have any questions, stop me. The way I really like to think about these things is going to be what’s the bias?
AB: Right.
Dr. ST: Who is going to be profiting from these? You know, is it, the influencer? Who’s going to be profiting by having more followers than we, we’ve just started thinking about over the last few years? Like before I think about, you know, is it the person making the medicines?
AB: Yes, yes. The pharmacies.
Dr. ST: Do the pharma companies have biases? You know, is it, is it the biases from the providers? You know, like hyperbaric oxygen is an incredibly good treatment for dive related disease. You know, if someone’s scuba diving and they and they, they need decompression and oxygen, that’s like a clear benefit. It might. Wound healing is also something where hyperbaric oxygen probably has maybe some benefits, although I’m a little bit skeptical. But when you start thinking about this for longevity and for weight loss now I think we’re really getting into an area where probably the only one benefiting is the person who owns the machine.
AB: Interesting. So you’re saying that of the few things that I threw at you, of course GLP1 drugs do work and it’s helped a lot of people at many levels. But you’re cautioning people to do it carefully because we still don’t know the long term effects and we still don’t know how people can fully get off it. Right, but you’re saying that the other things could be supportive, but by themselves they cannot make a difference. Things like oxygen chambers and cold plunges and the like.
Dr. ST: One other thing I think is, that is very important. I think the placebo effect needs to be renamed to the effect of positive expectation. Like if you look at medical studies, you often see both arms, you know, when you look at a placebo, and if you look at the treatment group, they often both do better in the same way. And modern science now is really catching up with what we’ve all, what many people have believed in different cultures and different societies. If you think something’s going to work, if you have hope, it often does. And now we’re actually getting to the point now that we’re catching up. And even at the protein, synthesis level, if someone thinks something is going to do something, a placebo isn’t just a sugar pill. It is actually something that, where people might be thinking it has an effect. And we see that down at the cellular level now. It’s actually wonderful research.
AK: I was wondering, Sarge, is the opposite also true? Are we finding that in these studies that if you have a negative expectation, even if you have the drug, you actually get the opposite effect?
Dr. ST: Absolutely. This is called the nocebo effect.
AB: Oh, wow. I didn’t know there was a word for it.
Dr. ST: Yeah, and you see it a lot of times. You know, for example, for many people whose cold cholesterol is elevated, you know, there’s a lot of bad information on statins. And some people have such strong views on statins. Clearly there are side effects of any medication that’s effective. You’re going to have side effects. You know, if the medication has no side effects, most likely it has no benefit either.
AB: I have a theory about placebo and nocebo effects. A very simple theory. When you’re anticipating something positive, then your cortisol levels go down. But when you’re worried about something, your cortisol levels go up and then they play havoc with your system. So when your cortisol levels go down, you’re calmer, you’re happier, and everything works differently.
Dr. ST: The relaxation response that people can get almost certainly is helpful in almost anything. You can notice that from physiologic parameters, people’s blood pressure goes up when they go to the doctor’s office. You know, that’s. People may know this term. It’s called white coat hypertension. You go to the doctors, you see a blood pressure elevated. Why it’s nice to get blood pressure measurements at home. People doing transcendental meditation that went to a Massachusetts General Hospital doctor by the name of Benson. He studied them, they were showing and they taught people how transcendental Type meditation can actually lower white coat hypertension. And then he, and then Benson turned this, the relaxation response as well, and his lab is one of the same labs that’s actually studying the placebo effect and the effect of the cellular level as well. And so going back to what you’re saying is like, is chronic cortisol and chronic stress, really one of the drivers in illness. It absolutely is something. And if you’re worried about taking medication, there’s a chance that you’re going to have a nocebo effect.
AB: So, right, tell me from all the evidence that you’ve seen, and I know Amandeep, you’ve lived this, and Sarge, you see clients all the time who are on different diets. Now, the big diets recently, I mean, I believe this was the eighth year in a row that the Mediterranean diet won best diet or something. And then there’s the keto. Then there’s intermittent fasting, which has become almost like a religion with a lot of people. From the evidence, which eating pattern actually supports sustainable weight loss.
AK: Again, having tried pretty much every diet out there, I’ll just share my own personal experience and conclusion. The diet that’s best for you is the one that you will sustain, right? So if I can do keto for a week and then I cannot do it for the eighth day. No, that’s not gonna work, right? So again, it becomes a sustained habit. And so I found myself trying keto. And I’ve done extended fast. I’ve passed it up to 10 days with only water. You know, I followed the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean diet, the south beach diet, low fat diet, you name it, I’ve tried all of them, Paleo and whatnot. So that’s one thing, what can you sustain? The second is, there is no one right diet for everybody. What I found is, you know, let’s say if you’re a vegetarian or you’re a vegan, keto is almost impossible to do. And if you only love, you know, meat, and I tell you vegan is a better way to go for you, you’re not going to do it, you’re not going to sustain it, right? So, you have to find what works for you based on your preferences, the amount you eat, calories in, calories out. That matters.
From a weight loss perspective, calories in have to be less than calories out. It is just basic math, and there is no working around it. Now we have all these different models of the insulin carbohydrate model and where you have to drop your, you have to bring your insulin levels down and the only way to do that is bring your carbohydrate level down. Okay, there is some truth to it, yes. But if, let’s say you bring down the insulin levels and you’re still eating a thousand calories more than what you are burning every day, you’re not gonna lose weight. And I have experienced it, I have accurately experienced it. It doesn’t work at the same time. If the calories in are less than the calorie route, and it is not all fats and I’ve got a bunch of carbs in there, for instance, you’ll still lose weight. Now, is it the kind of weight you want to lose? Muscle loss, etc, etc? There’s a bunch of different conversations to have there. Purely from a weight loss perspective, the conclusion that I’ve come to is calories in, calories out matters and there is no working around it. And then everything around, whether it’s what macros, what sources for those macros, etc.
They matter, but much less. Just as those factors, they matter much less when it comes to weight loss. They do matter from a perspective of helping make sure those calories are less than calories out. So let’s talk about that. Let’s say you’ve got a 2,000 calorie diet, right? That’s what you’re shooting for. And you have to sustain that 2,000 calorie diet, 2,000 calories per day diet for six months. And the only way you’re going to get that 2000 calories is by drinking Coke with high fat post concert energy. Now that’s going to be super hard to sustain. Why? Because you’re going to be hungry. You’re going to have all the cravings, your insulin is going to go up and down, blood sugar is going to go up and down and you’re going to have a very hard time sustaining and limiting your circle to a thousand calories. We’re not talking about all the other micronutrient deficiencies that are going to happen and forget all that. We’re just talking purely calories in, calories out, and sustainability of it.
Now let’s switch that and say you’re going to get 2,000 calories. We’re going to the other extreme with only olive oil. Good luck getting 2000 calories in with olive oil. Just the amount of oil that you have to drink to make that happen. It’s going to be very, very difficult and it’s much more filling. You’re not going to. Your insulin is not going to go up and down. Blood sugar is not going to go up and down. Just much easier to sustain. That 2000 calorie diet with olive oil actually won’t even get to 2,000 calories. So two extremes, right? If I stay on whole foods like vegetables, meats, nuts, it’s much easier for me to maintain that 2,000 calorie number as compared to if I’m getting those 2,000 calories from processed foods coming out of the bag. Same calorie number. I get pain much better with whole food as compared to the bag. And so higher fiber content. It takes me time to cook it takes time to eat it. Like having 250 grams of broccoli takes me some time and then I’m full at the end of it and I don’t want rice. But having 250 grams of rice is way easier. Actually that’s quite a bit of rice, but it’s way easier to have that rice and I’ll digest it much faster. Just as an example. So those are the things I think about when it comes to diet. So which is the best diet? Whole foods, calories in, less than, calories out, balanced. And then we can talk about all the macros and, you know, how much protein do you need and how much fat and how much carbs and should it be low carb or high carb? And intermittent fasting, all of those things are optimizations or supporting acts into this core thing. Again, for me, calories in, calories out, and something that I can sustain.
AB: So you’re saying get an app like My Fitness Pal or one of those apps which just tracks your calories.
AK: Yeah, for sure that helps because that gives you awareness. Right? So I’ll give you an example, a very, very practical example. So earlier I used to be very stingy. 100% I’m on keto and I’m only following keto. And then I would do that for a few months and then at some point I would fall off the wagon
AB: And go crazy.
AK: Yes. I would fall off the wagon, say, oh, yeah, okay, fine, I’m not doing keto right now. So I’m going to have that cake and that ice cream and that candy and that chocolate. And then I’d beat myself up and say, damn it, I was doing keto. What happened here? I need to get back to keto. And then I’d get back onto that extreme. So again, you can see it’s not sustainable. So I would go in, and out, in and out like that. So not sustainable. Lately, for the last year or so, what I’ve been doing is I took a slightly different stance. I said I want to be consistent 80% of the time. And I also want to incorporate things that are, you know, other life experiences. For instance, my kids want to go get an ice cream. And so I made it so that every Sunday we’re going to go and get ice cream and I’m going to have ice cream with them. Now, they might have an entire scoop and I’ll have half a scoop.
That’s totally fine. They might put sprinkles and chocolate sauce on it, and I won’t. That’s totally fine. But I’m participating in that activity with them and it is rewarding for me. It is, you know, there’s joy for them and it doesn’t make me feel deprived. But Monday through Saturday, I’m not eating ice cream, so I’m consistent. And every Sunday we do get ice cream, so I have something to look forward to so I don’t feel deprived. I can stay consistent. This is a habit that I can sustain. And it’s pretty easy to sustain. Now, will that half a scoop of. One scoop of ice cream completely destroys my diet? Probably not. I also make sure that I know I’m getting the 200 calories extra on a Sunday. So through the week, I’ll cut 50 a day. Now I’m getting very specific. I’ll cut 50 a day.
AB: Yes.
AK: Essentially, I try to stay at slightly lower calories through the week because Sunday I know I’m going to go up a little bit, or on Sunday I won’t have that pizza because I’m going to have that ice cream. So it’s just a little bit of mindfulness, and kind of play with it to find what I can sustain.
AB: Interesting.
AK: Is there a best diet out there? Like, does ice cream belong in any of those diets? I don’t think so. But do I want to not have that experience with my kids or going on a Sunday and having action with them? I do want that experience.
AB: That’s so interesting. Sarge, do you want to add anything to that?
Dr. ST: Amandeep, that was perfect. It’s. It’s really what you are able to sustain. And that’s going to be the important thing. And if you go back and look at the medical, some of the medical studies on diet, you know, there’s questions years ago like, oh, low fat is the way to lose weight. And then maybe this isn’t really the right way to lose weight. There’s studies comparing different macros, you know, with different percentages of protein and different percentages of fat and different percentages of carbohydrates. But what we have to remember. And they all lost weight. But remember these studies were medical, were supervised and there were also high quality diets as well. And so they all had at least 20 grams of fiber in all three of those, in all three of those groups. And they did not have ultra processed food. The thing about ultra processed food is it’s like it’s so easy to consume a lot of calories in there.
It’s rewarding. Or a Snickers bar that has 260 calories. It’s like how, how fast is it to eat that versus like eating 260 calories of broccoli? And then, then it’s done. Looking at this, it’s really what you can do and what you can sustain. And for many people, some people can’t make a drastic change. It’s like, I’m now going to do keto. You know, I’m now going to do this. Those things actually rarely work. But what often does work are things like small sustainable habits. The fabulous book Atomic Habits. If you incorporate things like that not just in, in your, in the way you live your life, but also in the way you eat, those are, those are things that are extremely helpful. Now going back to liking diets that are healthy or many diets help you lose weight, but the ones that you. The one that keeps popping up is the Mediterranean, Mediterranean diet, you know, and why is it healthy? You know, one, it’s heart healthy because it has olive oil.
You know, they have nuts and seeds, but also lots of vegetables. You know, there’s lots of colors in there and there’s fatty fish in those as well. And all of these things are thought to be healthy. And when you actually study it, it does turn out that the Mediterranean diet is helpful in all, both in weight loss and as well as. And then, then when you do it is like, how can I have a Mediterranean diet? But I’m vegetarian and I live in India, you know, like we’re not nexol. And then it’s like, what do you, how do you do that? You know, just like Amandeep was saying, and it’s like, can you be keto and vegetarian? No, you can’t do that. But you know, what we have nowadays, I think that’s absolutely wonderful, is a great large language model. I want to go on a Mediterranean diet. But I live. But this is the kind of food that I like. What’s heart healthy and what’s this? And you can plug that in and I bet you’ll get something that’ll work quite well. It’s like, let’s have more beans. Let’s have more. Let’s have more lentils and such. Let’s have olive oil. Let’s add some seeds, you know, and make sure you get your. Make sure you get your vegetables in and find your protein in certain ways.
AB: So, Sarge, I want to interrupt you there. I want to ask you a question because this has popped up many, many times from people. What I’m finding is that a lot of people are doing it. They’re using AI and plugging in what they like and what they don’t like, their preferences and asking AI to give them a diet that would work for them. What do you think of that?
Dr. ST: I think if it helps them make some small changes gradually and it’s sustainable, I think it works, you know, but it’s all about the prompts as well. I was playing around with AI and just thinking how crazy the answers are. There’s like, I like ice cream and beer. And I want to lose. And I want to lose weight and I want this. And then. And then it says something and then you respond back to it. It says, but this isn’t going to work for me. I want more ice cream. You have to Properly AI. I don’t know. It seems like it wants to be your friend. It wants to do what you say.
AK: Pleasing you. Yeah, it also depends on the model that you’re using.
Dr. ST: Yeah, but like, you could play around with that, but so, so be wary of it. But many times it does help you come up with things, you know, and it could just be like, you know, there’s other things that sometimes can be easier if it fits in your lifestyle. Like, I’m sort of leaning into the idea of chrono eating, you know, like getting more of your calories earlier in the day. You know, that might help insulin levels as well, and that might be a little bit more sustainable. Sustainable. You know, like when you look at some of these studies and like, who keeps weight off? Like, like after you lose weight? One thing that often does come up is exercise. You hear some people minimize the use of exercise in weight loss because really it’s easier to calories in and calories out. It’s easier to cut 500 calories in your diet than to burn 500 calories in exercise. So that’s one thing that makes it easier. It’s like, you know, unless you’re a Tour de France writer who’s burning 10,000 calories a day, it’s really hard for someone to outrun a bad diet.
AK: Before we go to the exercise topic, something I wanted to share on the diet front, and using large language models. Right. So one of the things that I found, again, well, for me personally, this happened. I looked at my genetics and analyzed it in a bunch of different ways. And what I found was that high amounts of saturated fats, or I have a tendency for high amounts of saturated fats to raise my insulin levels. Okay, that’s interesting. Now. So clearly keto with lots of butter and coconut oil may not be a great idea. So, I did an experiment on this.
AB: Wow.
AK: I changed my intake, kept my calories the same, and replaced whole fat dairy with non fat dairy, added olive oil on the other end, replaced cheese, actually removed cheese entirely, removed ghee and started cooking with olive oil and avocado oil.
AB: Wow.
AK: She just replaced all the saturated fats. And I’ll say, let’s see what happens. So I measured my insulin levels before and measured my insulin levels. Three weeks later. My insulin levels dropped from 16 to 8.
AB: Oh my goodness.
AK: Mind blowing to see that happen. As I made those changes, were my calories exactly the same? It’s. I bet the calories also went down. So, it’s just hard to keep the calories if cheese goes out and full fat dairy is replaced with non fat dairy. So was it exactly the same amount of calories? Probably not. But can it really explain 10 pounds of weight loss? That’s a lot of weight loss in three weeks. And that insulin level dropped by eight points. This is the only thing that I can point to, that caused because my carb intake was not very high.
AB: Wow. So you’re saying you looked at your genetics and that is what made the big difference. You actually analyzed your genetics?
AK: Yeah. So. Because now we’re talking about which is the best diet for you. There is no one single best diet. So keto, when it works for so many people. It wasn’t working for me.
AB: Oh, that’s interesting. I want to talk about exercise. So as you said, Sarge, exercise alone probably can’t help you lose major weight, especially if you’ve got lots of. If you’re trying to drop major amounts of weight, it is critical for keeping weight off. Right. How should people think about movement as more than just calorie burning?
Dr. ST: We as humans haven’t changed biologically over the last several hundred years, but our environment has changed a lot. You know, we have cars now, you know, like natural experiments in places like China, where some villages have access to cars and some don’t. The weight loss, the weight gain in those villages that have cars is substantial. Those are some of the things that are, that are. Really gets you an idea of like, does movement matter? It absolutely does. You know, so. And when you look at exercise, how much is exercise as part of, like, weight loss itself? One thing, for many people, me included, when I’m exercising regularly, I crave healthy food.
You know, I. For, for some reason your body wants to know, and that’s for me. And I find that for other people, as well. When people do get to the phase where they’ve lost weight, right. The population that keeps the weight off tends to be the one that incorporates exercise, you know, and that’s as often two times a week of strength training and probably about 150 minutes a week of moderate cardio. You know, like, as a population whole, those are the people that tend to loot to keep weight off. And other things that are important is like, once you lose weight, your body kind of likes a set point. And so there’s something called neat. Neat is like the amount of calories you burn when you’re not really exercising. You know, like some people fidget a little when you lose, when, when people go on calorie deficits. There’s a concept called lean. Lean against the wall. Because you don’t have the energy, you don’t burn as many calories during the day. So then it’s nice to go on a walk, you know, like, like schedule a walk, in the evening.
That way you’ll get a few of these extra calories. Schedule things that you’re moving around, you know, do things like this. But it, but it is quite clear, if we’re talking about weight loss, exercise has a part of it. It’s harder to burn the calories, with just exercise alone, but it really helps you maintain it. But, and more so the value of exercise transcends just weight loss, you know, mental health, you know, cardiovascular. It’s just, it’s just something that’s just critically, critically important. This is something that we often do in our practice. I try to get all my patients to do at least two days of strength training a week and try to get a few minutes of cardio, more or less, depending on how vigorous it is.
AB: I love your example, Sarge, about China and the car situation, because if you look at something simple which the whole world seems to be adapting, like yoga, you know, there’s a lot of home exercises in there. They’ve copied. Grinding the wheat, that in itself is an exercise. Or, you know, sitting on your haunches and all those kinds of things, which were just things people did before machines entered our life, before the floors were being cleaned by Hoovers. So you’re absolutely right that our bodies are not ready for all this mechanization. Our body hasn’t changed, and it definitely hasn’t changed for our phones. Actually, you were beginning to talk about mental health, which again, was something I wanted to ask you both about. Amandeep, what mental shifts or daily habits helped you the most? Things that don’t get enough attention these days, you know, compared to the signs or the pills.
AK: Every morning, if I work out, my behavior around food and movement through the day is just different. I make better choices. So that’s just purely from a habits perspective. Now from a psychology perspective, something that I’ve started doing over the last year or so. So earlier I used to think about it as, I am fat, I need to lose weight, so I’m unhealthy, I need to get healthy. That was how I related. That was my narrative. Just over time. I’m still not there. But what I’ve tried to do or what I’m trying to do is say, find the type of person that exercises. I’m the type of person that eats healthy. Or ask myself the question, what would a fit individual do? What kind of a workout would a fit individual do? What kind of, off these things that are on the table, somebody who is health conscious, what would they eat? What choice would they make? And then I say, I’m the kind of person that makes those choices,
AB: Right.
AK: There’s a bit of an identity shift here that I’m trying to do, which it’s not easy to do there, but that’s the mental component of it, is, trying to make that identity shift and how I relate to myself and my own environment and my choices and so forth. And daily exercise is one component of it. Oh, I find it hard to wake up at six in the morning. I don’t want to exercise. My body is stiff. Two, what would somebody who is health conscious do at six in the morning when they will wake up, they will tell me this because then I, then I feel good through the day. And so then the momentum is getting great. And then what happened was, after several months of actually being in that habit, I fell off the wagon and because we were traveling and I didn’t work out in the morning and I fell off the wagon and I didn’t feel good, I missed it. I was now craving exercise at 6 in the morning. So the opposite happened for me. Where I was originally resisting it to now I’m saying I didn’t exercise, I don’t feel good, I want that.
AB: Right, right. So it became part of your system. You also started giving yourself positive affirmations about it, Correct?
AK: It was the way I was relating to myself. It was me saying, that makes me feel good, so I’m going to do more of it. And by the way, what would a health conscious or a fit person do to maintain their fitness?
AB: Fabulous.
AK: And if I’m that kind of person, what action am I going to take?
AB: Amandeep. I’m definitely going to try that. Sarge, I want to ask you about other supplements. So we’ve talked lots and lots about GLP1, right? There are clinics out there, like detox clinics. There’s a lot of clinics out there which promise that in a week or two they will help you detox and potentially lose some weight. And then there are other supplements out there which promise to kind of copy what GLP1 does. So talk to me about those.
Dr. ST: It’s just going back to like if they say it’s going to be effortless, come in and this will be easy. Chances are it’s not going to work.
AB: So some of these clinics do help you lose weight. I mean some of them you lose five kilos or so in two weeks. But keeping it off is the question, right?
Dr. ST: Oh, for sure. I mean the thing is you have to be careful about these quick fixes. And then like, what’s the harm with these is like, you know, are these detox diets, do they have laxatives in them? Do they have diuretics in them as well? Like, like do, do you have electrolyte imbalances? I mean there’s clearly episodes of people having side effects from. And it also preys on people that have eating disorders as well. And it could magnify these things as well. These things could be very unhealthy as a general rule, like if you start something off, you know, like if you lose a lot of weight early on and then you do something sustainable, I think that’s a little bit different. But if you go on something where you’re doing 800 calories, 1,000 calories a day for two weeks, you’re going to lose weight.
You know, you’re absolutely going to lose weight. But is it sustainable? You know, and most often that the answer is no in that sense. And thinking about what supplements or what supplements could be helpful, you know, like, the most important thing I think is going to be to make sure you’re getting whole foods and getting, and getting a lot of vegetables. That’s going to be any supplement. For most of my patients that are on GLP agonists, I do like to put them on a nice multivitamin. You know, I don’t lean into too many supplements, but I do think people should be on a supplement because I’m not sure about absorption and what else it does. And you want to make sure they, they, they do that. I also lean into Creatine as well, for weight loss as well, for, because it, because it helps with muscle mass. And when people are losing weight, you want to make sure they try to keep on muscle mass. And this is one, one thing where Creatine probably does help.
AB: Creatine. So that’s the one supplement you’d recommend, is it? And a multivitamin.
Dr. ST: I often recommend a multivitamin if someone is really trying to lose weight, and Creatine in order to maintain muscle mass.
AB: Okay. And Amandeep, have you found either a clinic or a supplement helpful?
AK: I’m very skeptical. Again, if something sounds too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true, as Sarge said. And what I look for is in a clinic, this is usually the red flag for me. If what they are recommending to me, they’re telling me that they can sell it to me, is generally a red flag because they’re making money off of that recommendation. So our incentives are not aligned. I’m not saying everybody is recommending based on their incentives, but generally that would be, that would make me more skeptical and I want to look under the hood a little bit more, into that recommendation of the clinic. So that’s my general viewpoint. And so my doctors who I work with, they tell me this is the thing that we would recommend.
And here’s why we recommend it. This is the data that we track, and you can buy from wherever you want. They don’t try to sell me anything. In fact, sometimes they say, well, this is a discount that we get from so and so providers. Sarge does this. This is the discount that we get from so and so providers. Feel free to buy from here and you should take the discount. There’s nothing in it for us. So that’s my general viewpoint on the clinic side on supplements. Again, having tried all kinds of supplements over time and tracked all kinds of data, I’ve come to the conclusion for me, the ones that are always there in my list, Vitamin D, creatine, omega 3, magnesium, those are the big four that are always there.
The rest I’ll cycle in and out. I’ll experiment and see. Okay, I’m working on this thing, you know, I’m working on hormone balancing. So whatever supplement to go try out for hormone balancing. And how would I know if it’s working or not? And so, I track it. I’ll cycle them in and out and just play with them for the most part. No supplements don’t do a whole lot. If the diet is fine, I don’t need a lot of supplements. But those are the four that I’m generally pretty consistent with.
AB: Okay, thank you.
AK: And over time I’ll actually increase my creatine level. So that’s the other thing. My creatine levels, I went from five grand now and sometimes I even take 20 grand.
AB: Wow. Wow.
AK: But 10 is pretty consistent.
AB: Yeah. So tell me quickly about creatine before we start winding up.
AK: Without going into the science of it. And there’s a lot of studies on this. There’s a lot of literature out there. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence as well, both, both physical and cognitive benefits. So I’m not going to go into that again. I’m not an expert on science, but I’ve read a lot of it. What I found for myself, just purely my own personal experience, is with creatine I’m able to push more during workouts and I recover that I can lift heavier, I can longer fat. I could just have a higher intensity during the workouts. And then I also recover better on the other end. So that’s on the physical side. And for that, 5 grams tends to be enough. Again, it’s every, I take it every day, so it kind of just stays in the system.
AB: Right.
AK: What I’ve also found is on days that I haven’t slept very well, which happens more often than I’d like to admit, if I take 20 grams and my cognitive sharpness and ability to just stay engaged through the day, stays the same as if I have, if I’ve had a good night of sleep. And so I’ve definitely noticed a subtle difference there. Lack of sleep plus creating I perform better than just purely lack of sleep. So that is why I go up to about 20, 25 grams on some days. It’s nothing that I do really. Right now my number is about 10 grams. Like I’m just staying at 10 grams and I tolerate fine. There’s no GI distress. So that’s the other thing. Right. If I was having GI distress because of creatine, I would probably not be doing it.
AB: So Sarge, what are the side effects of creatine? Any potential negative side effects?
Dr. ST: Usually not much at all. You know I, personally, don’t go above five for myself. You know there are some people saying that you should, you, you can go higher for neurocognitive benefits. That data is still a little bit, a little bit shaky. You know it, creatine works. It’s really like an amino, it’s a combination of amino acids that helps with ATP, can often help people exercise harder and help people recover a little bit better. And it also brings in water. So be careful, for your listeners, you know, really thinking about weight loss when you go on creatine, weight is going to go up, you know and a lot of that’s very water so be very wary of that. And this is why it’s nice to measure. So that’s one thing that I would add about a side effect of creatine is, often weight gain, an initial weight gain and that’s from water weight.
AB: As the final question I want to ask you gentlemen, for people who’ve tried everything to lose weight and Amandeep, I know you’ve been there, you’ve reached points where you’ve tried everything and you felt like nothing is working. What is the one piece of advice you want to give them grounded in both science and lived experience?
AK: I can share the lived experience side of things and say it’s hard. There have been times that I felt very hopeless and this has been a 25 plus year struggle for me. So much of that at one point some doctors also said that there might be some underlying condition that medical science just doesn’t understand and that you really want a piece of advice. The primary thing is, it’s not your, it’s a condition, it’s a medical condition that you’re dealing with. So don’t blame yourself. We tend to blame the individual for their weight issues. Don’t blame yourself. And then focus on the fundamentals and again, however you can stack it and build better habits. Start with exercise, go on a diet. Start with diet, go into exercise, with exercise, diet, sleep. There are solutions out there, GLP ones, pediatric surgery. And some might be appropriate, some might not be appropriate for you. But you know, focus on the fundamentals and just start to stack good habits. And then slowly, and slowly the momentum will build. But it’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself.
AB: Thank you. Sarge?
Dr. ST: I think that’s fantastic, a fantastic response. I think self kindness is a skill that lots of people need to worry about. Self compassion is going to be, is something that’s, that’s tremendously important and it’s a learnable skill. And I do think people who have had a hard time losing weight be very wary of predators, that’ll claim that they’ll be able to help you. I would seek reputable, reputable medical service that can help with weight loss. And again, it’s very, it’s difficult. And one thing to remember is there is a difference between weight loss for vanity and weight loss for health as well. Everyone wants to look good. I mean not everyone, I mean, but, I think most people, most people, I think want, most people want to, they want to look good, they want to feel good. You want to feel good as well. And there, the options, the surgical options are still out there and they’re, they’re, they’re tremendously effective. But some people do regain the weight after that. You know, there needs, there really just needs to be kindness and slow changes in habits. But some people might not be able to do it and they have to try and be kind to themselves and it’s a difficult world we live in and there’s so much bias against obesity in this world that it’s challenging and many of these habits have built up throughout their lives and many of the idea, of hopelessness has built up as well.
AB: So thank you. Now gentlemen, let’s finish with a quick round. We’re going to do a rapid fire. I’m going to throw a statement at you and you tell me if it’s myth or truth and give me one very quick line as to why. Okay? Cold plunges burn fat.
Dr. ST: False.
AB: Why?
Dr. ST: There’s no evidence about it. There’s no evidence for cold plunges to burn fat. Cold plunges may be helpful, but there’s no evidence that it burns fat.
AB: Okay. Detox teas help you lose weight.
Dr. ST: True, True. They will help you lose weight in the short term. They’re bad for you. You’ll regain the weight and it’ll end up worse, but they will help you lose weight in the very short term.
AB: Okay. Intermittent fasting works for everyone.
AK: False
AB: Why?
AK: It’s all about sustaining it. If you can’t sustain it, you can’t. Like, my mom will not be able to intermittently fast. She just wants her breakfast. That’s her habit. And, I can fast till 8pm no problem. So now what’s. Also, does it mean that I’m actually having a good response because my cortisol levels are elevated? And I’ve actually had a negative response to independent fasting as well, so. False.
AB: Okay. Cutting carbs is the fastest way to lose weight.
AK: False. You might lose some water, because as you deplete your glycogen stores, so a couple of pounds, four pounds, five pounds, and then that’s it. That’s not what you want. So the only way to lose weight. Calories in, calories out. Gotta get that right.
AB: Thank you. You can out exercise a bad diet.
AK: False. You know, one cookie is 250 calories or 200 calories. And that’s about a two mile walk, right? So bad diet, with three cookies in a day. Yeah. Six miles a walk.
AB: Thank you gentlemen. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. We’ve had a fabulous, fabulous podcast.
AK: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.
AB: What a conversation. So many myths untangled, so many truths clarified. We’ve seen that weight loss isn’t about chasing every new trend. Whether there’s an oxygen chamber, a cold plunge or the latest injection. It’s about understanding what really works for your body and why. That’s what this podcast is here for. To break down the noise, the confusion and the overwhelm so you can walk away with clarity. If this episode helped you, make sure to subscribe right now. Share it with someone who needs it and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway. Your support helps us to reach more people searching for real answers. And remember, wellness isn’t about doing everything. It’s about knowing what matters and building on that step by step. This is Anshu Bahanda from Wellness Curated. Until next time, stay curious, stay well and let us keep breaking it down for you. Thank you.
