Transcription:
Why Can't I Lose Weight?

Maggie McKay: Losing weight can be a lifelong struggle. So if you ever asked yourself, "Why can't I lose weight?" Dr. William Meadows, physician at Weight and Body Solutions, will help answer that along with nurse practitioner Jenecia Daniels.

Welcome to Top Docs Podcast. I'm Maggie McKay. Dr. Meadows, thank you so much for being here. Would you please introduce yourself?

Dr. William Meadows: Yes, I'm William Meadows. I've been practicing medicine here in Tampa since 1986. The first 25 years or so, I did emergency medicine. And now, I am practicing wellness, weight loss, multiple things. Beauty is a big part of our practice. And I do it with a very talented, young nurse practitioner that really knows her stuff and is excellent at what she does. And I have nothing but fun coming to work to see people every day.

Maggie McKay: Isn't that awesome? How many people can say that? Jenecia, can you please introduce yourself?

Jenecia Daniels: Hi, I'm Jenecia. I'm the nurse practitioner here. I'm a Valdosta, Georgia native. I've been a nurse practitioner practicing in this field for about five years now, specializing in weight loss medicine and aesthetic medicine.

Maggie McKay: I have to say, Jenecia, I know more people in my life who have struggled with weight than those who haven't. So for starters, how do I know which weight loss program will work for me?

Jenecia Daniels: Well, your preferences, your lifestyle, your budget, and your weight loss goals will all be considered and tailored to your individual needs to one of our many weight loss programs that we have here. We set safe, attainable goals for our guests and we're present for our patients throughout their weight loss journey.

We have multiple weight loss programs here that we do tailor to your needs. Our first program is the Phentermine-Only program. Phentermine is an appetite suppressant that works by telling your brain that you're less hungry. We combine this with behavior modification and other supplements to help you achieve your weight loss goals.

There's another program called Phentermine and Topiramate. This is for clients that are sensitive to the full strength dosing of phentermine. Research has shown us that combining a lower dose phentermine with the topiramate has the same effects as the phentermine-only program with fewer incidents of side effects. So, that is another option for people who can't tolerate the full dosing of phentermine.

Then, we have a third program, our Naltrexone and Bupropion Program. That is for somebody who has hypertension or other comorbidities that will make you ineligible for phentermine. Unlike the last two programs, this isn't a stimulant, so you can be on this program if you have certain comorbidities. It still works with reducing your appetite and your cravings.

And then, we have a Lipotropic Program. In this program we use a natural appetite suppressant called Thinhance, and we combine it with MIC injections and other supplements that help to regulate your appetite and your blood sugar. It leaves you with the sense of fullness and helps you to be in control of your diet.

And then, currently on our last program is our GLP one program. This right now is the number one most prescribed weight loss medication in the US right now. These medications include semaglutide and tirzepatide. In our clinic, we've been seeing great success on this medication with an average weight loss of 10 to 15 pounds a month. This program consists of a growing class of drugs called glucagon-like peptides. In essence, this class of medication slows the food from leaving your stomach, which leaves you with a sense of fullness. They also help to stabilize your blood sugar and reduce and eliminate your cravings.

And then actually, there is one more program that we have. It's tesofensine. It is a dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor program. It works primarily with three different neurotransmitters that help to reduce your hunger and cravings. It increases the fat reduction and has very few side effects, and it's considered very safe.

Maggie McKay: That is a lot of options, Jenecia. I think that's wonderful. I mean, you've got everybody covered.

Jenecia Daniels: We have a program for you here.

Maggie McKay: Jenecia, what's the best way to melt unwanted fat?

Jenecia Daniels: Well, during your free consultation process, we'll discuss the best way to melt your unwanted fat based on our different weight loss programs that we have here. We tailor specifically to you with our many programs to meet your needs. It will entail a combination of diet, exercise, behavior modification, and one of our weight loss programs. We'll coach you through this weight loss program along with the diet and exercise plan that will help you with your lifestyle, to help you burn unwanted body fat very quickly.

Sometimes though, after you've done all the previously stated methods and you still have these little trouble areas of fat, we do have another option. And that's our tumescent liposuction procedure. Liposuction is one of the most common performed cosmetic procedures in the United States. Tumescent liposuction is a procedure that removes the unwanted body fat, and once it's subcutaneous fat that's still existing after you've exhausted all efforts to lose weight. It's less painful and has faster and better results than traditional liposuction.

We often optimize our weight loss programs along with our hormone and peptide programs to help regulate our client's BMI. Dr. Meadows, who is an expert on this subject, is here to explain how we incorporate our hormone replacement therapies into our practice.

Maggie McKay: Dr. Meadows, how can hormone therapy, like Jenecia said, help you lose weight?

Dr. William Meadows: I am going to try to explain that. But I can say that hormone treatment in combination with diet and exercise will absolutely help you lose weight. To understand that, we have to understand that hormones are chemicals produced by the body and released from different tissues. And they cause different effects on the different parts of the body. They actually control the metabolism of our body and all of the cellular functions in our body. As we age, our hormone levels fall off. And as they fall, we begin to change and we begin to see our bodies aging. And aging is reflected in the loss of muscle mass, an increase in fat mass, poor control of blood sugar and other changes in our blood chemistry levels. And this is reflected in the bloodstream and in our skin, our muscle mass.

By replacing these hormones, we bring back our muscle mass. And I'm going to speak just briefly a little more on muscle mass later. But we gain back our muscle mass, we lose our body fat and we help return our body's chemistries back to what they should be in line to do. Other benefits of hormone treatment are slowing of the aging process, such as increasing bone density to prevent fractures from falls, things like that; improvement of growth factors, which will help with skin growth, collagen in particular in the skin, which is what gives it its normal texture. Other benefits are improving our nails, our hair. And hormone levels can easily be checked through simple blood tests, and then we can replace them as indicated because everyone is going to have different levels of different hormones at different ages.

The big thing is, is that, as Jenecia had mentioned before, there's a new class of drugs called peptides, including GLP-1 or semaglutide, and the other medications that she mentioned. These can accentuate the activities of hormones and increased weight loss and enhanced youth and wellness. We typically see results of weight loss along with our hormones and these GLP-1 chemicals, without them, in four to six weeks; but with them, we can see rapid 10 to 15-pound weight loss within 30 days.

So, as Jenecia and I go through the diet programs with people, we try to help them understand how much more they can do and how much more rapidly they can almost slow the aging process and lose the weight that they want to by adding these peptides such as the GLP-1 class of peptides, including semaglutide.

Maggie McKay: I like the sound of all of that, especially getting your muscle mass back and the quick results and that it's safe. You read so much about these new, I guess you would call them medicines, in the press, especially they're saying that it's working for everybody in Hollywood. So, it sounds very exciting. How long have they been around?

Dr. William Meadows: The GLP-1 peptides are fairly new, few years. Hormone replacement therapy has been around for quite some time. In fact, that's what took me away from my interest in emergency medicine almost 14 years ago and placed me into doing it much more full-time about 12 years ago, because of the wonderful effects that it has on people. The peptides in particular makes such a difference in such a short amount of time that I need to get back on mine. It really slows the aging process considerably. You cannot stop aging. It's not possible. But we can slow the aging process and give people back the things that make their life enjoyable. Make them have more muscle mass with any amount of exercise they can do. We prefer you start slowly and build up muscle mass gradually until the muscle mass can then equal or overtake the fat mass. And then, you look like a young, healthy person again instead of an older, heavy, unhealthy person.

Maggie McKay: And Dr. Meadows, speaking of exercise, how important is it? Would you say it's 50/50 or how much should people be doing when they're trying one of the programs?

Dr. William Meadows: I'm a little biased. I've been in competitive athletics since I was six years. So, I think that exercise is the number one thing to help keep someone young. I'm 66, and I look 66. I wish I looked younger. But exercise is very important. Now, not everyone can exercise at the same level. Not everyone has the same tolerance. So, you have to start slow and you gradually build up to whatever point you can reach.

I think that after COVID, I had a year and a half off. And so being a runner and a triathlete, I've now gone back to progressing slowly, doing ten 5Ks, then 10 10Ks, and then 10 15Ks, and then 10 half marathons, and then I'll be back to marathons. So, that's how we want people to look at it. You don't jump into a marathon all of a sudden. You don't jump into full-blown exercise to help with your diet. You start off with what you can do and add that to one of the diet programs that Jenecia has explained and goes through people with in their initial interviews. And as you exercise and build muscle mass, that muscle mass starts eating calories. Fat mass just stores calories. So if we can build muscle mass, we can actually accelerate the weight loss program, give you back the body shape. The weight loss is to give you a body shape that you want. And so, we want you to get that body shape. And in doing so, it takes multiple factors. And so, I wouldn't say it's 50/50. I would like to say exercise is much more important than just dieting. However, the two need to go together. I don't want to be too biased on exercise. The diet portion is very important too, and the medications really help with suppressing appetite, with changing hormone levels, with giving you back the things that made you young and healthy.

Maggie McKay: Good advice. Balance, right?

Dr. William Meadows: Right.

Maggie McKay: Yeah, that's a lot of good advice. Jenecia, what is the cost for your consultations for weight loss, HRT and liposuction?

Jenecia Daniels: Well, our consultations here are always free. You can always visit us here at Weight and Body Solutions, or you can give us a call at (813) 886-4395 and we will schedule you for a consultation.

Maggie McKay: This has been so informative, Dr. Meadows and Jenecia. Thank you so much for laying out some options to a problem that so many people suffer from. If someone would like to find out more, again, as Jenicia said, you can go to the Weight and Body Solutions website. Again, that's physician, Dr. William Meadows, and nurse practitioner, Jenecia Daniels, with Weight and Body Solutions. For a free consultation, go to weightandbody.com/free-consultation. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thank you for joining us. I'm Maggie McKay. Be well.