What is the Best Way to Lose Weight?

Ozempic or Mounjaro have become very popular drugs for weight loss. For diabetic patients, they can use the drug to lower their A1C and lose weight, but if they do not change their diet, they have to be on these drugs for life. In order to lose weight more healthily, eating healthier food, exercising, and doing physical activities every day help achieve happiness instead of relying on food for pleasure.

The mechanism of the weight loss drug:

Ozempic and other weight loss drugs slow down your intestinal movement; food will stay longer in your digestive tract. You feel full, and the nutrients are not absorbed in a normal way. The weight loss drug can slow down the smooth muscle movement in the intestine and stomach, so you may have obstruction if the food stays too long in the GI tract, leading the gut lining to swell. Furthermore, the weight loss drug can also slow down the bladder muscle movement, causing urine retention. If older men already have weak bladder muscles, they may have a hard time emptying the bladder, leading to UTI and sepsis. This happens more frequently to men with an enlarged prostate.

The weight loss drug can also lead to malnutrition because it influences the function of the digestive enzyme. Your body cannot absorb minerals and vitamins as efficiently as before. Without sufficient minerals, your nervous system will be more fragile; you can have high levels of anxiety, panic attacks, or even neuropathy.

What is the best way to lose weight and improve your A1C

If you want to suppress your appetite, you may use jasmine green tea. Jasmine green tea has a slightly bitter taste, which helps clear the stomach heat and inhibit the craving for food. I noticed that if I only drink green tea from the morning to early afternoon, I eat much less, and my brain will not crave sweets to make me happier. If you never drink green tea, you need to start slowly, because green tea slows down the stomach’s movement. You may feel nausea if your body has never coped with some of the ingredients in green tea.

I have a patient whose A1C was at 13 and refused to take Metformin. He started drinking green tea all day long and was able to drop his A1C from 13 to 5.7. Furthermore, he had some shoulder and hip injuries, and he recovered much faster and never experienced severe pain due to the anti-inflammatory effect of green tea.

People who do not have a healthy gut lining tend to have stomach discomfort when they start drinking green tea. They can start with black tea and gradually start drinking light green tea. Green tea does not influence the Ca²⁺ absorption. If you tend to have osteoporosis, green tea is a better choice than coffee. Coffee stimulates your body and produces more insulin; your blood sugar tends to drop faster. But your body does not burn the calories when the insulin levels are too high. Do you notice that once people start getting diabetes type I or II, their belly grows much faster? Even for type I diabetic patients, they can have skinny arms and legs, but their belly is bigger because they use insulin or Metformin. The body transfers the blood sugar into fat cells instead of burning the calories and producing more energy. Once the sugar drops, they need to eat more.

How can you combine the weight loss drug with diet changes to keep your weight at the right level?

If you need to use Ozempic to start losing weight initially, you may very likely lose your appetite. It is a good time to cut down the amount of food you consume. If you can eat a healthier diet instead of comfort food, you can gradually change your metabolism and improve your adrenal and thyroid function. Once your gut lining becomes healthier, you can start introducing green tea and cut back gradually on the weight loss drug. Once you get used to drinking green tea, you can have one or two bags of green tea to stabilize the fluctuation of the blood sugar. You can burn more calories and increase your metabolic level.

Weight loss drug and infertility:

If a woman wants to conceive a healthy baby, she needs to have a healthy gut lining and diet. She has to stop taking the weight loss drug and develop a healthy lifestyle so that she can stop taking the drug and improve her ovarian function. I’ve observed some of my infertility cases—many women have had PCOS and have had to take Metformin or Ozempic to lower their A1C to balance their hormones. One young lady started on a weight loss drug and lost over 100 lbs. When she was ready to use IVF to conceive, she stopped the drug and gained back all her weight within a few months.

Why is Metformin linked with longevity?

Longevity is linked with less inflammation, fewer chances of having cancer or wear and tear. The old saying “eat less and have a longer and healthier life” indicates that if we eat less, our A1C will be optimized and our inflammation will be at the right level to fight infection and clear up the dead tissue. Furthermore, eating less means that you can produce less metabolic waste and help the function of your GI, thyroid, and adrenal glands.