Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:26] All right, so I know I said we were gonna talk about alcohol and why does one glass turn into three and things like that, and I promise we will get there, but today I went on a little bit of a rant. Not trying to be mean, but I just realized I was feeling really fired up and spicy about this particular topic, and I felt like it was worth covering here on the podcast. It's really this conversation around why is it that sometimes medical intervention is seen as cheating? It's seen as taking the easy way out, and it's moralized. And I feel like this has recently only happened around weight loss and specifically with GLP1s or some type of weight loss medication. Now, I don't love calling GLP1s a medication because it's a peptide signaling hormone. So it is there to help get your body to do the thing that it's supposed to do.
[00:01:19] It is not solving a side effect. It's not a band aid. It is actually addressing the root cause. If you like root cause medicine and you want to get to the root of what is actually driving your symptoms and not just putting a band aid on it, not just masking it, not just covering it up, but actually doing something to heal and address it. GLP1s are one of those ways.
[00:01:40] And I think the issue is that this has been kind of hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies, and it's been positioned as weight loss medication. It's being used right now by pharmaceutical companies as a medication. However, what it is actually doing is healing your body.
[00:01:57] But there's this moral discussion around it. There's this moral view of medical intervention means that you are cheating. You are taking the easy way out. Shame on you.
[00:02:08] And this gets me fired up, which I'm sure you can already tell. But here's the thing. You do not get extra points for doing it the hard way. All right? What I think is interesting is that we don't call it cheating when we use medical intervention to help the body do something it's struggling to do.
[00:02:27] Unless we seem to talk about weight loss. Why is it that when it comes to weight loss, we now are moralizing this medical intervention and just talking about GLP1s for the weight loss benefits? Is only a tiny, teeny fraction of what's actually happening. Because the reason you are actually able to lose weight is because your body's systems are healing internally. It's helping your body to reregulate. It's helping your systems internally to do the thing they're supposed to do.
[00:02:59] So this is why I really struggle with calling it a weight loss medication. Because it is not there to help you lose weight. The weight loss is a byproduct. It is a downstream effect of your body actually healing.
[00:03:12] So why is there such shame and such stigma?
[00:03:17] Why do we keep telling ourselves or telling other people that it's cheating? And maybe you don't tell other people that, but maybe that's how you feel. Why do you feel like this is cheating?
[00:03:27] And this was really interesting. I remember a year or two ago, there was a woman in my building, and I noticed that she lost weight, and I was like, hey, you look really awesome. Like, great job. And she was like, oh, yeah, Well, I cheated. I was taking the shots. And I was like, honey, no, you weren't cheating. You know, but even people who are taking them are very much like, yep, I'm taking the easy way out. Yep, I'm just cheating. When really, these are not a monotherapy. It's not meant to be. Just do this one thing. This is meant to be done in conjunction with other habits, other things like evaluating hormones and gut health. And it's going to be so much better optimized. It's going to be so much more effective when you do that.
[00:04:08] But there's such fear and such a stigma around anything related to a medical intervention and weight loss. Right? Because I'm sure with bariatric surgery, people heard this too. If it's related to weight loss, we're going to be very dogmatic, very opinionated, and very shameful. What's interesting, though, is people's thoughts about supplements versus medications. Right? There's this hesitation around, well, I don't want to take thyroid medication, but if I could take a supplement, that's okay. And we have this assumption of, like, supplements, detoxes, food, exercise, these are the virtuous options. This is how you should do it. And it's like this stain on your humanity if you can't. Something is wrong with me and something is wrong with my body. If my body does not respond to diet and exercise the way that I think it should or the way that somebody else outside of me says that it should.
[00:05:03] And here's the thing that I've really started to notice about where I push back is on other people's invisible rules. The rules and this external authority having a better view or a better understanding of how my body is supposed to work. Like, no. Even a lot of doctors, I'm like, you don't know shit.
[00:05:21] Like, I am. I am fairly cynical these days. I'm not gonna lie. I think there are a lot of doctors that know their salt. They're really well informed, great people, very knowledgeable. There are a lot of them that don't. But there's this view of, like, medication is the shortcut. Medication is the easy way out. And the implication is that if you need medication, you did it to yourself. You didn't really want it. You didn't really try hard enough. You didn't want it bad enough. There's such a moral stigma around it. So there's the stigma around needing medication in general, I think, that we have. And then there's an even bigger stigma on weight loss and this downstream effect that it's creating of weight loss. I think for some people, they can kind of justify certain medications.
[00:06:08] But there's also this view of somehow my body is broken or something's wrong with me or somehow I caused this.
[00:06:15] But we don't apply this logic everywhere.
[00:06:18] This is where I just want to start to explore and open up the conversation and show some different perspectives of where we have medical intervention. But we also see it as, like, a very viable thing. So today, as I was talking, I thought about ivf. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is genius, right? Because if a woman is having difficulty conceiving, her body needs a little intervention. And so maybe it's something as simple as thyroid or progesterone intervention. Right? Some hormones.
[00:06:45] Maybe it is a little bit more intensive with IVF and medication and injections and procedures and some of these other more nuanced and extensive procedures.
[00:06:57] We don't tell her that's cheating.
[00:07:00] You should just have eaten better and exercised more, and then you would have been able to conceive. Right? We understand that her body, for whatever reason, needs some additional support to accomplish something that it wasn't accomplishing on its own.
[00:07:15] We would never tell a woman that she was taking the easy way out by doing ivf. We would never tell her she was cheating if she had PCOS or irregular periods and had a really hard time getting pregnant because she couldn't time her cycles very well. And so now she was using medication to better regulate her ovulation cycles.
[00:07:37] Like, we would never tell them that. Right? And I guarantee if you did, you had better be prepared to get punched in the face. Because there is no woman who has been through infertility struggles, ivf, working to have a carrier for your baby, things like that. Like, there is no woman who has been through that where we would think and assume that she is cheating. She's taking the easy way out, and she would not believe that on her own. She would be like, I am doing the hardest damn thing.
[00:08:06] I am doing something so hard, and I'm putting in so much more time and effort and money. Y', all, these procedures are expensive, but for them, it's worth it. Because what they really want is a baby. And when they can have that, it makes it worth it.
[00:08:23] And so if we look at that, this woman is getting support to help her body do what it's not able to do on its own, and we feel like that is okay.
[00:08:33] Why does it change when we're talking about metabolic health? Why does it change when we're talking about weight? Why does it change when we talk about emotional eating or binge eating or food noise?
[00:08:43] Because there are also some pretty interesting places that we don't consider where we get help or we use technology or we use medical intervention as cheating or demonizing it as a shortcut. We actually just enjoy it being a shortcut. Right? Like cars instead of walking.
[00:09:01] Oh, my gosh, y' all, look at the parking lot of a gym. Nobody is ever like, how dare you cheat and take the easy way out by not walking to the gym, by driving here, or by driving five or 10 miles to get to work. Nobody ever would think that or say that. Or maybe you want to hire a lawyer to help you navigate complicated legal systems, whether that's starting a business or getting divorced or navigating a system or something that you are not specifically trained to know how to do.
[00:09:33] Or what about surgery? Do we consider it cheating when somebody needs heart surgery? Do we consider it a shortcut? What about physical therapists that help recenter the body to find where it's out of balance and bring it back into balance? And we're now using someone and sometimes these external modalities to get the body functioning back the way that it should? We don't usually think of that as being a shortcut. One of the ones I've used has been eyeglasses. It's not a shortcut. It's not cheating for me to wear glasses so that I can see better and nobody's telling me, well, you should just take more supplements, Jillian. You should just eat more Carrots, and then you'll be able to see better.
[00:10:11] No, I actually need glasses, trust me. Hearing aids, though, that would be another one.
[00:10:17] There are all kinds of tools, all kinds of interventions, and we think about using these as being resourceful. We don't say, well, you, you didn't really do this all on your own. We think about using email as being a resourceful way of sending communication instead of sending something via regular mail. Cell phones and cell phones as being a resourceful way to get directions or to call somebody, or to send a message via text. Right? Like there are all kinds of ways in which we take shortcuts, we take easier ways, and we recognize it as using the tools available to us as intelligent. We are being smart because we're using this, we're being resourceful because we're using this.
[00:11:01] And yet Metabolic health is the one place where we suddenly have to prove that we've suffered enough or we've tried enough, or no matter how much we've suffered or tried, we're still just cheating, we're still just taking the easy way out. And there's a big difference between replacing something and supporting your body, supporting the systems that are already at work in your body. Because GLP1s in particular are there to support. It's there to spur, to encourage, to activate and stimulate the body to do the things it's supposed to do. There are interventions that provide enough support to help the body function more effectively, to do what it's not naturally doing, for whatever reason, whether it's due to genetics or trauma or injury or disease, or maybe toxic childhood environments that you could not have controlled as a kid.
[00:11:53] The distinction is replacement versus support. So when we look at GLPs in particular and metabolic health, metabolic support, you're not replacing what the body naturally does. You're not looking for the GLP1 to do all the work for you. This is where people get into trouble with it. This is where people go wrong.
[00:12:11] It's not that, oh, I don't have to change anything else about my lifestyle. And maybe for some people that's how they used it. But if they want long term results, long term sustainability, healthy receptor activation, healthy sensitivity to it so that they don't just keep building up a tolerance and needing more and more and more, we have to do the other parts. We have to look at habits and we do have to look at hormones and gut health and we need to look at our immune system. We need these other pieces of the puzzle. We want to look at it from this lens of can I give my body enough support to make the other things that I'm doing more effective? This is very different from take this. And it's the one thing that you need to be successful.
[00:12:51] That is why most people were not successful, because it was just a do this one thing and that's all you gotta do. And it's really important that we all understand that your body has context.
[00:13:02] Your body is not operating in a vacuum. Two women can eat the same food, do the same workouts, sleep the same number of hours, and their bodies can respond differently because of their genetics and because of their history, because of what their bodies have been through, particularly complex trauma, prolonged stress, chronic dysregulation with the nervous system, or cortisol dysregulation, years of dieting, toxic and dysfunctional relationships, hormonal changes, metabolic dysfunction. There are so many things that impact the body and what our body is naturally capable of doing.
[00:13:41] We don't necessarily need to be asking, why can't I do this on my own? I think that's where we get stuck and that's where the shame comes in. It's feeling like, well, I should, it should be able to do this. My body should be responding the way that I think it should be. But if it's not, we need to deal with that reality. And maybe a better question is, what does my body need in order to be able to do this?
[00:14:03] How do I support and encourage and give my body what it needs? And spoiler alert, it's not always going to be food and exercise related.
[00:14:12] It's not always going to be habit related.
[00:14:16] Sometimes habits are not enough.
[00:14:18] Stop making this a morality issue, okay? We have got to stop moralizing diet and exercise. It's not that these things are bad, these things are an important piece of the conversation, but they're not the entire intervention. It's not the only thing that is going to work. And again, for some people's bodies, that might be all that they need. Maybe they can do it with some supplements and some food and some exercise. But y', all, my body could not do this. I am a very healthy person and even my body was not responding the way that I thought it should.
[00:14:52] Lost all my arm hair, all my leg hair, my eyebrows completely, and nothing was helping it to grow back.
[00:14:59] Let's stop pretending that diet and exercise is this moral compass that we have to be following and adhering to. And if not, if we need something outside of that, then something's gone wrong. Shame on you, Shame on your body. It just shuts us down.
[00:15:14] If you've spent years in survival mode, you may need more support than somebody who hasn't. Not because you're broken, but because your starting point is different. What you've been through is different. Your history is different.
[00:15:27] That's why for me, when I looked at the science and I looked at what GLP1s were actually doing, and it really had like 1% to do with weight loss. It was actually so much more. Here's what it's doing in the body that is creating this downstream effect of weight loss, but it's actually healing and restoring the body and the systems. It's helping to bring balance back to the body.
[00:15:47] Because of that, weight loss is happening now easier because your body is functioning the way that it should. Because leptin and ghrelin are functioning the way that it should. Those receptors, those signals, those hormones, they're functioning better.
[00:16:01] Your gut is healing. There's less inflammation, which means there's less inflammation getting to your brain. Your vagus nerve is actually healing after years of trauma and abuse.
[00:16:11] When we look at all that it's doing now, it's creating a healthier person where you can come down on other medications. This is what's wild. So many people are able to come down on other standard medication because they are using peptides, because they are using GLP1 specifically.
[00:16:30] That's fascinating. I don't know that we have any other quote medication out there on the market where it doesn't cause you to need more medications to counteract the side effects. It's like usually you go on one medication and then you have maybe a couple side effects. So now you on medications for the side effects of the original one that you went on. Right. And it kind of has this trickle down effect versus now we're doing a quote medication, we're on this peptide hormone. And now you actually need less medications.
[00:17:00] Not only does it not trigger the need for more, but it actually reduces your need for the ones that you're already on.
[00:17:06] Like this is wild.
[00:17:08] But no amount of trying harder and just trying to eat better and exercise more was going to magically make my body do something that it was not capable of doing.
[00:17:17] It has fuck all to do with willpower or discipline.
[00:17:20] And I don't know why exactly my eyebrows started going out. I guarantee it has something to do with my thyroid, but I don't know the exact details and the exact nuance as to why it was happening. But I can tell you that the only thing that has been able to grow them back Genuinely from the inside out, because my body is actually healing, has been GLP1s, has been this tirzepatide. And I don't see it as cheating to regrow my eyebrows like this. Like this is not cheating, but I'm able to support my body in a way where I never was able to before.
[00:17:52] And so what you might find is that your body may need multiple layers of support. If your body has been under significant stress for a long time. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home with a dysfunctional family, or abusive parents, or parents who were addicted to some sort of substance, you may need support in various systems, because I guarantee there has been mass cortisol dysregulation because of your nervous system dysregulation and these high constant chronic states of fight or flight. So you'll likely need, number one, some hormonal support, potentially things like bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, some metabolic support, number two, potentially GLP1s, peptides, interventions like that, and number three, gut and immune support. Because the metabolic picture doesn't exist independently of the entire body. It's the whole thing.
[00:18:40] This is the framework. So we don't just want to look at one intervention as being this magic solution.
[00:18:47] That's why it's not just do the gut detox, and now everything's fine. Get on the hormones and now everything's fine. You may need a little bit of multiple pieces.
[00:18:56] Let's not make that a problem.
[00:18:58] And one of the things that I have been kind of saying throughout this entire episode is that GLP1s do so much more than simply make someone eat less.
[00:19:05] What I've seen is that because you have GLP1 receptors on your vagus nerve, in your gut, in your brain, on your organs, it's healing these internal systems, a lot of which were damaged by prolonged amounts of cortisol dysregulation, a dysregulated nervous system, having an abusive person in your life, often for decades.
[00:19:26] But even if it was just for one or two years, even if it was just a, quote, short amount of time, there could still be a fair amount of physiological damage to the body.
[00:19:37] The challenge is that we can't see it because it's all internal. But we're seeing how GLP1s are helping people with autoimmune conditions who struggle with anxiety and depression, who have various forms of brain damage or cognitive decline, like Alzheimer's. And we're seeing really incredible improvements when it comes to addiction, especially around things like smoking and alcoholism, and they've even done some research now around binge eating habits and the decrease in binge eating when using a low dose of a peptide, when using low doses of GLP1s. So I think what we're seeing here, and one of the things that I want to emphasize is that one of the big payoffs that we're really creating is capacity.
[00:20:21] Because when you're not spending all day thinking about food and what you're going to eat and when you're going to eat and are you exercising hard enough and fighting cravings and negotiating with yourself and feeling guilty and trying to white knuckle harder, you have more bandwidth when you stop beating yourself up because your body's not responding the way that you think it should. You have more time, energy, capacity to put towards other things in life.
[00:20:46] So now you can actually work on relationships and emotional regulation and movement and strength. You can work on boundaries and healing and your identity, your purpose and meaning, and this next phase of life that you're in and what it is that you want to create, we have the capacity to be able to address that because our brain is not so focused and hung up on food and exercise because of the diet trauma. The intervention doesn't replace the work, but it can give you the capacity to now do it. And I think that's huge because you can create the life that you crave without abandoning yourself to get there.
[00:21:28] So what if the question isn't, am I cheating by getting help?
[00:21:32] What if the question is, why have I decided that suffering is the price of admission for getting healthy? Y' all better rewind that and hear that again.
[00:21:42] Why have you decided that suffering is the price of admission to achieving your goal? Your body is not a morality test.
[00:21:51] You don't get extra points for doing things the hard way.
[00:21:54] You don't get extra points for suffering and trying harder and for ignoring years of data that what you're doing is not creating the results that you want? And using a tool doesn't mean that the tool did all the work. It simply means that you stopped insisting that you had to do the work without one. It's like trying to dig a hole without a shovel. Sure, you could use your hands, but it's gonna be a hell of a lot easier to just get a shovel, right? I think we can expand this even broader because this actually starts to tap into some of our deeper fears, wounds, challenges around asking for help, getting support.
[00:22:32] No longer feeling like you have to do it all on your own, because so many survivors think, if I need help, I'm failing. If I need help, I'm doing something wrong. If insurance won't cover it, it's not really necessary.
[00:22:44] If I can't sustain the support forever, then why even start?
[00:22:48] Other people figure it out on their own. This works for other people, so it should work for me too.
[00:22:54] I should be able to figure this out. I should be able to figure out all my own, all myself.
[00:22:59] Or if I really wanted it bad enough, I'd have enough discipline to do it on my own. We bring this morality into needing to do it on our own, needing to do it with just food and exercise.
[00:23:11] So we first looked at why do we call it cheating when we use a tool? But one of the larger issues underneath is why are we so uncomfortable receiving support in the first place?
[00:23:21] Because this deeper issue isn't about medication. It's self abandonment disguised as self sufficiency. We've been taught to be the woman who can handle it all, the woman who doesn't need anything, the woman who can figure it all out, the woman who sacrifices, the woman who pleases and makes sure that everybody else's needs are taken care of.
[00:23:40] She puts herself last. She stays small. She is seen and not heard.
[00:23:45] We grow up with these views, with these beliefs, and then they get reinforced throughout life. And then even when you grow up and you change careers or you change relationships, and now let's say you have the money, the opportunity, the awareness, the resources, and you still hesitate to spend resources on yourself because somewhere inside you keep thinking, do I really need this? Is this frivolous? Is this selfish?
[00:24:11] Meanwhile, you'll spend all the time, money, energy and emotional bandwidth solving everyone else's problems. So what would it look like to create the life that you crave without having to abandon yourself to get it? Because sometimes self reliance looks like doing things for yourself.
[00:24:27] And sometimes self trust looks like knowing when you need help and being willing to give that to yourself.
[00:24:35] You don't need somebody to save you, but you may need somebody to help you see what you can't see alone. And there's no shame in that. That's just part of having a human brain.
[00:24:44] Welcome to humanity. Because you know what? I have a human brain too. I have blind spots too. There are things that I still can't see at times.
[00:24:53] You don't have to prove that you can do everything alone. And if you'd like some help either uncovering and exploring your blind spot or, or if you want to talk more about what it would look like to start incorporating medical interventions like GLPs or hormone replacement therapy. I would love to chat.
[00:25:12] You can schedule a free Find the Blind Spot call. This is going to be a 30 minute coaching call where we'll get to talk through one concept, one thing, and it may kind of spider web into a couple different aspects, but ultimately we're going to bring it back to one thing that you're working on and look at what's getting in your way. What can you not see because you're so close to it? And I'm just gonna offer a new perspective, a new way of doing it, a new way of seeing it, a new way of operating in this world. I'll make sure that link is in the description and I'm going to leave this here for now. All right, Questions, Comments, Fears, regrets? Send me a message. I'd love to chat. All right y', all, here's to creating the life and body you you crave.
[00:25:59] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:26:19] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyyoucrave.com VTC.
[00:26:34] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
