From The Heart #1: Gaining Health Instead of Losing Weight

Have you ever considered that your weight loss approach might be fundamentally flawed? 

After a powerful conversation with a patient who experienced a breakthrough in her health journey, I felt compelled to share this insight during my lunch break, sometimes the most profound wisdom comes from the simplest shift in perspective.

Rather than obsessing over losing weight, this patient focused on gaining health. This subtle but revolutionary mindset shift transforms the entire approach to wellness. While many reduce weight management to "eat less, move more," the reality is infinitely more complex. Our modern environment constantly bombards us with processed food options and triggers that create a biological mismatch, making sustainable weight management increasingly challenging.

What many don't realize is how deeply interconnected our lifestyle factors truly are. 

Sleep deprivation alone can add 300 excess calories to your daily intake by disrupting hunger hormones and insulin sensitivity. Stress management directly impacts cortisol levels, which affect everything from sleep quality to food cravings. Exercise benefits extend far beyond calorie burning, enhancing mental clarity, building psychological resilience, and often leading to naturally better food choices. 

The path forward isn't about restrictive diets or temporary fixes. It's about consistently prioritizing whole foods, quality sleep, stress management, physical activity, and meaningful connections. 

By focusing on gaining health through these interconnected lifestyle pillars, weight management becomes a natural byproduct rather than an elusive goal. 

What health-promoting habits have made the biggest difference in your life? 

Share your experiences and join our community as we work together toward sustainable wellness approaches that actually work.

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

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Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules

Chapters

• 0:00 Section A

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo Plant-Based Buddies, welcome to a new segment of the show that I'm going to call From the Heart. Now, these bonus episodes are different no script, no plan, just me speaking openly and honestly about lessons and stories that come from real conversations, with real patience. It's raw and polished and honest, but packed with insights that matter. But packed with insights that matter. Most of the time, I simply open my phone camera, record a video and this is the audio of these conversations. So, if you're ready for something a little bit more spontaneous, this is from the heart, unplanned, unscripted, but straight to the point. Yo Plant Based Buddies.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Pardon the possible echo in my voice, I forgot my mic this morning but after an inspiring conversation with one of my patients, I wanted to come here and talk about it. So it's my lunch break and I just had a conversation with a patient that has had like an aha moment because of her weight loss journey that she's now on and it's quite inspiring, so I wanted to talk about it here. So this patient says that and it was in French, so pardon my translation, but my summary is that instead of focusing on losing weight, she is trying to gain health. Now that is very similar to something I've already spoken about, where I tell my patients to not focus on the weight they lose, but on the life that they're going to gain. Losing weight is hard when your environment and your biology are not aligned. Everything we do. Every street corner there's a restaurant with ultra-processed foods. All around us, we have infinite numbers of cues that are wanting us to over-consume hyper-palatable food, and very often, this mismatch between our environment and these food cues and food noise that people have can, unfortunately, lead to overconsumption of calories. Focusing on the life I'm going to gain when I lose weight, that's typically much more sustainable than trying fads or trends or diets or whatever hacks that the online communities try to sell. Now, that also typically means that this new life has to become a lifestyle. It has to become daily, small habits, small incremental changes that lead you down a path that gets you closer towards your goal. That means that you need to have a lot of patience and you just need to trust the process, which is very difficult. We live in 2025 era of having whatever you want very, very quickly. So this process of waiting and of patience is one that we don't see that often, and of patients is one that we don't see that often For a lot of people, a sustainable health gaining journey or weight loss journey means that prioritizing these six lifestyle pillars is going to be a must Right Now.

Speaker 1: 4:24

I do understand that most people just simply see losing weight as eat less and move more and get into a calorie deficit, but the truth is there are a million different factors that are much more complex than eat less, move more. For example, did you know that people who simply are sleep deprived less than six hours per night have a resulting increase in insulin resistance and increases in hormones like ghrelin that promote hunger and a decrease in leptin that promotes fullness or satiety? A decrease in leptin that promotes fullness or satiety. Sleep absolutely impacts the amount of calories that you eat the next day. It impacts mental health, mental clarity, and people tend to make poorer food choices when they are sleep deprived food choices when they are sleep deprived. One study showed that up to 300 excess calories are consumed by people who sleep less than six hours per night.

Speaker 1: 5:38

So part of a weight loss journey or a health gaining journey must absolutely focus on getting good quality sleep, of good quantity, at least seven to nine hours, but also of good quality, and good quality sleep means that to have good quality sleep and to progress normally towards different stages of sleep, your stress hormones need to be down. That means your cortisol needs to be down, your melatonin needs to be up, and these things do respond to lifestyle changes and lifestyle choices so that you can better align your circadian rhythm with your actual biology. Now you already know melatonin is not a hormone that makes you sleep, it's a hormone that primes your body for sleep. So that means that your melatonin, when it's high, your body receives the cues that it needs to have proper sleep. But melatonin, it goes down when you're exposed to light. So that means that after supper you're one to two hours before bed.

Speaker 1: 6:58

You should dim the lights, you should consider minimizing screen time, you should consider not eating, because we know that there are interactions between insulin and between melatonin. We also know that cortisol, the stress hormone, needs to be down. So that maybe means journaling for some people. Meditation maybe is white noise, Making sure that you're not taking all of the stress of the day and then you distract yourself with unhealthy habits and then, when time comes to sleep, these stressors resurface. So you see that getting on a health gaining journey is much more than just not eating as many calories. You need to have all of the foundational lifestyle pillars in check so that you can pave the way to actually be compliant to all these things that you want to change. If you're not sleeping well, everything else is going to be more difficult, including food choices, and that's really backed in the scientific literature.

Speaker 2: 8:14

And after that well.

Speaker 1: 8:16

If you're not sleeping well, not only do you make poor food choices, people tend to be more sedentary the next day, next day. Exercising is a big part of a lifestyle journey, not just in terms of burning calories and losing weight, but mostly in terms of having good mental health, less brain fog, more physical and psychological resilience and endurance, and people who exercise make better food choices. Now, all of these lifestyle pillars sleep, stress, food, exercise, social connections they're all completely intertwined completely intertwined. So saying to someone the key to weight loss is eat less, move more misses a lot of nuance that people need to understand. Your body exists as a whole and what you do in one lifestyle pillar will absolutely impact the other ones will absolutely impact the other ones.

Speaker 1: 9:28

So this patient that says no-transcript is getting things right. She's making better choices with her nutrition, basically including more fiber-rich foods and reducing foods that are ultra processed and rich in saturated fats. So naturally and instinctively just eating less processed foods, more fiber-rich foods and foods that are less high in saturated fat that naturally and by default puts you on a diet that's typically plant-forward, meaning that you're eating more whole foods, more whole plants and the proteins or animal products that she's now including in her diet are definitely ones that are healthier than the ones she was eating before. So it's not about going plant-based, and I always say right here you do not need to run marathons to be healthy or to be fit and you do not need to eat a 100% plant-based diet if that's not what you want to do and to be healthy. You can be healthy if you eat mostly whole foods most of the time over long term, while also prioritizing the other lifestyle pillars, because they are all 100% interconnected. If you sleep better, you eat better, you're more inclined to exercise, your stress levels will be lower, you'll make better choices all around. So if you are one of these people struggling with weight I know it's always easier said than done, but focus on gaining health and focus on the life, the new things you're going to be able to do, instead of just restricting food groups or focusing on the scale.

Speaker 1: 11:49

So I still have a lot to learn. I'm learning every day about my patients, because I've been very privileged in my life. I've not had to deal with being overweight or obese. I hear my patients talking about food noise. I'm very, very lucky to not be one of them that suffers from all this food noise. But I do know that food noise goes down when you're active, when you manage stress, when you sleep well and when you eat whole foods. So as much as possible, try to prioritize these lifestyle medicine pillars and hopefully they'll support your health gaining journey. Cool, let me know what you think I really love the community here. What you think I really love the community here can learn so much from everyone's experiences, so don't hesitate to drop a comment and just let me know what you think and what you've been through and what has worked and not worked for you. Cool hey everyone.

Speaker 2: 13:04

Go check out my website plantbaseddoctorjulescom to find free downloadable resources, and remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr Jules Cormier, and on YouTube at Plant-Based Dr Jules.