The TOP FOODS You Absolutely SHOULD NOT EAT To Live Longer! | Dr. Sten Ekberg & Lewis Howes

0:00 so yes top 10 foods would be like the ones we talked about but then in addition to that which is really hard for people to understand the number one food to avoid for you this video is sponsored by inside tracker and you'll hear more about them in just a minute I think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness yeah please welcome there's so many new Frankenstein Foods out there you know new manipulated Foods processed foods that people think are healthy that maybe aren't healthy so I wanted to dive in first and talk about really what you think the top five or ten foods or the categories of foods we should be thinking about eating for Optimal Health in all sense of the word

0:45 from from mental health brain health to physical health through spiritual health yes what would you say are those top five to ten foods we should be thinking about and categories yeah so first of all there's no difference between physical health and spiritual health and mental health if it works for the body it works for the body all right and it depends on where people are so the the number one rule would be to eat real food and people don't even know what that is anymore sixty seventy percent of calories consumed are white white flour white sugar and and flavorless semi-synthetic

1:31 seed oils that have been over processed there's no food value nutritional value in those it's it's all empty calories sixty percent of calories are from that yeah salsa number 60 to 70 percent of calories are from fake food so then and and the rest of the the 30 40 percent are necessarily that great either wow so the first part is just to teach people to eat real food and if the Earth produced it if it walked the planet or it grew on the planet and you don't screw it up then it's pretty good food right and then what I talk a lot about is low carb because not because

2:17 everyone has to have low carb uh like China and Asia they got around they got along for for centuries eating a bunch of carbs rice but they didn't add sugar on top of it and they didn't eat six meals a day with constant snacks and they had physical labor right so we we have to put it in in perspective in context for the the whole lifestyle so the sugar the calories the empty calories with sugar and white carbs and then low carb is what you're saying it's about to start yeah yeah and and the reason I talk so much about low carb is that somewhere around 80 I think Ben

3:03 bickman quoted 88 of the U.S and probably a large part of the world's population is insulin resistant today and if you are insulin resistant that only means one thing you ate too many carbs for you and that could be 20 grams for one person or 200 grams for another but if you're insulin resistant you ate too many carbs and that's it's not a few hundred million it's most people on the planet really I mean it's billions in the US it's probably somewhere around 88 percent I think if you go around the globe it's probably still 60 percent our insulin resistance yes and what is

3:49 insulin resistant mean what happens to the body if you are that so it's an adaptation okay the body will adapt to circumstances to whatever conditions you throw at it the body will make an intelligent adaptation and if you eat a carbohydrate it will raise your blood sugar more than other types of foods and if you raise blood sugar now the way to control that blood sugar and get that blood sugar into the cell is to release insulin so if you eat eat carbs I use my hands a lot so this is what I tell people that if you eat a carbohydrate your blood sugar goes up and then your body produces insulin

4:38 to get that carbohydrate into the cell and now if you wait a few hours that insulin will come back to Baseline and you can start all over but if you eat that carb and you produce that insulin to bring the glucose down but then you eat again while the insulin is still high now it's it's a stair step now you're just driving it higher and higher and higher so insulin resistance is simply an adaptation where your body starts resisting insulin right and I I've done a couple of videos where I liken this to a Salesman right or a friendly neighbor you're new in your

5:23 house the The Neighbor comes knocking on your door and says Welcome To The Neighborhood House of Pie it's like you go great I'm so happy I feel welcome here someone brought me something I need it's just like the cell wants this fuel uh if it's occasional if it's appropriate but then you have a thousand neighbors and they're all just lining up outside your house and every one of them brings a pie so after a couple of hundred pies you're pretty tired of this you start developing a resistance to neighbors bringing you pie right so anything that the body gets too much of it starts resisting it's just it's the way it's

6:09 supposed to work and when it resists the thing what happens to the body is that when you store fat is that what that's meaning correct correct so insulin is a storage hormone it's an anabolic hormone its job is to get the glucose from the bloodstream into the cell and whatever glucose the cell can use in the moment it will use but anything that's in excess of what it can use in the next near near future is going to be converted to Fat because we can only store a tiny little bit of carbohydrates and then the rest has to be stored as fat so we can store somewhere around 1500 calories as carbs but we have an

6:55 unlimited storage for fats really so like half a million calories and and I I call that a Fortune of of energy reserves right because the body is smart it wants to put on some extra weight for the winter when there is less food so the body is super super intelligent and if you put on fat there's a there's a reason but a lot of people would like a little bit less of a fortune okay exactly yeah so I want to talk about uh losing fat in a bit but let's let's I could go off course there but I want to I want to stick to what I was originally asking about the the Top Foods we should be eating and the foods we should be eliminating yeah so we

7:40 talked about eating real food low carb and eliminating kind of the white I guess sugars yeah what would be the Top Foods you think are so I believe humans are made to eat meat right so I think that's a foundation for humans I think our ancestors were hunter gatherers and it doesn't really matter what you eat uh I think meat lamb pork fish poultry it all has roughly the same protein and nutritional value I think variety is is really good um but then I think there are lots of other things that we can eat I think we should be very limited on grains

8:26 humans I don't believe were really made to eat a huge amount of grains why is that and I think it's because if there there's this thing called paleo that most people have heard of and paleo some people turn it into a religion and a lot of diets become religions like keto and low carb and paleo become religions but it's a philosophy and the Paleo philosophy says that humans have been around on the planet for a while and during that time wherever our ancestors were how far ever you want to go back to the to the African Savannah uh whether you want to put that limit like

9:11 a couple of million years back or or a quarter million years back our DNA is mostly unchanged since that time period so the DNA is what determines what kind of enzymes you can make what kind of digestive tract you have to break down those Foods so if we go a quarter of a million years on a certain type of food and then all of a sudden we change it the body has no idea what to do with that that's that's foreign it's an experiment so agriculture with grains was basically introduced some 10 000 years ago and for most of those 10 000 years we had what's called Ancient Grains which were wry and

9:59 spelled and iron corn and so forth but then we got into the last hundred years or even the last 50 years which in in the big scheme of things in in The evolutionary scale it's even it's not even a blink of an eye and now instead of four Ancient Grains we have 25 000 different kinds really yeah so when they've started hybridizing all these modern Wheats they're not looking for health benefits they're not looking for what humans can tolerate they're looking for what is sturdy to grow and what has the highest yield and so forth wow so you're not a fan of grains I'm not and I

10:45 think some people can tolerate some grains and I think if you do reasonably well with them then I think you can eat some but if you have any sort of sensitivities or digestive issues or allergies or brain fog or anything that isn't quite right I think grains would be the first first thing to go really where does oatmeal fall into that oatmeal is it's a grain it is one one of the friendlier grains because it is it does have some benefits it is naturally gluten free which is and it's not the only thing that people react to in grains but it's the number one offender so to speak so normal normal oats are

11:31 gluten free but it's still a carbohydrate it's still almost all starch and again it goes back to the 88 percent if you're insulin resistant then you need to avoid oats if you're not if you're super insulin sensitive then you can probably have some oats right and so does all carbs turn into sugar at some point yes or most carbs yes yes they do now there's this thing I'm I might look into this and do a video on something called resistant starch right because there's a lot of talk about it I've kind of kept it in the background for a while uh but yes basically all carbohydrate

12:19 turns into glucose and what the argument with the resistant starch is that well some of it doesn't get digested and becomes food for your bacteria in the large intestine but the the key word there is some so if if 30 percent reach the large intestine that still means 70 percent becomes glucose so again it's the people who are insulin resistant need need to watch it and you need to understand where you are on that scale so that you can monitor and if you're getting results fine then that's kind of what it's all about if you're getting the results then keep doing what you're

13:04 doing if you don't then get a little stricter right right so what about the uh you're saying meat is kind of the main category you're saying or one of the top Foods categories what about all the different people coming out in the last five ten years talking about vegetarianism and veganism and the benefits of that eliminating me because I see differences to see people saying yeah the the lion diet only it's like all meat and yeah they've you know gotten rid of certain diseases and skin conditions and I see other people and yeah vegetarian and vegan who eliminate things but also people that go that far extreme and have more issues so you know what are your thoughts on that perspective I think people find the arguments that they want to find right

13:51 so a lot of this is a philosophical and and ethical so I was a vegetarian for seven years really back in the late 90s and I read a book and it was very convincing and one of the arguments was that I mean there were lots of them but one of them that I later sort of had a different perspective was that look at World War II there was no meat around and people had way less heart disease and they had way less problems and they lost weight well they didn't have much of anything they didn't have any sugar they didn't have any white flour they didn't have any processed food so you can't and that's the argument that is made erroneously so often they they pick

14:37 something that's not a causative Factor but just a correlation so vegans versus carnivore I believe that plant food can have some cleansing properties right so if you have cancer for example and you have a toxic liver that it's a fatty liver it's an overwhelmed liver it's just congested and toxic in so many different ways I think that you should go vegan right I think you should try that for three months six months maybe 12 months until you can reevaluate because I think there's some powerful cleansing properties but animal products are more rebuilding

15:25 right so what are we looking to get from food we're looking to get fuel to turn into energy we're looking for building blocks to become tissue because your body constantly breaks down and you have to rebuild it right so you need what I call genuine replacement parts sure okay and if you're going to build a house and you you tree falls on your house and and the brick wall is damaged you don't rebuild that with foam right you need the right stuff and and we are built from the foods that the planet produces so we need genuine replacement parts and then we also need vitamins and minerals

16:11 those are the catalysts that help us convert the fuel and the building block into energy and tissue right and we get way more of that from animal Foods right they have a higher food value much more of the genuine replacement parts and and it kind of makes sense if you think about it because you are meat right your body is your tissue is primarily meat and if you eat something that's close to your tissue it's going to be less of a transition for your body to turn that into your tissue so yes your body can turn vegetables and plants into protein and body parts but it it doesn't happen nearly at the same

16:58 percentage of of conversion or absorption I mean you're yeah you're an elite World athlete uh you know champion of the decathlon arguably the hardest sporting event there is in the world uh you ate meat during that time I'm assuming and then you know after your career you went vegetarian for six seven years you said yeah and now you're back on meat so you've probably I'm assuming you've studied and seen all the documentaries about veganism and these Elite athletes that turn into vegan athletes and they have this superpower and then other people that are meat eaters and you've done it yourself as an elite athlete as a doctor and a nutritionist so what did you notice when you became vegan for seven years or vegetarian and then now back on meat after that

17:44 I did fairly well on it the biggest challenge for me was that when you don't eat meat then you tend to be more limited so if you're out somewhere traveling now you're eating a lot of bean burritos and french fries instead of Real Food carbs yeah correct um but I didn't I don't think I really I don't know that I really suffered but what happens with a lot of people is that it might take six seven eight nine ten years before they really become deficient in something before they become anemic before they're missing vitamin D and b12 because you have reserves of of most of those and and in my case I I wish I'd known half of the stuff that I know now

18:32 because I was not an educated athlete right well back in the 80s they were back in the 80s you you were taught to eat carbs eat your Wheaties yep yeah carbs over breakfast I I kid you not I probably ate more than a thousand grams of carbs per day oh my God on average I mean I was working out four five six hours a day eating five six seven thousand calories and you burn it all off so you think that hey there's no problem here but when you stop working out you keep eating that way that's what happened to me it's like yeah yeah I I never really gained the weight I mean I gained some I got a little a little fatter than I was because I didn't maintain three percent body fat exactly but

19:19 um I didn't really learn about food until much later when I was in in chiropractic school and started putting it together yeah that's interesting so you may not see the deficiencies in the first number of years but you're yeah what I'm hearing you say is you're probably eventually going to be more deficient yes it's just going to be harder and what what you see as a clinician is that there is no black and white everyone is looking for well just tell me what to do when you can't do that you you have to understand where you are on the scale and for some people I'm sure there are super strong weight lifters who are vegans because their body can tolerate it at

20:05 least for for many years but then I you have all these people have been vegetarian for or vegans for for 10 years and they start having all these issues especially thin females might have stress issues and digestive problems and so forth so on the other so so yes top 10 foods would be like the the ones we talked about but then in addition to that which it's really hard for people to understand and which we test a lot in the offices the number one food to avoid for you is the one that you react to right because that creates for everyone that creates

20:50 inflammation that wreaks Havoc it doesn't matter how healthy that food is for someone else but if you can't tolerate it if you have a reaction a hypersensitivity reaction that's the absolute worst food for you okay people age at different speeds and they date on your license may not represent your inner biological age at all if you're looking for ways to extend your health span and slow down the aging process the keys to your Health and Longevity run in your blood that's why inside tracker provides you with a personalized plan to boost your metabolism reduce stress improve sleep and optimize your health for the Long Haul it's created by Leading scientists and aging genetics and Biometrics inside

21:38 tracker analyzes your blood your DNA and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized and where you're not you'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise nutrition and supplementation for your body add inner age 2.0 to any plan for a definitive calculation of your true biological age to see how you're aging from the inside out when I got my results back from inside tracker they told me and I quote Lewis you're beating the clock and that feels good and now that inside tracker has shown me my biological age they are now providing an action plan of science-backed recommendations with the goal of improving the quality and quantity of the years ahead for a limited time get

22:25 20 off the entire inside tracker store just go to insidetracker.com forward slash School of greatness for more which brings us to the carnivores and I don't I think meat is a great Foundation and this is just like a personal feeling I don't think that carnivore is optimal forever for most people it might very well work but I think for most people I think a good variety is probably better you mean only carnivore only correct yeah correct but the people who get results from carnivore the reason it's such a huge movement and it undeniably

23:10 produces results is that if you eat something you're sensitive to you get inflammation then those are the worst foods for you and some people are so sensitive that they react to everything except meat right right so it's the ultimate Elimination Diet so now you've eliminated like if you go paleo you're going to eliminate Dairy and processed foods and sugar and grain because our ancestors didn't have any of that but if you're super sensitive you might still react to lettuce and bell pepper and and all of these things so the people who get the tremendous life-changing results on Carnivore they're the ones who only tolerate meat

23:59 right that's the ultimate elimination so now for some someone it might be that they ate meat and lettuce and it still didn't work and when they cut out the lettuce then they got the results but it doesn't mean that carnivore is the best for everybody I think anyone who has some issues that haven't been resolved and they have some autoimmunity they have digestive issues and brain fog I think they should try carnivore and see if it changes something right but again then we then we go and we turn these things into religions and we say it worked for me so you should do it too this is the answer for everyone yeah that's not the case right yeah yeah so what are some other meats that you recommend that we should be eating meat

24:45 is sorry food so you recommendation yeah I think then the next best would be tubers like Roots sweet potato rutabaga parsnip turnips Etc because they are they're generally fairly low carb um sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes are a little bit higher in carbs they're they're way less than than grains but a lot of these uh like the rutabaga and so forth they're they're fairly low carb sure gotcha and they're also gluten free and they pretty much fit into any regimen so if you're if you're on an autoimmune diet if you're an electin free diet if you're avoiding nightshades

25:30 the the tubers are still safe one of the top tubers sweet potatoes as sweet potatoes potatoes rutabaga turnips parsnips uh what's the other one the celery root okay so those are generally pretty good and again if so the the sweet potato is generally more safe than the potato because the potato is a Nightshade so if you again have those sensitivities and you're avoiding nightshades then potato has to go as well okay so we got the tubers what's the next category you really like so then assuming that you're not sensitive to nightshades then I would go

26:17 with all of the non-starchy vegetables so now we got eggplants and bell peppers that that I think for most people are good foods but again they're they have some lectins then I think the broccoli and cauliflower are like Staples uh in in my house for sure that those are low those I mean those are like very low calorie yes nutrient dense but also low carb too right yes broccoli uh cauliflower they're like four or five percent net carbs so it's very very low yeah and of course avocado which is really a fruit by by definition

27:04 but it has quite a bit of fat and very very low carbs it's like two three percent net carbs okay and what's the deal with the night shades because I know there's a big uh um you know conversation about that right now where these these Foods actually are hurting you you know these nightshades or it depends on your sensitivity level correct they're hurting some people to plant Paradise right correct yes so them I don't know what the percentage would be but I would not I think gluten hurts everyone right but I don't think lectins hurt everyone not at those doses again it's it's all about small doses dosage so nightshades have lectins and if you

27:52 are sensitive to something if you have inflammation if you have some issues then I think sort of like the carnivore carnivore is more extreme but before that you want to try cutting out the lectins cutting out the night shades okay but again it's not some people sort of pick their little niche and and say I'm gonna I'm gonna be the lectin guy I'm Gonna Be The Nightshade guy and they they promote that as the solution for everyone but it it's not and and low carb is not the solution for everyone I have some skinny patients that need to eat carbs right they don't need to eat sugar and white bread but they they would probably do better

28:38 eating 70 80 100 grams of carbs because they're very very insulin sensitive their body has trouble putting on some weight right are there any other categories you think we should be eating the the leafy greens are kind of in the the non-starchy vegetables but they're they're sort of a little subcategory and then I think uh some people can account the the eggs with with the meat but I think it's a separate category because very few people are sensitive to meat A lot of people are sensitive to eggs people are sensitive yes okay yes and and again it's not in my majority it's not like not like with wheat or or

29:25 pasteurized milk but I don't know 5 10 15 20 percent and and then it's hard to tell because the people that come to my clinic they're the ones who have the problems so they're probably way more sensitive than than the general population sure are you a big fan of eggs yourself yes as a food group absolutely yeah yeah and I think quality is huge I think a lot of problems develop because people eat really really poor quality so I think if the if the chicken or the hen had a healthy life and produces a healthy egg I think you're much less likely to ever develop a sensitivity but

30:14 if that chicken is eating chemicals and hormones and was raised under horrendous conditions I I think your body is much more likely to develop a sensitivity to that because of whatever might be in there right right any other final category you like Food Group the most nutrient dense foods yeah I do think even though Dairy is a very common allergen I do think a lot of people do well with some forms of dairy so I typically recommend yogurt and sour cream because it's very rewarding if you're doing a low carb diet then adding a little sour cream to

31:01 something is is super tasty I think cheese is okay for a lot of people especially if it's like a good quality cheese not the the melty singles and all that but not the nacho cheese dip at the movie theater which tastes so good but it's not that good yeah I don't even know about that cheese yeah yeah I think I've trained myself into just associating chemicals with I know with that stuff I know but yeah I try to get things as close to Nature as possible so if I have the option I'm going to get pasture-raised eggs I'm gonna get raw cheese with as few additives as possible because Nature Made things for us we we our nature right and all the other animals

31:47 on the planet they graze off the planet they don't process things they don't alter things so as soon as we change it we increase the likelihood of screwing it up and the more we change it the more we screw it up so the closer we can get to to the source the better yeah what would be three foods that you would recommend everyone eliminate if you could eliminate or have very very little every once in a while but if you can almost eliminate these three foods from your diet it would help you in a big way so I don't know if we can call them foods but obviously sugar in the quantity refined sugar in the quantities we eat is is absolutely toxic

32:35 to the body number two would be processed fats so healthy fats are natural fats butter meat fat pork avocado olive oil Etc because we don't change them we don't mess with them but anything that we make an oil from that doesn't necess that doesn't come easily like a seed or corn corn has just a couple of percent fat in it so it takes a lot of heat and chemicals and processing to get any oil out of it so it tastes terrible and then you have to bleach it and deodorize it and all that's it it's not a food anymore and and those foods are

33:21 extremely toxic so soybean oil corn oil canola oil all of those processed oils and especially if they're turned into a food product like margarine or shortening or something like that okay so I put I'd say sugar and and Seed oils and then something again that's not really a food but I would I would put it up there and every time I make a video on this I get a lot of backlash and it's artificial sweeteners oh man why are artificial sweeteners and people not good for us because they are chemicals they're foreign substances they were developed by companies who

34:07 made pesticides and and the latest and greatest so so aspartame got a bad rap so then they had to hustle to come up with something else so they came up with sucralose and they were very careful to name it in a way that sounded yes sucrose sugar sucralose but the fact is and and then and then they said that well you know it's just like sugar and then it just has some chlorine just like sea salt well in nature sodium chloride is only bonded through like an electrostatic charge I forget exactly what it's called but it's not like a tight Bond

34:53 so yes sodium chloride Perfectly Natural but when we bind chlorine to a carbon nature never does that basically every form of a chlorocarbon is a pesticide and one of the most famous ones was DDT which was banned as a cancer-causing agent it almost wiped out the national bird the eagle and it's so toxic it's in our environment 50 years later so chloro carbons are pesticides and that's what sucralose is it's a chlorocarbon wow so eliminate refined sugar eliminate processed fats which is mostly seed oils and artificial sweeteners are there any

35:40 non-sugar sweeteners yes natural that you like or recommend that in the right doses are okay for you yes so I use quite a bit of stevia as an artificial sweetener it is no no so some people bundle it together with artificial sweeteners just because it's a non-calorie sweetener but it is a plant product it's just a refined Leaf basically and the thing to watch for though is that they don't mix it up with a lot of other chemicals that it's the the concentrated version It's one ingredient not correct 10 ingredients yeah and another similar one would be monk fruits that is also

36:26 very similar in the way it tastes and and looks and so forth it's super super concentrated and it's also a plant extract so if you're going to add something to a coffee or a drink or something correct Stevia monk fruit yeah you say is is okay in the right dose yes okay and then in the gray Zone I would also put sugar alcohols interesting right some of them are better than others I think the best one would be erythritol because it is very slightly metabolized by the body so it doesn't really affect blood sugar but it doesn't really cause any other problems some of the other sugar alcohols they sort of

37:11 stay in the digestive tract for a while and then those sugar alcohols become food for your intestinal bacteria and that's where you get a lot of bloating gotcha so I would say sugar alcohols are okay if you eat them in moderation so this this is always the the trick in recommending food when you you make a list and people want to know the best one and so forth and you you categorize and rank them and now they say that is a good one I'm just gonna eat that or Dr Ekberg said sugar alcohols are okay so now I'm gonna eat that every day I'm Gonna Bake with it I'm gonna buy the ice cream with it and and and that's the thing everything in

37:57 in moderation so sugar alcohols if you eat a teaspoon or a tablespoon here and there I think it's totally fine but if you start baking with it and doing the ice cream and you start getting half a cup a day now you're definitely gonna upset the biome a little bit now what matters based on your age range you know if someone's in their 20s versus I'm in my late 30s almost 40 you're in your I believe 50s you said yeah does it matter based on how old you are of what you should be eating how much you should be eating types of foods or is it pretty consistent throughout the day I would say it's pretty consistent throughout

38:43 and one one analogy would be that I mean there's so many people they say that women should fast this way and teenagers should fast this way and women over 40 or under 47 it's like we love to complicate right right but are there different foods on the Savannah for one Giraffe versus another an older giraffe yeah does the does the male and the female giraffe eat from different trees it's like not really so I'm not saying that there's no value to that but I think we tend to over complicate things I think we if if we just understand that it's like 99 the same and then that last percent is where if

39:30 we want to really pick it apart then there may be some benefit there gotcha what about when it comes to Fat Loss you know I think it what is it over a third of the U.S is now categorized either pre-diabetic or obesity or something like that right it's yeah statistics yeah obesity is somewhere around 40 40 yeah in the US yes we know what that is globally or is it just um I keep looking it up I keep forgetting okay but it's increasing everywhere because I thought it was 33 like five years ago and yeah and now it's 40 yeah that's kind of scary it is it is and what I talk a lot about though is the the pre-diabetic that's the gray

40:17 area that nobody understands so we have we have 10 diabetics and over a certain age it's more like 25 30 percent but that's 10 of the entire population is is full-blown diabetic wow and then they say I forget the number I think it's like a third of the population is pre-diabetic but they base that off of blood sugar only all right but the only way that you really know where you are on the scale is to do some form of insulin resistance test and there's some complicated ones that you could do if you want like oral glucose tolerance tests and all that but the simplest insulin resistance tests the system

41:04 measure fasting insulin and see where you are sure and this goes back to to the model that I use my hands for where glucose goes up insulin goes up and pushes glucose back down so you could have a person who is has a good glucose and a healthy insulin level but then they eat too much carbs for them and 10 years later their insulin is three four five times higher but their glucose is still normal so that person is not going to make it into the statistics for the insulin resistant or the pre-diabetic it

41:51 takes 20 years to get there so if we actually if we actually measure the insulin and we stay at we a little bit more sensitive to the gradient now we're going to see that probably 80 percent of the population has some degree of insulin resistance gotcha right wow so how do we eliminate that is it through I mean how do we how do we burn is it burning the fat is it changing the foods to eliminate that or what is that it's it's reducing the insulin okay because the insulin is ultimately the fat storing hormone how do we reduce the insulin by eating less carbohydrates

42:36 and because carbohydrates all the foods that stimulate the insulin and the other thing is to eat fewer meals because insulin rises in response to food so when you don't eat you're giving the body a chance to drop insulin but most people the only time they don't eat is when they're sleeping right and their other ones they're eating right at best they get eight hours of fasting and then during their waking hours they just keep topping off the insulin but if you can just extend that fasting window by a few hours you've already made a huge difference so if you go instead of eating your last meal at 11 and your

43:23 first meal at seven what if you just skip that evening meal what if you don't eat after dinner at six o'clock now you've just extended that period where insulin could drop by five hours more than more than 50 percent increase right so those are some simple tools and that's why intermittent fasting is so popular yes and I would say it's even more powerful than than low carb because fasting is zero carb now like most diets and Trends we see out there in the health world you know all these different names of diets is intermittent fasting going to be another fad for a decade and then go away or do you think

44:10 this is something that people will actually use because there's so much pain with you know pre-diabetes and fat storage I think when people learn to eat real food then intermittent fasting almost becomes natural it becomes so easy it's such a no-brainer and everyone who tries it who who gets to the point where they might eat twice a day they might have lunch and dinner and then there is no there's no temptation there's no urgency to go back because it feels so normal and if we look again we go back to our ancestors quarter million years how did

44:56 they eat well they didn't wake up to a stocked fridge they they might have had some nuts or or a little bit of meat left over from the day but I don't believe that they would eat it because they had a healthy metabolism they were metabolically flexible so they woke up and they went out to catch something before they ate again so I think it's very logical to assume that we ate once or twice a day for almost all of human history until like 100 years ago or something correct and and even less than that and that's why we've had this explosion even into the 1950s and 60s and even into the 70s

45:44 people ate mostly three meals hmm and that and then is when they told us to eat low fat that's when the low fat craze came and what do you do exactly when you can't eat the fats now you can eat something else and those carbs are very transient right they raise the blood sugar and your body has to get it out of there and as soon as blood sugar drops now you're hungry again so this is part of what got us on this this roller coaster when did when did diabetes become a thing in the U.S like when they start to becoming a real problem originally when they talked about diabetes it was type 1 diabetes right because that's a failure of the

46:31 pancreas to produce insulin and those people used to die there was no treatment there was no cure if they ate extremely low carb they could live a little longer but basically type 1 diabetes is is starvation in the midst of Plenty that your blood sugar is 700 but you can't use it because you don't have insulin so insulin is not a bad thing but type 2 was unheard of even at the really even in the 1800s they made they might have known what it was but it was so rare that it wasn't like a concept or anything and it really wasn't until the

47:16 1970s that it became like a problem the 70s yeah we're talking 50 years ago yeah type 2 diabetes yeah wasn't a thing before then they they knew what it was and they they had some insulin to treat it but it was such a small percentage that it was I wouldn't say that didn't exist but I mean it was such a small issue compared to what we have today the the stats are it's exponential so do we have a metabolism problem where people aren't able to metabolize as efficiently what what their their bringing into their body and their system and that's why the the you know the weight the belly fat the the Obesity is happening or is it an insulin problem or is it a lack of

48:03 movement problem they they all tie together they all tie together and this this sad part is that it's it's so much harder to reverse the manifested problem and I've talked about this in some some videos I call it you your body has a carbohydrate tolerance or a carbohydrate processing machine and it works to a point but if you break it now you're out of luck right so if you've if you've broken your machine now it you have to be so strict and and this is where you're you're talking about the

48:50 the metabolism problem now it's so difficult to get that body to start working healthy again to become insulin sensitive and and heal your metabolism and that's why there's so many people who have trouble losing weight so many people have stubborn weight and stubborn weight is basically that you broke your carbohydrates processing machine if you will so how do we get rid of this stubborn weight then and that's the trick and this is this is like the last few percent of the population like if you check the the comments on on my videos there's all these people say hallelujah this works this is so great

49:39 um I lost 60 pounds in two months and and all I did was just I followed your advice I cut out the sugar I cut out the white bread but then there's there's this other group that I really really sympathize with and they're the ones who go keto they go low carb they do intermittent fasting for years and they lose like three pounds really why is that because their bodies are so stubborn and and part of it I do sympathize with them part of it I think is that it is so tough for them that it's challenging to be consistent that if they truly truly were consistent on the low carb and the exercise and the intermittent fasting

50:25 they would probably see some changes but then there there are these people who get close to zero results even though they're they're meticulous and now we get into some of the things I'm testing in my in my clinic is to try to figure out some of these patterns and and I find that there's these relationships between the the bond the stored body fat and the hypothalamus for example and between the pancreas and the hypothalamus between the liver and the pancreas where the the organs are kind of stuck they're just not talking to each other properly and then of course there's there's hypothyroid which is pretty common

51:14 uh but yeah I I do feel for those people and and there is a small percentage that just have so much harder time than the rest of them interesting and what about the connection to losing weight healing the body with psychological traumas emotional heartache yeah or other things that have hurt you in the past yeah there's a great book the body keeps the score [Music] um you know is relationship trauma childhood trauma you know breakups breakdowns in life tied to losing weight as well yes um everything is tied to everything it's

52:00 like that's the first thing that you learn when you're in in clinical practice and you do the stuff that that I do is anything can cause anything and what I try to teach people is the holistic approach I call it holistic health and some people they they say oh you lost me when you said holistic it's now they think it's about burning incense and and crystals but holistic simply means addressing the whole right you are a whole body you want your body to be whole so you need to look at all the aspects that tie into that and some people when it comes to weight obviously they look first at the

52:46 food which is like the chemical the biochemistry and then some other people talk about the exercise which is the physical mechanical and then now you're mentioning the third which is the emotional we have to understand we are chemical structural and emotional it's like three legs on a table and for some people they might have enough of a balance already that they just address one thing and they get results but to truly get Optimal Health we need to address all three for a period of time to to get the results when you do all of it for a for a period of time that's when you can get that Optimal Health

53:32 sure so with with weight loss I don't think it's ever well I shouldn't say ever for most people it's not the primary component but it's definitely a contributing component because we know for example that stress contributes to a hormone called cortisol and the purpose of cortisol is to raise blood sugar if you raise blood sugar you're going to trigger more insulin more insulin you become more insulin resistant right so I mean this is this is so plain and so documented that you give someone cortisol and they become insulin resistant so if you are stressed for whatever reason now you will become more insulin

54:19 resistant it's more difficult to reverse these processes if you are stressed at the same time so high blood sugar let me make sure I'm understanding this does not necessarily come from the foods you eat but it can also come from the stresses you have with your thoughts yes absolutely does it also come with Foods also or is it more from thoughts turned into stress and emotions it's definitely more from food okay and I don't think I think it'd be a very very rare case of someone who is metabolically healthy and insulin sensitive and has stressful thoughts to become to create a metabolic problem that by itself is probably not going to do it but for people who are insulin resistant

55:08 now if they have stress on top of that that becomes a very significant factor and same thing with with exercise I've done some videos on this where too many people think that exercise is all about Blood Sweat and Tears that yes if you're going to be an elite athlete you need to go through some pain you need to challenge your body to become better but that's not necessarily the healthiest way and more isn't better so for the person who has stressed their body they've depleted their body they got this this mid weight gain midsection weight gain those people should not go

55:53 to a boot camp in the gym right that's not going to help them because this this mid-section weight gain is too much cortisol really right you can gain weight everywhere but if you have it in the midsection that's very indicative of of cortisol so now if you go join a boot camp and they you got this motivated great trainer to whip you along then you're just going to make tons of cortisol that's going to make the problem worse really so what type of physical activity should we be doing to lose the the midsection weight we should do truly aerobic exercise and aerobic means with air which means that it's at

56:39 an intensity low enough that we can breathe comfortably and Supply the oxygen so as soon as you start huffing and puffing that's not a bad thing for short duration but if you go and you do a 45 minute spin class every day and you're just huffing and puffing you're going to make way way too much quarters really yes so you might be hurting your chances of losing the weight yes if you're doing that intense of a workout every day correct if you're doing a hit training two three times a week for 45 minutes is that okay reflect that's still intense if it's 45 minutes it's not hit gotcha yeah hit high intensity means that it's so in to

57:24 me my definition 10 15 minutes it's not well maybe the total duration would be 10-15 minutes but if you do interval high high intensity interval training is what hit is then the intervals should be so intense you can't even do them for more than 30 seconds like they they should be so intense provided you're fit enough to to do that of course but if you do 30 seconds and then you do 30 second rest and then 30 seconds you should be able to bring your heart rate up to maximum in maybe four or five intervals that is hit okay now now you're done right right you've you've created your yeah your your positive hormones

58:13 uh your your growth hormone to stimulate fat burning your growth hormone to stimulate muscle building to produce and and to stimulate new brain synapses to enhance learning and focus uh all the good stuff in the brain depends on on hormones and two of those hormones are human growth hormone and bdnf which is brain derived neurotrophic Factor and those two hormones are necessary to make new synapses right so your your brain is constantly remodeling and every time you learn something whether you're 20 years old or 80 years old you make new synapses

58:58 and the synapses you use they get stronger the ones that you don't use go away but these two hormones which some of the strongest ways to produce them is high intensity exercise and fasting are pretty much required to build a brain and and to learn really so what type of high intensity exercise are you doing on a weekly basis my favorite to really get the heart rate up is I go to my favorite Mountain uh in in close to where I live where there's the trail and it's like four four miles around and I walk a little bit I jog a little

59:44 bit I walk a little bit jog a little bit just kind of enjoying the movement and my heart rate probably stays around 100 to 120 130 Maybe and then I there's some hills and then I do some Sprints up the hills so now I push it a little bit and 30 second push and my heart rate's 160. and then I walk a little jog a little there's another Hill and I push it a little bit more and my heart rate hits 160 570. and and that might I might do that in 30 seconds or it might take a minute to to get to that heart rate and then I'm done you do a few Hills yes what if you did

1:00:30 20 Hills then too much a 10 to 30 second that might be okay if you're 20 25 years old you're an elite athlete and that's part of of your event but if you're 45 50 60 and you just try to stay as healthy as possible I think that's too much really and in any event it's unnecessary because it's not about the quantity quantity is good for Fitness but not not necessarily for health interesting so you only need a you know a few Sprints every couple is this every day or every few days it's I I would say it's no more than twice a week twice a week for the for the

1:01:16 average person now and we we have to if if you're watching this you you have to understand if you're in in the elite athlete category or in the 50 year old trying to Stave off living life degenerative disease yes yes yeah so if you're more of a uh you know if you're an athlete even in your 40s and 50s you could push it a little farther if you're competing and stuff or doing triathlons or marathons or yeah just wanting to stay lean yeah it's important to be doing that a little bit more yeah so there's no doubt I mean I I talk a lot of my videos about moderation like you do these hit exercises you you do it twice a week you keep it short but obviously that doesn't apply to

1:02:04 someone who has a a goal in an event if you're going after Fitness there's no substitute for punishing yourself right because you got to do it yeah is if you're going to perform in in an event you need to do something similar to that event at that level of intensity yeah and duration so fasting and high intensity exercise but it's not doing a you know CrossFit every day five days a week yeah because that creates too much cortisol correct especially if you're older you know past 30 or something it's probably not as good to do that is something like that you know a 45 to 60 Minute CrossFit type of training once a week you think okay or is it still creating too much cortisol I think

1:02:50 that's I think once or twice a week for the average person if you feel good I think is fine yeah but again I when I have people come in to my clinic those are people who have been to 20 different doctors they have tried vegan and carnivore and low carb and and yo-yo dieting and gluten-free they've done all that so the these are people with with challenges and now if if you're a little frail now that's where you really have to be careful and get everything right but yeah if you're if you're in your 30s 40s 50s you're you're feeling fine then go for it do do

1:03:35 one or two of those spin classes and what I would caution though is pay attention notice how your body is reacting how do you feel after the class are you exhausted are you are you stiff in the morning can you have trouble getting out of bed do your joints hurt that the next day then you're probably doing too much doing too much yeah and what about you know we've talked about fasting a little bit here what are the top three benefits of intermittent fasting or longer fasting you know 24 hour 48 hour fasting that you've seen in your research so number one is lowering insulin number and and with that lower in blood

1:04:22 sugar losing weight Etc the other big thing is that you induce something called autophagy but that's with that's with longer fasting autophagy is it's called self autophagus stands for self-eating and that's where if you're putting food in your body if you're putting especially protein in your body there's plenty of resources your body knows hey there's some there's some more coming I can just use that to to build tissue and to to do the stuff I need but if you stop putting it in now it becomes a very very scarce resource so now your body has to figure out where else can I get this and that's where

1:05:09 autophagy self-eating comes in so now your body up regulates its recycling mechanisms how long does it take to fast before autophagy starts so again that's what everybody asks and it's not a black or white it's a continuous it's a gradient I would say that it barely starts around 16 to 18 hours that's where you get like a trickle but then it increases pretty fast where there's a significant change between 18 and 24 hours and then it it sort of takes off from there so 48 hours

1:05:55 into it it's it's very significant 48 hours into it yeah so the longer you can go every you know extra few hours it continues to self-eat yes the yes stored in your body more yes yeah so the self-eating now part of what it eats is is fat obviously because you're not adding any fuel but the key with autophagy is protein because you need protein to to build a tissue your your cells have so much of a lifespan they break down and then you have to make new ones and you need protein for that so when you don't add any now you have to go look for some and a lot of people will say oh well that's where fasting is

1:06:41 dangerous because you're going to eat up your muscles the body is too smart for that because you need your muscles to go on the next hunt so we have all these mechanisms to spare muscles and that's why growth hormone increases also exponentially along with autophagy and growth hormone is muscle sparing it's basically telling the body of one of the mechanisms that tell the body don't use the muscle go find something else so now it gets much better at recycling these broken cells it gets much better at finding any kind of resource like virus and bacteria and parasites that

1:07:27 may also be made out of protein really and and kind of eating those things the bad things correct interesting what's the longest you've gone fasting the longest I've done is five days before four and a half no food water only just water yeah I've done three days yeah and you see the benefits a lot after a day and a half you really start to see and feel the benefits Yeah by day three I went the total right up to three and I was like okay I need I was starting to get a little tired and I think I pushed it because I worked out twice which yeah probably not supposed to do but I did like a an incline walk for an hour and I yeah which I I don't recommend but I was trying to be extreme yeah that's that's probably too much

1:08:13 yeah and this is where we come into this muscle sparing thing that I'm all in favor of doing some exercise while you're fasting because because you're going to increase your ketones you're going to increase your your growth hormone but if you're not adding any protein and you do something intense enough to break down muscle now your body has to sort of juggle the resources like it has to repair those muscles and where's the protein going to come from so it might break down some other muscles to repair that interesting okay I haven't seen specific research on this or anything it's just kind of Common Sense what what would the body do sure

1:08:58 so I I would exercise but I would keep it to purely aerobic I wouldn't even do hit not even brief hit during those times right right what did you do for those four and a half five days uh I probably not didn't do much of anything all right just probably just yeah maybe a little bit of walking but basically just my my everyday activities yeah did you feel pretty sharp after two three days would you start to feel a little slower towards the end I don't feel as great as people tell me that you feel yeah so much energy yeah so so I I do okay I don't feel any any dramatic Improvement in in Focus but

1:09:46 I do know that that it happens because I get the testimonials and and I do know especially for people who might have insulin resistance when they fast they're going to increase their ketones which becomes the the alternative brain fuel right and it also kind of helps heal certain things the if you've been driving the insulin it's allowing that to recover more right yes yeah yeah yeah your your whole carbohydrates processing machine is recovering because you're not you're not adding anything right right and and one more thing about autophagy and fasting is for brain trauma and and this I've I've hardly ever heard it spoken about

1:10:32 that the brain is is kind of its own little world up there inside the cranium we have the blood-brain barrier and a lot of things that go on in the brain are different than the way they work in the body so the reason for example that that spinal cord injuries are so devastating is that the nervous system is really poor at repairing itself right it's not it's it's encased in bone for a reason it's not supposed to get damaged you're not supposed to crack your skull or or break your spine and and that sense that that tissue is a little different it's sensitive and it doesn't have the capacity to repair itself very well

1:11:19 but the if you have a concussion for example you get some some tissue brain trauma you get some inflammation and about the only way that the brain can clean that up is through autophagy the self-eating interesting right so when people have a brain trauma traumatic brain injury that's the number one time that they want to absolutely not have any sugar really fast at that time yes and if they can throw in a 24-hour fast or something then that's going to be huge for the to reduce that that inflammation now what about when you hear like you know sometimes you might feel light-headed or a little tired or lethargic and people you'll hear people say well I

1:12:07 have I have low blood sugar I need to like have a piece of candy so it gives me more energy in that moment yeah what is that scenario that's when you have trained your body to depend on carbohydrates right if you go year in and year out and feed your body sugar or carbohydrates every two hours your body is going to upregulate all of the pathways to deal with carbohydrates it's going to down regulate any Pathway to pull from fat so now after so many years of that you cut out the carbohydrates you have no fuel source because the the backup system is dormant your body doesn't know now what do we do right right so it's because you trained

1:12:54 your body into depend on carbohydrates and it's so easy for most people the vast majority of people can get out of that in three to four days just by cutting out the carbs eat more protein eat more fat teach your body to upregulate the other system which is fat burning and that is where you have metabolic flexibility gotcha so most people probably going to take a few months to get like totally back to metabolic flexibility but you'll you'll break a huge part of that carb dependence just in a few days what would you say the the top three ways to increase human growth hormone they're

1:13:42 pretty simple other than injecting it which I'm not a fan of right right naturally yes naturally so fasting is the most powerful human growth hormone it occurs when you fast over I think you said 18 hours or roughly around there it's the same as autophagy it increases gradually I think you hit the maximum somewhere after four or five days okay or up to seven days then I think it's it's pretty much plateaued at a high level not sure so fasting and the other one is the exercise the high intensity exercise Sprints yeah is that also with like heavy lifting or is it just more Sprints yes so here's here's how we want to

1:14:28 think about this why and this is what I encourage people to do this is what I'm trying to do with my videos is try to think like the body what would I do if I was the body why is the body doing this so what's the purpose of growth hormone right it's to grow tissue and why would the body want to do that because there's a need right so if you're sitting on the couch and you're eating potato chips why would the body make growth hormone right but if you challenge your body if you push it if you do push-ups until you fail like you get a million dollars if you

1:15:14 can do one more and you can't do it that's pushing your body till it fails to exhaustion and now what's the message the message is I gotta get better the body says if he's going to do this again I want to be prepared next time he does this I better build some some muscle and to do that I need some growth hormone same thing with with fasting okay they're not putting in any other fuel right now I have to be smart about this I have to get my energy someplace else from fat so growth hormone is fat burning I have to protect my muscles so I can go on a hunt tomorrow so let's let's protect the muscles so when you

1:16:01 challenge your body when you when you scare your body you're telling it you're you're what you're doing right now isn't quite good enough you got to get better tomorrow that's it and there's so many other little ways like uh Wim Hof breathing that's the stress anything that's stressful is going to increase growth hormone you can even just sit and hold your breath for as long as you can and you're going to increase growth interesting yeah don't pass out but yeah and it's probably not at the at the magnitude that you get with with fasting and high intensity but there's all these different things where you challenge your body your body has to get better

1:16:47 what about cold showers hot same thing hot steam same thing anything that stresses the body but you don't want to be stressing it for hours is what I'm hearing correct is that correct cortisol which is yes spikes or insulin yes and there is there is eustress and there's distress and they the founder of the the guy who came up with the the stress and the Adaptive uh stress response was Hans celier he did tons of studies on this and he found that short-term stress I mean you stress is good stress right your body needs stress to get better if your body constantly breaks down you

1:17:34 have a turnover of cells so it's going to break down now you need a reason to make new cells that's the U stress right you need to use your body you need to use your brain you need to use your your liver every every tissue needs to have a purpose use it or lose it right so that's the U stress we need a moderate amount of different kinds of stress like gravity and weight bearing and so forth that gives the body a reason to make new healthy tissue but this stress is when we're stressing the body too much or in a chronic way now it becomes instead of adaptation it becomes Mal adaptation and it's like exercise so

1:18:21 many people they say they think that exercise is what makes you strong but it is an exercise breaks you down and it gives the body a reason to build a better body right so it's it's not the exercise that does it it's the recovery you know the Sleep recovery so after a really really hard workout like if you if you beat your body to pulp in the gym you need 72 hours to recover before you

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