Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow.

This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals.

My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the

health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.

Today I had the honor of connecting with Dr. Donald Vega. He is a registered dietician,

strength and conditioning specialist and a lifestyle mentor based in Costa Rica

with over 25 years of experience in metabolic health promotion. His most recent book, The Science of Losing Weight, is one that is an incredible resource for many, many of our listeners. Today we dove deep into the role of lifestyle in metabolic health including

sunlight as well as blue light therapies, the importance of high quality sleep,

why diets don't work, the impact of mindset as well as oxytocin and gratitude and

growth work, cold hormones mises the impact of autoimmune disorders as well as

trauma amongst a myriad of other very interesting and relevant topics I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did

recording it.

Welcome, Dr. Vega. So good to have you on the podcast. I know we've been it's taken a bit of time to get this worked into both of our calendars, but I loved reading your book and I'm so grateful to be able to share you with my community. Oh, thank you. Thank you for an invitation and I'm really glad to be here and I think the things that take a little longer, they're worth so I hope I'll make this valuable for all your audience.

Absolutely.

So, you know, when I was reflecting on your book and the work that you've done,

let's really start from the place of why as a culture are we struggling with more weight loss resistance now than we probably ever

had. I can quote statistics here in the United States about weight loss resistance and obesity and being overweight.

And I know that many of those statistics can be extrapolated to most westernized countries,

but in your clinical experience, what are some of the main drivers of weight loss resistance and the struggles

that most of your patients experience in trying to lose weight and become healthier?

Well, I think this is a great topic and sadly it's not just one aspect.

Since we are, you know, multicultural beings and we're exposed to a lot of information.

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