The Shocking TRUTH About Fats

Hello Health Champions. Today I want to reveal the shocking truth about fat but

in order to understand the issue completely we have to understand what

fat is where does fat come from and we have to understand the mechanisms of

what happens in the body when we eat fat or when we don't. Coming right up.

Hey I'm doctor 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 and hit that notification bell so you don't miss

anything in this video I will share ten principles with you about how fat works

in the body and it's critical that you understand all ten of them otherwise you

won't have the whole picture and you need the whole picture to know when fat

is good for you and when fat might be bad for you and if you stick around to

the end I'm gonna give you a bonus that's gonna tie it all together for you

so it's gonna be clearer than it's ever been before let's just real quick talk

about what fat is and what carbohydrates are so on planet Earth if

you're a human or if you're any other life form on the planet you are carbon

based carbon like in carbohydrate all life forms on the planet are carbon

based so if you're talking about a carbohydrate carbon and hydration. That

means carbon plus water so water is H2O so carbohydrate has carbon and hydrogen

and oxygen which incidentally is exactly what fat has it's just a different form

alright it's still carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and that means they're

somewhat interchangeable that carbohydrate can be turned into fat it's

a better storage form which we're going to talk about in detail we can't turn

fat back into carbohydrate but the fat is linked together

in triglycerides and we can use the glycerol from the backbone and we can

turn that back into glucose so we always have a tiny little bit of carbohydrate

that we can make from fat even when we're not eating any carbohydrate at all

and protein is also a carbohydrate in the sense it contains carbon and

hydrogen and oxygen but you just sprinkle in a little bit of nitrogen and

now you have amino acids that can become protein but fundamentally they share a

lot of building blocks so that means they're somewhat interchangeable they

have different purposes at different times but we're going to focus on on fat

today and just understand where that comes from number one thing to

understand is that your body is smart it's not just smart it's a miracle

of intelligence it's so perfect so fine-tuned so meticulous everything fits

together it knows exactly why it's doing what it's doing when I hear people and

especially doctors saying that we don't know why that happens those things just

happen sometimes I cringe nothing ever just happens sometimes the body does

everything for a reason and the number one reason it does anything is for

survival if we look back at human history and if we look at any wild

animal today then we have an irregular food supply okay there is not

refrigerators for all the animals on the planet they don't have three square

meals plus snacks and neither did humans until very very recently and because the

food supply was irregular then we had to set up a system where we could take

advantage of when there was plenty so that we could survive when there wasn't

so much and we call that feast and famine so during the feast we had to

have a way of putting some extra energy some fuel in storage for the

so that when we hit a period where there wasn't so much food then we had

something to fuel the energy otherwise we would be a very short-lived species

so storage is necessary for survival so the next question then is how do we

store energy and we can do it in two forms primarily even though protein also

contains energy the body saves it for last because we need the muscle for

propulsion we need to be able to walk and work and fight and the muscles

perform that work so we don't want to burn off the muscles too early and

that's why the body always saves it for last and the two ways that it can store

energy the other two ways is in the form of glycogen or fat the glycogen is

extremely limited I know you hear people talking about glycogen storage all the

time but we have to put it in perspective and realize the body is very

very poor at storing glycogen the most you can store is about 1500 calories

worth that's less than one day's energy supply of glycogen if you depended

entirely on glycogen you would never live an entire day the species would die

out within 24 hours unless we could constantly find food every day so the

first day the species was without food we'd be wiped out and when we look at

that 1,500 we have to realize about three-quarters of that is in the muscles

and that glycogen is earmarked for the muscles so even though your brain and

your tissues and your red blood cells need some glycogen they can never get it

from the muscle the glycogen goes in the muscle and stays there so if we want to

retrieve some glucose for the rest of the body for the brain and organs then

we have to go to the liver and then we're limited to 400 calories a day

right that's very very little glycogen we wouldn't last very far if

that's all we depended on so the best fuel for survival and necessity for

survival is to be able to store fat so if a somewhat overweight person weighs

about 200 pounds this is not like morbidly obese this is

just like high average today 200 pounds body weight 40 percent body fat that's

280,000 calories worth of fat that's a fortune that's stored away as energy we

could live six months off of that energy without adding anything except water and

some vitamins and minerals basically so compare six months to one day and you

start understanding why fat is so critical for survival we would never

make it unless we could put some fat into storage and unless we had a way of

using that fat for energy and during a fast we have to have be able to live off

of fat only and the third principle is to understand then why did the body pick

fat why do all animals store energy excess as fat and the reason is because

it's most efficient one gram of carbohydrates stored as glycogen also

binds 3 grams of water it's like a sponge it's sucks water it holds water

to it so one gram of glycogen actually weighs 4 grams and it gives us 4

calories so if we were to store energy in the form of glycogen we would have

one calorie per gram stored whereas with fat we have one gram equal

nine calories so fat is nine times more efficient for our survival and if we

were to store let's say that a thin person like myself I have about a

hundred thousand calories worth of fat stored on my body and I think it's

reasonable to think that that's about what a lean person not an emaciated but

a lean person would need to survive the winter okay you go a few months with

less food so you need to be able to burn a little bit of extra fat every day for

the the winter months so somewhere around a hundred thousand just

hypothetically if that was stored as fat we would need about thirty pounds if it

was stored as glycogen we would need to store 270 pounds worth of glycogen if we

include the water that it binds so if you're gonna carry around on your body

you're gonna carry around your energy reserves you want a backpack that weighs

30 pounds or you want a backpack that weighs 270 all right that's pretty

evident so the only way that we could survive the only way that we could store

enough energy to make it would be in the form of fat that is why we don't store

carbohydrate we store a tiny little bit and the rest of it gets very quickly

converted into fat principle number four to understand is how does the body

create fat and store fat and the answer is insulin insulin is our storage

hormone the purpose of insulin is to increase when we eat something our blood

sugar goes up and the purpose of insulin is to take the body from a catabolic or

breakdown state into an anabolic or build up or storage state that's what

insulin does and if we eat carbohydrates we have a large insulin response if we

eat protein we have a medium insulin response and if we eat fat we have a

virtually zero insulin response it's a negligible insulin response to fat and

why is that because carbohydrates gets absorbed in the bloodstream

the fastest and when blood sugar goes up that's a good thing to a point but

really high blood sugar or really low blood sugar is very toxic to the brain

diabetics can go into a coma from either high or low blood sugar so when we get

high blood sugar from high carbohydrate consumption that's an unstable situation

that's an emergency the body has to bring that down quickly and that's why

the insulin response to carbohydrates is so much higher than to protein or fat

another way of saying that is that carbohydrates because they have to get

out of the bloodstream faster they get in the bloodstream faster they get have

to get out of the bloodstream faster they get processed quicker which means

we are ready to eat again sooner and that's a good thing if we're

trying to put on fat for the winter it's a bad thing because we're get hungry all

the time and that's the advantage of protein and

fat because they're absorbed slower they stay in the bloodstream longer and there

is no urgency to get them out of there we get full longer

we get very satiated so we don't have to eat so often so insulin is a fat storing

hormone it's a fat creating hormone and it also is a hormone that prevents fat

burning principle number five and this is something that very often gets lost

in the arguments we hear vegans and low carb and carnivores and high carb and we

have all these different people and all these different arguments and what they

miss is that any excess will be stored any excess will trigger extra insulin

because any excess has to be stored that's the purpose of it okay anything

that is extra that we're not using in this moment has to be stored if we fill

up our glycogen stores the excess has to be converted to fat we don't have

a choice that's just the way it works so it doesn't matter if you eat more protein

or more fat or more carbohydrates if it's in a combination that extra and it

triggers insulin which it will if it's extra it will get stored as fat number

six so if this is how it works then is fat storage a good thing or a bad thing

well I know what you're thinking because if you're like most people then you have

a little bit of extra and you don't like it so you think well fat storage is

obviously a bad thing however from an evolutionary perspective if we think

back a hundred thousand years then fat storage again was a means to survival if

we lived in a world of feast and famine then fat storage allowed us to store

some extra fuel which then allowed us to use it and survive but that's the key

that there's a balance between storage and uses storage and usage and when we

live in a world of abundance and especially in the world of high carb

abundance now we're only getting the storage component of that equation we've

completely lost the time where we empty the vault because there's never a famine

and now we end up with something called chronic congestion that we eat something

insulin puts it away and before we get a chance to use it we eat again and we put

it away we eat again and we put it away we end up with chronic congestion we're

stuffing we're over filling every cell of the body and that is what leads to

the metabolic syndrome that causes most degenerative disease number seven is a

big question and there's a lot of arguments around this there's a low fat

camp and there's a high fat camp and the low fat camp claims that fat dietary fat

causes insulin resistance and they've got the research papers to prove it and

what they're basing that on is a bunch of observational research that says that

when they observe a cell that is packed with fat that cell is also insulin

resistant it's an insulin resistant cell and they can even show that the fat in

that cell is signaling to block the action of insulin so they are right

a fatty cell is insulin resistant and it is signaling further insulin resistance

but what they're not asking is how did that cell become insulin resistant

they're assuming that because there is fat in the cell and the cell is insulin

resistant the fat must be the cause rather than a co-conspirator rather than

just something that happens at the same time so we have to understand that the

insulin is what puts the fat in the cell that makes the cell insulin resistant

and the insulin resistance is a result of the cell being overstuffed it's over

congested and it didn't matter if we eat carbohydrate or protein or fat if we ate

too much of something then the excess would be stored as fat and that cell

becomes insulin resistant because it says I've got enough you've stuffed me

plenty leave me alone I don't want that insulin to give me anymore of what I

don't what I already have so dietary fat does not cause insulin resistance

cellular fat is associated with insulin resistance and dietary fat in itself

does not trigger insulin and so it can't cause insulin resistance we're going to

talk about some other cases on combinations where it is still not a

good thing but we'll explain that principle number eight what is the

primary fuel of the body if you look online if you look at the USDA you look

at Mayo Clinic you'll see over and over and over that they say that carbohydrate

is the primary fuel of the body that the brain can only run on glucose and so

forth and all of that is wrong the body will run primarily on glucose when

glucose is in abundance and is being continuously supplied that does not mean

it's the primary fuel it means it's the fuel that needs to be disposed of first

because high blood sugar is toxic the brain does not only run on glucose when

we have a famine when we have a fast when we go for a longer period of time

without food the body makes ketones and during a fast when carbs are in low

supply the brain uses as much as 75% ketones for fuel carbohydrate is not the

primary fuel it turns out that fat is the primary fuel and if we if you

understand anything about how the body stores fat for survival you have to

understand that fat is the primary fuel because during a famine you're gonna run

on 95% fat you're gonna spare the protein for the most part you'll lose a

percent here and there but there are no carbs added so the carbohydrates are

going to come from that glycerol backbone and the other 95 percent of

your energy is gonna come from fat so if you're on a keto diet or if you're on a

fast then you're gonna burn about 95 percent fat and 5% carbohydrates and

here's an interesting parallel that a lot of people like the extreme low fat

people they say you need to eat less than 10% fat in your diet your body

can't run on 10% fat there is absolutely no way because most of the organs at

rest work best on fat so if you eat 10% fat

your body will turn carbohydrates into fat because you can't use all those

carbohydrates in the moment and your heart and your liver and your kidneys

they actually prefer fat so if you eat virtually no fat your body will convert

carbs into fat so yeah you're using about 50% carbs and 50% fat anyway there

is no way to make the body run on 10% fat because it will convert carbs into

fat to bring that ratio up to around 50 50 I don't know the exact number it

could be 40 60 but a lot of the carbs get converted because the organs prefer

fat the only thing the carbohydrate or glucose is necessary for is the brain

during a fast it still needs about 25% of its energy from glucose the red blood

cells run only on glucose they don't have any mitochondria they can only get

energy from glycolysis but that's a very small percentage of your body weight so

they don't use an enormous amount plus they don't do any work they just float

around and the only other thing that you absolutely have to have carbohydrates

for is emergencies but you never run completely out your muscles always store

some glycogen and if you have to make a run for it and you make lactic acid then

that lactic acid came from carbohydrate that lactic acid is a byproduct of

glycolysis of breaking glucose in half so during an emergency when you have to

make a sprint when you have to create lactic acid and huff and puff then

glucose is required but you don't need a ton of it because that period of time is

not going to be very long and the muscles are always going to store some

principle number 9 does eating fat make you fat

even though I promote low carb and high fat and lots of people do high fat and

they lose weight it's not completely as simple as that because if you're on a

high carb diet then eating fat makes you fat because remember it's the insulin

that stores fat it's the insulin that puts the food away and makes you hungry

so if you eat high carb and high fat you will get fat and this is a problem with

a lot of studies that they do they call it a low carb high fat diet and they

think 60% carbs is normal when they set out to do these studies so they drop

that down to 40% and they think that's low carb but 40% is still an enormous

amount of carbohydrate compared to when you're fasting or you're eating a

ketogenic diet so 40% carbohydrate is still going to keep your insulin

sky-high and when insulin is sky-high then you're gonna store fat and you

can't burn fat so remember that you can't eat high fat unless you go very

low carb it's not a good idea if you eat low carb meaning less than

10% carbohydrate or in ketosis as low as 5% then high fat does not make you fat

it makes you satiated it allows you to go longer between meals so in the

end you end up eating less food and burning more fat principle number 10 so

we've pretty much agreed that fat overall is a good thing but there's

still fats that heal and there's still fats that kill and the good fats are the

ones that nature produced for us saturated fats in animal fats natural

fats in fish and meat and nuts and avocados all the natural fats are good

especially if we eat them in the food that they came from

we eat the whole food then that food protects the fats and keep them stable

and all their nutrients available we can also make oils if we process them

lightly so butter coconut oil extra virgin olive oil avocado oil if they're

lightly processed then they're still good they're still very very close to

the way that nature made them and saturated fats are great because they're

stable you can leave butter out on the counter it gets soft but it doesn't go

rancid it doesn't get ruined in immediately the bad fats are man-made

fats it's fats that we alter we take a bean

or a seed where we take corn something that doesn't have a lot of fat in it to

start with and now we have to extract the fat with petroleum solvents and with

extremely high pressure and extremely high heat and chemicals and then we

deodorize it and clean it and so forth these are so destroyed they're so

altered that they are oxidized and rancid and that harsh processing turns

them basically poisonous on top of that they're very high in omega sixes which

are inflammatory so there are good fats and bad fats and even though the bad

fats will still help you reduce insulin resistance it will still accomplish most

of the things we saw here that's in the short term in the long term you need to

eat whole food you need to eat the things that nature produced because they

will provide the nutrients and they're not going to be toxic so you can be

healthy for the long run so now that you understand the ten principles now that

you have them down cold then we can tie it all together

and we want to think about all of this that we've talked about as momentum and

you can have momentum toward storage or you can have momentum toward usage you

can have momentum towards congestion clogging or you can have momentum

toward cleaning and of course the storage is associated with insulin

resistance and having excess the usage is associated with insulin sensitivity

and it is the opposite is when you're you're cleaning it's when you're using

more than you're putting in so if fat is good or not depends on the

quality of the fat of course but it depends on where you are where is your

momentum so it doesn't mean that you have completely resolved your insulin

resistance but you have to be moving away from insulin resistance if you're

still eating in a way that you're becoming more insulin resistant and more

clogged then fat is not good is not necessarily worse than anything else you

eat but you're still your momentum is still toward congestion and fat isn't

going to help you if you are moving if you cut the carbs enough if you cut the

the carbs and the the frequency of meals enough that you're using more than

you're storing you've shifted the momentum toward clean up toward

de-congestion and now fat is good because fat now helps you further reduce insulin

resistance it makes you satiated it helps you eat less even though fat

dietary fat has the highest calorie density it is very satisfying and it

doesn't trigger insulin so eating more fat allows you to eat fewer calories

overall and it allows you to move away from congestion and now fat is a good thing

For some of you that truth may not have been so shocking but what's

shocking to me is the number of people out there who still have no idea

that fat is okay and when you look around in the grocery stores you see

thousands of low-fat and nonfat products promoted as guilt-free and heart-healthy

that is shocking so I hope you found this useful and that you share this

information with anyone that you know who is still stuck with the idea of fat

phobia because it is hurting them if you enjoyed this video make sure that you

check out that one as well thank you so much for watching I'll see

you in the next video