The Weightless Method: GLP-1s, Muscle & Metabolic Health with Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen | HFYH #138

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (0:00)
A GLP-1 should not be the last resource for anybody. If you feel that it's out of your hands and it feels like a full-time job, you should start with a GLP-1. If you're somewhere in between, then weights is always the best answer. But what I'm seeing now with GLP-1, we are reaching metabolic health that wasn't possible before.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:22)
Hi, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright, and this is HOT For Your Health. Join us for conversations on the bleeding edge of science, health, and culture as we bring you tech innovators, thought leaders, and the movers and shakers who are transforming science fiction into your new health reality. Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen, I'm so glad to have you on this podcast, not only because you are a triple board certified physician with offices in Manhattan, serving thousands of smart, savvy people, but over the last few years, we've become friends. So I'm so happy to have you here with me today.

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (1:07)
Thank you so much for having me today. I enjoy our conversations a lot.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:11)
Absolutely. Well, you were just a superstar at my Women's Health Conversations Conference that we had in Orlando. And I think your heart and your soul really came out as you were talking about your book, Weightless, as you were talking about your patients. And so before we get started really digging deep into Weightless and why you wrote it, tell me what makes you show up at work every day, besides the fact you're a physician and you have a business. But what is your heart and soul? Why do you come to work?

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (1:44)
Because I see and I know the possibility in my patients of reaching optimal health. I see the possibility in them. I know it can be done. They just need to be guided the right way.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:02)
Do you find people come to you sometimes with the world's best intentions, but sometimes lost? How do people arrive to you when they come?

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (2:12)
For many of my patients, I'm their last stop. I'm like the last opportunity, the last chance that they're giving a doctor, right? Because I see many patients with obesity over weight that they've struggled with their weight through their life, and they've been approached or seen by doctors that didn't believe them, just kept giving the same recommendations, didn't have spent enough time with them to build trust in a relationship, right? So many patients, I would say, if not the majority, come except skeptical, right? Like, like, let's see if this, let's see if it's something different. And I have to say that that's one of the other things that make me get up every day is to show them that we are, there's good doctors, right? That there's doctors that still believe in that idea of having a relationship with the patient. If, if you build trust, right? If you respect the vulnerability when they come to you and they tell you the deepest fears and traumas and shame and guilt. And when you respect that conversation, everything changes. The relationship becomes really bidirectional.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (3:20)
Well, you talk a lot about, almost every time I've heard you speak, about the emotional and psychological load women carry around, in addition to just the poundage. Is that what you're talking about? That, that the chronic stress and emotional burden of being metabolically unhealthy is more than just belly fat.

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (3:41)
It consumes their life for many patients, and for many of them, it consumes their life for decades, right? I can see in my patients, in some patients, it's a 24-7. Every plate in front of them triggers something, right? It triggers memories, it triggers shame, it triggers guilt, it triggers anxiety.
What do I have to do next to burn it up so I don't see the pounds gaining? How is this going to affect in my journey? Am I going to be setting me back? Like, what do I need to do to compensate what I'm going? It's a constant struggle. And I see patients struggle with that since their teenage years, since childhood, and they could be 40, 50, 60, and they're still struggling. Right? So it's a lot of burden, not just the physical weight, but the emotional weight.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (4:32)
Rocío, frankly, it sounds exhausting. And I wonder if this phenomenon that you see time and time again is why you entitled your book Weightless.

**Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen** (4:45)
Yeah. So it's a metaphor of what I see my patients' journey be, is when they come in bringing me excess weight as their problem. Through their journey with me for medication, I see them drop the physical weight, but then mentally, psychologically, emotionally, they become lighter and lighter and lighter until they become weightless. They drop the guilt, they drop the shame, and then they drop the physical weight. So it's what I want for my patients to be. That's the experience I want my patients to have. And I have this unique perspective from seeing patients with obesity every day, five days a week for the last whatever year's amount. It's something that I can provide to more people through a book than me seeing them as a patient.