The importance of body composition over weight loss. Explains why weight is not an accurate measure of health and shares insights on maintaining muscle while losing fat. Lifestyle changes, quality of life, and upcoming content on his YouTube channel and Pillars of Wellness website, including recipes, product reviews, and webinars on nutrition and physiology.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:08 – Weight loss

02:41 – The percentage of body fat

03:21 – Quality of life

04:58 – Do you got to quit or do you want to quit?

06:07 – Make you lose weight or make you lose fat

07:50 – The keto stuff

09:41 – The bagels

11:09 – How the body actually works

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So one of the questions I got was, how well and how often I work on weight loss. That’s actually not one of the things I do. Weight loss is very often something that happens because of what we do. More often than not, it is a fat loss, not weight loss. But it’s not it’s not something I, I don’t like to work on my office. Specifically, I don’t want to. We can’t work on the weight loss because, I think weight is a terrible measure. For anything, it’s not as bad as BMI, but it’s a terrible measure of health. Because if you gain a pound of muscle and lose a pound of fat, you’ve lost zero fat. You lost zero muscle, zero weight. Sorry. But you’ve gradually, substantially increased your health. And so it ended up happening. A lot of times people will lose 10 or 15, 20 pounds of fat gain ten, 15 pounds of muscle. So the negative weight and so that the scale shows they lost 5 pounds. However, they look totally different. They feel totally different. Their health is in a radically different place. They’ve got to buy all new clothes. And when I was working with weight loss, we would we would see those changes and people, mostly women, but people would come in and say, I haven’t lost any weight. I don’t feel like I’ve been successful because their goal is put on the scale.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:25] So anybody who’s been tracking what I’ve been doing, you can go back and you can look from day one till now. You know, you can see that I’ve leaned out quite a bit. I have not lost a single pound yet. Still the exact same way. I hover between 231 and 235. That’s where I’ve been since we’ve started this. Where was it almost 30 days ago? Because I’m still in a in a manner of build. Because if I can say at 230, I can cut down to my weight for stage, it’s not that hard. So that’s been my goal. Maintain the muscle, lose the fat, stay in that 228 to 233 range. That’s my goal. So the only reason I’m weighing is because I have something. I have a weight class I have to meet in on June 1st. So I’m trying to manage that. Weight is by far the worst way to ascertain and measure and track health. The way that I do it is with Dexa scans. So it’s much more important to me what you’re what your body composition is than what your weight is.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:32] So when we send somebody in for a Dexa so they weigh 200 pounds, and three months later we send them for another dexa and they still weigh 200 pounds. However, the percentage of body fat has gone from 16 to 10. That’s a really, really good change. So 6% of that entire person’s body was fat. So the way to that person’s body. So let’s make that easier. Let’s make it 5%. So 5% of 200 is 10 pounds. So they’ve lost 10 pounds of only fat, but they put on 10 pounds of muscle. So what ends up happening is that the scale doesn’t change at all. But again, they look, totally different. They feel totally different in their health is radically different. So that’s what I like to work on. Is body composition change, health, wellness. Because what I’m trying to do is create the highest quality of life for the longest period of time. That’s all that I my focus is on this quality of life.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:29] Because here’s the thing. At the end of the day, if you if you make a plan where you’re going to quit smoking and quit drinking and quit eating all the food you like, and you’re going to exercise more than you want to every day, and you’re going to sleep eight hours even though you don’t want to. And you’re going to do all these things, and you create this life that’s going to make you live longer, but you’re going to hate it. Why would you do that? You don’t get. It’s not like you’re not well. If you make these changes, you will live forever. All these people who are saying, well, I’ve made these changes and that means I’m going to live to 183 years old. Okay. Doubt it. But. All right.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:02] I have no idea where they’re getting this this concept that if they, you know, manage this, take this supplement, do these things are going to be 183. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re gonna be 103. And that’s fantastic. I don’t care. Like I told this people all the time. And I need people understand this is where I’m coming from. It’s my philosophy. I’d rather die at 75, falling off a mountain than climbing, then die at 80, drooling on my pillow. The nursing home. Right. So the guy who’s drooling on his pillow for the past, the last 7 or 8 years of his life, he’s still alive. So he gets to tell everybody I live to 90. Great. How? What was the quality of your life if you were asleep for 12 hours a day? Halfway. You know, your your mind was gone. So you weren’t cognizant for 10 or 12 of them and you having to wipe your butt. Take me out. I’m not. I don’t need to be there anymore. So it’s all about quality of life.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:53] So, like, people will come in and they tell me all the time, I got to quit smoking. I always go, do you got to quit or do you want to quit? Because if you got to quit, you’re not gonna. If you want to quit. I can help you. You will. But if you got to quit, that means that someone else is forcing you. Or someone or something is forcing you to quit. But you don’t really want to. So with that guy, will you be like, what? Don’t smoke the whole pack. Smoke 4 or 5. Enjoy the hell that. 4 or 5. Maybe we change you from, like, Marlboro to American spirit has less chemicals in it, but we buffer the change. And so you still get to have your cigars. You still get to have your hands. You still have your cigaret. It’s okay to have your bourbon, whatever it is, but your quality of life stays high and your function stays high longer. That’s that’s what that’s what it means to me. So do you have to quit drinking and smoking if you want to? It makes it easier. What if that makes you think? Gives your life a lot of pleasure. Don’t.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:45] Now, you can obviously take this to the Instagram. You’re like, well, then can I keep smoking crack and doing cocaine now? Hunter I can’t that’s I there’s certain things that we can’t work into your lifestyle and make you still healthy. However, there’s a lot of things we can’t. So that’s that’s the the question I’ve been getting over and over again. And, you know, I there’s things I can do that will make you lose weight or make you lose fat. But that’s not the. That’s not what I’m trying to do. That’s something. Lots of times people come to me with a very short window. You know, I have a roll. I’m trying to get at this thing. I’m trying to get. I need to lose 20, 30 pounds in the next two, three months. All right, we can do that. And they usually will stay with me to maintain their health and function after that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:28] Usually we do that for actresses or actors who are trying to get roles or, you know, guys, we’re trying to cut for specific things. One of the one of the ones we do a lot. And again, this isn’t weight focus, but we get a lot of guys in who the wife died, they were surprised by a divorce or she’s cheating on him or. And it’s worse for women since, you know, it’s just the last 4 or 5 of her old men, and they’re like, look, I got to get back in the game. I gotta get I gotta look better, I gotta feel better. I have more energy because I’m about to be, you know, single dad and I got to go out and do this. And for a single mom, I got into the sex. And then I have a lot of guys who come in and go. I need to be better for my wife or my kids. So that’s typically what we’re saying. But that’s that’s where that one goes.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:17] I made some comments about castor packs and coffee enemas. The videos are on YouTube. Just go to my YouTube channel, Dr. Chalmers1, one to the vast for my social. I’m trying to make all my social doctor Chalmers and the number one. So if you’re on any socials, TikTok, X, whatever it is, just look up Doctor Chalmer, the number one. That’s right. So check out the YouTube. They’re on there. They should be on the Pillars of Wellness website. If they’re not, I’ll make sure they get on there. So all of the things that we’re doing, all of the reviews on food, all the recipes we’re going to be having, my wife’s concert, you know, making a bunch of the keto stuff we met. She’s going to be recording how she does that. We’re gonna be posting all the recipes. A lot of the recipes we get from books, we get from online, we get from friends we’re going to be what are we making sure we give credit to everybody.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:01] What’ll happen is if we get out of the like, for instance, the ultimate keto bacon guy. Just phenomenal books. You’re looking for books. So we’ll we’ll take the recipe from there and we’ll tweak it. And so what we’re doing is saying, this is where we got the recipe. Here was the original recipe. And then next you’ll be like, here’s the tweaks we made. Like some of the things we like a little bit sweeter. And so we’ll add in extra whatever the sweetener is. I prefer monk fruit and erythritol, but if we’re going use Ali loaves, or we use whatever, well, we’ll put that in there. Some of the stuff we will do, we do with have crust. So, for instance, I talked about the pecan pie I eat all the time. And the cheesecake I eat all the time. The crust holds a tremendous amount of fat. And not a whole lot of fiber. And so what we’ll end up doing is we’ll make we’ll make it without the crust.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:50] And just to just to change the macro function a little bit. And so we will explain how to do that and why we do that and stuff like that in the videos and that sort of stuff. So if you’re looking for recipes, those are coming. If you’re looking for how to do castor packs and stuff like that, it’s all going to be at Pillars of Wellness dot com. We’re going to start shifting everything over to Pillars of Wellness here a little bit, because that’s just it’s just structure a little bit better for everything. So you guys check out pillars of wellness dot com. All the same socials. We’re all going to say where they’re at. Doctor Chalmers one. But all the stuff that my wife and I are going to be doing, all those videos, all the reviews, on all the food are going to go there. So and I will tell you that when I first I was first excited about all the reviews we’re doing. So like I get all these chocolates and candies and cookies and this would be awesome.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:35] So far we’ve been the reviews are come in and, everything we’ve gotten is kind of been like, the bagels were great, though, I will tell you, the plain bagels were great. The bread was great. The everything bagel I wish was a little bit more. Everything. I know, but you can fix that. You can just toss you, put cream cheese on it, tussle everything, seasoning on top of it. You’re good to go. So, so those are going to start rolling out in about two weeks. So we’ll have a bunch of those different chocolates and stuff like that. And one of the things is that if you guys decide, hey, where are things that you guys like, the way you guys taste things is the same as your taste. So my taste and your taste are equal. Then it’ll be a lot easier and I can save you guys some money because some of the things online were terrible. Like, not just like they looked really good. I was really excited about them. You eat them like my kids, eat some of the cookies and spit them out.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:26] So you know that it kind of tells you where those things are. So maybe we can save you guys some money. After you guys try some stuff. I didn’t like it. You didn’t like it either. I just. You said you liked it, and you’re like, all right, our tastes are similar. Then you can just be like, okay, the things that you guys like. I’ll try those first. So we can go through any of those. The desserts though, if you make, if you’re willing to make them at home. And this diet’s awesome. I mean, like, literally, I, I, I had so much taking pie last night and pizza that I was uncomfortable this morning, so. And I’m losing fat. So now there’s a whole play in that how it works. And people have been asking, you know, for walks, insurance like that. So we’re going to start making webinars as well. I’m going to do a webinar on how the body actually works.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:10] So the glucose fat system, the keto system, or the fat oxidizing system. We’ll walk through both of those so everybody understands how they work and how they can best utilize them for themselves. Because not everybody needs to be doing keto. Not everybody can do keto. Not everybody should be doing a glucose fat diet. And some people have to. So as we go through it, I’ll explain how it works, the whole chemistry of it, and then I’ll explain how you choose to get into that state and how you do it. So, because I oftentimes give more information than people want, I’m going to see the same video. We have a really short. This is how you do it. And then the really long chemistry version of this is why. And this is how all these things work. And here’s all the supplementation I take to fix the chemical pathways that are in there.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:54] So we’re going to do a short a long version of in the same webinar. So you can go really deep because you get even if you nerd out on this stuff. But if you’re just like, just give me the bullet points. That’ll be the first part of the video. So, those are coming in the next two, three weeks. I hope to have enough by, the beginning of May, end of April, beginning back. So we’ll see what those guys are at. But keep the questions coming. They’re great. A lot of my just answer back, because you guys have to be very specific questions about, like, your blood pressure. That’s where we go that if you guys are looking for supplementation to just really help with blood pressure. Kidney complex. Allison. Those are gonna be some of the best ones. I don’t know why. I don’t know why. Instagram pauses me all the time, but it does. Anyway, so, thanks for your time. If you guys have any more questions, room or questions at Children’s Walmart.com. Thanks for your time.

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