Dr. Theodore Bennett Facebook ad: “The Reading That Changed Everything”

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I spent 34 years telling patients how to lose weight. Then my own waist reached 44 inches. I'm Dr. Theodore Bennett. I've sat across the desk from patients who did everything right and still watched the weight come back. I never expected to be one of them. When my weight reached 224 pounds, my colleague said exactly what I would have said. We need to talk about a weight-loss medication. Phentermine is one option. I smiled. Nodded. Took the prescription. And put it in a drawer three days later. Before I took anything, I wanted to understand why my waist kept growing. For eighteen months, I tried everything else. Smaller portions. Low-carb meals. More walking. Food tracking. Lemon water every morning. I cut so many foods that my meals stopped feeling like meals. My weight would drop a little, then climb back. My waist barely changed. I was exhausted. My trousers pressed into my stomach when I sat through clinic. By 3 PM, I was loosening my belt under my desk. I'd wake at 2 AM thinking about my weight, lie there until 4 AM, then drag myself through a full clinic day on three hours of sleep. There was something else I hadn't connected in my own case. My A1C had been creeping up too. It was 6.2 at my last labs. My fasting glucose sat in the 120s no matter what I ate. My endocrinologist called it borderline. My colleague called my weight managed. I kept looking at each number separately. My husband found me upset in the bathroom one night at 11 PM, trying to button a pair of trousers. Take the prescription, he said. I've prescribed weight-loss plans for years, I said. I know how often people lose weight and gain it back. But I was running out of ideas. A few weeks later, I was reviewing a chart for Mrs. Alvarez, a 64-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes whom I'd seen eight months earlier. Her family said she seemed lighter and had more energy. She was laughing with her grandson on FaceTime when I called. I asked what had changed in her routine. My daughter ordered me a softgel called Metabolae, she said. Concentrated Ceylon cinnamon in MCT oil. I've been taking it and keeping track of my weight and waist. My clothes are fitting differently. You're telling me cinnamon changed your waist? I'm telling you what I've measured. And I can get through the day without feeling as worn out. I went home that night and couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about what Mrs. Alvarez had said. I've been a physician for 34 years. I don't believe in magic supplements. I trust measurements and evidence. So at 1:43 AM, still awake, I started reading. I didn't start with cinnamon. I started with my own numbers. A waist of 44 inches. A fasting glucose stuck in the 120s. An A1C drifting up. I'd been treating them as three separate problems. I wanted to know if they were one. Here is the chain I should have drawn for myself years earlier. Insulin moves glucose from your blood into your cells. In insulin resistance, your cells respond less well to that signal. So your body makes more insulin to clear the same glucose. A fasting glucose that won't come down is one sign that this may be happening. Insulin also tells your body to hold on to stored fat. While insulin levels stay high, releasing that fat for energy can be harder. That part doesn't explain why fat ends up at your waist. What explains the waist is a separate, well-documented link. Abdominal fat, especially the deeper fat around your organs, is more closely associated with insulin resistance than fat elsewhere in the body. The two tend to rise together, and each may make the other worse. So the chain looks like this. Cells respond less to insulin. The body makes more insulin. Stored fat gets harder to release. And the fat around your waist is the fat most closely tied to that whole pattern. I couldn't prove that was the whole story in my case. But my waist, my glucose and my A1C fit it better than they fit you just need to eat less. It also explained my eighteen months. Every diet cut what I ate, and the scale moved. Losing weight can improve how your body responds to insulin. But I never held the weight off long enough for that to last. Each time it came back, it came back to my waist. I'd spent eighteen months working on what I ate. I'd done nothing about how my body responded to insulin. That's what made Mrs. Alvarez's softgel worth a second look. Here is what's a hypothesis. In lab studies, compounds in cinnamon have been studied for their effect on insulin signaling, which is how cells respond when insulin tells them to take in glucose. If cells respond better, the body may need less insulin to do the same job. That connected directly to the chain I'd just drawn. But it's a possible explanation, not a proven one. Here is what's been measured in people. In a 16-week trial involving 116 adults with metabolic syndrome, participants taking 3 grams of cinnamon daily had a 4.8 cm greater reduction in waist circumference than the placebo group. A review of trials found an average reductions of about 1.02 kg in body weight and 2.4 cm at the waist. So I had a plausible mechanism and modest human results, and nothing that joined them for certain. That was enough to test it on myself. I ordered a bottle of generic Ceylon cinnamon capsules from Amazon. $18.99. One capsule a day. Didn't expect much. Two weeks later, my fasting glucose had moved seven points, from 124 to 117. That's within normal day-to-day variation, so I didn't count it. My waist measurement hadn't changed. The cinnamon research stayed in my mind, but I couldn't treat my 500 mg powder capsule as the same thing used in a trial giving participants 3 grams of cinnamon a day. I also couldn't treat a raw-cinnamon equivalent on a product label as a direct match for that trial dose. I went back to what Mrs. Alvarez's daughter had ordered her. Metabolae. True Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, from Sri Lanka. Each softgel contained 600 mg of a 12:1 extract. It was suspended in MCT oil, DNA-verified and third-party tested. The label also listed it as equivalent to 7,200 mg of raw cinnamon. That number tells you how much bark went into each softgel. It doesn't tell you how it compares with the 3 grams in the trial, and I didn't use it that way. What mattered to me was simpler. My generic label told me almost nothing. This one told me the species, the extract strength and how it was tested, so I knew exactly what I was measuring. That was the product Mrs. Alvarez had told me about. It was also a different product from the generic capsule I'd tried first. I wasn't buying it because a study had proved that Metabolae would reproduce its results. I chose it because I could check what was in the bag, then keep tracking my own weight and waist. I ordered Metabolae the same day. I set up the same record I'd want from a patient. Weight, waist measurement and fasting glucose, once a week. Meals and walks every day. I decided in advance that I wouldn't read anything into the first two weeks. The first two weeks gave me nothing worth recording. I hadn't expected them to. By week four, my waist had moved for the first time in eighteen months. I measured it twice to be sure. Over the following weeks, it kept moving, and my belt started sitting more comfortably. I trusted the tape, not how my trousers felt on a particular day. I was still watching my meals and walking. This time, I kept doing those things instead of stopping as soon as the scale shifted. Three months later, I walked into my colleague's office with my measurements. He studied the page for a long time. Your waist has come down. Yes. And your weight has come down too. Yes. He looked up at me. What changed? I kept walking and watching my meals. I also started taking a concentrated Ceylon cinnamon softgel and tracking my waist instead of looking only at the scale. I put the bag on his desk. He read the label and handed it back. Keep tracking your measurements, he said. That was six months ago. My waist is still smaller than it was at 44 inches. I can sit through clinic without loosening my belt. I'm sleeping better, and the midday crashes aren't running my day. I've spoken with five patients about tracking waist circumference alongside weight. When they ask what I changed myself, I tell them about my meals, walking and Metabolae. I don't turn my own experience into a promise about theirs. If your current weight-management plan is working for you, keep at it. But if your waist keeps growing while you eat less and move more, if the weight returns after every short-lived loss, and if your blood sugar is creeping up too, start measuring your waist alongside your weight and your glucose. Look at them as one picture, not three. If you take medication to lower your blood sugar, talk to your doctor before adding cinnamon. It may add to that effect. I'm sharing this because I wish I'd taken my own waist measurement seriously sooner. What I use is Metabolae. I ordered three more bags. I'm keeping the measuring tape too. P.S. A few things I wish I'd known before ordering: Metabolae has a 90-day money-back guarantee. Measure your waist on day one and again at day ninety. That gives you a real comparison. Each bag contains 30 softgels. The usage is one softgel with the first meal of the day. Track changes over weeks. In the cinnamon trials I read, weight and waist outcomes were measured over longer periods, including a 16-week trial. A few days of feeling different cannot tell you how much body fat has changed. I went from a 44-inch waist and a prescription sitting in my drawer to trousers that fit more comfortably and measurements I can discuss clearly with my colleague. That growing waist was worth paying attention to. ~ Dr. Theodore Bennett, Physician, 34 years

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The Reading That Changed Everything

Supports healthy blood sugar levels and metabolism with premium Ceylon cinnamon. Shop Metabolae's science-backed supplements. Free shipping available.