Tactics For Sustained Weight Loss: Michael Greger, MD | Rich Roll Podcast

so good to see you it's been a couple years but I think about you all the time man well you're just you're out there you have more energy you are more relentless than almost anybody I've ever met it's crazy you were just saying that you're doing how many lectures I got to 200 cities and sometimes more than one lecture per city sometimes to a you know different cities in writing day you know over ten months yeah yeah so when people say you know yeah I'd really like to eat better but I try too much nobody travels as much as you do I don't think I've ever met anybody who travels well but it's just our mounting like a three year book cycle so it's only one out of three years so I write a book a year then I'm on the road for a year but then I got you know and then I got a write three years worth of videos for nutrition facts and then I write the next book so do you whiteboard that all out of advance so you know what your books are down the line and all that so like 20 42 or something right I am and when do you how do you apportion that so you have all the videos coming out on nutrition facts right you got the books you got the lectures you're never home and when you are home you're on a walking desk like how does this work yeah yeah no no so people like well I love the video you like how'd you do the video today you were on the plane as if you know I'm like it's like I did that video a year ago literally right so I do I script three years where the videos every three years um and so you just hope and pray that broccoli is still good for you next year because you know it's right in stone has that ever happened where the science has changed and you had to pull the video video yeah yeah I mean usually in in in there's an even stronger evidence or you know in the same kind of direction but now there's we finally have something that really clinches it yeah more than more than anything rice but yeah well you were one of my very first guests on this show episode seven all the way down then we did a second one where there was a technical snafu we were at some conference and we did it and it didn't record that's only happened like three or four times in seven years but you were you you fell victim about the trend and then the last time that we did this I think was four years ago so it seems like yesterday you're in my heart what is the the current lecture all about because I know you you're constantly do you change it for every audience or you have kind of a lockdown thing that you do every year yeah so so now so I used to a new talk every year because I'm gonna say always traveling every year but now I'm only traveling you know after the new book so I just have the new book talk and so for new audiences they get the last book talk uh-huh but for audiences have already seen it the how not to die talk I give the how not to die it the weight loss talk that's right I'm doing now so this is the new mic I actually like the old one I mean so my the last dog how not to die talks is my favorite talk I mean she says more humor than any other time een so my preference and it's like perfectly memorized like hey I can like you know think about my grocery list while I'm giving it like I mean it's just like definitely write and put it so but and in the the new but you know I'm reading off the notes on a podium I missed you know it's gonna be a while before and just want to get really good at it so I'll never get it's like like a stand-up comedian you got a date you tape your special and you gotta retire the material it's all over but in your case this material it has a longer shelf life though this stuff doesn't doesn't necessarily age you know it's crazy so how not to die is selling better now than it did the month after release back 2016 when this old scene over 3/4 of a million copies right yeah about yeah down and hundred percent of all proceeds go to charity charity for all my books yeah we're talking a lot of money yeah yeah this last one I donated more than a million dollars this year Wow and I would suspect that that a big part of that other than just being you know compassionate in your heart is to basically rebut the argument that you're conflicted you have you're selling a book so you're you're you're anchored in this position and no matter what the evidence says you've got a toe this line because you're financially incentivized right although there's still the idea logic call kind of conflicts of interest so even even people that aren't necessarily profiting off of their work I mean they still may be wedded to some idea I'm so it doesn't completely divorce me from the right you know you know concern over bias but but yeah I mean with so much the the corrosive corruption of commercial influences well let me talk about that we then I mean medicine in general but nutrition in particular we're you know this I mean the you know the confirmation bias is just so extreme in no other field have I ever seen such a thing it's pretty bananas right now I feel like there's a mushroom cloud of information like if you're in the Twittersphere it's just it's insane the siloed you know kind of tribal wars that are going on right now are so emotional and acerbic it's it's quite toxic so how do you I mean you post your stuff I've noticed like you don't engage in any of that you kind of just stay above the fray ya know that yeah and that was a conscious decision to be like look this is all the science that I could find on this and so there's unless I mean and so the only you'll notice on nutrition fact the only comments I respond to is what about this study or you know what about this study you know and B because it's very possible I maybe I missed that stuff I mean you know I mean we got a huge research staff now but you know I want to make sure that this is that I like I I put that into the into the calculus when I came out with what I consider the best available balance of evidence and so it's like this is the sign so there's really nothing anyone can say you know I mean and so and and it's really not like you know most of my videos I turn really hard to be like this is now I have no opinion on this here's the science make up your own mind haha I mean it convinced me to do X Y & Z but if you're not convinced by the evidence you know wait till you know Rison else drops well you must you must get the criticism that you're cherry-picking studies like you have to make a decision about what studies you're gonna highlight in these videos right so that's why that's why it takes me forever to write the videos because I have to make sure so it's not just some new study but we're that new study it this in the context of every other study that's ever been published ever right I mean so many studies get published a year well I mean so just like legitimate so well so in the in obesity just just in the field of obesity there's over a hundred thousand studies every so that's like you know I mean so it's like you know I go to sleep and I'm already like you know I'm Way behind you do sleep I I'm working on it but you talked about that in the new book I know how do you practice it is so depressing to look at the sleep medicine literature because I just realized oh oh that's it I'm gonna that horrible things gonna happen to me oh is the one blind spot that's yeah yeah but I mean I just I find myself I'm so much less productive when I'm unconscious yeah that you know so thousand studies a year on obesity alone 100 thousands a hundred thousand oh my god you even weed through this and figure out so you know what's what's worth looking at and you know what's really worth exploring and digging into and and and ultimately I would imagine deconstructing at times to figure out what's you know what what holds up to your standards and what doesn't so there was over so we have over 100 research volunteers that churn through that's how we can get through tens and thousands of studies every year just because we have you know all these like retired docs that are just sitting around and just have a hobby of helping me out basically and so any one time we have nearly 200 active volunteers and that and and and so I mean we can just we can just xirn through so much and you know I have access I have people in libraries every major library anywhere who will pull any study from and you know so I have someone that will just go to the NIH you know largest medical library in the world and pull any gold stud isn't even online so I have access to everything and just in this incredibly privileged position to be able to you know but that's assuming the literature all says one thing right the problem with thee the reason why this new obesity book the weight loss book was such a bear the hardest thing I've ever taken on in my life was because it's incredibly conflicting mm-hmm and so uh if you know hunters they say one things that under 700 say they say another thing if say well we saying what is it about the way they did the studies the the populations the exclusion criteria like what was it that you could arrive at such disparate conclusions using very similar kind of methods and that took four four so simple questions like skip breakfast or not skip breakfast and exercise before after a meal or I mean these like really like these are thousand article research questions there's a thousand articles on and you're just like wait a second this is two pages of the book maybe what maybe it's a little sidebar and it's all others who want to know should I eat breakfast all night and no you know I could alive fast I get a lot of that to do that I think that's that's what everyone's like okay I don't care I know right be my guru right um and that with that but you know anyone fall I mean that's that's the antithesis of what I want to you know that's the problem is people just you know just follow what someone says and as if we were born with this knowledge I mean we I mean when it comes to something as life-and-death important as to what feed yourself and your family then if there's anything we should any decision we should make best based on evidence it should be something like that if you're online buying a toaster then the random opinions of strangers may actually be really useful like oh I like this one okay but when it but you know when I was when I was in practice and so we came to I say well you know why are you eating this particular path someone at the gym told me to you know eat this way right I'm like really I mean you're checkout aisle magazine is the reason that you're feeding your kids that I mean you realize that what we is the number one cause of death and disability in the United setting the most important decision we make is what we put in our mouths and so if there's any decision that should be built based on evidence and we should demand and evidence and not just a citation but show me the evidence I want to see it for myself to make sure you didn't take it out of context I mean that this is what and so that's that you and I both know well that even the most well-intentioned consumer who begins to explore this whether online or whatever they're gonna find conflicting information out there and it appears to have equal merit it's like it's like when you turn on the news and there's ten people yelling at each other at the same time even if one of them is completely Looney Tunes it appears that they're standing on equal footing right so you know you can find studies that will support whatever perspective or confirmation bias that you have and it becomes very difficult for that well meaning you know intelligent person to separate you know the chaff from you know the cream when it comes to this this is where you come in but even then it's like all right well you're sifting through thousands and thousands of these studies and realizing well this is complicated and even even good science seems to conflict you know how do you make heads or tails of that I can't judge somebody who's like you know dr. Greger just like what is it tell me give me the good man no you don't say you know it's like that and there's lots of problems with the you know peer-reviewed medical literature you know it's like that I don't know if Winston Churchill left it actually said it but attributed to Winston Churchill you know democracy worst form of government except for all the others right and it's the same thing I'm just like the peer-reviewed scientific literature it's the best we have I mean it's the worst we have except for all the others I mean that's what else can we do but abide by you know what's been you know published in the medical literature but there's lots of problems with industry bias and you know funding effects and and so that's why you really need the first thing I do when I look I study who paid for the study where is it coming from just so you can read it with that lens doesn't mean it's necessarily bad studies may still be a good study still be a good study but you want to read it with that you know to you want to you know take it with extra-special grain of salt and look at the materials methods really make sure they didn't create this they didn't produce the study in a way too get some desired result they were actually coming into it really you know look right learn something and despite the fact that you've read countless thousands of these studies I mean you've been you know you've been on board with the whole food plant-based diet for decades at this point do you ever come across a study that contravenes some long-held truth that you've held like if you ever had to mature update your thoughts on things like how how is that evolution bad yeah no look I mean anyone who's saying the same thing about nutrition that they're saying a few years ago obviously hasn't been keeping track the literature I mean the reason I can do new I could do new videos every day forever it's just because there's this tremendous wealth of information out there now usually is just kind of nibbling at the edges like after how not to die game out I realized that oh and I was telling people oh you got to toast your walnuts and sesame seeds it just makes your kitchen smell so wonderful that's great and they tasted wonderful then this paper came out talked about these AG es this advanced glycation in prices glycotoxins found in high-fat high-protein foods exposed to high dry heat temperatures traditionally it's like frankfurters and stuff and chicken mcnuggets but knots you put them at those temperatures and they create these nasty I don't so I now I tell people to eat the raw nuts but that's the nice thing about a video where so I could update I suppose the book which is already out but um you know when reprints we can get it but I mean little things like these are like good buds but I mean there you can find studies all the time saying you know you know bacon and butter is good for you just like the tobacco lobby would come literally with piles of studies to these congressional hearings say this is not this is not the research that says smoking is neutral this is the literature saying smoking is good for you it helps with Parkinson's disease and ulcerative colitis and but a lot of this is true because it's immunosuppressive and serving autoimmune disease you smoke you kill your immune system your your autoimmune disease gets better you phlegm every bell disease gets better but these are legit studies showing smoking beneficial now of course that's not the best available balance of evidence because you're gonna die graphic death lung cancer but you can but those studies exist and you can cherry-pick them out and that's why that's why you know every single every everyday a video comes out I send the video to every single principal investigator of every article I cite and be like excited here's your research you know um in hopes that one will be like you you you you misinterpreted or whatever and I can immediately you know kind of write so when you when you get like what is your response when somebody criticizes you and says he's just you know he's a plant-based guys always gonna be a plant-based guy he's got his own confirmation bias this is a guy who's really just an animal rights activist who's who shrouded himself in a medical frock I mean it's like I mean it's like you know some some you know pulmonologist saying oh you're just an anti cigarette guy I mean that your only reason you're telling people not to smoke again it's because you know you have a well-known record of you were against cigarettes ten years ago before this study comes out Oh a new study comes out saying smoke is bad for you mr. anti cigarettes is they're at it again [Applause] I mean the science is the science and you know the the charges of cherry-picking so for example there's only one died ever proven to reverse heart disease the majority of patients a plant-based diet number one killer of men and women like shouldn't that be the default diet and to proven otherwise only once so it's hard to cherry-pick when there's only one cherry like there's no other now in the future maybe some new diet will be shown too but I mean until that happens and this happens over and over again with multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease and on down the list nothing's been shown to work better and there's just I mean you know so right right I mean listen you said it but the fact that heart disease you know basically kills more people than anything else and this is the one protocol that actually will not only prevent it but reverse it if you have it like why are we even exploring anything further and the fact so it's amazing that it's so controversial and the fact that can also help prevent arrest to reverse other leading killers type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure we seem to make the case for Plan B's eating just simply overwhelming at this point I mean if this alright if there's one thing you need to know number one killer men and women only died ever proven a person in the majority patient's plant-based diet so the only way that wouldn't argue for it being the default die for everyone is if it so dramatically increase your risk of you know killers 2 through 15 or something such that would overwhelm the heart disease benefit and instead you just see you tend to see a benefit neutral effects across people right well you've got to be thrilled to see this movement this way of eating and living you know kind of explode over recent years I mean never before in your career you know have we seen such a crazy adoption rate which is super exciting but there's also a lot of pushback now and we have these sort of other diets that are rising to the surface and and you know challenging for their moment in the Sun and and and it makes me realize or I guess appreciate just how emotional all of this is it's not it's it's really not an information war as much as it is a psychological war you know what I mean like because you've spent decades putting information I mean nobody puts out more information about this than you do and if somebody's resistant to that that's their choice but I feel like the battle really needs to be waged on how to win hearts and mind and not just the minds but the hearts you know what I mean like huh what is what and I'm interested in you know whether you have thought about this you know with respect to the newest book it's like weight loss like everybody wants to lose weight right but often it's not it's not the information it's the implementation of the information and and what gets in the way of people taking that information and putting it into action has to do with their own psychological makeup and you know the emotional landscape and you know the the social construct in which they live their lives you know one eye you know at some of these you know amazing plant-based nutrition health care conferences now which now attract I was right so it's just amazing you know the number one question I have for everyone like how did you come across the obviously didn't learn about it and in medical school none of us did like how did you come and most frequently the answer I get is because a patient taught them like so they've had these patients forever and they've known their whole families and they've had diabetes and you know they're just trying to slow the rate at which they go blind and lose their kidney function and lower limbs and then all of a sudden they come in they're 20 pounds lighter they're there they need to they're dramatically over or medicated all of a sudden they have to pull back all the drugs and that doctors like what happened and the patient says oh I saw folks over knives or you know game changes some of the and then all of a sudden um and I me and the doctor in the back of their mind doctor saying I've got like two thousand patients just like you what is going on and that's so and so great that it's upside down oh my god and so a few tries me crazy and so I'm like wait a second I've got to stack this big of peer-reviewed scientific live randomized control trials proving reversal of these diseases yet it was one little anecdote one person comes to you and then all this uh but it's but it's but it's that human connection where like storied creatures like all the data in the world you know all you know it'll you know some people are open to that but other people they just need to see it in front of their face alright and so I note so that's that's why I think the more popular it gets the easier will be when they see their friends and families the transformations then it'll click that and of course I'll be in the background banging my head against the wall saying how long is this this is the seventies where a pentagon was it reverse of heart disease in the 70s how many people have died since then needlessly over a hundred thousand people every year heart disease in the United States alone that much suffering it should anger people right I mean the the the the reaction to someone who just doesn't have to go through you know open our surgery anymore isn't shouldn't be relief oh my god I have to get my chest cracked open and now I get to live long happy life and see my grandkids grow up she'd be like how why didn't anyone tell me this but right I'm outraged outraged it's yeah yeah of these two hundred cities that you visit all the speeches that you give many of them are at medical schools or hospitals because I obviously like the way to get to the root of this is to is to educate medical students and create a better ecosystem around care yeah train the trainer's that's really what I'm doing now is mostly talking to professional audiences I'm talking tonight at a Medical Center the and lots of medical schools now but and that's how much she started out my kind of speaking career is going in fact that was my goal speech every single medical school every two years to hit every single new grad coming out I have a whole new generation of Doc's learning this but I realized like that's too slow like they're not they're still gonna be in training for another five years then they got to get out and then they I mean so like people are dying now when it comes to safe simple side-effect free solutions like stop smoking eat healthier you don't need your doctor to tell you to do that we can take this directly to the people with this kind of democratization of information now available and so I you know so then that's how nutritionfacts.org got born instead of forget the doctors you know let them come around eventually we got a right people are dying right now people need to know and then of course it's up to you it's your body your choice wanna go smoke cigarettes book go bungee jump into whatever you want but you know there at least you should be you know educated about the predictable consequence of your actions other than your unbridled enthusiasm for this one of the things that's that that I like about you and that's interesting about you is that you really strive to stand outside of dogma and you're not telling people what to do you're just you're you're basically in a very objective way presenting the information and allowing people to do with it as they will yeah I mean that's always been really important to me is and look and for whatever reason there's no judgment I mean I happen to have the background that enabled me to do this work and to be Who I am I mean there are people struggling with all sorts of things that you don't know about and the fact that they're still eating you know crap on their home you know way home from work I mean no idea what's going on their lives they led them to whatever but should they have the opportunity to really you know whether it's a health scare or whatever to be I really need to clean up my act at least there should be a place they can go where here's the information this is what I wish I learned in medical school and you know do with it geek out on nutrition fun I mean how many hours of videos do you have on there now we have thousands thousands over two thousand videos now basically you go to the site and you could just search whatever food or whatever ailments and you've got it covered yeah yeah nobody video gonna be oh there's always new stuff I'm constantly I mean there's just always new yeah you know and you know it's so I do it two ways one through I run through all the topics actually alphabetically anyone's keeping my little close attention will be like oh oh so the olive oil came after the the nuts which came after they you know yeah um but and then I just go through and read all the every issue of every single English language nutrition journal in the world see because there may be topics I don't need even know to look up there's this yeah I mean all sorts of new hormones and really receptors and new I just working on the plane on this CD 36 receptor whoa blew my mind because right gets sidetracked on that it sounds like an air it sounds like a airplane to me like a c-130 in terms of taking it to the people which you've been doing the real needle mover I think has been this slew of documentaries that have come out over the last amaz'n of which is of course game changers and you were the scientific technical adviser on that movie right so what did that look like what was your involvement made that well I mean just I mean certainly to take that first point when I go around speak and ask people in these you know for our book signing lines so how do the it's what the health its forks over knives is these these documentaries are now just really yeah yeah tremendous oversized effect right and so if people if they're funders interested in getting this you know movement off the off the ground I think that's a decent way to go yeah well they're probably good investments these movies do very well do and so ya know so uh so yeah so I was approached by James Wilkes Oh God like seven years ago you know when it was just you know an idea and and you know if you've me for the for the film and some like you know on some highway and Santa Rosa or something in this noise he's like a little whatever you know like a little camcorder II kind of thing in a hotel um and it was just an idea but you can't say no to any opportunity right so like poor Dean Ornish still kicking himself for not being in Forks Over knives because he was taking some time off or whatever he just got to be in everything and hope something helps and and so so then here see it's starting to get some momentum for the film and and invited me back sit sorry we got to throw all that footage away it was crap before but now we actually have real cameras and you know alright right so then we you know do another thing and actually happened once or twice more than the like okay now we really have money now we have like that fancy so I when do like and then of course I get cut out completely from the film which is fine I wouldn't replace a second of it I think so perfect but hopefully I'll be in some DVD extra or something down the road but um so but the role I could play instead was to fact-check the film uh-huh because I have an army I mean that's what we do you're the perfect person for that yeah yeah and and and we actually behind the scene and I open invitation to anyone writing a book producing a film TV show anything come to me I'll do it for free our whole team I mean it's so important to me that we don't say ridiculous stuff and people throw the baby out with the bathwater I mean the movement has said just ridiculous crazy stuff exaggerated stuff I mean I mean yeah it doesn't help the movement to do that it right and because it imperils the crowd of bill and if you have and as if we have to exaggerate anything we should use the industry estimates for everything the most lowball you know oh oh yeah it's only fifteen hundred gallons per pound of beef whatever water you know according to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association or whatever I mean that's what I mean yeah it boggles the mind so yeah that's so critical that so a lot of the books that you know I've are written up and as long as as long and we will do it as long as they're willing to actually write so your your job was really vetting all the science so that there was no exaggerations and that everything that was said and every scene kind of you know met the met the scientific in fact was conservative so not just sticking to the consensus but like on the conservative side of anything let's not see anything the science is so strong we don't need to exaggerate we don't need to go anywhere but beyond the you have solid ground worst right and the the whole erectile-dysfunction sequence was your brainchild i was walk us through that well so we mean so I had the data I had the science but again you need to make the science relatable you know I could show you know a graph a table an amazing table with a statistical significance that alone would give you an erection but that's is that's not gonna move a visual sunny cinematic it's not cinematic and so they kept asking how do we make it how do we make it visual how do we make it alive and so so I said well let's do the lacked essence that you know the the cloudiness of fat after eating a meal in the serum and I knew just from reading the the literature on blood flow on into a few little function that they had these ridges scan machines with a name like ridges scan it's got to be good and and so and so and now it's actually being done legit why I mean in a real study in fact I think by us Feld but dr. oz Feld is now as the funding he's actually gonna put it to the test and a really you know tightly controlled randomized fashion with a you know a cadre of folks but again he was just they wanted to show the example to you know anyway right yeah but so latest book how not to diet how dare you write a book about weight loss can't believe this right so how not to die is really about sort of tackling preventing reversing the you know the the sort of top ailments chronic ailments that people suffer from but of course a is an ailment in and of itself were a contributor to a variety of ailments right so without sort of confronting obesity head-on you're not really getting you know you're not gonna move the needle for people right so you got it you got to get him to lose weight so I did that yeah yeah so how not to die fifteen leading causes of death just went through one through 15 chapter I needs talking rolled I'm a play in preventing resting reversing so there's a type 2 diabetes chapter obviously the but but never took obesity on directly and and it really required its own thing so that mean yeah so you have to then turn your focus into how to help people lose weight right like what is the science of weight loss and I would imagine you know you had to confront like a lot of things that we sort of assume or take for granted that perhaps maybe didn't turn out to be true like like oh calorie and calorie out or you know three meals a day or what you know what there's so much conventional wisdom around like here's how you lose weight ABC so by immersing yourself in all of this research like what surprised you the most or what did you discover that perhaps you know you didn't expect yeah so in both ways some of the conventional wisdom actually has real scientific basis and only recently doesn't have a real scientific basis so for years we've just been saying that's stop talking out of our butt but now oh that's actually true we should you know breakfast like a king you know lunch like a prince dinner like a pop or kind of thing some of this or you know drink water before a meal very common kind of thing oh now we actually have size it really does must show beneficial effects but I think the biggest the biggest challenge for me just because this is not my field I mean you know I just know from what I learned in med school and this concept that a calorie is a calorie right account from one source is just as fattening is a calorie from any other source I mean this is kind of a trope broadcast by the food industry to come absolved itself of culpability but it's just not true like you know 100 calories of chickpeas has a different effect on body weight than 100 calories of chicken or Chiclets based on absorption based on fiber content based on all sort and even if you absorb the same amount even accounting may still not be a cow it depends when you eat it in what context do you know how fast you eat it also I mean so I mean that just kind of exploded like my concepts of mmm kind of what we had learned in in in med school so like this chronobiology have a whole chapter on right service because this is I'd never heard anything about this so what I had known what we learned about in in medical training is it's called Karma therapeutics where if you give chemotherapy at the right time of day you actually have fewer side-effects and it's more effective than giving at a different time of day same dose same drug I'm which which it's fascinating but I hadn't taken it the log vehicle conclusion what about chronal prevention might exercise and and and and and you know sleep patterns and meal patterns also play a role if it has such a dramatic effect and indeed calories eaten in the morning are less fattening the exact same food eaten tonight the fewer calories after sundown the better so they do these states how it acts why's that well it's because so for example in the morning your body body has to to make glycogen stores for the for the rest of the day and in make instead of just using the energy if you if you take the little chains of sugars and starches and and make them the glycogen in your muscles and liver that's an energy intensive process and then you break it back down to be used later on and so the fact that you're using energy to basically get the energy right back it's kind of energy intensive buzzing that's one of the small reasons why eating in the morning when you're when your body's you know knows it's got a whole day ahead of it where are you you know you have that the glycogen building signal earlier in the day but you know a lot of the chronobiology stuff we just don't know in terms of what exactly is going on but everything from body temperature - you know testosterone - cortisol levels everything you know goes on this this wild day Lusaka and then there's seasonal cycles wheat lost you know it's in the the weight you put on the kind of winter months for for the for the holidays may you have the pack the pond how far the earth is from some crazy right the rotation I'm so that was the I mean that that yeah that just blew me away so you can put people in 2000 calories exact same 2,000 calories there's one meal it's breakfast or one meal at supper the army did this and one and the evening group same calories gains weight and the breakfast group loses with such insurance crazy and so then that really opened my eyes okay well now anything's possible and so then really kind of dug deep and you know came up just you know what are the criteria for for optimum weight loss like what would what would the optimum weight loss that it look like from kind of from the ground up just because um originally how not to die it was gonna be a chapter on each of the latest diet trends um and just you know going through what's the science behind each but I realized the books coming out of date before it even comes out you know I'm part of the US News and World Report you know diet panel you know and run a week at dozens of new diets have never heard about every year that we have to go through and I just realized well wait a second this that's not that right it's like whack-a-mole so instead let's just here's the criteria against which you can look at any future diet and see you kind of where would fall among this range and then and then the second half of the book is regardless of what you eat there are you know kind of tips and tricks they can and tweaks that can get you to accept right like this water thing and focusing on nutritional density and caloric dilution things no fancy that's the really the first part I mean that's part of a good help my weight loss diet weight loss techniques but like the water right water pre loading so if you drink two cups of water before eating a whopper you'll gain less weight then I mean so I mean so it's regardless of what you eat that's the whole second half and the hope is people won't just kind of jump to the second half it'll actually do a safe sustainable nutritious healthy diet but in terms of the foods to eat though I mean it harkens back to the previous book and it kind of Orient's around the daily dozen it ended up ended up that way based on those criteria like you want to beat fiber-rich and you know Loen added sugar isn't all that fat and you know bought a wrench and all they say and it's the same you know vegetables and kind of on down the list and that was the that was the the either the criticism with God from the daily diet daily does an app that we released as you know had a million downloads and there's two camps of criticism one is Oh My gods too much food I can't eat it all and oh my god I can't because through all this stuff make sure you get all of that well I mean but it's aspirational like you know it's just and you can you know make a game and see how many you can get if you don't do good one day you can try better the next day and that was actually this I mean I'm hoping to you know after you checked off those box there's only so much room for pepperoni pizza at the end of the day I mean it's it's this kind of it's this kind of eat more approach but it's really hoping to kind of actually push out some of the less healthy options but the other group of criticisms came in it's it's not enough calories it's like look I'm training there's no way I'm getting a gun get enough calories eating this concept I was like well look this is the minimum you can eat more food I'm gonna say this is all you can eat this is I just want people to hit this but then I realized wait a second Oh too much food too few calories that sounds like a good weight loss diet and the fact that these are some of the healthiest foods on the planet it's a good bonus as well right did you come across some interesting research on intermittent fasting because that seems to be the thing that that you know a lot of people are talking about and thinking about and practicing right now and I've had a couple people on the podcast speak to it that's the biggest chapter is the fasting janitor so much information now I remember looking to fasting because there's been a you know common interest for for years people have asked me about it anytime I only want to say I don't know once ever even if the most esoteric question in the world I want it the next time someone asked me that I'm gonna know an answer to it and some people cast me about fasting and there's no data and so that's why if there's if there's if there's a condition or food that you can't find a Nutrition Facts that org their number one reason it's probably because there's just no good data out there I mean it's not like you know I'm trying to ignore it's just like we don't know and so but just in the last few years have been an explosion of research into in am in fasting water-only fast thing you know five to 20 five five time restrictive feeding all these and so tremendous literature what's interesting about the intermittent fasting literature well so in terms of investing no benefit in terms of compliance or lean mass conservation or weight loss compared to continuous caloric restriction and the longest largest studies debate shows increasing cholesterol for people that have the same claw restriction doing alternate a modified fasting and so I would encourage people not to do it or at least check cholesterol checked but the time restrictive feeding where you try to narrow your eating window to twelve hours or less and so your fasting at least half the day what was that's this is one of the research areas where there was diametrically opposed some studies so it's great for you other studies so it's terrible for you has all these negative metabolic consequences and so it was my job to like what is going on here and it turns out it's timing early versus late so when do you break the fast so your window right so if your window is late you get the negative biological consequence of eating at night I'm and and and shifting your calories towards later in the day and so people that skip breakfast I had these negative metabolic effects of timer Street feeding whereas people that did early time restrictive feeding not only got the Bennett the carnal biological benefits of shifting their calories towards the beginning of the day they also got the time restricted feeding benefits and so that is really the I'm that that that's that's one of the things in the book that actually changed the way my family eats yeah you just rocked me with that because I do it where I eat at night if you're good I don't eat there if you miss any meal it should be it should be you supper enough breakfast right breakfast is called break fast for a reason yeah I mean wow yeah I mean and and and that actually may be one of the reason that the seven day Adventists vegetarians live the longest living population in the world right okinawa japanese was at number two and they're done they now they're eating KFC there's really only one blue zone that continues to this day it's in Loma Linda California these seventh-day Adventists longest-living formally stop study population in the world but me one of the reasons may be because they practice this early time restrictive eating often skipping supper of the the teachings of the church are you know like two meals a day and you know make lunch the biggest meal a day um it hasn't been put to the test but given all this a short term data yeah this is very interesting maybe oh no that'll be the next book how not to age I'll look deep into that is it is that the nature is starting January 25 one that'll be out December 22 what's the book after that um I think it's gonna be a lot to die from cancer for cancer survivors unfortunately you know the advice people with cancer diagnosis get to see whatever you want or just keep weight on or whatever terrible advice I mean now we actually have some decent data on cancer survival not just prevent I mean so how not to die how to prevent cancer what if you already have cancer what can we do to slow down stop or burst so that'll that'll pray next and then but I'm gonna do one a mental health how not to age though that's a that's a good one I just had David Sinclair in here the other day great I got Dan Buettner coming back here tomorrow [Music] aging stuff that's super interesting I mean I think the work that David is doing obviously that's in the genetic field it's not nutrition per se but I think there's so much emerging science that's happening right there it's pretty fast you know in fact there was this one seminal paper that really inspired me to write the whole book and that was basically the Big Pharma got together the top researchers in the world flew them to the some luxury resort somewhere and so Sinclair was there and long ago on everybody who's anyone in the field got paid enough money to all come together to list the most potentially the the the most druggable longevity pathways in the body like we wanted to make a you know a longevity drug how would we do it right it said they all sat down they came up with these five biochemical pathways for longevity and I looked at this I said wait a second every single one of these we can modify would diet you know sort of talk about like mTOR igf-1 and all the wait a second think we could all do that you know so I was like all this like Burt that's the whole book one chapter on each we can yeah I'm so I'm really said Wow yeah very cool so I imagine you probably get this from time to time dr. Greger love the new book but I got to tell you I've been on the keto diet I've lost all this weight I feel good or I'm on the carnivore diet I'm on this diet I'm on that diet so you know like you can't tell me that your way is better than my way right and I mean I can say let's see your lab work or let me see your arteries let me see your calcium score let me see I mean you know I just mean anything that's the that's a sort of common retort from the low carb carnivore camp that these the blood work is misleading because it doesn't necessarily mean what it says ah well I mean if you have science to support that but that's not what I mean the science shows I mean I mean so you know there's you know the presidential advisory from the American Heart Association came out you know for it to because of these crazy myths out there that they have to write these papers saying yes that's a fight it's bad for you yes coconut oil is bad for you and I mean and and yes LDLs is leaning predictor of our disease I mean you know I mean things that have been settled science for decades but in the Internet age of flat earthers we have to come out and explicitly explicitly say right and so I mean yeah so and and and we don't just have a short term biomarkers we have you know large populations people who fall diets even even trending in that direction living significally shorter lives it is interesting that the carnivore diet has has caught the attention of so many people and seems to be like a like a trending thing right now it's like it's like it's like if internet troll were a diet it would be please just like that right but I mean look you can imagine someone with food intolerance whether it's celiac disease or anything the ultimate determination right and so people go on elimination diets I mean typically put someone on like you know water sweet potatoes and tapioca like three things no one's allergic to and then all of a sudden their joints feel better they more energy all of a sudden their chronic indigestion goes away okay and then you add back what was it what was it about your diet that you know was causing a problem and so them it's the same thing I mean you're just basically you know excluding and so if you did have some kind of intolerance well then you know but obviously then you'd want to add healthy foods back into your diet to find out what it is and so you can I've one of the things that I've been contending with in the last couple years I mean I've been plant-based for 13 years now is the fact that now there is this proliferation of amazing taste tasting plant-based analogues to every food imaginable right and it all tastes great and I'll find myself indulging in that a little bit more than I should and kind of you know selling the lie to myself like oh it's it's plant-based it's cool you know and knowing of course like isn't the healthiest thing you know and then I follow that up with with another kind of layer of denial which is that because I'm an athlete that I can kind of outrun it you know I can burn it on and as long as I'm trim and I feel good that I'm not I'm not necessarily paying the same toll than somebody else is and I know that's not true and and so there's always like yeah I'm plant-based but I can I can certainly iterate and evolve you know to do better than I'm doing yeah ya know and that ain't bright it's the process and it's harder I mean but I mean what I see you know when I see an ad from Burger King bragging that it's 1% Wofford 0% beef they're bragging that there's no beef in their new burger I mean that just speaks to me to the tremendous surge in interest and plump I see of course I don't magic be right so but when I say right but nutritionally right if you look at these things often more sodium use the coconut oil base oh man as much more saturated fat even sometimes so these are right not healthy foods step in the right direction step in stone foods I like them you know um you know not everyone could go you know kale quinoa overnight but transition foods to get people in direction of eating healthier so I see that as a tremendously kind of optimistic social phenomenon but my concern is that people will stop there people will you just kind of switch over their milk shakes their cheese burgers and milkshakes and then stall there and not capture the full benefits of Blimpie's um yeah it's never been easier to to Evie you can go you can get your you can go to Burger King and get fries and a burger and you can then go get coconut ice cream and knock yourself out and then wonder how come I'm not losing weight fatter yeah yeah I just yeah I moved to Philly recently there are multiple all vegan doughnut shops like Oh which all vegan doughnut shop do you want to go you know I mean I mean that's right and so right I mean you can be you can have a terrible terrible vegan diet I know that if I'm eating whole food plant-based and I'm adhering to that pretty strictly that I don't really have to like the idea of needing to diet it just doesn't it just I don't have to worry about it right so how need you to die how not I know that's tricky right how to diet not as Yoda would say would have retitled it so knowing that then it is now it is how not to diet and yet it is a program that extends beyond just eat these foods like you have these strategies and things to kind of accelerate that aspect of it right and because I wanted to I mean with so much kind of nutritional noise and nonsense out there I just wanted there to finally be not only an evidence-based diet book but you know I said thousands of studies digging up every possible you know tip trick tweet technique proven to accelerate loss of body fat to give people at every possible advantage and kind of you know build them optimal weight loss solutions from the ground up basically my criteria is if I mean if it's been proven to cause weight loss and it's not I mean they're ahead of low bar but like I don't have a chapter on which cigarettes are best to smoke away and we know nicotine is I mean a proven you know but so I say look we can eat nicotine containing foods and maybe get some benefits but um and there was some some things actually cut out like there was a licorice root chapter I took out because the therapeutic index of you could get too much licorice really easily and hurt yourself but there were some things there was some base level of safety but beyond that if a car's weight loss in a randomized control trial it's in the book and I want to give people every possible kind of advantage since that's our came this kind of twenty one tweaks thing to add on to their daily dozen now they've got like 40 check marks every day you know if you really wanted to go all out so if somebody comes to you and says listen I'm fifty sixty pounds overweight I got a I got a drop this weight my life hangs in the balance like how do you kickstart that person like walk me through like if you had you know five or ten minutes to speak to this person how do you kind of get them sorted in on their way yeah so get them the right information right I mean so yeah so you know I could show them the app doctor various daily dozen free app obviously everything I do everything I produce is available free um and then you know tell them about something like 21-day kickstart program from PCRM or a physician I mean for Responsible medicine first of every month totally free bunch of different languages hundreds of thousands people have done it you do is kind of social media group together and you know you get daily advice and tips and things like that again just to stick with it long enough so you can see the benefits yourself and then it's no longer some doctor wagging their finger at you'll be have that internal motivation to stick with it cuz you feel so much better digestion better your sleeps better your Energy's better oh and you're losing weight and you know without writing about it what are some of the crazier turnaround stories that you've heard or experienced oh well I mean the most exciting things is diseases for which there's nothing in the literature that suggested it's possible so people come to me and say I've Hashimoto's thyroiditis hypothyroidism and I tell them you're gonna be on thyroid hormone replacement rest your life your thyroids all scarred up it's over and we can help prevent it but you know and they say no no I had it I have diagnosed I was on this for years and then I went bass and all the sudden I'm off my thyroid medication here's my TSH is my lab values and I tell them your doctor has to write you up as a case study I want to see this publish and I'll do a video about it I mean so you know someone comes to me with ankylosing spondylitis and one of these you know horrible inflammatory autoimmune diseases I'm like look we have great data on Crohn's and multiple sclerosis and yeah and and all sort of kleiss and other similar rheumatoid arthritis up rised it helps with your disease but it hasn't been anything published yet and so quick we gotta get you we got we have to you know it doesn't exist in the scientific world and less is published in peer-reviewed scientific literature and so I encourage them to get it out there and actually there was just a case series and ankylosing spondylitis I'm excited to say but I mean those I mean you expect that you you I'd no longer have diabetes and heart disease I mean all these things and you know teary-eyed and you know I mean it's you know they're out of their wheelchair they're walking again it's they have their lives back and have a future again that you know old that that's why I've been seeing for years but what some of these new you know where someone says you know I have some you know some disease I have to look up I mean help with that too he said wait a second it's a little snake oil ii panacea right I mean that's yet that's a red flag when someone says my thing can help with XY and Z but you realize look we're talking about a diet that improves arterial health every single one of our organs needs blood flow to get rid of waste products get oxygen nutrients and so the no wonder that a heart healthy diet is a brain healthy diet is a liver healthy diet is a kidney healthy diet right and a plant-based diet is a whole food plant-based diet is basically synonymous with an anti-inflammatory diet and since inflammation plays roles so many chronic diseases no wanderin anti-inflammatory diet is gonna help kind of across the board with all these things and so I mean there's these kind of underlying you know mechanisms by which you can imagine and look even if someone will ask me what does it work for a disease you know Z that you know and I say well I don't know bud healthy guy can only help right I mean look and probably people with disease D Z prop we still die of heart disease number one right so forget for example breast cancer postmenopausal breast cancer number one killer of women with older women with breast cancer heart disease still kills them more than breast cancer and so whether or not a hopeful blemish that reverses breast cancer you're still you were still more likely in that emergency and we know we can reverse heart disease so of course everyone with breast cancer of course everyone should be on this healthy diet and then if there's side benefits well then great I mean you know as we see with prostate cancer and some other conditions well when you look at yeah like what you like what you said I mean what's killing people heart disease stroke obesity you know in terms of brain health alzheimer's is exploding right now and to the extent that you're eating in a way that's improving arterial function and reducing inflammation right the downstream domino impact of that you know has all kinds of positive consequences even if it doesn't help it helps doesn't help that particular thing it's like that meme of what if it turned out that that that global warming is a hoax we just improve the planet for no reason I mean like well just stopping smoking help this disease I don't know but it's probably a good idea to stop smoking right I mean it's just a minute just gonna what is a day in your personal life with food like how do you make it work well on the right well again no travelers yeah how do you deal with the airports and all of it yeah Airport food courts yeah well look it's getting easier now you can get like brown rice in an airport I mean that's great like these like you know fast casual places like you know things you never expect to see before and look there's you know I've grown better you know if I can you know land someplace and find Whole Foods and have a hot bar and grab some food and you know first few days I have snacks and then slowly it's all done you know what I've been doing recently is I we tell the organizers you gotta bring me food mm-hmm you know I mean there's only so many Mike Reider there's only so many sweet potatoes like he's greater I played with the crazy Ryder van Halen not like no green M&Ms no M&Ms period it's all right um and so right and so look i you know i need to I yeah and typically I don't even have time even if I could I mean right even if there's healthy food around here I am Southern California I can get healthy food but I don't have time I mean it's just and on the rare days here at home oh now then once I have control over my how excited you and know that's a beautiful thing all right well I mean I just yeah this is my first day of this this few weeks tint uh-huh and so I'm feeling the the leaving home thing it was hard to get up this morning but um yeah then I can eat this beautiful diet oh my and it's like it so much it's like a it's like a it's like a game like how healthy can I get I mean it's really and and you know what helped so I do love food delivery like Whole Foods delivery and then then you're not even tempted to buy junk because it's not in front of you Grammy and so it's like everything I eat so my house just as healthy food and so if you get hungry enough you're gonna eat an apple right I mean there's nothing up you will eventually eat that Apple right and so with only healthy stuff you know I can I can build up my healthy immune system always making a healthy choice the the most convenient right oh yeah I could go out and you know in the Philadelphia winter and bike someplace to get something to bike to the donut shop but so much easier when I have a fridge full of yummy food and do you prepare stuff ahead of time I do a lot of batch cooking yeah yeah yeah particularly now I'm doing a lot of this this prebiotic mix I talked about my winner in studying the improving your microbiome for the new big microbiome chapter in the in the diet book and just learning how again how important microbiome is and where are the most concentrated source of prebiotics and so I did I discovered sorghum for the first time discovered all these weird millets that I had no idea that have poorly digested starch and so they are fed to animals but poorly digested starch is exactly what we want because it's for the digested in our small intestine makes it down to our lower intestine where our good gut bugs can have a bounty of prebiotics and then has all those knock-on benefits and so that's the kind of thing where I just instant pot a huge amount and just you know Tupperware in the fridge and you know take out one every day since it's over in you know so I always have I always have my intact grains and a whole bunch of wonderful black lentils and then it's a matter of just getting greens in the house what else did you learn about the gut that gut biome and in prepping for this what's neat is now we have this interventional trust so we've always known you you can so flashback a few years ago it was a black hole almost no pun intended where because most gut bugs are actually own culture Bowl in laboratory conditions like we can't grow them outside of look human colon we don't know what that gasps oh well you don't know and so it we likely had no idea what's going on there until we had genetic fingerprinting techniques and also and for the first time we'd be like oh okay we can actually track people's microbiome over time compare people's different microbiome and we can correlate diseases with with different bugs in our gut and change people's diets change the microbiome see the beneficial or adverse effects but that's the problem if you improve someone's diet all of a sudden you give people lots of whole grains and legumes beans split peas chickpeas and lentils lots of prebiotics they get these beneficial changes in their microbiome and also and they have amazing health benefits uh yeah but you just fed them a whole bunch of healthy food how do we know microbiome has anything to do with it that's where fecal transplants come along right and we can prove it's the microbiome because we can take those gut buffs and put it into somebody who's continuously the crappy diet and see if we can get those same metabolic benefits and that's what we're saying so we're seeing yeah so you know someone gets a fecal transplant for someone who's overweight also and they start packing on pounds eating the same food or there's that's crazy mental health changes all sorts of crazy things um and now we can prove it's the gut bug now what happens is of course it's temporary because right you you infuse the gut bugs but then you keep starving them by not eating any fiber and then they die away but you see initially those same benefits of course you've got to feed those go they're gonna die off but but so so what went from a from a correlation science now we have a causation science and it's just fascinating that we can transfer the benefits of healthy diets so so I mean so the the black market rich role stool you could I mean you know the the the I mean yeah start selling that [ __ ] exactly who wouldn't it is it is fascinating I mean there's links to cravings as well like nature owns a gut flora impacts the foods that you crave a yeah yeah and it also I think is is because it's so complex that it's right for confusion and people kind of making claims about what you should and you shouldn't do that we don't necessarily have the ability to really back up at this point particularly this kind of personalized nutrition like people all the time are sending me things my I sent my stool sample in to this company and gave me back a thing and said I should be eating this and I shouldn't be eating this we don't have that concern you Larry does not same thing with the DNA testing right people that get back there their genome and say oh well I know I'm whatever I shouldn't be eating the x y&z we don't have that kind of but is it true we should be eating fermented foods and we should be eating you know nutritionally a variety of nutritionally dense foods to be kind of seeding that that gut flora with a diversity of bacteria so it's the three rights prebiotics probiotics and polyphenols which of these kind of tend to be brightly colored pigments in fruits and vegetables these are kind of the three are the three things that benefit a good microbiome and you can use all three of them or just two of them I mean the problem with probiotics is you take them and then they just die off you don't continue to eat healthy and so if you just have like antibiotic associated diarrhea or something you wipe out you go got bugs then I see a therapeutic role of something like probiotics but otherwise taking probiotics it's useless because they'll just die off if you put them in the same environment that didn't grow good gut bugs in the first place putting in some good acidophilus and they're just gonna die off because you're not feeding the acidophilus cuz good gut bugs are by definition fiber feeders resistant starch eaters these are I mean that's then that's what makes good gut bugs grow and so what we really need is we just need to feed our good gut bugs prebiotics and people who are like oh I eat so many fruits and vegetables but must realize fruits and vegetables or almost all water like you know fruits or like 80 percent water or somewhere where specials 90 95 percent water their water and vegetable form not actually a lot of fiber you can actually have a pretty deficient fiber deficient diet if you're not including whole grains and legumes some of these drier foods into your daily diet wow that's good to know alright cuz I just thought well as long as I'm eating a lot of high-fiber foods like I'm basically taking care of my prebiotic needs all right but there is actually not so the fruits and vegetables are not high they're high fiber foods compared to what 99% of the population eats but um if you're really trying to build you know 70 grams a day you know 80 grams a day or like 120 grams which is how we probably evolved you know based on human cop the lights you know fossilized feces then I mean if you and you do the math you people don't even close so you know Ornish you know really healthy you know hopeful plant-based diet and you gotta like 60 which is you know average is about 15 recommended minimum is about 30 and so getting 60 but I mean that's and that's a remarkably healthy diet to shoot up there and then these population studies where they have know essentially no heart disease no diabetes no breast cancer no you know like sub-saharan Africa half century ago they were getting you know the the triple digit fiber construction every day and so part of that benefit may actually have been the microbiome and that was the benefit of the fiber as opposed to you know drop a one's cholesterol or something right more will be revealed though I think there's there's there's got to be like lots of crazy studies being performed right now know and so there there are vegan fecal transplant studies what can we you give someone you know you know you know they do it through tubes they do it to capsules I you know you just don't want to burp after that you know that kind of thing do you know Robin shut can dr. Robin shuck can dc-dc physician who specializes in the microbiome and she was that she was on the show a long time ago but she was predicting not only fecal transplants becoming like a booming business but actual spas like high-end spas where you could go and have your you know your artisanal I want them to eat for the week before you show up exactly right that's great well let's let's shift gears I want to talk about sitting for a minute you did some interesting stuff here on the book of around that I know you're we're sitting at sitting is unless you're on an airplane or in a car yeah yeah I'm staying yeah stuck my butt all day in a plane typically um but yeah so I mean I there's this myth that sitting some new smoking not by any stretch of imagination at least ten times more deadly to smoke than to sit but prolonged sitting define typically over six hours a day is associated with increased mortality even if you then go out to the gym and work out hard for an hour a day after work and so it does I mean that helps but doesn't completely counterbalance the fact that you're sitting all day and we think a lot of that has to do with the venous stasis they they the quack you bill coagula bility of your blood the fact that you're not actually having movement of blood from your veins in your lower legs effects into thela function and effects kind of you're kind of a systemic arterial tree but even something like you know bobbing your knee up and down has been shown to completely eliminate this effect that's wild um and so in the end they have someone just Bob one knee up and down versus the other and you can measure the differences and what's going on their legs and that is what's correlated with this increased you know cardiovascular disease morbidity mortality so there's a way so even if your truck driver or even if you're stuck inside all day send down there are things you can do and so yeah there's all sorts of I go through all the the various different like little bars and things they can put on your desk and which ones work which ones are just fad and so there are ways you can kind of mouse effect but or you you know do standing desks walking desk I love getting back to my walking desk I dicted to the thing wasn't there a study that you looked at where they put people on basically you know a a standardized amount of calories every day and said you can exercise this much and there was a difference in between you know some of them lost weight some of them didn't and it came down to how much they were sitting and then there was this realization that there are certain people that are walking around all the time he's kind of casually throughout the day and they were having amazing benefits that the people who were just eating the same and working out the same who were sitting more weren't able to realize these neat benefits read these non-exercise through money so so what what they so what they realized is that we typically you know this whole calories in calories out and you ask people what matters and people actually either say they're the same or calories out matters more and that's completely not true we have almost total control over calories in fact we could eat nothing although can calories out typical exercise like casual exerciser it's only like 5% of calories out most of our calories out are our energy intensive brains most wild animals movement is their number-one calories out for us it's our brains we could lie down in bed chained to a bed all day still burn over a thousand calories the most of the and so that's why it's it's so hard to outrun a bad diet because you know even a moderately exercise moderately obese person moderately intensely exercising for an hour burns 350 calories I mean most snacks drinks processed foods have like 70 Cal are consumed it's 70 calories a minute so five minutes eating just wiped out a whole hour of exercise that's why it's so difficult but what they learned is because and so there's a there's a you know like a 60 percent slice that's just like you know your basal metabolic you know activity keeping your breathing your heart pumping your brain going and then there's a small sliver unless you're a mountain climber an Army Ranger something really doing intense exercise you just have a small fraction of voluntary says but then there's this non exercise thermogenesis which is fidgeting which is just moving walking around you know standing rather than sitting I think so the now we have these accelerometers we can put on people and so really revolutionized our understanding of where these calories are going and why you put people on the same kind of same calorie diet of the same enforced exercise schedule and some people lose vastly more amounts of weight than others and most of that had to do it's not like some people just you know had metabolic slowing or there's some biochemical thing going on know is the amount of the of this this this cannon on you know you know typical kind of exercise you know where you're sending out a half an hour to do any kind of exercise it was just that they're just moving around more during the day and so how can we enforce that well being at a standing desk you have postural muscles otherwise you'd collapse to your floor you know anything you can do to get you to just move yourself more and you know bouncing your knees that kind of stuff I mean that dovetails pretty perfectly with the Blue Zones findings right that these people that live so long and live so healthy are people that are just kind of in constant low-grade motion throughout the day right they're not going to the gym right now because their whole life it's just not we were built to move and so you know and so I mean that's what some of that sipping data suggests what about the person who has struggled to lose weight their whole life and no matter what they do they just continue to gain or they can't you know they stay at a certain point is there is there validity to this being hormonal or an endocrine problem you know here people say like oh it's my genetic makeup or you know I just have a slow metabolism right so there are some conditions so for example hypothyroidism meaning where does slow down your metabolism by about fifteen percent and indeed it's just it's harder for them to lose weight but there's no such thing as someone who's basically obesity resistant there used to be there are people claim no matter what even if I don't need anything I gain weight or don't lose weight and so scientists lock them in a lab and when you do that everybody everybody everybody with has never been a single published case they lose weight in fact exactly as they should in terms of body fat some of them and this is where this comes from start retaining water such that they lose no weight after not eating for four days um so the bathroom scale says they haven't lost a pound but if you actually do CT scans DEXA scans actually see what's going on so their body they're losing body fat exactly as predicted but they're retaining all this water and then finally when that diuresis happens all of a sudden they plunge down and match exactly on to the curve but it can take days for you to reach that so you can imagine people who are like I'm starving myself for literally days not losing a pound there's something wrong with me no you are actually losing body fat every single day it's just your scale doesn't tell you the you know the the what compartments you're losing that weight from wow that's interesting because I feel like that that does come up quite a bit people you know will say just you know I there's something different about my genetic makeup that makes me immune from these positive experiences that other people have so they just have to get enough time yeah one of the things that I hear quite frequently is rich you know I've been listening to you I read your book blah blah whatever I saw the movies I went plant-based for a while and now I'm you know I'm pretty much there but I went back to some fish and a little bit of you know a little bit of meat here and there so I'm kind of 90% in your direction like is that good like it how do you how does this how does the evidence in the science break down in terms of somebody who's predominantly plant-based I guess the word plant-based I mean how do you define that if you're plant-based it doesn't mean your your plant perfect or your right plant a hundred percent what is the difference between somebody who is you know adhering to you know your optimal protocol versus the person who is indulging in a little bit of meat and dairy products on the side I think the body has remarkable ability to bounce back from insults in fact that's what this kind of this heart disease reversal data shows is that you can have you can eat a lifetime of this horrible food and then even when the average age is like in the 60s some of these reversal studies and even after a lifetime you can clean off there's the body was just waiting for you to stop you know attacking your arteries with these foods and you could rapidly I'm reversal and you get more reversal the more compliance you get but but these the compliance wasn't perfect in most of these studies and so people were eating those kind of ninety percent type diets and seeing the remarkable benefits you know it's like there's no study in the world that suggests someone with who's like a social smoker picks up a few cigarettes at a party once a year is gonna have any greater you know lung cancer risk than someone who doesn't smoke at all of course we tell people don't smoke at all because we're afraid this kind of kind of you know lead down that path and some people are easier or ironically more compliant with strict rules black and white rules so if you're like there's no cheese in the house versus a little cheese and I'm just gonna have a little bit the concern I think with a lot of these plant-based physicians who are like absolutely strict zero you know we don't want you to eat any of this it's not that they think it's not that the science supports we need that level of compliance to get the benefits but the concern is you won't is that you'll slip back down to your old guys okay so it's a psychological you know you know it's easier for for for an alcoholic to complete each other yeah this yeah trust me I mean a couple observations on that I mean I certainly fall into that camp like I have to have ardent strict rules around this stuff because if I you know partake a little bit that just opens the door for more like I just know myself well enough to know like if if I could have a little bit of cheese here and here and there that I could maintain that for a little while but six months later they're they're probably be a lot more cheese happening like that would be that would be the harm it wouldn't be that cheese ones right that wouldn't be that it's that it triggers it it basically keeps that craving alive right rather than allowing me to transcendent and it doesn't allow your tastebuds to adapt right I mean so I mean we our taste buds have been so deaded by this deadened by the hyper salty hyper sweet hyper fatty foods such that natural foods don't taste any good and so then you feel like some kind of aesthetic monk where you just eating it but give it a few weeks and all of a sudden you know the soup salt had to taste weeks ago we have these great studies so it's actually to salt you prefer lower salts and the same thing happens with you no but look the rapist peach in the world tastes sour after bowl of Froot Loops like in natural food but all of a sudden you get to a point where if you start if you get rid of all that crap then all of a sudden you know corn on the cob no butter no salt tastes delicious like natural healthy whole food then you get the best of both worlds wait a second tastes delicious and you get to live longer that's what plant-based eating is all about but you may never get there if you you know well I'll have a little cheese here a little cheese there you maintain that you can't like that yeah except then and then then okay I'm gonna be good eat that salad and this how it doesn't taste like cardboard because you know it doesn't have the same kind of yeah right I I know that to be true because I've experienced that in my life but I think people hearing that think it's [ __ ] like they're like they can't believe they can't believe that that's true they're like that sounds great but there's no way yeah I have about this is that I don't think people are very good objective they're not objective about about what they're truly doing like when they say I having a little bit of this or I have a moderate amount of this I think their their perception of that moderation is is generally in my experience completely out of whack no in fact there's a great study that I talked about in the new book where and and this is the reason why moderation why food industry loves moderation they asked people what they thought a moderate amount of chocolate would be moderate amount of you know process meet modern mounted they go through all these foods right and what was the definition of moderate exactly how much they themselves were eating no matter how much they're eating that was defined as moderate based on their own intake they were even in chocolate bar every day that's moderate intake and so so when the food industry says everything in moderation that's pathetic that's basically giving people license to do exactly what they were doing before because they all everyone thinks that they're eating moderate amounts of bad food Ronny's and it goes back to the psychology of all of this it really isn't about the information it's about it's about people's emotional you know baggage around all of this stuff that and I really think that that is the biggest barrier like when somebody says I can't lose weight or what there's there's a whole you know package there that needs to be you know really deconstructed in order to get that person you know acclimated towards a new way of living and eating and I have a chapter in the book talking about those psychological we have these glitches right so I talked about like in psychology delivery so they called - what the hell effect that's the ue1 cooking they eat the whole bag because I already screwed up but which makes absolutely no sense just take step back waiting so I I made one step away from what my planned so I'm just gonna go all if that makes absolutely no sense in fact you eat that one then you definitely shouldn't eat the whole but but our psychology goes in the absolute wrong direction and the same thing then there's a the flipside is making progress towards a goal actually gives people license though you know so losing weight one week um is correlated with gaining weight the next way right you're you but just the understanding of that knowing that that's a glitch um that the hope is that you can catch yourself huh right and so you know I find myself you know after some for our book signing you know the you know jet lag to heck you know staring at whatever goodies are in my hotel minibar right and have this my first way just like I deserve this like oh my god Ben what I went through today but then I really I just what the hell but you're alright I just you know I just I I just I I the self licensing and I say no what I deserve of course mmm-hmm is to be healthy so yeah I think I think momentum is underrated too once people get a little practice with this and they're starting to see even the smallest amount of result positive result then it really like enforces you know that drive to keep going and it's almost like an insurance policy or a barrier against those kind of slips and I'm something mystical about that and in that does argue towards the more if you're gonna try it go all in as opposed to the 8090 percent right well if you're gonna try it like a free sample right that's what I used to tell my patients right right like if you look you can eat anything for a few weeks you mean nothing for viewings I mean let's just let's try it let's go all in just you know and because people can't stomach the thought of I'm never going to need another pepperoni pizza rest of my life like this is unthinkable but like no no just a couple weeks then we can go right back to even whatever you want you know just give it a try I'm in the but but the hope is that they go all-in they start to feel the benefits right so they're they're less painful periods they're they're chronic migraines whatever whatever it is such that then have that internal motivation even if they don't take advantage and they do slip back to their old ways they know at least in the back of their mind they know how good they could feel at any time if they just moved in that direction but you don't know how good you're gonna feel to give it a try what changes would you make to our system of healthcare if you were in charge I mean you know listen nobody goes into medicine to you know just be a vehicle for for diagnosis and prescription you know but the system is set up to create a dynamic that forces medical practitioners into this kind of practice that you know isn't really necessarily I would imagine what they thought they were signing up for yeah I mean it's really the I mean in fact if you look at mental health statistics of practices these days particularly in the United States this is not what we kind of signed up for because most of what comes in our door about 80 percent in primary care are these chronic diseases for which we have very little to offer our patients then kind of traditional medical model right we can slow down the rate at which you go blind or which you lose your kidney function we can slow down the rate at which you know your arteries clogged off by you know prescribing these drugs and only have a little time so we give these prescriptions but instead of giving fully informed consent that well here's your other options that I don't have time to tell you about and are may work better and less side effects but I mean the the system is set up to kind of reward bad behavior the most profitable doctor visit in North America is a blood pressure check doctors love it everybody loves it they're being billed for it they come in you're on a blood pressure medication they come in every and then you tweak the drug a little bit and then come back it's the easiest you know is you fit it in a few minutes you get to Bill for it and in it's the most common primary care visit and for a condition that need not happen at all this is lifestyle disease high blood pressures lifestyle disease but that entire sector of the field would be gone both big farm and and big medicine I mean no one benefits from people eating healthier I mean if you go down the list like the junk food industry the we name one industry that would that would benefit from people eating healthier and you say well what about the health insurance industry don't they benefit from people because they have to pay for it all no they get a slice of the pie and the bigger the pie the bigger the slice I mean that you know when I when I get to talk to these you know healthcare executives of these conferences first of all they'll say well you know they're only gonna be on my insurance for a few years and I switches people switched insurance so frequently why am I gonna prevent their diabetes and have some other company benefit from my preventing their diabetes and it's the pie I mean it's just so expensive and and they they get their cut and the more expensive it is the bigger the cut and it's just the whole system is rigged kind of against us you know the CEOs of junk food companies aren't sitting around trying to think of way creative ways to contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic they just need to make money for the shareholders how do you do that you don't do that selling something that goes bad like produce that you can't brand you can't making you want a snack cake that sits on the Shelf right I mean I mean the system is just set up to to you know reward these behaviors that make people sick yeah so how do we change the incentive ization so that we get more Robert Oz belts and Michelle McCracken's who are who you know have created practices where they have follow up an accountability and they're they're you know providing that kind of extra level of care to help people make these lifestyle shifts like there has to be an economic structure that that that you know makes it attractive for young doctors to enter into this yes so I mean it's a reimbursement I mean that's a you know Dean Ornish had this famous quote saying that you know he thought was the research but knows all about reimbursed me you know so he proved back in nineteen ninety right decades ago you could reverse heart disease number-one killer and you know is you know hundreds of thousands people continue to die every year needlessly it because it's not the the lifestyle purchase isn't reimbursed and so yes some people can fight against the the buck the trend and find creative ways to like these shared medical visits where can bill insurance you this actually no technical maximum for the number of people you can get you can get 30 people in Rome and you bill insurance for each of those 30 people and give the same little speech that you give for a group diabetics or a group of people with obesity and so that's one of the kind of ways that within the system I'm doctor to be able to to get reimbursed but yeah I mean it we just need to change the incentives like why do do US taxpayer subsidized by the billions the the sugar industry the corn syrup industry the the make cheap livestock feed $4 man your burgers why why are we paying a quarter billion dollars to the sorghum industry I'm buying some sorghum now because I love it but I didn't even know about it a few months ago right no it's all fed to livestock uh-huh and so I mean now you can argue we shouldn't be subset that government should be subsidizing the foods out but if you're going to subsidize this how about subsidizing fruits and vegetables making them cheaper even free to em because then they'll have also said knock-on benefits in terms of lower costs across the board yeah taking those subsidies and channeling them into improving health care or creating those incentives what's the the controversy is so who's gonna pay for health care not what the fundamental health care is going to be right I think Ornish did create a reimbursable program absolutely paid right pay for reimbursed by Medicare there's two programs now him and Pritikin um and and and I speak at hospital I speak at Ornish programs across the country that's often my in into a medical system to kind of promote the program saying that this option exists yeah speaking of Pritikin Pritikin you know your your entry point to this whole thing begins with Pritikin yeah yeah amazing right and not a doctor right people always think doc britain now he's an engineer came from the outside diagnosed with with serious heart disease in his early 40s and was and was basically told the you go home and die there's nothing we can do about it I'm back then we didn't have drugs for I mean couldn't even put anybody on anything and people just were first and you die heart disease reversible no but then he looked around the world found these popular you use a data guy you just went and so there's population of the world that don't suffer from epidemic heart disease like it's unknown people just don't have heart in rural China sub-saharan Africa wait a sec what was it about these populations he figured oh maybe it's cholesterol and started experimenting around how we can lower people cholesterol came plant-based diet and reversed you know heart disease by the thousands bought back then we didn't have angiography we didn't have this ability to visualize inside what the artists were looking like and so it's a clinical diagnosis that angina they could they had such bad heart disease it couldn't walk up the steps but you just had to trust that the patient had engine and all of a sudden they go on a plant-based diet and all of a sudden they're they're running marathons and the response the medical community's well you never had heart disease first place if you had heart disease you wouldn't be running marathons well but it's because it was simple but all of a sudden what Orange brought to the table is we could prove with something called quantitative angiography oh we can actually see the arteries open up get bigger improved blood flow reversal proof in black and white pups of some of those prestigious medical journals in the world and but one of those people that Pritikin reverse their heart disease was francis gregor my grandmother who you know the in a wheelchair after so many bypass surgeries basically run on the plumbing and there she was and saw about Pritikin on 60 minutes per diem was featured on 60 minutes who somehow made the cross-country track one of his earliest patients she's featured and predict ins biography and she you know they wheeled her in and she walked out within a few weeks she was walking ten miles a day went on living another thirty one years they aged 96 after medical death sentence at age 65 and that's what that's what changed are all family I mean now as a kid this was all happen when I was on I I mean I just well yeah duh you go to the doctor you get better that's what doctors do right little did I know what revolution back then the thought that heart disease was reversible completely revolutionary only later in life did I realized what had happened what my grandma was part of I was Pritikin kind of perceived as a quack in his time well he was I mean he was putting doctors at shame because he knew the science because he had he'd read read all the primary literature and so with just Tomales there's actually some old YouTube of his debates he would just demolish opponents because they thought they knew what they're talking about of course they mean they were just the doctors it weren't odd anything about nutrition and so I thought I mean he was just kind of untouchable when when when who was actually presenting the science but they didn't believe his results whose results were too miraculous and he couldn't prove it beyond these amazing patient testimonials but you know how far does that really go it doesn't until you know we have good data to back it up and he inspired everything that you've done I know that's why I was mad at rigor that's why I started nutrition facts that's why I wrote how not to die that's why all the proceeds ever seen from all my books are done into charity I just want to do what everyone for everyone's family what Pritikin did for my family right well let's round this down maybe provide a few starting points for somebody that's listening to this this information is totally new to that person they're overweight they're ready for a change what's the first thing they do go to your local public library grab how not to diet check it out and nutritionfacts.org all my work is free there no ads no corporate sponsorship strictly non-commercial not sell anything just put up as a public service as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother I like how you mentioned the library and not the bookstore free books are free literally in your neighborhood they're just sitting there but if you had to tell them like look I'm ready I'm staring at my next meal like what should I focus on what am i what what are what are a couple foods are some like thumbnail you know rules that I can wrap my head around yeah so there's a 17 criteria which make for the first part of the book like being rich in fiber or water rich vegetables things like that that that through calorie density mechanisms and improving microbiome health is and etc can you know can achieve that satiety without calorie restriction or portion control I mean that's that's the magic of plant-based eating as opposed additional weight loss approaches is that you know people are told to eat ad libitum meaning eat as much as you want and and that's because you know you take people put people on a whole food plant-based diet and you slash 2,000 calories out of their daily diet cut their caloric intake in half they don't notice because I mean yeah I mean they have these crazy it put me a healthy enough that you you just could some foods you impossible to overeat 2,000 calories of strawberries forty four cups of strawberries you couldn't fit them all in your stomach like you know I mean that you know that's just you know there's you know me I go on and on oh listen man I I love you I you know I can go out and run really far distances but I aspire to your level of you know what I mean whatever you got I want it and you've been so inspiring to me in my journey and I just I love the impact that you're having in the world and and it's it's massive it's no small thing you've devoted your life to this cause and you've changed so many other people's lives and it's to be commended it's an honor to talk to you today well you know what I hear beyond just documentaries I heard you on the rich roll podcast and that's why I changed my life and that's why I'm here good come back again sometime and you're going to speak at a hospital tonight that's right where am I gonna pick you don't even know do you know what state you're in I just looked down my phone like oh I'm going to the airport oh yeah what's the pitch at the hospital tonight um we're gonna do weight loss uh-huh we're gonna do weight loss good alright now friend let's get you out of here peace [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 252,021

Rating: 4.85114 out of 5

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition, plant-based diet, how to go plant based diet, how to eat plant based, vegan weight loss secrets, lose weight without dieting, how to lose weight without dieting, how to lose weight without dieting and exercise, whole food plant based diet, whole food plant based weight loss, michael greger how not to diet

Id: auZDWTMLM8I

Length: 94min 28sec (5668 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020