Season 8, Episode 2: Nutrients and Supplements for Lasting Weight Loss with Derek Johnson

Evelyne Lambrecht: I’m so excited to talk to you today. Derek Johnson is a highly experienced, integrative and holistic nutritionist with over 26 years of experience in helping individuals make lasting, healthy lifestyle changes. He’s the founder of Derek Johnson Nutrition, a successful telehealth consulting practice, and has worked with thousands of clients from 2011 to 2019, Derek served as executive nutrition director for The Biggest Loser Resorts. And in this role, he developed and managed the nutrition and integrative health programs across all resort locations, trained educational staff collaborated with executive chefs and provided expert guidance for marketing and media initiatives.

He’s widely recognized for his expertise in weight loss resistance, gut health, sports nutrition, and overall wellness. He frequently consults with top physicians and works with a diverse range of clients, from Hollywood celebrities to professional athletes, as well as business leaders, busy parents and teens. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for Designs for Health and is an expert in weight loss resistance, gut health, metabolic flexibility, sports performance and those are some of the topics we’ll be covering today. So, Derek, to start, what is lighting you up this week?

Derek Johnson: I would say well, I mean, I think for me, I’m always drawn towards whatever the latest and greatest is. So whether it’s a podcast or I listen to an article or something that, you know, new product that comes out from one of the companies you work with, you think it’s going to get old, right after doing this for 6 years, but it never is. Since most people talk on the business side, on the personal side, I’m super pumped. We have another soccer tournament coming up for my son. So, I’m the nerd dad with the Starlink and videotaping and streaming the game. So, I get into all that. You have to have passion outside of work. So, my passion is, obviously my marriage and, and, but my kids both being in competitive sports. So, I’m pumped for the weekend and then by the time I get home on Sunday, though, I’m like phew, but I love that.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Thank you for sharing. So, let’s start by talking about The Biggest Loser, actually. So, you worked on the show quite a few years ago, and on The Biggest Loser it’s all about rapid weight loss, right? Rapid transformation. I’m just curious, do you have any cool stories to share and what did you learn from that experience in terms of rapid weight loss versus more sustainable long term weight loss?

Derek Johnson: That’s a great question. So, I started out, I mean, I got to work with a lot of the contestants on the show, and it was always fun going to see the filming. And like everything on TV, when you go and you see it being filmed live, you’re like, this is the smallest room I’ve ever seen in my life, right? It’s so not like the way what you see it with what’s on TV.

What I mainly did, my job, as you had mentioned, was the executive nutrition director for the resorts. So, the reason I enjoyed doing that versus, like, you know, doing, like, some of the amazing trainers and the people on the show, they’re all actually wonderful people. Because how do I say it was a game show? Right. Just kind of like a game show. And unfortunately, it was, you know, as many people perceived, it’s like, how are they losing that much weight in that period of time?

And are they going to keep it off? Right? If you’re thinking from a clinician standpoint, you’re like, really? At the resorts our minimum stay, or I should say our average day was two weeks. So, we had people two sometimes three times four. We had people from all over the world coming. So, when I was brought in, I took it away from a calories in, calories out concept.

I can share this now because it’s over. But yeah, I remember when coming in there, when I after I first interviewed for the job, there were people with calculators calculating, like at the salad bar. How many calories they’re eating per day. Right. Thinking like the body’s about, you know, it’s a bank account, not a biochemistry set. I think I stole that from JJ.

And I was like, no, no, no, there’s so much more to this, which we’ll talk about today in terms of lifestyle. And what do you do? How do you master your morning and what do you do during the day? And how do you master your evening? Like I talked to so many of my clients about. And so, we were able to just destruct and then reconstruct that whole program, including really helping people when they got home. Right. You can give them the best advice in the world. Anyone can go to a wellness resort, a yoga retreat and come back and be like, reset, I feel great. And then you go back and it’s like life happens and everything’s.

So, it was really the coaching, which is a big part of what my job is. Unfortunately, a lot of the people, if they followed it even back then when it first started out being social media got much bigger. I still can come in contact with a bunch of them. And they’ve kept the weight off very small percent. In the amount of weight, it would be mind blowing. I mean I would see people gain within a month 40 pounds.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Whoa.

Derek Johnson: Insane. Yeah. So, because we work with some of the great docs we were using in-body scans and stuff at the resort that I had brought in versus traditional skill, testing and, and using that impedance.

And it was just wild to see. Right. We use that because we wanted people losing and not just losing water and muscle tissue. Right. So, it was a wild ride. But when I really got a chance to see that the big things that I, that I took away were, which I still don’t think is talked about enough is the emotional aspect and the psychology of food. I was blown away.

I’ll give you the story of lunch in the story a few times. So this guy, at this huge company, we were at the Malibu, which is sort of where I work, because in California I was it was like a home resort, and that I was with there most, And after two weeks, he actually gained a pound and he was he’s ready to quit and we were like, no, go one more week.

And he met someone and then one of the therapists, because that was a big part of the resorts, is talking to therapists and stuff, you really have to cover the emotional piece. And he met someone, and then I remember him like kind of losing it and crying for like two days.

And he was just like hugging everybody. He let go of his guard and he figured out something that clicked. I don’t know the whole story. He pursued it till the next week. Again, these are crazy numbers because these are people that need to lose a lot of weight. He lost 15 pounds in the following six days.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Oh my goodness.

Derek Johnson: On the emotional release. So, there’s so many of these people based on how they were raised, their relationship with food and how they view it, which is a problem for everyone. Even for people that want to lose 5 or 10 or 15 pounds, not 50 or 100. So, I found that that was such an eye-opening experience on how people perceive food, what they viewed it as, how it integrated in their life. The emotional aspects, what they went to. I learned a lot in that aspect. So it was that part of it was super helpful.

But it was fun. But it certainly it was a passion for me doing that for six and a half years. But at the same time, I still had my practice and that was my ultimate passion. And we can talk a little bit about my history of my original education in dietetics, having my own underlying health problems, being introduced, I what we now call integrative medicine or integrative nutrition, and having my wake-up call with, you know, my underlying health issues and going, I never learned any of that in school. And then doing the testing and so I had a big pivot, right?

So, I always say, I’ve been doing this for correctly for about 21 years, but the first five years I was just doing what I learned in school. And I’m not saying everything was wrong, but what average things that are taught in traditional, dietetics, although it’s getting better as everyone probably knows, listening to this podcast, it’s amazing and I don’t regret any of it, but there’s so much more to it than calories in, calories out, eat your whole grains and, you know, dairy for strong bones or, whatever their talking about.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I would love to hear a little more of your story. Like how were you drawn to dietetics? And you know what led to that shift, like you were just saying.

Derek Johnson: Yeah, I was, always into sports. And I originally went to play soccer at school and college, and then, I remember taking a nutrition course and just picking it, but I think I was always fascinated about it because I for years going through high school and even as a kid has always had like GI problems and stomach issues, but I never had, there was never any like, oh, here’s what’s going on with you.

And I remember taking a course and then kind of talking sometimes there was a talk about medication and antibiotics and I was like, wait, I think I’m still taking that. And a doctor back in high school for acne had put me on minocycline. I just stayed on it. I didn’t know. And then you start digging. And back then it was like fish tape and go into the library and there was no Google or ChatGPT.

And I remember digging and just I was always interested in like how the human body works and different things like that and frustrated. Why some days I would feel great and other days I would feel terrible. Some days I was more anxious and some days I had more energy, and other days I had neither or both. Or low energy and high anxiety. So that was the driver for me.

And in terms of like, wow, this is super cool, maybe I can figure things out. And that’s what changed. So I was originally a biology major, and then I just kind of took off and then became obsessed in a sense of just learning more. But it was much more difficult to learn back then. In terms of outside of what you learned in school or what was in which we had textbooks. So I think that that today is amazing, but on the other side of the coin is there’s so much information through social media trying to decipher what is true and what is not true, because, yeah, even I see like products and things come on, if I didn’t know what I knew, I’d take that. Right?

So I had that. Then I met a functional medicine practitioner after my first job, which was in Venice Beach. In like the bodybuilding world, did some testing. And then that led me to Dr. David Brady. Back then we were doing the stuff with, you know, JJ and I were doing stuff with Designs for Health. We were going to all these seminars, Robert Cran and all these different people and, yeah, then I met David and we were sending our GI stool tests back then to Germany.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Oh, wow.

Derek Johnson: And I just after meeting with him and a couple other practitioners, the original one that did blood work was like, you have leaky gut to the stool test. You’ve had some inflammation, which I didn’t remember what the labs were now, but it was obviously like a CRP. And I had, he just had a lot of different aspects of what I thought I knew I was doing correctly based on what I learned, which of most of which I was doing was incorrect, including the foods I was consuming, which explained. So then once I had that pivot and did everything that these practitioners had told me, I was like, oh, this feels good. And that was like, I want to know more about whatever that is, right? So I, I dove in and have been obsessed, ever since about all the things that so many of the people that listen to this podcast.

And so I got a good lesson early from some mentors about knowing like, find what your passion is, know what hats you wear. Well, you can’t wear too many. Don’t try and be a know-it-all. And so I’ve really stuck with that. And so because of my history, there’s another piece of this with my son, who was sick for some seven and a half years, almost eight years.

So I’ve learned a lot through that, which was like mold toxicity and allergies and a story that most people don’t know. And so I try and always stay in my lane for what I do know well. And people like Dr. Brady and JJ and Dr. Talapin, who’s another good mentor and friend of mine, I’ve always said, I know this is gross, but I was like a leech. I was like, I’m going to hold on to this person. I want to be their best friend. I want to learn as much as I can.

And more importantly, I wanted to, you know, if something came up when I do these, like discovery calls that I do with people, if I hear a story that I’m like, I’m not your person. I want to have a team of people that I can refer out to, or when something comes up with someone or a client I am working with, I want to be able to refer them out to someone who I’m not. Because that was brick and mortar in an integrative medicine practice in LA for over 20 years. And so it’s easy because I had people all over the place, the office and etc. now I’m doing telehealth. I have to be able to send them to those people. So hopefully that helps. And kind of where I’m at now, and things just continue to grow and exciting things. Because new products come out and you test them out and it’s so much fun.

But again, I know what lanes I want to stay and I know what I work on. I think it’s important to do that as a practitioner.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s great. Thank you for sharing. And we will dive into the business aspect a little more later on. And I always love, well hearing everyone’s passion rate for this field. Like there is really always so much to learn. I started studying nutrition in high school and it’s like every day there’s new stuff. It’s so exciting and I always love hearing the early stories of Designs for Health as well. And we’ve had David Brady, our Chief Medical Officer on the podcast, and JJ Virgin and very grateful to them.

So let’s talk about weight loss. So first of all, how do you define what sustainable weight loss looks like?

Derek Johnson: When I think of another good saying, and I don’t know who uses this one, which I like, I know it was from was it Sportsline? I’m going back 20 years. Diana Saltzman I think another old school. She used to say, you have to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy. That’s stuck with me. That was built well at least 20 years ago. And I was like, gosh, that made so much sense for me. And so we have that. So I kind of go in reverse.

You have to define health right? So there are a lot of people who lose weight that have low energy, that don’t sleep well, that don’t feel well, both emotionally and physically. So I think you could say I lost weight and I’m at my goal, but to me, I have more questions on how do you feel as a human and we’ll talk later. I, I really think that is human. We’ve lost the art of being human is something I sort of have come up with myself that I tell people, and I can kind of define that, as far as how we’re designed and your belief system, everyone will agree with what I have to say, I believe.

So I think in weight loss you can go with the classic win, lose weight, keep it off for a year. Right. With the rise in the GLP1’s, I think that is a different conversation. So I guess the answer to the question is, I have multiple questions on that one. If I talk to someone, I want to define what that means. I want them to lose the weight. And that weight is only defined by body composition in terms of skeletal muscle mass and body fat. Right. So I’m 5’9” with my hair popped up. And you can have five males at 5’9”, five females at 130 and all with at 5’6” or whatever within, let’s say half an inch to an inch of each other. But they all look differently.

So I think it’s important when we think of weight we think of only body composition. I think scales are worthless. I think the BMI is the bad mass index which is why we use those things even back in the Biggest Loser days. And to this day, my favorite is the InBody because the Whole Body H2ON is by far the most accurate one out there that I’ve come across.

And so we can really tell people that once we people are happy with where they’re at, then we can really assess how do you feel and how do you feel during that weight loss? Or you might feel worse before you feel better. Like we see with a lot of protocols we put people on. And ultimately, if they’re emotionally happy, right, and they’re physically happy with where they’re at, how their clothes fit and the body composition numbers are good, that’s so much more important than someone being at a super low weight, which, with the people I’ve dealt in Hollywood, in the movies that I do and all the things that I work with, we have so many people that you’re just like, I know you’re lean, but I’m just thinking, man, there’s so unhealthy inside, right? So I hope that helps. I know you’ll get used to being I, even though I love going off the cuff, I think it’s a tough question to answer if you don’t look at all aspects, I guess is how I would to say it.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. Well, so to get a little more specific, if we can, in a male versus a female, if you’re working with someone, what numbers are you looking at in weight loss or like as a percentage of body fat? And where do you maybe sound an alarm if somebody is maybe losing too much muscle weight? I mean, obviously like you’re telling everybody to work out, but you know, situations change. So what do you what do you do there?

Derek Johnson: I think by far just throwing that off since, I know we’re not going to talk about today, I guess the whole podcast on all the semaglutide, the Ozempic eaters, appetites of control, etc. of the world.

I wish everyone was doing body composition testing before and after and watching them through the journey. We require it. The doctors I work with, it’s required so that we can help them. It’s still required even if you’re not doing it. We’ve been doing this for decades, right? So we want to make sure and I rely on that. But I also rely on how people feel because there are a lot of those people. You can’t even show the number, right? I still have like an hour, one of the one practice. We have the cover that puts over it. Like how do you feel where you’re at the like rate? You’re like, oh my gosh, you know, and they only lost 2 pounds, but they feel amazing because you can actually feel leaner without losing weight. Especially based on gastrointestinal health.

And so I think I always focus on, you know, skeletal muscle mass first. What’s one of the biggest indicators on morbidity, our mortality, is grip strength. The Peter Ortiz’s of the world talk a lot about this. And so grip strength so important. So they’re going to weigh more and be more dense, which is most important for all men and women.

And then the thing that I think we focus on most, if we are able to measure that like we are in the practice, I still is in California. It’s visceral fat. Right? Because have you ever have met come across someone that had an, health complication from, like an overweight, a little bit of extra arm fat on the tricep or like on the inner thigh muscle? I don’t know of any. It’s always visceral fat, right where your organs are. So we’re always focused on visceral fat. That particular measurement on the body. We use you know, allows you to go up to ten. I like it at five or less. You know, 6 or 7 is still okay. So it’s really about body composition.

Everyone’s so different because for any practitioner I think we get a lot more practitioners on here. I had to learn over time, even with using my big InBody 57 like a $12,000 machine, or someone’s getting a DEXA scan, there are a lot of people that look fit, feel fit, and are fit, and the numbers don’t always match up. So you can look at them and they’re physically strong and they’re physically feeling good. And so as long as they don’t have high numbers of visceral fat, and if they’re carrying a little bit of excess and you have a male that wants to get under ten, which is super lean, right? But they’re at 14 and they feel great. Is that a single indicator of something that’s going to affect their lifespan? And I’m like, no.

Because you can have someone who’s physically fit, who doesn’t sleep well because it does happen, even though it’s the people with sleep have a lot of issues who doesn’t get the most important thing that’s free – sunlight – for us as humans. And that patient’s going to not have a good life, and you can have someone who’s doing all the right things in the biohacking and getting sunlight, and they’re meditating and they’re controlling stress hormones, and they’re sleeping well and they’re 10 pounds overweight? That person’s going to live longer, in my opinion.

So I don’t put I don’t define it particularly based on those numbers. I really again focus on the emotional piece of it. And are they happy with where they’re at? If we have to push the envelope with supplements or hopefully not medications, so that they are happy, that’s also important because we want them, there’s a lot of people who, how those numbers, depending on what their lifestyle was, affect them tremendously.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. Just to clarify, the numbers you were saying earlier was that body fat percentage?

Derek Johnson: Yeah. So percentages I mean, for women if they’re again, they get a bad rap. If you’re petite, the measurements on the machines that are always that nice versus someone who’s like 5’11”, five nine even, in those, teens are very difficult to get to and I don’t think it’s necessary.

But we have to put it also based on age group. So if you’re someone who wants to be in the teens, who is an athlete that’s under 25 and you’re female at 17% phenomenal, you could be a 21% and still be great. Once you start getting higher. Visceral fat getting into the mid 20s, in the high 20s, then there’s usually problems.

Men, right? It’s a bit different once they start getting over 15, 16, 17 and getting into the later teens tends to be problematic again, especially if that visceral fat is higher and then ultimately right. The averages are always going to be in the high 20s and low 30s for women in the United States, and above. And then men are going to be in those low 20s to mid 20s that we’ll see that who, who still like want to lose ten, 15 pounds.

And then clearly with the people who are in the obese categories, we’re getting 30s plus across the board.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. So as a rep I’m often asked by practitioners what do you have for weight loss, what products? Because their patients are coming to them for that. And I can recommend certain products. That’s my job to educate about those. And those products get great feedback. But I really struggle with that question. And I feel like you’ve sort of addressed this nuance as well since we’ve been chatting. And my usual answer is, well, it depends like, tell me more about your patient. Are they male or female? What’s going on with their hormones, their diet, their sleep, their stress? Is there a history of trauma? And weight loss to me is not as simple as even, count your macros and that’s it. It’s really a complex, multifactorial issue. So I’m curious, like to hear more about your approach when somebody comes to you specifically for weight loss. And then I do want to get into some of those nutrients after.

Derek Johnson: That’s great. I think that even if people look lean and feel lean, everyone, including myself, now that I’m, as my son likes to call me, of over halfway to 100, I was like, I turned 51 last week.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Happy birthday!

Derek Johnson: I feel amazing. And I try and practice what I preach, obviously. And so I think on that, on that note, when we look at it, when they come for weight loss and a lot of these people, which is also been coined by a lot of people out there that fall into the category of weight loss resistance. So what’s why is the body resisting the weight loss idea? And obviously this weight is not semaglutide shot to become so prevalent and popular.

So I start first, if someone comes in, they’ll say, well, what can I take right now for weight loss? And I go, I never start with supplements? For weight loss in particular, you go through the basics of them, I’m not going to go through them. Everyone probably listens to this knows the magnesium, the vitamin D’s of the world, B-complex, etc. Let me go back to what I said about 5 to 7 minutes ago on ‘we’ve lost the art of being human’, and I don’t think that we spend enough time on it. The average there’s different statistics. So I’m just going to give the baseline stat, we’re spending over 90% of our life indoors. And it doesn’t matter what your religious belief is like, who you follow or what you believe or you don’t believe at all. And anything, no one’s going to argue the fact human beings are designed to be outside.

And it is so important and we don’t spend enough time outside. So I think everyone would agree with that is what I was alluding to earlier. Two, certainly the ‘sitting is the new smoking’. I’m sitting now, but my desk stands. I’m very blessed now because I live on a really huge lot.

And I go walk and I search for golf balls and do all sorts of stuff throughout the day and take the dog out. Or before. I was in an integrative medicine practice, and I wasn’t following the rules because I was just like a revolving door of people coming in and out. So I go through the basics of like, if we don’t go through with what human beings, whether you believe we were here for 2500 years or 2.5 billion years, it doesn’t matter. It’s, we all agree on the physiology and the biochemistry of the body, right?

So if we’re not aligning with how the design works because we can’t live in a blue zone. And there’s certainly more than 4 or 5 of like I went and I took a siesta and I went and then I went to my garden and maybe I had a glass of wine and I sat down and had dinner for two hours, maybe we get on a vacation once or twice a year so we can talk about sort of why supplements are important for hacking these things because we can’t leave that lifestyle, nor can I.

But we have to get back to the basic things, and everyone who probably listens on this podcast is talking about the hydration and doing the lemon in the salad or whatever they’re telling people to do in the morning. But I think the movement, you know, before the thing, we were not you. I mean, you mentioned rolling, which I’m a huge fan of, doing something to get the body moving, hydration, and most importantly, sunlight. Even if it’s stormy outside and you’re in and over cover, right? You absorb sun through, everyone knows, in your skin. I have something that most people don’t know. Through your eyes, we know. And through your, obviously through your skin. But you actually absorb all Eric, one of the brain treatment centers is a brilliant guy, and you actually absorb light through your ears.

So do you even have these devices? Where’s my device? This is nine years old. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I just. You’ll get used to me in my brain, and then I have to do it. This is. They have a better one, but it’s called the human charger.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Well, I’ve never seen that before.

Derek Johnson: Yeah, it’s so cool. This one’s nine years old. Still works, and it looks like an iPod. And you wear it. And for 14 minutes, it shoots light in here to mimic sunlight. So they’re great for, like, you know, people who travel. I have a client that I just started working with that lives in Alaska. And so there’s problems there with sunlight parts of the year.

So there are ways around it to hack it if you can’t get it. And if you live in Chicago and it’s winter on like here, you know, there’s sun lamps, there’s happy lights and all sorts of things. So I know I’m not answering the question directly, which again, I’m sorry, I just I, I’m like, there have so many things popping in my head beforehand.

So it’s so important to get people to doing the basics. And I have three parts, right. It’s last year morning. Be consistent during the day, which match your evening and they all feed on each other. You’re not going to mess up your evening if you weren’t consistent during the day and you didn’t start your day off right. If you messed up at the night and ate too late before bedtime and did things, then you’re going to have a problem in the morning, right? They feed on each other sequentially in both directions.

So once those things are around, our have been assessed and people are making progress. And I don’t like to give people more than three wins, usually 2 or 3 wins at a time and let them. I think the only published research I’ve seen, it’s probably changed, but this comes from Alicia from my PLR days, who was one of the PhDs doing her PhD from UCLA at their Malibu resort. She said, Derek, did you know that the only published research shows that people who can change habit at 66 days? And I was like, I didn’t know. I thought it was three weeks, like everybody says.

So I think a lot we don’t give the body enough time. So it’s super important. So as people are going those I don’t wait 66 days to get them supplements, especially with the testing and the things that we do. And then we jump in and after it had the basics and after they’ve checked off. Those are the things I’m do I’m drinking my water, I’m moving. Then I don’t feel like we’re wasting. Not that it would be a full waste to put someone on, into a trim or something like that. I just feel there’s so much fight emotionally and physically in the body. They’re already having weight loss resistance. The body’s not going to just release because they take a supplement and they’re already overwhelmed.

Again, I know I get used to these podcasts, but the speaking to practitioners is different. But we have to we have to be patient like we’re telling them to be patient. And sometimes we just jump too far in and I have to. I’ve learned over the years of putting my putting them in their shoes and being like what they just heard and how much they’re analyzing. And if we overwhelm them with too many wins and taking supplements is a win. They’re overwhelmed. And I think we all get good on reading the people we work with. And if you get someone who’s like, done it all and you’re that practitioner and they come in because this happens to me, they’re like, I saw A, B, C, I’m like, okay, I know what you’re at, I get it. Well, I’ll jump in deeper and we will use things right. Like EndoTrim, which I think is a great product. I love those good performance peptides.

And then certainly those nutrients that I just discussed, are more important to me than being on carnatine, ECGC or some kind boron extract.

Evelyne Lambrecht: So let’s talk more about that. So there are nutrients and formulas that can be very helpful. And I think that’s what practitioners also want to hear in this conversation. So let’s dive into some of those. And I think that the different supplement categories for weight loss kind of address different areas. Right. Like are we properly burning our food for fuel. Like is our metabolism working properly and working on like fatty acid metabolism versus working on appetite regulation versus more of like a thermogenesis perspective. So I’d love for you to talk through like nutrients in each category and maybe like when you actually incorporate those with people, once they have the basics mastered.

Derek Johnson: Okay, yeah. And on those nutrients, like we were discussing before with the magnesium, getting the baseline things fixed from the term, they start their day, they’re eating better. They’re listening to us. They’re getting sunlight, they’re hydrating. They’re really focused on making better food decisions, balancing their glucose levels with the proper food choices. Then, I think a big part of this, which a lot of people probably agree listening to this is, I always go to the gut, right, as most people do. And it’s a big that’s 75% of what I do because of what I went through. And so I think I’ve just drawn people into that for my own personal story.

And we all know the studies with the identical twins that they find and one’s overweight and one’s not overweight and the fecal transplants and what they’re doing with fecal transplants and reversing and slowing down, prediabetes and diabetes.

So if we know all this information and we want this patient or your client to lose weight, and we’re not doing the proper gut testing and fixing the gut, which we know is huge piece in the mood. And they’re all connected right back to Ayurvedic medicine. All this diet document medicine in the world. Now we just have the data to kind of be like, oh, you guys are right.

It’s so important. So I think of the gut as like the ultimate supplement, not just with digestion and assimilation, but absorption, including supplements. So if the patient has permeability and the patient has all this stress and anxiety and they have some form of dysbiosis, again, those have to be addressed. And there’s only so many things that depending on, are they 25? Well yeah they’re going to heal really quick. I still think I’m 25. I sort of have a shoulder injury from working out like I’m 25. Or are they someone who’s been metabolically compromised with no metabolically flexibility because they’ve been pushing and beating up? I tell people 99% of the people I work with, there’s always that 1% that you’re like, that’s your schedule? But everyone else, including me, we lead a lifestyle where the human body is like, what are you doing on pace of life? Like running around with our heads cut off.

So how do we stay ahead of that? There are plenty of things because, you know, our schedules can always change. So if we do those basic things and we go through outside, obviously lifestyle being the cornerstone of this and nutrition and the gut is in a good place again. Then once we start thinking about, okay, outside of them taking the basics that we know that they need even without labs, right? I mean, thinking for one of their knees, you’re healed by magnesium. You don’t eat fish, fish oil could be good, etc. then you can start talking about the carnitines of the world. And the green tea extracts. There are a lot of great companies and a lot of great companies out there that make I think the formulated products tend to work really well. Right. That where you can just take one. Berberine is obviously a big topic of conversation for blood sugar regulation. I find that the berberine complexes that have multiple ones work best than berberine alone, but it is an antimicrobial, so you need to be mindful of that.

And then if you start tincturing small things and not giving them four things at once, I’m always I’m the guy that’s like, take this, let’s see how it goes for a week. Give me feedback, we’ll add something else in. So that piece of adding to someone who’s trying to lose weight, that has weight loss resistance comes after I’ve checked all the boxes off prior to that. And then I’m still going methodically in my wins to give them. And then these things tend to work amazing. Really, really good. Really well because they’ve done the hard work. If you get them to being, I think a lot of people use this word and I didn’t make it up, I took it like we all take the, I like the metabolically flexibility. Like you have flexibility where you don’t have to eat the same macros which you mentioned before. You eat the same calories, you get the same output and the same input with the work workouts that you’re doing.

And then if you mess up for one week and you feel you went back to ground zero, right? If we fix those things and then we put in these great weight loss support supplements that are out there, they work really well if you put the hard work in. Including, which we I mentioned earlier, like obviously sleep being a big one in this. I love Matthew Walker stuff.

Evelyne Lambrecht: So I want to talk a little bit more specifics about some of those nutrients, like you said, somebody they’ve mastered some of the basics. You’ve gotten their gut health in order. But I often hear that, like, carnitine works better in men than in women initially. So I’m wondering, do you treat your males and females differently? Do you use different nutrients? Can you talk a little bit more about dosing and timing of some of those nutrients?

Derek Johnson: I think some of those things, certainly they’re different for men and women. They’re also different based on age. So we, with the docs I work with, we get a ton of testing and I do some testing as well if you want to talk about that. And so it allows us to be very specific outside of our great educational guesses, which we’ve always done until we had these wonderful labs. So that’s extremely helpful. And everyone reacts differently.

You also will react differently where you are with women. I sort of have this analogy where the human body is like a spider web, and that the brain in the gutter in the center of the spider web. So you can’t, with allopathic mindset of just touch one area without the other. Everyone here is we’re trying to treat underlying causation, not treat symptoms. But women unfortunately, God had a plan. I don’t know what his plan was, but they’re like two spider webs. There’s so much more going on. Which is why I rely a lot of my doctors, especially when they start getting into their mid to late 40s and early 50s.

That is tough, right? So you have to have the right people, which I rely on the doctors I work with heavily to right to get the HRT in those things. Right. So the dosages change. I’m a low- to slow-start with everything and ease people in. If someone’s doing the your classic like 200 micrograms of chromium and it’s in a blend with American ginseng and some of the garcinias and stuff that they have, I like to ease people in because I don’t want them overwhelm, especially when we start thinking about like, capsule count. I’m so mindful of capsule count. Like I can literally take like 30 capsules. My wife’s like, you’re insane. I don’t know what you’re doing. She’s like one, two.

So what’s more important? So as we add those things on, I rely on with some of the companies I work with where we can create customized programs, or supplementation formulas. Then we can change dosages. But I tend to rely on those brilliant people. Like you mentioned earlier, Dr. Brady. And these people are behind the scenes, like creating these wonderful formulas. And I feel like they’re just another a piece of the puzzle. And if we wait to, you know how you, again, I’m going to digress here, but I look as people, as puzzles and some people at great thinking from a practitioner standpoint, sometimes you get like the 125 puzzle person in here, like, oh, this is going to be this is nice.

And sometimes you get like the 2,000 piece people, but you still have to build the outside first. This is my analogy that I made up. And so everything I mentioned earlier is me building the outside of the puzzle. So we have a frame. Now I have that framework. Then as we start getting the puzzle starts getting smaller and we start adding in these, these nutrients, the carnitines of the world, which I think work right, especially in vegetarians.

And if we see deficiencies and again, I lean on my labs a lot. So to get those things, then the products really start kicking in. Working within the biochemistry versus if we don’t build the frame and do all these things, the chances of them working, you know, aren’t as well. I think stress, when I think of products, is overlooked. We might take something for weight loss, but we’re not managing the HPA axis or adrenal function. So the GABAs of the world, the theanines of the world, adrenal complex. But you have to have the test to know are they low adrenal, high adrenal right. Catecholamines, production possible sarin and all the different products. So it’s hard for me to pigeonhole myself to say such specific dosages outside of you need 150 mg of phosphatidylserine because you have high cortisol.

Okay. Yeah. Or all going to start there. Or you should take some of the liposomals out there that have like GABA and theanine in it and be like, yeah, take four pumps when you’re stressed out during the day, keep that catecholamine production down. Don’t try and shut off all that stress at night. You got to work on it during the day.

So I think when I think of weight loss, I’m always back to gut health. Are they sleeping right? Modulating stress during the day? And then we can give them some of the carnitines and beanames and the coromamines of the world and the garcinias and stuff like that, to facilitate more weight loss when those pieces of the puzzle have been set, does that help? Does that make sense?

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. And some of those nutrients that you just mentioned for stress, for HPA axis dysfunction can be very helpful too for that appetite dysregulation part, right?

Derek Johnson: So very true I’m glad you brought that up. Absolutely. That is so important.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I want to talk about testing. But I’m also curious diet wise. There are so many different schools of thought right when it comes to diet. And so I’m curious from your practice, what have you seen works really well in men versus in women. And I’m curious on the diet aspect, are you actually recommending certain macros and having people calculate those or not? And are you also recommending different feeding windows? Because I feel like another big topic, intermittent fasting or time restricted feeding.

Derek Johnson: Yeah. So feeding windows food choices. And, because I love telling stories. So the first one I’ll tell is, I find it super interesting that everyone tries to pigeonhole people like, this is the best diet and you must follow it. And then we hit our keto and our carnivore and our latest in paleo, and which has been around for a long time.

What’s interesting to me, if you go back to, I just looked at people who live the longest on this planet and you just looked at Blue Zone data do and even meet the same food.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I mean, there’s some commonalities. Like, plants?

Derek Johnson: There’s common that they have the same that diet. Some are meat eaters. Some of the people who live longest drink and smoke. There are people in France with like crazy records. So I’d go back to the pivot of they’re being human.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely.

Derek Johnson: We’ve lost the art of being human. So if you’re going to be so caught up in counting your calories and be so caught up in, I got to follow these specific macros to answer your question. Absolutely. Especially with my professional athletes. I’ll have them do a week so I can see their macros and see where they’re at and see if they’re bonking in the workouts. I think it’s important, but I have them do that daily. No. Just my day-to-day client that I’m working with track calories now. I have an app. They take photos of it. I’m more concerned with them tracking how they feel every day, because the best lab on the planet is you. How was your digestion? Do you get postprandial bloat? How was your energy? Did you crash? How was your sleep? Are you using Aura rings of the world? Like, I’m really into all that data and we can talk about the EMR that I love that I use.

But it’s super important to get those things down. And then we can start to dig in. I think that, you know, time restricted eating, which is technically what it’s called, but we’ll go with intermittent fasting because everyone likes to call it that. People are like, I don’t want to fast. I go, well everybody fasts. Do you stop eating and go to bed and wake up eating? I love that book Fast Like a Girl that came out. I have no affiliation. I just like it because the one where I find people get into the most trouble are women, because they just read the 16-8 and they just start fasting. And if you have active cycles, you’re premenopausal, you need to be very careful. Men get away with a lot more on the fasting piece of it. Do I agree with it? Absolutely. I went to my first fasting seminar and it was 2011, and I heard this guy talk and I was like, I never thought about this. I learned in dietetics. Like, they’ll put to one liquid extended fasting who are obese, they’re going to die with neuropathy.

And so that changed my practice. I was a hangry person. My wife would carry around snacks like, oh, there’s Derek and there’s Eric. And when Eric would come out it was like, oh, he’s going to kill somebody. But once I learned that I had set that up myself because I had a faster metabolism and I could eat breakfast, and I paid attention.

I always eat healthy, but I could get away with a lot of things, not so much now. I really leaned on it and I was like, oh, this is so nice. I think people get into the fasting trap, another term that a lot of people use where they over fast because they’re not careful and that creates problems. I also will say in this subject, people don’t talk about the most important fast in the world, and that’s the fast before you go to sleep, for most people.

I got my baseball players that were just all shipped out, and there’s different rules for them pounding calories to keep weight on, but they’re different humans. There are people with blood sugar issues that need to eat before bed and things like that. But for the most part, I always use this analogy. If I’m in an elevator and Evelyne and I are in there, and I was like, I want to get a read on her, what would I say I got 30 seconds, I would say, tell me what you do three hours before you go to bed. And I think when you get into that, that’s the heart of where most people’s problems are.

And so when I think of fasting, my brain immediately goes, what do you do? And fasting includes technology. And I don’t fast for two hours from technology before I go to bed. That’s crazy. It’s great if you could do it. But I’ve had kids. It’s not going to happen. But we have to think of what we consume orally, visually. And back to what I said before, mastering your morning. Everyone knows what the sunlight and the lemon in the water consistency with the blood sugar. You could be a 12 hour fast or 14 hour fast, or a 16 hour fast person.

On that note, I will add refeed days are essential and most people don’t do reset days that aren’t working with the practitioner. Because most practitioners know you can’t just continue to do these long fast without refeed days. They’re super important. And then what do you do before you go to bed? And when is your stop time? And then how are you setting yourself up for proper sleep.

So all of those things are very important. Fasting is extremely important. Everybody does it. And then when you really get people metabolically flexible, then you can start talking about it and you get it different for men and women, different depending on ages. Getting into just doing like 24-hour, like bone broth fast and things like that, they’re super helpful, 40-hour fast. I don’t really think anyone needs to go over 72. There’s tons of research and literature, but that’s not where you start. You got to work your way up to it. Did that help?

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. And actually, I love that question that you asked about what are you doing in the 2 to 3 hours before bed. Yeah, that’s great because I’m usually working on my computer.

Derek Johnson: I’m like, okay, I’m breaking the rules. I’m partnering where I’m perfect, I’m taking my thinning, my Gaba for blue light, and then I’m like, I got to work, right? Because I bend them. People who know me. I am not a calorie counting, like Derek never breaks the rules. I love golfing, I love going out with friends. I love having fun. But I do that because I’ve worked very hard to stay metabolically flexible. So when I bend and break the rules, I feel great. Anyone’s ever run to me at some type of seminar, oh, I’m out there having a good time. I’m excited to learn, but I’m also excited to have fun. And I do that. And that’s what I teach and what I preach to people about. Like it’s this isn’t a calorie counting, live in a box of only eat these foods life because people don’t do that worldwide, right? They just live and eat.

And sadly, we don’t have to get in this because everyone knows. But with the lack of regenerative farming, the quality of what’s in our foods and the stuff, we have to work harder and we have to do things. We have to take supplements and we have to do an extended fast and things like that to get ahead of this toxic world we live in and in the foods. Even for people like you and me, we’re making good decisions. We still have challenges because of the options we’re given, in my opinion.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. I’m not to like hammer this so much, but I would love to know when you are working with your clients, do you ever give them some sort of percentage of like protein? Or is it just like make sure that you have this number of grams of protein per day, or just make sure that you’re eating some kind of protein, vegetables, fiber, healthy fat, like at each meal.

Derek Johnson: So let me and I didn’t answer that question from earlier. I think most people back to my thing like they don’t all eat the same food. I think protein is crucial as most people do in this industry. Hopefully they’re able to handle animal protein if they’re not with the substitute. Some people are like I eat eggs and fish. I’m like okay well we’re here for the mercury but we’ll find you know we’ll do eggs, we’ll do protein powders and amino acids and different products. But the key is it’s real food.

So I’ll answer that question in terms of numbers. But I’ll also I just this might be helpful like clinical pearl, which I also stole from someone years ago. I tell people I could. It’s super interesting if you ever had a tomato in the airport and then you’re eating it in a salad and you’re like, oh, I think that’s a tomato. It’s like, but not really. And it’s not like a tomato. Right? And then you traveled to Italy or France or something, and you eat your fruits and vegetables and you’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. I can eat this like an apple. Messages in food. That’s what I find fascinating about these people who lived throughout the world. They didn’t lose the art of, you know, being human. They’re all eating real food. Those are their common denominators. And there’s common denominators in food and there’s not, depending on what we’re talking about. So it’s always real food based. And I definitely lean on more of that for a lot of people.

If I had to pick one along more of the ancestral Paleolithic diet, but leaving room for grains is fine and if you don’t have a problem with lectins and you like hummus, then eat it like Mediterranean diet is the most steady diet in the world, eat it. Just make sure you’ve got all the like and be Italian. I would say pour olive oil, don’t drizzle. So I lean on those. And I think if you control the eating window, you have protein in every meal. Of course we want more, but do you need one gram? And, you know, I’ve dispelled this rule of my with my professional athletes and people.

And not that I’m not against it, but do you have to be methodical and get .08 to 1.1 gram per pound? No, because then you’re stressing people out, then they’re face feeding because they didn’t make your rule, in my opinion. But if they’re eating real food and back, because there’s a lot of people that try and do this that aren’t digesting, assimilating, and most importantly, absorbing the nutrients.

And just because it says 40g on the label doesn’t mean it’s 40g. So if they’re getting protein centric, maybe they did a CGM and they’re watching their blood sugar, which I love. And they’re keeping a glycemic balance with the fats and the carbs and the proteins. Ultimately, they’re going to get to their goal when they haven’t lost the art of being human. They’re eating real foods. They picked a window. They’re not eating too close to bedtime. They’re sleeping. If you spend too much time on macros and calorie counting and doing those, but you’re not looking at the frame of the break, then I just feel like you’re not going to get your goal.

Do people like to do that? Do I work with them on their macros because they’re so specific with my athletes? Oh my gosh, absolutely. It’s kind of fun, but most people aren’t willing to do that. Of getting like 125g of protein I’ll get that in, weigh 130 pounds. I’ll get that in. Great. But you have to take people where they’re at. So I again I’m always I’m always customizing everything based on who I’m speaking with.

But, certainly people don’t eat enough fiber. Everyone agrees with that. What are we at, like, 50g per person in the United States or something silly. But we’ll build on enough protein there, and then we have to come back to the quality. Right. Where did it come from? Where was that fish raised? No different than a fish oil. How did it get from the capsule? Do you ever think about that?

Evelyne Lambrecht: I do, yeah. Oh, that could be like a whole different conversation. But I’m like, wait, I don’t know if that’s something that I want to have people think about because we’re selling fish oil.

Derek Johnson: But, yeah. So people who sell fish oils are usually doing their standardized testing. There are reports and all the great companies. And I think there’s 4 or 5 amazing ones out there. You’re going to get a good product, but you’re just buying something because of the price that, I won’t bash on any stores. But I would say good luck. And we see that in the testing when people like, I take this and then we test them or like, yeah, this makes sense.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And there was a really interesting study published, I think it was in 2021 where they took a bunch of different fish oils over 20 from different health food stores and retail stores, and they tested the TOTOX scores. So for toxicity and sensitivity. And, it was actually pretty crazy how rancid some of these fish oils were. So it does speak to, you know, purchasing high quality fish oil.

Derek Johnson: Which is why some of the studies will come out and tell people not to take fish oil for the increase in cardiovascular disease because of that oxidative stress that does coming from these toxic fish. All true because when people say I take a fish oil general population, they are taking these toxic fish oils that no one’s looking at how to go from fish to capsule, is it in trade, good triglyceride form and all the things that these great companies do? Totally agree with you. Just like when regular someone’s like, oh, I got this, whatever store on Amazon. And I’m like, you know anything about methylation? I’m like, well, yeah, you’re probably better off not taking it. And of course we want to get it through food. But it’s tough to get all those things. I could not agree with you more.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. And I do also want to add I just interviewed Deanna Minich this week also, and we’ve really talked about that the humanness part and how as humans we have like a light deficiency during the day and a dark deficiency at night. And we talked about quote unquote anti-nutrients and just how important it is to go back to basics and live like humans. So, it just keeps coming up in every conversation.

Derek Johnson: It’s so important. I would take someone who had a good, let’s say, just decent nutrition plan, like they’re doing the best, they’re eating fruits and vegetables and maybe there’s a couple seed oils in there and a few things, but they’re outside. They’re getting sunlight. They’re happy. They’re in a good relationship with family and friends, which is another big one I didn’t mention. We’ve done social, mental. I would take all of that and they move a lot. Which is the most underrated exercise in the world is walking outside both at the day and nighttime I’d like to add.

And they’re doing all the human things and their diets, they don’t have a personal chef versus the person that has, like a chef that’s making all the things that stressed out in their office, sitting all day, not getting sunlight, not taking supplements, I take that person even though their food is quote unquote better over the loss of humanness any day of the week. It’s not even close for me.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. Totally agree.

Derek Johnson: And that’s why it’s so hard for me to answer on the different diets. But again, back to the quality of just what is your body recognize?

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. So you mentioned testing a couple times. I know you’re a fan of using Metabolomics Spotlight in practice. And so I’m curious what are some patterns that you see when it comes to metabolomics testing in your weight loss patients.

Derek Johnson: Yeah. And weight loss specifically. Going through the pages of my head, you’re going to see page one, with some of the glycolysis is going to be usually elevated, if not ketones will be high. Potentially. Page two is B vitamins. Everyone that doesn’t take a B vitamins, even if they have a good diet, they tend to be a little bit out. The one that sticks out a lot is the stress hormones like catecholamines, cortisol. Those are right. Adrenal complex, VMA all very low, over dopamine use.

So they’re stressed out because their bodies are stressed because they’re overweight. They’re nutrient deficient because their diets aren’t that great. They have excessive glucose because their blood sugar, they’re probably just taking in glucose. Maybe hemoglobin, I wouldn’t say never insulin, which I’ve never been able to answer that question why it’s never tested. And then, you know, the toxin markers too, like gluconic acid and things like that. I’m just blown away on how many people live in toxic environments. It’s just mind-boggling to me. And I spend a ton of time with my clients on proper air filtration. Proper water filtration. You know, these things that we need as humans. And so that one tends to hit high, especially in people, like toxic load doesn’t give us all the answers, but we dig deeper. And then antioxidant need is always there. Like glutathione, always low right. Because they’re detoxing and their bodies just doesn’t get enough. And they have all this. So I think those are ones that stand out the most to me. Just kind of off of the cuff.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And then I’m curious with the business aspect, you know, you’ve run the successful practice for really long time and I’m curious about some of the tools. So I know that you do the stool testing and metabolomics organic acids testing. We talked about wearables just a little bit. You mentioned them. So I’m curious how do you integrate all of that in your practice to have a holistic view?

Derek Johnson: Yeah. So I learned, I finally listened to JJ, who I’ve known for like 25 years. And I went from being like, Derek running around with his head cut off to wait, maybe I should work with less people more frequently and not be like a crazy person. As you’ve all heard him speak, you’re like, this guy’s a nut job. I’m just like, go, go, go. I’m like, yeah, more and more and more and more. And, so I package things, you know, several years ago, not that not long enough ago. And I was like, this is amazing. And then I’ve always packaged it with labs. I love Spotlight because I’m able to package it very easily and order those through my office orders them and they’re part of the package, and I like it. If I hear on my initial consult, I’ll order through one of my docs or myself, like a GI map or something if I want the parasitology and things like that, H. Pylori.

But the packaging business side of it has been so great, and I love the layout of the Spotlight it’s the patients are like, oh, green and yellow and red. Got it. I don’t know it. Beta hydroxybutyrateblahblah is right. There’s like oh I get it. Did I talk from 30,000 ft? Unless I get like super smart person that’s into like the labs, meaning they have a passion for it. We’ll dig deeper. So I love that piece of it, the packaging of it. And then my I worked very hard on my maintenance program, and the Well World app, I was one of the first people to white label it which was a game changer. So I have that.

I’ve switched over to Biocanic is the best EMR on the planet, in my opinion. Because again, I’m a nerd, I love data, and I can bring all that into one platform. I can stare at everything. I still dive back in because of my old habits to look at things individually. And by the way, want to know my latest new thing?

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yes.

Derek Johnson: Do you know you can drop in data? Because I do this for labs, of course. But like everybody else, probably. But do you know you can drop in like, boop scores and data scores and oura scores and calculate months at a time in ChatGPT.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I’ve not done that. I’ve done lab work.

Derek Johnson: Oh no, I’m doing it for all my work. Yeah. It’s great. And then I’m like, no, check. Make me a chart for my client. I tell it what to do, right? It’s all about prompts. And then it creates these charts and they see it so much differently. Although the apps are great, but it’s nice to screen share with them and be like, oh, here’s what’s going on with your screen.

And I think so. But I love Biocanic because it does all that. It’s a platform we can share and I will tell some everybody is the new incorporation. Again, I have no affiliation with Biocanic other than I think they’re amazing up there. I saw it. Is everyone here? I feel like I’m at a seminar. Raise your hand if you use AI. But the Heidi that they incorporate. It’s even if you don’t have Biocanic as a practitioner, if you want your life to change on notes and sending notes to your clients and your patients and understanding, you have to use Heidi and I don’t have any affiliation with them, but I’ve tried them all. I finally, I’ve done Otter, I’ve done Fireflies and Meat Geek, which I like because it’s on my phone. But Heidi is the most game changing because it thinks like a clinician. It was designed for clinicians, so you don’t get a summary of an hour or a 30 minute or a 20 minute call, any time it hit food, food goes into a category. If you talk supplements, if you’re a physician, talk on ICD ten codes, whatever. It categorizes everything specifically to what you said, summarizes it. You can do it super refined, like crazy where you want it or, you know, in the sweet spot. Yeah, all these different like platforms and that. Then you’re like, click send. And then I look back on my notes and I’m just taking less notes, even though I still have to take mine for my own mental capacity.

But then when I just click send and you send it to your client when you’re done, they’re like this is amazing. The feedback I’ve gotten on. Oh, we talked about those, especially in labs and stuff, when it summarizes everything and then you’re not bombarded, with questions on the practitioner side. So that’s my wheelhouse is Biocanic, Heidi. And then on the business side, we have our own private label. But I’ve also with some companies that have really leaned on, using links and scripts.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Very, very helpful tips there. Derek, we’re pretty much out of time. So we got to get to our rapid fire questions. And I wanted to talk more about peptides with you. I wanted to talk more about GLP1s. You sort of mentioned them, but we weren’t able to dive deep. But this has been a very valuable conversation. So thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and experience.

So let’s go into the rapid fire questions. What are your three favorite supplements, nutrients for yourself?

Derek Johnson: Well, I would say magnesium because I take several forms, but I take a trimagnesium with magnesium theronate and I just love that for my sleep. My favorite, and I’m not going to give the basics. I finally found a company again, no affiliation with. Maybe I won’t mention them because, for three years I’ve been trying to find a methylene blue that I love. That doesn’t blue your mouth and tongue. Even though I kind of like looking like a Smurf. Methylene blue is just, I think with my family history. It’s just been one of the biggest game changers for me personally, and I probably wouldn’t have felt it when I was 25, but now? Oh my gosh. And I know magnesium supplements like I know, but obviously I’m just so used to taking it. I feel such a difference.

And then for me, I kind of lean on the gut piece of it. And because of my history, the products that just work with mucosal lining and/or digestive support, are game changer. I want to be eating and parasympathetic state rest digest. But with my pace of life always I don’t get the chance.

So if I take my enzymes or whatever I’m doing, like I just feel so much better, right? If I take things because I don’t follow all the rules and I have to stay ahead of that with my history. So I have to have a gut support. Something in the mitochondrial support and something on sleep is a block. And to my mind, it’s a great question I probably should have thought about that.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay, next, one quick answer. What are your favorite health practices to keep you balanced? And I know you kind of sprinkled them in throughout, like your walks during the day.

Derek Johnson: My number one, I’ll just give you one, be uncomfortable. I don’t live in 72 degrees in the gym, in your house, in your car, in your office. Be cold. Be hot, be uncomfortable. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Interesting answer. We could talk more about that.

Derek Johnson: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you open the door just to crack

Evelyne Lambrecht: What is something you’ve changed your mind about through all of your years in practice?

Derek Johnson: I would go back to pigeonholed people in specific diets, like we all know that certain things. But there are some people, for instance, that do fine with moderate gluten exposure. We can’t just make a plate. I know our gluten in the United States is bad, but if they have a healthy gut and they’re doing some consumption, but not all the time, and getting exposure, which can be good for them or misses, it’s fine. Or before, when I was younger, be like, no, no, no, no, you can’t eat gluten, right? No no no no no you can’t eat dairy like. So I think on those things becoming a little bit more lenient and leaning on the humanness is super important, and realizing there are plenty of people that live a long time that eat is foods, and we have to keep that in mind.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Well, Derek, thank you so much. This has been great. And thank you for tuning in to Conversations for Health today. Check out the show notes for resources from this episode. Please share this podcast with your colleagues. Follow us. Give the show five-star review so we can reach more practitioners. And thank you for designing a well world with us.

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