Why Diets Fail 80% of Menopausal Women with Dr Michelle Gordon

Why You're Not Losing Weight in Menopause — And What to Actually Do About It

If you've ever felt like you were doing everything right — eating well, exercising, living healthily — only to watch your body change in ways you didn't ask for, this episode is for you.

Dr. Orlena is joined by Dr. Michelle Gordon, a former general surgeon turned board-certified obesity medicine specialist, who brings a frank, science-first perspective to one of the most frustrating experiences of midlife: unexplained weight gain and stubborn visceral fat.

This conversation goes well beyond the usual advice. Here's what you'll discover:

The visceral fat vicious cycle. Visceral fat isn't just stored energy — it's an active inflammatory organ. Dr. Gordon explains how it floods your body with inflammatory signals, disrupts your hunger hormones, and creates a biological loop that can make you feel hungry even when you're significantly overweight. And menopause is precisely the time it's most likely to take hold.

Why "calories in, calories out" fails midlife women. When you cut calories, your metabolism slows — and your body fights back. Add the hormonal turbulence of perimenopause, a drop in daily activity you probably don't even notice, and the fact that hunger is a brain signal rather than a conscious choice, and you begin to understand why 80–85% of dieters fail to maintain their results long term. It is not a discipline problem.

Treating weight gain as a chronic disease — and breaking the shame spiral. Dr. Gordon makes a compelling case that obesity and significant weight gain need to be treated with the same clinical seriousness as high blood pressure or diabetes. She and Dr. Orlena also explore the real role of HRT (it's not a weight loss drug, but it matters more than you think), the truth about GLP-1 medications, why strength training is non-negotiable, and how the shame spiral keeps women trapped — and what it takes to step out of it.

Whether you're navigating perimenopause, post-menopause, or simply want to understand what's happening in your body, this episode will leave you with clarity, compassion for yourself, and a far more useful picture of what your options really are.

Find Dr. Michelle Gordon at drgordon.me or on Substack at drmichellegordon.substack.com. Follow her on IG: https://www.instagram.com/doctormichellegordon/ 

Watch Stop Dieting Start Thriving: https://www.drorlena.com/stop-dieting 

Sign up for the Stop Dieting and Start Thriving Video: 

https://www.drorlena.com/stop-dieting

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena: 

https://www.drorlena.com/book-a-call-dr-o 

Transcript

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Dr Orlena: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I'm super excited today. We have Dr. Michelle Gordon joining us. Hello and welcome.

Dr Michelle Gordon: Hi, thanks for having me

Dr Orlena: It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for spending some time. Would you like to just start off by introducing yourself, please?

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. So my name is Dr. Michelle Gordon. I'm trained formerly as a general surgeon. I was a surgeon for about 15 years and I'd like to say 20 because I had five-year residency. And in COVID, I had a practice that I had grown to four surgeons working for me and multimillion dollars, and in COVID, I closed it all down and just couldn't do it anymore.

Walking into a hospital in COVID was really hard. I took a few years off and started looking at metabolic medicine and saw that we have here in America, we have something called the Obesity Society and the American Board of Obesity Medicine, and I looked into that and took their exam, went through their clinical path, and took the exam in 2023 and started practicing obesity medicine [00:01:00] formally in 2024, and so I've been practicing for a few years. In obesity medicine, I also took the lifestyle medicine exam, so I have... I'm diplomate in that and in the board of the American Board of Obesity Medicine as a- as well as being boarded in general surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons.

And and at the end of this month, I'm gonna be taking the Menopause Society certifying exam.

Dr Orlena: Oh, wow. Amazing. How do you have time to

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. I don't know. Plus, I garden.

Dr Orlena: do all of these things? So today what we want to talk about is menopause. So I think what we're really interested in is leading a healthy life and doing all the things that we can do, that we enjoy to lead a long and healthy life, to be vibrant in later of life. And then suddenly menopause comes in, and so many people say to me I was doing all of this stuff.

I was eating healthily and [00:02:00] exercising, and I didn't change anything, and suddenly out of nowhere came this abdominal fat." And that's what I would like to talk to you about today

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. It's really an interesting kind of conundrum. In menopause specifically, the because of lack decreased activity, we don't even know it, but we decrease our activity in menopause and decreased fat oxidation we gain weight. But hormonal shifts, the chaos of perimenopause leads us to some behavior changes.

Now, obesity is not a behavior, but the inflammation that surrounds it can lead to excess weight, and then it's very hard to remove. I like to do, on my patients, I like to do a baseline DEXA scan to know what the visceral fat is when we start and then follow that. And even for somebody who is normal weight in menopause or perimenopause, if they have high visceral fat, then [00:03:00] we may actually wanna talk about medication for them.

We-- I don't like BMI as a measure. It's the measure that we use, but it's not a good measure because it doesn't look at fat and lean tissue

Dr Orlena: That's a really interesting observation. One of the things I always see is people talk about this, what do they call it? Skinny on the outside, fat on the inside. And I have to confess, I understand the concept of that, but I have never seen people, I think, to see it in my brain, if that makes sense.

So I think about somebody who's got a flat stomach and think surely they can't have that much visceral fat, but is that true or is that not true?

Dr Michelle Gordon: That's not true. It, you just don't know. You can't know how much visceral fat somebody has until you do a whole body DEXA scan. That's the gold standard. Yeah. What we see in, in perimenopause is we see that women their waist will grow, and that's an indication of visceral fat.

Indic- that's why we like [00:04:00] the waist to height ratio. So a healthy waist to height ratio is 0.5 or lower. That's what we're always striving for in our patients, in a... if you don't have access to DEXA. That's I think really important to look at. And we do DEXA scan regularly to look for osteoporosis all you have to do is ask them to do a whole body scan instead of just looking at the bones, and then you can find out how much visceral fat you have

Dr Orlena: Yeah, it's really interesting based in Spain and I see so many people in the States. I understand that you can go and get a DEXA scan at your local pharmacy, but here in Spain that's not-- if I wanted to go and get a DEXA scan, I would-- it would be a reasonable way away. And I think as well, because we have a public health service here, they will give me a DEXA scan for osteoporosis, but they won't then turn that into a whole body scan.

They'll just say no. So I think it's very-- it depends on location as to whether people can get DEXA scans

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah, we, yeah, we can't go to a pharmacy to get it, but there are some [00:05:00] mobile units in certain cities and, high density cities. In Spain, you have a two-tier system, and there probably are independent places depending on where you live. So if you're in Barcelona, for example you could probably find somewhere, somewhere highly populated to get it done

Dr Orlena: Yeah, exactly. But I'm a reasonable way from Barcelona. But yes, I have seen one. I'm sometimes tempted 'cause I just want to know. I'm interested in seeing things. Thinking about this stage, I think something that would be really interesting to explore a little bit more is this idea of inflammation and abdominal fat.

Can you ex- it seems to me that it's almost like inflammation creates the abdominal fat, and then the abdominal fat creates inflammation, and it feels like it's a bit like a vicious cycle, but perhaps you can shed some light for us

Dr Michelle Gordon: Okay, hang on So what can happen as you gain weight your body, especially in perimenopause, preferentially adds fat around the visceral organs as you lose estrogen. So one, [00:06:00] one of the things that can help with that is hormone replacement. But the it drives... Visceral adipose tissue, or VAT, is an in- is an independent infla- inflammatory system.

So it's an active endocrine organ, and it dumps, it, it dumps these inflammatory m- markers into the portal vein. It is a really weird thing. And I don't wanna go too much into the biochemistry of it, because that's probably outside the scope of this podcast. But the main thing is cytokines, and and then because of that, then the adipokines get dysregulated, and this then just leads to a cycle.

And what happens when this hap- when you have this increased visceral fat, then we have dysregulated signaling of leptin and ghrelin, and that can lead to feeling hunger even when [00:07:00] you're 100 pounds overweight

Dr Orlena: Yeah. Okay. And so how do we change this? You talked about medication, but first of all, can we talk about lifestyle changes and what people need to do? Or perhaps my question is, I saw you did a reel which was, "It's not about calories. It's not as simple as calories in, calories out." So can you explain that a little bit first?

Dr Michelle Gordon: It's not because when... if diets worked, if counting calories worked, then we wouldn't see... weight Watchers wouldn't exist, right? Slimming World wouldn't exist. There's the... Diets don't work because when you decrease your calories, your basal metabolic drops. As you lose weight, your basal me- basal metabolic rate drops, but then your body

preferentially tries to get you back up. This is evolutionary biology. So what happens, in evolution, there was, like, this feast and famine, and so you always... the body always tried to get back to where it was. It didn't keep a steady [00:08:00] state. Kept, kept going up. And now we have such an abundance. Our environment is so full of food that we never have any lack.

Now, that's not an argument for fasting. I'm not a big fasting proponent, but that's a whole different thing. Most of the fasting data was done on men. But When you what happens, I think that calories in, calories out fails midlife women because our... In midlife, we don't burn at the same rate.

It, burn rate goes down, and so what we think is, what we think is maintenance is actually a surplus. So could calories in, calories out help us? Maybe if you drop the amount of calories in by an extra 500 calories, but then you feel really hungry. So it's a conundrum. It's a real conundrum in midlife women

Dr Orlena: Yeah. [00:09:00] And also I think for me, the whole calories in, calories out is so complicated by things like our biome. What actually gets through our biome.

Dr Michelle Gordon: yeah, for sure

Dr Orlena: goes in our mouth isn't necessarily the same as what gets through. And then thinking about things like the hormonal impacts. For example, I've got a son who is 17 and, he's gone from stick insect to, muscly person.

And yes, he is eating lots more, but really what's driving that is the testosterone. And I think those things it's just everyone on the internet always says, "Oh, it's so easy. Calories in, calories out." And you're like, it's one model of looking at it, but it doesn't paint a full picture.

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. So I like to look at it, there's... when women start to age, w- and people in general, but I focus on women, our activity level actually goes down. We don't know it. We don't... We're not aware of it, but we actually decrease our activity. And [00:10:00] then I'm sorry, my phone's ringing.

So what may have worked in the past isn't gonna work. And then when we f- when we throw in the hormonal chaos of perimenopause it just becomes like this... It's feels so random And 80% of people who go on a diet and lose weight fail. 80, 80 to 85%. So only...

Dr Orlena: You mean in long term they fail or-

Dr Michelle Gordon: long term.

Dr Orlena: Yes. Yeah. So they do it for a bit and then they stop and-

Dr Michelle Gordon: Success on a diet is maintaining a 10% weight loss over time

Dr Orlena: So what is the solution? What do people need to do?

Dr Michelle Gordon: Obesity is a chronic disease needs treatment. So if you came to me and said, my blood pressure's really high," I would probably wanna prescribe you or I'd send you, probably send you a cardiologist 'cause I don't treat blood pressure as a general rule. [00:11:00] But, "I have headaches. I'm having headaches every day," and then we check your blood pressure in, two or three cons- consecutive visits and your blood pressure's high then we're gonna treat it, right?

Now, what happens when we stop that treatment? The blood pressure goes back up and you're at higher risk for a stroke. It doesn't cure it. Now, are there things that can cure blood pressure? Maybe losing weight can cure blood pressure, but not if it's familial. So in the same way, we have to treat obesity like a chronic disease. We have to change the narrative around it. Obesity is not a behavior. Obesity has, is a disease of inflammation, and the best treatment we have multiple drugs, but the ones that have worked the best are these long-acting incretins, which are the GLP-1s.

And we've got a lot of really interesting things in the pipeline. But before we had GLP-1s, treating obesity was very difficult because we tried to rely on behavior, and behavior isn't enough because hunger comes from your brain

Dr Orlena: And so if we're talking about obese people, what about the [00:12:00] people who are in between? People who've just put on a little bit of weight. They're, they'd like to lose a bit, but they're not

Dr Michelle Gordon: It, I think it depends on how much visceral fat you have and where your inflammation markers are. Because if you are, if you've gained, in perimenopause 15 or 20 pounds and your inflammation markers are through the roof, your CRP is high and your lipids are high, then probably a GLP-1 temporarily would work.

Now, I don't usually talk about a t-temporary fix, but as we get the hormones stabilized, you may be able to maintain, and that can happen for some people. And I do think that as we start to understand women's health more, that we may have this window where women will need a GLP-1 for a short term and then can come off of it.

But for the most part, I tell people that when they take a GLP-1, they're gonna be taking some form of it for the rest of their lives because obesity is a chronic disease that requires treatment. But we just [00:13:00] don't have the s- the data and we don't have the funding because women's health has been horribly underfunded and not important.

Dr Orlena: And in terms of lifestyle changes I see people eat... changing how they eat. So thinking about, okay, can we reduce the inflammation in how we eat, how we exercise, how we sleep? Is this-- can that have a significant impact or are you saying, "No, it can't"?

Dr Michelle Gordon: I think it can, but it's not gonna c- it's not gonna cure the obesity for 80 to 85% of people. Lifestyle changes alone won't do it. That's why Weight Watchers doesn't work. That's why diets don't work. There are-- I'm not gonna say there's no argument for lifestyle changes. Lifestyle changes are important, and they're part of the prescription.

The issue is that behavior change is really hard, and people don't change their behavior for the most part. It's very hard to get people to change their behavior. What I find is that trying to get [00:14:00] people to move more, we sometimes have to start with five minutes of exercise. Let's go for a walk for five minutes.

It's, So that's the harder part. But when you have a body that is actually cooperating and helping you eat less because you're taking a medication that is making it so your brain doesn't crave as much, then it's a little bit easier. Because what happens for these people is so much of their brain space is taken up with how they're thinking about food or how they're not happy with their bodies or whatever other kinds of mental chatter's going on.

Once they, once we treat the obesity and-- I've had so many patients say to me, "I took that drug, and all of a sudden I realized I'd had so much food noise I didn't know I had before. It just went away." Then we can start to fill that time with something else. But then we also have people who are athletes and who exercise regularly but still have obesity.

Look at Serena Williams. Was it Serena Williams or Venus? It was [00:15:00] Venus Williams. Venus Williams, world-class athlete, took a GLP-1 because after having children her biolog- biology was not back to where it had been

Dr Orlena: Yeah

Dr Michelle Gordon: because creating a human, turns out, changes your metabolism

Dr Orlena: So ideally, behavioral changes plus or minus GLP-1 if necessary.

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yes

Dr Orlena: And in terms of HRT, you mentioned that HRT has an impact. Is that a preventative or will it reverse, help reverse?

Dr Michelle Gordon: HRT is not a weight loss modality. It's a bone health, heart health, brain health protective modal- modality wellbeing. I've surveyed over 50,000 women in menopause, and one of the overwhelming responses was, "I feel like an alien has taken over, and I don't feel like myself at all in my body. What's going on? And why didn't anyone tell me this was gonna [00:16:00] happen?" So hormones make you feel like yourself again when you get them right.

It just all of a sudden it's like your pr- your brain clears up, your, You're able to have more motivation, that sort of thing. And for most women I really like to give them testosterone as well, because testosterone is responsible for mood and motivation and m- muscle health and heart health.

We have testosterone receptors everywhere. And so the fact that testoster- there's no FDA-approved testosterone for women and that it's a controlled substance makes it really hard to be able to give it. But there's, there is a myth out there that women don't have testosterone

Dr Orlena: I understood that we had testosterone, but what I didn't realize, I thought it was the estrogen that really plays the muscle part, that the estrogen is what's really helping us create muscle as opposed to test- in men, that's testosterone

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. No it's, testosterone is important for muscle [00:17:00] building and wellbeing in women. I've even had some patients that I put on low dose testosterone and they started, like they, they were able to get off anxiety medication. They were able to sleep better. It's amazing what can happen when you correct women's hormones

Dr Orlena: Perfect. So HRT, yes, but really for helping us feel better so that we can do all the things that we want to do as opposed to having a direct effect on either weight loss. I had heard that HRT prevents buildup of visceral fat. Is that

Dr Michelle Gordon: The main reason, again, for for menopausal hormone therapy is to help with wellbeing and mood and motivation and prevention of osteoporosis and

Dr Orlena: And sleeping

Dr Michelle Gordon: and dementia.

Dr Orlena: And sleeping better

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. Oh, yes, without question. So if you're if you're in, perimenopause and your periods are regular or irregular even, and you find that you're waking up at 3:00 AM and can't get back to sleep, then you probably [00:18:00] need hormones.

Dr Orlena: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Michelle Gordon: It can prevent or attenuate visceral adipose tissue a- accumulation.

But if you stop it, it's ... They go away

Dr Orlena: Yeah. Yeah

Dr Michelle Gordon: Just like every other treatment

Dr Orlena: But I do see people-- I do see the tide changing a little bit in terms of HRT. I still think there's a lot of work to do in terms of like stories in Spain, even my own story. So you asked me if I had been through menopause, and the answer is yes. But actually in perimenopause, I went to my gynecologist or it was midwife here in Spain, that's how it works after I'd had children, saying, I'd had a lot of discomfort and they didn't start me on vaginal estrogen.

And I think years ago they should have done that, and it took me quite a long time to get HRT as well. So yes, things are moving in the right direction, but it's not as available as it should be. There's still a lot of people who [00:19:00] have barriers there to something that's actually very cheap and

well-tolerated 

Dr Michelle Gordon: the biggest barrier is the fact that there was a study that was done here in the US called the Women's Health Initiative, and the lead investigator was a man who had a bias against women's hormones. He really thought women should not have hormones. And rather through going-- than going through peer review, he went to the press when he found that the hormones that they were using increased the risk of breast cancer.

But there were a few problems with the study. Almost... I think the average age of the enrollees was 62. They were using a synthetic progestin, which can lead to breast cancer and not a bioidentical progesterone. They were using conjugated equine estrogen, not a bioidentical estrogen. So there are multiple issues with the study, and a re-- looking at it again all these errors came out, and it caused such a panic that overnight women, it-- we went from maybe about 40% of women being on hormone therapy to about [00:20:00] 0.4% in a whole generation.

A whole generation missed out on hormone

Dr Orlena: Yeah. No, I remember my mother at the time, she was on HRT and then she stopped, and I think that whole coho- cohort of people is the people who it really affected. And now we're the second generation coming through it with this story in the back of our mind of how awful it is, and actually we know that's not true

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah, it's not true, but the problem is changing the par- changing the paradigm with the physicians because physicians have this belief, and changing beliefs is difficult once, once it gets in there. And then on top of that, there's-- because these drugs have been out for a while, there's no money for it in the pharmaceutical companies, and so in America at least, we have a patch shortage.

Dr Orlena: Oh,

Dr Michelle Gordon: happens if we have women who are all capable and able to do things?

Dr Orlena: Perfect. So coming back to women, menopause, wanting to lead our best lives, wanting to be our most healthy, is there [00:21:00] anything else that we should talk about?

Dr Michelle Gordon: We have to lift weights. We have to build muscle. We have to m- maintain muscle and to preserve our muscle and functional training so that if you fall down, you're not gonna break a hip. Those are really important things.

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Michelle Gordon: That's, prevention of osteoporosis, hormone therapy plus weight training, without question.

And the recommended amount of exercise is notoriously too low. 150 minutes. It probably should be closer to 400 to 600 minutes

Dr Orlena: Yeah. Perfect. And so coming back to weights, we want to lift weights so we can be that independent person later on in our 80s and our 90s, and if we do trip, we just trip and don't end up on the floor, which can be a disaster for many people. But also that muscle is gonna... If we are worried about our visceral fat, that muscle is gonna help us burn fat.

I know that's not a [00:22:00] quick win, but it is something that contributes to the decrease in inflammation and the changing the body composition

Dr Michelle Gordon: Y- yeah, and weightlifting will definitely help you change your body composition without question. You're gonna burn a little bit more not enough to raise your calories to, 800 above baseline. But it's it is gonna help you burn a little bit more fat muscle. A little bit more calories during the day.

It does raise the BMR, but not as much as you would expect. And in menopause and perimenopause and and with weight loss it's crazy because when you lose weight, the BMR decreases more than you would expect

Dr Orlena: And so when you're starting someone on a-- or when somebody's taking a GLP, how does that work? Does it not just reduce the amount they eat?

Dr Michelle Gordon: It does, but it does other things. All the studies show that even the SELECT trial showed that there were cardiovascular benefits even without weight loss

Dr Orlena: In terms of the mechanism for weight loss, [00:23:00] is it just that now people are eating less or are there other mechanisms that it's contributing to by decreasing the inflammation or anything?

Dr Michelle Gordon: I, it does help decrease inflammation, and so because you're decreasing it, it looks like in the studies that there is a preferential decrease of visceral fat the active endocrine organ. So it does that, but it also decreases... It hits the hunger center in the brain. And so w- when you're not hungry, you're not gonna eat as much.

It does make you eat less. We have to face it that you're not gonna lose weight unless you lose, eat less food. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah

Dr Michelle Gordon: problem is that hunger is subconscious. It's not, it's very hard to control consciously. And so the, if you try to white-knuckle it, most of the time your biology's gonna override it, and you're gonna end up grazing on things because, you haven't eaten, you haven't indulged for a while or whatever.

But that's the difference. I [00:24:00] think it, it hits that. But it also sl- you know for a few months, it slows gastric emptying. Not, it, that doesn't last forever, so the gastric emptying goes back to normal after a few after some time on it, I think about six months. But the main factor is, yes, it decreases hunger and helps people eat less

Dr Orlena: Okay, perfect. Fabulous. Thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to put into this conversation?

Dr Michelle Gordon: I think the main thing is we have to end weight stigma. We have to stop thinking about obesity as a form of gluttony or, something moral. It's not a choice. It's not something that, it's not like people intentionally went out and spent a bunch of their time eating to gain weight

Dr Orlena: Yeah. And I think the way I see that working with women, helping them to make this transformation is that it's almost like a self-blame thing that's going on because there's this conversation in society about it, it is y- your [00:25:00] fault. It's not really that society is saying that, but what people take from that is it's my fault and I feel like a failure because I haven't changed this.

And although I'm a totally competent woman in so many areas of my life, I have failed miserably to do this, therefore there should-- there's something wrong with me. And then people get down into this low stress, and then they start turning to food for comfort, and then you're just exacerbating it as opposed to just going, "Yeah, this is just my body.

This is what my body has done." Like in the same way that, I don't know, I got stung by a wasp yesterday and my foot has swollen up, but I-- and it's really uncomfortable, but I don't go, "Oh my goodness, 

Dr Michelle Gordon: it's my fault.

Dr Orlena: fault." Perhaps it was because

Really close. 

Dr Michelle Gordon: I call that the shame spiral, and it's so easy to get stuck in a spiral of shame when you try and fail. Those are-- the people who do that are the perfect candidate for GLP-1s. Now, again, 9% of patients don't respond to GLP-1, and then we have to look at other modalities.

But with what's coming down the pipeline, I [00:26:00] think, we're gonna be able to manage obesity in a way that, that makes sense. And hopefully these drugs will just get cheaper and cheaper

Dr Orlena: Yeah, and I would say as a health coach as well, so I help people make these, that I do see people making lifestyle changes, and they do have support doing it. So they do change their diet, and they do exercise more, and that can... I think it's slow. It's definitely not as quick as if they were on GLP-1s, but some people don't want to be on GLP-1s, or they don't work for some people.

Some people want to incorporate the healthy lifestyle as well. And when we're thinking about things like lifting weights as well, you want to do that whether you're on GLP-1s or not. So there's a certain amount of work that I think people should be doing the work that they do with me, doing that first and then getting the GLP-1, and then they're in a position because they're already doing the weightlifting,

Dr Michelle Gordon: [00:27:00] Yeah. I think that there's room for-- look-- to look at it from both perspectives. If you have somebody who really can't move much and they start a GLP-1 and then they lose weight and then they start to move, then we have that, right? The other thing is w- people who have tried and tried and just were not successful and then started a GLP-1 and started to see that success, anytime you see success, that's a motivation.

So motivation comes from, taking little bit-- li- little steps forward. And so is it important to develop new habits? Yes. How you develop them before-- cart before the horse or, 

Dr Orlena: yeah, no, totally. I take your point and I think you're absolutely right that I think one of the main things that I do as a health coach is keep people going when there's that sort of phase where they can't see what's going on. Actually, for example, I had someone who said to me the other day, "I had my blood works done and they were all fabulous."

And the doctor said, "I can see that you have been leading a healthy life for a, a period of [00:28:00] time." But in her brain she was saying, "But none of this is working because that visceral fat isn't disappearing quick enough." But actually all her markers show that she's doing amazingly well, but those are invisible to us so we don't see them.

So yeah, no, I totally take your point that it can zip you along there.

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah, exactly

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Thank you very much for spending some time and chatting about this issue. Where can people find you and what services do you have to help

Dr Michelle Gordon: So I have a private direct pay practice that is exclusive and requires a, an application. You can go to drgordon.me, D-R-G-O-R-D-O-N.me to apply. That's only for the US-based people, and I'm licensed in 40 states and territories.

Dr Orlena: So people can work with you online?

Dr Michelle Gordon: Yeah. And then I have, There's an education product there called The Predictable Pattern Behind Midlife Weight Gain, and you can purchase that on drgordon.me.[00:29:00] 

But probably the best way to find, if you wanna interact with me, is to go to Substack and sign up on Substack, and that's d- drmichellegordon.substack.com. And you, when you become a subscriber on Substack, then you get more interaction with me.

Dr Orlena: Okay, perfect. I will leave all the links in the... Sorry

Dr Michelle Gordon: Oh, yeah, but I'm also on Instagram at doctor, but the doctor spelled out, michellegordon, and Facebook at drmichellegordon.

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Fabulous. Thank you very much

Dr Michelle Gordon: Thank you. Thanks for having me.