Top 10 Tips To Lose Belly Fat Backed By Science

Hello health champions today i want to talk  about the top 10 ways to lose belly fat  

that are supposedly backed by science isn't it  frustrating when something's supposed to work  

and they say it's backed by science and yet it  doesn't work for you that's because it doesn't  

have to work for everybody to be called science  it just has to work for most people but once you  

understand some of the basic mechanisms of losing  belly fat then you can still make it work for you  

and reach your goals 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 and hit that notification  bell and you can also join as a member so you  

don't miss anything the first item i saw on a list  was to track your calories is that a good idea do  

calories matter well yes and no you still have  to have a calorie deficit yes at some point you  

have to expend more calories than you take in but  if you try to count calories and reduce calories  

in a form of calorie deprivation then that is  not going to work because it's not sustainable  

you have to understand the underlying mechanism  and that is a calorie is not a calorie it depends  

on which hormones these calories trigger so you  want to reduce sugar and carbohydrates why because  

that is the only way to reduce insulin and  insulin resistance and insulin is a fat storing  

hormone they change behavior so when you reduce  insulin you reduce hunger that's the way to reduce  

calories not by counting calories now consider  for a moment why do we have belly fat why does  

it accumulate in one place why doesn't it just  spread out evenly and if it doesn't spread out  

evenly which it doesn't then why doesn't it all  collect in the left foot or in the right leg right  

if it was random it could just end up anywhere  so the answer is it's not random again there are  

hormones that determine where it ends up and if  we have an imbalance in these hormones then we  

have to fix that underlying imbalance in order to  correct the problem so we have to reduce insulin  

we have to reduce cortisol and we have to increase  growth hormone because both of these have to do  

with fat storing and blood sugar and this has to  do with fat burning number two on the list i saw  

suggested we eat a high protein diet does that  work well let's look at the underlying mechanisms  

if we eat carbohydrate it contributes a certain  amount of insulin response if we eat protein  

it does a certain amount but it's much less it's  about 30 to 50 percent depending on the protein  

and how it's utilized in the body but let's  just call it half as much insulin whereas fat  

contributes just a tiny little bit of insulin  now let's say that for the standard american diet  

that we eat a certain amount of protein a certain  amount of carb and a certain amount of fat  

then the total insulin load would be when we add  all those contributions together so it would be  

this much now if we want to reduce belly  fat and reduce insulin then we have to lower  

the total insulin load can we do that on a high  protein diet well let's say that we increase the  

protein by 50 percent then the contribution  from protein on insulin would obviously be 50  

larger but here's the beauty and this is why a  high protein diet can work but may not work if you  

don't understand this if you keep eating sugar and  carb then you're going to bypass any beneficial  

effects because you're going to bypass the satiety  mechanisms but if you eat good quality food then  

what this protein allows you to do is to eat less  carbohydrates so if you eat more protein you could  

cut back the carbohydrate down to maybe a fourth  and still be very satiated and then you eat the  

same amount of fat but you've still reduced your  total insulin load by maybe a third but once we  

understand this then we say okay well a high  protein diet could work but is there something  

else that could work even better and that is  called a low carb high fat diet so now we could  

eat maybe a hundred percent like the same amount  of protein but let's say we eat what's recommended  

of a moderate protein diet so eat eighty percent  of that it would still work if we had a hundred  

but the difference now is we cut back carbs  dramatically we cut it back to about 10 percent  

so the contribution from carbs are very very small  now we need to eat something else to get satiated  

to get full and have energy and that's fat so  we triple the fat intake but that has hardly any  

effect on insulin so now even though we're eating  the same calories we're having the same satiety  

we have less than half the insulin load and as our  bodies get used to this now we can reduce calories  

and still be full because the body is eating the  fat off the body tip number three reduce stress  

that's a great advice for so many reasons but  the primary here is that there is a stress  

hormone called cortisol cortisol puts you in a  fight flight response where in a fight flight  

response the body tries to increase glucose  which will increase hunger and cravings which  

will increase blood glucose which will increase  insulin so here you're stuck in that vicious cycle  

of stress and cravings and insulin so if you can  reduce stress then you have a really good chance  

of reducing all of this and kind of breaking that  vicious cycle so reducing stress is fantastic  

advice tip number four is to get adequate sleep is  that good yes because lack of sleep equals stress  

and as we just talked about on the previous slide  you have stress create all these problems so  

sleep is one of the ways to avoid those problems  but here's a quick little quiz for you what is  

wrong with this picture and i don't have a lot of  time for you to think about it but the answer is  

do not sleep with your cell phone because  that is unnecessary electromagnetic stress  

put it in another room or put it really far away  from you don't have it in your bed tip number five  

aerobic exercise is that a good idea yes but  not necessarily for the reason people think most  

people recommend exercise because they think it  burns calories that it helps put you in a deficit  

that is not the way it works primarily and when  you do exercise you have to make sure you don't  

do it at a high sustained intensity you do a low  intensity with maybe short bursts of short term  

high intensity why because you do not want to  increase cortisol like we talked on the previous  

slide it does help to use up some carbohydrate  it helps kind of clean up those carbohydrate  

and glycogen stores but it's not the primary  mechanism even though it does help a little bit  

what it does help is circulation it helps detox  it helps oxygenate tissues it helps on so many  

different levels but mostly exercise helps  with brain activation and when you increase  

your brain activity you also help reduce stress  now let's look for a moment at what does it mean  

when something is backed by science and why it may  not work for you even if it works for a majority  

so this is a purely hypothetical example i made up  every bit of this don't draw any conclusions that  

one thing would work better but let's say they  did a study and they tested a number of different  

people and they had them jog for 10 days and these  people lost or gained various amounts of weight  

and then they did what's called a best fitting  line they take the average and they draw a  

conclusion and say that out of all these people  on average if they jog for 10 days then they lose  

one and a half pounds per person on  average and then they had another group  

and again purely hypothetical and they  had them walk for 10 days and then  

they draw the best fitting line and they come  up with the conclusion that these people lost  

one pound so based on comparing studies in  science we would conclude that jogging is better  

but what if you were in this study that concluded  that jogging works for weight loss but you happen  

to be this person right here who gained about two  pounds and this is what we have to understand that  

everyone is different there's so many different  variables we don't know what else went on here  

there may have been a death in the family they  may have lost their job there may have been  

some stress or some inflammation or an allergic  reaction that we can't account for in here  

or maybe this person was just super sensitive  to stress and cortisol to any time they tried  

to do something more then it backfired on them  that's why we have to understand the principles  

so that we can start fitting it together into a  picture that works for us we have to understand  

that statistics do not predict success or failure  in the individual case that would be like saying  

let's study what the weather is in Australia  today and draw conclusions about the weather  

in New York they're different data points and they  may or may not have anything to do with each other  

tip number six is to lift weights is that a good  idea i think so but the typical advice is to keep  

more muscle to build muscle because it's more  metabolically active and even though that is  

true that's a kind of small contribution the  main reason is that weight lifting increases  

growth hormone which is a fat burning hormone  it does have a tremendous benefit in maintaining  

muscle mass and how does it do that well when you  exercise you're telling your body that look these  

muscles I'm actually planning to use them for  something I'm not going to just sit in the sofa  

because if you sit in the sofa your body  doesn't care if it burns fat or protein but if  

you're using your muscles you're signaling you're  telling your body these muscles are really useful  

please put some extra resources into rebuilding  and maintaining the muscles and that's the message  

you get from growth hormone then again  there's a slight added benefit in that  

muscles are a little bit more metabolically  active one more benefit is that when you work  

out whether you build additional muscle or not  you're going to maintain a good muscle tone  

which is the same as increasing signaling and  increasing brain tone tip number seven is to  

drink some apple cider vinegar there has been  significant amount of research that shows it  

improves insulin sensitivity all things equal it  will help does that mean that you can just do this  

i wouldn't recommend it because yes you'll  see some benefit but it would be very slight  

in comparison to what you can do if you do all  of these different things or most of these things  

why would you add it because it's so simple it's  inexpensive so you might as well tip number eight  

is to cut back on alcohol is that a good idea yes  absolutely not because it has a bunch of calories  

which is what they usually tell you or even that  it stimulates a lot of insulin but it's the fact  

that alcohol and fructose are the two things that  clog up the liver more than anything else and  

when you clog up the liver you get fatty liver  disease if it's because of alcohol it's called  

alcoholic fatty liver disease and these go hand  in hand with diabetes and insulin resistance  

so if you're going to do it use it very  sparingly especially if you're trying to  

reverse a condition and if you drink a little more  alcohol then realize that if the alcohol has sugar  

and or carbs in it then it's way worse than  just the alcohol tip number nine is to reduce  

sugar and carbs and now we're getting into the  real heavy hitters when it comes to reducing  

belly fat high fructose corn syrup and agave are  the worst and now a lot of people are going to  

choke on their agave sweetened coffee because  they've been told that agave is so natural  

and so good and so low glycemic and it is low  glycemic but just like high fructose corn syrup  

it is highest in fructose so it has the highest  liver clogging potential of any sweetener  

almost as bad as sugar which is terrible that's  50 50 fructose and glucose and then honey  

again a lot of people are to get a little bit  of a surprise on that because honey is about  

40 fructose so it's not quite as bad as sugar  and it does have some natural things in it  

but it's still a sugar and it's a lot of fructose  in there and last on the carbohydrate list  

is starch which is still bad it's not  as terrible as the others because starch  

is glucose only so it has a blood sugar  effect but not a liver choking effect like  

fructose does and tip number 10 is intermittent  fasting and now we're talking about your most  

powerful way to improve all of these things we  talked about to reduce the insulin only when you  

eat does your body have a reason to produce  large amounts of insulin the longer you go  

without food the longer you give your body an  opportunity to lower insulin it's also the most  

powerful way to increase growth hormone to improve  autophagy to speed up weight loss and to reverse  

alcoholic and non-alcoholic fatty liver and  a quick little quiz for extra credit if you  

know where these abbreviations come from on this  chart you can put it in the comments down below  

everything i talked about here are tools and you  use these tools to the degree that you need them  

so reducing carbohydrates is a tool and you cut  back on the carbs to the degree that you need to  

you increase the fasting period until you  start seeing some results and then you balance  

these two variables cutting carbs and increasing  fasting until you start seeing changes in insulin  

and appetite and growth hormone carbs and fasting  is going to be the most powerful tool for most  

people but again you may not be most people  and that's where you have additional tools  

so sleep meditation aerobic exercise weight  lifting high intensity interval training these  

may be for some people the thing that's going  to provide the breakthrough or just that little  

additional edge what we want to understand is  that recovery is just as important as activation  

exercise is activation but it's also stress and  it's breakdown so life and exercise are stressful  

but they're good for us if it's in balance if  we can balance the activation and the recovery  

then that's something that makes us stronger if  we don't get the recovery then it's just breaking  

us down and if we do this right now we end up with  balance or homeostasis most people are really busy  

so they tend to focus on maybe one or two of  these things that they can get to and then they  

say oh well I'll deal with the other things when  my life gets in order and I understand but do your  

absolute best to understand that these are not  optional they are necessary you cannot express  

optimal health you cannot express your genome  optimally unless you find a good balance on  

all or as many of these factors as possible and  realize that we are all different and that's why  

you can't just go by what one study says or what  worked for your neighbor or the guy next door  

we have to start understanding  more about how the body works  

and the principles and then we can go with  trial and error we can fit it together  

and come up with something that works for us and  that works long term if you enjoyed this video  

i think you really should look at that one next  thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time