Master Your Hunger and Desires for Natural Weight Loss

Learning the seven hungers. Am I even hungry? What's the difference between hunger and craving? Craving is like, it's more of a hormonal response, right? And I think a lot of us can relate to that. It's like, when I... crave bread pudding with and milk, warm bread pudding, it's because my heart hunger. is craving love, craving sweetness, craving a hug, oxytocin, serotonin, right? Those are the hormones of craving. This is Dr. Talks.

For this Doctor Talks, I have a really wonderful guest. We have Dr. Kelly Rutley, who's a doctor of chiropractic. And she is a transformational experience creator and the visionary of the permission, invent, and empower live. She's been a doctor of chiropractic. chiropractic for 18 years, a former fitness trainer and fitness competitor. Dr. Rutley was the mind behind the Lake Tahoe Wellness Festival all the way back in 2008. So a long, long history of wellness knowledge. And today we're going to

to be talking about fat loss and how to satiate yourself and lose weight naturally. So thank you so much for joining me, doctor. Thank you, Dr. Francavilla. It's so nice to be here with you. I am so excited to have this super relevant conversation with you today. So tell me about your transition over time from focusing on sort of, you know, conventional chiropractic treatments and adjustments to focusing on fat loss. Yeah. So, I mean, I have always been

teaching people how to lose weight. Right. So as a personal fitness trainer prior to chiropractic school, I mean, really like when, when clients come to a personal fitness trainer, they say, I want to get healthy. What they really mean is I want to lose weight. Right. So transitioning into chiropractic where there really was not any emphasis on helping people lose weight or lose body fat. What I found when I got into practice is that almost every pain.

scenario and every pain condition I was treating. was going to benefit greatly from reducing inflammation and therefore reducing body fat. So I brought weight loss or fat loss into my practice, my chiropractic practice, and as a side effect, right? So I put them on a food plan. a ketogenic food plan. And as a side effect, they lost weight.

and reduce their pain and inflammation dramatically. So after a few years of that, to be honest with you, I was like, I don't need this tool anymore. And I think that that's a key point that I would make. it's so easy for us to get caught up in the tools right it's like well going to the gym is a tool chiropractic adjustments are a tool weight loss drugs are a tool none of those are the destination

Right. And so the destination finally became clear to me. And I was like, what do people really want? They want to be healthy. They want to live a long life and they want to be happy. And what is it that I do that helps them get there the fastest and the best? And that's I help them lose significant amounts of body fat.

And so now I really just coach coaches to coach clients in losing body fat and getting fit and getting healthy because that's how I can exponentially expand my own personal impact. I love it. We're like two peas in a pod here. Similar journey where...

So much of the root causes of all the illnesses I was treating in my training were related to weight. And like you said, that inflammation, that underlying metabolic disruption that's going with it. And I was like, let's look at the big picture here. This is how we solve. So much health problems. So I love your journey there, right? Once we learn the root causes of things, it's like it feels silly to keep putting Band-Aids on things and we can be taking care of the root cause.

Yeah. And I remember my husband was like watching the transformation and transition in my practice. And he's like, you know, he's like, this weight loss part of your practice is really starting to hurt the chiropractic part of you. And I'm like, you know, it's really, really hard to try to convince people that they should care about their nervous system.

And like this is back before anyone was talking about the nervous system. So like trying to teach people to want to care about that and drag them into this like healthy lifestyle. It wasn't working. Right. And it's like people. People do see chiropractors as walking aspirins, right? It's like this hurts doc, fix it. And so by reducing the amount of, you know, global lipotoxicity, which you and I.

speak of the same language, right? It's like the toxicity of body fat. It's underlying all chronic disease. So it's like what bigger problem is there to solve in health right now in America? I agree. I have always felt the same way. So it's always so nice to connect with like-minded people. So tell us a little bit more about some of the results that you saw when you...

had people losing body fat, if there's anything that stands out to you or what some of those stories were. Yeah, absolutely. Before I do that, though, I want to share, do you mind if I share some startling statistics? Yeah, absolutely. Because I know that, I mean, we all know that obesity is a problem in America. Like we can all sing to the choir, but it wasn't until recently I got this data from the Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine. And it's like, it's just shocking when you hear this.

So there are 165 million women in the U.S. 65 million of them are over 50. 80% of women over 50. have at least one chronic health condition caused by obesity directly. And we don't need to go through the list of what those chronic health conditions are. But if you just like do the math on that, that's 80% of 60 million women have the number one complaint is I'm too fat.

Their number one complaint is not I wish I had a better relationship with my kid or I wish I was living in a better house. It's literally I'm too fat. Right. And then the next thing women will say is. But I'm hungry all the time and I've got all these cravings and it's like, I just want. So we'll get into that. Like, what is the difference between hunger, craving and wanting? What has been remarkable in my journey as someone who helps people facilitate?

loss is when I realized and recognized that we as an industry have been taught wrong and we're doing it wrong for so long. Like, I mean, I was a fitness trainer in the nineties. I was a fitness competitor. Right. So it was like. It was like... Get on the cardio twice a day, you know, to get shredded and get ripped, like starving. We went through the low fat craze. We went through, I'm 57 years old. So I've seen all that and been a part of all that. I was part of the gym industry. So there's the.

fitness industry, there's the diet industry, and then there is the health industry, right? So those are three completely different industries altogether. So we kind of screwed people up. We screwed ourselves up because I'm old enough to have been part of that. So we screwed ourselves up with all of that rhetoric and we had it wrong. And so what we didn't know, we didn't know. Now we know more. We do so much better. What became.

so incredibly remarkable was to watch and learn about all of the benefits that people experience when they're metabolizing body fat for fuel instead of sugar. And to literally see people not just get smaller and leaner and lighter and get into the jeans that they haven't worn since they were in high school, but. To have them then jump in when we're like, hey, we're doing a half marathon in Kauai. Who wants to come? And we've got 16 women in Kauai.

who stepped into our practice saying, recovering from cancer diagnoses and mastectomies and chemotherapy and radiation, saying, I just want to live, Dr. Radley. I don't want to work out. I don't want to sweat. I just want to live. And I believe you when you say that the body fat I've been carrying has been part of the problem, right? To then, two years later, crossing finish lines at half marathons.

Right. So it goes from like wanting to survive to like whatever your version of thriving is like, let's not get too caught up in the tool. Let's remember, like, what is the destination and all of these tools together, including the weight loss drugs that I know that you're a prescriber for. I think they are a phenomenal new tool. And I think that the audience really should start to think about, okay, what's my destination?

One of my clients, Vida, actually is probably like she's she's won a standout in my mind because she came to a virtual event I was doing called the permission event. So it's like we've got like 100 people on Zoom screens like during COVID. right because we couldn't do anything in person and i just remember her face on the zoom screen

And she raised her hand to come forward to get some laser coaching. And she's the one who had just gone through a breast cancer diagnosis, radical mastectomy, all the things. And she said, I just want to live. And she also said. The last place I ever thought I'd find myself is at some weight loss thing. She's like, I don't really want to be here, but I don't want to die. Two years later.

she came to kawaii we crossed a half marathon together and now she's actually working in the industry herself so like to me it's like there's tools and there's destinations what do you really want I love that. And I think that destination is something I always try to figure out with my patients, right? Like, where are we trying to get with this? What are your goals? And I love...

Broke out the fitness industry, the weight loss industry, and the health industry are different things. You mentioned the medications, which I do utilize. I am a big fan of. And those can be part of the health industry, but they also can be part of the weight loss industry, right?

And so we want to very much make sure that they are part of the health industry, that we're using them to reach a health goal, to thrive, as you said. We're just using them for weight loss. We're not developing the other components of health like nutrition.

movement and stress reduction and the other things that are really, really powerful, then they're part of the weight loss industry. And that can be harmful, right? Like that's not about thriving. A hundred percent. Okay. So I just had a conversation with a woman yesterday who. lost 50 pounds over the last year. She's in the medical world. So she's in hospitals every day. And she went on one of the weight loss drugs, lost 50 pounds on the scale.

Right. We don't know what it was, but it was 50 pounds of something. And I asked her, what, what has she been eating? So the other thing too, is. Diet means lifestyle in Greek. So we get to get over like the word that like, oh my God, I don't want to go on a diet. It's like diet means lifestyle. Let's get over it. It's okay to use the word, but. She released lost 50 pounds. And I said, what were you eating? She's like, well, a lot of fast food on the weekends. And what I grab and go food.

I'm like, OK, well, what's your version of grab and go food? And she listed off the kind of stuff that like people put in their kids lunchboxes when they don't really know. the difference between healthy food and processed food. She listed those things. And so absolutely, like, did she lose 50 pounds? Yes. What is her chief complaint right now, though? Exhaustion and depression.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I don't know. That's not my lane. But I do know that, like you said, Dr. Frank Avila is like, we need to take a multi-pronged approach. And probably a multidisciplinary approach. I mean, I'm a chiropractor, so people assume, I don't practice chiropractic with my hands anymore. People assume, oh my God, you must be anti-vax. You must be anti, you must be anti the weight loss.

I'm like, they're just a tool. They're just a tool. But the question will then be, what will you do after this tool? How will you handle the hunger? How will you handle cravings? How will you handle wanting when the food noise is no longer being suppressed?

Now you're you, right? That's what you're really known for, I think, right? You've given talks all over the U.S. about hunger, craving, and wanting. Tell us what those mean, because I don't know that everyone can break those three things apart in their head and like decide, like, am I having hunger? Am I having a craving? Is this a wanting? Like, what are those? Yeah, I'll totally simplify it because like.

There's no point in talking about like the hypothalamic pathways of hunger mechanisms in the brain and all that. It's like. People who really just want to get the body fat off, get the weight off, take their fitness back, get their health back and be happy, don't care about that.

But it is interesting to know the difference between hunger, craving and wanting so that when it's happening, you can better deal with it when you know where it's coming from. Right. So. True hunger is a physiological response to a lack of calories, right? it's a real thing. It's the mechanisms are, I don't have enough calories. I need more calories. I need to eat something where that gets all jacked up because that's the scientific term for dysregulated where that gets all jacked up is.

in like leptin and ghrelin and insulin resistance and leptin resistance and all the communication between body fat and the brain and the rest of our body. So to reestablish effective hunger signaling. There are different tools that we can use to repair all that, right? And yes, are the weight loss medications showing some effectiveness with that? Yes, they are, as does mindful eating techniques.

Learning the seven hungers. Am I even hungry? Right. What's the difference between hunger and craving? Craving is like. It's more of a hormonal response. Right. So and I think a lot of us can relate to that. It's like, oh, when I when I crave bread pudding was. and milk, warm bread pudding, it's because my heart hunger is craving love, craving sweetness, craving a hug, oxytocin.

oxytocin, serotonin, right? Those are the hormones of craving. So looking at it from that perspective, like, why do I want this? It's like, do I want this? Do I need this? And then why do I want this? do I need this? So that's hunger and craving. And then the third is wanting. And this blew my mind when I learned about hedonic hunger. Have you heard of it? Oh yeah.

I had not heard of it until like four years ago, but it totally makes sense because that's my family. I come from a family of foodies and foodies are also usually foodie and whiny. Like the food, the wine, the pairing, the experience of it. But it really is like frequent exposure to highly palatable foods creates that hedonic.

hunger signaling for like opulent meals and things that taste spectacular and every meal is like entertainment and so when we're dealing with he don't hunger the coaching that I give my clients and at first they don't love it, but then they kind of become relieved because the coaching that I give them is like, take the entertainment out of your food for a little bit. and train yourself to be satisfied with

less spicy, more bland, more basic foods for a little while so that you're not triggering that hedonic desire for like all the things, right? So that's the difference between... on the surface level that's the difference between hunger craving and wanting and all of its food noise but it's it's perpetuated by our physiology right not by a lack of character or laziness, or, oh, I don't know, you know.

entitled personalities. Like it's just not about any of that. Yeah, no, so powerful. And I agree. I always talk about how it is. It's really like physiology. And some people are more susceptible to like one of those than another, right? Like not everyone has that hedonic or pleasure from.

food right there's something like I don't really care what I eat you know and the people who have a lot of that hedonic or wanting like they can't imagine not feeling like they're like what do you mean you don't get excited about like a cheeseburger you don't like get excited thinking about creme brulee like you're

not thinking about what you're eating for your next meal you're not looking forward to it you're not looking at the menu at the restaurant right like they really do have so much food noise it really is very exciting and pleasurable to their brain and sometimes recognizing even just that right that you're experiencing the world a little

differently. Your body responds more dramatically to that food than other people's is powerful too, to realize you're living on an unlevel playing field there, if that's how your brain responds. A hundred percent. I mean, I grew up in a family with six kids and my mom was a hedonic eater, like full on. She was she everything you just described. Right. She looked at the menu ahead of time. If we went on vacation, it was around like where.

are we going for breakfast? Where are we going for lunch? Where are we going for dinner? My dad was the opposite. My mom's name was Jeannie. And I just remember him going, Jeannie is the only reason you go on vacation to eat. And she, she's kind of like, yeah. I mean, I'm with her. Like that's kind of a big part of why I travel is because I'm like, I want to try all the new stuff.

And I could care less. I'm like, if you can if I can automate my food as much as possible, like I would do that where I think I. leaned more when I went through my own weight gain and weight release journey, which I mean, you know, it doesn't matter a pound, five pounds for me is a hundred pounds for someone else. It doesn't matter. It's just a number for me. It was like 25 pounds.

Both of my parents died in a very short period of time and within two years of each other. And so I was just grieving like crazy, but I was working in my chiropractic practice. raising our daughter, being a wife, being all the things. And I was really craving a lot. And one of the things that tends to go with craving food. If you find that you also crave other things like alcohol, right? So the same pathways. And so it was food and wine.

And I finally learned, and this is one of the things I share with my clients, is like for each of these different experiences. find something to replace it. So I started running. I started making sure I saw the sunset every night and the sunrise every single morning for like 60 days. That's not extreme.

None of that's extreme. I ran an ultra marathon on my 50th birthday to prove to myself that I could overcome all of that stuff. And I remember people saying, my brother-in-law in particular, he's like, you know, that's really extreme.

that you would, you know, and I wasn't running to lose weight, by the way, like we don't run to lose weight. It doesn't work that great to run to lose weight. Yeah. You don't really, you don't need me to, to explain any of that. But the thing about being extreme is this. we have normalized what is really extreme, like having legs amputated from type two diabetes, you know?

Young people dying of cardiovascular disease, walking around America, going to airports, going to amusement parks and having it be normal that obese people need to have wheelchairs to move around the world. Like that's extreme. But going out to watch a sunset every night for 60 days to experience pleasure through your senses that doesn't include food or alcohol, that is not extreme.

Right. So can we just normalize dieting, right? Which is a healthy lifestyle. Like let's just normalize that instead. Like when you order a side of vegetables at a restaurant instead of maybe the potatoes or something and people, you know, act like that's like a weird thing to do. You're like that. That shouldn't be weird. Like that should be that should be perfectly acceptable. It should have been the option to begin with. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there's I just got back from spending six months, five months in Baja, California, Baja, Mexico. it's owned by mexico it's not california and you know i i have the screenshots on my phone i won't show you them obviously but you know the breakfast cereals that we have in the aisle at children's eye level with all the characters

like the rabbit and the toucan and this character. In Mexico, they federally banned all of those characters on children's cereal. They literally have white circles where their faces are. There are no characters on breakfast cereal boxes. Not only that, but they have big stickers that say excessio azucari, which means excessive. I might have pronounced that wrong. Excessive sugar. excessive calories, excessive sodium, excessive. Instead of whole grain.

uh yeah and so when you walk down the aisle with all the kids cereals and the crackers and the cookies without the characters and all that you just look and then the big sticker the warning stickers you're like that does not look very attractive or appealing. And as a parent who'd be buying that for your kids, you would notice that. So my, you know, all right.

politics aside, but it's like our government's not doing that for us. So like we parents need to be the ones just to regulate what happens in our families. Yeah. And I think we were kind of on this because we were talking about how we need to shift what normal is, right? Like instead of being like, yeah.

normal to have this super sugary cereal. Like, no, let's look at cues from other places in the world where they're like, this isn't a health food. This is not, this should not necessarily be your breakfast. Like what makes more sense for your family? So we have to shift that normal conversation. And you're right. No one.

is going to do it for us. I don't think the government's going to step in and do that for us anytime soon in our country. So we have to use these resources like this summit and take charge of our health ourselves and figure out what works for our bodies. What are some of your like big tips or like what should people do right away if they're trying to lose body fat? Yeah. I mean, it's. It's so simple that it's almost boring, boringly simple. And our brains like novelty. That's why we seek out.

wild food experiences and drink and all that is because our human brains seek novelty so unfortunately there's not a lot of novelty in what i'm going to share with you I completely believe that people should absolutely learn how to get their bodies into the state By the way, that does not mean ketoacidosis. That's a type one diabetic problem. It's not the same thing. Do not fear being in ketosis. It just means you're in the physiology of.

fat burning and fat metabolism because as i mentioned the client that i was sharing with you earlier she lost 50 pounds but she wasn't testing to see was she even metabolizing fat It could have been that there was a good amount of lean mass that she lost, which would explain the depression and fatigue. Right. And we can't afford to lose our mitochondria. We can't afford to lose our muscle mass. So getting into ketosis is really important.

you know i'll just you know i'm not gonna like what do you call it there's no veil between you know us and the information i mean 50 grams of carbohydrate per day is not too low It's not too low. It's not dangerous. I mean, obviously be monitored by a medical doctor such as Dr. Frank Avila, because it's important, especially if you have type one diabetes or any other medical condition, you don't want to just freewheel it and do it.

on your own. And make sure that you're getting an adequate amount of protein every day, three times a day, one for every pound of body weight, you should be getting one gram of protein. Right. So at least a half a gram. Right. So take your body weight. I always say for women between 70 and 90 nutritional grams of protein, not grams on the scale.

But big takeaway on what I just said, make sure you're doing this with a qualified professional because there are a lot of little conditions out there that can flare up and be problematic if you just try to. Do it on your own. Again, if you have diabetes, like you said, you're on medicine. That's.

allowing you to eat sugar and carbohydrates. Now you don't eat those. You often need a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot less medicine if you have type one or type two diabetes and you start keto. So definitely want to make sure whoever's prescribing those medicines is healthy. you navigate that sort of diet and high blood pressure medication. Like we see that a lot. Like people go and say they.

release a lot of water right in the beginning because carbohydrates carry a lot of water so they dump water the first couple of days they're like oh my god i'm so dizzy this must be bad for me come to find out if you're not working with a professional Your diet coach may not know that you're even on a blood pressure medication that might be potassium sparing and electrolytes are important, like all the things.

You know, an experience like this for your audience, Dr. Francovilla, is such a gift. And this is access to information that people did not have 10 years ago. So I acknowledge you for doing this. Can you tell me how the keto diet can help with hunger's craving and wanting? Yeah, it's so simple. And I try to really make sure that when I say ketogenic diet, I mean a properly formulated ketogenic diet, not the keto, K-E-T-O is just high fat.

very low carb with no discrepancy around what type of fats you're having. So saturated fat, unhealthy fats doesn't matter on the keto diet. properly formulated ketogenic diet, some of the huge benefits around hunger craving and wanting is, first of all, stabilization of blood sugar. stabilization of insulin, stabilization of leptin and ghrelin, which creates hunger and

When your body adapts and starts to actually use those little ketones, not only the fat itself, but uses those ketones for fuel, that is like high octane brain fuel. It is rocket fuel. so I mean I don't know you may I don't know what what your position is on all this but I mean people ask me all the time they're like how do you do all the stuff you do like you never get tired and I'm like

because I'm using fat for fuel. I know it sounds really weird, but it's like, that's my drug. People feel great in ketosis. Like it takes a week-ish, depending on the person, sometimes sooner to get there. And then people feel fantastic. when they're in ketosis.

Again, unless they have a medicine that needs to be adjusted or something else that they weren't doing in a supervised manner. But yeah, people feel great on it. Our brain is mostly fat, right? It responds well. It's designed to be able to run on ketones. Yeah. Yeah. There definitely can be a fantastic solution. Yeah. And again, it's a tool.

Right. Just like the weight loss drugs are a tool. And if that approach to eating doesn't work for you, then your provider or your practitioner, whoever you're working with, should have another food plan for you. Right. So I have a plant centric food plan that I offer. It's not vegan protocol, but it's a plant centric food plan. We have our ketogenic core plan. We have lots of different food strategies and sometimes the food strategy.

is also designed to accommodate a person's food preferences, right? Because if you've got a client or a patient who's like, the thought of eating meat makes me gag. Right. You can't be like, well, too bad. Eat your lamb. You know, like you've got to like meet people where they are and be respectful of food preferences. Absolutely. Well, Dr. Rotley, this was such a.

Great conversation. And if people would like to learn more from you, how can they connect? What can they find from you? Great. Go to my website. It's just very basic. It's kellyrutley.com. And on my website, there is a free gift for you. It's called eat your way happy. And it's a five day challenge that you do at your own pace and on your own. And it's got recipes and videos and a food.

a shopping list and a food strategy that works wonders for five days to help you get into ketosis and start experiencing the benefits of losing inches. and pounds and feeling happier because that's really the destination right it's like the complaint is i don't want to be fat and sick and but the the destination is don't we we just want to be happy

Yeah. So you can eat your way fat and sick or you can eat your way happy. What a great way to end. Eat your way happy. Who doesn't want to do that? I do. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Carolyn Frankavilla. So nice to meet you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for tuning into Dr. Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.drtalks.com. Stay connected. Stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.