92. You Asked, I Answered: My 10 Most-Asked Weight Loss Questions

In today’s first-ever Q&A episode, Dr. Stacy Heimburger pulls back the curtain and answers the top 10 questions she gets from patients, podcast listeners, and even friends at school pickup. From how she personally lost 90 pounds to managing emotional eating, weight regain, and cravings—this episode is packed with real talk, practical advice, and mindset shifts that will change how you approach weight loss.

She also dives into what it’s really like to lose weight after 40, how to rebuild trust with food, and how to start (or restart) your weight loss journey without feeling overwhelmed. Whether you’re on GLP-1 meds or not, you’ll find answers that apply to your real life.

Come for the strategy, stay for the compassion. This one’s a must-listen.

🔑 What You’ll Learn:

• How Dr. Stacy lost 90 pounds (and why sugar had to go)
• What to do if you gain weight back
• How to know if you're eating enough—or too much
• Why emotional eating isn’t a failure—it’s a signal
• The truth about losing weight after 40
• How to improve your relationship with food and your body
• The exact mindset shift that makes failure irrelevant

Want your question answered next time? Email: support@sugarfreemd.com

Free 2-Pound Plan Call!
Want to jump start your weight loss? Schedule a free call where Dr. Stacy Heimburger will work with you to create a personalized plan to lose 2 pounds in one week, factoring in your unique circumstances, challenges, and aspirations. Schedule now! www.sugarfreemd.com/2pound

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody and welcome back to the podcast or for those of you on YouTube, hello. I am doing a Q and A. We are on episode 92. So I have collected sort of the top 10 questions I get asked. And so I was going to answer them today. So if you don't hear your question answered, make sure you email me at support at sugarfreemd.com and I'll do a second episode if we need it. So let's get started.

First question I get asked a lot is how much weight have I lost and how exactly did I start? So we'll take that as one question. So I have actually lost about 90 pounds. I will be doing a big celebration if I hit 100 pounds. I'm okay where I am right now, but I'll just keep doing all my healthy little things that I do and see what happens. That has taken about three years and there was some...

Regain in the middle that we'll talk about because that is one of the next questions is about what happens if you start gaining weight I can tell you the way that I started was I really Didn't know what to do right? I'm a chronic dieter I have been dieting since I was nine years old My brain was full of so many rules so many different diets even like this awful Bloomingdale diet where you ate just like dry toast I don't know it was

awful, something where you eat a baked potato for breakfast. If you can name a diet, I'm sure I was on it. And so it used to just make me really think about food all of the time. I was always worried about what I was eating, how much of that I was eating, what was going to happen on the scale if I ate that, why did I really want this other food? Was it too much? Not enough. Like it was a mess.

up in my brain here, okay? It was a disaster. So I would say I conservatively estimate that 70 % of my brain power was somehow related to food. Either what I could have, what I couldn't have, what it was going to do, all of it. And it was a really, really unhealthy relationship with food. And I knew I wanted to do something different. I started listening to the coach that ended up training me.

Brooke Castillo from the Life Coach School and she talked about a hunger scale. So talking about just having this narrow window in a hunger scale of one to ten where maybe you go between like four and six, right? We don't let ourselves get too hungry and we don't let ourselves get too full. And I thought that sounded very reasonable, right? Like let's eat when we're hungry and stop when we've had enough. Very, very reasonable logical explanation.

The problem was is that when I started trying to pay attention to my hunger scale, I realized it was totally off. It was wrong. Like I couldn't pay attention because I would fluctuate from feeling extremely hungry to not hungry at all in the span of like five minutes without having done anything different. Like I didn't drink any water. I didn't eat anything and...

I just noticed over a few days that this was how it was, because I was like trying to write it down, be a good little student, Trying to write down my hunger, and it was totally unreliable. It was like a runaway train that made no sense. And I knew that that could not be correct, especially if I was feeling hungry within a couple of hours of eating a pretty substantial meal. just like logically knew that was wrong.

So in trying to learn this hunger scale, I learned that mine was broken. And so then I had to learn what to do about that. That is when I did more research. I think this is about the time I got certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. So I got certified in lifestyle medicine or boarded. And they teach.

about sugar and then I did a deep dive into sugar and found that it can really mess with your hunger hormones. So it can make you feel more hungry, it can actually stimulate ghrelin and make you feel more hungry and it can too much sugar and releases like an insulin, sugar spike will release insulin and insulin will directly block leptin which is our feel-full hormone. So sugar absolutely wrecks your hunger hormones especially

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sort of high spiking sugar. So all those concentrated sweets, anything ground into a powder, right? So it's not necessarily fruit, but other sugar.

I figured, me try that, okay? And let me try for 90 days to give up sugar and just see what happens. See if I can start to trust my hunger. The reason I picked 90 days is because I had done some anti-inflammatory diet work. And when you do those diets, there's something about like your inflammatory markers, 90 days seem to be this like magic number. So I thought, okay, 90 days, I can do this.

My brain was like, there's no food that's not sugar. We don't know what to do. And again, my coach was like, ask better questions. So I asked myself, what if it was easy? What would that look like for me? That is how I started. I'm going to try and give up sugar. Actually, I say I was going to try to. I said, I'm going to give up sugar for 90 days and I want it to be as easy as possible. I'm doing this in an effort to feel less hungry.

and to get back in touch with what my body needs. And so I'm going to have three meals a day that are primarily protein and veggie and healthy fat, and I'm going to try not to snack. So in addition to making this protocol that seemed very reasonable and very easy, I mean, come on, I was like talking about having eggs and bacon every morning for breakfast, never skipping a meal and giving myself very compassionate.

permission to have a snack if I was hungry. So none of that seemed hard. What was hard was kind of letting it go. That fact that I had gotten my weight, like my weight was to a point that I was very unhappy with myself. So I did have to do like some forgiveness of myself because it doesn't really matter why we got to whatever weight we got to, right? Or whatever weight we are now that we want to change. It doesn't matter what happened. We can't change any of it. All that matters is what we do now.

So I kind of let everything go. I made my protocol, three meals a day, try not to snack. I had a plan for snacks that were going to be like protein forward snacks. And then I went from there. And anytime it felt hard, I would ask myself, what would it look like if it were easier?

So that's what I did. And the weight started to come off and that makes it much easier to keep going, right? Momentum catches you working is one of my favorite things. So it was easy to have momentum and to feel motivated because I was seeing results. And all of that started with just asking better questions. What does this look like if it was easy? And then just being very curious.

about like, let's just see if it'll work. Like Lord knows I've tried every other diet on the planet. Let me just see what happens if I give up sugar. And then it started to work. So that was how that happened. How can I stay consistent when life gets busy? All right, well, if you listened to last week's episode, I go over this with our phone it in Monday plan.

The fact is life is going to get busy. And so if you are trying to follow a plan that does not take into account that life is going to throw you a curve ball, probably very often, then it's not the right plan. So whatever plan you're trying to follow, it needs to have room for life to go wrong because like best laid plans get messed up constantly. So I teach a lot about

having backup plans and backup plans to the backup plans. And then these like emergency safety nets, like where can I get some grab and go food if everything turns just to crap, right? What can I do? Where can I go? How can I recover and stay on my plan no matter what's happening? So I would say one of the keys to stay on track when life gets busy is to anticipate that life is going to be busy because that's the lives we lead. It's going to be busy.

and what safety nets can I put in place ahead of time to take care of me on a day that I'm going to be super stressed. So whether that's planning my meals ahead, putting something in the freezer, knowing where I can stop and grab something, or even the Monday morning phone it in plan, I need to have those things ready.

Next question, what do I do if I gain weight back after losing it? First of all, let me say that is normal, right? Sometimes it just happens. There's a season for everything. And sometimes things happen that are out of our control. Sometimes despite the new tools we have in our toolbox of how to respond to big emotions without eating, sometimes it's too much. And like our brain hits the easy button and we eat.

After my hip surgery, I did start to gain some weight back. was like, there was a lot of cortisol happening. I had to do a lot of brain dumps or thought downloads, whatever you want to call them. And it turned out I was just in a lot of pain. And then I was having a lot of negative self-talk about being a weight loss coach that was gaining weight. So I had to let go of all of those things. In addition to like, maybe I wasn't moving as much because I couldn't walk for a few weeks. So.

I would say if you're gaining weight, the first thing we need to do is forgive and like whatever happened happened. Take an honest look at what you're doing now compared to what you were doing. So that's why I love a good food diary. We're like, what am I doing now? And am I really like, did I stop writing stuff down? Did I stop planning ahead? Did I stop meal prepping? There is maybe something that we've been doing differently.

Or is it a cortisol problem? I've been super stressed out, I had major surgery, whatever it is, and then how can I take care of myself and lower my cortisol and sort of get back in the groove? So we want to go back to basics, which is water, sleep, and planning our food, okay? And just forgiveness and compassion. So that will probably help get you restarted.

Remember the first part of stopping weight gain is to stop weight gain, right? So if the scale doesn't move, like that's a win, right? We want to stop gaining first, then we can start losing again. So don't discount the scale stopping. That's a huge, huge turn, okay? Cause we're going from gaining to staying steady. And every time we can stay steady, I always just say like, look, I'm learning how to do maintenance.

right now, like this is how I'm going to maintain my weight. Look at what's going on. So stopping the weight gain, maintaining, and then starting to lose. And just again, going back to basics where we want to be writing things down, we want to be making a meal plan, we want to be really taking good care of ourselves in all the lifestyle part of weight loss, which is sleep, movement, water, okay?

How do I manage my stress-related cravings? This is a great question. I coach on this a lot, and I think this is where the lifestyle change, like this is one of the pillars, is this emotional resilience, this stress management. Lots of times this can be like, do some yoga. don't, yes, yoga's amazing, love yoga, but when I'm talking about sort of curing our stress cravings, it's number one.

Just being aware, which is a huge, huge step. So again, don't discount that. If you realize, my gosh, I'm eating and it's because of stress or this other emotion, like you're almost halfway there. So we need to identify like the reason I want food is not hunger, number one. Then what was the scenario? Like, can I write it down? Can I do a brain dump? Can I call a friend and like verbally process and see what happened? What sort of triggered me?

And what is my body really asking for? Is my body asking for understanding? Like is verbally processing with a friend enough? Does it need rest? Does it need just like a chill transition period before I go home, right? What does it need? So I actually counsel a lot of my clients to maybe come home in silence from work, especially if they're coming home and there's like kids and dinner and everything else, sort of second shift work we like to call it.

Maybe just being in silence and really being mindful and like taking in the scenery and consciously making a decision to calm your nervous system on the way home. Because maybe you're just overstimulated, right? And you're a little frazzled and you just eat to take the edge off of those frazzled feelings. But what if we could preemptively do that for ourselves in a different way that has nothing to do with food? So we want to identify.

that that's what's happening. Excellent job if you're already there. Next we want to see sort of what our trigger was and then three, what's my body asking for? Can I give it what it needs in a different way? So sort of if I had to do this day over again, what could I do differently to stop myself from being over the edge by the time I get home and want to stress eat?

How do I know if I'm eating enough? So this is, or how do I know if I'm eating too much or my portion's too big? So this comes in a variety of ways, this question. And the short answer is, I don't know, only you know, right? And that's a terrible answer, I'm sure. But what it really means is that you just need to experiment with your portion sizes because every day might be a little bit different. Your body needs what it needs and it definitely does not need more than it needs. Otherwise we start.

storing that as fat, right? We start putting that extra fuel in the freezer for later. But the only way to know is to start experimenting. And so I love doing the half plate rule where we dish out our meal and then we actually get two plates, right? So we dish onto one plate where we think our portion should be. We take half of that and put it on the next plate. Always telling our brain, I can eat the rest of this if I need it.

Right? A lot of us can get triggered into like a little bit of overeating or binge eating if we feel too restricted. So we want to like make sure we tell our brain, I can eat all of this, but I'm going to start with half and see how I feel. So we eat half, we drink some water, we wait about 10, 15 minutes. If we're still hungry, not a problem, eat half again. Right? So take that second plate, take half of that, put it on my first plate and I eat that and I do the same thing again. And just start experimenting.

with your volume of food. We want to make sure that we do not get to a point where we are feeling overstuffed when we are done eating. We want to feel satiated. We want to feel like we could still go for a walk. Maybe not for a run, but we want to be able to go for a walk after dinner without feeling like that over bloated, like, oh my gosh, I need to go for a walk or I'm going to die. Right? There's a difference there. So we want to...

feel like we could still go out and do something. We could still go out and be social. We could go for a walk. We could still walk and talk, right? And that's a good amount to be full. Now, again, if you feel like you're going to be triggered, like that's not enough food, we can always save that whatever's left. Put it in the fridge, tell our brain, like, I'm going to go do this other thing, and if I'm still hungry in 30 minutes, in 45 minutes, I will come back and eat the rest of that. So I think the short answer is we have to experiment.

And just know that it's going to take a minute to figure out what our volume is and that can continue to change so you might have to do this, you know every three months every six months right and see am I still eating the right amount of food? It's a great thing to do if you're really following your protocol and it kind of hit a stall Which would be like a month of nothing changing despite Following your actual protocol. That's where we need to switch something up. So maybe it's portion. Maybe it's

something else in our protocol, more veggies needed, something like that. So experimenting with portion size, that's a great time to do it, is you kind of hit a plateau.

Why is it hard to lose weight after 40? So I actually am menopause certified and testosterone does decline from 20 to 40. It's not necessarily because of menopause or perimenopause. That area around, you know, that can take 10 years, perimenopause, our hormones are all over the place.

Sometimes our estrogen is too high, sometimes it's too low, right? And our whole system is trying to recalibrate now that we're done having kids, it doesn't know what to do with itself, is a very simplified answer to what's happening with our hormones around perimenopause. As far as our body composition and our ability to lose weight, our body composition does change. So our fat starts to change its deposition points.

There is some research that says if we balance our hormones, if we get on hormone therapy, if appropriate, we can prevent them. But the really the answer is we have to optimize our nutrition and we have to optimize our muscle mass. So the more muscle we can keep into the oldest age that we can, the easier it's going to be to lose weight and maintain weight and just.

be healthy and prevent falls and all those things as we get older to really maximize our longevity and being healthy, right? It does no good to live to 90 if we're like not healthy doing it. So it can be a little bit harder to lose weight. Lots of times we have to, because we're losing muscle mass and muscle is more metabolically active than fat. So focusing on putting that muscle back on.

getting on hormone therapy if appropriate, find a menopause practitioner or start with your OBGYN or go on the Menopause Society website and look for a certified menopause person who's taken the test and knows the stuff and can help you if that's something that you want to explore. But really like optimizing your nutrition and optimizing your exercise, your muscle building.

that are those are the keys to being able to really lose weight, maintain weight as we get older. The fat deposition again like if hormone therapy is appropriate for you that can help there which will make it feel like you're losing weight maybe we just want things to stay where they are right. Gravity doesn't always agree but that is what we would like. Next question, what about fear of failing?

I hear this a lot and let me just say this, as long as you are working, you are not failing, right? The only time we fail is if we quit. So changing that mindset from I might fail to just this really curiosity like a science experiment, like I'm just going to keep going to figure out what works for me. I have all this information that I've been given, right? Again, if you've been dieting for years, we have too much information.

So we take that information, we synthesize it into what we need, and then find out what works for us. Everyone is a little bit different, so what works for me is not necessarily going to work for you, it's not going to work for the next person. So as long as we're experimenting and trying new things, we are not failing. We just haven't reached the end yet, and that's okay.

How can I get started without feeling overwhelmed? Easy, breezy, small, small steps. And the first thing to do is to figure out where you are now. So if you have not written down what you've been eating, right, if you do not keep a food diary, step one, start there. Just write down what you're eating, right? We can't make goals and make changes without knowing where we're starting. So figure out what your starting point is.

Okay, just write down what's going on for you. How much am I exercising? How much am I eating? what am I eating? And I'm not saying like one cup of green beans, right? Just like chicken and green beans, right? We just get an idea of what you're putting in your mouth and track all of it. Write it all down. Be honest with yourself. We need an honest assessment of where we are. And then we make small, small, small, small, small steps to get where we want to go. So we can set a goal and work our way there.

I know I've got episodes on goal setting. You can always call and get a two pound plan call with me and we can set it up and I can help you with your goal setting. But none of that works without knowing where we are. And we want to do like the least effective dose. So we just want to start with something small and be curious and see what happens. Right? I actually think going sugar free was not that big. And you might think it's really big, but it really was one small change.

because I didn't restrict food any other place. I let myself eat, like I was like, I'm eat three times a day and snack if I need it, right? So I was giving myself more food than I was probably eating before, because I was always in this restrict mentality. And so it was just one thing. I was just doing one thing. I'm going to give up sugar and see what happens. So we make one change and we go in with curiosity and compassion. And if we mess up, it's okay.

and then we see what happens and then we make another small change and we just go from there.

Can I lose weight without giving up foods I love? I think so. I will say this, the first 90 days, if you really like, or like, can't do it, I have to have sugar, that's not a big deal. Just pick something else to start with. If you're like, I want to try giving up sugar, but I want these favorite foods later in my life, okay, cool, let's do that. I'm just saying like, let's get to a point where we...

are in control of food or feel in control of food as opposed to food feeling like it's controlling us, right? Which is where I was when I was like, had all this sugar thing going on. I didn't feel in control of my food. Now that I feel more in control of my food, I can absolutely have all of my favorite foods because I trust myself around them. So let's build trust with ourselves around our food, doing some of these other changes that I talk about.

And then absolutely, let's eat it. But when we eat it, we're going to plan for it so that we can mindfully, with permission from our wiser self, really sit and mindfully enjoy it and take it in. Like, yes, I'm having this thing and I enjoy it. And it's not dirty or secret or I'm not stealing it, I'm not hiding in the closet, right? I'm having this thing that's special to me, this is why I decided to have it, like really thought out and mindful. And then we can absolutely still lose weight and have all the things we love.

How can I improve my relationship with my body? All right, I just literally just coached on this today. Before I did this podcast, our body needs us to talk nice to it. Okay, so when we look in the mirror and say things negative about our body, and let's be honest, ladies, we usually say the most horrible things about our body, like that's disgusting, right? Calling your body disgusting?

is not a good place to start a healthy relationship. So the first thing we want to do is get a little more neutral, right? We just have a human body. There is no perfect body. Because what society in the United States tells us is perfect changes every 10 years. It's not the same for every country. There's changes every 10 years. So this idea that there's one perfect is just ridiculous. It's not true. I just disproved it. Okay. So the fact of the matter is there are

Millions of bodies and they're all fine. Okay, so you are a human being with a human body and you need to at least be able to tell yourself that when you look in the mirror very neutral not negative not positive but neutral It will make a world of difference The next step to changing your relationship with your body is to find one thing about your body that you like All right, maybe it's I don't know

Anything you want it to be maybe it's your waist. Maybe it's your eyes. Maybe it's your hair Maybe it's your boobs. Maybe it's your butt I don't know pick a thing when you can look in the mirror and go from like oh, I have a human body It's like whatever and then you can be like, oh, but this thing I mean, it's all right, right? That's what we want. We want that it's okay Like all right my boobs like they're not where they used to be but they're all right Okay, just that small switch is going to dramatically change your relationship with your body

Being able to acknowledge one good thing about your body will change everything. It'll change the way you dress, it'll change the way you interact with people, it'll change how you hold yourself in public, it will change your confidence level because your thoughts will go to like, all right there, I'm all right, right? Which is much better than like, I'm disgusting. Okay, so.

First we go to neutral, you have a human body, apologize for nothing, right? There are millions of different bodies and you're allowed to have one, okay? So if you're human and you have a human body, perfect, okay? Then step two, find just one nice part of your body to compliment. And the compliment can be as small as like, it's okay, I mean, it's all right.

It's not what it used to be, but it's hanging in, right? Okay, so just, it doesn't have to be like, my God, I'm in love with this part of my body. It's amazing. Although if you can get there, better for you. I love that for you. But if we can just get to like, it's okay. Like I'm got a little something something. Okay, so if we can get there, it will literally change everything about your relationship with your body.

how you feel about your body, how you show off your body, how you dress your body, how you present yourself in a room to other people. So it's a huge, huge, huge, huge step. We'll change everything. And it's a very, very small thought change. It's not that big of a change from like, I have a human body to like, right, well, there's still a little something working. Okay. It's not, it's not a love letter by any stretch, but it's going to change everything about your relationship with your body.

All right, those were, let me make sure, yep, those were my top 10 questions. So this was our first Q &A. Waited until episode 92 to do it, I don't know why, but there you have it. If you have other questions that were not answered, please hit me up on Instagram, hit me up, email me, support at sugarfreeMD.com, like and subscribe to the new YouTube channel if you're watching on there.

rate and review the podcast and share with a friend if you don't mind. Until then, I'll see you next week. Bye.