Natural Ozempic
9 ways to boost your body's GLP1 production
Today we’re talking GLP1, the hormone that makes us feel full, which folks are injecting for weight loss under the names Ozempic and Wegovy. We don’t really need to inject ourselves with this hormone, though. Our bodies make GLP1 all by themselves.
To which, I hear you all grumbling, “Oh, yeah? Then why don’t I ever feel full?”
According to Dr. Michael Greger in his new book, Ozempic, it’s because most of the cells that produce the hormone GLP1 are quite far down the intestinal tract. When our food content reaches them, they are signaled that we are full. However, most of the content of ultra-processed foods and animal-based foods are absorbed far higher in the tract. The key difference in this case is the fiber content. Foods with fiber don’t fully digest, they’re just along for the ride, and they are still intact as they move through, and they signal those cells that we’re full. Meat and dairy do not have fiber, nor do most traditional processed foods. In fact, the fiber has been stripped way from foods like white rice, white sugar, white flour, and most of the cereals, snacks and breads and things you see in the market.
Foods with fibers are, as you probably know, whole fruits, whole vegetables, and whole grains.
I wanted to share my key takeaways from Dr. Greger’s book, Ozempic with you. This is all good stuff to know
Ozempic: Key Takeaways
On average taking a GLP1 injection weekly will result in a loss of about 15% of your body weight. After a year, no more weight comes off. You’ll need to continue the weekly injections for life, though, to maintain that first year’s loss.
As a rule, these drugs take you from obese to less obese, or from obese to overweight. 15% is not much if you weigh a lot, but it can be a lot if you weigh a little. It’s all relative.
If you weigh 150 it would be more than 22.5 pounds, taking you down to 127.5. That is about two sizes, from a 10 to a 6 perhaps, and maybe down from overweight to normal weight. That does seem significant, but you have to stay on the weekly injections for life to stay there.
However, if you weigh 300 lbs, it would equal a loss of 45 pounds, dropping you to 255, which is still obese. Plus you have to be on the med forever or the pounds come back.
Now, as Dr. Greger points out, excess fat is so bad for us that we could take a drug that would cut years off our lives and it would still be an improvement over keeping the fat. He estimates losing 15% of one’s weight could add 6 or 7 years to their lifespan, so that’s certainly worth consideration.
A Few More Things to Consider
Muscle Loss
On any diet or even after bariatric surgery, about 25% of the weight we lose will be lean muscle mass. But on a GLP1 injection, 40% of the weight loss is muscle.
Now consider what most of us do. We lose, we gain a bit back, we lose again, and it’s a cycle. However, what we gain back is seldom muscle. It’s fat. The muscle doesn’t return (unless we’re weight lifting and let’s face it, we’re not.) So our fat-to-muscle ratio becomes worse and worse each time we lose, then regain, then lose. We lose more muscle each time, and gain back less muscle and more fat every time.
Those using GLP1 agonists are told they must add resistance training and weight-bearing exercise to their daily routines to mitigate the muscle loss. However, you can’t really exercise your face.
Side Effects
About half of those prescribed these drugs only stay on them for six weeks. 80% quit within six months. The reason is that they feel sick to their stomachs when they take it. Really sick. Just miserable nausea and vomiting. Very rarely, the meds can cause an intestinal blockage requiring surgery.
Worth the Risk?
I don’t know how to answer this question. If I can do something in a way that has zero risk, or do the same thing in a way that has serious risk, how can the risky way ever be “worth the risk?”
But wait, I didn’t tell you the risk-free way to boost your body’s natural GLP1 production yet! (It’s exactly what you think it is. I know. I rolled my eyes, too.)
That said, losing 15% of your weight (if you’re overweight or obese) can add 5 to 7 years to your life. So that’s beneficial however you do it. It’s just that I know you can do that without the injections.
You’ll lose MORE weight, gain MORE health benefits, add MORE years to your life with ZERO risk with a whole food, all-plant diet.
Boost GLP1 Naturally
Eating our food more slowly has been clinically shown to boost GLP1 production. There are spiritual reasons to do this too, as it increases our appreciation of our meals. Try to gradually develop the habit of savoring every bite and interspersing meals with conversation to make them last even longer.
Personally, I tend to wolf my food as if I’m afraid someone will snatch my plate away before I’ve finished. This is a whole new notion to me. I intend to really work on this.
Sidebar: Isn’t it cool how there’s always a way to do a little bit better? This is an evolution, not a once & done kind of thing.Likewise, eating our food whole, rather than pureed or juiced, has been clinically shown to produce a higher GLP1 reaction. That makes sense, as the mashing of the food starts the breakdown of the fiber, which needs to stay mostly intact to trigger the GLP1 response downstream in our digestive tracts.
Herbs/Spices that have been shown to boost GLP1 production in our bodies are: Cinnamon, Cayenne, and Turmeric. Through an Ayurvedic lens, these are warm foods. They’re also vibrant flavors, not mild ones. I have no idea if either of those observations are related to making us feel sated, but I suspect they are.
Even processed meat alternatives produce a higher GLP1 response in the body than real meat, probably due to the fiber content in the fake stuff. Processed as hell and full of oil and sodium, but it’s still made from plants.
It really does seem to be about the fiber, doesn’t it?You cannot get the same benefit from a daily dose of Metamucil, because diversity is so crucial. There are 1000 different compounds found in whole plant foods. You can’t get that kind of variety from a supplement and as we have discussed before, variety is key to a healthy gut microbiome, which is a key to good health.
Vinegar produces acetate, much like fiber does, so ingesting vinegar regularly acidifies the colon, reducing colorectal cancer risk and boosting our GLP1 production to boot. (Not straight up, just use it on your foods. I put balsamic on/in nearly everything.
Bonus! When GLP1 and acetate (from vinegar or fiber) come together, they produce nitric oxide, those happy little bubbles that rebuild and repair our damaged endothelial cells. Those are the cells that heal and remove plaque that hasn’t hardened yet from the linings of our arteries, including our coronary arteries. This is one of the ways we can prevent and reverse heart disease.
A great source of vinegar is salt-free mustard, which is just mustard seeds & vinegar.Slow-digesting carbs like navy beans, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, etc., (not string beans so much) and sprouted grains like those in Ezekiel Bread, and whole grains like oats and barley, are major GLP1 production boosters. These foods have been shown to boost GLP1 even up to 14 hours after we’ve eaten them.
Eat green leafies, the darker the better as chlorophyl slows the absorption of fat, and the greens are filled with GLP1-stimulating fiber. Spinach has been shown to reduce cravings for chocolate hours after consumption. (They showed photos of chocolate and measured the brain response. Fascinating.)
Try not to overcook your greens, something of which I’m often guilty. I like my greens really tender, not crisp, especially the kale. I’ll try to start cooking them a little bit less. For full potency of the good stuff, shred the dark greens, then sprinkle with balsamic, massage it in, and let stand for ten minutes before cooking or using raw. For Kale, massage until it gets soft and shiny, almost as if it’s been steams already.
So, to summarize, you can boost your body’s own GLP1 levels by taking injections which are unnatural, expensive, make you sick as a dog, and will only take off about 15% of your weight, but must be taken for life…
OR you can get the same or better results by eating whole foods and exercising, eating slower, using lots of vinegar, mustard, turmeric, cinnamon, and cayenne, and upping the beans, sprouted grains & whole grains, and dark green leafies in your diet.
The whole food approach results in as much weight loss as is needed, until the body achieves its ideal size. It’s extremely difficult to overeat if you are following the plan correctly.
However, like with the injections, the whole food all-plant lifestyle must be permanent for the results to be maintained.
Which seems more sustainable to you? A lifetime of healthy eating, or a lifetime of weekly injections?
Bonus Benefits to WFPB over Injectables
Eating plants is in every way healthier than just continuing the bad eating habits of the past while taking a drug to fool your body. Eating a whole food, all-plant diet reduces risk for all our leading causes of death: type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, hypertension, cancer. It reduces risk for autoimmune disorders, and even depression.
A whole food, all-plant diet reduces our contribution to greenhouse gasses and climate change dramatically. In fact, one single person going plant-based saves 1100 gallons of water, 45 lbs of grain, 30 square feet of forest, 10 pounds of CO2, and 1 animal's life EVERY SINGLE DAY
The grocery bill comes down and down and down the more purely you follow the plan. There’s not much cheaper to eat than beans and rice (whole grain rice, not white.) And while organic, fresh produce is extremely pricey, it still costs less than meat.
This is only true if we shun the ultra-processed fake meats in the freezer section, which are often the priciest things in the store.
Recap: What I mean by “follow the plan”
We eat whole vegetables, not parts of vegetables. If we want “soy protein isolate” we’ll eat the whole soybean.
We do not eat oil. Not corn oil or olive oil or coconut oil or vegetable oil or sesame oil — NO oil. If we want some olive fat, we’ll eat a whole olive. The whole olive contains some fat, all the nutrients, and plenty of fiber. The other parts of the olive mitigate the harm its fat can cause. But if you only eat the fat of the olive (which is what olive oil is) without all the complementary parts of it, it’s harmful. Within five minutes of ingesting olive oil, the coronary arteries contract about 22%. And a very new study on whole food, all plant diets that included olive oil vs the same diets without the olive oil, FINALLY give us the clear picture. The no-olive-oil diet was shown to be far healthier.
We do not drink fruit juices. If we want orange juice, we will eat the whole orange and try to let too much dribble down our chins.
Are you detecting a pattern? It’s the WHOLE food. Not parts of the food.
We do not use white flour, or white rice, from which the bran and the germ have been stripped away from the grain before it has been ground, thus removing all the nutrients so that white flour must be artificially “enriched.” Anything you see with “enriched” on the label is telling you, “We have stripped all the natural nutrients and fiber from this food stuff and have put in fake nutrients, but not fiber, as a substitute.)
We use, instead whole grain flours like oat flour, brown rice flour, whole wheat flour. I make a gluten free whole grain flour blend with oat, brown rice, tapioca flour, potato starch, and finely ground chia seeds.
Whole Grain Gluten Free Flour: 1 & 1/2 cups brown rice flour, 1/2 cup all the others except the chia, which is 1 tablespoon. Easy peasy.
We do not use white sugar. If we use sugar at all, we tend to use raw sugar, but we use very very little sugar. To sweeten our food, we use things like maple syrup or agave nectar, but more we like to use fruits like dates, ripe bananas, apples, pineapple, and raisins.
When restoring heart health or losing weight are the goals, we also minimize nuts to strictly 1 handful or less per day, or 1 teaspoon of peanut butter per day, the amount in my favorite cookie recipe.
We enjoy chili, soup, stew, goulash, tacos, burritos, stuffed mushrooms, grain bowls, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, stuffing, Spanish rice, spaghetti, lasagna, tofu omelettes, French toast, pancakes, cookies, apple crisp, brownies, cakes, and more. Recipes for most or all of the above are on this site.
One needn’t feel denied or restricted. There are only a handful of kinds of meat, yet dozens and dozens of fruits, veggies, and grains to choose from. There are more than 500 kinds of mangoes, for heaven’s sake!
This is just a very big shift in mindset, and shakeup of old habits. It’s 99% psychological. You have no idea how hard it was for me to believe I could sauté without oil, and yet once I tried, it rapidly became the only way I do it.
Yes, weekly injections are a lot easier than changing habits, and even a 15% weight loss, no matter how heavy one might be, will add years to their lifespan, and reduce their heart attack risk by a few percentage points. All these are positive things.
If the choice is between staying overweight and taking GLP1 injections, then the injections are the healthier choice.
But there’s a third option that is healthier than either of the above. Eating whole foods, all-plants, nothing more processed than tofu or tempeh, nothing with a face or produced by something with a face, and absolutely no oil - that’s it and that’s all.
And seriously, throw in some exercise, like it or not.
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