Improve Your Health & Lose Weight with Kim Shapira: Rational Wellness Podcast 338
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Kim Shapira discusses How to Improve Your Health and Lose Weight with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
1:26 Some of the biggest challenges that clients have when trying to lose weight include that they do not listen to what’s going on inside their own body. You need to be mindful and use your rational mind, which knows that food is fuel. Our irrational mind thinks food is comfort, joy, entertainment, the enemy, fun.
6:08 In order to figure out which foods are good for us, Kim likes to run the Everywell Food Sensitivity panel, which is done by pricking your own finger at home and sending it in and this test is reasonably priced.
10:56 Kim has six rules for eating and the first one is to only eat when you’re hungry. And she also recommends the 15 minute rule so that you learn to eat slowly and that is to only eat no more than half of your food in 15 minutes by putting half as much food on your fork or spoon, put your fork down between bites, and chew your food many more times than you are used to, and eating slowly. It takes about 15 minutes from the time we start eating for the hormone leptin to be secreted that helps tell us that we are satiated. After 15 minutes you can check in with yourself and see if you are satisfied or not yet. Many of us today are eating so quickly and frequently and so much that we don’t really know what being hungry is. We are hard wired to be afraid of being hungry, since this means that our survival is at risk. But in the modern world where food is readily available, we should get used to being hungry and it is important to be hungry every 2 to 4 hours. If you are not hungry every 2 to 4 hours, your body fat is too high or you overate your last meal.
18:40 Emotional triggers. Early in our lives we tend to develop our own individual emotional triggers, which take us out of our rational mind into your irrational mind. This leads to emotional eating. We flip from from thinking about food as fuel to food as comfort or food as fun. When we have a thought that food is a good idea, which should scan our body and take some deep breaths and figure out if we’re really hungry or just wanting to eat for an emotional reason.
20:19 Hormones. There are a number of hormones that play a role in regulating appetite, including ghrelin, leptin, insulin, and cortisol. When our tank actually gets a little low, ghrelin sends a signal to the brain telling us it is time to start focusing on the next meal. When we eat slowly, we give leptin a chance to tell our brain that we’re satisfied. When we respond to stress incorrectly, such as the stress from either lack of sleep, too much sleep, alcohol, or food choices that are inflaming your body, the way that your nervous system is responds can cause our cortisol, our sex hormones, and our blood sugar to get out of whack. This is when we tend to store excess energy as fat. We need to work on meditation and mindfulness and long walks and listening to high vibration music and singing and humming and having more joy in our life, so we can relax our nervous system so we can say to our body, “We’re actually safe. We’re safe right now. You are safe to carry on. We do not need to store that way.”
24:24 Exercise. When it comes to exercise, Kim recommends getting 10,000 steps per day, which is common recommendation. We need to work on muscle strength, muscle endurance, and balance.
Kim Shapira is a dietician with a BA in Kinesiology from Tulane and a Masters degree in Human Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition from Boston University and author of This is What You’re Really Hungry For: Six Simple Rules to Transform Your Relationship with Food to Become your Healthiest Self. Her website is KimShapiraMethod.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.
Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters. Today we will be speaking with Kim Shapira, who is a celebrity dietician and nutritional therapist about how to improve your health and lose weight. Kim Shapira has a BA in Kinesiology from Tulane and a Master’s degree in Human Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition from Boston University, and she’s the author of This Is What You’re Really Hungry For: Six Simple Rules to Transform Your Relationship With Food to Become Your Healthiest Self. Kim does not believe in fad diets, vegetarian, carnivore, gluten-free, dairy-free tend to make you satisfaction-free. Replace these fad diets with a sustainable method that encourages you to eat what you love and empowers you to be the authority in your own body. Kim, thank you so much for joining us.
Kim: Thanks for having me. Excited to get into this.
Dr. Weitz: Good. So what are some of the biggest challenges that clients have when they’re trying to lose weight?
Kim: The noise, I would say, in the rest of the world, outside of themselves. I think most people forget to listen to what’s going on with their own body, and there’s so much confusion with what everyone else is doing.
Dr. Weitz: But how do you know what your body’s really saying?
Kim: You got to be mindful, you got to be grounded. And most people are walking around emotionally triggered and they don’t even recognize it. I mean our rational mind knows that food is fuel. Our irrational mind thinks food is comfort, joy, entertainment, the enemy, fun. And so, if you think food is anything other than fuel, it’s time to check in with what’s going on. Take some deep breaths and figure out where the discomfort is in your body or in your life that could be causing your mind to seek some pleasure from something that is outside of yourself.
Dr. Weitz: Now, you say that we should think of food as fuel, which is what I have always done, but a lot of people criticize me and say, “Well, you don’t really enjoy your food, but yet one of your six principles is to eat what you love.”
Kim: Yeah. So, I understand what people are saying when they say that to you, and I think you do too, right? What they’re saying is not actually what we’re meaning. Excuse me. So, what we actually mean is you should love the food you’re eating and also the food you’re eating should love your body. If your body is rejecting it in any way, you’re in a toxic relationship with this food. And so, it’s kind of going back with an ex and saying, “This time it’s going to be different,” but then recognizing, “Wait a minute, blueberries are giving me diarrhea, but everyone is saying they’re healthy and there’s a lot of confusion.” So, yeah, I love blueberries, but maybe they don’t agree with my body right now.
Dr. Weitz: Right. So what you’re saying is there’s a lot of foods that causes distress, maybe gastrointestinal or food sensitivity reactions or histamine reactions or blood sugar imbalances, et cetera?
Kim: Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, I love food, I bet you love food. I think the idea of a foodie is kind of silly because I think we all love food. None of us don’t love food. It’s just, we don’t need to eat it because it tastes good, we eat it when we’re hungry. So it’s got this one place in our life that’s super important, and we actually eat four or five times a day. We eat over 21 times in a week. We actually can’t remember anything we ate last week. So we’re putting so much energy into, “I love food-“
Dr. Weitz: Which, by the way, is one reason why 90% of the diet studies are completely invalid because they’re all based on food frequency questionnaires that require people to remember what they ate a month ago.
Kim: Yeah, exactly. I mean I cannot even remember what I ate yesterday and neither can my clients when I ask them, we have to jog their memories, give them cues, and we’re probably, none of us are telling it exactly the right way and remember it exactly the way it was. And so, it’s better to understand, let me simplify it and then tell me if this makes sense with eating what you love and being a foodie. I love to train my clients to think of food, all food, actually anything with a calorie, as a banana. So what would happen, right now, if I just handed you a banana, what would you do?
Dr. Weitz: Bananas are not part of my program.
Kim: Okay. But you would think, why is Kim handing me this banana? And then you would kind of scan, “I don’t need it right now. This is not what I eat.” And you would put it on hold, right? If we started thinking of everything with a calorie as a banana, nobody really eats bananas unless they’re physically hungry. And we would start thinking about everything. We wouldn’t sensationalize anything, and we would start recognizing, “I eat when I’m hungry. I trust that that banana is going to be right there when I need it in 10 minutes or one hour.” And that’s why the rule is eat what you love, make sure the food loves you back, but it’s really a practice in changing the way that you’re labeling food as good, bad, should, shouldn’t, healthy, unhealthy, and also the way that you are calling yourself a foodie.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Now, how do we recognize what foods are good for us?
Kim: Yeah, so there’s a couple different tests out there that I love to recommend. The first one is the Everlywell Food Sensitivity. It’s an at-home test, you prick your finger and then five days later you get the results. And these foods are showing up as moderate, mild, and high sensitivities and all of them and any of them, no matter where they fall, are usually related to some inflammatory distress that’s happening in your body. So they change, but also we can change the way our gut is reacting to foods. And so it’s important to recognize what foods are making you inflamed, and I can’t look into someone’s body. I can kind of guess, after looking at food records, like, “Huh, interesting that all these foods have lemon and you’re breaking out in hives.” But a test is much easier.
Dr. Weitz: Now, when we look at the food sensitivity testing landscape, I mean there are lots and lots and lots of choices, and you can go from spending $100 to spending $3,000 and every level of testing, the argument is made that this testing is more accurate, it encompasses more parameters, more immunoglobulins, more ways of looking at gluten. There’s tests that involve looking at 20 different proteins in wheat alone, and then similar tests for every other food. So, it’s kind of confusing which food sensitivity test we want to trust. And so, some people have found one they like and they agree with, but other people have decided it’s better to just do a elimination diet and just take out a bunch of foods and then put them back and see if they create a reaction.
Kim: Yeah, I think the elimination is interesting. The food sensitivity and finding out what you’re sensitive to is interesting. But what I also find interesting is, what are you doing to add to your diet to really change the mucosal layer of your digestive tract? And there are a couple things that you can do that are generally not inflammatory except they might be. And so, I would recommend a variety of fruits and vegetables with antioxidants to help your mucosal layer. The problem is, what if you’re sensitive to one of those fruits? So it goes back and forth. The ways to actually improve your gut would be Omega-3s, a probiotic, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains and fiber. The problem is we don’t know what whole grains you’re sensitive to, if you are sensitive to. You may not be, actually, the whole world is not sensitive to grains, but some people are, and again, it’s based on their lifestyle, it’s based on their stress level, it’s based on their antibiotic use-
Dr. Weitz: Don’t they have lectins that are going to kill us all?
Kim: No, I don’t think so. No, I think we have more information that is giving us tangible results that is improving the quality of our life. If you’re somebody who’s finding that it’s stressful, or it’s going to cause you to become a little obsessive about it, I wouldn’t bother with any of the eliminations. I would work on adding the quality things to your diet.
Dr. Weitz: So, if you do this Everlywell test and you find these food sensitivities, do you tell people to avoid it for a period of time and test them back?
Kim: It really depends on their mental health. It depends on what their diet history is and how they view diet. If they are having arthritic pain and diarrhea or they’re constipated, if they’re getting headaches and heartburn, I would say it’s worth eliminating the foods for a couple weeks. The worst-case scenario, if you have something, you already know how to deal with the discomfort of it, but it’s interesting, and I think when people understand, blueberries give them diarrhea, they’re more likely to not eat the blueberries. So, there is something really cool about learning versus being told, “Blueberries give you diarrhea.” They don’t give diarrhea to everybody, but some people get diarrhea from blueberries. So, whatever is going on with your body is individualized and you can’t compare two bodies with that. But the test works for everybody and it’s a game changer as far as I’m concerned.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Okay. So, let’s see. So your six rules are, one is that you should only eat when you’re hungry and you also have this 15 minute rule, and part of that is also to eat slowly, and you have this 15 minute rule to help slow you down. If you can talk about that.
Kim: Yeah. So I think you have to kind of go back to the beginning and understand why I call them rules even, because I think that’s very triggering for a lot of people. But it’s kind of like somebody in the beginning of your life taught you to brush your teeth and they insisted that you do it and you hated it and you threw temper tantrums and then it became a part of your value system, and now we just do it. And so, these are rules that you need to do that are non-negotiables that then become your automatic set of values that you just practice. So, they become a sustainable way for you to manage and maintain your health and your weight. And that’s the idea behind the word rules, to be honest. And what I’ve found over the last 27 years is I was kind of saying the same thing to everybody when they would say to me, “I’m going out socially, I’m eating in a restaurant. What happens if someone else is making my food?” And I would say, “Well, start with half, right?” There’s a fail-safe in starting with half because we need the hormone leptin to tell our mind that we’re satisfied, but it takes 15 minutes from the moment we start eating until it gets launched. And so it’s really important to slow down so that way we can be more mindful. And that’s why I have the 15-minute rule. But before that, the rule is to only eat when you’re hungry. And then some people will say, “Well, I don’t know what hunger is,” which is actually shocking, and also people are scared of the word hunger. They’re scared of being hungry. They think it’s painful and they think it’s scary. And I think that’s how we’re hardwired because hunger is the message we get from our body that tells us our survival is at risk.
And so, hunger is not painful, it’s not scary. It’s isolated to your stomach, hopefully. If you’re having a blood sugar issue, that’s not in your stomach, that is a physical response, and that’s different than hunger, but can also be related to hunger. It’s important to be hungry every two to four hours. This is how we regulate blood sugar and keep our system running smoothly. So, if you’re not hungry every two to three hours, your body fat is too high or you over ate your last meal, and so there’s a lot of ways to regulate that. But you start when you’re hungry, you eat slowly, and what I would recommend is taking half the food off your fork or spoon, putting half the amount in your mouth, putting your fork down, chewing your food longer than you think necessary, and what people will find is this is really, really boring, but we need all the nutrition in the food we’re eating, and we can’t get it if we’re not breaking it down.
The first form of digestion is chewing, and we’re supposed to chew our food 15 to 45 times depending on the type of food. So that first half, you’re now slowing down and you’re getting the opportunity to be rewarded with the delicious flavors that you say you love. And all studies prove that we are rewarded by the anticipation. I get to put that in my mouth, especially when we’re emotionally triggered, we’re looking for some fun, and that food is way more fun than whatever we’re feeling in our body, and we need to change the reward to, “I’m enjoying what’s in my mouth.” So slowing down, putting your fork down between each bite, letting that 15 minutes time come, and then checking in with your body to see if you need more food. There is a true fail safe in that.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. When you talk about being hungry, it’s really common these days to use some form of fasting or intermittent fasting as part of your weight loss strategy. What do you think about using that to help people as part of a weight loss program?
Kim: Yeah. So I’m all about being beach ready every day of the year. I’m not into strategies. I’m not into, “Let’s lose weight this month for a wedding. Let me get in shape for my holiday trip.” I am into sustainable, long-term peaceful wellness, which means you never have to worry about your weight because it’s just normal. And so, anytime you’re going to jump into a fad, which is a $33 billion business, you’re basically doing something using willpower, short-term power. And I’m all about inner power, using confidence and strength to know that you have everything you need in you to survive the moments long term. So we fast between dinner and breakfast every night of our life, I’m all for it, it improves the way we sleep. It improves the quality of our life, our digestion, our health, our esophagus. It’s everything. So, we should not be eating four to six hours before bed, that would give us a 10 or 12 hour fast, that’s all we need. We should wake up hungry. We should have something satisfying for breakfast, be hungry three hours later, and this is how we keep our metabolism going.
Dr. Weitz: Because the new strategy now is to skip breakfast. When I got into this 40 years ago, the revelation was everybody skips breakfast, they eat too much for dinner, so the key to weight loss is you have to eat within an hour of waking up. You have to eat breakfast. That’s the key to losing weight. And you have to eat every three hours. And now everybody’s saying-
Kim: You know what I hear…
Dr. Weitz: … the key to weight loss is not to eat breakfast.
Kim: You know what I hear there is, and this is the most common problem, if we go back to your first question, the reality is why are we focused on the key to weight loss? We should be focused on the day after we lose the weight. How can I maintain that weight loss? And so, if we’re just doing something short term, that’s all we’re doing. We have to change. And so that’s going to require your new set of values, like a moral compass. Most people’s diet compass is totally broken, and we have to change so we can have long-term results.
I mean we are… I don’t know. For me, I’m all about regulating your metabolism, decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, all preventable diseases that are weight managed. So, we have to learn how to manage our weight. If we jump into a fad, and by the way, when I got into this, and the reason why I got into nutrition to begin with was I was curious why people feared fat. So, it was 1997, SnackWell’s had just hit the market and people were like, “Go, you have to eat nonfat.” And so if you’re looking at the cycle, I mean then we had Barry Sears and the Zone diet, and we had Atkins who died of a heart attack. We have to wake up and look at long-term results. We know what our human body needs. We need to manage our emotions and we need to eat when we’re hungry. Sometimes, we have birthday cake because it’s a birthday, but we don’t need to have birthday cake every single day.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And before the Atkins Diet, we had the grapefruit diet and on and on and on.
Kim: Yeah. Awesome.
Dr. Weitz: So, in your book, you also talk about individual emotional triggers, and that takes you out of your rational mind into your irrational mind and it plays a role in emotional leading.
Kim: Yeah. So in the first six years of our life, we all develop anywhere between three and five emotional triggers that we will work on for the rest of our life. And these triggers will show up wearing different pants, as I like to say. And if we don’t understand them, we don’t know that we’re caught off guard, let’s say, and if we go through something traumatizing, we develop new emotional triggers. Like 9/11, the pandemic, everybody was emotionally triggered. The way the story played out was different for every person, and we are going to be mastering the way we respond to this trigger for the rest of our life until we actually master it.
And so again, it goes from food is fuel in our rational mind to quickly flipping our lid to food is comfort, food is fun. And when we think food is anything other than fuel, it actually means we are not okay. And it could mean that we’re hungry, it could mean that we’re stressed, it could mean that we’re bored. But understanding that when we have a thought that food is a good idea, it means that our alarm is going off and we need to take some deep breaths, scan our body, and figure out why we’re not okay, and then resolve it.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. You mentioned ghrelin I think, or leptin, one of those.
Kim: Yeah, both. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. So talk a little bit about the role of hormones in regulating appetite, including insulin.
Kim: Yeah. So if you think about a gas tank and you have a meter in your car that’s telling you it’s empty or full, we have the same kind of system. Right now everybody should just scan their body and see how badly they have to pee. We’re able to kind of picture how badly we need to use the restroom. We’re actually, when we get the signal we have to pee, we actually can assess if we have to do it right now or if we can finish this phone call we’re on. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to pee six times today. Where are those toilets? I hope that I find them.” We trust that we will. And hunger is another signal that we get from our body that we also need to listen to and trust that we will be provided for when we need it, instead of being fear-based. So, when our tank gets a little low, ghrelin sends a signal to the brain saying, “Hey, it’s time to start focusing on the next meal.” That’s all it is. And when we eat and we start with half, we’re giving leptin a chance to tell our brain we’re satisfied.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And then insulin, this is insulin we know is a hormone that tends to make you store fat. And we know how bears eat a bunch of fruit so they can gain body fat and get through the winter hibernation. So, we know that eating sugar and high glycemic carbohydrates tends to stimulate insulin and makes us store fat. So-
Kim: Not necessarily. Only if your metabolism and the way that you’re dealing with stress is not functioning right. So, I’m not necessarily talking about stress of what’s going on in the world or deadline, that is one type of stress, but physical stress that is happening in our body that is from lack of sleep, too much sleep, alcohol, food choices that are inflaming your body or causing any sort of inflammation, the way that your nervous system is responding to the day. This is the stress that I’m talking to. And when our body recognizes that we have stress, it responds within 10 seconds, it tips off the hippocampus, the pituitary, and the adrenal glands. 1,400 different sensations occur and one thing that happens is our cortisol, our sex hormones, and our blood sugar metabolism all get out of whack. And this is when we start storing things incorrectly or turning things into fat. And the reason that’s happening is the same reason for the bear, let’s say, but when our body detects stress, it goes into fight or flight mode. It doesn’t recognize that the deadline is temporary. It doesn’t recognize that your nervous system is out of whack short term. It thinks that it needs to jump in and save you and store for the winter.
We need to work on meditation and mindfulness and long walks and listening to high vibration music and singing and humming and having more joy in our life so we can relax our nervous system so we can say to our body, “We’re actually safe. We’re safe right now. You are safe to carry on. We do not need to store that way.” But if we’re not doing those practices, our mind and body don’t know that we’re safe and it’s going into protection mode.
Dr. Weitz: So essentially, it sounds like you’re saying that really it’s more about cortisol than it is about insulin?
Kim: It is. I would agree with that.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. So when it comes to exercise, you recommend 10,000 steps a day. That’s a common recommendation. People using their various step meters. What are the most important factors when it comes to exercise?
Kim: I think there’s so many, right? We’ve got the way our muscles can perform, and I’m sure that you have a lot to weigh in on this, we’ve got muscle endurance, we’ve got strength and flexibility, we’ve got cardiovascular. So we need, first and foremost, we need to move. And so the recommendation to get 10,000 steps is because the average American is getting between 3,000 and 4,000, if we are lucky. And this is a totally preventable problem that leads to digestive distress, hormonal imbalance, weight gain, and all these things lead to lower quality of life and disease earlier on. So, we know that we really need 7,000 steps every single day to lower our risk of sudden death by 50%, and to decrease our risk of Alzheimer’s and tons of other diseases. The reason why I recommend 10,000 is because of weight maintenance. We need to be active humans and we’re very inactive.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I also think it’s really important that part of our exercise program involve resistance training because we tend to lose muscle, and that’s one reason why your metabolism slows down. So I think it’s important to try to build muscle, especially as we age.
Kim: Especially as we age. And we need our balance, we need to be able to carry groceries into the house. We need to carry a pot of water. We need to do so much more. And if we don’t have the muscle mass, and you know, with all the work that you’re doing, how important it is to maintain your bone, your joint, all these things, lubrication, everything, so, again, we have a better quality of life.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Kim: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. And then you also mentioned the importance of drinking a lot of water, and I think that’s a pretty common thing that everybody recommends drinking lots of water. How do we know how much water we need?
Kim: Oh, we need a ton. Nobody knows how much water we need and-
Dr. Weitz: What’s the best magic form of water? Should it be-
Kim: Yeah. Okay, wait, the first question-
Dr. Weitz: We have all these different parameters. First question is how much water, how much water should you have?
Kim: Yeah, how much water. First of all, I am the kind of person who believes what is going out is also going in. And what is happening out here is happening inside. And so if we look at the world-
Dr. Weitz: Don’t just collect all your urine and drink it.
Kim: No, no.
Dr. Weitz: No.
Kim: But we’re surrounded by bodies of water. Water is the most important thing that we have going inside of our body. We have 100 trillion cells, each cell is 43% water. It’s the way that we detox every single day. It helps every one of our organs operate well. And so, we are losing water through talking, through saliva, through spit, sweat, urine, feces, all these ways. And so, we need to constantly be replenishing. And the secret sauce, in my opinion, to losing weight and keeping it off is at least eight cups of water a day. There are some really cool scales that now tell you your percentage of water weight, and it is shocking to see when somebody is suffering from joint pain or constipation and they’re at 42% water and they get up to 55%, they’re living their life in flow. They’re just feeling great. Dehydration, which is-
Dr. Weitz: Sounds like you’re talking about Bioimpedance, which we use regularly with clients.
Kim: Yes. Yeah. So 1% dehydration, which is about two cups of water, feels like the flu. So my guess is that everyone is walking around dehydrated, and so then it depends on the types of food you’re eating and if you can even absorb the water.
Dr. Weitz: Or you’re consuming coffee and things like that, that tend to dehydrate you on top of it.
Kim: Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t count herbal tea or milks as water because your body’s working to break those foods down. And so, I would just call water water. And it’s great if you’re having milks and fruits and-
Dr. Weitz: Does it matter what kind of water? We have all these different forms of water. We have alkaline water, we have electrolyte water, we have pure sauce water, we have-
Kim: Yeah, I know. We also have tap water, and I think that it’s like, “Drink some tap water. We’re okay. We don’t have to buy our water.” It’s kind of shocking that we’re all out there buying our water. Drink the tap water too. It’s got some things in it.
Dr. Weitz: We will have to differ on that, but-
Kim: Yeah. Yes. It depends on your tap, for sure it depends on your tap.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. No, all you have to do is just look at a chart of the levels of PFOAs in drinking water across the country and it’s everywhere. And that’s just one of thousands of toxic chemicals, so-
Kim: You’re not wrong, okay, you’re right.
Dr. Weitz: … [inaudible 00:29:33] at least having a water purification system.
Kim: Yes. There you go. Tap water with a purification system, please.
Dr. Weitz: There you go.
Kim: Because otherwise you’re getting your water in a plastic bottle probably, and then we’re talking about plasticides and we’re talking about hormone disruptors, endocrine disruptors. And so, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Weitz: I talk to people about the plastic water bottles. They’re like, “Oh, I won’t leave the plastic water bottle in the heat.” And yet they bought it from some store that had it sitting out in the back on pallets in heat for days.
Kim: I know. I know. I know. So, I’m still going to go back to the purified tap. I left out the word purified in the beginning. Thanks for reminding me.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And then the last parameter that you have in your system is sleep. And we all know we need sleep. Most people don’t get enough sleep.
Kim: The average American’s getting six and a half hours, and we cannot lose weight and maintain our weight if we’re not sleeping well. And we are also, sleep is where melatonin, a hormone that is naturally occurring in our body, works as an antioxidant and it goes in and it vacuums up all of our inflammation. If you are not getting sleep, you’re missing out on this amazing clean out, let’s say, from melatonin. I wouldn’t recommend taking melatonin, but I would recommend working on your sleep hygiene.
So, as soon as you feel tired, this is the time to go to sleep. If you’re starting to adjust your sleep to a better sleep rhythm, so you’re at least getting seven hours, you might feel tired in the beginning because you’re adjusting your circadian rhythms, and that’s actually jet lag. So, it takes three days to recover. But I would highly recommend that everybody works on changing their sleep to getting at least seven to nine hours. We really need seven to nine, but like I said, the average American is getting six and a half, so it’s not enough. And if you’re having any problems falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up tired, these are situations you need to reach out and get some help for.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, we’ve got that circadian rhythm. So in the morning, you got that cortisol and then you got the melatonin in the evening, and respecting that circadian rhythm I think is super important. But I do think that taking melatonin can be beneficial as well. It’s also, as you mentioned, an important antioxidant as well as something that might help with sleep.
Kim: But if you take it, and it might only help you fall asleep, and so if you’re finding that you’re struggling and waking yourself up in the middle of the night, this could be because you’re eating too close to bed, you’re drinking alcohol, or you are not dealing with your nervous system correctly. So, it’s really important to focus on what’s going on. And melatonin is not going to fix the waking up in the middle of the night problem. And when we take melatonin, it actually tells your brain to stop producing it. So, I think it’s better for you to do it naturally, but of course, having support in the beginning is an okay situation.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Okay, good. So, I think those are the questions that I had. Any other things that you want to tell our listeners about?
Kim: No, this was awesome. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Good, thank you. And when we post this in, I think about three weeks, I’ll send you links and hopefully you can share it with your followers.
Kim: Of course, I will. Of course. Of course. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, and how can listeners find out about you and your book and your website, et cetera?
Kim: Yeah, so my website and my Instagram, my LinkedIn, everything is @KimShapiraMethod, kimshapiramethod.com. I have groups that I work with weekly. I have individual clients that I see daily. I have a webinar class, if you like to do things from the privacy of your own home. And of course, my book, This Is What You’re Really Hungry For, is available in every bookstore now.
Dr. Weitz: So kimshapiramethod.com, that’s your website?
Kim: That’s my website.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. And you like people to contact you through Instagram?
Kim: Anywhere is fine.
Dr. Weitz: Anywhere is fine. Okay.
Kim: Anywhere is fine.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you, Kim.
Kim: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would certainly appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review. That way, more people will discover the Rational Wellness Podcast. And I wanted to let everybody know that I do have some openings for new patients, so I can see you for a functional medicine consultation for specific health issues, like gut problems, autoimmune diseases, cardio metabolic conditions, or for an executive health screen and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. And that usually means we’re going to do some more detailed lab work, stool testing, sometimes urine testing, and we’re going to look at a lot more details to get a better picture of your overall health from a preventative functional medicine perspective. So, if you’re interested, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at (310) 395-3111 and we can set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine. I’ll talk to everybody next week.
