5 Shocking Things Feeding Visceral Fat, Cancer & Inflammation | Dr. William Li
n2tsiGDIAMc • 2024-12-06
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Kind: captions Language: en processed Meats now all of us that were kids grew up you know at the you know eating deli meats turkey and the ham right I mean like that's basically you you what did your mom what did your mom pack in your lunch bag right yeah exactly okay well that's that's a relic of the 1950s you know of the sort of ultra processed foods that are everywhere Laden with chemicals that's not what we want to be doing now I have to say it doesn't mean categorically that uh that the uh hams or sausages are bad for you because if you go to Italy or if you go to places in Asia or Latin America where they create they they create dried Meats kind of the old way they're not putting chemicals in there and they're not manipulating it but here you know where you go to the deli counter and you know like yeah take take a look at that Deli like that's not meat doesn't come like that okay exactly so here's the thing uh processed meats are actually classified by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen and you know linked to the uh causation of cancer you got to eat a lot of it but a lot of people actually eat I mean how many hogies or Subs yeah right um and I gotta say you know like when I was growing up as a kid I I love those kind of like fancy kind of like the deli meats and stuff like that absolutely totally not good for you so that's not good for you it also damages the gut microbiome uh and it can actually damage your DNA so you want to kind of be cut down or cut out uh sodas and processed meats and then the other thing is really a category and I call these ultr processed foods so things are in a box or in a can that you know like are instant this or you know uh scoop out and and eat it quick you know I don't want to name any particular products um I don't want to call any products out but I think we all know the stuff a lot of stuff we grew up with and or advertised on television to kids you know the Frosted this the pop that the things that you that you know like the TV dinners like things that used to be like instant Foods got to be really careful about that because if you take a look at the packaging and I'm telling you there's one thing your viewers can get from me about things to watch out for whatever you buy pick it up if it's in a box or in a can and look on the side don't look just at the that the label look at the I mean at the name of it look at the side and see if you recognize the ingredients if if you start you know if you lose start losing track and you can't pronounce and you don't know what most of that stuff is it's an ultra processed food that harms your DNA that lowers your immunity that screws up your gut microbiome impairs angiogenesis it actually causes our cells to age faster those tiir burn down faster oh man by those processed foods yeah Ultra Ultra processed foods Ultra right what's the difference between Ultra and processed so look processing is technically any type of food you manipulate on like if you pick a tomato and you cut it up and you make spaghetti sauce at home that's processing you're processing it okay if you're taking flour and an egg and you're making home made pasta you're processing it I'm talking about Ultra process you know there's a term called Extrusion have you heard of this yes okay so basically you've got these diecut machines that like this goop gets thrown into and like the big oil like crazy oils get thrown in there and then it just like pushes out uh like Play-Doh chunks of food that get cut and dried that's what I'm talking about like that's the ultra processing it takes I guess maybe the definition it takes food and trans forms it into a form you don't recognize got it okay the you don't recognize that food yeah you don't want that I'm curious Dr Lee what do you think has been the the biggest aha for you in your Decades of work through from medical school to your research to your practice to these things what is what was the biggest aha when you learned this thing it it changed everything for you you know there have been so many instances of that like a scientist I'm seeing new things uh literally on a weekly basis things are like my jaw drops virtually you know like last week uh leis I read about a new discovery that we just discovered a new type of human cell in our heart last week like you know like that that's like I hit my head like oh my god really we uh a couple years ago we discovered a new uh brain cell called the rose hip neuron okay and it seems to be linked to depression so I I'm always amazed I mean as a scientist I'm Amazed by the um uh by the marvelousness of the body and how much we don't know about it and still so we have to respect it did you know by the way that we had it also um this is just this past year 2021 there was a landmark discovery that changed everything we knew about our metabolism M what is that well so everybody says that you know like um when you're uh uh a teenager you're growing tall you got a high metabolism you're just burn calories right okay totally wrong metabolism going down when you're team okay and then people say when you're um in your 20s or 30s you know and you're starting to gain weight and getting out of shape and they're like man my metabolism is slowing down and then some people basically say that uh you know I was unlucky because I was born with a bad metabolism look at my sister or look at my cousin she's rail thin she's so lucky she's got a fast metabolism right all that has been turn upended completely it turns out that all humans go through only four phases of metabolism in their whole life tell me okay I'm actually I'm G to show you this because it's actually right here in my desk you got a chart you got a you got a graph got a chart no no I got I got a paper this baby right here it's in a journal science okay this is how researchers do it like I I all around my office man like I am reading this stuff and this paper uh I tell you I gotta look at this it it studyed like 8,000 people from like 30 countries and it studied people from eight days old to 90 years old across 20 different countries all right this is the largest study of human metabolism ever undertaken and here's what they found that if you subtracted out body fat and which is different for everybody okay and you were to just go right down to the core of real metabolism energy usage energy generation are here's here are the four phases when we're born we got the same metabolism as our mother makes sense synchronized okay from zero or from from from the day you're born to Oney old your metabolism skyrockets in fact it's twice High when you're Oney old as when you're 20 years old wow okay so from one year old down to throughout your teenagers in puberty that time you think that you're eating a lot and your metabolism is going skyh high it's actually coming down from its peak interesting why does it seem like you're burning so many calories well you you just you you um well you're more active and you're growing yeah uh uh so you may burning more calories but your your metabolism hasn't changing this is the key thing we are hardwired to go through these phases now it's going down to 20 years old from 20 years old to 60 years old okay from college to retirement it doesn't change it is Rock stable huh all right so it's our and then after 60 it starts to diminish but not as fast as you think it's a slow deep it's a slow grade down okay four phases of human metabolism we never knew this before this year all right this is how it new it is so here's the key thing what makes all the difference between people like how why is your metabolism different than mine and why is somebody why is a sumo wrestler metabolism different than you know somebody who's on a runway in mil okay and it has to do with the fact that our metabolisms are all the same but the lifestyle choices that we make can actually push our metabolism one way or the other so it our metabolism doesn't cause us to be fat our fat slows down our metabolism it's the other way around interesting completely way around so what so how do we burn more fat then to beat up my metabolism that's what I'm working on right now and that's that's that is the topic of my next book by the way which I'm writing right now yeah so so stay tuned for that answer because I I'm on to something really hot on that um and I I will give you a little bit of a of a sneak peek what's s yes well you can eat certain foods to burn your fat down so so while while a caloric restriction and fasting uh uh can actually also do it it turns out there are certain foods that you can actually eat that will trigger it one of those give me some of those I I don't I don't want to give you a too much I don't want to give your viewers a spoiler because I'll have you come I'll have you invite me back on the show we'll talk we'll back on for sure we'll have you back on for sure you can give us the whole debrief but what what would you see a couple of these Foods at least that you think that are are now research and proven to be powerful fat burning well I'll give you I'll give you I'll give you one that's actually just a surprise is seafood actually Seafood yeah helps burn fat yep is it help burn fat or it starts to trigger and activate the fat burning process it's it it triggers so there are there are certain elements in food that are newly discovered in research like I just told you I just told you some new stuff out that's coming out of the hot off the presses but I can tell you like this is where this is what I do the research that if I told you about research about biotech developments it may not actually mean anything to you for 10 years maybe ever never okay but when there's when there's research about food or about your health a lot of times there's stuff that you that has immediacy you can put it to use right away so cancer starving Foods regenerative Foods gut health foods that can also help your brain foods that slow down cellular aging foods that lower inflammation and boost your immune system at the same time you know that's what I'm talking about because the power of healing rests inside our body and Health Care is not something that we need to rely on when we go to the doctor's office right every year you go once healthc care is everything in between that we do for ourselves and food is a medicine that we take absolutely uh I've talked about this many times on on my show before that I grew up uh in a specific religion called Christian Science where it was more the practice of spiritual awareness and that were spiritual ideas and and less on using medicine to heal but more using the mind and awareness to heal you know thought which would then heal the physical body um so medicine was never really a thing I studied or really took growing up uh it was just kind of like when we got sick or when something happened we we used thought prayer spiritual prayer to kind of remind ourselves of who we are but the uh I'm curious do you think that people could live without modern medicine if they eat properly like all the things that you talk about in your book eat to be diseased do you think we could live longer lives healthier lives without the need of certain medicines um or are you saying we should be using and eating food when we need them well we should be eating to enrich our lives from the time we're young all the way until our last breath and and that should actually be able to tackle about 2third of all the chronic diseases and by the way about a third of all cancers are thought to be due to diet and lifestyle onethird of cancers all right we ought to be able to dodge but you got to start early right I mean this is not one of these things where I've been smoking my whole life and now I'm gonna actually turn over a new Leaf it's never too late to quit by the way however the fact of the matter is that H you know like so you grew up you know know is in Christ in the Christian Science um framework which you're in you're in the Boston area so you yeah that's where the Hub is the mother church is in is in Boston yes it's it's amaz it's an amazing place a a really spectacular uh place to visit and and a in a very special place actually um but I I will tell you that the idea of of um uh having formative years uh uh groomed in a healthy mindset yes which is I think what you're talking about yes uh is so important so that if you've got kids and if you're um involved with teaching and if you're involved with a business where you can actually impact on kids think about the impact that you have now could actually influence their health 30 40 50 60 years from now and that to me is a big responsibility it's a giant opportunity to make a better Society that's beautiful I'm curious we got a few more minutes left um what do you think you're telling me that every week you're essentially finding these aha moments based on the research papers you're finding and things that you're discovering yourself and what do you think in your mind if you could predict the future 10 years out 5 10 years out what are going to be the brown groundbreaking things that we as humans discover in the next 5 to 10 years that is going to transform our health wow um based on what you've seen in the last five to 10 years and we like these are unbelievable every month new findings what do you think is on the horizon for us well one thing that I think is most uh one of the big aha jaw-droppers for me in the kind of the journey that I've actually had in my career is the fact that we can regenerate ourselves okay and I never thought that was even possible I had been working in stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine and you know it's a real struggle it's an uphill climb to really try to show that we can actually regenerate the heart or the brain or nerves and yet the body does it every single day and when I discovered that you know you could regenerate um uh tissue by uh uh barley you know eating barley which is beta D glucan or with uh uh chocolate as I mentioned to you cacao poly phenols or even olive oil the there's something called hydroxy tyrosol it's a natural chemical and extra virgin olive oil it helps to kind of make that distinctive Olive oily taste um uh that that can actually help to protect your stem cell or if you are not a vegan but you eat seafood um uh and and you and you're really adventurous you know that black pasta Squid Ink uh that they have sometimes in menus I happen to I you know I like to explore different kinds of food Squid Ink actually protects your stem cells it's like a shield okay and so the fact that you we can actually eat to regenerate so I'm very excited by this idea that we can um uh eat foods and we're still discovering what foods can help our Propel our body's regenerative capacity I think that's going to actually be um a uh groundbreaking and then something that I'm actually working on that is really you know future forward right so you're asking like what what's going to be mind-blowing in the future yes all right well look um I'm a I'm kind of like a pretty downto earth guy like I believe that we should be protecting our planet doing everything we can we can to um take care of nurture this ball that we live on uh and we should be doing better for our community um but I also I think from the time I was a kid I appreciated and I was excited by this idea of space travel which is now happening more often right all right so here's something I think is going to happen over the next decade um as humans become extraterrestrial we're going to be the first extraterrestrials we're ever going to meet is ourselves and we get Beyond near Earth orbit we're going to be our bodies are going to be bombarded by Galactic radiation and and and have the effects of negative gravity um changing our body we got to find out what kinds of foods huh for supplements so we got to eat to protect ourselves that's crazy so I'm working on that that's cool so I I I've been meeting with astronauts I've been talking to people in the space program flight surgeons and what I'm figuring is that if we can figure out what we're going to need in the future to that we could probably bring that right down to earth right now to actually do something good for us so that's you know so I'm excited by that that's cool that's really cool how do we optimize our metabolism like what are some foods that you think we can eat how should we eat what types of activities should we be doing every single day that you found to be useful in like optimizing the metabolism well you know the first thing I sort of want to share is an explanation uh of what is metabolism because I think this is a term that everyone thinks they know something about but I'm telling you there's a new science of the metabolism that is changing the way that we understand everything and and it's so new that some of the information is less than 2 years old the old textbooks are still being ripped up and thrown out the window the new ones haven't even been written yet so we're talking about some real Cutting Edge stuff the first point is that our metabolism as a scientist I could throw a lot of very very complicated scientific terms at you but I'm not going to do it your metabolism is your body system to be able to use fuel in your body to run your body's engines just like if you have a car and you have an engine that makes that makes the car run you have to put fuel into the car okay in order to be to be able to run that engine so in a car when you're driving and you look at the fuel gauge and the the tank is running low what do you do you turn pull over to the gas station and you pull out and fill up the tank when the tank is full the nozzle clicks put it back and then you drive off our body is the same way when our engines are running it's our metabolism how to use that energy and fuel when our fuel tank runs low our fuel gauge runs low it's in our brain and it's hardwired in our muscles and our organs when it runs low what do we do we don't go to a station we pull over to the dinner table we pull over to the restaurant we pull over to the snack bar to the refrigerator to The Pantry all right and what are we doing we are actually getting fuel hey there I've got something important to share with you and that is my guide to the three healthy foods that you might want to avoid if you're looking for longevity many products that are marketed as nutritious can actually undermine your health and if you want to find out more about these sneaky ingredients and how to make better choices then just click on the link below the video for all the details it's very important to know what's really in your food and this resource that I'm giving you gives you a head start get it right now for free in the description below or you can access the guy by scanning the QR code on the screen with your smartphone now let's jump back into the video so just like fueling up your car so when we actually pick up fuel to put into our body think about the analogy I just gave you with a car and fuel good quality fuel that you put into your car or your gas tank is going to make your engine run a lot longer your car could take a crappy low quality gas once or two twice you know when you're filling that's all that's available right to get you it back on the road but if you actually continuously put low quality fuel crappy quality Fuel and you start to have contaminated gasoline into that fuel whether it's contaminated with chemicals or sugar or whatever else it is you watch you destroy your engine over time same deal when it comes to food in our engine our food is our fuel our our body our metabolism runs that energy and the quality makes all the difference in the world now I want to talk about some specific foods that help our metabolism run really really well but in addition to one way to that I want to say about how do we wreck our metabolism okay is just using the same analogy as the gas station now imagine you go to the pull up to the filling station with your car and you put the nozzle in your gas tank the gas tank is full and normally the nozzle clicks when the gas tank is full and it's not going to fill anymore no more gas comes out and you pull it out and you're good to go our body doesn't have a clicker so when we sit down to put fuel in our body and you say overeating all right that's what we're doing where there's no clicker we're just continuing to shove food into our body now what happens when you're actually at a filling station if your gas tank were to overflow all right it run down the side out of the tank down the side of the car around the wheels it would pull around your feet and you'd be standing in this flammable toxic dangerous mess right and you would hope that the air you'd have to walk away and the air would evaporate the gasoline right now we don't have the same luxury when we eat when we eat and we ovat what we're doing is we are overloading the tanks in our body and our body has to put that extra fuel somewhere it can't evaporate so what our body does is it takes extra Fuel and it stuffs it into our fat our fat cells our fat cells are normal fuel tanks all right so when we have when we eat we're using the energy anything extra gets stored into little fat cells fat cells get bigger bigger bigger all right and then if you're eating normal amounts it'll store some extra energy then when you're done eating it'll burn down that fuel now if you actually continuously actually overload the gas tank you're going to fill up that fat fuel tank it's going to be blisteringly big like a water balloon and then guess what your body says we still got more fuel you overate now you got to make more fat cells fuel tanks and it's going to fill those up and that gets filled up now you got to make another one and it's going to fill up and now you kind of see why over putting too much fuel in our body causes us to actually gain extra body fat that extra body fat is like a toxic mess that are standing in that gasoline that overflo gas tank is like it's flammable it's inflammation which is like flame inside our body that sets us up for a big problem the good news about that is we can actually eat less so being mindful that that's how our body works you eat less is really really helpful so I always tell people eat stop eating when you feel satisfied but before you feel full and if you eat slower you're stomach will signal text message your brain to tell you like when it's actually naturally full the other thing you can do that would be incredibly important to actually keep your metabolism going well is not to eat too close to bedtime and not to eat too close to getting up in the morning because when we are actually eating food there's a a hormone called insulin that our pancreas our body produces and Insulin works to draw that food fuel as energy into our cells that's what insulin does all right and when our insulin is up it's the signal in our body is our metabolisms that store the fuel baby don't burn it store it we want to gobble it all up and pack it away all right it's like ammo for energy when our insulin is down which is when we're not eating our metabolism shifts gears and says all right time to tap into the fuel so if you want to burn that extra fuel that's stored in in your tanks which is your fat cells you might have extra fat from overeating yesterday or overeating the last week or the last month or from the holidays whatever it is your celebration all right the fact is that you could your body is actually hardw to burn that down but it only Burns it down when you are not eating because the insulin goes down and your metabolism shifts gears to actually be in fat burning mode this happens when we're sleeping Naturally by the way and when we're sleeping we're not eating by the way another name for that is fasting which is why when we get up in the morning and we have our coffee and our eggs or whatever it's called breakfast breakfast is breaking your overnight fast break fast all right and so when what you hear about uh intermittent fasting isn't just a trend isn't kind of like this crazy you know new way of actually living your life it's what how our body's hardw to do it every single day when you're sleeping you're fasting when you're fasting your insulin's down when your insulin's down your metabolism goes sh let's go ahead and start burning down extra fuel all right so if you don't eat too close to bedtime like when you stop eating okay let's say you go to bed at 11: and you get up at 700 in the morning that's 8 hours of sleep I strongly recommend that as a generally good optimal amount of time of sleep to get cleans your brain it gets rid of the toxins it actually reset your immune system all kinds of things calm stress lowers inflammation good quality 8 hours of sleep now let's say that you eat dinner so you go to bed from 11:00 and get up at 7:00 8 hours let's say that you eat dinner at 7:00 in the evening all right and for most people let's say that you finish eating at around 8 an hour later you put their dishes away in the sink at 8:00 all right now how many of us actually eat a little snack later we go for some dessert we're before bedtime I got to eat one more thing all right don't want to do that because every time you do that close to bedtime you're spiking your insulin when the insulin goes up your metabolism isn't able to burn fat if you stop eating when you put your dishes in the sink so let's say that you eat dinner at 7 you stop eating at 8: put your dishes in a sink no more food that's it okay you'll get used to it it'll be cool don't worry all right you've G and you go to bed 11 from 8 to 11 you've given your body three extra hours you've given your metabolism the gift of three extra hours to burn down that extra fuel that's gotten stuck and trapped in your body and if you get up at 700 in the morning rather than roll out of bed and do what you know our mommies told us to do when we were kids hurry up and eat breakfast so you can get on the school bus and go to school in time all right if you get up instead let's say it's 7 take a shower get dressed check your emails read a book read a newspaper whatever it is you're going to do go for a walk an hour later you sit and have a breakfast you've given your body your metabolism the gift of an extra hour in the morning that you burn down fuel so let's do some math 3 hours after after the dishes are in the sink before bedtime Plus Plus 8 hours of sleeping time that's 11 hours plus one extra hour before you actually sit down and eat breakfast it's reasonable to do anybody can actually do that honestly but do the math 3+ 8+ 1 Now it's 12 hours you've given your body 50% of your life is spent towards streamlining your metabolism by burning down that extra body fat that's how you allow your inner metabolism to start to rise to the surface so without actually having to even go on any kind of crazy diet any fats any elimination you can just kind of use that timing and of course the amount to eat like always leave some white space on your plate don't go back for seconds and quit The Clean Plate Club that's a way with before we even talk about what are some good choices to add that you can actually use your body to fight on your behalf I love that explanation and it just seems like the the main thing somebody can do to improve the function of their metabolism is to lose excess body fat and the best way to do that without necessarily going on a specific diet or focusing on specific Foods is to just eat less than you are now and finding creative ways to do that one of them being almost like the Tim restricted feeding window like you said almost like you don't eat past a certain time you eat like an hour after you get up or something like that in my book Eat to beat your diet I call it once you realize what time you finish dinner and what time you eat breakfast you can set your own it's like an alarm on your watch or your phone you can set the time you're going to open your eating window in the morning okay and you can set what time you're going to close the eating window so you're not going to eat anymore right and you can even set an alarm on your phone if you need a reminder but actually you know if you realize that the time that you're not eating after you put the dishes away your body is actually starting to shift into gear to start to streamline your metabolism that's kind of an awareness you can't unlearn that like once you hear that then next time you actually reach for that brownie or that piece of cake or whatever it is bag of chips like some voice in your head is going to wait a minute wait a minute I don't want to be interfering with my body right now my body actually wants to do something you another part of your brain might be saying go ahead and eat it right that's the the Angel and the devil kind of on both shoulders Waring with your brain but again this is where I think you by understanding what your goals are you realize that your body wants to help you it's trying to help you it's there for you man like it's got your back and so by putting that in your head it's is an easy thing now you want to take that to the next level and this is what I read about my new book EB your diet what's really cool is that during the time you're eating it turns out that food doesn't always grow fat in fact the research has shown some foods actually during the day even when your insulin is up some foods will actually cause your body to fight extra body fat and streamline your metabolism while you're eating so just now before I was telling you when insulin is up when you're eating your body metabolism is all about storing the food and not burning it and when you're not eating and your insulin's down it'll actually start to burn the fuel there's an exception to that rule and that's if you choose and I wrote about 150 different foods proven by human studies research studies that when you eat them in moderation these foods and the natural chemicals contained in them will fire your metabolism so you can eat to lose and burn down extra body fat so you can streamline your metabolism that to me is a really amazing thing because it's good news you can choose foods I mean who would have thought you can eat foods to lose weight doesn't make sense right yes it does the science teaches us and the clinical studies show us it can be actually done what are the top things that you would say that people are doing every day that actually create those potholes when it comes to our vascular health I know you like to focus on what we can add but I'd also like to talk about what's causing the most damage when it comes to our vascular health and our overall blood flow throughout the body yeah okay so um that's really an important thing to think about like I spend most of my time developing positive messages that people can lean into but if you want to start from a from a from a Level Playing Field you got to think about all right how do you unburden your how do you unload and unburden your body's Health defenses so you're not working against yourself that's kind of like what we're talking about what are the things that we that people commonly do that work against your health your health defenses so you're you're sitting down and and and suppressing your defenses well let's let's let's walk through a couple of them number one is physical inactivity right like I mean think about during the pandemic a lot of people were just not doing as much not Outdoors as much not exercising as much not socializing as much not traveling as much and you know and there's a lot of depression too and so physical activity you know even 30 minutes of moderate physical activity get your heart rate up walk out you know like everybody feels a little bit better after taking a walk no matter how stressed out you are and even if you're not stressed out you feel better it gets your circulation going um it uh it exercise like that lowers inflammation um being physically inactive the couch potato actually is is incredibly being a c is incredibly damaging by the way I I heard a um uh like when you walk you rev up your metabolism as well I saw the study that I was just looking at for the next book I'm WR writing that's really amazing it turns out if you are going to be a couch potato that sitting down a lot there was a research studied on this even fidgeting the knee going B up or you know fidget with a you know like one of those fidget toys even that starts to burn calories uh compared to um just not moving at all like just sitting and staring at a screen and so again movement physical activity really important actually to kind of rev up your metabolism get back to Better Health um uh uh and um uh and Unleash Your Health offenses another thing is really eating a lot of ultra processed foods um you know all of us who go to the grocery store um uh are tempted to go into the middle aisle it's almost like a a siren calls you into the middle a to look at all the colorful packaged ultr processed things you know calls you it's like the the siren that calls the ship captain to wind up on the rocks and then sink the ship well this is the middle aisle of the grocery store now there's a lot of good stuff there too as well well but I think most of us go for the things that have been advertised to us since we were a kid to go look for those sweets and things in the middle aisle well it turns out that if you take the time to go around the perimeter first and go to the produce section and that's where you should spend most of your time when you're grocery shopping looking for what's fresh and plant-based and it really kind of rev up your your dietary fiber and your bioactives that's what's really good but the middle a you know it's hard to stay out of and so when people eat boxed Foods Jarred Foods canned foods that are laced with chemical preservatives and and process made with made up using Factory processes that take whole food and turn them into the sort of this weird um machined food extruded food you know thing food that your grandmother or great grandmother would not recognize as food and then you add these synthetic chemicals to it man does that actually work against your body's Health offenses wow and you know there's been so much conversation these days about being mindful this goes into the category of ultr processed foods but being mindful about the overall sort of load of sugar and highly refined carbohydrates uh you know we've done multiple episodes about continuous glucose monitors and just being more aware about the order of food so maybe you go to a restaurant and instead of having the bread and the butter which everybody likes to do here and there especially if it's a nice piece of sourdough or we're lucky here in Los Angeles there's a few places that will Import in wheat from Italy you were talking about Italy and the quality of ingredients there so instead of having those at the beginning of your dinner when you sit down at the restaurant maybe saving that piece of bread for the end after you have some Fiber some healthy fats and protein inside of there how important is sequencing to you and do you think of it in the context of the advice that you give folks when you're talking about food is medicine very important sequencing you know like first of all I believe that we should eat um food not only for our Health but to bring us joy okay and and and and so there's nothing wrong with eating foods that you really enjoy that are also healthy for you and I think that's really the alignment we're going to have and when you when you have a spread of food in front of you whether it's at a restaurant and you get your bread and butter and then you get your salad then you get your Mane then you get your dessert okay there's a there's kind of like a ritual order that it goes in but nobody said that you have to eat it in the order that it's actually served to you what I think when it comes to of food is that you should eat the healthiest things first and save other bits really on the side take a little nibble of them you the problem you know that you talk about with bread okay even good quality bread like you know homemade sourdough bread with stuff from midley the problem with that is that if you sit down when you're really hungry and that's the first thing that you're served you're going to eat a lot of it I try to tell people you know don't waste your appetite you're going to have a certain amount of appetite you don't want to load up uh one on the stuff that's not necessarily high quality calories and bioactives you know I I what I do when I actually sit at restaurant I don't eat the bread right away I look at the menu I look at the whole menu and what I try to do is to recognize ingredients that are healthy and then see if they are actually listed in offerings that I really am drawn towards attracted towards something with capers I know Capers have a lot of chlorogenic acid do or cortin wow look at that that's anting salad I don't I've never had that before let me try that you know and I I kind of then I I size up the whole meal and um and then I and then I will order but I'm not eating the bread first before I even look at that and I'm like yeah you know I'm kind of full up I'm just going to eat I'm just going to get like the the the family style pasta for myself now you got bread now you got pasta now you've kind of like just distorted your whole kind of thing so what I say is that look on the menu for the things that are good for you and and and and um by the way sometimes you can order sometimes there's really good stuff that's order in smaller plates and you can just order two of those or even three of those without ordering entree you know and and so there's no Rhyme or Reason you know I I I I don't want to say that you you should eat dessert first and you're main last that's not what I'm saying but what I'm saying is that eat the spend the quality of your time doing eating the things that are tasty and good for you on the topic of things that are good for you you know I love your Instagram and by the way everybody who's listening if you want more of this information little preview uh Dr William Lee has so many great resources that are out there this is incredible free webinar that your team is doing on a regular basis we'll link to it inside of the show notes as well as your Instagram is another great resource because you will always make me excited about an ingredient or food that I thought I knew about but then maybe I forgot to include on a regular basis and this is one of those foods that was in your GR Grand Slam sorry a little tongue twister Grand Slam PDF again we have the link to where to download that inside of the show notes and also I saw you do an Instagram uh TV or an Instagram live video on this recently and that's sunflower seeds so hey there if you're ready to take control of your health using the power of food then I encourage you to check out my eat to beat disease online course more than 4,000 people from 80 countries have taken it and now they know know how to eat to beat disease and you can too I personally developed all the material in this course drawing from my latest research and my years of experience it's designed to give you practical science-based strategies that you can use to boost your health every single day to learn more click the link below why should we be excited about sunflower seeds if you can remember some of the key highlights and talking points that you shared about why you like to include this uh ingredient in your diet on a regular basis well one of the things that I love about sunflower seeds is they they taste really good they're nutty they have this kind of really delicate kind of flavor um it's not a it's not and and they're and they're not very crunchy they're they're kind of soft um uh and um uh and and they're very commonly eaten in the Mediterranean lightly roasted uh and so it's just a it's a great uh treat it's good source of dietary fiber and there's also a bioactive in it called SG I'm not even bother going into the chemical name pronounce what the S and the D and the g stands for but I can tell you that actually it protects your stem cells and yes sunflower seeds do belong to the Grand Slammers but I will also tell you that the fact that there's dietary fiber to feed your gut microbiome which helps your metabolism helps you heal better makes you feel better and actually activates your brain and improves your mood sunflower seeds are a great way of snacking and the protection against your for your stem cells also means that um it helps your body renew itself from the inside out now sunflower seeds are something I like to keep around like a just a little bowlful um like if I'm for a snack that's the other thing I like about it you don't have to like you don't have to eat up like a couple of fistfuls of the stuff for to be good for you you just you can just kind of like Chew in them a little bit bit bit by bit and you you feel totally satisfied and it's a great source of fiber and other bioactives does it matter if we eat them raw or not or roasted should be worried about how much uh sodium might come with they are roasted just any kind of considerations and I guess people could think about this when they're thinking about all sort of seeds and nuts that they want to include in their diet so we love to hear your take such an important thing so you know like what I do is I buy I like to buy just a bag of sunflower seeds or cashews or walnuts that isn't actually pre-seasoned I like to do it myself honestly or sometimes like sunflower seeds I don't mind them they're not seasoned at all I kind of like the fact that they're actually even a little sweet you know um and they're not clly sweet but they're they're definitely not salty you can salt them if you want but the but be very careful about commercial brand seasoned nuts and seeds because often times they are loaded with salt also sometimes they're loaded with unhealthy oils because to roast them they'll coat them with really unhealthy saturated fats and then they roast them and they'll dump salt on them and they'll Shake all the salt off and that'll be a pretty tasty bag that I guarantee you like it'll be kind of addictive to go through them but man your your sodium will go through the roof and then if you get the the barbecu flavors and then the pizza flavored and all those other kinds of things that might sound attractive on the label just remember mostly those are seasonings that some of which are synthetic and are engineered to taste like something with artif you know something synthetic like that's not what you want and so I like to go for the ele Al natural flavors if I'm going to season it like cashews I might season myself a little bit walnuts I don't need seasoning pecans are allness almonds I don't really need seasoning but if you're going to use seasoning um just take a little pinch of sea salt okay um and and you can just just um just sprinkle it on it mix it around you'll get a little bit of salt but you do not want to actually this is not Shaker uh style you don't definitely want don't want to do that yeah the interesting thing about it is that the level of sodium that comes in these highly processed snacks that are already prepared for us I was even using a spice yesterday that is from a very healthy company and known as a healthy company the spice was organic it's a pre-seasoning and I was looking at the bag and the bag which had the spice inside of it that I was using for these uh chicken thighs that I was making to add to my base salad my big fat salad you know had avocado oil had olive oil some avocado olives a bunch of really just good and healthy things including fermented beets that's usually my sort of chosen way of having beets in my diet and other great vegetables anyways I was looking at the bag on the back and the amount of sodium that was in there was essentially almost 30% of the recommended daily value for one serving of that seasoning that's there now the crazy thing is I was doing the math online about what it would take for me at my house to use salt right high quality table salt or Himalayan salt or sea salt to get close to that amount and what most of us forget is that if we wanted to Salt our food at the level that it comes pre-seasoned by processed food companies some which are still in that quote unquote healthy category it actually wouldn't taste that good if we used salt ourselves to do that equivalent amount of sodium you have to engineer it and do all sorts of things to make that amount of salt palatable so I think for the most part if people are just using uh a reasonable amount of sea salt at home uh just to dust their meal or add a little bit to their roast veggies you're going to be fine overall it's actually very hard to get to levels of sodium that are coming in these processed foods that we pick up in the store so I think the moral of the story and feel free to disagree or agree is just overall cutting down the amount of processed foods that we include in our diet even being very wary of a lot of the healthy processed foods that are now being sold at Whole Foods in other places because that's really where you get these large quantities of sodium from yeah I mean it's always buy or beware and the the one sort of cheat that every uh commercial food provider restaurants included to to make their food taste better is salt because salt does make almost everything taste better just like sugar makes everything tastes better a little bit's okay the the quantities that are often used are not okay and I think that that's important to remember too along those same lines um you know your listener should actually think about this when you go to a restaurant if you were to actually um uh go behind the scenes and see how the chefs are actually salting the food you'd be surprised they will grab like a like a like a big mound of salt um and just throw it into a dish sometimes and it'll taste really great but you got way more sodium in there than you ever thought when I cook at home I'll tell you although I um will uh be be very CAU conscious cautious not to use too much salt here's a little trick that um people who cook at home can use so if you're going to sauté something in a pan okay I I I usually cook with olive oil over medium heat not super high heat I don't want to burn the the stuff in the olive oil and I wanted to put a little salt you know just a little bit of salt what I what I don't do is cook the food and then take the salt and throw it into the food after it's done I will actually sometimes just take a pinch of salt and dust the olive oil while it's heating up now you're guaranteed not to actually put too much salt in because you can see exactly how much salt you're putting in if you were to put the like a spoonful of salt in there you're like man I just ruin the whole pan I can't use that pan I got to clean it out and do start it all over again so I think you know even when even if you're cooking at home just having that awareness that you know whether it's at home or a restaurant or at a uh process Ultra processed Factory somebody's putting salt in there and it's up to you to determine how much you're going to allow into your body why is it so controversial and why are you so confident to be able to tell people cut out these diet drinks from your diet yeah well I think I I have the same general Outlook as you and my own stance and my advice is very similar which is take a precautionary stance um and be be informed look I mean life is wor the living so we're all we all do things that are that are maybe not so good for us from time to time but you know every time you you every time you commit yourself to making a decision like that just be aware it may not be so good for you we we we may not be 100% certain and of course everyone's a little bit different but here's what I write about in my book because I was deeply researching this what's the role of beverages people say well fruit juices must be okay because they come from fruits which are plant-based aren't you talking about eating plant-based Foods yes but again this is you know back to this idea of new Nuance which is really important I think that the science of the body is continuously changing and advancing so that we understand more and more what the impact is of something that we might consume and how our body responds to it 10 years ago there were some inklings that maybe diet soft drinks might not be so good for our metabolism now that we've dived deeper into gut health we're beginning to see more concrete data that suggest that there is an impact we also do know more greatly than ever that our gut health is so important for our overall health and so when we start to put together this hypothesis and start to stitch together some of the information the precautionary position is you know be really careful about diet sodas and be careful about sodas in general and so for my book one of the things that I wanted to do is just to write about like where's the Safe Harbor and all this right by the way I I take people in my book through the as I was writing the to my book on Foods I wrote for the reader imagining that they were sitting in the grocery cart like we all did when we were kids in our mom's grocery cart and she was pushing us through the grocery store and what I'm doing is kind of whispering your ear telling you what is healthy and good for your metabolism to put in the grocery cart and when we get to the beverage aisle okay there's a whole chapter on beverages I really come to this conclusion that um there are three beverages that I call the Holy
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