Episode 55: You Weigh Less on the Moon with Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND

The Good Mood Podcast

I don't like treating weight loss. As a naturopathic doctor, my principles are to treat the root cause of disease, do no harm, and work with the healing power of nature. Most patients who want to lose weight expect to be put on a calorie-restricted diet and, frustratingly, calorie-restricted diets don't work.

Most people enter a cycle of calorie (or carb, or meal) restriction, find the diet gets harder, they inevitably fall off the wagon, and "cheat", and then gain the weight back and more. This is why 95% of people who go on a diet, gain everything back and more in the subsequent 1 to 5 years. A yet even modern medicine conspires to recommend weight loss to patients with pre-diabetes, or diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hormonal conditions like PCOS.

But, in the words of Linda Bacon from her Scientific American article "Fat is Not a Problem", "Telling people they need to lose weight is a lot like telling someone with a cold to stop sneezing so much—it may not be possible and won’t make the cold go away."

The problem is that, in order to lose weight, we need to get healthy---metabolically healthy.

And now, because of diet culture, we often have to break through walls of stigma, shame, yo-yo dieting, poor relationships with food, and body image, in order to get to the core of metabolic healing, which works very differently from traditional weight loss methods, and may not result in immediate weight loss, or any weight loss at all, despite being beneficial to your body as a whole.

So, I created a course called You Weight Less on the Moon, on my site The Good Mood Project (check the link in bio to join for just $34).

This episode of the Good Mood Podcast gives you a sneak peak in to the first chapter, called "Why Diets Don't Work", as well as my story with body image, food, and dieting---it should be an interesting listen if you're at all interested in dismantling diet culture, and restoring metabolic health through root cause, guilt and shame-free medicine that honours your body's wisdom and hunger cues.

About the course:

The course contains 11 Chapters and 38 lessons, with mini videos, journalling prompts, and audio meditations and visualizations. It even contains a 40-minute yoga flow.

We talk about body image, diet culture, and weight stigma

Metabolism, set point weight, reverse dieting, and stress' impact on the metabolism

Hormonal causes of metabolic dysfunction: cortisol, insulin, leptin, the thyroid hormones, and the sex hormones.

Relationship with food: Intuitive and Mindful Eating.

Body Image: self-compassion, body neutrality, and Polyvagal Theory

The digestive system and lymphatic system

Gentle nutrition, such as reducing inflammation and satiety building

And embodied lifestyle practices for helping us develop more interoception to start improving our attention and attunement to the body's cues.

Listen here to the beginning of the course and, if you want to join for lifetime access, click the link in the show notes to join or find the course at learn.goodmoodproject.ca

Join the course:

https://learn.goodmoodproject.ca/courses/you-weigh-less-on-the-moon