Five Foods To Eat For Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard | Exam Room Podcast

so you want to lose weight and you want to lose it fast and you want to keep it off it's possible we've got five foods coming up that will help you do just that right here on the exam [Music] room it seems like every year on January 1 half of the entire world goes on a diet but there's nothing new about this whole idea about getting fit the New Year New You traces back well over a century and it seems like we have been willing for just as long to do anything to lose those unwanted pounds back in the 1920s there was the cigarette diet where people puffed away to lose weight a decade later checkout aisles were lighting up with people buying Citrus as part of the grapefruit diet craze and somewhere between then and now we have had the drinking man's diet the cookie diet the Cabbage diet and God only knows what else but luckily we have come a long way my friends when it comes to losing weight and my guest today says it's time that we stop worrying about all of those fads and just focusing on healthy food instead and he's got five of his best for losing weight and keeping it off to turn your weight loss dreams into a reality Dr Neil Barnard is here with us today five foods that can help you lose weight fast and also we're going to be doing the power Foods Focus as we get ready for his new book the power Foods diet which is available right now for pre-order we're going to be talking about foods that actually work like the latest fad weight loss drugs talking specifically about wovi so what foods can act like wovi we're going to find out with the power Foods focus and if there's a question that you have for Dr Barnard drop it in the comments drop it in the chat we're going to get to as many as we can when we open up the doctor's mailbag in just a little bit but first let's go ahead and welcome Dr Barnard to the show good to see you as always my friend hi good to see you Chuck all right so we've got the cigarette diet we've got the drinking man's diet the baby food diet was another one uh which of these are you most likely to prescribe to your patients Dr barnhard oh good grief when you said the cigarette diet I thought that can't be true but you know that I'm sure that was true because one of the things that people H that happens to them when they quit smoking is they gain weight so you can imagine people trying that don't try this at home smoke your pounds away my friends not a great idea cigarettes endorsed by doctors like what through the 50s and even probably part of the 60s isn't that true they were and cigarettes were sold at my hospital George Washington University hospital until the mid 80s so um people were slow to pick up on that so that's not healthy but so are a lot of the diets that people try to do that they end up doing more harm than good all right well let's shift away from the cigarettes and shift over to a healthier option forget the fads your message has been as long as we've been doing the show let's just focus on on some really healthy foods and you've come up with a list of five that can really help us achieve our weight loss goals so go ahead let's start running through these what's the first on your list okay um and first of all where these came from uh researchers have actually looked at going Beyond getting away from the foods that cause weight gain that's a good point but there are certain foods that when you bring them into your diet actually seem to be associated with weight loss at Harvard University 2015 researchers looked at a massive group of people more than 100 thousand people tracked their diet changes and found certain foods that were associated with weight loss if they were brought into the diet in a big way and the number one category of foods is blueberries and other berries and there's a number of reasons for that they're they're high in fiber they're really low in calories they tend to be filling however there there's there's another thing Chuck and that is you look at that blue color I mean you could see a blueberries color at 300 yard that deep purple color is what we call anthocyanins it's an antioxidant and two years after the Harvard study came out 2017 researchers in the United Kingdom looked at Twins and what they found is that if you took a twin pair and you put them in a dexa machine so which the a dexa machine looks at your body composition the twin who ate the most anthocyanins had 9% less body fat specifically abdominal fat compared to her identical twin sister the reason we do this kind of research is that it takes genetics out of it and it focuses on foods that people are eating uh why is that what we think is that there is something about these anthocyanins that affects body metabolism so what do you do do you go to the store and just get a capsule of anthocyanin no what you do is you go to the store and get some blueberries get while you're at it get some mangoes and maybe some bananas and just slice them up together together and have this this as a really nice dessert that Trio of blueberries and mangoes and bananas it's sweet as pudding but there's nothing bad in it or in the power Foods diet you'll see Dustin harter's wonderful recipe for blueberry pops or he's got a triple berry sorbet or even take your French toast and drizzle it with his blueberry syrup so they ways to bring the anthocyanins into your diet whether it's blueberries or all the things that come from them well so now that's very interesting that it's not just you know you you can obviously I mean pick up that cart of blueberries and they're delicious and I feel like it's especially like on a warm summer's day you just get a handful of these things and you go to town and they're delicious um but it sounds like you still get these benefits no matter how it is that you're consuming the blueberry short of eating something like not Dustin harter's blueberry uh pop but you know a blueberry Pop Tart probably not going to do you any favor so where do we draw the line between the benefits that come from eating the blueberry and then when it's just been processed Beyond any sort of I don't I can't even say the word that I want to say on this show you know what I mean I know exactly what you mean and you're thinking right it really depends on what you mies it with so this dessert that I described which is very simple it's it's not even a recipe let's say I take blueberries mangoes bananas what am I doing I'm mixing three high fiber effectively zero fat low calorie foods together and you get a nice subtle taste it's great now if you take the blueberries and you bake it into a muffin you're thinking no there's no way that can be um healthy it depends entirely on what's in that muffin if you make it with a nice uh a nice natural whole grain flour um fair enough if you pack in a whole bunch of butter and shortening and oil which is what's in most muffins that's what makes them kind of gooey well you're going to completely undo the benefit of the blueberries um so by the way Lindsay s Nixon who is a terrific recipe developer and worked along with Dustin on the recipes in the par Foods diet came up with a really nice muffin recipe that Chuck I'm going to make it for you it's wild blueberry muffins uh basically no fat um all goodness I'm all about a good blueberry muffin my friend have been for many many years and I know that if it's in your book The Power Foods diet it's going to be a healthy muffin and we're going to be good to go so I I'm especially happy about that um I would assume frozen blueberries when they're out of season those are also going to be okay Okay frozen blueberries perfectly fine in fact they're they're good they're they're really economical and they're ready when you are uh the funny thing about blueberries if they're fresh delicious but they don't last super long so having some frozen ones in in the in the freezer is a good idea and just to kind of clean things up here a little bit uh I also want to go ahead and and ask you whether or not um other berries we're focusing on blueberries but strawberries raspberries blackberries would they also give us some sort of benefit here they do yeah they're all the Harvard researchers included them found the same benefit and they all have anthocyanins the funny thing about this category you know people haven't heard much about anthocyan they know beta carotene that's the orange antioxidant in carrots sweet potatoes they know lopine maybe that's the red in a tomato or watermelon but the anthocyanins are also powerful antioxidants and they're in a huge range uh strawberry that's not lopine that's anthos that that version of red grapes uh the purple grapes blueberries and in October and November when the leaves are turning all those Wild colors that's all anthos is that's a whole big painting box so that's what the UK researchers uh jumped in on and so whether the anths come from blueberries strawberries raspberries or any place uh they're part of that good healthy group all right so we've got berries at the top of the list what's number two okay now for number two it's not exactly a food it's a spice and it's cinnamon and and the reason that I want to bring in cinnamon people have looked at cinnamon for a long period of time because there is evidence that it actually as as it goes down your digestive tract tastes good on the taste buds goes down it actually attaches to a certain receptor in your gut wall that has a slight metabolism boosting effect it stimulates the production of epinephrine booster your metabolism a little bit so is this real will this work there have been lots and lots and lots of studies but one that I really like quite a lot uh brought in more than a hundred people randomly assigned them to either a placebo dummy nothing um or active cinnamon and the amount that they used was not heroic it was about a teaspoon uh per day and what they found is that over a 16we period the average person lost almost eight pounds um and this was compared to the placebo control group that thought they were getting cinnamon but they actually weren't so we think the effect is real but here again uh the same same risk you could take cinnamon and you can there are good ways to do it um if you want you could take it in capsules like the research subjects did although I don't think you really need to do that I would put it on your oatmeal or let's say you're making french toast don't make French toast the usual way where you have it sopping up eggs and milk and calories and all that kind of stuff I'm used my French toast recipe which is very light delicious um and you can crisp it up in your Pan um and you put a little bit of cinnamon on there if you want along with the cinnamon blueberry cinnamon syrup and it just makes the food taste great but the food you're using it on is also really good because it's high fiber and not calorie Laden so you can make it look really really well and is there a particular type of cinnamon that might work best here or is this just kind of a broad spectrum of all the cinnamons that really we can benefit from oh Chuck I'm really glad you asked that yes the answer is cilon cinnamon um cinnamon from Sri Lanka but it's commonly referred to as Salon cinnamon now you go to the store you may not see it um what you're going to see in the store very often is uh it'll say China it'll say Vietnam say Indonesia something like that um those are relative they taste in fact they often taste a little bit stronger than Salon cinnamon but the salon cinnamon is the one that you want that's the one that's got the benefits what what do we know what it is specifically about Salon cinnamon is it the soil that that's grown in is it the climate like what what is it about this particular cinnamon or do we even know is this a magical spice um I I don't think it's the growing conditions I think it's the actual cultivar um it's actually the genetics of it and the others are uh a very close cousin of it but they're not the same all right number three on the list we've got Berry cinnamon and what is next the next one is gonna surprise you a little bit and I'm gonna say it's the the basic Plain Jane food for a lot of people but it's brown rice and why am I saying brown rice try this yourself at home if you're have if you feel like GE my weight is just not right I really need to get back to basics cook yourself up some brown rice include it in what you eat day by day and you'll start to realize wait a minute back when Japan was pre uh pre- westernization 1950s early 1960s before McDonald's brought brought meat and cheese in the Japanese population was the thinnest longest live population on the planet now they were eating what pork maybe a little here and there fish yeah maybe a little bit but the bulk of the diet was rice now what they had was white rice because white rice is more shelf stable um it does not tend to get um the the brown rice the fiber the fiber coating contains a little bit of natural oils that will eventually go rancid if you keep it on the Shelf too long so white rice became really popular but you're better off with the brown rice so um brown rice to some people when they make it yes it's high in fiber it's really low in calories very filling and will help you lose weight but for a lot of people the way they cook it you know what it comes out like West newspapers um and it's all soggy uh so they go to the store and they look at a rice cooker and it cost them $400 they think maybe not uh let me give you the secret to cooking the perfect brown rice take your brown rice short grain would be probably the the one I would prefer has a little bit of a Nutty flavor take it put it into a saucepan rinse it off that gets any dust off and now pour off the excess water you now have wet rice damp rice in the bottom of a pan now stir it on high heat Stir It Up let it dry and what'll happen is it toasts and as it toasts you'll smell a little bit of this Aroma as the the rice is just caramelizing just a tiny bit and then uh once it's stirred dry you know we're not making popcorn don't do this for five minutes just stir it dry then pour in three parts water to one part rice you heard me right most people make W rice two parts water one part rice uh put the lid on wait till all the water's gone we're not doing that the reason we're doing three parts water is we're cooking it like pasta set a timer at 4 30 minutes pour off that excess water just like you would if you're cooking pasta and the rice that comes out fluff it up serve it with a little light soy sauce absolutely delicious and before you go to work tomorrow put some rice in the bottom of a Pyrex Bowl put some green vegetable like some uh steamed broccoli all over the top maybe a little bit of tofu a little bit of soy sauce zap it when you get into the office it'll satisfy you make you feel great and you're going to lose weight day by day by day by day by day because the rice is high fiber very low in calories man you are making me hungry I've never thought about actually toasting rice during the cooking process to consume it I've toasted rice and put that in uh when I'm steeping green tea and that gives it a really nice rich nutty flavor but I didn't know the trick about toasting it and then going through the rest of the cooking process as you would normally that sounds amazing where did you pick up on that I have tried to remember where I learned this I'm sure it was from a macrobiotic Chef probably 30 years uh ago but I've made it that way ever since and for all the people who feel like brown rice just doesn't do it for them this trick will get you well by the way also once you're done if you want to put a little Sesame on top you can or there's a product called gasio which can be some sesame seeds a little bit of salt little bit of crushed seaweed just a little smidgen on there gives it a little extra flavor you've just turned one of the most simple Foods in the entire world into a gourmet delicacy my friend well done Bravo and also that's off to the the person who taught you about this in the first place Round of Applause for that person A+ uh okay um by the way a lot of people say well no no no no no no no no you guys are supposed to be talking about weight loss today and rice is carb carb carb carb carb can't be doing that you're saying in this case and and based off of previous episodes fear not the carb my friend the carb can be your friend depending on how that carb is packaged correct that is so important to understand because the lowest calorie food um apart from water you know which has zero calories but apart from that that the lowest part calory part of what you eat is fiber fiber has zero or very close to zero calories depending on which type it is maybe maybe uh two calories per gram but not more than that then carbohydrate comes next at four protein also has four but fat has nine calories per gram so when you go down to something like brown rice which is a mixture of fiber and healthy complex carbohydrate you just can't do better than that and it fills you up it gives your body the the energy that it needs and it helps keep you thin and I go back to Asia Asian countries when they were eating a rice based diet did not have weight problems but with economics and changes in culture when the pork and the cheese and the milk and the ice cream come in and the fat comes into the diet that's when the weight problems start so we're just making the clock go backward and we are instead of westernizing their diet we're kind of easternization from all green vegetables are good but the cruciferous vegetables stand out for a couple of reasons um one is that they have a specific anti-cancer effect U that you get in addition to their weight loss effect the anti-cancer effect comes from a natural compound called sorane which is in the broccoli or brussels sprouts and if you eat the broccoli today by tomorrow and the next day your liver is making more Phase 2 enzymes that are toxifying enzymes it is that fast um but the weight loss effect comes from a real no-brainer thing a serving of uh broccoli about five grams of fiber okay fills you up makes you feel satisfied how many calories 55 uh if it's asparagus asparagus a little bit less fiber maybe 40 uh maybe four grams of fiber in a serving how many calories all of about 40 something like that so these are the foods that have practically no calories but they they uh are very filling the funny secret that broccoli doesn't doesn't really brag about but it should is protein if a person ate nothing but broccoli all day let's say you're eating 2,000 calories a day and all you ate was broccoli uh not that you'd ever do this but you would have well over 100 grams of protein uh a day just from that alone so the per calorie basis the crucifer cruciferous vegetables very high in protein very high in fiber very filling make you feel terrific um the big problem we have with these is particularly for a lot of kids who are you know teenagers they're afraid of broccoli so the way to make broccoli really delectable go to the store I know you know about this you get some brags aminos it comes in a little spray bottle it's like soy sauce but a little sweeter and you steam up the broccoli spray on the brags delicious or take a lemon or a lime cut it up uh roll it before you cut it Roll It on the surface of your counter so that kind of breaks up the membranes and that liberates the juice put the lemon juice all over the the steamed broccoli the combination of the bitterness of the broccoli and the sourness of the lemon juice combines beautifully you can do the same thing with seasoned rice vinegar makes it like candy you know I I'm getting the impression and I know that when you write your books you you have uh a very talented people assist in creating the rest recipes for them but I'm telling you if you ever considered creating Dr Barnard's cookbook where it is your recipes exclusively my friend based off of what you said the past 20 minutes and 51 seconds I think that you could have yourself another bestselling book my friend I'm just saying it all sounds so good oh my goodness I have to say I'm one of these people who's kind of all thumbs in the kitchen but I guess I guess my message is if I can do it you can do it I like the way you think you know what I mean I got you I got you so uh we've been through four of your top five that only leaves us with the fifth and final food on that list what might that be my friend okay number five really easy one and this is melon this could be a cantaloupe it could be melon it could be watermelon now this is on the Harvard list too uh this came in at about I think number four on the Harvard list but the reason that I that I want melon here is um you buy a melon you buy watermelon you put it on your counter and you know what happens you got a melon on your counter nothing happens nobody eats it but what you do instead is you slice it open cut it into bite-sized pieces put it in a little bowl little glass bowl put it inside your refrigerator and what you'll discover is that when your family members come around and they open the the refrigerator door like a museum you know what I mean what's in here um because it's already cut up and it's already bite-sized they grab a whole bunch put it on a plate and it disappears no time the beauty of that is it's not something that's it's not a a high calorie um junk food snack it's a healthy snack it's nutrition vitamins water fiber nothing to apologized for you get a melon you put it on the counter what happens it stays on the counter so true I mean there has never been a wiser statement the fact though that um that that really works for virtually all melons is pretty promising and the thing that just I learned in my experience now keeping weight off for well over a decade is that look don't force yourself to eat a food that you don't like the taste of because that is going to derail your success there's only so many times you can eat that before you say enough is enough I'm going to go for the good oldfashioned hamburger but if you don't like watermelon try the Honeydew if you don't like that go with the cantaloupe something like that and so there's really something for everyone here just because on this list of five foods there's just so many different varieties of them that you can find the one that works for you wouldn't you say absolutely and mix them up um so I mentioned of the top melons at the end put them together um there you know you can make your own salad of all these things and you can spice them up in fun ways all right let's uh do the power Foods Focus here very excited March 26th is the release of the power Foods diet this is going to be your next book and so the power Foods Focus today we're going to be talking about foods that work like wovi we were talking about all of those fat diets at the start of the show and man it seems like you can't turn on the TV open up the internet without hearing about these weight loss drugs but you're saying that there are actually Foods out there that can mimic W Go's effects what are they that's exactly right and in fact we should Chuck we should probably even put it the other way around because um the glp1 in uh analoges like w GOI oing and others um gp1 is something that when it goes to the brain it reduces your appetite the drugs the drug manufacturers didn't invent it it started in your body glp1 is made in your own digestive tract mother nature built it in saying okay when food goes down we got to have a signal that says you've had enough so your intestinal tract makes glp1 goes in your bloodstream goes to the brain among other things and it says hm right amount you can eat less now and eventually kind of turns it off so all that noo nordis did in making OIC and rovi was they made something that mimicked what your body does naturally here's the problem so many people are eating foods that don't have they that have almost no effect on glp1 in your body uh in fact Dr Hana kova our own uh director of clinical research here at the Physicians committee has been at a guest here on the exam room liveb many times um did an amazing study she brought in volunteers and gave them two different meals the meat-based meal I'm talking about just one single meal the meat-based meal people eating this sandwich uh then you measure the glp1 barely a rip then you take the same person separate time bring them in feed them the same number of calories but it is a plant-based meal and what you can see is as those nutrients go down the digestive tract they grab a hold of that Machinery that makes gp1 turn it on the glp1 goes to the brain and and we can measure it and she did and published these findings so the the the magic question really is why what is this about it looks like meat has meat is what it's protein mixed with fat plus the occasional tape worm and salmonella but I'm talking about food so that does not trigger glp1 release but a food that has carbohydrate and fiber and if it has fat it's more the the polyunsaturates or monounsaturated fats not the saturated fat and bacon that seems to be the trigger for turning on the gp1 so you get these same foods high in fiber they tame your appetite naturally they're really good but they actually do exactly what uh the noo nordis of the world have been trying to do with drugs is they release the glp1 naturally now now you might say well how strong is the effect if you look at the studies of wovi and OIC over the long run if you can get a person who really sticks with it which is hard to do um for a lot reasons people most people give up on them after a while but if you looked at somebody who's stuck with it they might lose a substantial amount of weight maybe as much as 35 pounds um with a healthy lifestyle plus the drug if you were to look at say the Adventist Health study 2 Data where they looked at vegans versus pescatarians versus mediators and so forth the vegans on average in that study were about 35 pounds lighter compared to the omnivores so so the point I'm making is that longer term adherence to a diet that is plant-based is turning on the body to regulate appetite in a healthy way to give you the glp1 in a healthy way to help you to excrete this the calories you don't need and will maintain your body weight at a much lower and healthier level and we talked about a lot of different foods on the show today I would assume that none of them pose the kind of risk that accompanies a lot of these weight loss drug we hear a lot about gastrointestinal uh freezing so to speak gastroparesis um we don't see any of that with any of your five foods for weight loss today do we that's exactly right Chuck the all the side effects are good ones I mean they bring your cholesterol down they they make your blood sugar get better keep in mind if you're using a drug um they're not you're not injecting glp1 you're injecting a glp1 receptor Agonist meaning it's something that is different enough that the company can patent it so it can't be just something in your body it's got to be chemically different or they couldn't go through that they couldn't make any profit off it so it's going to be something that is unnatural it's designed to be that way and suddenly you get all these side effects like you get nausea and gastroparesis that's just beginning of it um there are other things you probably saw the French study that showed a higher risk of thyroid cancer and just stay tuned I I'm not trying to say there isn't a role for medication for weight control there may well be for some people what I'm trying to say is that these are not what I'm trying to say is that we can do much the same thing naturally if we if we do it right if we take advantage of the power foods that will work for us and don't let the the unhealthy Foods creep in and undo their benefit absolutely absolutely and just as a weight loss guy myself having been through that transformation I think that no matter what route you take to lose the weight you know the long-term solution um is not going to come come by way of an injectable or a surgery or a pill or anything like that it's about making changes to your diet and finding the foods like the five that we talked about here on the show today uh that can really help with not just uh your weight loss but really excite your taste buds as well and so once you're able to replace uh the unhealthy things that you're eating currently with the foods that we've been talking about and foods that you enjoy that are also healthy you're going to be in really good shape and I promise you no matter how it is that you get started on your weight loss Journey as a guy who has kept 280 PBS off now for 14 years uh there's there's just no escaping the fact that there is no magical solution for this other than changing your diet but the good news is as is uh proven you were talking about blueberry muffins for goodness sakes in your book so you're still going to be able to eat a lot of the things that you have been enjoying your your entire life it's just a matter of making them healthier simple as that Dr barard exactly right and when I worked with Dustin harder and lindsy Nixon on the recipes we wanted to make foods some foods that were a little bit elegant took a little more time in the kitchen others that were really easy and others that were Convenient Food for all those people which is maybe about half of the people who read my books about half the people really don't cook at all and they're looking for convenience foods and this can still work for you but Chuck let me tell you something I I think my most important benefit here is I'm hoping that people will find ways to tackle their own weight issues so so that they're not hurting themselves with diets that promise a lot of things or with side effects and expense from drugs but also so that we're taking into our lives healthy food habits that we can share with other people around us including our children or younger people in our homes because otherwise they're growing up into a world that's really going to beat them up a little bit when it comes to weight issues and I think there are ways to deal with it more humanly absolutely and we're going to be talking more about that in an upcoming episode but if you would like to take the time right now to pre-order your copy of the power Foods diet there's a link to do that right now in the show description or in the episode notes and then also Dr Barnard I mean the perfect place to bring those muffins if at all possible would be to the National Press Club on March 26th the day that the book is released cuz you me Dustin Harter a whole bunch of people were going to get together and have a big old party for that release I can't wait uh fill us in a little more about what might be happening that night at the national Press Club it's going to be really exciting we're going to talk about the things that we've been touching on here in more detail we're going to show you a whole range of wonderful foods that biologically affect the body in the best possible way to speed weight loss to make it permanent but then we're going to show you what Dustin and the other magicians that we work with have done in the kitchen to make them absolutely delectable so it's going to be a really fun evening and Chuck I'm delighted that you're going to be leading the whole thing it's going to be at the national press club which you know well um such a wonderful historic place here in downtown Washington a stone throw from the White House beautiful Roman we're gonna fill it and have a party absolutely so stay tuned ticket details going to be announced very very soon I promise you and if you're an exam room VIP you may be the first to know about it it's absolutely free to sign up for that that is our exclusive club for exam Ries who really love taking their health IQ to the next level head over to pcrm.org exam room VIP to sign up today plus we're going to have exclusive uh live virtual events uh in uh um in conjunction with the release of the book you're going to get early access to select episodes of the show a whole lot of perks there absolutely for free and does us a whole heap of good to support our mission at the Physicians Committee of making the world a healthier and more compassionate place as well so pcrm.org exam room viip to sign up and there's a link to that as well in the epis episode Notes too so Dr barard uh this may be the first time in the history of the exam room live that we haven't gotten the opportunity to open up the doctor's mailbag I know that there are a lot of questions that came in today but have no fear what I would love to do is save these and then we will bring them up in another episode because I feel like there's so much more that we could talk about here when it comes to weight loss I'm looking forward to it all right Dr Barnard appreciate your time helping us raise our health IQs I also want to take a moment to thank the Gregory J ryer memorial fund for their continued support of the exam room podcast and the Physicians committee and the cool thing about the Gregory J Ridder memorial fund is that they carry on the love that Greg had for Animals by promoting plant-based health and working to end animal abuse while also emphasizing programs that promote systemic change and benefit us as human beings and you can visit them online right now at Gregory writer fund.org that's Gregory riter spelled REI TF fund.org you see that right there there it is right there in the episode notes as well and so if you give them a follow give them a follow on social media sign up for the newsletter we would greatly appreciate that and thank you Allison and the team at the writer fund for all of your continued support and behalf on uh on behalf of everybody here at the Physicians committee I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll we will talk to you again very very soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

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Length: 34min 25sec (2065 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024