Have you ever struggled to maintain a diet in the hopes of losing weight? Why is it so challenging to stick with a new regime? Dr. J David Prologo – best-known for inventing a medical procedure where the nerve which signals hunger to the brain is frozen, effectively allowing individuals to diet without hunger - suggests that dieting doesn’t work because it is a battle against the body. In his book The Catching Point Transformation, Dr. Prologo outlines a unique strategy for individuals struggling to lose weight while acknowledging that ‘mind over matter’ may not be enough.
Can you tell us about your background and credentials? How did your unique career experience lead you to write The Catching Point Transformation?
I am a graduate of The Ohio State University School of Medicine. My post graduate training and certifications are in interventional radiology (image guided procedures) and obesity medicine. This unique dual certification allowed me to create brand new procedures that block hunger to help with weight loss.
Those procedures confirmed a remarkable new phenomenon in the space of weight loss and are changing the focus of new programs. They allowed people to “stay with it” just long enough to get to a critical point beyond which it was no longer difficult, effectively making healthy living much easier for millions of people or otherwise simply quit the old-fashioned diets.
Plainly said, it has shifted the focus to understanding why our bodies fight us and make life miserable for us when we start a diet. Why do we hate it and why we can’t sustain it? Changing that experience is what is changing the outcomes. Focusing on easing the body’s resistance to weight loss.
Tell us about The Catching Point Transformation.
The Catching Point Transformation was written because it has become absolutely clear that the old-fashioned plan of restricting calories and starting new exercise does not work. Ninety five percent of people who try this fail, and while we have been touting this as the gold standard of care – the incidence of obesity has tripled in the United States and increased all over the world.
These programs don’t work because the body fights back by slowing its metabolism, generating ravaging hunger feelings, inducing anxiety and depression, adjusting the gut microbiome, producing hunger and stress hormones, initiating food seeking missions, and much more. The body essentially fights what it thinks is a starvation event and makes it impossible to stay with the plan. It’s like the resistance you feel when you deprive the body of oxygen by staying under water. You can do it for a short time, but eventually the body’s survival signals will overcome your efforts and drive you to the surface.
The Catching Point Transformation describes the medical procedures, interventions, and medications that block that response. It further teaches the reader what new things to focus on that will blunt this response and change the body so that weight loss becomes easy, vs. an undoable task.
Would you consider it a diet book?
NO! The first half of The Catching Point Transformation describes new science and understandings that explain precisely why diets are not working. This is the foundation of the book. A narrative that essentially exposes the trap diet failers have fallen into. A validation for those who say, “No matter what I do, I just cannot lose weight. I could eat the same diet as Skinny Sally over there and not lose a pound.” You are right! And there is an explanation and reasons why you should stop that approach that isn’t working.
The remainder of the book focuses on new variables that will lead to change. The Catching Point Transformation identifies for readers at least 20 new changes that can be made to change the body and ease the struggle of weight loss. Some of them are medical procedures. Many of them are not. For example, the addition of elements to the diet (vs. focusing on restriction) leads to a more peaceful experience when losing weight. Phenomenon such as the leucine trigger, active recovery, and lunasin supplementation nurture change for the reader – and ultimately result in transformation.
What differentiates your strategy from others in the market?
Traditional strategies employ an old-fashioned assault on the body of new exercise combined with calorie restriction, a literal recipe for failure as the body fights back against this perceived starvation event.
The Catching Point Transformation brings in new elements to the readers life that nurture and accelerate change (vs. focusing on restriction). Focusing on the addition of the right nutrients, staying full, recovering, sleeping and supplementing (and more) leads to changes in the body that ease the mind and reassure the brain that we are not starving. This leads to body change and a different experience. We bring the reader to a new point in their lives, The Catching Point, beyond which all of this is easy. We bring them across an expanse to join the people for whom healthy living and working out is not only not a struggle, but a joy.
What is the best advice you could give to anyone who is struggling with maintaining their dieting/exercising regime?
You will not succeed with any traditional diet in your current state. There is a difference between those folks who can easily and enjoyably follow these programs for maintenance, and those of us trying to make a change. Those of us trying to make a change (i.e., lose weight), the resistance will be unbearable, and you will eventually quit.
Join us and change your body so that you also can have an easy, enjoyable time. Let us get you to that critical catching point, beyond which these otherwise undoable diets will be effortless.
A mentor of mine once gave me advice that I would share here with those that struggle with weight loss: “If what you are doing is not working, try something else.” We can get you a different outcome if you are willing to try a different way.
What is the main misconception about dieting that you would like to correct?
We take on this question in the very first Chapter of the book, entitled “Mind over matter is Bull$%&#.” The idea that someone can make a change from 250 pounds to 180 by having willpower or mental fortitude or perseverance is absolutely ridiculous. It’s like telling a cancer patient who cannot take a medication because of nausea that they just “really gotta want it,” or “well, I guess you don’t really want to be rid of your cancer.” People cannot tolerate our current programs or ideas about weight loss the same way come cancer patients cannot tolerate a drug because of nausea. Not because their minds are weak or any such nonsense, but because the body cannot tolerate it.
We owe them a better option. We understand now why that it is. We owe them an apology.
Can you talk about your personal health and wellness journey? Did any insights from The Catching Point Transformation help you personally?
I spent my entire life watching my loved ones fail diets. People I knew to be strong and have willpowers of steel. I saw firsthand that something was shutting them down. Something was going on that could not be overcome with the mind.
I then spent the greater part of my career proving this to be true. Outside of my work bariatric surgeons were on the same track. They were making changes to the body that lead to weight loss. Importantly these were not “willpower implantation surgeries” or some other kind of brain surgery or psychosocial intervention. These were body changes that changed outcomes.
Our own procedures reproduced the same. Changes to the body interrupted this signal that told the brain we were starving and stopped all these backlashes like hunger hormone spikes and so on. The body was blocking the change.
From that, 20+ changes were identified that modified this phenomenon and led to easier and sustainable weight loss – some are medical, some are not.
What is the main takeaway you hope readers will remember after reading The Catching Point Transformation?
The body is blocking your change. Not your mind. You are not weak-willed or mentally defective. The experience of eating clean and exercising for those that are trying to make a change is totally different than the same exact clean eating and exercise for maintenance in a lean person. To be successful in making a change, you must address the body’s resistance. We have figured out how to do it. Give it a try!
To learn more about Dr. J David Prologo click here.
You can also find more information on The Catching Point Transformation by clicking here.
