How to Lose Belly Fat: The Complete Guide

Hello Health Champions. If you're ready  to lose that belly fat and you're ready to  

lose that weight and do it once and for all  this is the video that's going to bring it  

all together for you why are there so many  new diets all the time nothing has changed  

the human body the one that you have is the same  genetic makeup as it was a hundred thousand years  

ago so all you have to do is understand how the  body really works and then you will know why it's  

doing the things that it's doing so watch this  video very closely from beginning to end because  

only when you understand the mechanism will you be  able to create that weight loss and that fat loss  

forever and it will be easy coming right up hey  I'm Dr Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former  

Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master  health by understanding how the body really works  

make sure you subscribe hit that bell and turn  on all the notifications so you never miss a life  

saving video so why do we gain fat is it because  we're eating too many calories well of course it  

is but that doesn't answer anything the question  is why would we eat too many calories what is  

it that determines that behavior so there are two  things really that we're going to go over in some  

detail and really elaborate so that you get it one  is that we eat too often and two is that we eat  

the wrong things and once you understand why  they are the wrong things and how things fit  

then you'll see it clear as day do you think  this bear is overweight he might weigh a thousand  

pounds he might have a huge percentage of body  fat but he's perfectly normal and he is healthy  

mobile functional he can run faster than you or  i ever could he has the exact right amount of  

fat for that time in his life in his environment  he's following natural behavior and his behavior  

is dictated it's determined by hormones now humans  may not weigh a thousand pounds like the bear but  

75 percent of Americans are overweight today  more than 40 percent of Americans are obese  

is that because of a genetic switch did it just  flip and turn us fat no because we've created  

most of these problems almost all of them in  two generations after that genetic makeup has  

remained the same and been successful in keeping  our weight normal for thousands of generations is  

it willpower did we have willpower for all those  years and then all of a sudden it was just gone  

i don't think so sure we have some food addictions  we have some cravings but the question is why is  

that now just like the bear we are following  hormones hormones are determining our behavior  

but unlike the bear we have developed  unnatural hormones an unnatural balance  

of hormones because the food that we're eating  is not natural anymore every other animal on  

the planet eats food from nature that is  appropriate for their species and humans  

don't do that anymore now i understand this can be  extremely frustrating because we've been told so  

many different things we've been told about this  diet and that diet and calories and low fat and  

all of these different things and you've been  told the wrong thing this is not your fault but  

it doesn't relieve you of responsibility from now  on when you have access to the correct information  

now you have to learn how your body really  works so that you can make those changes and  

be successful once and for all the first issue  i mentioned was that we eat too often there's a  

pattern a cycle of feast and famine everywhere in  nature and we eat something when there's plenty of  

food we store the excess so that we have plenty  left over when there is less we can fast we can  

burn through the reserves until we have a chance  to eat again now for the bear that cycle is about  

six months they bulk up for six months so that  they can afford a six-month hibernation without  

eating at all of course humans don't do that  and we can't know for sure what our prehistoric  

humans did but if we look at every other  species on the planet we can safely say that our  

ancestors did not have three square meals  and snacks every two hours throughout the day  

more likely they probably ate once or twice a  day when they were lucky and if they were not so  

lucky they might go a couple of three days without  food so there's a fasting pattern there's a cycle  

built in to our metabolism what about modern  humans well we probably get if we're lucky eight  

hours and five minutes and that's if we can sleep  a full eight hours and it takes us five minutes to  

find food when we get up so what we have done as  modern humans is we eat and we store but then we  

bypass the fasting we skip that part and we skip  the burning because you can't burn unless you fast  

and you just short that cycle out to eat and  store and eat and store and eat and store  

so it's not really that you eat too much you're  supposed to eat until you're full you don't have  

to stuff yourself till you're nauseous but you're  supposed to eat until you're satisfied till you've  

had enough that sends the body a signal that  you're safe everything is okay we can maintain  

your metabolism when we try to skip when we try to  eat less then we're sending the body the message  

of deprivation that there's never quite enough  and the body starts slowing down on metabolism  

so you're supposed to eat until you're full  but you're not supposed to eat six times a day  

and when we do that that's where we get stuck in  this eat and store cycle we never get a chance  

to balance that cycle out and how do  we ever come to this point well there's  

two things really it's because we've been told  to eat six times a day that we've been told  

that raising blood sugar six times a day is a good  thing which is atrocious but the other part is the  

types of food that we're eating sort of invite  to that you've probably heard about blood glucose  

and here's how that works and how it relates to  fat and weight gain the average person has about  

100 milligrams of glucose per deciliter so for the  average size person that adds up to about three  

grams okay that's half a teaspoon of glucose at  any given time and the body really likes to keep  

it in a tight range so that when you're fasting  you might be at 80 to 85 milligrams and after a  

meal it might be 120 if you eat whole food with  protein like meat and good fats and non-starchy  

vegetables and things like that then the  changes they fluctuate very very slowly  

well what about a diabetic or someone with insulin  resistance would start shooting up and they have  

milligrams per deciliter that's only one more  teaspoon that means it's gone from three grams  

to nine grams of circulating glucose it doesn't  sound like much right but here's what's happening  

you get these enormous blood sugar spikes and when  that happens your body goes into emergency mode  

this amount of blood glucose is very toxic to the  brain it ruins it destroys blood vessels causing  

micro vessel disease which is the cause  for kidney failure and blindness further  

causes neuropathy which is the leading cause of  amputations so this is a big deal now let's say  

that you follow the recommendations and we're not  talking about snacks here that just keep it simple  

and you eat 100 grams of carbohydrate three times  a day four hours apart now you can't use a hundred  

grams of carbohydrate until you eat again so  you might be able to use fifty so at least  

has to be stored now a lot of times you will hear  people say that carbohydrate is the preferred  

fuel because the body uses it first it's the  preferential fuel well it's not that it prefers it  

it's that it has to use it first it's an emergency  it has to get this glucose out of the bloodstream  

and if you ate a hundred grams all of that  glucose has to get into the bloodstream before  

it gets into the cells and this has to happen  in a relatively short time period because even  

one teaspoon is going to shoot your glucose up  to 300 and all this glucose has to pass through  

the bloodstream into the cells and whatever extra  carbohydrate you can't use before the next meal  

it has to be stored the excess has to be stored so  every time you have something above this line here  

your body goes into emergency mode it releases a  ton of insulin which we'll talk about in a little  

bit and it stores the excess now how does the  body store energy and why does it do that well  

there are two types of energy that it can store  carbohydrate and fat now in your muscles you have  

protein storage and this can be used in an extreme  emergency you can convert protein to energy but  

that's not the purpose the purpose of protein  is building blocked and structural parts it's  

carbohydrates and fat that we're going to talk  about today we have a very limited very poor  

ability to store carbohydrate your muscles can  hold about 1600 calories your liver can store  

about 400 calories and why we store energy for  survival okay we need energy for movement we  

need it to generate heat and to think to move  we need those signals from the brain to control  

movement and metabolism and all those different  things and if we look at the total storage of  

carbs as being 2000 calories represented by  this little square then this is how much a lean  

relatively lean person would store and if you're  using up about 2 000 calories a day for survival  

then that means if you relied completely solely  on carbohydrates you could live one day and that  

means any time that humans didn't have food for  a day we would be wiped out we would never have  

made it as a species and this is why we can store  fat fat is a much more efficient form of storage  

we can store 90 times as much which is  180 000 calories which would keep us alive  

for three months you could live on that amount of  fat for three months drinking nothing but water  

and do perfectly fine and your body figures out  the difference it figures out how to function  

and do the best possible under those circumstances  and this isn't even an overweight person this is a  

180 pound person with 28 body fat so it's not like  a super slim athletes but it's not an overweight  

person either at 28 percent and where did that fat  come from it came primarily from glucose the body  

can store any excess energy as fat but as we saw  in the previous example it's the excess glucose  

that most readily gets stored and converted into  fat and what we have to understand is if you start  

building up too much fat if you have the desire to  lose some weight lose some fat you can't burn fat  

if you keep adding carbs if you put more carbs  in before you burn through the previous ones  

you can never get to lose that fat you can't get  to fat burning and the other thing is if your  

insulin is high which again is a result of those  carbohydrates in the presence of high insulin you  

can't burn fat because your body is busy making  fat in the pre in the presence of high insulin  

your body is making fat and it is way too smart to  make fat and burn fat at the same time what would  

be the point so you can think of carbohydrates as  kindling if you're going to make a fire you put  

some kindling in for short term but that's never  how you intend to keep the fire burning if you  

want to keep it burning for for days and weeks you  put some big big logs on and that's what the fat  

is now while we do want to reduce overall carbs  not all carbs are equally bad they don't work the  

same what we have to understand is that a plant is  made of glucose if it comes from the plant kingdom  

it is built from glucose and if this glucose gets  into the bloodstream then it will trigger insulin  

to a much higher degree than protein or fat would  but if we take bread for example this bread is 70  

percent of the weight is net carbs pure starch and  that starch is going to get converted into glucose  

so we have three percent of calories are from fat  12 from protein and 85 percent of the calories  

are from starch from glucose two slices which is  very easy to eat is 28 grams and if we couple that  

with some jam and some orange juice and some  sugar in the coffee and maybe some other part  

of the breakfast it's very easy to get up to  100 grams of carbs in in one meal let's look at  

an example of a non-starchy vegetable like  cabbage it has three percent of its weight is net  

carbs meaning that it can be absorbed and  turn into glucose in the blood 12 percent  

of calories from fat 36 from protein and 52 from  carbohydrates so the ratios are very different the  

carbs are not as dominant there is much much much  less of them but also it is absorbed much slower  

and you can't eat as much two slices of toast  is pretty easy to eat two pounds of cabbage  

is not that easy so you're just not going to  load up on a bunch of carbs by eating non-starchy  

vegetables so the two factors is quantity and  speed how much are you eating and how quickly  

do they get in there this is safe and this is not  what does insulin do so much talk about insulin  

basically it unlocks cells you eat something it  turns to glucose glucose gets in the bloodstream  

but it is no good to you until it's in the  cell the cell is the metabolic machinery that's  

actually going to use this glucose for energy  it can't become energy until it's in the cell  

and that's what insulin does it unlocks the cell  to allow it through and then the glucose enters  

the cell the cell uses some of it for energy and  turns the rest of it into fat and here's what  

that would look like if we have a normal blood  sugar like we talked about before it stays within  

that range and then the insulin required is very  moderate it's going to rise very very slowly the  

yellow line here represents insulin it's going to  rise slowly in response to a slow rise in glucose  

and we have a low insulin response we remain  insulin sensitive that's a healthy place to be but  

if we have the 300 milligram blood glucose  example like a diabetic now it looks like this  

and we have huge spikes of glucose and whenever  glucose is really high we need a ton of insulin  

this is an emergency we have to get that glucose  out of there shuttle it through into the cells  

but if we have that much insulin going and we eat  every four hour that insulin doesn't even have  

time to come down to baseline before we load up  on more carbs so carbs are the things that drive  

insulin high insulin but the frequency amplifies  it so if we do all of those things now we drive  

that insulin higher and higher and higher it works  less and less and less so the body has to make  

more and more insulin because the cells don't  respond and now we have insulin resistance let's  

look at insulin resistance and our friend the  fat cell what's the purpose of a fat cell well  

its purpose is to store fat that's where we  load up our energy so we can survive a famine  

a fat cell can grow quite a bit more so  than any other cell in the body really  

and in its shrunken state it's about 10 microns 10  micrometers but it can grow in diameter 20 times  

so because it's a spherical or a volume structure  that means it can grow 8 000 times it can expand  

and hold 8 000 times more fat that's the capacity  but when we start pushing the limit of that  

capacity then this is not a healthy fat cell  anymore it becomes inflamed we have stuffed it  

so full that it starts leaking and now is  where we get all of these metabolic problems  

of insulin resistance of metabolic syndrome type  2 diabetes cardiovascular disease stroke dementia  

and the list goes on and on now let's look at  the historical perspective of what we've been  

eating so if we go about a hundred thousand years  some people argue we've been around with the same  

genetic makeup for about a quarter million  years but let's just call it a really long time  

for all of that time 100 percent of  what we ate was from nature unprocessed  

unmodified just like every other species on the  planet to this day we ate from nature we didn't  

mess with it no grain no processed foods we ate  meat vegetables nuts tubers anything we could hunt  

capture dig up or pick basically just like every  other species then 8 000 years or so give or take  

we started with some agriculture and that  time frame is represented by this yellow here  

so everything was still unprocessed we ate  most of what we ate was still whole food  

the grain was probably processed to some degree  but it certainly wasn't bleached or hybridized or  

anything like that and maybe during this time we  also started using some oils like a natural easy  

squeezed oil pressed oil like olive oil  then we get into the last 50 years so  

in comparison this 100 000 years is probably like  5 000 generations thousands and thousands and  

thousands of generations and then we get into two  generations like from your grandparents basically  

and this time period is so short that if i did  that to scale it wouldn't even be one pixels  

that's a tiny tiny little line here that wouldn't  even be visible that's how short a time frame that  

is where we have turned everything completely  upside down now hardly any of what we eat  

is unprocessed there's virtually no whole food to  be had anymore we eat white flour sugar plant oils  

processed with with harsh chemicals and high heat  with GMOs chemicals artificial flavors artificial  

sugars artificial colors etc etc so almost all  of this is non-food we changed it it's not food  

anymore and this is what we have to start realize  that we come from a genetic makeup that is used to  

getting fed and we're not getting fed anymore now  here's an interesting question if you were trying  

to get someone fat as fast as possible what would  that diet look like well they haven't done that  

with humans but they do it with mice and rats  on a regular basis because for certain studies  

they want fat rats so they designed obesogenic  rat chow they formulated it so that these  

rats would gain weight as fast as possible and  they came up with a formula that was 15 percent of  

calories from protein 45 from fat and 40 percent  from carbohydrates mice are much smaller rats are  

much smaller than humans but if you convert these  percentages to the human scale of 2 000 calories  

then that's about 200 grams of carbohydrate in  a day about a hundred grams of fat and about  

70 grams five 70 75 grams of protein now maybe  it's just me but when you look at the standard  

American diet it's not that different it's almost  as if this diet was designed to make you as fat  

as possible as fast as possible and this is what  they tell you they say eat lots and lots of carbs  

and then you say well that's just the standard  American diet that's not what they're supposed to  

eat people just eat junk food well let's look at  the US daily allowances then what they recommend  

now they give us some ranges so it's not an  exact number they tell us 20 to 35 percent of  

fat 45 to 65 carbohydrate but again it's  really not that different right it looks  

pretty much the same so we're talking about an  obese population we're talking about reversing it  

and they give you even more of the thing that  is making you fat they're recommending you  

to eat as much as you possibly can of the thing  that is making you fat now i want to contrast that  

with a low carb or a ketogenic diet which has  the same amount of protein approximately but  

it has very very low carbohydrates  so a keto diet typically  

becomes ketogenic when you get carbohydrates  under five percent or about 20 grams a day  

and what you do then is you eat moderate protein  and you fill up the rest of your energy from fat  

so you get a profile that's distinctly different  than the other patterns so i hope you can see  

that the obesogenic rat chow is very very close to  both what people eat and what they're told to eat  

but the low carb lifestyle that's often ridiculed  is the one that's actually making a difference  

then are there any drawbacks to a low-carb  high-fat diet well in my opinion the only drawback  

is unfounded fears because people don't understand  this we've been conditioned and programmed so long  

that we think that we're supposed to eat more and  more and more carbohydrate because the fat on the  

body comes from fat that's just not how it works  and unfounded fears and myths are what's holding  

people back so one example is i hear all the time  well the your recommendations they're going to  

clog your arteries because research showed that  high fat diets are unhealthy well how do they do  

that research have they actually researched this  on a healthy low-carb high-fat diet how do they do  

that well first of all most of these studies are  done on rats and again what they do when they go  

high fat when they call it a high fat diet they  start off with a standard american diet or those  

approximate ratios and then they take the  fat from 35 percent to 45 that's their idea  

of a high fat diet but here's the problem  they don't reduce the carbs significantly  

right you cannot burn fat while your insulin is  high and taking it from 250 grams to 200 grams  

is not going to reverse your insulin resistance  right so you're maintaining carbs at a level  

that's going to maintain insulin which means  you cannot burn fat so now you raise the fat  

and you get even unhealthier so even though i eat  tons of fat i do it while eating very low carb  

if you're very insulin sensitive then the fats  are very healthy as long as they're healthy fats  

if you cram in a bunch of extra fats while you're  cramming carbohydrates and sugar then that's  

extremely unhealthy so the research is not done  on a high fat low carb diet it's done on a high  

fat extremely high carbohydrate diet another thing  i hear very often is that saturated fat is bad so  

the keto diet the low carb diet lifestyle the  paleo they promote way too much saturated fat  

which raises cholesterol which clogs arteries and  I hear a lot of concerned people who say well I  

started eating like you said and i feel better my  insulin is down I lose the weight my doctor says  

I'm healthier but my cholesterol went up and now  I'm worried that I'm going to clog my arteries  

well let's look at that when we study the research  there's some research from early 1950s and 1960s  

very old very flawed research that suggested there  may be some relationship between cholesterol and  

heart disease it wasn't a causative relationship  it was observational they found that people with  

higher cholesterol might have more heart disease  but in every study since then there's virtually  

no correlation whatsoever however if we look  at insulin resistance if we look at the amount  

of insulin in the bloodstream there's a very  strong correlation to heart disease there's a  

very strong correlation to diabetes there's a very  strong correlation to stroke and to Alzheimer's  

and even to cancer so all of the things that  cholesterol gets blamed for is actually about  

insulin resistance and if you eat a good quality  fat while reducing your carbs then your insulin  

is going down even if your cholesterol goes up it  is irrelevant it has no bearing on heart disease  

and there's one exception I want to cover that's  if you have small oxidized LDL so you often hear  

about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol where  LDL is supposedly good and LDL is supposedly bad  

well it doesn't work like that all of them are  good unless they get damaged and oxidized now  

that LDL is actually a risk of heart disease  but that doesn't come from cholesterol  

it was the insulin resistance and the oxidative  stress that damaged the cholesterol so that it  

became harmful so it's never cholesterol by itself  it is the insulin resistance and you can reduce  

the insulin resistance by eating saturated fat or  any healthy fat what you want to avoid are plant  

oils and you want to eat lots of good healthy  fat if the animal was healthy the fat is healthy  

so keep it simple it's really not that complicated  the hardest thing we have to do is to unlearn all  

of the stupid things that we've learned in the  last 50 years about cholesterol and calories and  

saturated fats so it's simple you eliminate sugar  you eat till you're full you reduce carbohydrates  

you eat meat vegetables fat you stop processed  foods you eat healthy fat you eat less often and  

you keep insulin low by doing all those  things and you learn what actual real food is  

if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn  more about how the body actually works I think  

you should check out that one next thank you so  much for watching I'll see you in the next video