"Sal's Weight Coach" with Jina Klapisch

Coach Jina Klapisch who helps Sal Daher keep off 100 pounds is our guest in this episode. Sal and Jina discuss how HMR clients are able to take off and keep off significant weight with no hunger or feeling of deprivation. Check out HMR Weight Loss and Lifestyle Coaching here.

Jina Klapisch, weight and health coach

Highlights:

  • Sal Daher Introduces Jina Klapisch

  • What Sets HMR Apart From the Rest

  • How HMR Works

  • "... What you're doing here is helping people discover the things that are easy for them to do repeatedly and make them into habits, and not try to do stuff that's hard, impossible for them..."

  • Decision-Free

  • Sal's Diet Journey at the Age of Thirteen

  • Oprah and HMR

  • "... when you're trying to make a very big change in your life, whether it's quitting smoking or quitting drinking, or with food, you need to take a break from that substance ... so that you can see clearly as you lose this weight and start to really figure out who I am as an eater..."

  • How Your Environment Can Affect Your Weight

  • Outlive by Peter Attia MD

  • "... The first half mile that you walk every single day is the golden half mile. The first mile you walk is the golden mile. That is going to add years to your life..."

  • Advice to the Audience

  • Jina's Background

  • "... 80% of weight loss is keeping it off, the hard part..."

  • Jina's Parting Thoughts

ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:

Transcript of “Sal's Weight Coach”

Guest: Jina Klapisch

Sal Daher: I am really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston podcast is sponsored by Purdue University entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty, faculty that's top five engineering school, in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out to industry, out to the clinic. Peter Fasse is also a great support to entrepreneurs. He is a patent attorney specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful to some of the startups, which I'm involved, including a startup, came out of Purdue, Savran Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast.

Sal Daher Introduces Jina Klapisch

Welcome to Angel Invest Boston. Conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today we're very privileged to have a very special guest. She's not a founder in the usual sense of the word, although she is an entrepreneur. She is not an angel investor, although maybe someday she will be. Her name is Jina Klapisch and she's a very special person in my life because she's my weight loss and lifestyle coach and she is the person who has helped me lose more than 100 pounds and is helping me keeping it off. Welcome, Jina Klapisch.

Jina Klapisch: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here today with you, Sal. This is very exciting for me.

Sal Daher: Oh, this is awesome. Jina is at HMR Weight Loss and Lifestyle Coaching, which is a business in Natick, Massachusetts there in the old Leonard Boris Hospital and we're going to get into what they do. HMR program in its various embodiments, in its various versions is what I've used-- This is the sixth time around. Five times before I lost weight, but I put it back on. The sixth time, I have lost the weight. I started the process back in July of '21 and I finished losing most of that early '22. Now it's late April of 23 and I'm keeping off more than 100 pounds, which is way better than I've ever done before, which is way better than most people do, humbly speaking. I owe a lot of that to the help that was provided to me by Jina Klapisch. Jina, tell us exactly what sets HMR apart from other types of weight loss programs.

What Sets HMR Apart From the Rest

Jina Klapisch: HMR, especially our program here in Natick, what I've learned over the 30 years I've been in this industry, I've been doing this work for over 30 years, is that losing weight is easy for most people. If you do the diet, whatever the diet, people lose the weight, but it's keeping off that weight that's really difficult. In order to do both of those things, you need a program that gives you a number of things. That program needs to give you coaching, it needs to give you support, it needs to give you accountability and reinforcement, and it needs to have an approach that is about lifestyle, so not a quick fix diet, we're going to get this weight off, but a program that says, "Yes, I can help you lose that weight, but I'm also going to help you change your lifestyle habits through coaching and support and through repetition so that you have the best shot at keeping the weight off."

I think what separates HMR Weight Loss and Lifestyle Coaching from others, is you're going to get all of that. It's like a one-stop shop for weight loss and lifestyle habit management. In addition to that, you're going to improve your health. So we see people come off medications, we see people have more energy and sleep better.

Sal Daher: Amen, absolutely.

Jina Klapisch: Just all the things that people are looking for when they want to lose weight and change their habits.

Sal Daher: Coach Jina, losing weight is what percentage of the effort that you have to put in? Is it 50%, is it 60%, and then 40% keeping it off, what would you say is the distribution there?

Jina Klapisch: I'd say it's like 20% to 80% to keep it off, that's where the energy and the efforts come in, is in the long-term lifestyle, weight management, and health management. Again, I've seen this over my 30 years where people come to me, to my program after they have done other programs and lost weight, and I say to them, "This is your last stop on the train, I want this to be the last stop for you and it can be." That's I think a really important, hopeful message for people.

Sal Daher: My experience with HMR, the first time that I went through HMR was in the early '90s. It was a very different program then, it was much earlier, and in those days you just did the shakes. I lost weight very quickly, and I was down to my ideal body weight. I had never been in my ideal body weight as an adult ever, but thanks to HMR, I got down to that.

However, I didn't really do the maintenance part of it, they had maintenance, they knew it was important, they knew it then, but the way that the business was done then, and the way that the service was provided then was very inflexible. You either phoned your coach, but you had to attend physical class, and I moved to Singapore the year after that.

I couldn't even email my coach, was not accepted in those days, they were very rigid. Larry Stifler, the psychologist who founded HMR, looked at a lot of data and he said, "It's very important for a person to be present at the class in order to change their behavior and so forth." This is serious stuff, there's science behind it.

There was a reason for doing it, this has evolved, this is now 30 years later, the HMR program has evolved, and they have a much broader palette of foods that you eat. Very structured eating. By the way let's just describe the HMR program, what it entails. Okay. Jina, can you just give us a quick description of how it works?

How HMR Works

Jina Klapisch: Yes, sure. Someone would come into the program and once they decide to join, they would go into Phase 1. Phase 1 is our active weight loss phase, and you would choose one of three different weight loss options. We do use meal replacements which are high protein shakes, high protein portion controlled meals, and high protein bars. That's it. As our foundation for all of our plans, because it makes it easy. As you experience, Sal, it's easy, it's decision-free. It just takes all the guesswork out of the equation. Yes, you were going to say?

Sal Daher: Decision-Free is the name of the program for the fastest weight loss. Literally you only take shakes or shakes and entrées, and may be a bar here or there, and a soup, no vegetables, no fruit, nothing, but it's very easy to count the calories, very easy to get in a lot of shakes and so forth to keep you full. This is a really important thing about HMR, okay? Finish this because I want to tell you a story of my first experience dieting when I was a 13-year-old boy.

Jina Klapisch: Well, as you were referencing, one of best parts about Phase 1 that I think-- When people sometimes hear shakes and meals and that's it, they get nervous, but we have something called More is Better. We very much believe in the volumetrics approach where we don't want you to be hungry, so if you feel like you need something whether you're physically hungry, maybe you're just I say nudgy in class all the time, like you're just feeling like you need something, you have a place to go that you can say yes to, and that would be another shake, another meal. We do have a really great high protein oatmeal, so you always have the option to have more of whatever is in that toolbox so that you-

Sal Daher: Chicken soup, which is a--

Jina Klapisch: Chicken soup, yes. You can do a lot with the shakes. You can make the chocolate and add peanut butter and you can add sugar-free Jell-O pudding powder. You can really get creative.

Sal Daher: Let's qualify that.

Jina Klapisch: Sure.

"... What you're doing here is helping people discover the things that are easy for them to do repeatedly and make them into habits, and not try to do stuff that's hard, impossible for them..."

Sal Daher: PB 2, it's not real peanut butter, it's peanut butter flavor that lends a flavor a bit of a texture to it. Not something I use, because I'm not crazy about peanut butter, but that is an important point here, Jina. What you're doing here is helping people discover the things that are easy for them to do repeatedly and make them into habits, and not try to do stuff that's hard, impossible for them. Try to make stuff that's easy for them, make it easier for them to do it over and over. Please continue with your thoughts. You have the Decision-Free, which is just the shakes and the meals. Please continue, the other two programs.

Jina Klapisch: Yes. I just going to add one more thing to that. I think when people think of weight loss and dieting, it's all about what I can't have and feeling deprived. We take a completely different attitude here. We say, you know what, it's all about what you can have so have that extra shake, make it delicious. We don't want you to feel hungry or deprived. Yes, Decision-Free uses just our meal replacements and it is going to give you your quickest, easiest weight loss. That's what Sal did to lose his 100 pounds and just did a great job with that.

For those who don't want to do Decision-Free, we do have one option that allows you to use the meal replacements with vegetables and fruits. You could use those from the get-go. Some people really love that. It's a really good approach for people who maybe only have to lose 30 or 40 pounds versus somebody who has 100 pounds to lose. The beauty of this program is you have your own coach. That's me. I'm going to walk through this process with you, so I'll help to guide you to make the decision that's going to work best for you. You're not in this by yourself. You certainly have a lot of support and I think that's really helpful too.

Sal Daher: In addition to the coach, you are attending a weekly class. This is very important because human beings are highly social creatures and we need to be in an environment that is thinking about weight loss, it's discussing weight loss because we live in a society where every signal coming at us prompts us to eat more and more unhealthy stuff. We need to have a bit of a refuge, a place where you can reinforce your commitment to your weight loss, which is the weekly attendance to class. This is something that's really well-established. I compare it to AA, alcoholics who are successful at staying sober. These people attend a weekly meeting. They have a sponsor, they have a very structured program, they work at it all the time and they know that they are alcoholics, always alcoholics, but they're sober alcoholics.

This is a program that works. AA works. It doesn't work very often, but if anything works, it works. Attendance to class keeps you identifying as a person who is controlling her or his weight. This is a really important thing. James Clear, thanks to James Clear of Atomic Habits. A great book, we should all read this. Eventually, we'll mention it again. The idea is that you have to change your identity. You have to be someone who is controlling her weight, his weight, and not someone who is not controlling weight. The same thing with the alcoholic who is going to the meeting. He is a sober alcoholic. He identifies herself or himself as a sober alcoholic. Please continue.

We talked about Decision-Free, we talked about healthy solutions. By the way, Decision-Free is a medically supervised program to make sure that you're getting sufficient protein and sufficient nutrition, potassium, everything so that you're healthy. Every few weeks you have blood draw, there's a fully qualified and very nice physician who reviews your blood work and your blood pressure and all these things and smiles and says, "Gosh, your blood pressure looks great."

[laughter]

Please continue.

Jina Klapisch: I'll just say just to piggyback off of what you said about attendance, I really think that attendance is our secret sauce in this program. As I said, I've been with HMR since 1989, and HMR is a data-based program, so everything that we do has been proven through science and data. One of the things that we've seen is that when people get together every week and they're held accountable and they're able to identify as a person who really needs to focus on themselves, their weight, their health, they do so much better. This was tested during COVID, wasn't it? When-

Sal Daher: Oh, yes. [laughs]

Jina Klapisch: -I had to quickly go from in-person attendance, which was really a foundation piece or part of our work, to Zoom. Although we did really well, it just was different, and people really started to notice, especially as they came back into the classroom, how wonderful it was to be around people and to be able to talk about the struggles and the triumphs and really, everything associated with change of lifestyle and change of habit. Attendance is our secret sauce for sure.

I'll say too about the medical supervision piece, it's really great because sometimes people coming into the program do have diabetes or do have cardiovascular issues, and they are a little bit nervous about a program like this, so they have that added level of support, which is really nice as well. Those two pieces together, plus the support and the coaching and just the accountability makes a huge difference. You can speak to that, Sal.

Sal Daher: Absolutely. No, no, absolutely. I've done Healthy Solutions and I have also done Decision-Free more frequently for a faster weight loss because you just feel it goes faster, you're really psyched. When I do the Decision-Free, I don't deviate from the diet one inch. I don't have one grape, I don't have one grain of anything outside, so my weight drops like you wouldn't believe. The third format of the diet that you were talking about, the third program, please elaborate on that.

Jina Klapisch: We call it Healthy Solutions.

Sal Daher: I'm sorry, we talked about Decision-Free, we talked about Healthy Solutions. You said that there are three programs, Decision-Free, Healthy Solutions--

Jina Klapisch: Right. Within Decision-Free, there's two options for people to choose.

Decision-Free

Sal Daher: Okay.

Jina Klapisch: The first option in Decision-Free would be to just start with just our high protein shakes, which includes chocolate, vanilla, chicken soup, and our multi-grain cereal or oatmeal. You would start with just the shakes, five minimum, you can have more if you need more, and then at any point you can add in entrées or bars. Then in Decision-Free, there's a choice to start with three shakes and two of the meals as your beginning meal plan or program. You can choose which one of those, but they're both Decision-Free in the sense that there's no other decisions to make, no outside food.

Sal Daher: It is astonishing how quickly you will lose weight. In terms of the number of calories per day, I was consuming about 1,400 calories per day. To someone who's about my size, 1,400 calories, a person would not lose weight very quickly, but my weight came off like crazy because I was doing between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a week of exercise. I calculated that. In a week, when I lost maybe three and a half, four pounds, maybe I lost one and a half from exercise and the rest was from deficiting. We'll get more into this later.

Basically, we have these two different large buckets, just Decision-Free and the other one is Healthy Solutions. Decision free is usually medically supervised, within Decision-Free, you have different variations. You can have just the shakes, where you will lose weight very quickly. You can achieve unbelievable satiety with the shakes because guess what? The shakes, I was using 110 calories. To get to my 1,400 calories, I could have 13 shakes. Believe it, if I have 13 of those shakes with all the water, I'd be so full I wouldn't be able to walk. You're not going to be hungry on the HMR diet.

Sal's Diet Journey at the Age of Thirteen

Maybe I can tell my story when I dieted when I was 13 years old. I grew up as a fat kid. If you saw me back in 1966 when I came to America, you'd say, "Oh, he's a little pudgy." In those days I was a fat kid. I was a kid, in Brazil my doctor has said to my mom, get him a soccer ball. Get him moving. He needs to lose weight. I got here, I discovered Ring Dings.

Jina Klapisch: Devil Dogs.

Sal Daher: All these yummy pastries, all this stuff. I balloon. I put on a lot of weight. Still today, I would not be that fat. Maybe I needed to lose 30 pounds, 20 pounds. I was a big kid anyway. [laughs] The doctor, "Mrs. Daher, your son needs to lose weight. I'm going to make an appointment with a dietitian." I went to the dietician and she put me on this 1,300-calorie-a-day diet. I was a big 13-year-old boy. I was hungry all the time. That diet was horrible because I was a volume eater. I like large amounts of food and I couldn't eat any of the foods that I liked. I had to eat little bouts of beef, a little amount of rice and a little bit of vegetable and I was hungry all the time. It was torture and I lost 20 pounds.

Then I went off the diet. I would never diet. It was torture. The funny thing is when I think about going through HMR years later, I'm a full-grown adult. On 1,400 calories a day, I was never hungry. When I got hungry, I went and had another shake. There were days when maybe I had 16 shakes. So big deal. 16 times a 100, it's like 1600 calories. It's nothing. I was never hungry.

Oprah and HMR

It was so gratifying to me because it fit my particular-- There are people who could not have more than five shakes, they would be full. I could be 16 shakes in a day and that's what I needed. This is the great thing about HMR. By the way, I'm not an investor in HMR, I don't have a stake in them. What I have is gratitude for what they've done. It's a quirky program. Let's tell the story about Oprah. Sometime in the past, there were conversations with Oprah that she might want to do the diet with HMR. From Oprah Winfrey's point of view, really it's impossible for her to attend a weekly meeting at one of the centers of HMR centers because she's probably America's most recognizable celebrity.

The place would be mobbed every week. It's undoable. It really was an impossible situation that they had to create a way for her to have the clinic at her house. Dr. Stifler, who was very particular, he had a lot of data. The data showed that you had to attend class, and it had to be with other people in the social environment. You have the coach, weekly classes and all this stuff.

Oprah said, no, I need you to come to my house, to send a health educator to my house every week, and I'll do the diet and so forth. She is somebody who is very high functioning, very capable, she probably would've done really well. Dr. Stifler was very particular. His data did not show that it would be successful if you went to someone's house. He didn't have data on someone like Oprah.

He passed up the opportunity of having Oprah be his client, his patient. This would've been like Oprah's weight loss program. He turned down Oprah. He's the guy who-- I mean because he's so dedicated to his data and the data didn't show that, and he was not going to go where the data didn't show. Tremendous integrity, bad business judgment in my opinion.

[laughter]

"... when you're trying to make a very big change in your life, whether it's quitting smoking or quitting drinking, or with food, you need to take a break from that substance ... so that you can see clearly as you lose this weight and start to really figure out who I am as an eater..."

Jina Klapisch: Yes, I mean, it just shows the integrity of the program. I think that one of the things that I really admire about being part of it is, diets go through phases and fads and HMR has never compromised their core fundamentals and foundations based on a fad. Yes, they introduce new products, they try different programs, but they don't compromise what they know the science says works, which is attendance, which is Decision-Free.

I'll say something about the Decision-Free too. I think when you're trying to make a very big change in your life, whether it's quitting smoking or quitting drinking, or with food, you need to take a break from that substance. Get away from it for a little while so that you can see clearly as you lose this weight and start to really figure out who I am as an eater and identify with that and then start to make those changes that will support you long-term to keep the weight off. I think Decision-Free serves so many valuable purposes.

Sal Daher: It is unbelievable, the energy that you get on the Decision-Free diet. It's just amazing. Look, here's more perspective on HMR. I first went through the program back in the early '90s before I went to Singapore. One of the coaches that I had then was Bill Reese. I had several different coaches in the meantime, and it's incredibly consistent. I mean, really talking about integrity. The program went to different owners. At one point, it was owned by one of the large pharmaceutical companies and so forth, and now it's owned by a private equity group. It's a serious program and they're in the business of helping you lose weight. They're not in the business of selling their product.

They're not like all these diet fads and so forth, they're just pushing the product. These people really care. They take pride in having success with their patients. If all they wanted to do was sell their products, they could sell their delicious BeneFit Bars. [laughs] You could eat a lot of those and you'd not lose weight. It's a tool. It's kept behind a pane of glass with a little hammer that you break when it's needed. When you're at a dinner with family and everybody's having a delicious cake that you love, you break out your BeneFit Bar and you have your sweet. It's sweet. It is much more filling than if you had cake. It has much lower glycemic impact on you if you had cake.

If you drink it with water, it's somewhat filling, but it's not like the shake. It's not like the entrées, not like the cereal, the chicken soup, or whatever. It doesn't come close in terms of filling you up and providing you nutrition and to keep you on your diet. Let me encapsulate here. I think this point is really important. The diet is all about figuring out a repeatable strategy for you to eat foods that are filling and satisfying for you, and also to problem solve around increasing your physical activity, because we didn't talk about this yet, physical activity, okay? Also making sure that you're sleeping well, that you're doing all sorts of other things to maintain-- control your stress around you.

Really, it is lifestyle in a sense that your eating is connected with all these other things. For example, is it possible to lose weight on HMR without exercising at all? There are people who are paralyzed. There are people who are in wheelchairs and can exercise very minimally. They do manage to lose weight in HMR. I've seen them. We have people in class right now who are doing it. People who have tremendous problems with their health, who are losing weight on HMR with very minimal exercise.

I have also seen the case of this lady back in the early 2000s, HMR program when it was in Newton. She was so impaired when she started HMR that she couldn't walk from her car all the way to the HMR offices. She had to stop the lobby and rest before she went up to HMR. This lady within nine months was on a NordicTrack cross-country exerciser. She used to weigh like 300 pounds. She was a small woman. She lost 200 something pounds. It was an unbelievable loss. She became incredibly fit. She had gotten so overweight because she was caring for her mother. She was depressed, and she was eating as a way of compensating for that. She dug herself out of that hole.

I was astonished at the progress that she made, because I was always kind of fit. I always did exercise. I was overweight, but I was 236. I was 6'1 then. If you saw me today, you wouldn't think I was that-- I was kind of pudgy. I wasn't really that fat, but I got down to perfectly fit weight, a lot of muscle and all this stuff. This poor woman, she was tiny. 300 pounds was a lot of weight for her. She did heroic things. Of course, she went off her diabetes medication. She was relatively young, some blood pressure medication also. She was off all the meds and she was on a freaking NordicTrack. I have a NordicTrack cross-country exerciser. It's not easy to stay on.

How Your Environment Can Affect Your Weight

She would spend an hour on that thing, because her cardiovascular fit that really-- She just blew the hinges off. I saw it with my own eyes. She was sitting in class with me and really inspired me. This is one of the reasons why attending class every week is important, because you're going to see someone like that. You're going to see someone like M, the young father of three, or the family man working professional. He's a handsome guy with a beard, but he was very overweight and he took off an amazing amount of weight. He's just going into maintenance right now. Every time I'm in class with M, I am just inspired. Also reminds me of how hard it is to be struggling with your weight, to have to support your family.

I have the luxury right now in my mid late '60s. Recently well off, I have a lot of flexibility with my schedule. I don't have the responsibilities that a young father has. Mr. A, another person, delightful person who's in class was also very inspiring. His mom Mrs. K, who's another delightful person. By the way, being overweight is strongly genetically determined. There have been a lot of studies done. This is an area where they've done studies over decades and decades, and with identical twins raised apart. I'll repeat this over and over in the future podcasts, the concordance between the weight of the identical twins raised apart is up to 80% to 90%. It's very rare that you get a phenomenon that consistent in nature. What it means is being overweight, responding to the signals for eating more and putting on weight is very much determined by your genes, but it's not destiny because you can fight against those things. When we were evolving on the African plain, and when we got these genes for putting on weight, we weren't overweight then because the environment wasn't conducive for that, we just survived. We're the ones who survived.

Now we have to fight really hard, you have to understand that each person is different, people have different eating styles. This is why it's really important to create a bespoke personalized set of habits. This is where HMR is really great at because it's not a one-size-fit-all solutions. They have the existing tools. There's the tools there, but they're applied in different ways. I see some of my classmates, they do amazing things with cooking that this and that, that. I'm a Mister dump dump with Bill Reese.

I got a bag of California style, blended, whole foods, I put that in, that's like almost five cups of vegetables, I put two entrées and put some roasted garlic powder on it, my granddaughter says, "What's that weird smell?" She doesn't like garlic. Then I eat that and I'm happy, I'm full. Other people couldn't do that. They can't eat up any vegetables. They will do other things that they'll make these shakes into these little crispy wafers and they'll nibble on that with some water and so forth. It satisfies them.

Different things, I'll come in with a pomelo, is this Filipino version of a grapefruit, the size of a soccer ball, it has a real thick skin, high-volume food. I can eat that for half an hour, 40, sometimes I eat it in class. That thing is 150 calories. For the involvement it takes, the glycemic impact is very low. The sugar load on your body is very low because you consume it over a whole hour and your body can absorb it. There are all these gazillion strategies that you can you learn and support it to make those strategies into habits in particular to you.

Everything I talk about here is my experience. Okay? Your experience with HMR, other people that I know who are in HMR, experience is slightly different, a lot of commonalities, but all of it has to do with looking for sustainable habits and change of lifestyle.

Jina Klapisch: Yes, and it's doable.

Sal Daher: It is hard, but if you focus on it, you can do it. Okay?

Jina Klapisch: Absolutely.

Sal Daher: I've seen that woman who was 300 pounds and could hardly walk from the parking lot to the office, becoming an unbelievable athlete. Okay, I've seen it with my own eyes. Enough focus, enough dedication, you can do it. Now to those people who are saying, "Oh, I've got 40 pounds on me. I'm fit. I'm okay, I'm athletic. I can still run. I do this."

Look, I used to play squash once or twice a week. I had a resting pulse in the 50s. My blood sugar levels are normal, and I was 100 pounds overweight and yet I was very fit. Was that a healthy thing? I wasn't diabetic, but yes, I was probably having more plaque deposit on my arteries than I needed to, okay? That's going to count when I'm 90 years old trying to keep up with my great great grandkids. I wish that I hadn't been there. I wish that I done something like this in my '20s.

You think time's on your side. It's later than you think, buddy. You don't have the luxury because these things that kill you, most people die of heart disease. If cancer doesn't kill you, heart disea-- the biggest killer is still heart disease, but the reality is that you live through old age and what kills you at old age is heart disease, number one.

My wonderful mother-in-law passed away at 104. She had a very healthy life. She beat all the odds. In the end, her heart failed. At 104, your heart will fail. What you want to do is you want to make sure that when you're 80 or 70 years old or 90 years old, your heart still has enough reserves to keep working. Don't mess around, "Oh, yes, I could still run. I can still play hockey even though I'm carrying 50 pounds I shouldn't carry." Lose that weight and get healthy because you don't have the room you think you do.

Outlive by Peter Attia MD

Read Outlive by Peter Attia MD. I'm reading that book right now. He is a longevity doctor. Don't let that throw you. This guy is backed up by science. He's a practicing physician. He has a concierge practice in Austin, Texas. It's very serious. I highly recommend if you're a young person, when you think that you can just like, "Oh, yes, big deal. Yes, I'm going to eat that sub, or grinder, no sweat." You got to get healthy right now because you maybe healthy right now, but the metrics we have in our medical system for measuring, things are wrong.

If you have A1C of above 6.7, you're diabetic. If you're below that, you're prediabetic. Guess what? If you're at 5 something plus, you got problems. Your insulin resistance. You're not diabetic yet, but you've got problems, and it's they haven't shown up yet. The good news is we have reduced mortality from heart disease in the last 60 years by two-thirds. A lot of that smoking and a lot of it is statins, drugs that control blood lipids. The reality is, as Peter Attia says, heart disease should kill as many people as typhoid fever kills today." Which is none. Nobody should die from heart disease because it's preventable if you start early enough, and we don't.

Jina Klapisch: Exactly.

Sal Daher: HMR is a very good place to start fighting your heart disease early on.

Jina Klapisch: Absolutely. 100%.

Sal Daher: Which Is why I applaud Mr. M and Mr. A for doing the work they're doing at their young age.

Jina Klapisch: This program is one that treats the whole person. You come to this program to lose weight, but we're going to address lifestyle habits, including physical activity.

Sal Daher: I'm the host, I have to translate. Physical activity means exercise.

Jina Klapisch: Oh, I'm sorry. Yes.

[laughter]

That's our little jargon. We have our own little jargon and I sometimes get lost.

"... The first half mile that you walk every single day is the golden half mile. The first mile you walk is the golden mile. That is going to add years to your life..."

Sal Daher: Coming back to Peter Attia. Okay. It is the magic pill of health. If there's anything that's close to a magic pill, it's not Ozempic or all these other things.

[laughter]

We can get into that a little later. Maybe they have the rule. The magic pill is getting out there and walking. The first half mile that you walk every single day is the golden half mile. The first mile you walk is the golden mile. That is going to add years to your life. It's going to make you have a better mood. You're going to sleep better. Libido is going to be improved. You're going to have better cognition. It boggles the mind, the benefits that you have. That is the magic pill. My architect recently sent me an article from the New York Times about this. How it really is true, you cannot overestimate the value of exercise.

Jina Klapisch: There was a quote in I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, and I've said it so many times in class that I have memorized it. It said, if there were a pill that could do for human health that which exercise does, it would instantly be the standard of care. If there were one pill that could do everything exercise does for the human body, that pill, everyone would take it. [laughs]

Sal Daher: Former HMR coach Bill Reese said in the 90s, if there was a magic pill that you had to get up 45 minutes earlier and stand in line for 45 minutes to get that would improve your health, do this and do that and help you lose weight along the way a little bit, people would stand in line for it, but when you tell them that it's exercise, they won't go out and exercise 45 minutes every day. [laughs] It's free.

Jina Klapisch: It's free, pair of sneakers.

Sal Daher: Get out there.

Jina Klapisch: Get out there, get out, enjoy the sunshine.

Sal Daher: Outdoors helps.

Jina Klapisch: Tremendously.

Sal Daher: It Improves cognition because you're seeing, you're processing more stuff. Just walking in a basement is very good. It's better than not walking, but walking outside is even better for maintaining your cognitive abilities. Okay. Jina, we've talked about the diet. We've talked about the importance of group. The fact that it really is about creating a new lifestyle. We've touched a little bit on exercise. Is there anything else that you want to focus on as we think about wrapping up our interview?

Advice to the Audience

Jina Klapisch: I think that, I guess the message is that weight loss and long-term weight management, it's daunting for people. I want to make sure that people know there's a place they can go where they can lose weight, they can lose weight quickly, they can lose weight safely, good nutrition, never feel hungry, and more importantly, they can work with a coach one-on-one. You have your own personal coach. I think that's very different than other programs where they can get that support and accountability and ideas troubleshooting together.

Everyone's different, as you said. What works for M might not work for A, and my job is to help figure out what's going to work best for each person who comes in front of me. My goal is for you to lose weight, but it's also for you to change your habits and really live your best quality of life. I just want people to know that there's a place they can go and it's hopeful and it's doable. Yes, it's work, I'm not going to lie. It's certainly work.

Sal Daher: It is definitely work. It is hard. It is hard work. There are times when you're going to have crises. You're going to have crises. You're got to call up Jina and say, "Jina, I had the hot fudge sundae." Jina's got to say, "You evil person." She's not going to do that.

Jina Klapisch: No, no, no.

Sal Daher: She will help you. Say, "Have you had a shake yet?"

Jina Klapisch: That's important too because a lot of people feel judged and they feel shamed. You'll never feel that here. My job is to support you. If you do come and say you've eaten the hot fudge sundae, I'll say, "Okay, let's get back on track. What do we need to do differently? What happened?" Versus, there's no shame. That doesn't happen here, as you can attest to for yourself, but also for the other people in the program.

Sal Daher: Don't do this alone, okay? Don't try to do this alone. I'm an angel investor and I say angel investors don't do angel investing alone because it really helps to be in a group, because group, they see the talent of the founder. They're much better at reading the talent of the founder. You group source your wisdom about the founder and the company. Well, here you have the benefit of somebody, this intelligent, very nice lady who's been doing this for 30 years in a system that has a lot of data behind it and has lots and lots of different tools. In a context where you attend a weekly class with the nicest--

Let me tell you, I strain to think of somebody in a class at HMR who's not a nice person. I really find it hard to think. I think maybe there was, but I can't remember. I think they're so nice. You know, they're quirky. Some of them do crazy things. Oh, Sal. Sal, Sal D. Not me, another Sal.

Jina Klapisch: [crosstalk] we have fun. Yes, another Sal D, imagine, yes, we definitely have our fun. Very fun.

Sal Daher: That's so much fun. It is just a wonderful, wonderful -

Jina Klapisch: It's like a family almost.

Sal Daher: It is. It's like a very large extended Mediterranean family. Cousin Sal, there he is. This crazy thing and he's got his parrot or whatever.

Jina Klapisch: Yes.

Sal Daher: By the way, quickly, let's do a little biography on you, Jina. You come from an Italian-American family, right?

Jina's Background

Jina Klapisch: I do.

Sal Daher: Don't let the Klapisch fool you. It's not Kleschi, Her married name is Klapisch.

Jina Klapisch: Yes. I'm one of five. I grew up in a big Italian family. I think everyone in my family struggles with their weight. My mom was obese, my dad was obese. Sadly, my dad passed away when I was very young and my mom gained a lot of weight. What led me to HMR really was my mother. She did this program back in the '80s. I was just getting out of college and I was a nutritional psychology major, knowing I wanted to continue down this path.

She said, "I think they're looking for a job." I thought, "Oh, I'm too young. They'll never hire me." I went through a series of interviews and I did get hired, and that's the beginning of my journey. HMR has trained me. Certification comes through that as a health coach. I'm currently studying right now to become a functional medicine practitioner. That'll just add to all of the work I can do to help my clients be successful. I grew up around food. It's cultural.

Sal Daher: Emotion is expressed through food.

Jina Klapisch: Oh, yes.

Sal Daher: Eat, eat, eat..

Jina Klapisch: Mangia.

Sal Daher: I'm from a Lebanese family, people come and offer you a dish after you've eaten to the gills, "In honor of Uncle Sayid, have another serving. How can you dishonor Uncle Sayid and not have another serving?" These things developed at a time the people were starving. They would feast, and during the feast, they would say, "Oh, we'll never starve again. This is wonderful." Then a few months later, people were really struggling. These are habits that we can't laugh at them, we can't be sneer at them because these came from tragic circumstances and it's very important to honor that. It really is. It's wonderful.

I engage in feasts, I feast, but within certain controls. I'm counting calories, I try to cut the tops off those days. Then after that, I'm weighing myself and trying to lose some of the weight that I might've put on from that event. That's because it's part of my life. I'm going to live like this the rest of my life so that I can live and watch my grandkids grow up and maybe have great-grandkids. That's my plan and I'm not going to deviate from it.

Jina Klapisch: May I say one thing to add to that? After people go through our Phase 1 and they lose their weight, we do have Phase 2, which is all about maintenance. That's, Sal, you're currently in Phase 2, our long term--

Sal Daher: Living in the real world.

"... 80% of weight loss is keeping it off, the hard part..."

Jina Klapisch: Exactly.

Sal Daher: 80% of weight loss is keeping it off, the hard part.

Jina Klapisch: 80%.

Sal Daher: It's the hard part.

Jina Klapisch: The hard part.

Sal Daher: It's four times harder than losing it. This is where HMR really, really shines.

Jina Klapisch: I agree and I'll say you gave a great example like, what happens if you've lost your 100 pounds, and now it's the weekend and it's your daughter's wedding. You go and you deviate off and your calories are too high, and you're feeling bad, and all the emotion comes in. Well, guess what? You call your coach, you get back to your meeting, and we get you right back on track.

In addition to that, you learn through the process, are there ways I can get to the wedding and not have it be such a disaster? Could I eat more vegetables? Could I eat something before I go? Could I do physical activity that morning? There's all kinds of strategies to implement, that's my job. That the program's job is to help support all of that, facilitate that learning and that re-education, and it can be done, it can be done, for sure. You're doing it, Sal, you're a great example of that.

Sal Daher: I know the HMR method because I've been involved with it well over 30 years, almost as much as you've been-- I've around as long as you have and I've seen different instances of it and so forth, but there's a long road between knowing and doing.

Jina Klapisch: Absolutely.

Sal Daher: In a startup world people like to say ideas are easy, implementation is hard, actually getting things to work. This is where the coach, the class and the tools that HMR provides, they help you implement, translate your knowledge into repeatable habits that become part of your life. You change your way of life, your lifestyle, therefore, that's why you're naming the company now HMR Weight Loss and Lifestyle Coaching, to emphasize the value that this is for life, you're not going to be "Oh, I've got a vacation coming up, I'm going to drop 60 pounds, I'm going to look smashing, and I'm going to go to vacation, and the rest of my life, I'm going to keep the 60--" it's not going to happen. A word about GLP-1 agonists. GLP-1 agonists, these are the miracle weight loss drugs.

Jina Klapisch: Ozempic, Wegovy. My thought is that they have a place in the weight loss and weight management world, but they are not the answer by any stretch. What I mean to say is, is that if you use one of these drugs, and quite honestly, the only folks who should be using them are Type 2 diabetics in my opinion, they're a great crutch, they're going to help you because they do reduce appetite, they do, and you will lose weight, but you still have to change your lifestyle habits, there's no getting around to that.

Even if you had bariatric surgery, which people do who come to me, you still have to change your lifestyle habits after you've had the surgery and lost the initial weight or you won't keep the weight off. I do think there's a place for them, but I don't think they're the answer by any stretch. I want that emphasis on that point to be made more than it is now. So I'm going to say it. I think you agree with me, but you can disagree.

Sal Daher: I agree with you, but I have a couple of things I want to say, okay?

Jina Klapisch: Sure.

Sal Daher: If you're looking at Wegovy, Ozempic, you're dreaming of Mounjaro, whoa, 60 pounds, whoa, you're going to really lose weight. I say, "Wait a second. That's expensive." It is well documented, that after you go off this stuff, they have these-- they've done studies, I think it's 18 months, a year plus, people start getting weight back and so forth. Another downside from it is that you're dyspeptic, you're really not interested in food while you're on it. "Ah, I'm going to make this right now. I love food."

Jina Klapisch: It's great.

Sal Daher: I'm half Lebanese. I love to eat.

Jina Klapisch: It's great.

Sal Daher: I'm keeping off more than 100 pounds of body weight while loving to eat. If you're on Ozempic or all these things, you don't like to eat. You're not eating because it doesn't appeal to you. "Heck, that's not for me." I think you will get pretty much the same effect by going on Decision-Free just on the shakes. Let me tell you, it'll be more satisfying because at least you get to taste something that you actually enjoy drinking because the shakes are pretty tasty.

Jina Klapisch: They are delicious. If I do say so myself. [laughs]

Sal Daher: You will lose weight as fast as if you were on one of these weight loss drugs, but you won't have all the other side effects. You won't be dyspeptic, you're not going to run a risk of this and run the risk of that and blah, blah and all this stuff. I mean, there's--

Jina Klapisch: I do think they downplay the side effects, there are many.

Sal Daher: Yes, and they don't know enough. People haven't used them for long enough. Before you do that, okay, if you want to do the same thing as you're going to do with Wegovy, go through the Decision-Free. In four months, you're going to drop all the weight you would have dropped on Wegovy. Then you're going to stop doing it, you're going to put it all back on again, the same way you're going put it on Wegovy except you have saved a lot of money. Maybe you might have learned something along the way from sitting in class because you're not going to be able to have the shakes and all that stuff. You're not going to be able to do it on your own unless you're supported by a class.

Because you're not going to be-- you're not going to stay in the program because the first two weeks are not easy. A coach helps you the first two weeks to build, change the habits and all that stuff, and that's what the coach does. After you're on it, it's smooth sailing, your weight will drop like you would not believe. If you're thinking about these other weight loss drugs, they have their goal.

Now for Type 2 diabetics, I think they're really very impressive. I mean, they control-- I hear that they do not-- if someone has, for example, fatty liver, I hear that these GLP-1 agonists do not resolve that problem, which is in the long run, that's a real problem. If you still have a fatty liver.

Jina Klapisch: Do you know what does resolve fatty liver? Going through Phase 1 at HMR.

Sal Daher: My visceral fat just dropped tremendously, and how do I know? Because I had a DEXA scan. Anyway, so let's have some parting thoughts here.

Jina Klapisch: Okay.

Jina's Parting Thoughts

Sal Daher: Jina, what thoughts would you like to leave this audience? These are angel investors, meaning older people, 50s plus, who might've put on a few pounds. Then there are the founders, the younger people, who are the age of Mr. M and Mr. A and who have similar work schedules and have lots of responsibilities and are juggling a very busy life. What would you like to say to those two audiences?

Jina Klapisch: Well, first, I just want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity to let people know about our program because it's a great program. We have an amazing community here. We have a wonderful program here with data-driven results. For those people and those two audiences, I would say that, "Come join us. Come find out about who we are. Give me a call. We can talk about your personal situation, and this program is right for everyone. You're not too old. You're not too fat. You're not too anything. If you're willing and you have an open mind, this program is perfect for you, and I would love to hear from you."

Sal Daher: I can say that there's one of my Walnut colleagues who's joining the program soon. I won't say who, okay?

[laughter]

Jina Klapisch: Yes. Yes.

Sal Daher: One of my Walnut colleagues is joining the program soon and is an angel investor, a very capable person with a very busy life, a very successful person. Look, I don't have a financial stake in this company. I'm a CFA charter holder. I have to disclose all conflicts that I have. The only conflict I have is I owe a debt of gratitude to HMR and to Jina Klapisch and to, Dr. Rapa, and to all the wonderful people at HMR for having helped me to lose weight. I lost 114 pounds. I'm keeping off about 103, 104.

I'm making an effort to lose about 5 pounds right now because I want to get my visceral fat down to just the perfect level. It's reasonably low, but I want to get it to perfect level. In the year since because I had two DEXA scans. I had a DEXA scan when I finished the program, a DEXA scan recently, and I'm in very good shape. I had an A plus for my DEXA scan.

[laughs]

They're like, "Wow." Amazing bone density, amazing muscularity. I put on muscle in the last year. Nine of those pounds of the 14 pounds that I put on is muscle, which is most people-- If you go off your diet, you're not going to put on muscle that quickly because I've been exercising a lot. You do lose muscle when you diet, but if you are taking a lot of protein, you're exercising, you're going to minimize that, but afterward, what really tells is how you're doing afterwards and how much muscle you're putting on and how your fitness is improving. Anyway, Jina, I'm really grateful to you for making time to do this. I can tell you that I'm very grateful to you. I appreciate you and you and Jill and Terry and Dr. Rapa, my old buddy, Bill Reese and his sister Leeny and all these wonderful people.

Jina Klapisch: Great people.

Sal Daher: Patience that it requires to be a health educator because these people, they know a lot. Okay, and they're repeating things, it takes a lot of repetition. Drink water. We had a shake. We had a shake. Try the shake.

Jina Klapisch: I just love what I do. I have such a passion for helping people change their life and just live a better quality of life. I love the work I do, and I'm blessed. I'm so lucky to be able to do this. thank you for this opportunity to talk about what I love. You're such a great example. Look at Sal and, you know.

Sal Daher: I'm a 90-day wonder that's 30 years in the making.

[laughter]

Jina Klapisch: That's funny.

Sal Daher: It took me 30 years to succeed at HMR. I think you, the listener, I think you probably can beat me in that. You probably can succeed at HMR on your first shot out with Jina. Give it a try.

Jina Klapisch: There you go. There's the challenge right there. [laughs]

Sal Daher: Thank you, Jina Klapisch.

Jina Klapisch: Thank you so much, Sal. I appreciate this opportunity.

Sal Daher: This Is Angel Invest Boston. I'm Sal Daher. Thanks for listening.

[music]

Sal Daher: I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.

Katharine Woodman-Maynard