Hello Health Champions we keep hearing about
how important carbohydrates are and how bad fat is and how losing weight is all about creating
a calorie deficit but if it's that simple then why is 80 of the population overweight and why is
it getting worse so quickly let's talk about that calories in calories out is often quoted as an
irrefutable law of physics and it is indeed true however that's not the whole picture and very
often more important than learning the truth is unlearning that which is untrue and here's
how the calorie story usually goes if you are hypothetically burning 3 000 calories per day and
you want to lose some weight you cut back to 2500 now you have a deficit of 500 so with seven days a
week that's 3 500 calories per week so now you're losing one pound per week simple enough so you
keep that up and every week you lose one more pound and if you weigh 200 pounds then all
you have to do is to keep this diet up eat 2500 calories for 200 weeks and you will weigh
exactly zero you will completely disappear now how many people think that's going to happen
I didn't think so because we know something changes along the way the body doesn't like to
disappear it likes to stay alive it likes its physical existence so somewhere along the way
it's something changes and in the beginning we might be losing weight nice and steady but
after a while after a few weeks the weight loss plateaus but we don't give up so easily so
now instead of 2500 calories we cut down to 2 000 and again we have a 5 500 calorie deficit and
the story repeats so for a while we lose a little bit more weight but then after a while the body
has this sense of not wanting to disappear so it changes something it cuts back on the expenditure
it adapts it spends less energy because it doesn't like to disappear whatever perception it has of
the weight that it wants to keep is a set point and it doesn't want to deviate too far from that
set point so we cannot simply count the calories and do the math and think that's going to happen
and this is what millions and millions of people experience every day that they lose for a while
and then it plateaus and then it starts going back up and every time they do this it gets a little
bit harder so this is not the solution and yes the law of physics it's still true but what it
doesn't account for is that in a living organism that organism has the ability to change things
one huge key to losing weight is to eat more unprocessed foods but there's more to it than
the usual story which goes something like this that you should eat more whole grain instead of
white toast and if you do that we're told you're going to get so much more nutrients and so much
more fiber and it's absorbed much slower and you will lose the weight well here's the truth of it
that when it comes to vitamins and minerals there is a significant difference that for the most part
you lose anywhere from five to eighty percent of the vitamins and minerals when you go from whole
grain to White so there's a significant difference but short term that's not going to matter too much
for weight loss then they say that there's so much more fiber but turns out there's only 1.9 gram
versus 1.1 so it's not insignificant there is a difference but it's not a huge difference and
then we're told that their net carb difference is different but it turns out the net carbs
only go from 10 to 12 and a huge portion of what matters is the glycemic index which is
a measurement of how quickly does that bread become broken down and digested and turn into
blood sugar and here we see the whole grain has a glycemic index of 74 and the white toast is about
75.
So there's a myth here that there's a very very small difference in terms of blood glucose
and the impact on diabetes and weight loss and Insulin they are basically the same so short term
there's really no difference long term it does matter with the vitamins and minerals but you're
really better off skipping both of these there are some grains though that are a good bit better
and some of them can get as low as into the 50s but what we're talking about here is bread that
looks like this it's heavy as a brick it basically sinks if you put it in water that's how heavy it
is and you can see all of the individual current journals because they haven't broken down the
kernels they don't grind the flower to make this kind of bread and it's the same thing if
you're going to do oats you want to do the steel cut oats where they don't grind it they don't
steam roll it it's still the whole grain and now it's absorbed much much slower you're also much
better off if you do some ancient grain that means something that we haven't destroyed with genetic
manipulation so Rye is a good example you also have things like barley steel cut oats you have
some old grains like Ember and einkorn and spelled but stay away as much as you can from the modern
wheat and stay away from things that are made from ground flour now if you're type 2 diabetic then I
suggest you leave grains out all together because even though 50 is a whole lot lower than 75 it's
still not really a low glycemic food however if you are insulin sensitive if you're metabolically
healthy and you'd like to have some grain once in a while then use these Ancient Grains but I still
don't think you should turn it into a staple have it once in a while in moderation like I use this
one occasionally to make garlic bread you toast it you spread butter and garlic on it and it's super
delicious but I might have that once a week so what's much much more important than calories
is how does this food influence your body and how does that affect your behavior so the first
thing we have to understand is one of the keys is called blood sugar blood glucose and this is super
super important for the body to keep it regulated to keep it within a very tight range so imagine
how tightly regulated this is if you can eat 10 grams of carbohydrate and if you're metabolically
healthy see if everything is working then shortly thereafter whether it be 30 minutes or 60 or 90
minutes your blood glucose is going to be within that narrow range of 80 to 90 milligrams per
deciliter and if you're metabolically healthy and you eat 200 grams of carbohydrate then a little
bit later might take a little bit longer maybe 90 minutes to two hours but you will still be in
that same range that is how incredibly powerful the body is and how important it is for the body
to keep it in that tight range and the body uses different hormones to accomplish this so when
you eat a carbohydrate and your blood glucose goes up the body releases a hormone called insulin
that acts as a guide for that glucose to get it out of the bloodstream and into the cell so one
of the keys to to losing weight is to stabilize blood sugar not just to lower it or keep it in
a certain range but to stabilize it and keep it from fluctuating too much because here's what
happens if you eat something that is quickly absorbed a lot of carbohydrate that's absorbed
quickly now you get a glucose Spike that food gets quickly into your bloodstream your blood
glucose goes up and now your body has to act on an emergency because if that glucose goes too
high that's very dangerous for your brain you can actually get into a coma if that gets totally
out of control so as soon as it starts Rising your body releases insulin and if you have
a glucose Spike you get an insulin spike a corresponding insulin Spike so here's basically
what that looks like so if this is the range where your body is doing okay and let's say that
it's a little bit lower because you have unstable glucose and then you eat something and your
glucose goes up and then shortly thereafter your insulin responds to that and you get this insulin
Spike and then when insulin is high it guides the glucose out of the bloodstream so now glucose
drops again but if we have a lot of insulin because we had a lot of glucose then it tends to
overshoot especially if this is going on for a while so now your glucose is low and now you get
hungry and you eat something so now your glucose starts going up again and the insulin which was
on its way down now responds to that new insulin Spike and it pushes the glucose down and so on
and so forth and every time that your glucose is really low now that's another emergency for the
body so now the body releases a hormone called cortisol to raise blood sugar so there's two ways
that you can deal with this low blood sugar that's to release cortisol to make new glucose in the
liver and the other way of course is to eat so you're going to make cortisol and you're going to
get cravings and so you keep this roller coaster going and this is why these blood sugar swings
also leads to more Cravings because every time that your glucose is low then your brain brain
doesn't have the fuel that it's used to because if you always eat carbohydrates then you're
teaching your body to only use carbohydrates so when it drops a little bit your body doesn't
know what to do you get a little light-headed you get a little irritable and you probably recognize
that when you're irritable is when you had the Cravings that's when you reach for something and
the more Cravings you have the more you tend to start snacking and the more snacking you do the
more you increase your food you increase your caloric intake and you also increase your calorie
storage of course especially when you have these blood sugar swings because every time that insulin
is high and it pushes this glucose down whatever glucose you can't use in that moment has to be
stored and you have a very limited ability to store carbohydrates you can only store so much in
the liver and when that storage is full all the rest of this glucose gets converted to Fat so this
insulin whenever it's high it pushes the glucose into a cell but this insulin is also promoting
the conversion of glucose to Fat so every time that you have this roller coaster then you're
promoting fat storage another popular concept is to front load your calories and what does that
mean well most people if we look at a 24-hour day then at midnight they're still sleeping then
they wake up in the morning and they tend to have a small quick breakfast because they're
in a hurry so they just grab something and then they sit down for lunch and they have a little
bit more time but they're still kind of rushed and then they come home for dinner and they
eat most of their food in the evening and the problem with this is that assuming that they eat
a certain percentage of carbohydrates through all these meals then for a small meal you get a small
insulin Spike for a larger meal you get a larger insulin Spike and for the biggest meal you get
the biggest insulin Spike and then you go to bed and then you might have some additional snacks in
between here because a lot of people do but this is what you don't want to do this is the opposite
of front loading because here you're back loading you're eating most of the food you're creating the
biggest insulin Spike just before you go to bed so it's going to take the body a good amount of time
to process this food and when you go to bed you're not really going to use a whole lot of it so front
loading means that instead you eat your biggest meal in the morning and then you have a smaller
meal for lunch and your smallest meal at dinner time and just like we saw before now you have the
biggest insulin Spike you can store the most in the morning early in the day and then you eat less
and less you store less and less so you have a chance as you go through the day to burn through
some of that and then as you go to bed there's not all this insulin that's going to start acting
on storing food for you into fat and this relates to how much time your body actually spends in fat
burning so if you eat your biggest meal toward the end of the day let's say at seven o'clock then by
midnight you've barely started burning fat you're still putting fat you're putting calories away
turning them into fat so let's hypothetically say that it gets to midnight before you start burning
fat now you have seven hours to burn fat and allow that insulin to drop throughout the night before
you wake up and start all over whereas if you start with the biggest meal and finish with the
smallest you've already processed through some of that and you get a couple of hours of fat burning
before midnight and then you still have the seven hours here plus there are much lower insulin
levels going into the sleep so you probably get more fat burning here than even you do in the
beginning of this period so here you have about seven hours of fat burning but with the other
model here with the front loading you might get nine hours of fat burning so there's two benefits
to that you get a longer period of fat burning but you also finish the day with a much lower level of
insulin so once you go to sleep that low level is allowed to continue to decrease and get lower and
lower so by the time you have your first meal you probably much lower insulin you've allowed your
body to reverse some of that insulin resistance by the time you get into having your first meal but
if we really understand these principles we can take this one step further so let's say instead of
having that breakfast meal we just skip breakfast all together because we still have some food the
body is not going to run out it's just a habit and instead we have a larger meal for lunch and
about the same size for dinner so depending on how hungry you are you eat until you're full right
you don't force food you don't eat excessively but you you also don't deprive yourself you eat until
you're full and if you understand what triggers insulin which is glucose now if you eat more
protein and fat and less carbohydrate now you can eat till you're full you can eat to satiety
and still only make about half as much insulin it doesn't take much insulin to process that food
because your blood sugar is much more stable there are no huge swings to respond to one analogy
is that if you eat high carb it's like putting gasoline on a fire but if you eat low carb it's
like you put a Log on the Fire it's going to keep you warm for hours instead of minutes and then
your second meal of course also will be low carb so you still get that low trigger of insulin and
now even though you ate a bigger meal because your insulin and levels are lower overall you get into
fat burning faster so you still get that couple of hours before midnight but now you have a full
12 hours from Midnight to lunch when you have your first meal so instead of seven or nine now
you get 14 hours so you get twice as much time in fat burning as the first example but you also
benefit from the overall lower insulin levels so if your insulin levels are already high if you
have trouble losing weight then this Top Model is going to be very difficult to reduce weight
width whereas if you drop to the bottom here that would be your best bet to really allow that
insulin to reverse the insulin resistance to drop long term so here's the meal plan first you
lower your carbs a little bit so that you can stop snacks you start stabilizing your blood sugar
and you cut out the snacks it might be a little uncomfortable for just a couple of days but your
body will get used to it very very quickly and then you start looking at the feeding window the
time period during the day that you're eating so let's say you're starting at 12 hours and then
you put your breakfast a little bit later and your dinner a little bit earlier so you're down to
10 hours now there is 14 hours without food that you can actually burn some fat instead and then
you keep doing this you put the breakfast a little later until it becomes lunch you put the dinner a
little bit earlier until you go from 10 to 8 to 6 hours of feeding window then at the same time you
go from three meals a day down until you only need two meals a day and for most people that's going
to be plenty you're going to get great results there however if your body is super stubborn or
if you prefer to try it and see if it works and if you feel good at it you can go down to one meal
per day it also doesn't hurt to change things up a little bit so your body doesn't get stuck in
any one pattern so you can plan your actual meal a million different ways but you start with the
protein it could be beef but get the best quality that you have access to it could be fish try to
get wild caught if you can it could be poultry it could be chicken wild birds turkey could be
wild game could be venison elk buffalo bison you name it anything that is raised properly on food
that is proper for that species is a good source of protein if you're a vegetarian or a lacto over
vegetarian this could be eggs it could be tofu it could be nuts and seeds something that's a little
bit more concentrated in protein then you add some vegetables and these you want to emphasize the
leafy greens like lettuce and spinach and kale and collard greens or any leafy green that you
like it could be parsley or bok choy it doesn't really matter they're all mostly similar then
you can also have some non-starchy vegetables like bell pepper and cauliflower and broccoli if
you're a little bit more or insulin sensitive if your body is not so stubborn you could throw in
a little bit of sweet potato or regular potato or other tubers but if your body is pretty stubborn
or if you're a type 2 diabetic then you want to stick with a non-starchy vegetables and the
leafy greens so you start with a moderate amount of the protein and then you load up with as much
vegetables as you can eat basically and then you add in fat to satiety you add enough fat to make
it taste good you add enough fat to feel full and this fat could be natural fat as part of the meat
or the fish it could be added natural fats like butter or extra virgin olive oil things that have
been minimally processed coconut oil and ghee are also excellent choices and remember just because
you hear that low carb diets are high fat diets that keto you can eat a lot of fat that does
not mean that more fat is better it's not the fat that does it it's the lack of carbohydrate
that does it but you still need to eat enough fat to satiety but if you are eating this way and
you're stuffing yourself full of fat and you're not losing weight then you're probably eating too
much fat so remember moderate protein greens as much as you can eat and then fat to satiety so if
you notice that I sometimes say if you are very insulin resistant if your body is very stubborn
so how do you find out what do I mean by that well the best way really is to get some blood work and
to understand what the blood work means you want to understand your glucose your A1C levels your
insulin levels your triglycerides and how all of that fits into your metabolic health and how that
carries over to your cholesterol levels so I have recently released a blood work course where people
can learn more about that because unfortunately most doctors don't really have much knowledge
Beyond just measuring the glucose level and if it goes crazy then they say here's your metformin
or your medication but we can find out things 20 years earlier that can save us a lot of time and
grief so put a link down below if you want to learn more about that course if you enjoyed this
video you're going to love that one and if you truly want to master Health by understanding how
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