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Melanie Cole (Host): Losing weight can be such a challenge for so many people. Diets are hard to stick to and it can be difficult to find the time to exercise. But maintaining a healthy weight is one of the most important things you can do for your immediate and long-term health. Whether you just want to lose a few pounds or make a more dramatic change because of health reasons; Aspirus can help you find a weight loss program that’s right for you. My guest today is Dr. Timothy Logemann. He is a cardiologist and the Medical Director of the Aspirus Ideal Weight Solution. Welcome to the show Dr. Logemann. So, what is Aspirus Ideal Weight Solution?

Dr. Timothy N. Logemann, MD (Guest): Thanks Melanie. Aspirus Ideal Weight Solution is a medically supervised weight loss protocol that we’ve been using for about the last five or six years. it is a low carbohydrate approach. It is a partial meal replacement approach. So, it’s a well-established, well-researched, well-thought out approach. Our patients come in every week and they are followed by one of our health coaches. They eat some of the foods – of our foods that we sell. They also eat low carbohydrate approach, so they eat low carbohydrate vegetables and their own protein. So, they will eat one of our products for breakfast, they will eat one of the products for lunch with vegetables and lettuce. They will eat protein and vegetables and lettuce for supper and then usually a snack a day. So, it’s a medically supervised protocol with low calorie partial meal replacement, that results in very reproducible weight loss. With once a week coaching, people get a lot of support through the process. The protocol is very easy to follow. We withdraw people’s medication as they go through the protocol. As they go through the protocol, their blood sugars and their blood pressure come under better control. So, since it is medically supervised; we are able to kind of help them with their medications. And people usually men get about 3-5 pounds of weight loss per week and women about 2 or 3 pounds. So, it is very easy to follow, very reproducible and are very good results for our weight loss patients.

Melanie: Dr. Logemann, one of the complaints that many people have with other weight loss programs is that the choices are there and some people like those choices and some people have a lot of trouble with the choices. So, as far as meal planning and meal replacement; it’s pretty well set, so they don’t have to worry about what they should have, it’s just right there ready to go.

Dr. Logemann: Yeah, I think that’s the nice thing about this protocol. It’s very specific what they should eat and if they eat what’s on the protocol, they are going to lose the weight. That being said, very specific there are still a lot of choices within that, for various different palettes or taste preferences. So, the products – there are over 70 different products that we use so people can find something that they like. We have soups, we have bars, we have chips, they are all protein-based, low carbohydrate so we take the carbohydrates out of the diet and people start to burn fat as their energy source and so that is what allows them to lose weight. So, even though it is very specific, it’s very flexible in that we can usually find something that somebody is going to enjoy eating and still go through this process. The other thing that’s interesting, is that when you get rid of carbohydrates and people switch to burning fat as their fuel source; we really don’t have much hunger in this program which is I think kind of interesting. Patients assume that if they are in a weight-loss protocol, they are going to be hungry all the time. We really don’t see that. The body starts burning fat, it realizes it has plenty of fuel there and so people really aren’t hungry even though they are losing 3-5 pounds a week.

Melanie: Dr. Logemann, some people are averse to exercise. They are not sure they want to get involved in a program where that’s going to be the main focus. Is exercise involved in the Aspirus Ideal Weight Solution?

Dr. Logemann: Yeah, so exercise is probably not as good a weight loss technique as what is touted. Especially for most of our patients that are middle age or older; they can only burn a couple hundred calories exercising and oftentimes, it actually makes them hungry when they exercise so, sometimes they overeat – it’s very to overeat your exercise and you really can’t exercise yourself out of bad diet. So, weight-loss and health is 80% diet. And also, when we are on this program, you are only getting about 1100-1200 calories a day, so it’s not a great time to really exercise a lot. A lot of our patients have other problems orthopedically which limits exercises well so, exercise is really not a part of this program. People can do their regular activities of daily living. They can walk, but really weight loss on anti-obesity treatment is about diet. This diet responds very well without the addition of exercise. As people get better, they lose weight, they do want to become more active and we are supportive of that. Exercise is very important in the weight maintenance phase to keep the weight off and we try to work with people toward that, but I have heard so many times and it breaks my heart; people say I can’t lose weight because I can’t exercise. And that is just the opposite of the truth. You can always lose weight if you follow our protocol. And in fact, once you start losing weight, then you can exercise. So, no, we don’t need people – we take people that can’t exercise. Exercise is really not the main focus of weight-loss or of this program.

Melanie: So, a diet such as this which some people call a ketogenic diet you know and using fat for your fuel, it does change the way your body metabolizes as you say it uses fat for your fuel. What happens when they come off of this medically supervised weight-loss program and start eating carbohydrates again? Is there a backlash? What happens? What have you found are some long-term results?

Dr. Logemann: Yeah, so I mean low carbohydrate ketogenic diet is very standard now in the weight loss industry, very safe results. We have treated several thousand patients like this and across the country hundreds of thousands of people have been treated with this protocol. So, it is very well tolerated. When you first start on about the first four or five days, some people get a little fatigue as they switch to fat burning, but if you think about it, if you want to lose weight; you have to burn the fat. So, we want people to become fat burning. As people come off the protocol, we do that over about two to four weeks, so we slowly phase carbohydrates back in to the diet and there really isn’t a problem when they get back on carbohydrates. Obviously, if they fall off our maintenance program and they get back into too many carbohydrates, the risk is weight regain and we try to follow people on a regular basis and educate them against that type of approach but really just switching back to a low to moderate amount of carbohydrates is just really not a problem. We do it over about a two to four-week period.

Melanie: So, let’s talk about the phases and how patient success is supported. Tell us about your team and what happens in each phase.

Dr. Logemann: Yeah, so the first phase is the longest phase. That’s the weight-loss phase. That is three of our products a day. It is vegetables and eight ounces of protein. People stay on that until they hit their target weight and a target weight is determined between you and the coach based on how much you weigh now, where you would like to be and what the coach thinks is realistic. So, people work toward that target weight. Usually what happens is somebody sets a target weight and they get to it pretty quickly and they actually set another lower target weight and they continue to move down the spectrum. We have had people anywhere from that want to lose 20 pounds for a high school reunion to our biggest weight loss so far is 350 pounds. So, we treat people in all areas for all different types of things. Cosmetic weight loss to medical weight loss for people that have diabetes and complications. So, after they are done – so in phase one, we are seeing them every week, they are eating just eight ounces of protein, vegetables and lettuce. Phase two they start to eat lean protein for lunch and for supper, they are down to two products, then for phase three, they eat a little bit of carbohydrate for breakfast and just have one of our snacks and breakfast will be carbohydrate, lean protein, egg, something like that and then phase four is just the maintenance phase where we try to encourage them to eat healthy which would be low carbohydrate vegetables, lean proteins, a little bit of complex carbohydrates and a little bit of healthy fats mono and saturated fats, olive oils that type of stuff.

Melanie: So, then as far as the benefits and what people can see, and how they are supported, kind of give us your best advice; because you really set it out very well for us Dr. Logemann, but tell people what you want them to know about if they are scared and they are considering this type of a program, but they are concerned about temptation and that sort of thing. How do you help them with that?

Dr. Logemann: Yeah okay that’s a complicated question actually several different parts. Maybe we can come back to it again. But as far as temptation, I think the biggest thing that we get, is results right away, in other words, some people have been told oh you should lose weight slowly, you should lose a pound a week and if anybody has ever tried to lose a pound a week, you know it’s just very difficult. It’s hard to stay motivated. You have one bad weekend because of a Packers game and all of the sudden you have gained more than you lost. So, people stay motivated on our program because they are losing so much weight on a regular sustainable basis. Oftentimes, when people first start the protocol, they are going to have a fluid loss in addition to a fat loss, so we might see ten pounds in the first week. Now some of that is fluid, which is good, but it’s a very motivating result so people are seeing weight loss, they are getting results, their clothes are fitting better, they’re buying smaller clothes, they are coming off their medications, their blood sugar is better. I just had a patient yesterday who I saw that she lost 45 pounds and you know she was surprised and that’s kind of moderate for us. We have a lot of people that have lost 100 pounds, but she was like, Dr. I just can’t believe how good I feel, and my husband and I were talking, and we were at Fleet Farm and I picked up a 45-pound bag of bird seed and I could barely lift it and then my husband said, well that’s what you were carrying around every day. He said no wonder you were tired. When you got rid of the 45-pound pack, no wonder you feel better. So, our patients are motivated and stay motivated because they get results, they get results quickly, they get sustained results and, so they tend to go with it.

What I would tell people that are thinking about the program is that your health is worth it. It’s hard to stay active in life when your weight is not under control. Your joints are bad. Your legs are bad. You don’t have energy. You are on medications, sometimes with side effects and as people invest in their health, they go through this program, they get off medications for their blood pressure, they get off medications for their blood sugar, their sleep apnea gets better, their joints feel better. It’s just a tremendous investment in their health and wellbeing so that they can really live a full enjoyable life with joy in it. They can get up and engage their children and their grandchildren. They can go to work and enjoy it. They can do hobbies. I mean out man that lost 350 pounds is so excited because this year he can go deer hunting. Yeah 600,000 deer hunters in Wisconsin, huge family tradition, huge tradition of hunting and enjoying the outdoors. He wasn’t able to go for many, many years and this year he’s so excited that he can go this year and his goal next year is to go elk hunting which is even more physically demanding. So, I mean I think that’s just a great example of when people invest in their health how they can get back into enjoying life and it’s just so exciting to see him be a part of it that we really enjoy it.

Melanie: What an amazing program. How can people get started?

Dr. Logemann: So, yeah, they can just call – they can Google us. We are on the Aspirus website. They can call our number 715-847-2380 to register for a free workshop. We are available through the Aspirus website as well so, a lot of different ways but the easiest is the phone number 715-847-2380. We have offices in Wausau, Kronenwetter, Rhinelander, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids, so that if somebody is not living in Wausau, we try to make it easy for them. We come to them.

Melanie: Wow, thank you so much. I can just hear your passion and your energy Dr. Logemann. What a wonderful guest you are and a great program. Thank you so much for being with us today. This is Aspirus Health Talk and for more information, please visit www.aspirus.org , that’s www.aspirus.org and you can get more information on the Aspirus Ideal Weight Solution there. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.