As I have said in many of my articles and podcasts, weight is not always the key measurement for wellness.
In this podcast, I am responding to many questions about hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and three critical wellness techniques.
#healthandwellness #weightmanagement #testosterone #podcast
00:51 - How does your body handle sugar or insulin functionality
02:48 - The impact of macro sets (high fat, high carb, or even distribution) on metabolic function
03:07 - Hormones and their role in metabolism, including testosterone, insulin, estrogen, and thyroid
hormones.
04:34 - Testosterone as the healing hormone.
07:12 - Personal examples of incorporating keto-friendly desserts into the diet.
07:24 - Impact of seed oils, gluten, glyphosate, and processing on metabolic health.
12:40 - Mindset in achieving health and fitness goals.
14:11 - Consistency and staying the course in fitness and health journeys.
15:47 - The idea that calories are important, but chemistry matters more in achieving desired results.
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of them and look forward to hearing from you.
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Wellness Insights with Dr. Matt Chalmers
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Dr. Matt Chalmers
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness.
Full Transcript, and may have been edited for grammar.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] This is Dr. Chalmers. Welcome to Wellness Insights with me. Dr. Chalmers. You guys keep asking me, what do I mean when I keep saying it's chemistry over calories?
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:13] So first of all, the idea that you know, every human being with all of our diversity, you know, everything short, tall, fat, then everything everybody has, the metabolic system is exactly the same, is kind of a little bit silly. It's not really how it works.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:28] So what we're at is we're going to go through a lot of the things that matter. It's a little bit more complex, but you guys should get kind of gross understanding what's going on. So whenever I look at somebody, we're trying to figure out how to get their body where it needs to be in metabolic function, that type of thing.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:44] The first thing I always start with is called somatic typing. So somatic typing is basically how your body handles sugars or insulin functionality. So it is a little bit hormonal, but there's a little bit more than that to it. So sometimes typing, remember, is a scale. It's not it's a spectrum, it's not an A, B or C thing, but so.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:08] Basically you have you have couple different groups. You have ecto morphs, which those are the guys that everybody knows this type of people where they can eat whatever they want to.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:15] They never gain an ounce. You know, the person who can eat the large deep dish pizza with all the toppings and drink a case of beer and not get announced the next day. Those guys, those are your exomars and it sounds awesome. And they're like, Oh, I hate those guys. Those guys have a problem gaining weight. So, like, they have their own problems. Then you got your mesmer versus the guys in the middle. Their bodies burn fat and sugar is pretty much evenly. And so those are the guys. If you cut their calories, they do really, really well. They lose fat. It's really easy to maintain muscle mass. It's a little bit of amino acid function, a little bit of protein, and they're good and have guys on the other end of the spectrum, which is where I live, called Indo Morphs.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:54] Our bodies really want to burn fat. If you give us sugar, if you give us carbohydrates, we will turn it into fat to hopefully burn lighter. So it's really hard, really easy for an amorphous to gain fat, really, really hard for us to lose fat. This is where Akito lives and does really, really well. So that's the first kind of piece of it. Now, again, like I said, it's a spectrum, so you have your hard ecto morphs, which you got to give tons of sugar to lots of tests to do it, to get them again anyway. And then you've got your, your ecto mesmos, which you're kind of in the middle of that and you're mazo actos and you're Mazo then you're Mazo Endo, your endo Mazo and your endo. So I guess it's a big spectrum. You have to figure out where people are on it to really kind of hold this end.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:41] But you know, it's not super difficult. So that's the first place you start is, you know, what kind of macro set are we looking at? Are we looking at high fat or are we looking at high carb or are we looking at kind of an even distribution of our macro sets like that? So so that's the first place you start. So that that's a part of the caloric thing is, you know, obviously where your macro set is up. Now the other thing is is hormones. So hormones are a little bit interesting because it's not just the number on the blood sheet.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:17] What you have to understand is that you have a couple of different factors playing it with hormones. So first of all, you have the actual number. So let's play with testosterone, for example. So for a guy, you want to be at 1000 on trough day more or less, right? And so some people will have 700 on their testosterone scale and they feel amazing. And some people have 700 and they feel okay, but not great. Well, you what you have to understand is that you have two parts. For every hormone function, you have the amount of hormone you have or the keys, and then you have the amount of receptor sites you have or the locks. They have to come together and work together for a function to happen. Right? So you can have a good level of hormone, but you can have a either a low amount of receptors or a good amount of receptors with low functionality.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:02] Youu get low result or you can have a lot of receptors that have high functionality. And so you get a little bit of hormone and this massive reaction inside the body. And so you kind of have to understand, one, what each hormones job is, what it really does, how it affects the body. And then you can start complying with the levels like, okay, at this level of hormone, I'm getting X level of reaction. Is that what we're looking to do? And so that's one of the big pieces that you have to kind of look at with hormones. But we can kind of run through some of that.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:34] Testosterone is probably the most important hormone you can be able to add to the body to affect healthy fat, you know, muscle ligament, brain got all the good things. Testosterone is the healing hormone. It's the one that tells you right, to go back and repair and regenerate and heal and increase metabolic function and restore all the things. And you guys know how much how I made 55 videos about testosterone. So the other one is insulin insulin's job is to control the glucose fed state so.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:05] What happens is that your body consumes food, turns it into sugar, the sugar goes in your blood. And then the insulin's job is to take it from the from the blood and push it into the tissues. So that's what insulin does, which is also why it's super easy to fix diabetes with ketosis because you don't need insulin anymore for ketosis. But anyway, so that's what insulin does. Insulin's very helpful. It's anabolic. It's a great thing to use. We've destroyed our insulin receptors with the amount of fake sugars we have. But again, that's another story. So insulin is a big player and that's what you see when you talk about the glycemic index. We were talking about complex carbs and they're talking about, you know, low GI. It's how much insulin responses it's going to create in the body that's more or less what we're talking about. So insulin, the big player estrogen is going to be a player for everybody. Estrogen is. Not a great hormone if you're not trying have a baby. But especially in guys, it'll hold. It'll hold water on you.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:07] It'll make you puffy. It does. It does stuff you really don't want to do. So checking your estrogens keep those levels down is important. And there's a lot of Zino and phytoestrogens. You know, BPA is AstraZeneca. There's all sorts of things that are out in the market that are they're messing with you. So you've got to check those. And some of those don't even show up on an estrogen test. So that was a little scary. But so estrogen is a player and, you know, thyroid does does make a play. But, you know, if you're worried about your thyroid levels, radically increase your iodine, that helps a lot. But so you have a hormonal function as well.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:38] You've got to make sure that you're checking that. But those those are kind of the, you know, motion actually obviously helps, but those are kind of the big parameters. So you got your smarter typing in your hormones, you know, in your macro set, which gives that amount of typing. So. You know, if you're if you're kind of lost in this whole I don't understand why I'm so fat or why I say things like, you know, for instance, a lot of people. Alto, the actor morphs. A lot of people will do a bunch better measures and does the whole deal. If you guys will swap your desserts out for keto desserts and especially if you make them yourself. Because here's one of the things we have to recognize that is the odd player out. Seed Oils. Gluten. Glyphosate. Processing. All the chemicals we use for that. Tear the body apart. You know when you fix metabolic syndrome, that's one of the things you do. You put you on a cathartic diet. You strip out all the preservatives and that's how you heal the body back up. But that's one of those big things is that, you know, if you if you take like if you take like the normal brownie mix that has flour and, you know, the gluten, the glyphosate and the, you know, the sugar and stuff like that, the calorie counts really high.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:57] But if you can turn around, you're like, all right, I'm going to use butter and almond flour and erythritol and eggs. And that's where the calorie count actually comes down quite a bit. But the chemistry is much, much stiffer. And this is one of those things I keep saying chemistry over calories is that when you use things like Erythritol, not only is it amazingly beneficial for your heart and blood vessels, but it decreases glycemic function and it has no calories. So what ends up happening is that the amount of insulin that your body produces, the the hormone that feeds fat cells decreases, and then your body can process the eggs and the butter and the oil and flour and lots of really, really well. So you don't have any extra inflammatory issues.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:39] You're also missing the gluten and the glyphosate, which causes all sorts of gut damage and inflammation to your body is going to hold extra fluids and things like that. So, you know, and then you have all the processing that's in normal, you know, sugary cakey stuff. So that's what I'm talking about. So when I talk about, you know, hey, even if you're not in those, if you're if you're mesmos or maso acto, if you guys will swap out your your chemistry, if you start making some of these things at home, if you start changing the way that you're doing these things, so, you know, it'll help a lot as an endo the guy who is everybody gets any kind of sugar, it turns into fat. You know, I have I have pancakes all the time. I have pizza all the time. I have. I usually have these are pancakes and peanut butter, you know, four nights out of the week. You know, it's just one of the things I eat. So but they're they're they're almond flour, They're egg, you know, there's no sugar in them. And so they still look and taste the same, but they don't have the chemistry. You know, I have brownies all the time.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:41] I want we more dessert stuff now on keto than we've ever done before. We make it, but we eat a ton more. And so if you guys will start looking at the easiest thing to do is to grab. There's a, there's a Kido cookbook, I think it's called the Ultimate Keto Cookbook. It's Desserts White. It's fantastic. You don't have to be in ketosis again to use it. I would recommend that you use more sweetener. I like things sweeter than than the book was, but so Erythritol is my favorite, you know, monk fruit or restaurateur. All those other things are my favorite. Just because arithmetic is so unbelievably healthy, good for your heart and blood vessels. And with the COVID issues like everybody needs the extra help with the heart and blood vessel issues. So Erythritol is my favorite. Stevia is a great one. Monk fruit's great.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:30] Yeah. If you're going to use different, you know, different or alternative sugars or alternative sweeteners, check the glycemic on them. The multiple volatile actually has a glycemic index. It's a little bit higher than you want, but that's kind of that's kind of where we're talking about. So you know this this fat things a little bit bigger than just you didn't exercise enough, you didn't stick to the plan enough. You know, that's why you didn't you didn't lose the weight. You know, it really does matter what the chemistry in your food and what that chemistry does, make it in your side of your body. So, you know, if you're if you're trying to figure out the similar type thing, look at the glycemic index. Look at, you know, glycemic load, that type of thing. If you're worried about your health, make sure your doctor is pulling your insulin levels.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:13] Because, I mean, one of the biggest things I see is, you know, people are like, oh, they you know, they come to me and they feel terrible. The doctor tells them their lives are normal, but they're like their doctor didn't pull testosterone. They didn't pull, you know, 99% of the non-polar. Right. Thyroid lives to begin with, you know, free T3, free T4, reverse T3. They just pull to SAGE, which I've talked about a lot. But, you know, those things are going to kind of help kind of put everything back where it needs to be. So this Christmas, this Thanksgiving, that type of thing, if you guys are looking for good desserts, really kind of lean into the keto desserts because all you're really changing is the preservatives and the amount of glycemic load or insulin release from these things.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:54] My mom made a key that Mary Aquino pecan pie that I swear to God, I cannot tell the difference between this one and a normal pecan pie. It is so good. It was unbelievable. We make cookies all the time. Like I said, we eat a lot more desserts now than ever. My wife makes a seven layer what we call a chocolate lasagna. It's basically just layers and layers of different types of chocolate, and it's deliciously amazing. But it doesn't it doesn't have any sugar in it. So it doesn't raise your glycemic function at all. So that's kind of what we're talking about when we talk about this type of stuff.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:26] If you guys need more help with this, there's a lot of guys out that can do this, not just me grab some keto books like read some keto stuff that I make. All my guys are great. When I work with people on this, I make them all read the books because you know, the more involved you get with your own health care, the better results you're going to get. So grab some of those. There's a white one. It's called the Keto Bible on Amazon. It's with my Ph.D. that I like that one and I'll give you some good information. And so one of the things I want to make sure, because I've talked to people about this before and they're like, Oh, so I don't need my trainer anymore. Man. If you think that your trainers sold jobs, they give you a diet plan. You've missed the entire purpose of your trainer.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:09] You're the most important thing that you can do for your health, for anything is your mindset, is your mind mental function? You know, mental function, I'll tell you, is, number one, diets. Number two, hormones. Number three, I'll make the argument back and forth on hormones and diet. But mental peace is the most important. And when you have a good trainer, you don't have you don't have personal best anymore. You have team teams like that trainer. If he's a good he or she is a good trainer. They cannot succeed unless you succeed. They can't win unless you win. They're their metrics of how well they're doing are 100% dependent upon you reaching your goals. And so there's a lot of times where you're losing fat and gaining muscle. And guess what happens if you lose a pound of fat and you gain a pound of muscle? The scale doesn't move at all.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:58] It's plus one minus one. So it doesn't move. And there's there's times where you're like, man, am I going anywhere? I don't think this is working. And you need that trainer to step in and go, You're on the path. You're doing fine. Stick with it. Consistency is what wins because we all get in our heads. We're all like, I'm messing up. I'm not doing the right thing, and I need to change something because I'm not seeing immediate results. And you need that trainer to be like, No, no, stay the course. This is the time game. Stay the course. You know? And it's funny because I talk to people that I well, I don't think I need a trainer. I work with a lot of professional like top of the line you know bikini champions muscle the guys on stage who are winning everything. All of them have at least one coach. Most of them have a training coach to lift with opposing coach, to pose with a diet coach to work on stuff like that. So they have the higher you go, the more coaches you get. It's not that, you know, they don't need it because they're on stage and they know everything. So you definitely need one.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:57] And you know, if you're just trying to lose a little bit of weight and try to get back in healthy. So, you know, make sure you're using your trainer. A lot of times the trainers piece, especially if I'm on my side, we end up being therapists as well because, you know, life sucks. Things hit you in the face and you know, you've got to go deal with them and you show up at the gym and you're pissy and you know, you start working out and you start talking about and all of a sudden you get down to the end of the day and you're good. So there's a lot of neurology in there as well.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:24] But, you know, that's the thing. So lean into your trainers. You know, they're going to really be able to help you kind of get the mental piece going to stick with consistency. And a lot of the times it's it's just like I do weekly check ins with my guys. It's just accountability. It's like, did you go to the gym? Did you do the things you said you were going to do? Like that helps out a lot. So stick with your trainers. They're wildly more important than just a diet plan. But, you know, if we'll all sort of recognizing that this this calories in, calories out thing is a part, calories are a thing. I'm not saying they're not like, you know, but the other side of that is I talk to you all the time.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:16:00] They're like, you know, I'm still fat because I just can't stick to my diet plan. I'm always 100 calories, 150 calories over. And, you know, I just can't get it done, guys. 100 calories is not going to matter at all. Like, there's there's a lot of days where, you know, I'll eat five, 600 calories more or I'll eat. And then my wife would be like one of ice cream with me. I'm like, all right. And so that's another five, 600 calories that I'll have right there. But it doesn't matter as much because the macro sets where it's supposed to be and because everything else, the hormones, everything else is set where it's supposed to be. So how can you eat 1000 5000 calories a day over every day? Now, that's gonna be a problem because it's so chemistry, right? Has to deal with.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:16:38] But there's a lot more functionality there. So a lot of you guys who have been doing the program have been staying the course. You guys have been eating. Right. You know, according your diet plan, you're eating and you're just not getting the results.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:16:50] You know, check the glycemic function because we got to look at insulin hormones like is that were supposed to be check your testosterone levels, make sure that's where it supposed to be. You know, and you've heard me like I've made lots and lots of ideas going off about how to source from it's not cheating. It's it's hypercritical to your health to make sure your levels are right. So, you know, get that old eighties, George W Bush, you know, strap out of your head. You know, recognize it's the most important thing you can add to your body for your overall health. But that's kind of that's kind of where a lot of this stuff is.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:17:20] So when I talk about it's chemistry or calories, that's what I mean. So if you're lost in the calories thing, look at the glycemic function. Look in this amount of typing, If you can figure out where you are on the spanner type chart, it's really going to help you kind of figure out what type of chemistry you need to put in your body or what macro set or what diet you need to put in your body. A lot of you Indo Mazo guys, which are more endo morphs and mezza morphs, you'll cut your calories, you'll get really, really tired and you'll lose some weight and you'll start feeling good.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:17:48] But you don't go where you want to go. And then, you know, you'll do some keto stuff. You'll be like, Oh, this is like I'm getting all the results and you're like, Well, kilos unsustainable. I've been doing keto for three years. It's super easy, you know, it just takes a little bit of effort, you know, get with someone who knows what they're doing. The only thing I can't replace is French fries. Like I say, I have pizza. I have.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:18:09] Like my wife will eat half the pizza and I'll eat the other half of hers and my whole pizza like once a week. So I have a pizza and a half every week. So you can have pizza. There's all sorts of things you guys can have.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:18:20] The problem is that you're going have to make some of this stuff yourself. And that's that's that's where the crux of this is. And that's the only time that it's like, okay, well, your laziness is going to play a factor. I'm like, Well, I've got kids. I've got this cool. Like, Yeah, I'll go every week and I'll get a big thing of pulled pork and sausage and brisket, and I'll come home and I'll eat that. And, you know, on Sundays we'll get together, we'll make a bunch of stuff and we make our pizzas as a family. And so that's really fun. Like, my my oldest son is actually two and he's 11, and he can make some of the best steaks I've ever had. He also he also does really good with with his pizzas.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:18:58] These kids can do it. And the great thing is, is that if you'll spend the time cooking with your kids and learning together, you've just handed your kids a skill that is hyper critical to their health and to their their their wealth and everything else, because they, you know, you can oftentimes make really good, healthy food cheaper than you can buy junk food. So, you know, and that's a big piece of it as well. So, you know, I didn't go very deep on any of this stuff cause I wanted to get to kind of all the topics and the overview of it all here, you know, because we're almost 20 minutes now and, you know, we didn't go real deep.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:19:31] But if you have more stuff, I've made more videos about this type of stuff. If you guys have more questions, ask I'm going to start doing more, you know, Instagram, live things and answer some of these sure questions, But that's kind of where we're at. So if you guys can start to recognize that, yes, calories are a thing, but the chemistry's more important. What's your somatic type? Where are your hormones? You know, those type of things. You know, it's really, really important. Sleep's a giant piece of this as well.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:19:55] Methylation is a big piece of this. There's other things. But if you'll figure out your cyanotype, your macro set, you'll figure out your hormones and just do those things, you're going to be in a really good place as far as, you know, figuring out more about how your body works and how to manipulate the chemistry to get the results you're looking for.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:20:13] You guys have any questions? You know, like I said, there's lots of other podcasts I've done on this type of stuff. You know, if you guys want, you know, we get the hippie office pillars of wellness Chalmers Wellness dot com.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:20:23] But you know Dr. Chalmers one one all my socials I don't think that Twitter works very well because after I put out the my treatment for COVID, all of my social got crushed.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:20:31] But you know check out the of the podcast and you know that'll be probably the easiest way to go because of your questions, questions of chalmers, wellness or put it in the DMS and we'll we'll get him answered. Thanks.