Your Doctor Is Wrong About Weight Loss

Hello Health Champions.

Isn't it amazing that billions of people are affected by obesity and being overweight and

yet there is no other species on the planet that has any trouble in the wild to maintain

an ideal weight.

It seems so basic and yet despite an endless stream of advice the problem just keeps getting

worse.

Today I'm going to take on some of the biggest misconceptions about the types of food we

eat so that after today's video there will be no doubt in your mind about the basic mechanisms

of losing weight and burning fat.

The development of obesity has been explosive to say the least.

In the 1800’s it was virtually unknown.

100 years later we had started getting some sugar and processed foods but it wasn't the

staple yet.

By 1960 is one of the staple and we saw an explosive increase and every year, every decade

we saw a dramatic increase.

THen it was getting so bad that in 1980 we started getting our first example of expert

advice of the USDA published their guidelines the first edition and they felt that we needed

some more advice, so every five years they have published the guidelines again and again,

but they haven't really changed much and they don't appear to have helped much either.

So before the guy lines it was pretty bad we were sort of on a pretty steep increase

but that's nothing compared to how it's been looking after the guidelines.

Usually the attitude toward people with obesity and overweight is that they're guilty as charged.

That the only problem is that they're taking and more calories than they're burning and

they eat too much they don't exercise enough and if it's that wasn't enough we really have

to rub in the guilt and refer to the seven deadly sins and two of those are gluttony

which means that you have no self-control you eat for pleasure and your hedonistic about

it and the solution would be temperance which is another way of saying you just need to

exercise some moderation and restraint and the next thing often referred to as sloth

and laziness that if you just didn't sit around if you showed some diligence if you had some

determination and effort then surely you could solve this problem and just eat less and exercise

more.

But what if it isn't that simple?

What if this advice is flawed or what if it’s even completely wrong?

What if we're blaming the wrong person?

That maybe the advice is so wrong that we should turn it around and put the advice on

trial so let's take the advice to court and see how it holds up.

The guidelines that everyone agrees on for the most part says to maintain an ideal weight.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Eat a variety of foods.

Avoid fat and cholesterol, especially saturated fats, and you should increase starch and fiber.

You should reduce process added sugar to less than 10% of calories which is about 50 grams

a day.

You should reduce sodium and you should drink alcohol in moderation.

So that was published in 1980 and after nine additions they pretty much just check the

same boxes.

They change a few words here and there to earn their salaries but nothing's really changed.

We're going to take a look at some of the details but the basic message is still that

you want to control your weight by eating less calories, burning more calories, and

eating a healthy diet.

But the question which we’re also going to talk about is - What is a healthy diet?

That seems to be the problem that no one can agree on.

Now when we go to trial and especially if there's disagreement we need a law book and

the best reference for how the human body works is called Guyton and Hall textbook of

medical physiology.

It's been the standard since 1956 so every reputable institution of learning when it

comes to health has been referring to this book or, a few very similar ones to teach

their students, how the body works about human physiology.

Arthur C Guyton is a legend.

He wrote the first eight editions all by himself and then they started adding staff and John

Hall co-wrote edition 9 and 10 and then Guyton died and died in a car accident so from then

on it was written without him.

Today they are up to the 14th Edition and this is a pretty hefty volume it's 1152 pages

and I'm not kidding when I'm saying that there was a lot of groaning and complaining in school

when people had to read this.

Me however I thought I was the best book I ever came across because it explained all

the things I wanted to know.

So I read this book cover to cover and I read most of it several times because I really

wanted to know.

Today it's been published in 15 different languages but what I'm curious about is basically

how does this book, the principles that they discussed, how does that compare to the expert

advice about health and about losing weight.

In other words does it look like the experts have actually read the book?

And the experts I'll refer to are going to be the USDA and the Mayo Clinic not because

I want to pick on them or analyze them specifically but cuz they publish a lot and they represent

the general consensus.

So when I went to each of these the American Medical Association Physicians committee,

and the dietetic association, and the American Diabetes Association, Johns Hopkins, Harvard

Health.

They all agreed on these pretty much to a T. 98% they all said the same thing.

And then also includes the u.s.

News & World Report and the experts there who every year compiles a list and votes on

the best diets for health and weight-loss and blood pressure and so forth.

And through the expert advice the common thread is about calories.

But is a calorie a calorie?

Well, Mayo Clinic says that obesity occurs when you take in more calories than you burn

your body then stores these excess calories as fat that sounds reasonable that makes sense

but what does Guyton say about this?

He says - all the excess carbohydrates that cannot be stored as glycogen or converted

to fat under the stimulus of insulin and then stored as fat.

Isn’t that interesting that the general discussion is typically about calories but

Guyton doesn't mention calories at all.

He talks about carbohydrates and he talks about carbohydrates getting converted to fat

under the stimulus of insulin and then insulin stores these as fat.

It is quite a different picture and it makes sense cuz we had receptors we have hormones

we have a whole metabolic machinery to deal with carbohydrates and glycogen and fat and

Insulin we have no receptor for calories.

And I'm going to quickly go through some of the mechanisms of insulin and I'm not going

to read you the whole thing but I'll let you go back and refer to that but in summary,

when it comes to insulin and storage the law book Guyton says that insulin has a huge impact

on the storage in the body and whenever we eat a high carb diet high carb meal than there

is a rapid insulin spike they say that insulin promotes the conversion of carbs into fat

and then these carbohydrates turn into fat get stored in the fat tissue so that's the

first lesson that if you have too much fat on your body it was insulin that stored it.

We’re always told to eat less and exercise more but when it comes to muscles and exercise

we typically also hear that glucose and carbohydrate is the preferred fuel for exercise but Guyton

says that muscles use fat for fuel most of the time.

That's their default is to use fat and the only exception to that rule is when we exercise

when we have a moderate to high intensity exercise then the fat isn't enough anymore

and now the muscles become more insulin sensitive meaning we don't have to have a lot of insulin

but the work by the muscles themselves make the muscles more insulin sensitive so they

can start using up more glucose.

The other circumstance when the muscle stop using fat primarily is when we have high carb

meals why because high carb meals create big spikes in insulin.

That insulin is going to quickly push a lot of glucose into the muscle so now the muscle

shifts from fat to glucose metabolism.

So if we want to lose weight we want to burn fat obviously but whenever we eat high carbohydrate

then that carbohydrate prevents fat burning so the more carbs to eat the higher your insulin

is the less fat burning is going to take place during exercise and then you're being called

lazy or slothful because you don't exercise enough but the reason is you're not burning

enough fat is because you're eating too many carbs and your insulin is too high.

That prevents the fat burning during exercise.

And even though insulin primarily acts on glucose, it has a tremendous impact on fat.

So whenever insulin is high, it increases the use of carbohydrates and automatically

decreases the burning and the usage of fat.

So in other words insulin is fat sparing.

That doesn't seem like a good thing if you're trying to lose weight and burn fat, right?

The second mechanism is that insulin also promotes lipogenesis.

That means making fat.

And it is specially does this if we have had a high carb meal because now not only do we

have the insulin to push the enzymes towards fat building but we have a lot of substrate,

a lot of building materials to turn into fat.

And the third way insulin affects fat is that insulin turns off lipase.

And lipase is an enzyme that breaks down fat but insulin turns it off.

So in summary Guyton says that all aspects of fat-burning are stopped or prevented or

reduced by insulin.

All aspects of fat burning.

But the effects of insulin go even further.

And they also affect hunger.

How do they do that?

Well, insulin reduces, it inhibits, blocks an enzyme in the liver that is supposed to

turn glycogen into glucose.

So you eat carbohydrates you store it as much as you can in the form of glycogen but you

plan to use that glycogen and break it down into glucose at some later point.

However, when insulin is high you can't do that very well.

As a result when insulin is high there is less fuel available from carbohydrate and

then we said on the previous slide that insulin also turns off lipase which breaks down fat

so now we have a double whammy we can't break down fats and we can't use the carb stores

we can't use the fat stores the body stores all that good stuff for use later but when

insulin is high with can't get to it and what do you think happens if you’ve stored stuff

and you can get to it you'll of course it makes you hungry cuz if you can't get to it

you have to go find new food and then you're being called slothful and a glutton cuz you

can't control yourself when all along it is your hormones your insulin that controls your

behavior.

So as you heard Guyton had a lot to say about insulin and metabolism and fat storing and

being overweight.

But yet in Mayo Clinic there is no mention of insulin as a cause in obesity, not a word.

Insulin in this article showed up twice in the section for complications because they're

saying it's more like a side note that by the way people with obesity are more likely

to develop and number of different health problems such as heart disease and strokes

Obesity makes you more likely to have high blood pressure or obesity can affect the way

your body uses insulin.

No, it's the carbohydrate that affects the insulin that causes the obesity.

They get it backwards because they don't look at the cause and effect.

And here’s my favorite example about association versus cause and effect.

So I'm sure you've all been driving along the road and all of a sudden it comes to a

standstill.

And if it's a really really bad standstill that just goes on for 20 minutes 30 minutes

an hour, now you're pretty much guaranteed that that traffic jam also is going to involve

an accident and there's going to be some emergency vehicles once you get up there There’s going

to be an ambulance and a fire truck and some police.

But here’s the Curious Thing I've never actually seen how that started I've never

seen what was the first thing but I think it's pretty clear.

I think here's the way it starts that first the emergency vehicle gets there the police

and the fire trucks they drive up and they park across the road cuz that's what I see

whenever I come up there and then that obviously causes that traffic jam and then traffic gets

backed up for miles and then cuz then nothing better to do now the emergency responders

take two cars and they smashed together into an accident.

And I hope you know I'm kidding but that's how crazy it gets when we confuse association

with cause and effect and when it comes to the law book about how the body works there

is no confusion.

There is no association there is cause and effect and it starts with increased carbohydrates

that causes increased insulin.

Insulin spikes which causes fat sparing, which means you can't get to your energy stores

which causes your body to prefer to go and look for new food which causes hunger which

makes you eat more and then that insulin makes you burn less and you're stuck in that loop

as long as insulin is high.

So knowing what the law book says then we would expect the official guidelines that

everyone agrees on to have food that does not stimulate insulin, right?

That's what we would expect.

So they tell us to eat fruit plenty of fruit 2 cups of fruit gives you 69 grams of carb

57 g of sugar so much fructose and glucose etc and I've use the Imperial US units over

here and the standard international units over there.

I'm not going to read all these you can go back and look at them they want you to eat

so much legumes and so much starchy vegetables and 6 oz of whole grain and processed grain

and they say at least half should be whole grain but as you can see there very little

difference in the sugar impact.

They tell you to eat 3 cups of dairy and it should be low-fat or nonfat and of course

this dairy contains all the sugar but they take out this thing that could slow it down

the fat would reduce that insulin response a little bit and then you can have up to 50

grams of added sugar to maintain a normal balanced lifestyle the recommendations I would

back knowing what we now know about insulin.

So when we add it all up we hear that they recommend 270 grams of carbs which includes

170 g of sugar 62 grams of those are fructose which I'm not going to get into a lot in this

video but basically fructose has low glycemic index with does not stimulate insulin but

it's worse because it is basically toxic to the liver it works very much like alcohol

on the liver which promotes insulin resistant even more than any other carbohydrate.

But all of the carbs that are not fructose are going to eventually turn into glucose

and stimulate insulin.

So we have 208 grams of things that either are glucose are going to become glucose and

I know what you're thinking it can't be that bad right surely you're fudging the numbers

you're pushing them just a little bit to make a point and I wish that was so.

If you eat 270 grams of carbs on a 2000 calorie diet that's 54% and they recommend up to sixty-five

percent of carbohydrates so if we just use the number of 60 which is typical recommendation,

that would be 300 grams of carbohydrates So now that we understand Guyton and insulin

a little bit better it seems that not only are the official recommendations inappropriate,

but they probably couldn't get worse if they tried to make them bad on purpose.

So if we visually illustrate the standard American diet and then we compare it to a

diet that they use for lab rats to make them fat on purpose then it seems like the obesogenic

rat chow is not quite as bad as the standard American diet because the thing that causes

this insulin and fat storage is actually even higher in the standard American diet.

So we started out saying that overweight people are usually considered guilty as charged but

now it seems like it's actually the guidelines that are guilty as charged, because the guidelines

fail on every point when it comes to calories in calories out.

That's not how it works because it's about how the foods trigger different hormones not

about the number of calories because the body does different things with the fuel based

on which hormones and how much of those hormones are triggered.

We also see that it's not about gluttony it's not about poor character because food becomes

a drug.

It's every bit as addictive as cocaine or heroin or anything else when we trigger powerful

hormones that make us eat more.

And it's not even about exercise even though I will never miss an opportunity to recommend

exercise because there's nothing the body that works the way it's supposed to without

exercise, it's still not the way that you're going to lose weight.

It's still not the reason why I overweight people stay overweight it's because the insulin

resistance prevents fat burning and it's because most of the insulin resistance is a result

and associated with a fatty liver and we're not going to pull fat out of the liver with

exercise.

And as if that wasn't enough the ultimate fail is to assume that what works for one

person is going to work for another person.

I can't tell you how many times I hear people say that - Oh but I do this and I'm not overweight

it's not what you're saying.

Or someone says - Oh this is easy.

I just stopped drinking soda and I lost 60 pounds.

I don't know why these other people are failing they must be lazy and have no character.

But it's different that when you have stubborn weight when you have become insulin-resistant

when you either have a genetic predisposition or if you have broken down your tolerance

over many many years and you have stubborn weight, the rules have changed.

They’re completely different rules.

The diet and lifestyle that's going to maintain health for this person is not going to reverse

the condition for that person.

We just have to understand that it's different so one person could eat 50 grams and that

would be too much and another person could eat 500 and they're totally fine at least

for many many years.

I probably ate 1000 grams of carbs and a lot of it was junk for a long long time but that

was at that level of activity at that point in my life it wasn't healthy.

I had all sorts of other problems but I didn't get overweight.

I didn't become insulin-resistant.

I probably would have if I'd kept it up.

If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one.

And if you truly want to 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.