Episode Details

About the Guest

Lori Balue is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and metabolic restoration practitioner based in Southern California. After losing 100 pounds in her 50s and reversing asthma, pre-diabetes, and chronic joint pain through metabolic restoration, she has completed multiple Grand Canyon rim-to-rims, runs half marathons annually, and summits peaks across the San Gabriels and Sierra Nevada. At 63, she is training for Mount Whitney.

What's Covered in Part 2

Why We Get Fat — The Full Picture

Nobody chooses to be overweight. The environment is toxic. Lori traces the dietary shift from pre-1970s eating — natural fats, protein, whole foods, three meals a day — to the fat-free era of the '70s and '80s, when sugar and ultra-processed food replaced fat and protein. The result: chronically elevated insulin, suppressed satiety signals, and a food supply engineered to override the body's natural appetite shutoff. It's not willpower. It's biochemistry.

Lori's Journey — The Full Arc

From the teenager who lost weight on Atkins and felt her depression lift, to the 225-pound woman cycling through Nutrisystem and starvation diets in her 30s and 40s. Wheat and dairy sensitivities she didn't yet know she had. Food addiction she couldn't overcome through willpower because willpower isn't the right tool. Pre-diabetes. PCOS. Twenty-five years of trying. The Wheat Belly, the HCG diet, paleo, finally keto — and then the moment her brain turned back on and she understood what had been happening to her body the whole time.

How to Restore Your Metabolism

Metabolic restoration starts with diagnostic labs — a roadmap of digestion, gut health, hormones, food sensitivities, and mineral levels. Fix the digestion first: if you're not absorbing protein, no amount of eating right will work. Add back the minerals — potassium, sodium, the spark plugs of the body. Reduce insulin response through low-carb nutrition. Build muscle through protein and movement. The metabolism follows. Three to six months, guided. Not complicated, Lori says — just the basics, done right.

The Grand Canyon as a Measuring Stick

Lori has been returning to the Grand Canyon annually since 2016, when she went down to Phantom Ranch with her then-husband and had excruciating knee pain on every downhill step. Each subsequent visit she tracked her body's progress — more strength, less pain, less altitude sickness. The rim-to-rim came when her body was simply capable of it. Her most recent hike: a personal best on Bright Angel, five hours from the river to the rim, passing younger hikers who were struggling. She fueled just right. She didn't sit down once.

The Mount Wilson Fatality

Lori was hiking with a group at Mount Wilson when a member of her party — an experienced runner in excellent shape, headed for the Grand Canyon — stepped too close to the edge and fell. She was 30 minutes behind and saw the aftermath. Her takeaway: it was not a bad decision. It was a complete fluke. Trail safety reminders she takes from it: approach narrow sections front-to-back, not side by side, and never stand on edges — not ever.

The Divorce

The husband who asked, without looking up from the couch, when she was going to lose the weight — he didn't wait. They divorced. She lost the weight at 60, after the marriage ended. Twenty-five years of learning. She got there anyway.

Half Marathons — and Why Not a Full

Lori stumbled into half marathons when a friend invited her to Zion. She trained, showed up dialed-in nutritionally, and walked-jogged to a finish in three and a half hours. Now she does one a year, gets her time down a little each time, and dances at the finish line because she's full of joy. A full marathon, in her assessment, introduces oxidative stress she doesn't want