The School of Greatness - Never Eat These Foods Again To Lose Weight & Live Longer w/ Dr. William Li EP 1410

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today!Dr. William Li is an internationally renowned physician, scientist and best-selling author. His groundbreaking research has led to the development of more than 30 new medical treatments that impact care for more than 70 diseases including diabetes, blindness, heart disease and obesity. He is President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, and he is leading global initiatives on food as medicine. His newest book, “Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer” is available now.In this episode you will learn:The foods you need to eat and the foods you need to avoid for a longer life.The surprising science around fat.The truth about diet soda versus regular soda.Everything you need to know about how metabolism actually works.How to actually change your health habits to start seeing consistent results.For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1410Get Dr. Li's book: https://drwilliamli.com/Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod

But actually, knowing what to do is, I think, compromised if you don't know the why. Why should you do it? Because that internalizes the reasons, you know, and that's what should give you the motivation. So again, you know, back to this whole idea. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

We are about to dive in in this episode of all things healing the body and losing weight and preventing disease. That's what this is going to be about. And I'm curious, before we get into these insights, if people follow the advice we give them today, if they start following some of these principles, how many more years do you think they'll be able to extend on their lifespan if they just start applying some of the things that we're going to talk about and also the things that you have in your book you want a number yeah what's 20 20 years yep you think we can extend like so yeah Wow yeah we ought to be able to actually get I mean look I'm

a medical doctor we ought to be able to get people well into their 90s in really vibrant health and the only things that actually keep us from getting there really are the impediments that we create for ourselves. What are those key impediments that we create for ourselves? Habits. And that is a big umbrella for a lot of things that can actually take down and cripple our health. I would say access. That's an issue of society. More people need to have equal access to things. And then I think something that you talk about, which is self-doubt. A lot of people doubt their ability to claim their health, to be able to command their health. And one of the things that I really believe in,

I mean, because I've seen this myself, I really try to get other people to practice it, is how do you overcome those self-doubts so that you feel armed, so that you are capable and you're confident to be able to go out there and take back your health? Right, right. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of us

have basic knowledge that you're supposed to eat good things, and take back your health. Right, right. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of us have basic knowledge that you're supposed to eat good things, you're supposed to sleep a certain amount of hours, you're supposed to drink mostly water, and you're supposed to move your body. I feel like a majority of at least Americans know or have heard that at one point, right? Middle America has heard that at one point,

if not many, many times. So we have the basic knowledge of living a healthy life, but why do you think we go against medical advice, holistic health practices, and wisdom of extending our life? Because I think the idea of eat, move, sleep, smile, right? That's a bumper sticker, all right? And everyone can wear that t-shirt or drive around with the bumper sticker. But actually, knowing what to do is, I think, compromised if you don't know the why. Why should you do it? Because that internalizes the reasons, you know? And that's what should give you the motivation. So again,

you know, back to this whole idea of you have to be confident in order to be able to go out there step by step every single day to be able to take your health, what belongs to you. What I tell people is that health does not happen in the doctor's office. Health care does not happen in a doctor's office. That's sick care. Health care actually happens when you're between the doctor's visits. That's what we got to do for ourselves. And finally, the science is beginning to deliver on the whys.

That's what's important. The science, you said, are delivering on the whys? Yeah. We're starting to understand why we should be doing things. Really? Yeah. Why we should be sleeping. Why we should be moving.

Why? And, you know, they're also adding nuances to the whats. Because, you know, eat healthy things, whatever that means. Even when people talk about eat plant-based foods. Well, why? You know, what is it exactly? And to go beyond, you know, the hand waving, kale waving kind of stuff. I think that's, well, that's what I'm all about.

Yeah. Getting to those details. And what would you say are the three or five foods that people should avoid that will take care of a lot of these problems? If they just avoided a few key foods or ingredients that would help them extend their life tremendously. Yeah. Well, look, I'm going to tell you them. But I want to first say my research and sort of really what I've been trying to do is to tell people what they should add to their lives. Because if you spend more time adding the good stuff to your life that you enjoy, there's just less room for the bad stuff.

But if you want actually the answer to what are the sort of unquestionably bad things that if you were to really systematically remove, you're going to be better off for it and live longer and better. I can tell you. Ultra-processed foods is one of them. Okay. Anything in a box that has 20 ingredients that you can't pronounce, that's a pretty good sign. And if you look more closely, there are artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavorings. You know the drill. That's the stuff that's been flooding our nation really since the 1950s and with a lot of marketing

associated with it. So then it kind of like hypnotizes you to go for that. That's one. Number two, I would say processed meats. Now look, I mean, we all grew up eating different kinds of processed meats, but you know that lunch meat, that, you know, the bologna sandwich that, you know, the cafeteria lady, you know, your mom's put in your lunch boxes. Look, the World Health Organization considers that a level one carcinogen. Really?

Yeah. And so think about what that means, that a world authority on health has put a label on it. It doesn't mean that you can't eat it sometimes. But if you eat it regularly, like a lot of people do, that's what you want to cut out. That's number two. Number three, soda.

Both regular soda and diet soda. Now look, I enjoy a soda every now and then, just like the next person. However, most people don't realize there's like nine teaspoons of refined sugar in a typical can of soda and that overwhelms your metabolism. Your body just can't handle that. It can handle a can, but you know those people who say like I have a six pack of soda every day. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. Clearly you're not able to... Forget about the word calorie. It's just that you're flooding your system with things that challenge your metabolism.

And there's no way you can actually handle that. And what happens to the system when you flood it with that much sugar at once? And then if you do it over and over every day for years? Okay. So when you put sugar in your body, what happens is the same thing that happens if you put any kind, a piece of fruit in your body or anything healthy, broccoli. Your body will sense that it has food, that's fuel, that's energy, calories, all right? And immediately your body secretes hormones like insulin. and immediately your body secretes hormones like insulin.

And that insulin basically says, hey, let's take any energy you got and let's put it into the fuel tank. That's like pulling your car over to the filling station and putting that nozzle in a gas tank. And so the insulin rises and you're taking the energy you need and storing everything that you don't need at the moment. Now, your regular cells are running off this fuel.

Anything extra is going to get stuffed into these tiny little fat cells, normal healthy fat cells. We need our fat. There are fuel tanks. But nine tablespoons of sugar, you're going to be filling it more and more and more and more. Those fat cells are going to expand. And when they run out of space because you've actually filled up the water balloon, your body's got to make more fat cells. And those get filled up as well.

And that's what happens day after day after day after case after case of soda. And I'll tell you, people say, well, then I'll have the non-nutritive soda, the diet soda. And what does that do? It's worse. Diet soda's worse? Ironically, it's worse. Come on, how so? The reason is diet soda with artificial sweeteners actually doesn't overwhelm your metabolism directly. What it does is that the non-nutritive sweeteners that don't get absorbed

in your body as calories, sugar-free, go down and poison your gut microbiome, your gut bacteria. Now, a lot of people say, well, you know, the evidence isn't really there. I can tell you as a scientist following this field, the evidence is stacking up. You damage your ecosystem of your critical healthy bacteria, and that healthy bacteria commands our immune system, lowers inflammation, helps us heal from the inside out, and even controls how we feel, our emotional wellness. All right. So the bottom line is that either way you cut it, if you need to slake your thirst on a super hot day, you know, there are other things that you can drink. If you need to drink a soda, and listen, I've been in that spot. It's super hot.

I just got to have something, something. All right, you name the brand. One can, and then realize that, you know, your body's going to have to recover from that. Yeah, it's going to take a day or two until you get back on track. Wow. And so if you had to choose between regular soda with all the sugar or diet soda

with all the other ingredients, which do you prefer? I used to play this game with a friend of mine. You know, would you rather be eaten by a white shark or drop it in a volcano? Which one? They're both bad. You know what? Honestly, from what I know as a scientist, I'd rather have the regular soda.

Really? Yeah. One can. One can. If you had to choose one can of each. Listen, my metabolism, because I don't have diabetes, actually will spring back. It'll take a little while. It'll be resilient.

I've got 39 trillion bacteria in my gut microbiome, and that's going to take a lot harder to recover that. Wow. Is there one more thing you would add to this list of what to avoid? Well, I mean, I guess, again, all these things in moderation will be okay. I would say alcohol. And I'll tell you, I was just telling some folks about this. I have a very specific philosophy about alcohol because you've heard about, well, one or two glasses of red wine a day lowers your risk. Okay. In no case is the benefit coming from the ethanol, the actual alcohol, coming from the stuff that comes out of the fermentation in the red wine,

the resveratrol and the other polyphenols, and even beer. You know, I mean, beer has hops. Those hops actually ferment out some of the really great stuff. It's not the alcohol in the beer either. And so what I tell people about alcohol is as far back as humans have been cultivating grain, they've also been fermenting it. Alcohol is very much part of humanity. We celebrate births, deaths, weddings, holidays with alcohol. And so I'm a big believer in being who we are, right? Traditions. Traditions. And I believe in that. So what I would say is, you know, if that's important to you, go for it. But be moderate and recognize, again, this is the why part of it,

that in no case is it the ethanol and the alcohol that's good for you. It's the other stuff that's good for you. But you know what? I totally respect the fact that it plays a role in our humanity, right? And I Have a hard time with this because I've never been drunk in my life You know My parents didn't drink and and they were just like you want to have a clear mind as frequently as possible Life is hard enough with a clear mind trying to make good decisions consistently and managing stress

when you flood your mind to be consistently in managing stress, when you flood your mind to be weaker and the brain to literally be weaker and the body to be weaker with alcohol, it just makes it harder to make conscious decisions. So I'll kind of give you a little refinement on the medical side. It is weaker, but it's actually less coordinated. Exactly. To make good decisions, we need really good coordination. We need to have situation awareness, good coordination, alignment, strategy, execution. Speech awareness.

Speech awareness, everything. All that kind of goes with the fog when we actually have mind-altering substances. What does alcohol do for the gut microbiome? How does it affect it positively or negatively? You know, I would say that by and large, if you drink a lot of alcohol, it's negative. Most of the studies so far, and we're just still learning how to study the microbiome, fairly neutral. Because you're drinking alcohol with food oftentimes. We're not talking about Las and Las Vegas kind of stuff. Sure.

All right. And actually some of the polyphenols that come from fermented alcohol products actually help the gut microbiome. So it's not a simple picture. Sure. Right? Different than the soda. Different than the soda.

Yeah. Ironically. There's no benefit. Right. Just a straight sugar bomb. soda. Different than the soda. Yeah. Ironically. There's no benefit. Yeah. Right. Just straight sugar bomb. One of the things, but I love that you said alcohol as a doctor, that this is not something that we should, this is something we should avoid. You know, if you want to do it for a traditional base or things like that, cool, but just know it's not really adding a lot of

nutritional value to your life. Zero. Zero nutritional value. So it's the same thing with me of wanting to have a candy bar. It's not adding any nutritional value, but I'm going to do it from time to time. And you're going to enjoy it that time, but you're not going to continuously abuse that. You're not going to be a glutton about it. Exactly. And what about the three to five things we should add or use more frequently to help us improve the quality of our health? In my first book, I wrote about 300 different foods. In my new book, I write about 150 foods that improve your metabolism. So I've got quite a choice, a list to choose from for choice.

What are the five most powerful to burn fat and heal your metabolism? And live longer. And live longer. What would you say? If you could only choose five foods consistently. Yeah. And obviously variety plays a big part in nutritional value and the gut microbiome. But let's just play devil's advocate. Let me give you two for sure.

Yes. And then I'm going to come up with five as sort of a flyby of things that I enjoy. Two things for sure, coffee and tea. To add. To add, yeah. Really? Yeah. Tea in every way activates your body's health defenses and improves your health defenses.

And not just green tea, not just straight on green tea in a bag. Matcha tea, ceremonial tea, oolong tea, the slightly fermented tea, and even the ultimate fermented tea, which is Pu'er tea. It comes from a little village in China, and it's an ultra-fermented, dark, smoky, digestive tea. It's a probiotic tea, good for your gut microbiome. It improves your metabolism. So tea, that's a category to be one.

But not like a tea, like normal tea bags that you get at a store, but specific types of tea. Is that what I'm hearing? Well, but you can get them in tea bags. Okay, cool. Yeah. Gotcha. The other thing is coffee.

Now, why coffee? I mean, I've heard from different individuals. I don't know if they're actual nutritionists or scientists, but I've heard different people talk about this from a sports performance point of view, that coffee in the morning causes the body to be more acidic, and you don't want it to be acidic for performance. But I don't know, again, I'm not a nutritionist or a scientist, so can you speak into that? Yeah. Well, let me first address what you just were describing from a medical doctor's perspective. There's a lot of discussion about acidic blood and basic blood. I can tell you as a physician who's taking care

of people in the ICU, all right, our body is a perfect balancer of pH in your blood at all times, very narrow range. You cannot acidify your blood. If you had acidic blood, you'd be in the ICU with sepsis and you'd be on your way out. I guarantee you that. So this whole idea that the food you eat can acidify or neutralize your blood, not true. I've never seen it as a physician. I don't think it can be done because bacteria can do it. Like when you're septic, you have overwhelming infection. That will acidify your blood. Cup of coffee, absolutely not. Now, I'll tell you though, there is acid in coffee. It's called chlorogenic acid. But unlike a harmful effect, in fact,

it gives you all benefits. Really? A couple of things that chlorogenic acid does, and then I'll tell you something really interesting about the organic versus a conventionally grown coffee. Okay. So chlorogenic acid actually first of all activates your circulation, makes your blood flow better, all your brain, your your muscles, your organs have better blood flow over time. Okay not it's not like an instant hit and boom you got better circulation but over time when you say regularly drink yes that's what it actually does. Number two, it actually protects your stem cells,

so it helps you renew yourself from the inside out. So we're healing ourselves, continuously replacing the injured and the dead and the sloughed off stuff, just more tissue. Chlorogenic acid actually helps your gut microbiome, makes a better gut health, all right, which then helps your immunity and everything else. Chlorogenic acid also slows down the degradation of your telomeres, which means that it slows down cellular aging and it improves your immunity.

On top of that, chlorogenic acid helps to fight excess body fat. acid helps to fight excess body fat. One of the ways it does it is it prevents new fat from being made. It slows down the loading up of existing fat cells with extra fuel so your balloon doesn't blow up quite as much as it normally would. And the other thing it does is it turns on brown fat in your body, which is a special kind of fat. It's not jiggly fat. It's wafer-thin fat. It's around your neck. It's underneath your breastbone. It's under your arms, a little bit behind your back. When that brown fat lights up, it is like putting a lighter to your gas range. Whoosh! You you got flame. And the energy it takes to burn that flame is drawn from bad fat. So good fat can burn down bad fat

and chlorogenic acid does that. So coffee actually has all of these benefits. So coffee can help you burn fat. Absolutely. Now, is it the type of quality of coffee? Is it all coffees? Is it generic brand coffee? You know, you scoop in type of quality of coffee? Is it all coffees? Is it generic brand coffee? You know, you scoop in and you pour instant coffee?

Or is it what types of coffee? From everything that research has shown, it is the chlorogenic acid in coffee. So you're asking the right question. So what are the different levels and different types of coffee? So that has not been exactly studied yet to know if one brand or Folgers or whatever. Okay, but I will tell you one thing that has been studied. Chlorogenic acid is much higher, the good stuff. There's a lot more of it, three times as much in organic coffee compared to conventionally

grown coffee. And the reason why is that chlorogenic acid is one of those natural chemicals, bioactives we call it, that's made in response to injury. So basically in organic plants that don't have pesticides, you've got normal bugs that nibble on the leaves and the stems. And so as a response, they're making chlorogenic acid. Lots of it. Okay. Add some pesticides there. Fewer plants, fewer bugs. Right.

Fewer pests, less nibbling. Doesn't make as much. But the plants aren't as strong defending themselves. Is that what that means? That's right. Exactly. They don't need. They don't need to defend themselves. They don't need to defend themselves.

Interesting. You take away the ability to defend yourself. Interesting. So it's called chlor... What's it called? Chlorogenic. Chlorogenic acid. Acid. Now, is this a similar case where, you know,

people say it's good to drink a glass of wine every night because of the rosveritrol, but the potential... The side effects of having alcohol can outweigh just having the supplement of rosveritrol. Is there any side effects to coffee that outweigh the benefit of the chlorogenic acid? Where you could pull that from some other source,

a plant-based source or a supplemental source instead of also having the coffee caffeine and the other things that come with it? It's different than wine because coffee doesn't have the alcohol, which is toxic to your system. Coffee does have caffeine if you have a caffeinated version. Some people are very sensitive to caffeine. So caffeinated coffee isn't right for everyone. So there's no absolutes here. It's all individualized.

That's what we're learning about health across the board. It's all about who we are and what's right for our body. Can decaffeinated coffee get the same benefit? It's got to be decaffeinated using a water process. All right. Now, most decaffeination processes used to be used solvents to remove the caffeine. So they actually put chemicals into the tea or coffee to remove the caffeine. In so doing, they leave some of the residue of the solvent in the coffee or the tea. Oh, that's not good. And they also take away the polyphenols as well, including the chlorogenic. Right. So what's the point of it then? Exactly.

Well, you don't have as much caffeine. All right. But you're not getting the good stuff. You get less of the bad stuff. You still don't have the benefits. Interesting. So what's interesting is that coffee is generally safe to drink. A lot of people used to think, well, it'll cause esophagitis. It'll actually cause your heart to race. Not for most people.

Actually, it doesn't increase heart disease in most people. Obviously, if you're a particular person, you're sensitive to it, you've got to be careful. But there's other sources of chlorogenic acid as well. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples have chlorogenic acid. Really? But so does a pear. A pear has chlorogenic acid as well.

So you don't have to, you know, I try to encourage people not to get fixated on only one food substance and try to go at it like crazy, like mad. Learn that, you know, just know that we're beginning to discover what's in certain foods that are good for us. And many times those elements that are good in one food are also found in other foods as well. Right. And that opens up the gateways to be able to have diversity. Exactly. I love that. Now, speaking of fruit, and these are your top two, is like the coffee and tea, which I think is powerful that you explained all this. But speaking of fruit, eat to beat your diet, burn fat, heal your metabolism, and live longer, which is what you talk about in the book. How important is fruit in this factor? look, how important is fruit in this factor?

Or does fruit have too much sugar spiking, which I've heard from some nutritionists over the last couple of years that I've interviewed, where you take a handful of grapes and the glucose monitor spikes through the roof. Is that really healthy for metabolism and living longer? Or how do we manage our fruit intake so that it's not too much? All right. So there's a kind of a myth out there that the sweet fruits, the sugar in fruits, actually are just as bad as sugar in candy. All right. And that's not

necessarily the case. First, candy is just sugar and other stuff. Fruits are nutrient dense, which means that not only does it have sugar, but it's got all these other polyphenols and dietary fiber and other aspects, small molecules and other things, other natural chemicals that are actually good for our body. Most of those, net-net, actually benefit us. For the average person who eats reasonable amounts of fruit, even a sweet fruit like a mango, which is one of the sweetest fruits that I know of, totally fine. When you eat it, it'll taste really sweet, or pomegranates, for example, your blood sugar will spike,

but I want to come back to that in a second. But you're also getting all these other polyphenols that actually will work on different parts of your body, including your metabolism, to benefit you. And so, and by the way, our body needs sugar. Our brain consumes sugar like crazy, even outside of the diet, outside of candy. And so we actually need actual sugar. If we don't have it, our body will make it. All right. So this is the whole thing. You know,

in the wellness space and health and wellness space, there's sort of two categories that people veer towards. They tend to make something a hero or a demon. All right. And I think that's really the goddess in the details. We need to know these details. And I think that's really, the God is in the details. We need to know these details. And that actually allows us to be more reasonable. And so for me, eating fruit is perfectly reasonable if you don't have diabetes. Okay, spiking sugar, sugar spikes.

If you're an average, normal person, no problem. Your body is fully capable. Spiking sugar is kind of like character assassination of the food. It actually doesn't matter. Your body is supposed to have a sugar spike and then it'll actually take it down. It's just drawing energy into your cells. What I tell people is like, spiking sugar is basically like what happens in your car when you're filling it with gas. Gas tank's gonna go up, all right? But then you're gonna burn it down.

And your body actually stores it. So I wouldn't get wigged out about, you know, people that are monitoring like moment to moment their sugar spikes. That's interesting, but it's less important than overall what actually happens. If your body's unable to take down that sugar. That's a problem.

That's a problem. The spike isn't the problem. It's the long tail of your body. If your insulin is not working, you're not sensitive to insulin, or if your metabolism is not working, you can't take that energy in. Now you got a problem. Yeah. How do we maximize our metabolism to take in the sugar spikes of life? to take in the sugar spikes of life? That's a good question. The way to actually do it honestly is the not only what we eat, which matters a lot,

but how we eat and when we eat. So you know that... okay let me give you the analogy and this will actually get a little bit into the topic of intermittent fasting which we'll talk a lot about. I like to explain metabolism in a very, very simple way. Our body is just like a car. When you're driving your car, you've got an engine.

You check out the fuel tank. When the fuel tank is running low, pull over to the filling station, take out the nozzle, fill up the tank. All right, when the tank is full, click, nozzle stops, putting gas in, put it back, get back in the car and drive off. And your gas tank is full. Our body's the same way. Our body's an engine. It runs. Okay. And when we're low on fuel, all right, and fuel for us comes from our food, what we got to do is pull over to the dinner table or to the restaurant or to the refrigerator in order to load up on fuel. Now our fuel comes from food and we call it calories. But I tell people don't get fixated on the word calories.

You don't need to count every calorie you actually have. The quality of the fuel matters, for sure. We talked about that a little bit. So you do want the highest quality of fuel that you can put in your body. Just like if you actually put crappy fuel in your gas tank. Right. You know, your car's going to run. But eventually, over 10 years, five years, 10 years, you're going to be screwing that engine. All right. Your car's not going to run as well as if you took care of it. That's kind of like the analogy for our body. All right. So how do you actually maximize your metabolism? Our metabolism is how our body takes the fuel, the food, energy from food,

moves it in ourselves, and then allows our engine to power it up to do whatever it is we're doing. Blinking, speaking, jogging, running, lifting, whatever it is you're doing. All right, that's what our metabolism actually is. Now, we put food in your mouth. That's fuel. Your body senses the fuel. It produces the hormone insulin. Insulin actually takes that fuel in, right?

You put it into your fuel tank. Your fuel tank, your body's going to run on it, but then any extra goes into your little fat cells. Your fuel tank, your gas tank, no big deal. And the little gas tank gets a little bit bigger because it's filled with fuel, all right, and then when you stop eating and the fuel gets loaded up, the insulin levels will go down, all right, and then you're off. You're driving away from the filling station. That's simple, all right. Now, our body is rigged so that when we are putting fuel into our system, eating, all right, it's like putting gas into our tank of our car. You can't burn the fuel. It doesn't want to burn the fuel.

When you eat, it doesn't want to burn it. Right. Right. Because it makes sense. You want to actually load up, not deplete. You're storing up. All right. And that's like your car in the the filling station you turn off your engine when you're filling up your tank All right, rest at the rest. Yeah, and then when you when you when you're filled up then you can drive off again Mmm, we shouldn't be moving while we're fueling Shouldn't be shouldn't be can you can but you shouldn't be it's an override, right? Like so we can override that stuff, but you shouldn't be so you're asking about how to optimize Yes, how do you how do you take advantage of what your body's hardwired to do?

Now, think about it. When you're at the gas station and you're filling gas in your tank, when the tank is full, there's a click. No more fuel comes out. Imagine what would happen if there was no click. The tank would fill up. It would come out of the tank, overflow down the side of the car, around the wheels, pool around your feet, and you were standing in a dangerous, flammable mess, right? Yes. Now, when we eat food, we don't have a clicker to stop us from putting food in our mouth, okay?

We should. We should, but we don't, all right? And so what happens is when we actually overeat, okay, eat too much. So this is the how. Eat too much, what winds up happening is we're putting a ton of fuel into our system. Now there's no leaking of the food out. It won't pool down around our feet. Our body quickly stuffs it. So it has all the energy it needs. It stuffs some excess into the existing fat cells. Existing fat cells get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

All right. Oops. Now you fill them up. They're like tight water balloons, about as big as they'll get. Wow. Now the body still got fuel to store. What does it do? It makes more fat cells.

And now it fills those up. And then makes more, fills those up. Now you can see why when you overeat, you have too much fuel, why you gain weight and you develop too much body fat. Now, what happens is that fat grows bigger and bigger and bigger over time. It goes from a little bit to a bigger mass. It needs a blood supply. So it actually reaches out to try to grab more blood vessels to feed it. But if you're overeating and the fat is expanding so fast because you're just storing fuel and it's not able to it's not able to get blood blood vessels fast enough blood supply fast enough Guess what the middle of it starts to die. It's called hypoxia and that middle of the fat

Behaves like a tumor it starts to die and when it dies it becomes inflammatory This is why when you have too much body fat, it becomes a dangerous inflammatory situation, just like if you're standing in that filling station with the gas over-bloating, spilling out over on your feet. And what happens when the body stores too much body fat and we have that much inflammation in the body fat? Yeah. Well, first is it derails your metabolism.

All the hormones, natural hormones, we should talk about what fat normally does because that's another big myth that has been, you know, that science has actually started to help us rethink what body fat actually is. But basically our body fat normally protects us. It's a cushion. It's a space heater. It will burn extra energy. But it also is an organ in the body. I don't know, people don't realize that. Fat is an organ. Fat is an organ.

Like your pancreas, like your liver, like your kidneys, your fat is now really truly an organ. It's an endocrine organ, which means that it secretes hormones. All right, the three hormones, it secretes 13 hormones that we know of, but the three that are most important, one is leptin, which basically is

a volume switch to your brain for your appetite. When your fat makes leptin, it tells you, you know what? Slow down there. Hey, buddy, you're not that hungry. All right. So it turns it down. So the volume goes down. So you need that. I got more of that. I need more of that to turn it down for me. Now, the other hormone it makes is called adiponectin. Now, many people won't have heard of, some people might have heard of leptin. They may not know adiponectin. Adiponectin is the hormone that if I were to take a vial of blood from you and measure it in a lab, is 1,000 times higher in level than any other hormone in your body, 24-7.

And the reason is adiponectin allows insulin to pull energy into your cells. So you need that. And your fat, healthy fat, makes adiponectin. All right, very, very important. And then the third hormone that is of utmost importance is called resistant. And resistant basically is the break to the adiponectin,

what's gas pedal. Gas pedal, adiponectin, lots of energy, break, resistance, slow down there, buddy. All right. And so these three, leptin, adiponectin, resistant, they're made by normal healthy fat. So what happens when fat overgrows and it becomes inflammatory? All of those hormones go haywire. They're not behaving the way they should be behaving. You're not pulling in energy. You're not absorbing energy. Your hunger mechanisms are not working right. You're overeating. And then you can't stop your ability to sort of trigger your metabolism, what it needs to start and stop. That gas break thing, completely messed up.

On top of that, you've got inflammation that spills out from your fat, all right? And when it spills out from your fat, that's kind of like the gasoline leaking out around your shoes at the gas station. In the gas station, it's flammable. In your body, it's inflammatory. It screws up your immune system.

It sets you up for diabetes, sets you up for cancer, sets your blood vessels up to narrow so you are set up for stroke and heart attack. It's all bad. Wow. Excess fat is all bad. Excess body fat. But don't forget, one of the things that I started saying is that some fat is absolutely critical. In fact, we need normal fat. Fat is good until

it's bad. So we don't want to fear it. We want to tame it. If someone's listening or watching this right now and they're thinking to themselves, man, I've just struggled my whole life with my body weight. And I've, you know, life happened and, you know, kids or divorce or just career changes and just life just happened and just, it got away from me. And they're 50, 70, 80 pounds overweight. They've gained that excess body fat

that they know they don't want to have. But they don't want to beat themselves up because that doesn't help them either. They've beaten themselves up for too long and that almost makes them want to eat more bad foods because they don't feel good about themselves. How can they emotionally and psychologically break free while also changing their habits and know that this is a journey. It's not going to happen in two weeks and lose 50 pounds and stick, but it's like, it's going to take time and it's going to be a journey. What can someone in that position start to think and do to start seeing consistent results? Do you think? Yeah, well, there's two main things I talk about in my new book.

One is actually time, food. Figure out what time you eat and don't eat. And secondly is choose foods that actually can help your body fight fat. That's a little bit of a surprise that you can eat foods to lose weight, to fight extra body fat, but it turns out science tells us that's actually true. And it's studied in people as well. Let's talk first about the timing of food. Remember I told you, when your insulin level is high, because when you're eating, you can't burn fat. So when your insulin level is low, when you're not eating, your body switches into fat-burning mode. When does that actually naturally happen? When you're sleeping.

Most people, when they're sleeping, are not eating. And then what happens when they get up in the morning, they eat breakfast, they're breaking their fast. So sleeping is fasting. It's very normal. It's not necessarily invented as a new fad or a trend. It's actually how our body's wired. And so if you follow the wiring, the hard wiring of our body, the operating system of our body, when you're sleeping and not eating, your body's burning down fat. You've got extra weight, extra body fat, take advantage of what your body naturally wants to do. Now, how do you actually give your body the most chance to burn down extra body fat? Sleep. Let me just kind of set out some hypotheticals. Let's say you sleep eight hours. You go to bed at 11, wake up at 7.

During that time, your body's actually burning fat, which is good. That's going to get you over time to get to your fighting weight, so to speak. How much fat do we burn with eight hours of sleep, do you know? It actually depends on how good your sleep is. It also depends on when you ate before you went to bed. It also matters who you are, right? And lots of other stress factors. The way you think about yourself, your identity.

Totally. Wow. Totally. So the things that you talk about, sort of like this really harnessing your, knowing yourself and harnessing your strengths and healing from the inside out, that is critical for getting good quality, using those eight hours. That is critical for getting good quality, using those eight hours. Now, let's talk a little bit about when you're actually eating last.

Because if you're sleeping eight hours, 11 to 7, because you're not eating and you're burning fat, let's say that you… One share of your last bite, be and buy. Exactly. So I'm trying to give you analogies that people can understand very easily. Let's say you eat dinner at 7 o'clock, all right, and you finish dinner at 8, all right? You put your dishes away at 8, all right? That seems pretty reasonable for most people. After 8 o'clock and you go to bed at 11, do not snack. No midnight snack, no nibbling.

No cookies, no chips. No chips, no waiting for the dessert at the end. All right? Now you've gained three extra hours from 8 o'clock when your dishes get put away all the way until you go to bed. Don't eat. I don't eat. It's fine. You know, in the beginning, you might have some habits like, oh, man, I should.

Don't. That's a habit you want to break. Uh-huh. Okay? Because, and here's the why. Because if you don't eat, your insulin levels will go down quickly from dinner. And then what will happen is you get those three extra hours added on to the eight hours that you have that your body is doing what it's doing. So does that mean you can still have tea or like a carbonated water or like a sparkling water? Just nothing with zero calories.

No calories. No food. Especially no desserts. No noshing on those little sweet things nibblies at night what if there's a little lemon in the like water lemon's okay that's okay yeah yeah okay um no sugar gotcha no and and like so then what happens now you've actually built yourself eight hours of sleep three hours of extra time that's a bonus okay get up in morning. Let's say you get up at seven, right? Don't do what your mommy told you to do when you were a kid, which is roll out of bed, eat breakfast, get on the school bus to get to school. Right. That's how we're all conditioned. Here's what you want to do. Get up, brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed,

take your time to get oriented to the day. I usually don't eat anything for about an hour after I get up, and I'm perfectly fine. It's really habit that makes you want to sit down and pour a bowl of cereal. Now you've gained an extra hour. So that's 12 hours now, right? Now you've got 12 hours. You've got 12 clean hours. That's half the day.

With no food. With no food, your body's burning. It's different than 16 and 8, but it's the same principle. 16 and 8, intermittent fasting. Now you've got to really push it so you're squeezing all your foods in 8 hours. It may not work for everybody, but what I'm trying to empower people, to be great, you don't need to go to 16. 12 gets you into great zone.

Wow, really? Think about it. How many people do you know say, you know, I get eight hours of sleep, but then when you really talk to them, they're actually eating late at night. Right before they fall asleep. Yeah, now you're cutting into your burn time. Interesting. All right. So that's one thing is really sort of the timing of your meals. Oh, by the way, I mean, I'm sure this has happened to you as well. Busy people sometimes skip breakfast for whatever reason. Skip breakfast.

Yeah, or sometimes skip lunch. Totally fine. You can think about that when it happens that you're buying yourself extra fat burn time. All right. And so for people who, you who, in that scenario you gave, somebody who's overweight and has been struggling with it and say, this is what happened to me, here's a really simple way just to get a little bit disciplined. Diary out, journal out when you normally eat, when you stop eating, when you go to bed. And what I say in my book is that try to

create a 12-hour food window that you that you're gonna open up in the morning what time do you open the window that you're gonna eat and what time you get to close the window that you're not gonna eat anymore yeah you know it's you'll be believe me you'll be fine if you don't eat after dinner when you put your dishes away and you'll be fine if you take a little extra time before you sit at the breakfast table guarantee you yeah, you know, like you're, you're going to be just fine and you're going to be healthier for it. And some people think like eating in an eight hour window is too short for them,

but 12 hours is much more manageable. It seems like it's, it's really not that hard to do. It's been studied actually in clinical trials in people. They actually compared 12 and 12, 12 fasting, 12 eating with 16 fasting and 80. Oh, what happened? Both lost weight, both burned fat. You got about 40% more fat burn when you went 16. All right. So, you know, you're fasting more. It makes sense, right? You're just having more time to burn if you can manage that. But the problem is that most people can't sustain that. And for me, I sort of practice reasonableness. Don't be so extreme.

Don't be extreme. Yeah. Human nature is not extreme. We can all do extreme things once in a while. Yeah. But if you really want to kind of level set to be good all the time, great all the time, frankly, your head towards greatness, you want to be good all the time. It's consistency Consistency that's the key. Yeah and be committed to it. Yeah. Okay, so 12-hour window

and What about if you were going to skip one meal? Is it better to skip? Breakfast lunch or dinner is it better to have like a I'm gonna eat my protein and veggies in the morning after an hour Waking up and have you know solid meal to fuel me for the day. I'm going to have like a lighter lunch and then no dinner and have a longer burn time before you go to sleep. Or is it better to skip breakfast and have lunch and a lighter dinner? You know, I think whatever works for people, but I will tell you that it's better to, for

me, the way I look at it, I encourage people to skip breakfast. Just because you're burning fat all night long, just keep the burn going. Keep burning. Keep burning. Yeah. Okay. And the key, though, if you're going to skip a meal, all right, the key is if you're going to skip a meal is not to overeat the next time you sit down for food. And think, I'm starving.

Ah, yeah. Don't do it. I mean, again, you know, these things take a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of self-actualization. You just have to recognize it's in your control. Right. What is the, okay, so we're talking about fat, and we're talking about your new book,

Eat to Beat Your Diet, Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer. Make sure you guys get a copy of this, packed with tons of research, wisdom, and practical application that you can do for your daily life. What is the most surprising science around fat in your mind? And you talk about fat not being the villain we've made it out to be. In what ways does it support us? Okay. So I want to tell people, because I'm a scientist, I'm a vascular biologist, as well as a doctor. As scientists, we like to look at origins of tissue, of organs. Okay. What's the origin of fat, right? Well, so a lot of people don't know this, but it's been studied. Your mom's egg met your dad's sperm. You were a ball of cells in the womb. And when you started

to form who you will later be, the first tissue that gets laid down are your blood vessels, your circulation. Every cell, every organ needs a blood flow, right? Otherwise, it's not going to survive. Blood vessels. Second tissue that gets laid down are nerves, because every organ needs a blood flow, right? Otherwise it's not going to survive. Blood vessels. Second tissue that gets laid down are nerves. Because every organ needs a signal pathway, you need to be able to send commands to the organ through your nerves. Third tissue that gets laid down, fat. Really? Little tiny fat cells start to form like bubble wrap around your blood vessels. And the reason it does this is because, remember we talked about this,

your fat cells are your fuel tanks, and your blood receives the fuel, so it's gotta load it right into the tank. It's like if you were designing a car, that's what you would do. Okay, so. So this is over muscle, this is over tissue, this is over bone.

Yeah, this is the primordial system. So you had fat before you had a face you could stuff with food. That's a key thing because we don't start to think about fat until later on in life. Now when you're born, what gives us joy when we see a baby? It's a fat baby, chubby baby, chubby cheeks, round belly belly arms and legs that look like a like a circus balloon like Michelin Man Michelin Man right that's the and and we know that a baby is healthy if it's kind of budgie and chubby now imagine if you saw a baby that had chiseled cheekbones like a fashion model thin

arms and long thin thighs longly you'd say there's something seriously wrong with that baby, and you'd be absolutely right. So I'm just telling you, we have to rethink what we know about body fat. It's not bad. What does it do? Well, I mentioned to you, it's an organ that secretes these critical hormones that turn up or turn down our appetite, that allow us to suck in energy, along with insulin, that can be the break for sucking that energy in. Very, very important. In fact, 13 hormones, those three are the most important ones. What else does it do?

It's a cushion. Now, if we didn't have fat in our body, if we tripped on a rug and it fell on the floor, our organs would rupture. Wow. Okay. Got in a car accident, bam, your organs would rupture. Thank goodness we've got some padding in there so that it can be a shock absorber for us.

That's very, very important. And then the brown fat, which is not the jiggly fat. There's two colors of fat in our body, brown and white. White fat is the jiggly fat, the fat under your arm, under your chin, the muffin top, around your thighs and your butt. That's the stuff that people kind of like... They want to get rid of. They want to get rid of. That's actually not that... It may not be pleasing. You might want to get rid of it, but it's not the most harmful part. The most harmful part of fat

is lumpy, bumpy, and it grows inside your body. In the organs. Around your organs. Okay. Yeah, it's kind of. It's not the external fat on your body. It's not the external fat.

It's actually inside. So you. That's the scary fat. Yeah, because you could have a big body size, okay, like a heavyweight boxer, or you could be real thin, all right, like a javelin thrower, and you could still have excess body fat packed inside your skinny frame.

How does that happen if you're skinny and you still get fat on the inside? It has to do with your body frame. Some people have thin frames. Think about it this way. You go to the FedEx and you're gonna ship some fluorescent light bulb. It's kind of delicate. You don't want it to break. So you're gonna get a big thin box and then you're gonna actually get peanuts and you're going to pour the peanuts in there to pat it, right? Now let's say you get an extra bag of peanuts. You're going to really cram those peanuts in there. And so that light bulb is being pressed by the peanuts and you're going to force that thinning box to be shut, tape it shut. At arm's length, it's still a skinny box. Inside, it's

bursting, about to burst. That's what can happen with visceral fat. Dr. Wow. So how do we get rid of the visceral fat around our organs? Dr. It's one of the first fats that energy is drawn from when your brown fat fires it. So let's talk about the hero fat, the good guy. So I told you the white fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat, the stuff that grows inside you, actually is lumpy, bumpy, jiggly, wiggly. Brown fat is wafer thin, and it's not close to the skin. You can't see it. It's close to the bone around your neck, behind your chest. It's really deep inside you, and it fires up whenever you actually need it to fire up. Originally, we thought, we think actually it was intended for cold temperatures. All right.

So basically, when you're really cold, it lights up your brown fat. And the brown fat, again, as a space heater, takes fuel from wherever it can get, like your visceral fat. And it burns it down in order to generate heat. All right. Keeps your core body temperature warm. Where does it get that fuel? From your excess fat. Draws from there first. All right. That's why when you see there are certain foods that you can eat that turn on your brown fat, they also decrease your waist circumference because they are shrinking the

harmful fat that's inside your body. That's the fat you want to get rid of. Gotcha. Wow. Okay. And the easiest way to get rid of it is how? The easiest way to get rid of it is actually to allow your body to normally burn, as we talked about with the timed eating. But another way that you can add on top of that is choosing foods that I write about in my book, 150 of them, that when you eat them, ignite your brown fat. So it ignites extra burn. It's sort of like putting nitro into your body. It actually helps your body burn extra fuel. Where does it get the fuel from? The brown fat burns down fuel, and it gets that fuel from the white fat, the harmful fat. Good fat fights bad fat. So you've got 150 of these foods in Eat to Beat Your Diet, the new book. And I'm curious if you

could share five that help burn fat, the foods that you should eat to help burn fat. What would those be? So this is the second section of my book where I actually tell people about the foods. And the way I wrote this, by the way, Lewis, is I take the reader into a trip in my grocery cart. It's like when you were a kid, you know, you rode your mom's grocery cart. Yes. And she pushed you around. Yeah, it was the best. So what I do is I put you in a grocery cart,

and I wheel you around the store, a grocery store, and I narrate into your ear, whisper in your ear, what foods you should have put into the cart. All right, so we go to the produce section, we go to the beverage section, we go to the forbidden middle aisles. Oh, man. I tell you how to find the good stuff in there. The box aisles.

And then we go to the seafood section and we pick up different foods. So let me come up with five just going through, cruising through the section of the grocery store. going through, cruising through the section of the grocery store, produce section, I look at tomatoes that contain lycopene. And the lycopene actually dissolves in your fat. So when you eat a tomato, the lycopene naturally dissolves in

your fat to fight fat. Interesting. Now what about the case about lectins with tomatoes? Big urban legend. Tomatoes do have lectins. There are hundreds of lectins. The ones that are in tomatoes are harmless. That's it. Big urban legend. Tomatoes do have lectins. There are hundreds of lectins. The ones that aren't lectins are harmless. Okay.

All right. That's it. That's the end of the story. There you go. You know? Okay. I mean, so, again, well-meaning people

try to interpret things and they tend to kind of miss, they try to put together a story that actually isn't supported by science. Okay. All the evidence for tomatoes show that,

in fact, you get net-net health benefits from it. Okay. So, tomatoes. Now, that, in fact, you get net-net health benefits from it. Okay. So tomatoes. Now, is a tomato in any form? Is that in tomato sauce or is it more? It could be raw tomatoes.

It could be tomato sauce, tomato paste. Okay. Double concentrated tomato paste in a tube. Even more concentrated because it's got even more lycopene. There's even tomato powder you can find, all right, the tomato sauce, the canned tomatoes, tomato paste, you don't find that in a produce section. You find that in middle aisles. Right. So tomatoes help you activate the process of burning fat. That's right. Exactly. And what's really cool about tomatoes is that the stuff that

is in tomatoes, lycopene that does the fat burning, dissolves in fat. So when you eat it, it immediately travels into your fat, okay, embeds itself in your fat to fight the fat. Nice. Pretty powerful. That's great. Okay, so tomatoes fight the fat. All right, now we're still in the... I want to show another one that's actually pretty powerful.

There was a study that showed eating just two pears a day would help you lose three pounds. Come on. Really? Okay. Yeah. Over about a month. And the bottom line-

Oh, it's only eating two pears a day? No, no, no, no, no. You eat everything else, but you just add two pears a day. Now, why? Because pears have the same thing as in coffee, chlorogenic acid that fights body fat. But pears, in addition, have six grams. A medium pear has about six grams of dietary fiber. The fiber is prebiotic.

It feeds your gut bacteria, your gut microbiome. And your gut microbiome is very, very happy. It gets happy and pays you back by helping to up your metabolism, streamlines your lipids, your blood cholesterols, actually helps to lower your blood pressure, lowers inflammation, and it actually improves your metabolism as well and helps you burn body fat. And so as a fruit, pear's got the fiber, it's got the chlorogenic acid, also not too sweet. It's not too much sugar, right?

Not too much sugar either. Compared to an apple, which typically has more, right? Compared to a pineapple or compared to a mango. What about apples compared to pears? You know, also it's about, apple and pear is about the same. About the same. Okay, cool. Compared to a pineapple or compared to a mango. What about apples compared to pears? You know, it's also, it's about, apple and pear is about the same. About the same. Okay, cool.

Does it depend on the type of apple? Because some apples are like filled with a lot of sugar. They're huge and they're... Yeah, so again, I think that the focus on the sugar is sort of a little bit of a bogey. Okay, got it. What you want to do is to focus on the good stuff in apples. And I'll tell you for the polyphenols in apples, that has been studied. All right, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith,

and the Renet Apple are the three varietals that actually have the highest polyphenols. What are those again? Golden? Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and the Renet. R-E-I-N-E-T-T-E. That's a smaller European apple. You'll see if you go to any European market in the fall,

it's all over the place. So these have more polyphenols than, say, the Fuji apple or the other. Oh, yeah. Fuji has actually relatively little. They're on the lower end of the polyphenols. Right. It's just more like candy bar. It's like just sugar is what it tastes like.

It tastes so good. Yeah, it's light. I mean, I would say that it's got kind of a light flavor. It's not as dense, and it doesn't produce as much polyphenol. Got it. Okay, so Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and the other one. Okay, so pears and apples. No, I did tomatoes.

Tomatoes, pears. Those are my two picks. Let's dive into the middle aisle. All right. I love that. The first place I'd go in the middle aisle actually is the spices. And I would get a bag of dried chili, chili powder, poblano chilies, ancho chilies, you know, any kind of chili. And by the way, it's chili. So you could get the powder, you could get the dried pods, or if you wanted to get a salsa, chili salsa, that would also work. If you want to go to get sriracha sauce, that also works. I'm just telling

you, this is how you get to 150 different foods. It's the chili in it. Now, what's in chili? You're going to love this. Now, there is something called capsaicin. Capsaicin and capsinoids. All right? Those are the two things in chili that give you the burn. All right? Make you sweat, too.

For me, as a white boy, it makes me sweat a lot when I have chili. Now I'm going to tell you why. I like them, but I'm like dripping sweat. I'm going to tell you why now. Because the capsaicin in chili binds to, turns on a switch on your tongue and in your mouth. It's called TRPV1. Okay, don't worry about the name of it. Just know that there's a switch. Pepper capsaicin goes to the switch, turns on the switch in your tongue. Your tongue then sends a text message to your brain and

your brain releases two kinds of hormones. One is an endorphin. So it's a feel-good hormone. That's why you love it. Okay, that's why some people are addicted to chili or a hot spice. The other one is called noradrenaline. Noradrenaline is a stress hormone, actually. And you can feel this next time you have something spicy. Put it in your mouth, feel the burn, and if you pay attention to it, like in a quiet room, or if you can go into a zen state, you'll feel the text message go to your brain. You will feel the hormones being sent down the nerves of your neck.

Like literally you'll feel it. And those nerves and those hormones light up your brown fat. They turn on your brown fat like a key into an ignition. Boom. Turn it on. And by the way, that noradrenaline, norepinephrine actually causes you to sweat. Right. Right?

So now you understand exactly what's it. But you're also turning on your metabolism. And that brown fat that's turning on is burning down harmful extra fat. So sweating when you eat is not a bad thing. It's a reflection of the fact that your brain is doing something. It's working. It's working. It's burning calories.

It's connecting to the fat, the brown fat, right? It's starting to activate the metabolism. Is there any negative side effects to having chilies in your gut or in your intestines where it's like inflaming something or it's impacting it in a negative way? So it turns out that- Kind of feel it burning. First of all, every one is a little bit different. So let's recognize that it's super important to listen to your body. And if something is, you're not responding well to something,

cut it down or cut it out or try it in a different way, for sure. So some people will be very sensitive to chili. Other people not, right? Now, here's the thing. That switch that I told you, the trip V1 that chili activates in your tongue, the text message in your brain, it's present along your entire gut. So it keeps on, as it's rolling down, it keeps on sending that message all the way to the end, which is, you know, why some people feel it burning on the way out too. Now, what does that mean when you eat something and the next day it

burns too on the way out and sometimes I'm sweating again. Is that a good thing? Well, I mean, it just shows you that what you ate is actually doing something. It's your body's response to what you ate. And, yeah, it's actually turning on your metabolism. Interesting. Okay. So it doesn't mean that you want it to burn on the way out. Right. You want to tune it to.

Have a little bit less. Have a little bit less. All right. Now, the other thing that's really interesting about. So anyway, so that's a middle-aged one. That's three. Dried chili powder or salsas. Yeah, chili salsas.

Sriracha sauce. Yeah. Fourth. Yep. I'm chili powder or salsas. Chili salsas. Sriracha sauce. Fourth, I'm going to pick a can of beans. A can of beans. Or it could be dried beans. A can of beans. What type of beans? Black beans? Pinto beans? So actually any of these beans are all legumes. So it could be navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, black beans. Could even be lentils, navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, black beans, could even be lentils, frankly. But the point is that they're beans, and these legumes actually not only have healthy fats, they are very rich in dietary fiber. Really? Now, why is that good for your metabolism? When you eat beans, not only feeding that your gut microbiome with a fiber, it turns out that beans actually make you feel

a little more full. They fill you up. Well, they give you the sensation that you're filled up. You feel that way. They don't necessarily cause you to bulge out. So if you even eat a spoonful of beans slowly, or bean soup, bean stew, if you eat it slowly, don't chug it, Even a few spoonfuls will make you feel like eating a little bit less. That's playing in your brain. That's actually helpful,

right? It's your body just helping you. You're using your operating system to basically say, don't eat so much. And yet those beans are feeding your gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome is lowering inflammation, helping your metabolism, making your body more sensitive to insulin so your metabolism is more efficient, helping you heal better, text messaging your brain to release social hormones, all good things. And by the way, it's been studied at the University of Toronto, basically one cup of beans eaten five days a week, right? So that's not every day of the week and it's not a whole can. It's about a half a can, three quarters of a can. Actually will shrink your waistline by about almost two inches. Come on, wait a minute. One cup of beans a week. Yeah, this has been studied.

For how long? About a month. A month? Yeah. And that's the only thing you do. No workout, no special dietary risks, no caloric restriction. Eating the same amounts of foods you normally eat. Yep, just adding the beans. Just adding the beans. I'm telling you, this is why you can eat to beat your diet. Wow. The whole idea about dieting is cutting out, deprivation, elimination, doing something

you don't want to do. I'm telling you, you can lean into this and you can actually find foods. And again, beans are one of them. Chili is another one. Chili peppers. Yep. Chili peppers and beans. Now you got chili. Oh, there you go. Right. There you go. It's a chili. Right. So again, combining them, you can actually get all this other stuff. It's just really interesting what the science is showing us. Now there's so many different diets out there. I can't remember which one says don't eat legumes.

If that's the paleo diet or something else like this that's saying like legumes are bad for you or whatever it is. What is it about legumes that some people say you shouldn't eat? I think people talk about lectins again. Lectins and legumes of like you should remove these or have them a certain way. You want to soak your beans. That'll actually neutralize everything. No biggie like you know i i want to basically communicate how it's a non-issue okay you know and the lectins are not poisonous gotcha they're not they're not poisonous to the

beans so soak them in the if you soak the longer you soak them the less gas they can cause right that's also helpful that's nice um exactly are there certain beans that are already pre-soaked that you can buy or you know honestly a can of that are already pre-soaked that you can buy? You know, honestly, a can of beans is already pre-soaked. Like ready to eat can of beans. Can of pinto beans or black beans. Yeah. Now we can get into all the, you know, are there plastics in the can and all that kind of stuff.

Are they organic and this and that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can get into that. But I can tell you that like this is pretty simple stuff. You know, we were talking about the dude out there that has got a lot of extra weight and wants to know, what can I do for myself? In addition to timing your eating and with the things we talked about, look, get into the grocery store and start picking selectively. And it could be, by the way, it could be dried chili peppers or it could be fresh chili peppers.

You want to make some Thai food? There you go. Great. I like it. Okay, great. I think I owe you one more. Yeah, so that was beans. So the fifth one, food that will help you burn fat and lose weight.

I'm actually going to go to the seafood section. And I know seafood can be controversial because a lot of people say, I don't like fish. But I can tell you that if you don't like fish, you haven't had, if you say, I don't like seafood, you just haven't yet had seafood cooked the right way. I'm just telling you that. There are people that live along the coast that eat seafood and it is so delicious. The Mediterranean diet is one of the diets that helps people kind of live longer

in certain blue zones. Absolutely. And also in Asia as well. And that's why I call my approach to eating Mediterranean. It's kind of like a mix, a blend of both. It's how I call my approach to eating Mediterranean. I like that. It's kind of like a mix and blend of both. It's how I naturally eat. But let's talk about the seafood section. So everybody used to say, think, again, this is a little bit of myth busting. You've got to have oily fish. It's got to be salmon or sardines or mackerel or anchovies. To get the omegas, right?

Because the omegas, oh man, that's too fishy for me. I don't think I could eat sardines. know oh i you know my mom made two salmon once and i don't like it okay but here's the surprise the science has now shown that even non-oily fish less oily fish can actually have enough amogithrys to give you the benefit so salmon will actually cause you to lose weight but cod which is a non-oily fish will also cause you to lose weight. A little bit less than salmon, a little bit less weight, but it turns on your metabolism. Omega three in cod is enough to turn on your fat burning system for your metabolism. It activates your metabolism. Now from that, from the omega three in cod, you can then extrapolate to other seafood, clams, mussels, shrimp. I can

tell you four shrimp will turn on your fat burning system the way that a piece of cod would. It would actually burn fat, right? Four shrimp. I love shrimp. Yeah. Now I can tell you how you cook your food makes a big difference. If you deep fry your shrimp, you know, you've kind of gone backwards. But depending on how you cook it, it's about being mindful. And this is really the fact that it's pretty amazing. So in my publisher, when I first said how I was going to set up my book, they're like, be careful about the seafood. People don't like seafood. And I'm like, that's the reason I'm going to write about it.

Because I'm going to write about it the way that people love seafood, write about it. And I'm not just going to cover salmon. I'm going to talk about cod and hake and halibut. And then I'm going to talk about shrimp, which is what people love to eat, and clams and mussels and squid, calamari and octopus and all these other, and I get into some pretty unusual things that you can get in the Mediterranean and also in Asia as well. I think this is the first book that has the word diet on the cover. It's an anti-diet book, not a diet book. It actually talks about mantis shrimp and mitten crab.

These are, by the way, if you live in Europe or in Asia, along the coast, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I want to push people's imaginations. When you watch a food channel, you watch Iron Chef the coast, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I wanna push people's imaginations. I wanna, you know, like when you watch a food channel, you watch Iron Chef or something, like you're really curious about what these things are. Or Anthony Bourdain. I want people to approach the seafood section like that.

Like, what's Dr. Lee gonna write about next? Just take, I wanna take you on that journey. Wow. I'm kind of, I like certain seafoods, but I feel like if I went to Asia, I'd be like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to try these things because it'd be too intense. Looking for me, trust the locals. Right.

And this, and this is what I always do when I travel and I do my research, I find, you know, a local will take me to someplace and I be open-minded learn, be willing to learn, you know, and by the way, you know, like, uh, trust. learn, be willing to learn, you know, and by the way, you know, like, uh, trust the experience that you just might discover your new favorite thing. Interesting. Yeah. All right. That's, that's a big leap of faith, but to me, that's actually an important thing to be willing to do, to be able to conquer your fear in order to be able to actually master your, um, your, your, that's true. That's true. Um, I love these five foods. So let me rephrase, uh, recap these tomatoes, pears, dried chili powder, or chilies,

uh, beans and cod, or you said salmon and shrimp. Yeah. Four shrimp. So those are beautiful. These are five foods that will support you in burning fat and optimizing your metabolism. Five of 150 to talk about in this book. With the doses, by the way. With the exact doses. With the exact dose that research would dictate will be helpful to turn on your fat burning.

I love that. So that's a key thing. Food dosing, by the way, very important concept. Because not only do you want to know what to eat, you want to know how much to eat that's based on science. Right. Now, there's a lot of experts, you being one of them, obviously, who is doing the research, working in the science, seeing the studies that other people are doing,

testing the studies, using it with different clients and patients, using these things yourself, seeing how it is. with different clients and patients, using these things yourself, seeing how it is, how can we know how to trust our own selves as the expert? When there are lots of experts out there saying different things and different research and different methods to apply, how can we see all the things that are out there

and everything in the fitness and nutrition industry in general and still say, okay, I know everyone's saying all these different things and there's different research for things, but how do I learn to trust myself as the expert for optimizing my nutrition and my body? I write about this. There's a whole chapter in here that I write about Bruce Lee. And I wrote about Bruce Lee because I was a big fan of Bruce Lee when I was a kid. And I loved the martial arts and I studied martial arts. But actually it's less about, as I've sort of, you know, gotten to be an adult, what's really still amazing about him is really his philosophy and his approach to fitness and health and

actually approach to life. And one of the most important, I think, concepts he talks about is really knowing yourself, like being very honest with yourself, taking the time to really have that self-knowledge. And I think you talk about this as well, about self-knowledge and understanding what makes you tick, what injuries you've had, what your preferences are, who you are inside. That's the key to the unlock. And I think that's true for food as well. By understanding who you are, what you respond to, what your origins are. We all are connected to food from the time we were a kid. Every one of us, no matter who it is, who's watching this, you have some food, some smell that came out of your mom's kitchen

that makes you feel good. My mom's lasagna, so good. Right? Okay. And so that's part of who you are. That's part of self-knowledge. If you do more of that, you actually can trust yourself to know what your preferences are. The other way you can trust yourself is to really learn how to find trustworthy sources. Look at credentials. Look at what else people are doing. But what I would say is that look for people who are not offering you quick fixes. When it comes to your health, it's never a quick fix.

It's a journey, as you said. And so anybody who basically says, just eat this and you'll be all set, or this super food or super supplement, that's a promise they can't deliver on. Interesting. All right, and so what happens is when you try that, it doesn't work.

You learn to not trust yourself. Right. Right? Interesting. So look at your, trust yourself. Right. Right? Interesting.

So look at your…learn how to trust yourself to trust other people. Who do you learn to trust? Think about it. You're at school. Which teachers are you going to trust? Which coaches are you going to trust? What friends are you going to trust? Same deal, I think, when we get all this other information.

I actually think that part of the confusion that we actually have on health and wellness and diet and nutrition is not that we have too many voices out there. It's that everyone has their own philosophy of what should be done. Look, even veganism, let me just explain this. I'm totally all for people that decide to go for veganism, but understand that the choice of being a vegan is not really because of health. It's really an ethical decision. That's not a health decision.

That's not based on science. That is your ethics. That's your morals. Go for it. I support you with that. And own it. And own it. Okay?

And I think that to really then people try to twist that and to say, eh, it's going to be healthy for you. Now you've got to do it this way. And even things that we really then people try to twist that into say, it's going to be healthy for you. Now you got to do it this way. And even things that we talked about, like intermittent fasting, you know what? It's not a trend. It's what we do. It's how our body's wired. And so what I try to do is to really take down some of this mystery, make it non-mythical. And if there's an urban legend, I want to bash it because it doesn't belong there. It is going to confuse people. So I think that's another way to have people trust themselves. And then I think the third thing that is absolutely vital to learn how to trust yourself,

to move forward, to continue to trust yourself, is do things that you enjoy. Things that bring you pleasure and joy. When it comes to food, human nature abhors deprivation. Don't do this, don't do that. You're a bad person if you do this. And you associate that with foods that you love. It's terrible. You're not going to stick to that. Then you don't know who to listen to and you can't trust your inner voice. What I try to do is to say, look, in my books, I actually put lists of food out that I've done all the hard work to tell you and I show you what the science is showing that are good. I tell people, bust out a Sharpie or however you actually digital and circle the foods that I've listed, that I've already done the homework for you, that you already like.

Start with those. You're already ahead of the game. You're already eating foods that you like. Then you can start to trust the information. Now you want to kind of explore more. Look, there's a lot of other foods you didn't circle. Give it a shot. Yeah, that's great.

I'm curious, how long have you been doing this work for? It's been what? 30 years. Three decades. And I feel like there's things that have evolved in science and research in the medical field over the last 30 years, right? I'm curious, what is the thing that when you started your medical practice and started science and research around nutrition and healing and cancer and all these different

things, what has come out in the last decade that we didn't know 30 years ago, that you didn't even know was possible 30 years ago, and now we're seeing, oh, this is a common day practice. So we'll start with that. And then the second thing would be, what do you see is gonna be possible over the next 30 years that seems impossible, or we just don't know the answer to yet?

All right, the single most mind-blowing thing to me about nutrition that's come out, not just in the last 10 years, how about the last two years, last 24 months, has changed our entire understanding of metabolism. So I can tell you this, just two years ago in 2021, there was a research paper

that was published, a research study that was published, that was an epic study, the most ambitious, largest, most impactful study of human metabolism ever conducted. And it was published in the journal Science, which is one of the top peer-reviewed credible journals. And Science, that journal, publishes Discovery. So this is a discovery in the last two years that completely changes everything that we knew about human metabolism. It's so new, so profound, that the textbooks on metabolism are being ripped up and thrown out right now. And the new ones haven't even been written yet. Come on, wow.

All right, so let me tell you what it is. Yes. All right? So there was a researcher named Herman Ponser out of Duke University who worked with 90 other collaborators. This is a big research project, all right, across 20 countries, global, and they studied 6,000 people in exactly the same way for metabolism. Now this wasn't possible until a few years ago.

And the way they studied them is they gave everybody a drink of water, H2O, water. The hydrogen is H, oxygen is the O, and they tweaked the hydrogen and the oxygen just the O and they tweak the hydrogen the oxygen just a little bit so you can measure it all right so you they drank the water and then the body metabolized the hydrogen the oxygen and you can measure the metabolism in the breath in their breath you can measure it in their blood and you can measure in their urine all right I studied this exactly the same way in 6,000 people. Now here is the mic drop part of this. They studied the entire human lifespan from two days old to 92 years old.

They studied people from across 20 countries from this entire age range. Different body sizes, different races, ethnicities, everything is different. Different sexes, genders. All right. Now, and they measured the metabolism. What do you think they found at the beginning? At the beginning, from metabolism, what do you think they found? They probably found, from all the different types of people, they probably found... 6,000 people.

20 countries. I mean... Two days old today. This is a very uneducated guess, but they probably found that the metabolism is different for different people, based on age or... So that's what they found, the results. The results were all over the map, just like you would expect. So you had an honest guess based on common sense and based on what we kind of observe

around us. Yes. However, we now live in the age of artificial intelligence and supercomputing. So this group designed an algorithm that would be able to go into the data set and correct the result based on the metabolism as it should be, as it is is if you remove the effect of excess body fat Mmm, and when you removed every person's excess body fat from this Completely natural study. All right what they revealed it was the results were not all over the map anymore Well, I'll say it was no there was only four phases of human metabolism that were revealed across our entire lifespan of human metabolism that were revealed across our entire lifespan. So now we know humans go through four phases of metabolism. And depending on your age, you go through exactly the same four stages. This is our hard word.

This, Lewis, is our operating system for our metabolism. Now what are those systems? What are those four phases? This first stage is when you're born. So when you're born, you come out of your mom, your metabolism's kind of synced up with your mom, like a menstrual cycle. All right, you pop out,

and your metabolism from zero to one, stage one skyrockets like a rocket ship blasting off. All right, and your metabolism, by the time you're one year old, is 50% higher than when you're gonna be an adult. That's how high it overshoots. All right. Now, stage two is from one year old to 20 years old. One to 20. And your metabolism goes down, down, down, down, down, down from one to 20, down through teenage years, through adolescence to 20. Now, the reason that's important when it's going down is because teenage years, adolescence,

that's when your height skyrockets. People put on muscle. They're eating two dinners. They're bouncing off the wall. Every parent says, my kid must be, metabolism must be going through the roof. No, it's actually coming down, down, down, down, down to age 20, which is when you hit your adult level. Did we not know this before two years ago? No.

We didn't know that the metabolism goes down in your teens. No. This is completely spanking new discovery. Okay. It's still high, but it's going down. It's going down. Okay. Okay.

It started from 50% higher. Now it's going down to adult level. Now 20, it hits your adult level. Now, here's the big surprise. Is everyone at 20 or sometimes 19 or 21 or is it kind of around this? They hit the spot at 20. Wow. Okay. Everyone is. That's what they hit. Wow. Okay. Now let me tell you from 20 to age 60, human metabolism, your operating system for metabolism is rock stable through pregnancy, through menopause, through middle age, up until you're 60. It doesn't change. It's hardwired to be the same. Okay. Now, that means that 60 can be the new 20. Interesting. If you allow your metabolism to do

what it wants to do. That's amazing. That's what's inside us. That's our operating system. Okay. And we didn't know that for sure. Most people say, oh, when I'm middle age, I'm going to have trouble with my weight. Yes. Okay. It's all of these external factors and some internal factors changes your behavior, marketing, the bad choices you make. And then what, I'm going to come back to that for a second to explain that.

So then at age 60, that's the third phase. Age 60 to 90, the final stages, is stage four. And guess what? Your metabolism from 60 onwards does slow down a little bit. By the time you're 90, it slows down 17%. So when you're 90, your metabolism is only 17% of what it was at 60, but it was also 17% of what you were at 20. Wow. All right? Interesting. This is the pattern of human metabolism. This is what the new textbooks are. This is the new discovery about how humans actually work across our lifespan. Very important.

Now, one more thing about this. You only reveal this when you remove the effects of excess body fat. What happens when you put the effect of excess body back in? You smash your metabolism. You suppress it. So it's not that a slow metabolism that you're born with makes you gain weight and get fat, it's the other way around.

Excess fat slows your metabolism. So if you burn the fat, or if you get rid of the fat, then your metabolism goes up. Goes up because that's the operating system. You unleash your inner metabolism. That's powerful. That's very powerful. And why do we want to have a powerful metabolism?

What's the importance of it? Energy, mental clarity, cognition, better muscle strength. I mean, all the things you want over the course of your life. Metabolism is our body's ability to run the engine of your body like a car engine. You want to be able to drive at 90 the same way that your car was when you bought it when you rolled it out of the car shop. Right? So that's what I'm saying is that this and this hardwired pattern you know which I have in my book it's like a drawing of exactly how it works. This puts the power back into our hands. So for the person who says, you know what, this is my life and I've been struggling with weight,

I'm telling you, in your body, your operating system wants to operate at a higher level. You've got extra body fat. Okay, you've got to work to unleash that inner metabolism. It's going to rise. Your water level will rise when you actually fight that body fat. And by the way, you don't need to suck it out or burn it out or chop it out. Most people don't. Now some people who are morbidly obese, they might have a serious medical problem. But what I'm saying is that the behaviors that we take, the accountability, the commitment

that we take to just adjust our life pattern. Look, put your dishes away and don't eat until you wake up in the morning. Don't eat breakfast for like an hour after you get up. That gives you 12 hours of fat burning. You'll start moving in that right direction. Then add some of these 150 foods that you can find in the grocery store. You don't have to order this online from some special, you know. Exotic place. Exotic place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is in the grocery store. You don't have to order this online from some special, you know, exotic place. This is in the grocery store. That's what I'm talking about. That's what you

can eat to beat your diet. I love this. I'm so inspired by this. And I want everyone to get a copy of Eat to Beat Your Diet. Again, if you're looking to burn fat, if you're looking to heal your metabolism and live longer, then this is the book for you. Again, I'm inspired by all of your work. You've got another TED Talk that's got, I think, over 11 million views. It's called Can We Eat to Starve Cancer? And in our previous interview, we talked a little bit about some of these concepts as well. So if people want more from you, check out that other interview we did. Get this book and also follow you at drwilliamlee.com and also all over social media, Dr. William Lee, that's L-I, everywhere on social media. This is inspiring work. And I'm curious,

how else can we be of support and service to you? Well look, my mission is to get information out so I want to invite everybody to sign on my newsletter. I pump out new information, new research I'm seeing every single week. I'm sort of like drinking from a fire hose of the new research. I do with all the heavy lifting to translate everything to figure out what's important, what's ready for prime time or not ready for prime time. But what I do in my newsletters, I put it out there so you can actually see for yourself. Look, I've been involved with biotechnology and drug development. That can take a decade and maybe it won't work. Food research that is credible has immediacy because something that you hear that I tell you that's based on science, once you hear it, you could put it in action that evening. And start getting results.

And start getting results. And it becomes self-actuated. That's why I really got into food as medicine. Yes. And so I think, you know, sign on to the newsletter. You know, I do these free master classes. And I love the fact that I've got people from all around the world that sign on. Everybody is united by their love of health and their desire to see if there's some way to make food work out.

And so what I tell people is to love your food, to love your health. And then if you're really serious, you want to do a deep dive with me, come with me on one of my four-week online digital courses that I teach. I come on and do office hours, and I talk to people, and it's Q&A. I have these little mini courses that you can actually do as well. But the point is, this is all part of my mission, to get that information out there. And that's all at DrWilliamLee.com, right? That's right. All that information.

So sign up for the newsletter, the courses, all that stuff. How often are you sending out the research? Is it weekly in the newsletter? Okay. This is inspiring stuff. Dr. Lee, I want to acknowledge you for your constant commitment to knowledge, science, and research

to helping people improve their life. For me, that's what I'm excited about. I don't have the skills to do the research like you and understand the science, but I'm grateful that you are doing it so that I can have you on this show and share this with the world as well. And I really acknowledge you for taking the time

to do all the research for this book because I know how much energy it takes to create a book. You've done a few of them. And so thank you for putting this together so we can understand it, hopefully conceptualize it and apply it and take consistent action. So I really appreciate you creating this and adding so much value in the world. I asked you this last time, but I'm curious if it's different because it was over a year ago when we had you on last time.

This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths question. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day. You've applied all of your wisdom and you've extended more than 20 years of your life, right? You live as long as you want. But for whatever reason, in this hypothetical scenario, you've got to take all of your message with you. Your books, this interview, all your content you've ever created has to go to the next place, hypothetical. So we don't have anything to remember you by except for these three final truths that you would share with the world or three lessons from all your wisdom that you would share.

What would be those three truths for you? One of them is to try to align your health with the things that bring you joy. Very important. Because that way you can do it the whole time and always feel good about it. Second thing, I would say take the time to know yourself. It's so easy not to take that time, but it's so valuable and so worth it to take that time. And the third is to listen to your body. You know, we run around doing things all the time and we sort of treat our bodies as if they were this passive engine we can push through,

you know, a snowstorm. And actually, if we paid attention and listened and learned how to be in tune with our bodies, we're going to actually be a lot healthier no matter what. Yeah. Those are beautiful. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Joy. When you can actually find a place or an area in your life where you really truly feel joy, you're great. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend.

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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.