Most people think weight loss is simple: eat less, move more, push through the fatigue.

But what if that approach is exactly why so many diets fail?

Today, I'm joined by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences who studies the neuroscience of eating behavior and long-term weight loss. According to Dr. Susan, fatigue during dieting is a short-term feeling that should ease over time…with the right approach.

When you cut calories, your body doesn't just burn fat and carry on. It responds. Metabolism slows, energy drops, and hormones shift in ways that are normal but may make you feel tired.

However, Dr. Susan's work challenges the idea that dieting has to mean constant hunger and fatigue. According to her data, hunger actually drops to very low levels when the right strategy is in place.

Her approach is different. She believes sustainable results don't come from pushing harder. They come from working with your biology in ways that reduce fatigue, stabilize appetite, and support long-term adherence.

In this episode, Dr. Susan and I break down why dieting so often leads to rebound weight gain and what to do instead.

(This episode was initially released in May 2017)

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar taught the most popular course ever at Harvard and is one of the world's top happiness experts. He defines happiness not as temporary pleasure (like going to the beach or eating ice cream), but as "whole person well-being," captured in his SPIRE framework: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional.

One of the most powerful studies Dr. Ben-Shahar shares is about janitors, nurses, and doctors working in the same hospitals doing identical work…yet some saw their work as a "job" (something they had to do for a paycheck), others as a "career" (focused on climbing the organizational hierarchy), and others as a "calling" (meaningful work that matters). The janitors who saw their work as facilitating patient healing were happier and performed better than doctors who saw their work as just a job.

Surprisingly, research shows there is NO connection between IQ and happiness. But there IS a strong connection between using your intelligence (being curious, asking questions, and lifelong learning) and happiness. Curious people are not just happier and more successful, they also live longer!

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Alan Christianson, a board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist and the founding president of the Endocrine Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the American College of Thyroidology. We'll discuss his new book, the Hormone Healing Cookbook, and specific foods for resolving pesky symptoms driven by hormonal changes in midlife.

In this episode, I'm speaking with Caroline Alan, the self-proclaimed "Mineral Geek."

She shares her history of serious health problems, including gut inflammation, periodontal disease with bone loss in her teeth, recurring sinus infections, brain fog so bad she left her corporate career, and lifelong insomnia.

But her health completely transformed thanks to a chance suggestion from her business partner to try liquid minerals.

Caroline is now passionate about sharing the connections she's found between mineral depletion, replenishment, and cellular function.

She's also a soon-to-be published author; her book, The Mineral Reset: The Essential Guide to Replenishing Your Body and Restoring Your Health, will be available at the end of April.

Most people think body fat is the problem. If you gain weight, the goal is simple: eat less, burn more, and try to get rid of it.

But what if that way of thinking is fundamentally flawed?

Today, I'm joined by Dr. William Li, a world-renowned physician and scientist who has led the development of more than 30 new medical treatments that impact care for over 70 diseases, including cancer, diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. Dr. Li has spent decades studying the biology of metabolism, fat, and disease.

In his view, body fat itself is not the enemy. In fact, it plays a critical role in your health. The real problem begins when fat becomes excessive, dysfunctional, and inflammatory, disrupting the systems that regulate metabolism and energy balance.

This shift in perspective changes everything.

In this episode, I'm speaking with Dr. Christopher Pickard, a hypertension expert with decades of expertise studying nutrition and lifestyle on how to get your blood pressure back down into the healthy range.

In this podcast, Dr. Pickard and I discuss:

• The link between high blood pressure and the risk of dying from COVID-19…and how Dr. Pickard is using this knowledge to help his patients

• What high blood pressure is actually trying to tell you—it's not a disease; it's a warning sign of something more

• 3 unexpected causes for hypertension and the problem with simply "fixing it" with a pill

• 7 practical ways you can start addressing high blood pressure NOW

• Why breathing through your nose (versus your mouth) might be the missing piece to solving some people's hypertension

• One amazingly simple step you can take to increase nitric oxide (and decrease blood pressure!)

• Learn the best fruit to eat to support healthy blood pressure levels!

Most people think of chronic illness as something caused by a specific trigger…an infection, a toxin, or even an autoimmune reaction. And the solution is to find and eliminate that one thing.

But what if that's not how it actually works?

Today, I'm excited to have Dr. Eric Gordon back on the podcast. He's built a reputation for doing what most doctors won't, which is looking beyond the diagnosis to find what's actually driving a patient's illness and figuring out the right order to address it. His clinical work spans Lyme disease, ME/CFS, autoimmune conditions, and mitochondrial dysfunction, and many other forms of dysfunction, often all at once in the same patient.

In 2016, he co-authored a landmark study with Dr. Robert Naviaux, also a former guest on this podcast and a bit of a personal hero of mine, someone who has done some of the most important work in medicine of the last century, with his work on the cell danger response.

In Dr. Gordon's view, chronic illness happens when the body's normal healing cycle gets interrupted and stuck in a persistent inflammatory state.

From that perspective, the problem isn't just the original trigger. It's the state your body has shifted into. And if that's true, it changes how you approach treatment.

That shift in thinking opens the door to very different kinds of interventions. These approaches focus on changing the broader biological environment rather than chasing a single cause.

In this episode, Dr. Gordon and I discuss a therapy that filters and replaces part of your blood plasma and may help remove inflammatory factors circulating in the blood that keep the body stuck.

In this podcast, Dr. Eric Gordon and I discuss:

• Why chronic illness often reflects a body stuck in the wrong healing state; compensations the body makes for stressors are designed to be short-term, not chronic

• What happens when the body's normal repair cycle gets interrupted

• Why the body's response, not the original trigger, can keep people sick

• The surprising role of "old information" in ongoing dysfunction

• Why trying to fix one problem at a time often falls short in people with overlapping conditions

• Dr. Gordon explains why treating the body as a machine will never work - biological reductionism is the fundamental error

• How a fascinating intervention called plasmapheresis works to filter and replace blood plasma and lower inflammatory load

• Why plasmapheresis is gaining attention in chronic illness and longevity

• Dr. Gordon's belief that medicine is faulty because it's hooked on specificity, that the more we can do exactly what we want, the better…but this approach is lacking because we don't know exactly how our bodies work

In this episode of The Energy Blueprint, I'm speaking with neuroscientist and bestselling author Mark Waldman. Mark has been on the podcast multiple times, but I find his information so interesting that I'm excited to have him back today.

Mark is now working in a new field called network neuroscience. During our conversation, he explains the framework of this field and shares some very practical but very effective steps to reduce mind-wandering and improve psychotherapy outcomes.