I Ate 100 HAMBURGERS In 10 Days: Here's What Happened To My BLOOD

Hello Health Champions. Today I'm going to talk  about what happened when I ate 100 hamburgers  

in 10 days. And that's a lot of red meat and  according to conventional wisdom red meat is a  

bad thing. It's bad for your health it causes all  sorts of problems, so I wanted to eat a lot of it  

and see what would happen because it has saturated  fat and a lot of cholesterol and supposedly that  

causes inflammation it causes heart disease  and it causes diabetes. So I did some blood  

work before and after to measure these things and  we're going to take a look at how that changed so  

some of the blood work regards blood glucose and  kidney function so a couple of markers here would  

be hemoglobin A1c which is a measurement of your  average blood glucose over a 90-day period so it's  

one of the primary ways to diagnose diabetes and  metabolic problems the ideal range would be 4.8 to  

5.3 that's the optimal range officially everything  is fine up to about 5.7 but we want to keep it a  

little tighter for Optimal Health so before I was  at 5.2 after I was at 5.3 so one tenth difference  

which is not significant that's pretty much within  the margin of error and also we want to keep in  

mind that as long as it's within that optimal  range one number is not necessarily better than  

the other another thing I measured was insulin  and between two and five is an optimal number I  

started off at 3.6 and finished at 3.9 so again  well within that optimal range and there's not  

really a quality difference between these numbers  we can't say that one is really better than the  

other blood urea nitrogen is interesting so that's  nitrogen waste products from protein so when we  

break down protein we make some tissue we use  some protein to make tissue but then the excess  

gets turned into energy and then the byproduct  is nitrogen so if we eat a ton of protein we  

would expect that number to go up and normally it  should be between 12 and 19 I started off at 16  

and afterwards it was 10. and I don't know why it  went that low I would expect it to stay about the  

same and it's one of the lowest readings I've  had so I don't have a really great explanation  

for that but if something goes down if we get  below the optimal range then we'd be concerned  

that the person wasn't eating enough if they were  malnourished or starving or something then we'd be  

concerned about that but in my case when I load  it up then we're not worried about a low number  

also relating to kidney function would be  estimated glomerular filtration rate which is  

how much the kidneys are filtering through and a  good value is between 90 and 120 I started off at  

92 and finished at 99. so again no significant  difference here and we see a couple of tenths  

up and down but as long as we understand why the  changes are there and what to look for then we can  

tell if we need to be concerned so if the bun for  example had been super high then we'd be worried  

if we eat a ton of protein and the bond goes up  that means the kidneys may not be filtering but  

like I said if I'm eating tons of food and it  goes down then it's some sort of variation but  

we're not concerned about that so what kind of  hamburgers did I eat well I ate 9 90 gram patties  

and I'm going to break down the details on that  with those I would have some condiments I eat some  

onions tomato pickles I put some mustard and mayo  on there maybe some ketchup just a tiny little bit  

of a low sugar variety what I like better actually  is some spice so I put some hot sauce on shriracha  

on there and the big difference though is what  people think about hamburgers is typically with  

a bun with bread and I had no bun no bread  with this and also a lot of people associate  

some sort of soft drink and I had no soda with  these we're going to compare to some fast food  

restaurants and see what a difference that make  even though they're both sort of called hamburgers  

so I would also have them with a salad and in  a salad I like to put things like lettuce onion  

tomato avocado I would put some cucumber bell  pepper I love to sprinkle a little goat cheese  

on there and then of course olive oil and vinegar  plus some salt and pepper and that's pretty much  

all I would put in there sometimes I'll put some  seeds maybe some pumpkin seeds but I I didn't do  

any of that because I had enough food as it was  and just to create some variety on two occasions  

out of 20 meals I had some mashed potatoes  and I made a cream sauce with that and also  

fried up some mushrooms in a pan with that so  in the blood work we also want to look at the  

liver function and inflammation because we hear  that too much red meat creates inflammation and  

too much protein is hard on the liver so we want  to see what happened and the number one enzyme  

that's associated with the liver is the alt and  a good range is between 10 and 22 before I was at  

19 and after I was at 15. so again both are within  the optimal range but we can certainly see that it  

didn't get worse we did not overload that liver in  any way another interesting marker is d-reactive  

protein it's a very popular General marker for  systemic inflammation chronic inflammation and  

a good number is as close to zero as possible we  don't want it over one if you get your blood work  

back and it's astronomical like 40 50 60 then it's  probably because you have an acute infection which  

can really drive that number up but for long term  it should be under one ideally and I started at  

0.3 and I finished at 0 0.3 which is a typical  value for me so no change there another thing  

is uric acid when people get a high uric acid the  first thing they're told is to stop eating meat  

because they can create some stones and gout and  things like that a good range is 3.7 to 5.5 and  

I was at 5.3 at first and 5.1 afterwards so  again it didn't seem like it overloaded the  

liver or created any systemic inflammation either  so sometimes we get the idea that lower is always  

better like we hear cholesterol less is always  better and nothing could be further from the truth  

some things like C-reactive protein that's not a  good marker close to zero the closer to zero the  

better but a lot of other things like uric acid we  need to be in a certain range and if it's too low  

then the body might be failing in some way because  uric acid is a really important extracellular  

wait for the body to fight inflammation so the  body might actually try to make more uric acid  

to fight inflammation so for the most part  less is not better we want to be in a Range  

so again here we see no significant changes so  let's look at the macros to try to understand  

what this food is all about so I ate 10 hamburger  patties of 90 grams each that's 900 grams or two  

pounds of ground beef and I mixed seven percent  fat with 15 fat so I ended up around 11 and that's  

just because I wanted the specific I wanted the  organic grass-fed and those were the the mixtures  

they came with normally I'd like a little more fat  in there but when you're going to eat two pounds  

every day then I try to keep the fat down a little  bit just so that it wouldn't be too much food to  

eat and let me tell you that was quite a bit of  meat to eat as it was so I didn't want to get  

nauseous with just stuffing myself full so that  ended up at 11 fat on average that's about 1800  

calories from the patties and then all the other  things that I ate like avocados and vegetables and  

olive oil would add up to about 700 calories so I  two meals a day at a about to 2500 calories total  

and I kept the carbs very low like I usually  do the exception where it went up a little  

bit was twice where I had a little bit of mashed  potatoes but other than that it was pretty much  

leafy greens and onion and tomatoes the protein  was 180 grams and that was almost all from the  

beef very few grams of protein from the other  things that I ate so that might be just a few  

grams higher than than that number and the fat  we had about 100 grams from the meat but then  

I also had some avocado and some olive oil like  I mentioned so when it comes to macro calories  

I had about five percent of my calories from  carbohydrates about 29 from protein and 65  

from fat and then that adds up to a hundred if  you take that rounding into account and normally  

though I would recommend between five and ten  percent of your calories from carbohydrate I  

think that's a long-term good way to do it I think  protein should be between 15 and 20 percent so the  

29 is a a good bit higher it is like 50 percent  above what I would normally eat or almost twice  

so that's not necessarily the way I would  recommend it and if you ate some ground beef  

with more fat in it and that would bring that  protein down but like I said my goal here was  

to hit a certain number and that's why it ended  up that way and also then fat would be about 70  

to 80 percent of calories normally but now  let's compare to eating the same number of  

calories in the form of fast food because that's  how people usually think of hamburgers that's I  

believe why hamburgers have a bad name and a lot  of the reasons why red meat is looked down upon  

so if we had two meals from a fast food restaurant  and we had let's say a Big Mac one medium fries  

and a medium soda so pretty typical what  people would eat and then the second meal  

would be another Big Mac medium fries but now we  finish with a small milkshake this would give you  

virtually exactly the same number of calories 2510  calories but when we look at the macros then it's  

dramatically different so now we have 326 grams of  carbs compared to I was between 10 and 70 and for  

the most part I was probably 15 to 20. protein  was 70 grams and fat was 103. so when we look  

at the percentages we got 65 percent of calories  from carbs we have nine from protein and 25 from  

fat but the biggest difference here now the 326  that's over 300 grams of carbs that's already a  

huge difference but the biggest difference is that  this also contains 151 grams of added sugar and I  

had maybe one or two grams of added sugar through  that ketchup and that wasn't even every day  

so if we look at this and compare just a  little bit in in picture form we look at  

the carbohydrates on my meal plan versus the  fast food we see a 13 times difference if we  

look at the protein then mine is a good bit  higher it's three times higher now again like  

I said I think that is unnecessarily high I  would suggest we bring that down by about a  

third but at the same time I think people eating  at fast food restaurants might think that they're  

getting a bunch of protein but they're probably  going to be protein deficient eating that way  

and you're not getting a whole lot of meat in  there and then the question is is it even meat  

the next thing would be fat and again mine wasn't  quite three times but almost three times higher  

than the fast food so it's kind of interesting  people associate fast food with high fat but  

it turns out that's almost a low-fat diet and  all you're really getting is a bunch of sugar  

and then if we look at the sugar you see this  little arrow down there so the one or two or three  

grams of sugar that I would get that would barely  register it just like a pixel thick there whereas  

the fast food would have a hundred and fifty grams  so we're talking 75 times more sugar in that fast  

food meal so you could have hamburgers without the  sugar you can eat all sorts of things that people  

associate with one way but you just modify it to  where it actually has real food ingredients but  

here's the one that I bet everyone is wondering  about what happened to the cholesterol and the  

blood lipids so with the cholesterol in my book  an optimal number for a male in my age not a  

teenager not a female but someone 50 and above  it should be between 170 and 270. that would be  

optimal now the mainstream guideline says that  less is always better and 200 is the cutoff and  

that's just simply not the way it works so  the optimal for my age is 170 to 270. I had  

233 before and I finished up at 199. so that's a  really interesting number I have not seen a number  

ever that I can recall for myself where I was  under 200 and now I ate two pounds of meat every  

day that's supposed to have all this cholesterol  and my cholesterol went down so that just lets  

us know that it's not about dietary cholesterol  there are other factors plus I don't even look  

at this number as a marker for health by itself  I don't think that has any value at all my LDL  

should be between 120 and 170 and I started at 151  and went down to 120 my HDL ideal is 55 to 75 and  

I went from 73 to 70. so all in all these are  excellent numbers we're well within the optimal  

ranges and none of it got worse triglycerides is  another Factor we want to look at because that's  

the blood lipids and we think that by eating  fat we're raising blood lipids blood fats and  

normally we want to see it between 50 and 90. I  started out at 54. my numbers are usually quite  

low and I finished up at 42. so again I don't  know why it went below 50 but the only time  

we're really concerned with a very low number  for triglycerides is if we have symptoms of  

hypoglycemia then that would be a problem because  if we don't have enough energy for the brain and  

the triglycerides go down then that number could  indicate hypoglycemia but if we don't have those  

symptoms there's not really much to worry about  with a low triglyceride number so again when it  

came to cholesterol after eating 100 hamburgers  in 10 days there was no significant changes and  

while macros matter a little bit the percentages  of calories from fat protein and carbs it's not  

totally unimportant but the food quality is even  more important and the fat that I ate had very  

very good quality so I ate only organic grass-fed  beef and it was quite inexpensive by the way I  

got it at Walmart that has a good selection I  ate avocado that's an excellent source of fat  

mostly mono unsaturated and I had mostly olive  oil normally I eat a quite a bit of butter but  

with all this meat there wasn't really a way to  put that that butter in and I had the olive oil  

on the salad so I probably didn't eat more than  maybe a stick of butter during those 10 days  

whereas the fast food restaurant the food that  you get from Fast Foods especially but pretty  

much all restaurants is grain fed beef so that's  vastly different the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio in  

organic grass-fed those ratios are about a one  to one between omega-3 and omega-6 in grain-fed  

beef it could be 20 to 1 with omega-6s being high  and those are pro-inflammatory also the fats that  

they use to cook the other things like the fries  and they cook the patties themselves also not in  

olive oil or butter they use canola oil corn oil  and soybean oil for all their cooking and that's  

used for the fries anything fried onion rings  french fries but also like I said the patties  

and that's a highly damaged oil to start with and  then when they use it all day to fry things then  

they cause tremendous damage to those fatty acids  that were bad to start with and then they get even  

worse and here's a funny little tidbit for you  some of you may already know that McDonald's  

and a lot of fast food restaurants used to fry  their french fries in beef Tallow that was the  

secret ingredient that made the fries taste so  good but then because of pressures from society  

from consumers they heard that saturated fat was  so bad that they discontinued the beef Tallow in  

1990 and they switched to all these synthetic  seed oils that cannot withstand that heat for  

longer periods of time without taking tremendous  damage the Tallow would actually be a fairly good  

thing if you're going to deep fry something you  want to use something like coconut oil or beef  

Tallow because it's stable it's saturated and  it can sustain a lot of heat for a long time  

but now when they stopped the Tallow they had to  try to get some flavor back in so they're using  

what they call Natural beef flavor and anytime  I see natural in my experience 99 of the time  

it is synthetic it is made from something that  you don't want to put in your body and but that  

that brings back some of that meat flavor to  it but here's the way we want to really look  

at cholesterol and understand it I said the  total number of cholesterol I don't have much  

faith in I don't think it has any significance for  health but here are the ones that really matter  

so we want to do the LDL particle count the  higher the particle count the smaller the  

particles are per milligram and if they're  small that means that there's oxidation and  

inflammation that creates damage to your body and  to these LDL particles so The Official Guidelines  

say to keep that number below one thousand  but again they think lower is always better  

I think that there's a very very wide range it's  very difficult to pin down a number so I just  

threw these numbers up to give you an idea that  you could have a total cholesterol of say three  

to four hundred and still be healthy and then your  LDL particle count would be very very high so that  

range doesn't really apply to anything I don't  think so before I had a number of 1222 and after  

it was at 892 which again interestingly it's  one of the lowest numbers I have ever had even  

though people tell us that eating red meat will  cause all this inflammation and all this damage  

the other number we want to look at is the  number of small LDL out of the total number  

of LDL particles how many are small meaning  below 20.5 nanometers because if they're small  

that means there's a lot of inflammation a lot of  damage oxidative stress going on and there's not  

an exact number because this range is so wide  it's hard to pin down a number so I'm just  

throwing out my opinion which is that it should  be ideally less than 20 percent of the LDL should  

be small and here again Lower is better there's  no range that we want to need to keep it above  

so I started at 350 and I ended up at 112 which  is again one of the best numbers I have ever had  

then we also measured the LDL size and the the  average size overall and we want to see that  

between 21 to 23 closer to 23 would be better  and I started out at 21.3 and it actually went  

up to 21.8 and when we look at the percentage of  LDL that was small so we take this small number  

and we divide it by the total LDL then again I  think that should be less than 20 I started out  

at 29 and I finished up at 13. but if there's  one thing I really want to emphasize is with  

all these markers that I've shown you is that  we don't we want to start off with a range as  

an idea but we don't want to fixate on that range  and we never want to look at markers in isolation  

we need to look at the big picture we need to  relate them to the individual to what's going on  

what they've been doing etc in order to  really understand the bigger picture and  

I created a blood work course that will give  you some information down below if you really  

want to learn more and take charge of your  health then I believe that's a great resource  

so the last thing I want to throw in just some  ideas here about ratios that are often mentioned  

in relation to cardiovascular health and one of  those ratios is to take the total cholesterol and  

divide by the HDL and ideally according to the  textbook you want that right at three I would  

say maybe 2.5 to 5.0 and why is that because if  you're LDL if your total cholesterol is quite high  

if it's running around 300 then you could still be  perfectly healthy but you don't want your HDL to  

be too high if you have a cholesterol of 300 total  you don't want your HDL to be a hundred that's too  

high you still want your HDL to be maybe 70  or 75 and then you would end up with a number  

higher closer to five by the same token if your  cholesterol is 225 and your HDL is too high then  

that would push the ratio way way down and you  don't want that ratio too low because a high HDL  

is not so good either so mine started out at 3.2  and I finished at 2.8 so again the 3 is probably  

the sweet spot but it depends on how how high  your total is another ratio is triglycerides over  

HDL so if you're insulin resistant if you have  metabolic problems and inflammation then typically  

your triglycerides will go up and your HDL will  go down so a good ratio would be less than one  

and I started at 0.8 and finished at 0.6 so again  one is not better than the other as long as you're  

in that good range and one of the primary drivers  of cardiovascular disease is insulin resistance  

so one of the best markers for that is the  homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance  

which takes into account both how high your  glucose is but also the amount of insulin it takes  

to bring that glucose down and they've set up the  formula so that a good number is right around one  

and if you're within a few tenths of that like  0.5 to 1.5 you're perfectly fine but if it starts  

shooting up then you're becoming insulin resistant  and I started at 0.8 and I finished up at one so  

I find it really interesting that you can eat a  hundred hamburgers in 10 days 2 pounds of red meat  

every day for 10 days something that's supposedly  really bad that causes all these problems and  

yet we see no significant changes on any of these  blood work markers so that just goes to show that  

red meat is not the evil that it's been portrayed  to be the key is to stay away from the sugar and  

eat Quality Foods and of course I over did the  hamburgers here because I wanted a nice round  

number normally you would just eat a moderate  amount until you're full and make sure that you  

get plenty of vegetables non-starchy vegetables  with that and if you want to really dig in and  

understand more to really Master the blood work  so you know what's going on with you then I put  

the link down below for that course if you enjoyed  this video you're going to love that one and if  

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