Making Weight Loss Easier with Dr. Neal Barnard | Exam Room LIVE Q&A

it is a fact that weight loss can be really hard but it can also be way easier than we make it out to [Music] be welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the Physicians committee hello I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carol appreciate you raising your health IQ with us in more than 150 countries around the world and making the exam room one of the most consumed nutrition podcasts anywhere on the planet today now look here's the score I know how hard weight loss can be having weighed 420 lbs done every diet known to man it can seem impossible at times and then one day it just seems like the light bulb goes off and it clicks and everything seems to fall into place so what are those traps that we fall into why are diets so hard where are we going wrong and what can we do to really ramp up our metabolism and put food to work for us to burn some extra calories today we are going to get answers to make weight loss easy with Dr Neil Barnard he is the author of the book The Power Foods diet and with that we welcome Dr barard to the exam room live thanks for being here my friend it's great to see you Chuck great to see you and before we even dive into any of the questions from the exam roomies who have sent them in and are joining us live right now I got to say I'm really looking forward to one the release of the book it's coming out on March 26th I'm really really really excited about that but of course our big powerful Foods Revolution event live at the national Press Club on March 26th as well everybody that night who has a ticket also gets a copy of your book that my friend is a winwin it's going to be a blast we're going to have foods for everybody to taste you're going to be uh our host for the evening Justin harder will be there talking about the delicious foods that he packed into this book and it's my job to talk about how the science works and how you put it to work for yourself so here is the book right here the power Foods diet there's a link to order your copy right now in the show description and in the episode notes but let's talk about dieting and weight loss and where a lot of us seem to be going wrong because it does seem to be really hard but can it also be as simple as I said at the top where one day everything just kind of falls into place you have that Epiphany that aha moment like this really should have been this easy all along it absolutely you know for so many people they really get hammered by a dieting experience the automatic thing is well I've been eating too much food so I should eat fewer calories maybe 800 calories a day for a while until I slimm down the problem is that gets old by Wednesday you're ready to eat the sofa you know your body does not want to be hungry and it Rebels or some people will do low carb and then okay you're starting off but then you realize you know I'm feeling guilty if I ever have a piece of fruit or a serving of rice or a potato or a sweet potato or bread or all so many things are are ruled out and that's suffering too but what we've discovered is that certain dietary patterns are associated with weight loss like a plant-based diet get keeping low fat but in addition within that there are certain foods that are better than others meaning that they are foods that tackle your appetite to tone down your appetite or trap calories so you can't absorb them or even boost your metabolism so all of those things can be put to work in your breakfast in your lunch in your dinner and that's what makes it easy so it sounds to me like you're talking about eating foods that can actually help us burn fat shed those unwanted pounds as opposed to eating the foods then that would pack on those pounds that in itself is kind of inverting what we know of the quote unquote diet model I love that idea um but let's talk about where a lot of people right now are kind of going wrong what are some of the more common diet pitfalls that you've heard of over those years that really set us up to fail from day one well apart from the idea of cutting calories and so forth some people have the idea oh I'll just eat lots of protein protein is lean and that's going to help me and then unfortunately people who do that very often find that their weight loss doesn't continue at all in fact they might gain weight because the protein sources they're picking are associated with a lot of fat and a lot of calories and it ends ends up not really working very well um one other thing this is a little bit paradoxical exercise is good it has a lot of benefits but there are some people who feel the only way to lose weight is with exercise and so they sign up they have a gym membership they're paying certain amount of money every month and they go there and they sweat and they hurt and then they realize this is too much work and they just give it up you want to do exercise in the right way and do it in addition to a diet change not instead of it interesting question here I'm wondering if you are somebody who devotes a lot of time and going to the gym sweating and then burning a lot of calories does the body fight hard hard to retain a lot of the fat that you may be eating there because it knows that it's going to be burned right off so it kind of goes into save mode well your body does go into save mode to a degree um and your body will also go into sort of restore mode um after the exercise is over you're going to automatically be eating more calories to try to restore what you have lost your your body is a little bit greedy if it senses it's losing some fat it wants to bring it back all right and I want to go back to this idea of eating foods that can actually help you then burn more fat let's take a question from Rebecca for example Rebecca's wondering what are some of the best foods that you can eat for weight loss and it would be great if you could key in on a few of those that you have in the book that actually can help to burn that fat just as soon as you put them down into your belly there are quite a number of them and the these are surprises uh I want to give some credit to the folks at Harvard at Harvard University 2015 they released a study where they looked at more than a 100,000 people and found certain foods if you increased them in your diet you would lose more weight as the years went by number six was the Bean Group and that's beans peas lentils plus things made from them like soybeans turning into tofu all those things if people tended to eat more of them they tended to lose weight and then group number five was the melon group that's cantaloupes watermelons things like that and it may be no surprise because they're high in water high in fiber pretty low in calories number four was the Citrus group and the surprise here was it's not just oranges uh and grapefruits but even juices which are much maligned uh people say eat the whole fruit but juice was associated with weight loss too so the Citrus group comes in and then the group number three uh was green leafy vegetables so that could be spinach it could be asparagus whatever group number two that was cruciferous vegetables specifically so that's brussels sprouts broccoli C flower but the number one weight loss food group was this humble unassuming modest little blueberry blueberries raspberries strawberries the berry group and this is partly because they they're high in fiber but but Chuck there's an interesting thing about this blueberries have anthocyanins that's what makes them blue anthocyanins also there are some reddish ones that make strawberries red uh researchers in the United Kingdom two years after the Harvard study showed that blueberries were the the big granddaddy of weight loss um they did uh dexa scans that's a a scanning technique where you can look at the body fat that a person has on their thighs on their abdomen they brought in almost 3,000 Twins and what they found is that the twin consuming the most anthocyanins had about 9% less abdominal fat compared with her genetically identical sister so the anthocyans in this case were berries but also they included pears because of that little reddish blush that pears have uh on them they all seem to be associated with it so those would be some starters and then if you want to get fancy there are several spices uh cinnamon Ginger uh hot peppers we can talk about them too yeah you've mentioned specifically recently on the show Salon cinnamon which seems to be the the granddaddy of all cinnamons when it comes to uh weight loss here have we been able to Fig figure out what compound it is in the salon cinnamon that seems to be so potent here yeah there there's a couple things um partly it's because the other cinnamons like Saigon Cinnamon or Indonesian cinnamon they are a related compound called cassia a related uh plant called cassia which in kind of mild overdose seems to have some toxicity whereas Salon cinamon c y l n uh as in Sri Lanka Salon cinnamon is not a associated with that that's first thing the second thing is that the cinnamon has been dissected by scientists and they found an alahh in it um and you know researchers just kind of make up names for things they call it Sy the Malahide but it's a compound in the salon cinnamon that has a receptor there's a receptor in your digestive tract that the cinam alahh attaches to and once it attaches it triggers the release of a little touch of adrenaline in your blood and so we think that's what's happening so you eat it you know um half a teaspoon something like that uh triggers an adrenaline increase that ramps up your metabolism and that that's amazing to me so in addition to the cinnamon Tom is wondering right now he's watching on Facebook he's wondering you know what are some other foods that we might be able to eat that can boost that metabolism similarly it sounds like the blueberry is going to be one you mentioned hot peppers are there some others maybe some honorable mentions in the book well there's one overall concept that people need to know about is that if your body is insulin resistant you can't burn calories now that's that sounds like a mouthful but let me explain to you what I mean what are your burners in your body it's your muscles if you got muscle mass you're going to burn calories but your muscles you might have a lot of muscles you might have a lot of muscle tissue but if your muscles absorb fat fat particles from your cheese pizza the fat particles get into each individual muscle cell this is not this is is not thigh fat this is not belly fat this is microscopic fat particles within your muscles that came from fat you you eat once this muscle cell is filled with fat particles glucose can't get in anymore if glucose can't get in it can't be burned it's floating around in your blood it's not being burned your metabolism goes down it tanks because your cells are filled with fat and that is insulin resistance the fatty cell will not take insulin's Direction which says come on now insulin is trying to say let the glucose in the cell it won't do it so what is the diet adjustment that fixes this get the fat out of the diet when you have no animal products in your diet if you're on a plant-based diet there's no animal fat if you keep oils really low the fat in the cells starts to dissipate and we can measure that with magnetic resonance spectroscopy you can see the fat going away happens in your muscles happens in your liver and once that happens that cell sucks the sugar out of your blood goes into the cell it's like throwing it in the furnace and the furnace can then burn it again and you know here's an interesting question as well from Caitlyn who's wondering well let's talk more about metabolism because I've been told by my nutritionist that I need to eat a lot frequently during the day many meals multiple times throughout the day and that's the key to keeping metabolism up is it the frequency of E eating Dr Barnard which I have also heard or is it more that we really need to focus more on what it is we're eating as opposed to how often we're eating both do matter uh the the what you're eating is the most important thing because you can eat frequently or or less often and if you're eating really fatty calorie dense foods you're going to gain weight no matter what however back about oh I'm going to say 20 years ago there became an idea that if we ate frequent small meals over the over the course of a day our cholesterols would fall our blood sugars would get better and we'd lose weight Chuck we were 180 degrees wrong it didn't work it really didn't work people gave it the good college try it doesn't work and now people are suggesting that for some people they might try the opposite which is very few rather large meals you've heard Dr kova talk about that have a really big breakfast have a pretty big uh lunch maybe in the early afternoon and you don't need more than that now I'm not necessarily suggesting that that's for everybody but the idea of eating frequently without throughout the day uh really unfortunately doesn't work all right and let's stick with metabolism this seems to be a Hot Topic right now Caitlyn did not give her age but she is wondering Dr Barnard how age can affect metabolism and weight loss yeah age plays a big role um but maybe not in the way you're you might be thinking the number one time of metabolic supercharging is not when you're 18 it's not when you're 27 it is when you are a little baby when you are born you are doubling your body weight you're growing really fast your metabolism is huge you are burning burning burning burning calories then it kind of settles down a little bit um and through the teens 20s 30s 40s 50s it stays about the same uh when a person is somewhere over about 60 or 70 somewhere in there ites start to slow down for some people and that's often because they are less physically active so they're losing muscle mass your muscles are calorie burners if they start to kind of shrivel up a little bit your metabolism Falls by the way that does not have to happen uh there are a lot of people north of 70 who maintain their muscle mass and their metabolism is fine you know at that age and what is it that that person is doing that another isn't what what is kind of the line of delineation in terms of what it is we're eating maybe even our exercise load to keep that metabolism up versus somebody who just has that real sluggish metabolism after reaching that certain age so to speak part of it is that they're lacing up their sneakers they're Physically Active they're getting out as opposed to parking in front of the TV the other thing is if they are eating the kinds of foods we're talking about avoiding animal fats avoiding excess vegetable oil then you don't have a lot of fat in your muscle cells and they are able to maintain their ability to burn regardless of your age um and the other thing of course is that let's say a person is over 60 over 70 over 80 whatever it's you're it's never too late for you to bring in the power of foods okay tomorrow morning you're making oatmeal sprinkle on a little cinnamon the cinnamon has the metabolism boosting effect that I mentioned completely independent of age and the amount that worked in research studies uh using about a teaspoon a day researchers burned off about seven or eight pounds in patients over a 16we period now you might say well I don't need to burn up that much I don't need to to go that fast okay have a half a teaspoon or whatever see see what you what you can do with that and one last thing for people who love Mexican food you know a jalapeno here and there um you feel the the burn you you when you're having spicy food you might find yourself sweating a little bit kep seasin in peccant Foods um jalapenos and that kind of thing capsacin actually stimulates thermogenesis so that your body is turning food into body heat and you could feel it so it's it's evaporating so these are just tricks that a person can use have ginger have cinnamon have uh capsacin if you want avoid the fats and your metabolism will uh either be restored or it'll be protected if it's if it's already okay you know that sounds a lot like something that somebody told me about drinking ice water and how the body has to use energy burn calories to warm up that ice water once you've swallowed it is that kind of the same effect or is there something else special about these Peppers um well that's true about ice water except for the fact that you're never going to eat enough ice water to really make it make it matter you know you can't drink yourself th with nothing but ice water uh you you you could chew the ice too that give you a little bit little bit of exercise but no um with with the with the capin it's a relatively small amount of food that does it and the effect lasts for about an hour so you I guess you can put a jalapeno in your ice water if you wanted to but the jalapeno is going to be better than the ice cubes I'll stick with lemon water thank you um Daphne is wondering if we could talk a little bit more about exercise here how much exercise are we talking about because it seems like generically over the years of the show we've heard people talk about light exercise moderate exercise and intense exercise so which of those three groups do you think gets that biggest benefit in terms of metabolism boosting you know I think we're rewriting this science as we go along but let me say say one thing first of all um when you are exercising no matter what kind of exercising you're doing whether you're walking jogging or running a marathon you know what you're not doing you're not eating a bowl of ice cream so one of the best things about exercise is that it's something that makes you feel good that distracts you from the refrigerator okay that's job one the second thing that's obvious is the more you move the more you burn so uh the numbers are about roughly a 100 calorie burn per mile and that's whether you walk it or run it and now that sounds funny because you're going to burn more calories running than walking however it takes you longer to walk it so you're exercising for a longer period of time when you walk so regardless of speed it's roughly 100 calories per mile and Chuck I have a confession to make I have often been saying to people that exercise is really pretty limited its effect on on body weight uh because it's only 100 calories a mile you got to run five miles to to make it to make it 500 calories and you're GNA it's going to ramp up your exercise so you tend to bring it back but Chuck here's my confession over the last couple of months I have been running a whole lot more than I have before and I am not a person who really needs to lose any weight but I've lost about six or seven pounds just in that period of time uh because of a a more intensive run running EX running uh regimen so yeah there's something there to it for sure all right let's switch to another common diet uh misnomer I would say and that is portion control you have talked a lot about you really don't need to do that if you're eating the right type of foods Lucy is wondering how important portion control can be in terms of weight loss it's okay to do portion control it's perfectly fine if you wish to and if it works for you go for it but you shouldn't have to do it and the reason I emphasize that is for some people they get so hung up and they put their guilt wraps on with it okay I have the portion I'm supposed to eat is X but I ate too much and uh now I should feel terrible because because my appetite got the better of me also if you are controlling portions what that often means is the food you selected is not a good food if you have to to modify the portion of it there's something wrong with it so how many apples should you eat what's a portion of an apple one a half two researchers actually tested this they brought in individuals and gave them I'm not making this up check three apples every day day after day after day and they had to convince these research participants to stick with it eating this huge amount of fruit and you know how much weight these people gained zero none they lost weight so portion control never makes up for choosing the wrong foods and there some plenty of foods these naturally modest calorie appetite taming foods that frankly the more you eat of them the more what you lose and Virginia is wondering what are some of those low calorie high volume quote unquote foods that we can be eating that can really help us out in that department yeah uh I really want to cite Barbara rolls who was at Penn State and she she penned the name volumetrics and she did some really interesting studies she would give people um a a portion of some veget vegetables and then she would give them a glass of water and she would note the effect on their weight uh and then she would do a separate experiment where she would combine the vegetables and the water in a vegetable soup exactly the same ingredients but consumed together and what she found was that somehow having them together tackled the appetite more so people were less likely to overeat more likely to to lose weight and so what the idea of volumetrics that she came up with was any food where the calories are lower than say the grams of of food um that's going to going to help you so what are those Foods obviously soup things like salads things like fruit they're very high in fiber which has practically no calories and let me say something that is going to make a lot of dieters squirm which is carbohydrate is good carbohydrate whether it's a potato rice or your morning toast carbohydrate has four calories per gram fats have nine calories per gram so I know so many people memorize the idea carbohydrate is fattening carbohydrate is part of taming your appetite once you fill get filled on high carbohydrate Foods your appetite gets turned off and the number of calories you've actually had is is lower than it would be otherwise so bring in high-fiber foods bring in high carb foods what are those beans granddaddy of all beans peas lentils uh next up would be the vegetable group and that's the starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes but also the non-starchy ones like broccoli uh third up is fruit and then beyond that is is whole grains breads rice that kind of thing that kind of brings me back to what it was we were talking about earlier in the show and that thermic effect of food is that the same as the after meal calorie burn that Dr hanuk kalova as as you said is talked about on the show previously we yes we we first started looking at this back in the early 2000s uh we brought in 64 women who had been gaining weight and and they were all after menopause had done Atkins South Beach everything and were really frustrated and we put them on a diet that was Zero animal products very low in oil uh we we Tau to them non- oil cooking techniques but we measured their after meal burn and and the way you do this Chuck is that you put on what looks like a kind of like a a pilot's mask um and so what we're measuring is their oxygen intake and their carbon dioxide output and with some pretty simple arithmetic I can tell you how fast you're burning calories so you bring in the participants you put on the mask you measure their calories then you have them eat something like a a pad of butter doesn't affect the metabolism at all it just slides into your body have two or three Pats of butter nothing have a stick of butter or two sticks nothing it is it does not increase the thermogenesis it doesn't increase the after maal calor stop do the study again with a food that is high in fiber and high in complex carbohydrates with plant protein in it plant-based food and what you see is completely the opposite your metabolism sitting here then you eat the mum metabolism goes up up up up up and it stays higher than than it has been for a good three hours maybe four or five hours depending on the individual and then to put the cherry on the cake they you stick with low-fat vegan diet after 14 weeks everybody came back they ate the exact same test meal sitting in the same chair wearing the same mask and what do you think happened their metabolism went up but it went up about 15% even higher why because as your body continues to eat this way the fat is getting sucked out of your out of your muscle cells it's coming out of your liver cells so your ability to burn calories which is already good with these Foods is now that much better so week after week after week it gets better and forgive me we may have covered this uh during an episode with Dr kova but what would happen if this was one of those high fiber Whole Foods like a avocado or a nut but obviously those two examples also do include fat different from what you would find in those sticks of butter that you were talking about but would the person get that after meal calorie burn then despite the fact that you're still eating a higher fat food regrettably not to the same extent and my apologies to all my friends who are making wonderful avocado toast and wonderful organic peanut butter delicious foods however um the the the fat content of these Foods is is unusually high for a plant and it will slow down your calorie burn I mean keep in mind nuts are in a tree um you have to climb up and get them and once you do they are in a shell so the idea of actually eating a lot of nuts was something you couldn't do until the 7-Eleven started stack you know stocking them so um yeah and then you and then when they make the SmokeHouse flavor I mean you can't resist but in nature people would not be eating these fatty foods really very much plants all the fruits except for avocado and coconut uh all the vegetables all the grains all the beans are naturally very modest in in in fat so your muscles have nothing to fear because the fat is not going to come and fill them up but now with modern distribution you can have avocado toast three times a day and unfortunately although it's good fat it'll fill your muscle cells up unfortunately would they then in turn actually work to kind of slow your metabolism down yep yes they yes they would um and Michael rhen um at at the German diabetes center did some great research on this and he he was here in the US in the 1990s studying with Jerry Schulman and kit Peterson at Yale and when he was at Yale he did an amazing study where he took in individuals young healthy skinny people put in an IV and gave them a lipid infusion you're putting fat into the body it goes into the muscle cells and the muscles start taking us on not within days or weeks but within just hours the fat gets into the cells and it slows down the cell's ability to burn calories then he did studies with actual meals and he looked at palm oil same effect one single meal will slow down your burn and then he did it with a healthy fat canola oil it's low unsaturated fat but you know what it still has some of the same effect not as bad as the palm oil but it still has it and then I guess the question is comes to us from Peter like guys I hear you but you're really creating a rainy day here for my mood because I love nuts and I love seeds and he's wondering how then it's possible to incorporate them into a healthy diet okay um a couple of things first of all there are benefits to nuts and seeds I mean there there really are um they are high in vitamin E vitamin E cuts the risk of Alzheimer's vitamin E is a great antioxidant so for a for a typical person if you would like kind of a rule of thumb I would say an ounce per day of nuts or seeds walnuts almonds sesame seeds and what's an ounce an ounce is your hand pour them in once it touches your fingers that's more than an ounce and here's the other key don't eat it once you eat it you're going to fill your hand again so instead take your hand which has now got an ounce of seeds in it and crumble it up put it on your oatmeal or your pancake and use nuts as a flavor use them as a flavoring don't use it as a primary snack food because you know exactly what I mean um one handful of nuts down the hatch leads to another one another one another one especially if they are flavored so use them as an ingredient but if if you are really trying to lose weight aggressively if you're trying to tackle diabetes or if you have a hormon related issue like menopausal hot flashes or endometriosis or menstrual cramps for you I would suggest setting the nuts aside for right now because you you need to really uh cool down your fat intake to more a greater degree and Fran has an interesting question here kind of goes hand in hand with what is that we've been talking about she's wondering what are some specific signs that we should be looking for that could signal that the metabolism is in fact slowing down you may be unaware of it um you may not be aware of it but you but there are sometimes signs that you can discover one is that you're standing on the scale and it's going the wrong direction even though you're not changing anything you're your um your your diet is about the same but now you're gaining a little bit of weight the other thing is sometimes people have other symptoms as as well you look in the mirror and your skin and hair uh don't seem healthy your hair is a little bit more brittle than it was before your your uh gut your digestion is not working very well if if you're having these symptoms You may wish to ask your doctor to check your thyroid because if your thyroid gland this little Clark Kent at the base of your neck which turns into a Superman when it can because it it regulates your energy energy level if it is not getting the iodine that it needs your metabolism is going to slow down because you're not making enough thyroid hormone to keep your metabolism up so those are some of the signs to look for and you know it just kind of makes me wonder whether or not everybody at a c it seems like there's blanket advice like you know at a certain age you go to get this screening when you're 5 years older you go to get this screening and uh when you're this age you have to start taking centr silver you know is there a certain age where all of us should be starting to become a little bit more in tune with our metabolism and paying really close attention to things you mentioned that really into your 50s that's when things you know seem to be pretty steady but then when you hit 60 that's the age to start being on the lookout for it so would you say that 60 is that magical number where you really want to start paying closer attention to everything the symptoms that I mentioned they can hit you when you're 30 Um this can happen but your rule of thumb is is reasonable Chuck yes that said these symptoms can happen really early in life and I'll give you a quick example I was mentioning iodine you need iodine in your diet because the iodine goes to your thyroid and the iodine makes thyroid hormone it's the the essential ingredient for thyroid hormone where is the iodine going to be iodized salt okay but we're modern people we eat Himalayan salt you know we're having kosher salt it may not be iodized at all so you might be missing iodine in your diet now you can have then iodized salt it's great or this is the reason to visit your nearest Japanese restaurant because the Nori that they wrap around the Cucumber roll or the asparagus roll loaded with healthy iodine or the wakame which is in the Miso soup loaded with iodine the sea vegetables bring it to you in the healthiest possible way so let's take things home here with a couple of other practical type questions as I like to call them number one Claire is somebody who's also been struggling and I think that she's in the same boat as a lot of others when it comes to weight loss she's wondering what advice you might have some strategies for managing cravings and hunger particularly for a lot of these higher fat foods that we've been saying get out of the diet how can you manage those Cravings so that you can instead turn to these healthier foods and not pull your hair out at the same time oh such a good question because you know everybody can have a craving here and there and let me suggest a couple of things um the the first is if there is something that leads you astray if if it's a problem food then don't tease yourself with it don't have it in your house I'm talking about you know junk food or whatever it is just don't have it around because what we're going to do is we're going to tease ourselves we're going to try to be strong but you know food manufacturers are working over time to overcome your resistance they know exactly how to make these Foods irresistible they're stronger than you are most of the time um the reason this is important is a lot of people say well moderation in all things moderation yes for good things you want some broccoli but not broccoli all the time you want fruit plenty of it but not all the time moderation and good things but if something doesn't love you back don't have it at all leave it out of your diet completely so because otherwise you're going to tease yourself use the word just forgetting uh let's say a smoker it decides okay I'm going to I really need to quit but if I'm at a party I'll have a cigarette that reignites the memory of how much you liked nicotine um but if you decide I'm just not going to have any cigarettes at all then forgetting you you just come in you pave over all those memories about how you felt about tobacco and you're six months out you haven't had any and you just don't care about it it's gone you can use that same thing with food if you just separate yourself from a food that's got you into a rut then the forgetting process paves over those memories and uh you're not going to have such a big problem and one last thing I would say um if you crave something that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad there are people who crave mangoes and they crave papayas and so forth that's A- okay have at it I know for sure you're not going to eat 16 mangoes so you're going to be okay oh you haven't met Cyrus Kata that man can eat some mangoes holy C I mean that's his Instagram handle mango men uh nutrition um I love that dude uh all right you were talking about Japanese sushi and miso soup some specific examples there uh but Margot is also wondering what are some other healthy snacks that people can really turn to to ramp up that metabolism get that after meal calorie burn and really support them in their weight loss goals okay fruit comes right at the top obviously and that's for a couple reasons one is it can always be around it can be in your desk drawer or something like that or if you've got a cantaloup or watermelon uh put it in your freezer I sorry put it in your fridge cut it up put it in a bowl so that it's ready when you are um otherwise if you leave that watermelon hole it's just sitting on your counter you're not going to eat it you know cut it up make it put it there and if you happen to graze on it no harm done uh it's not really high in calories it'll sustain your metabolism and it's not going to be fattening at all so fruits I think always come at the Top If You're consuming a snack uh the lowfat versions are always better now I got to tell you we did uh a study years ago looking at Weight Loss the rules were it was no animal products we kept oils really low those were the only rules one day our research participant said did you know Dr barard that Twizzlers are vegan and I gotta you know I said let me look at the pack I guess it's true you know there just just sugary starchy artificially colored junk and that isn't what we were suggesting people ate but you know you you make your rules in research you got to live with them and what we discovered that that even the people who were vegan lowfat but eating Twizzlers also they lost weight just like everybody else why because there's no animal fat there's there's no not much of any kind of fat and so people did all right now I'm not recommending them but a low-fat kind of sugary food for a lot of people is really not a big problem all right and last question we've talked a lot about food we haven't talked so much about drink though Jos is wondering how do beverages like green tea or coffee impact weight loss I believe that there are studies floating around the universe Dr Barnard that say both can be beneficial here they will um coffee drinkers will um tend to be a little bit Slimmer than the non- coffee drinker and a tea drinker green or otherwise will tend to be a little bit Slimmer too and there are lots of compounds in these uh in these things there's a little bit of theob bromine in them a number of other things but the 600 lb gorilla that is sipping your cup of coffee is caffeine CA caffeine is the one is the the element that does indeed raise your metabolism a little bit um now here's here's the bad news two two issues the first is that your body will eventually start to accommodate to that so that you might get a little burn at first but then you'll you might end up really not getting a huge burn as in subsequent years the second thing is you go to Starbucks and you say give me a double latte and you discover it is a formula for weight gain why because it's coffee and a whole boatload of milk and milk is a mixture of fat and sugar so what goes into your coffee can be as important or more important than the coffee itself let me do one more thing like we're famous to do here on the show and sneak one more question in there uh we also haven't talked about sleep yet and I want to get to Oscar's question uh really quickly because I'm sure that a lot of people are wondering about this how important is sleep in terms of weight loss and keeping the metabolism healthy oh sleep is really important in a number of ways I mean the first is a little bit obvious um you can't go to the refrigerator when you're unconscious that's good and now now this is real Chuck how many people stay up till 11 11:30 12 1 you are awake and what are you doing you know exactly what you're doing you got the remote in your hand and you're going to the refrigerator and you're seeing what's there when you unconscious that all stops s that's number one now when you become unconscious your metabolism does slow down it does because your your body is not moving at all it doesn't slow hugely maybe 15% something like that but when you're asleep something magical happens sleep is when your body starts restoring leptin function leptin is a hormone comes out of your fat cells and it turns down your appetite it's an appetite taming hormone when you're asleep your leptin comes back when you're asleep your insulin resistance goes down as well your insulin sensitivity improves so um let's say you're not what you discover is that your leptin is is not working your appetite is out of control and is this not true if you've really been sleep deprived you'll eat anything just to get through the day this is not a time when people have really good result and researchers have looked at what is the optimum optimum amount of sleep and the way they calculated this is they looked at huge groups of people how many hours of sleep did they report and what was their body mass index and if you believe the research The Sweet Spot was 7.7 hours of sleep that was where you hit the the the the lowest body weight now you can take it with a grain of salt but what they're suggesting is sleep deprivation is terrible but if you're if you're the kind of person who just never gets out of bed at all that's not so good either so do what you can to get some sleep if you're having trouble sleeping get some exercise during the day so that your muscles are tired so that they demand sleep a half hour before you lie down to sleep stretch and yawn like you were a little six-year-old kid I know this sounds funny but if you do that three or four times it resets the brain to go into sleep uh and also be careful about alcohol and caffeine u c caffeine we've said some good things about but it makes sleep Rocky for some people and so does alcohol alcohol will metabolize to an alide that at 4:00 in the morning wakes you up so those are a few tips and the book is the power Foods diet by Dr Neil Barnard there's a link to order your copy right now in the show description and in the episode notes and the party to celebrate the book is coming up March 26th very soon at the national Press Club in Washington DC Dr Barnard you and I are going to be there along with Chef Dustin Harter Stephanie IGN from PL inspiration and a whole lot of exam roomies and health enthusiasts we're all getting together to celebrate the release of your new book and put the power to food for work for us and I think that that's just going to be an extraordinary evening I cannot wait Chuck we're really going to have a party it's going to be such a blast whenever you and I and Dustin and everybody Stephanie we get together we have so much fun and I hope uh exam roomies from far and wide are able to join us the Press Club is a beautiful spot the food will be there uh Stephanie's story in particular is astounding so wait till you hear that and and everybody who comes gets a free copy of the power Foods diet as well and I I do have one request when you come share the book with somebody who needs it that's the most important thing because there are a lot of folks who are kind of on a rough path and they're beating themselves up but when they learn how easy it is to get their weight back in a better Direction you you never know you might have really saved them a lot of trouble you might even have saved their life absolutely no question about it and certainly I wish that I had this information a number of years ago when I made a different decision to undergo weight loss surgery I will never say that I regret it but certainly knowing now what I do I would have made a separate decision um and I think that this can really help a lot of people out who are just feeling so lost and hopeless and so it does have uh and unbiased Believe It or Not absolute endorsement so uh thank you for releasing the book there's so much great powerful information in there Dr Bard my hats on off to you well thank you and I want to thank Dustin and Lindsay for creating the great recipes and all the people who who who loaned us their own experiences that we shared in the book as well I hope people have fun they learn a lot and I hope they're able to reach their health goals once and for all so pcrm.org events to get your tickets or there's a link in the episode notes as well and I want to let you know that today's episode of the exam room live has been powered by the Gregory J Ryder memorial fund you know the Gregory J ryer memorial fund supports organizations just like the Physicians committee that that carry on the love that Greg had for Animals by promoting plant-based health and also working to end animal abuse while also emphasizing programs that promote systemic change which means that we as human beings also majorly benefit and you can visit them right now online at Gregory writer fund.org you see the web address up on your screen Gregory riter fund.org that's REI T erf fund.org and Dr Barnard I'm pretty sure Alison Mahoney is going to be joining us on the 26th of March as well it's going to be really good to see her oh I love Alison I can't wait to see her you know Greg had such a marvelous heart for animals and was the just the most wonderful person and Allison has just carried forward that spirit so beautifully so I hope she's there and I want to say hi absolutely so hi Allison if you're watching today as well Dr Barnard I want to thank you for having a marvelous time with us here on the show really helping to make weight loss a lot easier I think that once we start to understand a lot of these Concepts it's like we said at the beginning that light bulb goes off have that Epiphany and everything starts falling into place as you march forward to a healthier future thank you Chuck all right and to the crew behind the scenes thank you guys for making the magic happen and to you exam roomies thanks for watching raising your health IQs with us and sending in so many tremendous questions and for everyone here at the Physicians committee I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll we will talk to you again very soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 32,087

Keywords:

Id: 5ItfA01iXx0

Length: 44min 55sec (2695 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024