7 Habits To Lose Weight and Finally Keep It Off For Good with Chef AJ

all right thank you so much for joining us today we have an action-packed another action-packed webinar with none other than the legend chef aj chef aj how you doing today i'm great how are you cyrus happy new year and happy new year to everyone happy new year to you too uh we have a packed house here today uh already in the first 15 seconds there are more than one and a half thousand people in the room not to make you nervous there's just a lot of people who really like you no pressure there that's bigger than my entire high school was my gut tells me that by at peak we're probably gonna have i think we're gonna have four and a half thousand people here today we had over 26 000 people register for this webinar and that's uh the most in the history of the world so uh we're gonna have a lot of fun today here um and and the reason for that is because uh chef aj is not only a phenomenal personality but she's incredibly informative and she gives us a lot of really good information here today we're going to be talking about sustainable weight loss and how you can use a plant-based diet to not only lose weight today but also keep that weight off into the future chef aj always offers up loads of uh of helpful information and tips because she herself has also lost a ton of weight over the past and uh so that's why if you are really interested in remembering this information do us a favor and get out a pen and a and a pad of paper and have it ready so that you can write a bunch of stuff down today because trust me when i say you're probably going to forget about 80 of what she says but if you write things down then you can increase that and remember it into the future uh now chef aj herself has been devoted to a plant-based diet for more than 43 years that's just a couple more years and i've been alive that's really impressive she's a television host she's a chef she's a culinary instructor and she's a professional speaker she's also the author of several popular books and she's the creator of the ultimate weight loss program that has helped hundreds of people achieve the health that they deserve today she's here to share her extensive knowledge about weight loss strategies and how plant-based nutrition and other lifestyle changes can help you achieve long-lasting that's the key long lasting weight loss not just weight loss today and then a yo-yo tomorrow we're talking about long-lasting weight loss into the future uh so we're she's going to teach us a couple of things here okay ready number one seven key habits for continued weight loss success which is awesome uh which specific foods keep you feeling full and satisfied while eating fewer calories now that's kind of a an aha moment that i know a lot of people have when they're thinking about weight loss because the traditional weight loss industry tells you that you have to calorie restrict and that you have to portion restrict and you have to eat smaller and smaller and smaller amounts of food chef aid is going to teach you that you can eat larger and larger and larger amounts of food and actually feel full and lose weight at the same time she'll teach you exactly what to eat what not to eat and teach you exactly how you can lose weight without counting a single calorie you do not have to count calories and i know it may sound strange and impossible but trust me chef aj knows at all and then last but not least she's going to teach you how to set up your environment for sustainable weight loss okay your environment is very very important and she's going to teach you everything you want to know about that so uh just a couple of ground rules here if you have a specific question that you'd like chef aj to answer okay we're gonna have a q a uh session at the very end of this webinar um please do us a favor and write your session your question in the q a box that you'll see at the bottom of your zoom screen the we have a whole team in the background that's going to be fielding as many questions as possible and when we get to the q a section we're going to try and get to as many of these questions as possible in in the time frame um but before we go any further in the chat box please uh give me a number okay if you are currently a plant-based eater meaning that the majority of the plant of the food that you eat in your diet comes from plants put the number one in the chat box if you are not a plant-based eater and you the majority of your food comes from not plants write the number two and if you're somewhere in between give me like a 1.5 okay i'm just trying to get a gauge here for approximately how many of you claim to be plant-based and how many of you uh are maybe not plant-based yet but are interested in doing so and from what i can see let me just increase my screen here i'm seeing mainly ones lots and lots and lots of ones and then there's a whole bunch of 1.25s coming in a bunch of 1.5s and wow these numbers are coming in pretty fast lots of one point fives and twos one point fives one one one one so i can't really do math in my head this quickly but my gut tells me that most of the people here are like one 1.3s 1.4 is 1.5 okay so we're sort of like you know trending towards plant-based but maybe not fully plant-based and that's totally fine because again there's no requirement to have to be fully plant-based but chef aj's going to teach you why you would even want to try it in the first place so for those of you who don't know me my name is cyrus cambada i have a phd in nutritional biochemistry i've been living with type 1 diabetes myself for the past 18 years at this point and i transitioned to a low-fat plant-based whole food diet exactly the way that chef aj is going to describe back in 2003 when it was not cool it was way before anybody knew any really solid evidence-based information about plant-based diets since that time i've been able to take full control of my health and lower my insulin requirements and get much better blood glucose control and i've gone on to teach a bunch of people how to do that in our mastering diabetes coaching program so i'm going to be your host here tonight and i'm going to be running the mc on the on the back end and i just want to make sure that chef aj here has an opportunity to share her wisdom because trust me when i say she's got a lot so chef aj uh how many people do you think are here right now well it says 3k you can see it 3k yeah right awesome so did i misquote anything is everything that i said uh everything everything i think i think i can do what you said okay cool cool all right i'm pretty excited about this too so um before we turn it over to you i just want to put in i just want to say one thing here so what i'm gonna do is i'm going to uh share my screen and i'm going to can you see this screen right here it says forks over knives yeah okay cool so um what i want to talk to you real quickly about the fork server knives team um i know the folks over at the fork server knife team extremely well and their main goal is to make whole food plant-based eating very easy and enjoyable and accessible to everyone okay they want to see all of you living healthy and happy lives it's what they do and it's what they live for every single day they have a ton of products and services that they have developed specifically for this purpose now some of my favorite products from the forks over knives team are their salad dressings i don't know if you guys have actually seen these style dresses before but trust me when i say they are delicious they have a variety of flavors and they are not only delicious but they're very convenient and it's a simple way to get all the flavor of homemade salad dressing with extremely healthy ingredients i think some of you may have tried these dressings before and you know exactly how amazing they are but if you haven't tried them before trust me when i say you might want to get your hands on these okay every single one of these salad dressings is free of added oils made in the usa by a small batch manufacturer from recipes created specifically from the forks over knives team and in conjunction with them they contain high quality all-natural ingredients 100 all natural high quality ingredients and they are beautifully presented and they feature some of the best flavors to complement any salad or any meal including orange sesame that you see on the screen right here balsamic fig this one's tasty trust me when i say that and then creamy italian and there's a fresh new batch of all of these dressing flavors available right now so what you can do is head on over to the forks over knives online store to grab some of these dressings and while you're there you can also pick up the latest version of the forks over knives magazine this winter 2021 edition was just released and trust me when i say it's an incredible magazine and i really really really do mean that this specific issue is packed with pages of expert tips of practical advice of inspiring success stories and yes 72 recipes in one no i'm sorry 78 recipes inside of one magazine and they teach you things like how to make a quick five ingredient pasta dinner plant-based versions of southern food and bed the best veggie burger recipes that you can find anywhere uh and coming later this month is going to be a special issue that offers the 100 best recipes from forks over knives chef aj are you ready to rock and roll you betcha awesome so i'll hand it over to you feel free to uh share your screen and then um you can take control all righty let me just get this in the right view perfect there we have it perfect well thank you so much cyrus for that wonderful introduction and thank you so much to forks over nice for always doing these free webinars and giving me the honor to host it i did one last year by the way and if you want to really learn more about calorie density that cyrus mentioned that is on the forks over knives youtube page that might be a good one to check out as well and thank you all so much for being here i hope that your new year has gotten off to a very healthy and happy start so today i'm going to talk about seven habits to lose weight and finally keep it off for good and this does not involve counting calories weighing and measuring your food on a plate eating thimble-sized portions of food no excessive exercise no pills potions procedures and that sounds good to you you're in the right place [Music] last week i heard my friend dr doug lyle who is the co-author of the pleasure trap give a presentation and he said that weight loss is the number one personal goal at least in the western world if you don't believe me just go to any supermarket and look at what's on the cover of just about every magazine it's always the latest diet fad you know they've actually surveyed people in the united states and asked them would they rather be thin or rich and believe it or not the majority of people said then it's evidenced by the fact that just last year alone americans spent over 72 billion dollars for weight loss products and weight loss programs yet over 90 percent of diets fail now depending on who you talk to this number could be even higher oops how the heck did that happen excuse me this number could be even higher most people that lose weight through a great deal of suffering and deprivation gain it all back usually within two years and the thing is is if what you're doing isn't sustainable the results won't be permanent and one thing that i found that is completely sustainable and unparalleled for both weight loss and weight maintenance is a low fat whole food plant-based diet and it's also really delicious so what is highly successful well in my opinion a highly successful program that enables you to lose weight is one that is really one that is going to promote your health first and foremost that enables you to eat enough delicious and nutritious food that you'll feel satisfied that you'll want to stay on that eating plan and it also enables you to easily maintain the weight that you've lost without counting calories carbs points weighing and measuring your food the rest of your life or doing an inordinate amount of exercise so who am i to make all these bold claims well as cyrus had mentioned i have been following a planned exclusive diet for nearly 44 years excuse me i've written four books including the bestseller the secrets to ultimate weight loss i had a tv show called the healthy living with chef aj and i had the privilege to be a speaker and share the stage with many of the prominent people in the plant-based world if you see the middle slide there's dr greger and dr kim williams we were speaking at one of the mcdougall conferences and i also have the joy of hosting the truth about weight loss summit now in its third year and as you can see some of the before and after pictures i've helped lots of people lose lots of weight [Music] and my first client was myself you know i was obese for over 50 years of my life i first became fat at the age of five and by the age of 11 i weighed 160 pounds and at that time i was not yet even 5 feet tall this is a picture of me from 1987 when i was 27 years old on the tonight show with johnny carson you can find that on my youtube page if you'd like to see my act i've been dabbling in comedy on and off for many years and in that time i weighed believe it or not close to 200 pounds and i'm only 5 feet 5 inches tall [Music] so i grew up with suffering from obesity and failed diets you know my great-grandmother she had both of her legs amputated due to type 2 diabetes my grandmother who was also obese had diabetes and nearly lost her sight my mother was morbidly obese and all the women in my family most of the men too died at a very early age from complications due to obesity [Music] i first became vegan in 1977 for ethical reasons and by the time i was 43 years old weighing almost 200 pounds i had a cancer scare i was diagnosed with edematous polyps in my sigmoid colon i was bleeding internally these are the kind of polyps that if not removed always turn to cancer now i had been vegan for 26 years but i wasn't following a low-fat whole food plant-based diet i was following a junk food vegan diet and this is when i had my wake-up call and really changed my diet for the health-promoting one that i eat today and that i'm going to tell you about right shortly before i turned 51 years old i went to the true north health center in santa rosa california and met two of the secret weapons when it comes to weight loss dr doug lyle and dr alan goldhamer the co-authors of the pleasure trap dr lyle was also in the movie forks overnight as you may remember and dr lyle assured me that the reason that i was obese was not because i had emotional problems but because i had math problems and he sat me down and explained calorie density to me and dr goldhamer lectured about that quite a bit during my stay at the true north health center the picture on the left was taken in night in 2003 when i was 43 years old i weighed 165 pounds i'm wearing a brown shirt standing next to an 800 pound brown cow i'm the one on the right the picture on the right was taken in 2013 when i was 53 years old and weighed 127 pounds and now 8 years later i've maintained that weight probably about 10 pounds even leaner and i've done it really without suffering or deprivation and it's been quite delicious but more important than that i've had the privilege now to work with thousands of clients to help them gain both the health and the body that they so richly deserve and today i'm going to talk about the seven habits of highly successful losers in reality they're really the biggest winners but by losers i mean the people that have lost the weight and kept it off because after studying them i've noticed that there were some characteristics that they seem to have in common and i'm going to share these with you now doesn't mean you have to do all of them but see if any of them resonate with you and this might be something that you can put in your tool belt the next time you try to lose weight [Music] so the first habit that i've noticed that all the biggest losers have in common is they eat rather simply and simply doesn't mean boring i'm not saying that you have to eat broccoli and sweet potatoes every day for the rest of your life although dr mcdougall just said last week on a talk that you could do that and be perfectly healthy but by eating simply what i'm actually talking about is limiting variety now that doesn't mean limiting variety from meal to meal but per meal now how many out here watching today eat 30 different breakfasts 30 different lunches and 30 different dinners let's face it most people find their favorites whether they're healthy or not and repeat them over and over and that seems to work beautifully for weight loss and weight management and also it's a very simple way to eat and it makes the food prep much easier but the reason we say to limit variety per meal is because of this notion that was coined by dr barbara rolls who will meet later in this presentation called sensory specific satiety and what dr rolls discovered is that the more choices you offer yourself per meal the more you're likely to overeat because variety encourages overeating think about it have you ever gone to a buffet or cruise the more choices that you afford yourself the more you're going to find yourself eating think about thanksgiving many of us are stuffed to the gills and we can't eat another bite until that pumpkin pie comes out with sensory specific satiety that means you can actually lose your appetite for one food but then continue appetite for another food what this means is that per meal don't unlock don't allow yourself limited choices and especially if you are someone who suffers with food addiction variety actually can be the kiss of death so eating simply has been a tool that many of my clients have successfully used find your favorites and repeat them often but realize that even within the plant kingdom the variety is endless in the legume category there's over 18 000 different kinds there's 4 000 different kinds of sweet potatoes so looking at a bowl like that you can vary the grain the green the vegetable the sauce and so in a way the variety can be unlimited my clients that have been successful also eat minimally processed food you know americans eat over 92 percent of their calories from animal products and processed food and less than 10 percent from fruits and vegetables the people that have been successful losing weight and keeping it off are eating whole foods in their whole form with the fiber and water attack attached not eating these ultra processed ultra refined foods that have no fiber and have no water because when you have fiber in a food and you have water in a food like in whole plants fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes fiber and water together create what is known as bulk bulk is what creates satiety imagine like a sponge in water expanding and that's what creates fullness which allows you to feel full on fewer calories animal products and processed food have no fiber they have no water so they contribute very little to satiety and are not very good for weight loss i don't know if you're familiar with michael moss who is an investigative journalist and pulitzer prize winning author who wrote a book called salt sugar and fat how the food giants hooked us but what he talked about is how sugar is addictive fats addictive and salts addictive and when they are put together in foods like in restaurant food and processed food in a process called layering and loading they create a bliss point in the brain of the consumer that makes it almost impossible not to overeat if you think about it sugar fat and salt are not found in nature at least not in any concentrated form and they're never found together in the same food so when we use a lot of sugar fat and salt it causes us to overeat and that makes it very difficult for us to lose weight so instead of eating prepackaged processed food eat ingredients and by that i mean pretty much anything that you can find in the produce aisle if it comes from a plant eat it if it's manufactured in a plant don't eat it and remember that variety does make us overeat so if you want variety have variety from meal to meal rather than within a single meal and you'll find you are much less likely to overeat and when you do that it makes it much easier to lose weight now if you want variety forks overnights has you covered because they have the best meal plan i have it i use it the recipes are outstanding there's a wide variety suitable for every age and every palette and it makes shopping easy it takes the guesswork out of what you're going to have for dinner so especially if you're somebody that doesn't want to eat sweet potatoes and broccoli every meal consider giving that a try so the second habit that many of my successful clients have in common is that they're getting most of their calories from starches veggies and fruits as i recently mentioned most americans get most of their calories from animal products and processed food and very little from fruits and vegetables now fruits and vegetables are the healthiest foods on the planet and we want you to eat as many of them as possible they're the foods highest in nutrient density and lowest in calorie density but if that's all you eat you're probably going to be pretty hungry because they are so low in calorie density people think oh i'm just going to eat a salad and i'm going to be good well the thing is it's not going to fill you up because fruits and vegetables are mostly water yes they have fiber and vitamins minerals phytochemicals antioxidants and micronutrients but fruits and vegetables are mostly water and while very healthy they don't create the kind of satiety that the starches are now people say oh i can't eat starch i can't eat carbs carbs make you fat well if they're processed and refined carbs like sugar flour and alcohol you're absolutely right but these unrefined complex carbohydrates found in nature in their whole food form like potatoes sweet potatoes all the wonderful whole grains like quinoa tef millet amaranth oats corn all the legumes like beans split peas and lentils and all the wonderful winter squashes like butternut acorn hubbard delicata kabocha squash these foods are extremely low in calorie density yes a little bit higher than the fruits and vegetables but they have a moderate range of caloric density especially when compared to animal products and processed food in high fat plant foods like nut seeds and avocado that most people can eat these ad libitum as much as they want as often as they want until they're comfortably full or satisfied the problem is when you eat only fruits and vegetables you don't have satiety you may have your calories low but if you don't feel full you're eventually going to get hungry and then you're going to overeat and it's not usually on the right foods so we want the starch to be at least 50 of our calories sometimes even more 50 60 70 80 dr mcdougall would say 90. but anytime you eat food just make sure that half the plate is starch again unprocessed starch and not with butter or cheese or oil on it and half of vegetables and that is really the way that you can successfully lose weight with a full plate and how do we know this well now i want to introduce you to dr barbara roll she's an upcoming speaker on the truth about weight loss summit and she has a laboratory at penn state university where she studies human eating behavior and she's done more research on the field of calorie density than any other human being alive first you need to know that your stomach is lined with these receptors you actually have three kinds of receptors stretch receptors nutrient receptors and calorie receptors and this is what's going to tell you whether or not you feel full the problem with most diets is they ask you to eat less food and that makes about as much sense as asking you to breathe less oxygen you can only do that for so long without becoming extremely uncomfortable you want to activate your mechanisms of satiety to stretch nutrient calorie receptors but do it in a way that you can actually reduce your calories without noticing without feeling hungry well how do you do that well thanks to barbara rolls she discovered in her laboratory at penn state where she studies human eating behavior that human beings eat the same amount of food per day by weight now that doesn't mean that i ate the same amount as patrick barbubian who's the strongest man in the world who happens to be vegan but that most of us consistently eat three to five pounds of food a day the problem with traditional diets where they ask you to weigh and measure your food or count calories is that you're eating less food that your body requires and desires so what we want to do is keep the amount of food constant three to five pounds of food a day but change the overall caloric density of that food so that we can actually in some cases eat twice as much food yet take in half as many calories and so that is how we can go from empty to full without consuming too many calories by understanding and employing the principle of calorie density calorie density simply means calories per pound of food and what's important here is that food varies in caloric density and by a 40-fold difference now caloric density isn't counting calories you don't have to memorize how many calories and a couple of blueberries or a half a cup of rice you just have to know the average calorie density of a few favor of a few different food groups and you have to know this magic number of 567 calories per pound because if you eat food that on average has no more than 567 calories per pound you will lose weight and you can still eat until you're comfortably full satiated and satisfied each time as i mentioned there's a 40-fold difference in the caloric density of food with non-starchy vegetables like greens being the food lowest in caloric density also very high in nutrient density these have only about 100 calories per pound and they're loaded with fiber and vitamins and minerals and water and at the other end of the spectrum we have i don't even really think this is a food but olive oil any kind of oil for that matter any refined or processed oil 4 000 calories a pound a 40 fold difference in the caloric density of food so hopefully you can see simply by making some swaps and changing the caloric density of the foods you're eating you would be able to lose weight you know for the same amount of calories in two tablespoons of olive oil which really isn't very much and if you're eating at restaurants a lot believe me you're getting at least two tablespoons of olive oil you could have four pounds of zucchini four pounds now what do you think is going to fill you up more so as i mentioned last year i had the privilege of giving a forks over knives webinar on calorie density where i really delved into this that is still available on youtube if you'd like to brush up on it or learn more about it but here's the calorie density chart that i'm referring to this red line is something that i came up with when i was trying to explain to clients what they could eat and keep it very simple and it corroborates with the research that 567 calories per pound is the magic number because the foods to the left of the red line are all the whole plant foods found in nature fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes and of these you can really can freely eat the foods to the right of thread line the ones in red these are either animal products or processed food these are not found in nature they are of a very very high caloric density they don't have water they don't have fiber which means they don't contribute to satiety and they have no vitamins minerals phytochemicals or antioxidants the foods in purple are very very healthful foods these are the high fat plant foods but they are extremely calorically dense and for some people including them in anything but small amounts makes it very difficult for them to lose weight and maintain that weight loss when you eat calories are important but the other thing that's really important is satiety because you could stuff yourself with iceberg lettuce all day and you could feel mechanically full but you won't feel satiated and that's why i don't recommend just eating fruits and vegetables why starch is important because you need to feel satiated in order to stop eating well there was another doctor at sydney university named dr susannah holt who developed what's known as the satiety index where she tested the effect on hunger on a variety of different foods and guess what food created the most satiety well it's one of my favorite foods and that would be the potatoes and before you say potatoes or fattening i'd like to refer you to people that have ate nothing but potatoes for a year and lost tremendous amounts of weight like andrew spud fit taylor who after a year of eating only potatoes lost 120 pounds and reversed his food addiction and depression but you have to realize that what you eat has to fill you up or else you won't be able to stop eating [Music] the thing that's great about these carbs these complex carbs the starches is there like an hourglass and they release their energy slowly over time i've often heard dr mcdougall say that starch is to the hunger drive what oxygen is to the breathing drive the other secret is again to have everything you eat have fiber and have the fiber intact because fiber keeps you full longer and it doesn't contribute to calories you know fiber is important to every single bodily process it helps flush out toxins it binds to waste material like cholesterol it actually tricks the brain into thinking it's full on fewer calories it makes you regular but where weight loss is concerned it really is the magic bullet because it is what keeps you full and again if you're eating 92 percent of calories from animal products and processed food you're getting very little fiber and believe it or not only three percent of americans even get enough fiber [Music] i want to talk a little bit about the blue zones for a minute because i learned something really interesting when i recently interviewed dan buettner who studied the blue zones and that they eat savory breakfasts if you're familiar at all with my work you know that for the last 10 years i've been suggesting to people to eat vegetables for breakfast and people thought i was crazy but then i find out from dan buettner that blue zones actually eat savory breakfast and most people and parts of the world that don't suffer from the obesity and disease rates that we have in the united states actually eat savory breakfast now if you're somebody that struggles with food addiction particularly sugar addiction this might be a strategy you'd like to try because when you start your day in a savory way you really can set yourself up for success by not having those sweet cravings by starting the day with something sweet you know most americans 67 percent in fact start their day with boxed cereal which is basically like sugar and flour in a box the box is probably the healthiest part because that's where all the fiber is it's not that you can only eat vegetables for breakfast i just recommend that you eat them as part of your breakfast with your starch actually is part of every meal so another great strategy for losing weight and keeping it off is without weighing and measuring your food but just visually noticing that every plate of food you eat is half starch and half non-starchy vegetables because the vegetables will dilute the overall caloric density of the meal give you all the nutrients you need with one extra bonus and i found this out quite by accident when i started my ultimate weight loss program 10 years i would tell the participants to eat vegetables for breakfast not knowing really until dr greger's book how not to diet came out that the reason these were so successful was because of a compound called thylakoids thylakoids are found in the dark green leafy vegetables and they actually turn off the hunger switch fight cravings for things like sugar and they actually block fat absorption so if you start your day with a dose of thylakoids you're setting yourself up for success [Music] so the third habit that i've noticed that many of my successful have clients have in common is they tend to avoid restaurants now that does not mean you can never ever eat in a restaurant again but you have to really understand the situation and kind of almost be an investigative journalist before you go to a restaurant i was a restaurant chef in los angeles for many years so i know what goes into a restaurant meal and i'm going to tell you that restaurants use more sugar fat and salt than you ever would use at home now maybe you can get a compliant meal someplace but the truth of the matter is is restaurants don't make your food to order they prep your food to order they assemble your food to order everything is done well in advance of you ever arriving there's these big pots of boiling water that already have the oil and salt in them that they're using to blanch your vegetables and cook your pasta the grill even if you say no oil is already smothered with oil all the cookware has residual oil it's really hard to get a meal that's free of oil let alone salt in a restaurant i know there may be exceptions and there's actually things you can do to increase your chances and i actually do a whole webinar in this and have a chapter in my book about that but you have to know that restaurant meals are not necessarily going to help you lose weight and keep it off and one of the reasons i really firmly believe this now is that since the pandemic this has been the first time that many of my clients have ever been able to lose weight and that is because they're not eating at restaurants anymore dr susan roberts at tough university is one of the experts on the truth about weight loss summit said that 92 percent of the meals that we eat at a restaurant contain more energy than most of us need at a single meal she talked about how her lab is right across the street from multiple restaurants and how she would get restaurant food and she was able to completely analyze how many calories and how many grams of fat were in these meals and she said the average restaurant meal because of the large portion sizes especially today have something like 1500 calories and she said when people eat a meal that big 500 to 1000 calories more than they need she says they don't compensate for it the next day by eating 500 to 1000 calories less which is why restaurant eating can really pack on the pounds i want to give you an example of what 2 000 calories can get you in many restaurants and this is from the new york times this is chipotle i don't know what restaurant this is uh this looks like panera [Music] sonic but what about a vegan restaurant you're asking me that must be a healthier choice while it's definitely healthier for the plant and the animals but not necessarily for your waistline this by the way if the restaurant has at least three locations they're required to put their nutritional information online so you can take a look at really what you're eating many people would think wow kale quinoa power salad that's got to be a great choice but if you've ever seen it first of all it's not very big but second of all this salad has over 500 calories 25 grams of fat two and a half of them saturated fat and over 1300 milligrams of sodium i think what a lot of people don't realize when they eat at restaurants is what i call the forgotten 500 calories they've done studies using oil and not using oil to to see if people had different levels of satiety so what they did is they made a meal of pasta cream of air and they made it the way i would make it where you have pasta that's not boiled in water there's no oil added after it comes out that's what restaurants usually do by the way they glug glug like it after they take it out of the water which already had oil the marinara was oil free and the vegetables didn't have any oil or butter so they had this nice plate of food that was a pasta prime of era made without oil they made an identical version with oil the way they normally would at a restaurant by putting the oil in the water of the pasta on the pasta when it comes out on the vegetables and also in the marinara sauce identical plates of food visually by weight but one had 500 calories more no one could ascertain any more fullness by eating 500 calories that's what happens when you eat at restaurants and when you eat oil because oil is insidious it slips under the radar undetected by your mechanisms of satiety because it can't activate the nutrient receptors because there's no nutrients in oil it can't activate the stretch receptors because there's there's no there's not enough volume and you would have to eat an unthinkable amount before it could even activate your calorie receptors and so you don't feel any fuller from eating 500 calories when they come from oil and that's why cutting down on the restaurants maybe even eliminating them for a while can really help whittle the waistline [Music] so these are the kind of foods i eat and not a single one of these has even 500 calories in it and you can see by the picture in the middle where i'm on the cruise that was just my first plate of food and that wasn't anywhere near 500 calories and i had more than one plate [Music] so the next habit that my successful clients have had in common is practicing some form of abstinence abstinence basically means that they have found the things in their life whether it was a food or a drug or a habit that just didn't work for them and they stopped doing it they abstained from doing it and this is going to be a very individual thing and this is where it's really just important to know yourself you know i have been saying since day one do the least restrictive diet that you can do but that will give you the results you seek and for some people including certain foods even in small amounts just derailed their success you know we've known for a very long time that sugar is more addictive in studies than either cocaine or heroin it lights up the same parts of the brain because it actually abuses the reward center of the brain sugar's also very high in caloric density 1800 calories a pound no fiber no water you know the beets that it was made from were only 195 calories a pound but research is showing that for many people especially people that are vulnerable to the effects of refined food addiction that flour does the same thing flour again is a highly processed food where the fiber has been disrupted or stripped or destroyed or removed flour is about 1500 calories a pound which is triple the caloric density of the whole grain from which it was made but the problem with sugar and flour for those that are susceptible is that it goes through the same refining process as drugs and alcohol and for those people these are these create an addictive like response so for some people they find when they abstain from these foods they have a much easier time losing weight and keeping it off and not constantly teasing themselves with these pleasure trap foods if you remember this commercial i believe it was from the 70s laced potato chips bet you can't eat just one well you can't and if you can't there's nothing wrong with you you know you're genetically hardwired to prefer the most concentrated source of calories for survival and the processed food industry knew this and they manufactured these food science experiments really so that the average person when they eat them would get a mild level of addiction get that bliss point in their brain continue with the hedonic eating and continue to buy the product and again i'm not making this up folks you can look in the medical literature yourself there are thousands now of articles showing how for example that people addicted to fat can alter the brain as much as hard drugs can that salt is linked to drug addiction and this goes on and on with sugar fat and salt now a lot of people think if they're going to abstain from their favorite foods it's going to be very difficult it's it's it's not going to be enjoyable but for the people that are able to do this i always say that abstinence is freedom and it's actually bliss because let's face it we live in a world now at least in the united states where over 70 percent of the people are overweight and 40 percent are obese and it's just getting worse if moderation works it certainly doesn't work for people that have addictions and i love how my good friend dr caldwell b esselstyn jr says moderation actually kills you know there's an old saying that 100 is actually often easier than 99 and that complete abstinence actually can be easier than perfect moderation so what should we stay away from well we know what we want to eat fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes for sure in unlimited varieties and combinations without things like oil and animal products but what should we abstain from if we're struggling losing weight and keeping it off well again this is going to be a very individual thing but i always say to people when in doubt leave it out you can always do an experiment by not having something for three weeks or a month and see how it does for you now if you have cravings and you feel like you can't be without it that's kind of a clue that maybe it isn't an addictive like process for you you know what they say if it walks like a duck quacks like duck is probably a duck but with the people i work with i recommend they stay away from the sofas and sofas is an acronym for sugar oil flour alcohol and salt and i always say if you want to lose weight keep it off and be healthy get off the sofas both literally and figuratively so we'll take the first four letters first sugar oil flour alcohol well first of all these are not whole foods these are highly processed foods that have never been found in nature before and they're also very calorically dense which means that even if they were health promoting which i don't believe they are it will be very difficult for the average person to lose weight including them in any measurable amount they're also really not food dr ellen goldhamer would tell you that all of the sofas are actually chemicals that we add to the food that actually fool our brain satiety mechanisms and cause us to overeat and the last thing we want to do if we're trying to lose weight is to be artificially stimulated to overeat well what about salt you say salt has no calories yes that's true but salt is a very very powerful appetite stimulant and the research shows that it contributes to what's known as passive overeating that when you salt your food you actually end up eating about 11 more calories and those calories usually come from fat so i recommend that people that really are having a hard time losing weight and keep it off do an experiment for three weeks maybe 30 days and see if you can eliminate all the sofas or at least greatly minimize them definitely you want to get rid of the oil at 4 000 calories a pound i don't know anybody who's going to lose weight having oil in their diet plus we know it's not good for your overall health and cardiovascular health the other thing i recommend you stay away from are trigger foods and this is going to be a very individual thing but the way i define a trigger food is any food that once you start eating it you just can't stop you know what that's saying that commercial once you pop you just can't stop the interesting thing is trigger foods can actually be foods that are fairly healthy ezekiel bread for example it's not a terribly unhealthy food yes it is calorically dense compared to whole grains it's 1500 calories per pound as opposed to the whole grain which is 500 calories per pound but even things for some people like nut seeds and avocado which are very healthy food for them those can be trigger foods sometimes chocolate can be a trigger food for different people these are going to be different things but if there's any food that you absolutely can't stop eating once you start that you need to know this about yourself and that's why you have to know your limitations and what you can and can't have in the house or in your mouth and so you want to take a look at what your personal trigger foods are now gateway foods are a little bit different than sugar foods but what they can do is get you into using these sugar foods again so to give you an example of what a gateway food might be would be corn tortillas now corn tortillas are not really an unhealthy food they are a bit calorically dense compared to corn whole corn is 500 calories per pound tortillas are more than double the caloric density at 1100 calories per pound when you cut them into chips and bake them even without oil and salt they're now about 1800 calories a pound remember the water has been removed so anytime you remove water you decrease satiety you increase calorie density so baked chips may be a perfectly healthy food for some but for others the minute they have baked chips the next thing you know they're face down in a bowl of guacamole so you just need to be aware of what your personal triggers and gateway foods are and consider abstaining from them at least for some period of time to see if it does make a difference in your ability to lose weight and keep it off so another habit that my successful clients have in common are daily movement and you notice i say movement instead of exercise because it seems like nobody likes the e word now let me tell you about my relationship with moving or exercising i want you to walk away from this webinar knowing one thing that as long as you're breathing there's hope because i am 60 years old i did not lose weight until i was almost 52 years old and i didn't start exercising until i was almost 54 years old so there is always hope but what happened to me when i was almost 50 years old is i slept on a wet floor in an office building and i severely fractured my knee i was too fat to use the crutches that they gave me in the emergency room or the walker that they then tried to give me so i had to be in a wheelchair for four months and while i was in the wheelchair i was getting heavier and heavier and i had to have all my daily needs taken care of by my husband which was embarrassing and that's when i vowed that once i got out of this wheelchair i was once and for all going to do something about my weight but the thing is it took a while before the knee was well enough that i could walk let alone do any kind of exercise the first thing you have to know is you can't un outrun your mouth you can't outrun your knife and fork you know you can't just exercise on a bad diet and hope for great results but exercise can certainly supercharge a good diet [Music] you may be familiar with an article that came out a few years ago that was groundbreaking in the scientific american journal called the exercise paradox and what the research discovered is that exercise actually contributes negligibly to weight loss that you actually do not burn very many calories when you exercise so if that's the case why bother doing it at all well exercise is important for other reasons it's important for brain health bone health immune function cardiovascular health but where weight loss is concerned it can be really important especially where maintenance comes along because what exercise does is it increases your self-esteem and it also increases your willpower and when both of these things are high you have a greater chance of sticking to a healthy eating plan the other thing that's really cool about exercise is that it makes you look longer and leaner regardless of your weight and that if people have addictions exercise has actually been shown to rewire the brain that helps people manage their addictions and possibly even overcome them you know you can eat pretty healthy all day but still blow it at night with a 2 000 calorie binge but you can never undo the effects of having exercised so it's really an important habit to start now if you're like me and never exercise just start where you are even people in wheelchairs there are things that you can do and you'll learn this and the truth about weight loss summit things like isometric exercises there's always something that somebody at every level of ability or debility can do even just getting a pedometer or using your phone to track your steps on any given day and then maybe increase them by one step or ten percent steps every day i've seen dramatic changes in people just starting to get out and move if you don't like any exercise or if you're one of those people that don't like any vegetables you eat the vegetable you hate the least you do the exercise that you hate the least the thing is is once you do it you may actually start liking it especially when when you see what it does to impress your internal audience it makes you feel better you know exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicine it'll help you sleep better when you sleep better again your ability to stick to a healthy eating plan is increased and again it really does increase willpower and it also allows you to burn more calories even at rest so start somewhere maybe there was something you enjoyed doing when you were little go outside and play dance to music but start do something and just start where you're at another really important habit that my successful clients have in common is always being prepared i'm sure you've heard that saying about a boy scout always being prepared and that's really important when it comes to affecting permanent dietary and lifestyle change you know a lot of people say to me oh chef aj i just can't do what you did because i don't have your willpower well i don't have any more willpower than any of you i promise you but what i do have is excellent preparation skills i always batch cook and i always have healthy food ready because willpower depletes not only as the day goes on but every time you have to make a decision and guess what we're forced to make over 200 food decisions every day and so don't leave your success to chance have healthy food ready because if all you have is healthy food and it's prepared i promise you you'll eat it because preparation always trumps motivation [Music] i like this quote by dan dan buettner marcos borges who's a friend of dan buettner who's an expert in the upcoming truth about weight loss summit he says if you want to be the best at anything including the best version of yourself you have to have systems in place for success these symptoms are healthy habits and making sure you always have healthy food ready whether you travel whether you're going to work or school or at home that is going to make the biggest difference and if you don't want to you know make the food yourself it's not as expensive as you think to get somebody to batch cook for you there are now whole food oil-free meal delivery companies there's the forks over knives meal planner there's the forks over nice cooking class they've got you covered but you've got to find a way to make sure that healthy food is always there and it's always ready and that really has been my secret over the last 10 years to keeping my weight off plus this next one which is to create a clean environment now if you know me at all i'm kind of known for this saying if it's in your house it's in your mouth and if it's not a question of if you will eat it when now if you saw the movie forks over knives remember how they talked about how all organisms are looking to gain the most pleasure for the least amount of pain with the least amount of energy if you love junk food don't beat yourself up you're supposed to we're genetically hardwired to prefer the most concentrated source of calories for survival that's just what we're supposed to do because back in the day we didn't get enough food so anytime we saw higher calorie food we gorged on it to survive but now we have the opposite problem we're not we we have too much food it wasn't we're not struggling to survive there's a 7-11 on every corner most places are open 24 hours so you're programmed to seek the most concentrated source of calories for survival so if there's rich food in your house even if it's not your favorite flavor you're always going to be drawn to it it will always be calling your name and especially if you have a bad day even more so you know there's a neurotransmitter that's released in the brain anytime we have a pleasurable experience it's called dopamine and they talk about this in forks over nice food sex sex food well the more calorically concentrated the calories the more dopamine is released and so when you have high fat high calorie food in the house and you've had a bad day trust me you're gonna have your hand in the cookie jar or your knife in the peanut butter jar let me tell you about one of my first clients many years ago and her name is melanie i used to run the ultimate weight loss program in my home in los angeles there were 24 participants every month that would come four consecutive weekends for meals and education and at that time i would go and do home checks and remove all the non-compliant food in their house and put it in a big black hefty trash bag as i was cleaning out her house i found a one pound box of see's candy and she wouldn't let me throw it away and i said why not we can't have it in here we're doing the 30 day challenge she says well that's scotch and she goes i don't i don't like dark chocolate i don't even like that flavor and i said this is not a good idea well guess what happened the day that her dog died all of a sudden dark chocolate tasted pretty good to her even though it wasn't her favorite flavor when you're seeking that hidden dopamine they don't it doesn't matter if it's your favorite flavor or not you're always going to be drawn to the most calorically dense foods that are available in any environment that you are you have to understand that willpower is only required if you have to make a decision and when you have a clean environment there's no willpower necessary now if you don't believe me let me give you a few quotes from some of the experts in the plant-based world who also talk about the importance of sanitizing your environment one of the things that dr lyle has said for years is that we must work harder on our environment than we do ourself i love how dr carrie saunders says if you hang around a barber shop it's just a matter of time until you get a haircut and dr tom campbell the co-author of the china study who actually runs an obesity clinic in rochester new york says if you have temptation anywhere in your environment you will fail now i know this can be difficult for people but if you live alone it shouldn't be that hard but i understand that we often live with people that aren't following our dietary style so there's some negotiation that may have to go on and sometimes even a session with dr lyle can help set the other people straight but the thing is is the cleaner the environment you can create the easier time you'll have i always say that that the more your environment is clean the more likely you are to be lean so if you're living with people that refuse to support you and your health journey maybe you can separate your food get a separate refrigerator or cabinet sometimes even get one with a lock for their non-compliant food so that you don't always have to see it and be triggered by it explain to them that they can eat anywhere that they want but that this year you're really making an effort to work on your health and feel better and you'd really appreciate it if they ate the non-compliant food out of the house or at least don't offer it to you or eat it right in front of you there are ways that a cleaner environment can be negotiated but i have to tell you while i can't say that you won't succeed in an unclean environment i have never not seen anyone succeed in a clean environment if it's in your house it's in your mouth so these are seven of the habits of the people that i've worked with that have successfully lost weight and kept it off and i hope that you'll consider implementing some or all of them in the new year and i thank you so much for this opportunity for your attention and i am more than happy to answer any questions [Music] chef aj that was fantastic um you know i i feel like i've i've heard a similar talk from you many many many times but every single time i listen i learn more and more and more uh i had no idea that there were four 000 varieties of potatoes is that right i actually googled that the other day because we were talking about that and sweet potatoes at least who knows of when you can find sweet potatoes and other potatoes we could eat a different bean and potato every day for the rest of our life and never repeat how many how many total varieties of beans are there uh dr kerry saunders said 18 000 legumes so not just beans but the peas split peas and lentils 18 000 legumes that's unbelievable um i think what you know another thing that um we get asked all the time is you know is salt okay for me is salt's okay for me right because salt doesn't necessarily add calories itself but like you said adding salt to your food can actually increase your calorie intake by about 11 percent yeah i was blown away when dr alvarez i mean because i didn't just take her word for it i said i want when somebody says something they go show me you know show me the money show me the research and i read the article 11 can be significant especially if you're trying to lose weight oh it's massive i mean especially if that 11 is continued you know on a daily basis um that's the difference between eating you know 2 000 calories or 2 200 calories i mean and if you add extra 200 calories on a daily basis and that accumulates over the course of time before you know it you uh you know you've added extra weight right and i think that i think that's so there's like a yin yang effect and that when you eat salt guess what you want next you want sweet and so you know it can be difficult they say that giving up salt is harder for people than the oil or the sugar but once they neuro-adapt which can take about 30 days people can actually appreciate the taste of whole natural food even more and then when you eat things like celery or chard you're like gosh this is really salty it's very true i noticed that every single time myself now or what's even worse is that when you go back to eating something that is salty because you had you know a package of processed food it hits you immediately and you're like oh this is this is too much you know that's the other thing about restaurants is even if you can get a meal without oil it's pretty hard to get one without salt and it's not just that it's an appetite similar it causes a lot of times water retention and then people like they go on the scale and the scales up a couple pounds you didn't gain two pounds of fat you retain water from the salt and an interesting i learned at the uh gi health summit i didn't realize this but dr fuhrman said it actually dehydrates the bowel that it's that there's other reasons that salt isn't good for us other than with weight loss and food addiction that's not bad that's uh i like that idea here uh okay so we got a couple we got actually more than a couple we got lots of questions that came in while you were talking okay here's the first question from kelsey how do you deal with excess skin that comes from losing weight any idea yes yes so that's a great question kelsey everybody's going to deal with it differently it depends where the excess skin is you know i've had a lot of clients that have lost over 100 pounds and some of them have elected to have you know the skin surgery after they have known that they were keeping the weight off like they didn't just get to the last pound and then go next week they waited about two years to be sure that they were able to maintain it because you don't want to cut that skin off and they regain your weight but a lot of them said the surgery was very painful but that it was worth it and then some people just choose to live with it it really depends how much skin you have you know almost every plastic surgeon or cosmetic surgeon does free consults and so you can get that information make sure they're board certified of course there is clothing now that can help so for example if your loose skin were here they have it i don't know what it's called but it's like a bra for your arm so if you were wearing a shirt like this you people wouldn't see the the sagging skin of course they have things like spanx so this is gonna be a very individual thing but realize that loose skin is your battle scars it just shows that you're a hero for losing the weight so don't be ashamed of it be proud of it and choose to deal with it in whatever way you can but to me that's like a like if you have loose skin that's amazing i don't know of any way to avoid that because think about it you know you've stretched it out probably for many years it unfortunately it doesn't bounce back if you're younger if you've been exercising your whole life sometimes it bounces back a little bit but usually people that have lost 50 pounds or more will have some degree of loose skin for sure um here's a very good question actually uh how does caffeine affect weight loss that's so funny because i just interviewed dr scott stoll the speaker on that you know different people are going to be more susceptible to the effect of it you know realize caffeine is a drug it's a central nervous system stimulant so it doesn't affect weight loss necessarily directly but it can affect it indirectly because caffeine has a 17-hour half-life so that one cup of coffee or maybe more that you have in the morning can affect your ability to get deep sleep later at night and we all know what happens when you don't sleep well you don't you wake up you're not refreshed you're not exercising you end up hungrier i wish i could remember exactly what dr linda carney said about there was she didn't talk once 17 reasons that caffeine can make you fat it for a lot of people it causes sweet cravings later in the afternoon so i don't know if it's so much directly related to weight gain as say something like oil is but i don't think it's the best thing in the world in general i know there's a lot of plant-based doctors now that are saying it's good for your health for some reasons but you know talk to like people like dr goldhamer and let him tell you exactly what's wrong with caffeine central nervous nervous system stimulant it's a drug it's not a food you know it's highly processed with all kinds of chemicals and even decaffeinated coffee is about 25 caffeine so i just don't recommend it because i don't recommend any drugs because i think the abstinence and the freedom from not having to use an addictive substance every day it just feels amazing if you can do it that's absolutely true this is a phenomenal point i like this a lot um okay so here's a question then plant-based meats the impossible burger the beyond burger beyond meat burgers thoughts so as an ethical vegan i would much rather have people eat these than animals any day of the week but also as somebody who specializes in helping people get to their ideal body weight i really don't think any amount of processed food is going to help get you there again there's no fiber there's no water these things have lots of oil salt in them they're very calorically dense so while they're better for you than animals and they're certainly better for the animals i don't really consider them foods that are really going to be favorable for your long-term health goals and weight loss goals so maybe a treat now and then for somebody that won't uh if it's better than eating animals for sure but it's definitely not a weight loss food remember fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes and uh you know also it's too much salt so much salt very true very good that's a good point yeah there's some transition foods that can be useful in the transition towards the plant base the thing is is you know if you get the forks overnight's meal planner or even in my book we have recipes for burgers that don't that are made from like food that are delicious chipotle black bean burgers sweet potato burgers you know what you like about the burgers is the stuff you put on them it's not really the burger i mean if that was the case people would just eat the meat but people like the bun they like the condiments that's what people like and so you can still have all that but it doesn't have to be one of these highly processed foods valid point i like it a lot okay so here's another question about intermittent fasting what's your take on intermittent fasting because i think for a lot of people it can be there's a lot of people who report back like oh okay it's not a big deal all i have to do is you know 16 hours of intermittent fasting on a daily basis and then problem solved i can you know skip a meal and i can lose weight and then other people report back and they say well okay fine but psychologically it can be very challenging to extend your not eating or your fasting window to anything beyond about 12 hours or so yeah is intermittent fasting something you recommend or not again this is going to depend on the individual it's almost like you've read my mind who i've interviewed for the summit because for every question somebody on the summit answered this and we have a wonderful talk from dr pam peak about circadian rhythm intermittent fasting and it's first of all people that have had a history of discordant eating and eating disorders especially anorexia i don't recommend intermittent fasting for the this population but it doesn't always have to be 16 hours what she's recommending according to the research from people like walter longo is that sometimes even just 12 hours is enough and 12 hours of not eating should be doable for most people because what that would look like is maybe having breakfast at seven and finishing dinner by seven that is pretty reasonable especially if you're going to bed at 10 o'clock having a 12 hour feeding window and a 12 hour non-feeding window they say that the longer you're in a non-feeding state the better but here's the thing first of the thing one of the things i recommend is that nobody eat at night and this is very very bad for weight loss unless you're planning on running a marathon at midnight the research done at northwestern showed that food calories that were consumed after dinner even if they were within your caloric budget turn to fat so eating at night is not good for weight loss and it's not good for gi health i can tell you that three to five hours between swallowing your last bite of food and laying down but for some people if they can comfortably extend that window over 12 hours to maybe 14 or 16 that seems to help people lose weight because you know you're having less food never doing one meal a day i know that's not recommended but you can still if you're if your window is eight or ten hours you can still eat at least two if not three meals a day what i say to people is eat when you're hungry so if you wake up in the morning and you're hungry you should eat but if you're really not hungry don't just eat because the clock says it's time or because of habit wait till you're hungry and then you might find that you can play around with that window but i think for a lot of people just if they would just stop eating after dinner they would already be doing intermittent fasting without even trying perfect okay this is great yeah i think a lot of people you know myself included a lot of times you're sort of like oh i'm hungry i wonder what time it is and then you look at the clock you're like oh what a coincidence it's noon right and it's not necessarily that you are physically feeling physiologically hungry right it's just that there was a psychological trigger that was subconscious that said hey it's lunchtime it's noon it's 11 30. it's one o'clock and all of a sudden that subconscious trigger happened you look at the clock you go oh yeah i guess it's time to eat and then you start eating food even though physiologically you may not actually have a need for calories so i'm glad you you talked about that okay two questions for you travel number one cravings number two let's tackle them one by one uh how do you deal with eating a so fast free diet when you are traveling and when you're busy any ideas yeah well for me i always make myself the locus of control so what that means for me is that i always make sure that i have a kitchen or a makeshift kitchen i've always brought my instant pot when i travel i have a whole free webinar on my youtube page how to eat healthily anywhere always make sure that i have a microwave in my hotel room most hotels either have one or will rent you one for five dollars worst case scenario i've gone to walmart bought one for twenty dollars and at the end of my stay gifted it to the housekeeping staff but always have my instant pot where i can cook beans and rice and vegetables and potatoes that's how i've managed it and realized that up until the pandemic i was traveling to a different city every single week and and i was still able to make it work so that's what i had to do to to to keep up my good habits because i know how what a slippery slope it is once you start eating these kind of foods i've seen it over and over again with little steps missteps and relapses from people so i bring the food with me and if i were to plan a vacation i would plan a healthy vacation like rancho la puerta or going to true north or renting an airbnb rather than like and i've done it on the cruise too by the way i've managed to stay compliant on cruises so it can be done but it takes some planning and dedication and also what happens is a lot of people use vacations as an excuse to go off plan that's never a good idea if you're a food addict or somebody struggling with weight and so choose your va if you're going for business it's different if you're going for pleasure then maybe reframe what a pleasurable vacation is and maybe it's one that involves hiking or skiing instead of just you know eating yeah you know personally i've never really understood the idea of going on vacation and then sitting for a long period of time not doing anything and then just eating a bunch of food and drinking a bunch of alcohol and i know that's sort of like the traditional view of what it's called club med exactly but that's that's what vacationing means to a lot of people i think because in their in their typical life they're burned out right and they're working very hard and they're maintaining you know a full-time job plus a family and uh you know trying to maintain an active social life and then they get so run down from that that this idea of going on vacation then turns into an ability to give yourself permission to do nothing to eat as much food as you want and to drink a lot of alcohol and that can be dangerous because that one you know week-long period can then create or recreate old habits that then turn into you know overeating patterns over the course of time yep okay so how about uh cravings how do you avoid food cravings when they come in especially when you're trying to eat healthier but all of a sudden the cookies and the crackers and the chips and the pastas and the sodas are talking to you saying time to eat meat time to eat what do you do well that see so cravings are a sign that the disease of food addiction is active so you can't avoid them but you can manage them and you can ride them like the wave you observe them mindfully with curiosity and you can watch them actually wax and wane you can also distract yourself by doing something else you know for example you could have the greatest craving in the world and if you saw that your you know dog was going to be run over by a car you wouldn't be thinking about indulging the craving you can distract yourself have you ever done anything in life where you've been in the zone like for me it's when i paint or when i'm doing improv when i'm doing something that i'm really engaged in love i don't i forget to eat sometimes so do something else do a sudoku puzzle do something that you know if you can't exercise right then you can you can out exercise a craving i can tell you that but this is why these groups like cyrus's group mastering diabetes can be so helpful because you have a support system and you can get online with them and and engage with them cravings will come and go and the thing is is if you're if you've been eating poorly for a long time especially these ultra processed food it can take several days to several weeks and even several months for it to come really completely die down but they don't stay at a hundred percent all the time if cravings were always like that then there would never be anybody in the history of the world that could have stopped smoking or drinking or got off drugs or lost weight they will wax and wane you ride them out you can indulge them in a healthy way so let's say you're having a craving for ice cream make yourself some banana and ice cream so there are ways to indulge them in a healthy way but if you indulge them in an unhealthy way thinking that you're going to extinguish the craving actually what you do is perpetuate the craving and make it last that much longer so you have to know going in that this is this this will happen it's normal and you know cravings are often cued by what's in the environment so for for example if you have caught out of rehab for alcoholism you don't keep alcohol in the house if food is your thing you don't keep those foods in the house because you can be triggered just by visually seeing them smelling them you know somebody's making toast and spreading peanut butter on it hearing your husband crunch those nuts these are all cues in the environment that can actually trigger cravings that's why we go back to one of the most important habits get that environment clean so that when you do have the craving the worst thing you can do maybe is indulge it with a baked sweet potato and that's not worse by the way that's terrific okay so somebody asked a really good question here uh just by the way we have about i don't know three maybe five minutes left here so we've got a couple more questions for you uh the first one comes in from gene she says uh if eating uh refined and packaged in processed foods can create a dopamine fix inside of your brain which can then become you know lead to addictive eating patterns uh okay fine i understand that great what can you eat when you need a dopamine fix well see that's sort of the problem is in the question because that's not why we eat correct correct so go into it so you're using food as a drug so the reason we eat is is to survive to nourish our body so we're not looking for foods to have this drug-like effect i mean there are ways to get dopamine naturally you can have sex for example and there's ways to get all kinds of feel good neurotransmitters like serotonin by doing things like exercise volunteer work but we we we don't want to look for food for our stimulation we want to look for food to nourish us at appropriate levels of dopamine stimulation so i i find a little bit difficult answering the question because it's basically like saying well this is a really bad drug so what drug can i take instead that will be less fat just because something is less bad doesn't mean it's good so we want to neuro adapt to the point where we get enough stimulation from the dopamine in whole natural food which can take a while if you're if you're used to eating up here and getting this much dopamine you know sweet potatoes and broccoli you're going to feel like this for a while you're going to feel bad that's why that's why exercise can be so important because it can it can replenish some of those brain chemicals that you're that you that you want to be activated so we have to find ways to feel good other than just eating food yeah a valid point i love it i love it i love it okay last question i'm 99 there with healthy eating but the scale is not moving what is going wrong what can i do without seeing a food diary from this individual the first thing i would say is salt sneaking in because salt can increase your body weight just because you're retaining water are some of these high-fat plant foods sneaking in you know um the nut butters you know the cashew cream sauce those kind of things you know how much how much fat are you eating compared to the whole natural food but almost more important than that is how many non-starchy vegetables you're eating you know i always carry dr goldhamer's voice in my head because he always would say show me an overweight person and i'll show you somebody who's unwilling to eat enough raw salad and steamed vegetables if you really are at a plateau which is what dr doug lyle calls a behavioral equilibrium what you want to do is increase the amount of non-starchy vegetables relative to the starch you don't want to go so low at the starch that you're going to be so hungry and overeat you still want that satiation but start increasing the amount of non-starchy vegetables and the technique they use at true north is called sequencing so what they do and this is how their buffet is lined up is you start every meal with the food lowest in caloric density which is raw salad this is salad like vegetables that don't have starch in them yet and you eat a large raw salad a pound of raw salad is only 100 calories and you will start to feel full then you follow with a pound of steamed greens which is now 200 calories so you've just eaten two pounds of food for 300 calories which is the same amount of calories and two tablespoons of olive oil and then with whatever amount of room you have left then you eat your more satiating potatoes rice or beans and you can do this in every meal there's not you can't really overeat on these non-starchy vegetables so that's a technique that i've seen dr goldhamer use at truenorth for people whose weight isn't budging so that's what i would also look at the amount of salt and is oil sneaking in are you going to restaurants you know how much how much of these high fat plant foods are you truly eating so usually when i'm working with somebody i'm looking at a food diary of at least three days to to try to find the culprit it's pretty clear as uh clear as night clears day it's actually yeah that's a really good point because i think a lot of the times uh people think that they're eating you know quote-unquote healthy and healthy is sort of like a broad term it's a judgment rather than it is an actual classification of the foods you're eating and so if you really like looking at the details to try and find out what you are actually consuming and you do have a lot of these uh you know higher fat plant foods or you know salt in your diet can really derail you chef aj do you have any parting words for the 2000 people that are still here yeah i know this could be a lot to take in especially if this information is new to you but you know watch forks over knives do your best bless the rest it's not about being perfect it's about just getting up one more time and you've been knocked down it i know it's difficult especially if you've tried before and haven't succeeded but i don't know if you've tried this way a whole food plant-based diet low in fat high in fiber it honestly has never not worked so brush the crumbs off for the new year try again start again get community support in the forks over nice facebook group and and i really think you can do it you can truly have both the health and the body that you deserve couldn't have said it better myself uh thank you to all of you who are still here with us there's 2000 of you guys here uh thank you chef aj you're always a beacon of light and just a wealth of information uh do me a favor and email me that study about eating 10 11 more when there's salt i'm very interested in reading that study um and thank you all so much for being here we will catch you next time in the very next webinar and until then happy eating have a great day have a great evening and eat as healthy as you can at all times we'll catch you guys soon

Channel: Forks Over Knives

Views: 243,279

Rating: 4.8759074 out of 5

Keywords: weight loss, webinar, forks over knives, vegan, plant-based, plant-based nutrition, diet

Id: dRRN399qzNI

Length: 76min 29sec (4589 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021