Weight Loss, Emotions & Metabolism  

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Nagina:  Hello, Dr. Ameet. How are you today? 

Dr. Ameet:  I'm doing fantastic. Thanks, Nagina. I'm really excited about how we're going to help everyone really get healthier and lose weight by detoxifying the liver, releasing emotional trauma and also healing the gut and the thyroid. So let's get started. 

Nagina:  Yes, absolutely. And that's exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about treating the root cause of weight gain, we're talking about liver stress, thyroid and holistic trauma healing and how those all really are some of the underlying factors of weight gain. So we're going to really get into this today. And Dr. Ameet, first of all I want to start off by asking you a little bit about how did you get into this field of focus, how did this area become a focus of yours? 

Dr. Ameet:  So I studied naturopathic medicine and psychotherapy at the same time. And I noticed that by healing my gut and changing my diet, of course, I was getting physically better and I was getting less puffy, less bloated. And at the same time while studying psychotherapy I felt so much better after I addressed my childhood wounds of being bullied in boarding school, of feeling abandoned or unsupported by my parents for dumping me in boarding school, we were beaten every day by teachers in Kenya, caning was normal - to be hit with a stick growing up. And that really created a freeze response in my body and shut down my metabolism and create a lot of fear in me which, of course, burns out my adrenal glands once in a while. 

So by empowering my confidence and releasing this fear-based thinking from childhood and also healing a lot of emotional breakups with different girlfriends and stuff like that, I came into a place of more self-love and that changed my health dramatically combined, of course, with changing my diet which is not enough I must say. Changing your diet and taking supplements is really not enough until you really heal those emotional wounds as well from childhood. And that made the biggest difference in my life. 

Nagina:  Oh, my gosh, thank you for sharing that. And it's like you could try to change your diet, you can try to change these things but then those are just on the surface if you have deeper emotional trauma and other things that are happening. And so your health drastically changed now. You're at a place where you feel like you have much more control of it, right? Like, because you worked through that, is that right? 

Trauma and stress related disorders 

Dr. Ameet:  I've worked through it, Nagina. I have less emotional triggers. So for example, some people will binge eat to compensate for emotional pain. So my food cravings are less, I don't need to go for the carbs because of a vulnerability coming up for me. Some people feel like emptiness or need to stuff themselves because of unresolved trauma usually or they're missing a parent connection or they're angry with someone and not realizing that they're actually angry with maybe a parent or something that happened in their past. 

And so by healing these wounds our behavior changes, we feel more self-love, more in connection with people so we isolate ourselves less and withdraw less. And then you're more likely to love yourself enough to exercise more to feel confident even exercising, going out there and living a good life. 

Nagina:  Oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense. Well, I know that you talk in your Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online about how liver toxicity and healing your leaky liver impacts weight loss and you talk a lot about that as well, can you tell us a little bit more about that, about how liver and how that relates to us releasing our weight? 

Dr. Ameet:  Okay, so the missing ingredient in most people's weight loss approach is really the liver, and I'll explain why. Weight gain is due to, of course, a poor diet, eating too many carbs and a lot of inflammation, a lot of people are puffy and retaining water because of chronic inflammation, also because of chronic toxicity. So the liver is your master organ - it detoxifies your body from toxins. Most people's leaky liver is sluggish or inflamed or toxic because of pesticides in the foods because of too many antibiotics, too much medication and just a poor unhealthy diet. 

Best foods to fight inflammation 

Also, our liver is inflamed because when we eat inflammatory foods like too much gluten, too much dairy, we have chronic inflammation that starts in the gut. That inflammation goes to the liver, the liver becomes stagnant and inflamed so it works less to detoxify. So now your body is getting more toxic and more inflamed. The more inflamed you get the more weight you'll put on, why? Because you're retaining more water because of a cortisol imbalance. Number two, when you get really inflamed and toxic your body produces more cortisol which messes up your insulin resistance and your metabolism, so then you start depositing more fat on your body and you have a hard time burning it off. 

So in my Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online I teach you how to really detoxify the liver using best herbs for liver repair, some of the top supplements for liver function, best liver detox and homeopathic remedies that go deeper than supplements to really detoxify the liver.

When you detoxify your liver you produce more bile, you release more bile into your gut. So what happens is you're releasing more toxins, number one, you're releasing more cholesterol, number two, you're actually improving digestion because the bile helps you break down foods and break down fats. By improving your digestion you're absorbing the right nutrients in your body. When you absorb the right nutrients in your body you get less hunger pangs because your body is satiated with the right nutrients. 

A lot of people feel hungry all the time because they're not getting the right nutrients in their body so they're just eating empty carbs or binge eating because they're lacking in nutrients. When your liver is flowing well your hunger pangs will reduce - I've seen that in clinic all the time. 

Liver hormones 

The other thing why the liver helps the gut is because in your gut you have all these beautiful good bacteria that help repair the gut lining. Now over time with antibiotic use, poor diet, etcetera, this gut lining gets damaged and the good bacteria get killed off so you get holes in the intestine and these holes is called leaky gut syndrome - learn how to heal leaky gut in 2 weeks. With leaky gut we have toxins going to the bloodstream causing inflammation everywhere - leading cause for asthma, eczema, arthritis and mental health issues, right? 

Now when you have that chronic inflammation, of course, you're going to get then the water retention, the cortisol imbalance which then causes the fat [no audio 06:53]. So you can start healing your gut, of course, by changing the diet - avoiding gluten, dairy and other food sensitivities you might have. And then I teach you how to repair the gut further in the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online, but at the same time most people forget to heal their liver with herbs for liver repair. When you begin to heal and detoxify the liver your liver releases the right amount of bile that keeps the good bacteria healthy and that helps with gut repair as well. So instead of only using probiotics and vitamin D to heal your gut and changing your diet you need to keep that liver flushing in order to have the best gut repair and, therefore, better weight loss and better metabolism. 

Nagina:  And how can you do that? How can people do that? How can they keep their liver healthy? 

Dr. Ameet:  Great question, so one, the first step is always to reduce inflammation, so removing inflammatory foods. Typically those are like gluten, dairy, too much alcohol, excessive beef I've seen, some beef, actually a lot of beef triggers inflammation in some people. You can get food allergy tests done. Eggs can be a trigger for some people. That's number one. Then we got to eat bitter foods. Bitter foods help stimulate bile release and detoxify the liver, they're excellent, the best liver detox. Then I use certain herbs, some examples include milk thistle and dandelion, these are herbs that, one, repair your liver cells, number two, actually stimulate bile flow from your liver. 

Leaky gut and weight loss resistance 

So there's two things you need to do when you're healing your liver - you need to repair the liver cells with the best herbs for liver repair because it's always getting damaged by oxidative stress from all the toxins in your body, so you need a lot of antioxidants, milk thistle is an antioxidant, you can also take alpha lipoic acid, vitamin A, vitamin C and other remedies that I cover in the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online And then you also need to keep that bile flowing, that's where the bitter foods come in, that's where the dandelion comes in, dandelion root. That stimulates the bile flow so it removes the toxins. 

Exercise is super important because the more you move then your lymphatics move and you detoxify your liver better. When you deep breathe your diaphragm massages your liver, your diaphragm moves up and down and massage your liver to help it detoxify. A lot of people who are stressed and they don't breathe deeply they get liver stagnation. So you'll see people stressed people getting heartburn, for example, or irritability which is related to liver stagnation. 

So as you detoxify your liver you'll be releasing more bile, you'll be releasing more toxins, you'll start feeling lighter. And when you remove toxins, remember, your thyroid and your adrenal glands start to work better and these are the organs that help you burn fat because they help your body basically process energy. And you need energy to burn fat. So if you have a hard time burning fat and you're trying to take all these stimulants like caffeine and green tea you could be missing the liver link, the toxicity link. So get rid of toxins and you'll burn fat much faster. 

Nagina:  That makes ... yes, and that's something that's really underlying, diet. It's like really making sure that you're removing and not adding toxins through your food, through other things that you're taking, through your environment even, right? 

Dr. Ameet:  Yeah. 

Nagina:  So that's so interesting. Now I also want to ask you, I know you talk about this as well in your Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online around adrenal burnout and why adrenal burnout slows down your metabolism and slows down weight loss, and this is actually a really big challenge that people find as they're moving into their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond is that they feel like their metabolism is slowing down. So let's talk about the adrenal, our adrenal glands, and what is adrenal burnout, like what does that mean and why does it slow down metabolism and weight loss and how to reverse adrenal fatigue naturally?

Best adrenal supplements for weight loss

Dr. Ameet:  Okay, now we're going to cover this very deeply so listen carefully. First of all the adrenal glands are helping you respond to stress. And what happens is we're responding to stress every day - financial issues, relationship issues, traffic, deadlines, work stress, etcetera, so our adrenal glands never switch off so they're going to burn out easily. But why are some people prone to burnout and others not? Usually it's because when you have a lot of adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs, these are traumas during childhood, your nervous system is programmed to be hyper vigilant or more fearful and more guarded. 

So when you are faced with adult stress those childhood traumas are retriggered so your adrenal glands are working extra hard if you've been traumatized as a child. And so when you go through a breakup, for example, abandonment trauma comes up if you're abandoned by your mom or fear of being bullied or abused comes up in your nervous system. And this will trigger a fight-or-flight response, a stronger one than people who have not been traumatized as children. The fight-or-flight response requires your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline to fight or flee from the threat. 

So now you have unresolved trauma, in need of holistic trauma therapy and you have everyday stress triggering these childhood wounds so your nervous system is always going to be in fight or flight or even freeze response. That uses up a lot of nutrients - vitamin C, magnesium, B vitamins and a lot of compounds that your adrenal glands need. So when these nutrients are used up and your nervous system is just fully exhausted you go into what's called adrenal burnout basically. And when that happens multiple other factors go on - you burn fat less effectively, one, your mitochondria shut down so your ATP production slows down, so again, you're burning fat less. You're going to cortisol imbalance because adrenal glands produce cortisol - when you get adrenal burnout you go into a cortisol imbalance. When that happens you go into insulin resistance and we all know that when you have insulin resistance you deposit fat much faster, you have a hard time controlling your blood sugar levels. With adrenal burnout you also retain more water, you have more water retention. And a lot of people have weight gain not because of fat deposits but actually because of water retention and inflammation. These are some ways on how to reverse adrenal fatigue naturally. 

Holistic medicine for weight loss

And when all these things happen is when you have a cortisol imbalance your conversion of inactive thyroid hormones to active thyroid hormones gets compensated. And we know that your thyroid hormone is important to help you lose weight and burn fat. So now your thyroid results might look normal in the labs or semi-normal but you're still getting like sluggishness and low thyroid symptoms, and that's usually because of adrenal burnout and cortisol imbalance, and of course, liver toxicity because most of your thyroid hormone is activated in your liver, 70%. So when you have liver stagnation you're converting and you're activating your thyroid hormone less. And all these things lead to more weight gain and poor [unclear/cross talking 14:26] 

Nagina:  So this is all working together and it's like you're really sharing how it's related to thyroid as well, it's that your adrenal burnout is related to thyroid. Also, is your liver health and is stress and all of that related to thyroid? And maybe you can talk a little bit more about the role of thyroid in weight gain as well which I know you talk about a lot, so let's talk about that a little bit because that'll bring it together. 

Dr. Ameet:  Okay, and if this gets confusing there's a free video series on the website as well people can look at how to heal the gut, the liver and everything together. So the thyroid is super important for metabolism. I think 99% of all your cells need your thyroid hormone to function well. It helps with your energy metabolism. So you have inactive thyroid hormone and active thyroid hormone, I'm simplifying it. If you don't have enough active thyroid hormone floating around your cells are not going to function well, so you're not going to burn fat as well, number one, you're not going to detoxify as well, all your brain chemicals are not going to be working too well, you're not even going to produce the right amount of brain chemicals so you're going to go more into anxiety and depression and sluggishness - find more about natural remedies for anxiety and depression. So you will put on weight, number one. Number two, with depression comes binge eating or anxiety comes binge eating most of the time, so another factor that's going to cause you to put on weight, right? 

When your thyroid hormones are low, see, your liver cells also need thyroid hormone to function well, so if your thyroid hormones are low your liver is not going to work as well so you're going to detoxify less, you're going to produce less bile. And with less bile you get more constipation, gas and bloating. So that's why a lot of people with low thyroid function get a lot of constipation, one is because of the lack of bile flow, number two is because the peristalsis movement, the movement in the gut, is not as effective. And if you're not detoxifying well and if you're not pooping well enough you're going to have more toxins build up in your body, therefore, more inflammation, and like I said, it's a vicious cycle, with more inflammation then we get more water retention, more insulin resistance, more weight gain. 

So the gut need to heal, the liver needs to detoxify, the emotional trauma needs to be released. For all these pillars of health - the gut, the liver, the adrenal glands and the mind to come more into harmony. And that's how people can lose weight faster. 

How to balance hormones for weight loss 

Nagina:  So that makes so much sense. We want to clear all of these things, we want our bodies working really efficiently and it's also about mental work on ourselves to really release what's holding us back. So Dr. Ameet, what are some things that someone could do if they've tried to change their diet, if they're exercising and they feel stuck? Maybe it could be one of these other things that's happening that's keeping them in the same place, how could they get started on understanding like where to get started in knowing what to do? And then how can someone move towards this holistically healthier person, like what's the couple first steps that someone could take? 

Dr. Ameet:  First is removing inflammatory foods and then doing the liver detox work I'm talking about. Then I've got this free video that helps you actually sit with your emotional vulnerability and remove emotional blocks that are keeping you against your own healing really. 

Then I would encourage people to actually not judge themselves for feeling weak, scared, angry, jealous, selfish, whatever - I want to actually sit with those feelings and feel them in your body, really see where they're coming from. And allow yourself to feel vulnerable with your emotions. And see a good therapist that can support you in the process. Because in that vulnerability comes change. 

When we judge our feelings, when we say we're not good enough for feeling that way or we're trying to correct ourselves, over correct ourselves, then what we do is we block the natural healing response of the body. So I really want to encourage people to begin to be compassionate with their feelings that they're getting because underneath all those feelings is often some trauma, either you're feeling not good enough, you were abandoned, you were criticized as a child or even abused and you felt powerless and because of that powerlessness maybe you want to defend that powerlessness by criticizing others or always getting angry or not showing up to meetings because you don't want to be faced with confrontation. So really being soft with yourself. 

And then that internal healing starts coming, that internal understanding starts coming, then you have more patience with yourself, more self-love. You might find yourself craving less foods, you might find yourself using less authoritative or criticizing language in your mind with yourself and other people. That'll create more room for you to actually choose more positive thoughts, more positive exercises for yourself, because when we criticize ourselves less we actually get more dopamine in our body. And dopamine is our motivation neurotransmitter. And many of us need that to go out there and exercise, to go out there for that walk, to go there and engage in social activities, but if we're always criticizing ourselves our dopamine levels are quite low so we'll feel less motivated to do things good for ourselves in life. 

Foods that increase metabolism 

Nagina:  Yes. Oh, my gosh, thank you for sharing that. That makes so much sense. And it feels like definitely, absolutely, you must solve anything that's holding you back, like solve those traumas, just connecting with yourself and working through it and then everything good can come out of that. 

So now that was so, so just helpful how you brought everything together like that. So Dr. Ameet, this has been so helpful, we've been talking about liver, we talked about stress and trauma, thyroid and really getting to the root cause of your weight gain. I know that you mentioned so many really amazing, like some amazing gifts, and I know you have a special free gift for our audience, can you talk a little bit about that and where they can find that and find out more about you? 

Dr. Ameet:  So if you really want to learn how to heal your gut, liver, adrenal glands and release emotional trauma there's a free video series on my website, that's drameet.com. My gut health book and the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online specializes also in mental health, so there's some great homeopathic remedies in my Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online that will help you release trauma and also resolve anxiety and depression which is often connected to weight gain as well - together with my other holistic medicine books. So you're welcome to check out those free resources. It'll give you a foundation of really working with the four pillars of your health - your gut, your liver, your adrenal glands and your mind. 

Nagina:  Amazing. Oh, my gosh, thank you so much. And that is also ... you can click on the button below to get Dr. Ameet's free gift. 

Dr. Ameet, I'm just so happy that you shared so much with us, really brought us out of just the typical things around losing weight because if you're doing the things that you've been taught, if you're doing all those typical things but it's not being released there's something underlying, but it still can happen, you still can slim down you still can release the weight when you address these other pieces and so it is sometimes about exploring yourself more and really going in deeper with yourself. So thank you so much for being here. We have just ... I've just enjoyed this conversation so much and it's been just a pleasure. Thank you so much. 

Dr. Ameet:  Lots of love and good luck, everyone. Thank you.

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