The Power Foods Diet: The Breakthrough Plan for Easy and Permanent Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard

hey everyone and welcome to Chef AJ live I'm your host Chef AJ and this is where I introduce you to amazing people like you who are doing great things in the world that I think you should know about well I have two very special guests today here to talk about this wonderful book that's going to be out in one two three four five days it's called the power Foods diet the Breakthrough plan that traps tames and burns calories for easy and permanent way L this is your alternative to OIC which you're going to find out is not the Panacea that people believe it's written by Dr Neil Barnard and he's here to talk about this new book which we hope you'll get now because you know it really helps us plant-based people it helps all authors if you buy the book in advance of it coming out it gets the attention of more major Publishers and people realize how important plant-based nutrition is in these types of books and also helps the author become a New York Times bestseller if you get it in the first few days so please first welcome the author of this fabulous new book Dr Neil Barnard well thank you AJ it's great to be with you again thank you Dr Barnard so power Foods diet how come you wrote this book and how come you wrote it now well you know there's been a shift over time the old idea was you got to just starve yourself don't eat to many calories or don't eat carbs and that's kind of given way to a more modern approach to thinking about food patterns dietary patterns the idea is less on how much are you eating and more on what types of foods are predominating in your diet that's been a good approach however what we've discovered is going beyond that it's not just say plant-based is good and animal based is bad although that's certainly true a plant-based diet helps people lose weight but within a plant-based diet different foods have different effects obviously a potato versus potato chips or something like that obvious differences but then there are some that just really stand out and so I thought okay let's take the standout Foods the power Foods that have one of three effects either they help reduce your appetite or they trap calories in your digestive track so you can never absorb them or they boost your metabolism and certain foods do these so heck let's make them into lasagna or soup or a salad or a dessert or let's make them into real foods so that instead of not eating we're enjoying the foods again that's that's the idea behind the power Foods di who discovered that certain foods have more of a potential to help people lose weight and be more satisfied well lots of research teams including our team here at the Physicians committee have been working on this but let me say um kind of a a word of thanks to our friends at Harvard because it was 2015 Harvard University researchers these are people you know too AJ um had they've been tracking more than 100,000 people and they looked at which foods people were eating more of as time went on and it turned out the Harvard researchers found that if there if you ate more and more and more of certain foods your weight would go down and down and down now wait a it how can it be that you're eating more and you're losing weight well if it's a food that is say high in fiber and it's really filling without a lot of calories the more you're eating that instead of something else you're going to do better so uh let me just get maybe AJ just let me just mention some of the foods that they picked on and that's kind of our starting point but that we're going to go way beyond that uh at the top of the list of the weight loss Foods was the humble unassuming blueberry and all of its cousins the strawberry and the Rasberry and you know you know the whole list grape Foods neglected foods but they have fiber yes they have low glycemic index sugar so they're absorbed gradually but they also have anthocyanins which are the pigments in them that seem to be biologically active no number two was the cruciferous vegetables all your pals broccoli cauliflower Brussels sprout uh but then the number three was green vegetables more broadly like spinach or asparagus and then we come to the fourth group which would be citrus fruits and citrus fruits counted even if it was fruit juice the much maligned juice people say eat the whole fruit you know and and and that's right it's good to eat the whole fruit but even juice counted it helped uh and then um after that we have melons so melons watermelon cantaloupe no no big surprise I mean high fiber lots of water everybody loves them you know um but the sixth group was the bean High the beans are the fiber Champions they got healthy complex carbohydrates and they come in beans they come in lentils they come in all these different wonderful forms that our grandparents knew all about and kids today wouldn't even recognize them if it hit them in the face kids don't know about these things so we got to bring back the bean so those are the ones that the Harvard researchers picked out but then other researchers looked at certain spices cinnamon Ginger the cap seasins and hot peppers yes um and lots of others too so we worked with our recipe developers Dustin harder who is a genius and Lindsey Nixon who is another genius and they just made these into the greatest recipes you've ever seen they looked at foods that can help weight loss did they also discover which foods do the opposite oh my goodness sakes you know what some of these are and but some of these are really pitched as healthy foods um salmon wild CAU salmon wild CAU salmon from Whole Foods you know okay I'm kidding a little bit but you know a lot of people have the idea that if I eat that I will lose weight um but they're getting a little mixed up with it um salmon has a lot of fat in it and it may be better quality fat than say beef fat but it's still a lot of fat Atlantic salmon has about it's about 40% fat as a percentage of calories if it's shinook it's about 50% or a little higher and one thing fishy ERS very often discover is they're not losing weight they're doing what they're supposed to do what the doctor said but I'm eating all this fish and I'm not losing weight well it has zero fiber zero complex carbohydrates to fill you up it's got a lot it's it's basically a lot of protein animal protein and animal fat and so you it will fill you up but by the time it fills you up you've eaten so many calories that weight loss just isn't happening so yeah that that's one that is overrated another one that's really overrated and that's coconut oil now you know coconut oil oh it's organic da da da it has a great mouth feel and and you know it does you can see why people add it to everything um because it's got a mouth feel akin to vaseline but uh unfortunately it will raise your cholesterol levels and same with palm oil so it's sad you'll buy some peanut butter you know peanuts alone would do it but they throw palm oil in there and these are cholesterol raising oils so I encourage people to ignore the marketing for them and to leave them out of their diets well you know when you talk about the foods that help you lose weight in the foods that hinder it the foods that help people lose weight seem to be the foods that are found in nature in their whole food form that have been around through pretty much all of human history and the ones that don't are foods that either our ancestors didn't eat at all like oil or ate very rarely well yes fruits vegetables beans whole grains they really come in tops but you know what you can make these in into 21st Century Foods um we found that cinnamon tends to boost the uh metabolism a little bit it contains a natural aldah that causes adrenaline to go into your blood just slightly so that your metabolism wraps up cinnamon is great blueberries are great we made blueberry syrup to pour on my Cinnamon French toast so it's America's favorite breakfast you know fabulous but uh you can lose weight consuming these healthy foods now don't get me wrong I am not suggesting that people take a funnel and just Jam food in I I it's good to eat healthful Foods in the quantities that seem right for you um we don't want to be overdoing and going crazy with it but you can love the foods that love you back absolutely and you know a lot of people eat oatmeal for breakfast or oat grats and a lot of times they'll put cinnamon and blueberry in so they're eating these Foods already would eating these foods be helpful if somebody was eating the standard American diet just decided to eat some blueberries and cinnamon sure they help and what really helps a lot is you eat more and more blueberries and if you eat so many blueberries that it pushes the eggs and bacon off your table then that's that's going to really help enormously and so um we've had a lot of fun with them I I mentioned the French toast with with blueberry syrup but uh let's say it's lunchtime and you want to have a lentil soup or a Minon or a pasta foli that know the Italian pasta and bean soup it's just great and all of these are power Foods um you can have the bean burritos and veggie chilies and all kinds of things and by the way I want to say um a big hi to Stephanie anfo who's here with us as well and Stephanie has been a big inspiration for me because she's been um talking really about how to make these foods work in your life and in in everybody's life because she's done it done it in her life too right well my next question was going to be um does this work and that was going to be my segue to in to intr do Stephanie who's been on the show before she has lost 100 pounds eating the kind of foods that Dr Barnard recommends in this book I've put the link in the chat and the show note so please get it now welcome back Stephanie so you've lost 100 pounds have you kept it off 11 years later I've kept it off eating exactly the way he describes in this book it's it's marvelous that's amazing what what do you like to eat from the foods that Dr Barnard mentioned well I love blueberries we blueberries probably every day here I love melons I love kale I love lentils um I love brown rice I love potatoes and I didn't realize at the time when I started this that these were so powerful um but tried and true 11 years later we're keeping it off and and we're still eating our plants off over here I love that eating your plants off how long did it take you to lose the 100 it took about 10 months to do it I mean luckily we weren't having obstacles with uh transition Foods Beyond burgers and stuff like that weren't really out at the time so it was the power foods like you said the Natural Foods the grains the greens the fruits the vegetables and the lentils um kept us full kept us going and I just want to inspire other people to do the same too absolutely are there any foods from your previous lifestyle that you miss that you haven't been able to recreate no we've been able to pretty much recreate everything that we enjoy and love and you know being a food for Life instructor with the Physicians committee I think I'm in 270 classes I've taught three to you know three to four different recipes a week no oil I've never seen so many foods flavors Cuisines quite honestly Chef AJ we're eating way more things than we've ever eaten yeah that's amazing hey Dr Bernard isn't this like your 20th or 21st book The Power Foods diet hey we don't count calories and I guess we don't count books either do but but you know but you know I want to say something that Stephanie shared that I think is so important you know about sharing information that you have with other people you know let's say let's say you're you're you're prescribed a drug let's say for weight loss you're prescribed wovie or for diabetes you're prescribed Metformin you know what you're not going to share that with anybody you're not going to share your injections with everybody you know you're not going to share your metformin pills with everybody you're not going to be handing them out I hope but what you can do is when you have knowledge when you have knowledge of what works with you that you can share easily and when you've got a plate of brownies that are vegan low-fat brownies um like we have some in the book called black and blue brownies which it's a goofy name but what what they are is they have blueberries in them a little bit of blueberries and they have catch this they got black beans and the brownies they disappear in the oven don't ask me how but they become chewy and just really nice so you make extra and you give them to your neighbor who does not believe that a plant-based diet can be good and they will say this is just cool this is so great can I have the recipe you make some chili you know there's no reason to make a tiny little pot of chili make a big pot of chili and then you can save some because you know how it gets better every day and you can also give it to other people so you can make extra spaghetti sauce you can share these things around and where knowledge fails where you can't convince a person just cognitively sometimes you reach them through their heart and sometimes through their taste buds so anyway it's um that's something you just can't do with the medication absolutely Stephanie there's a wonderful comment in the chat for you from Tommy Dutton saying your motivation is amazing I would not be here if it wasn't for her so you've got a fan in the chat and so do you Dr Barnard several thank you Tommy thank you guys so much yep Dr Barnard is amazing if you guys feel he's amazing then click the link below and buy the book Dr Bernard one of the things of the many things I found interesting in this book that you talked about was this idea of the calorie trapping effect can you expound on that a bit yes in 2017 research is at tuft University in Boston which is one of the the premier nutrition research universities in the world they did a study that I don't think my research team here at pcrm is ever going to do they brought in individuals for six weeks half of them ate white bread white rice you know that fiber depleted Foods the other half had whole grain bread brown rice the fiber rich foods and then what they did is they collected everybody's stool samples yes they did and they sorted through them and they looked for unabsorbed calories and they tested them out yes we're not going to do this here but what they discovered is that that the fiber that you're eating it breaks into a little microfiber particles that go down and like tiny little sponges find unabsorbed calor grab a hold of them and carry them right out with the waste so yes you are flushing calories down the toilet because fiber grabbed them so on a white bread diet there's not much fiber in it you you're going to absorb all those calories whole grain bread just the opposite so the moral of the story is if you have fiber in your diet it comes from Beans that's the champion next up vegetables next up fruits next up whole grains if those are in your diet you get plenty of fiber if you're eating cheese meat eggs overly refined Foods the fiber's gone and the fiber keeps you regular sure that's its big selling point some fibers reduce cholesterol that's super but did you know that they trap calories and carry them away so it's good for about 100 calories a day that it will remove from you know so you can't absorb them that's good and we're going to add to that the appetite taming effect that certain foods have that's good for about 200 calories a day and then the metabolic burn that you get after the meal is good for maybe another 200 so maybe about 500 calories per day you're removing without being aware of it you're not hungry you're not running for five miles at the gym which is by the way what you'd have to do at the gym if you want to burn off 500 calories um this the the food just do it you know without you lacing up your sneakers don't get me wrong love exercise great do it myself but even but the foods have this effect on their own so really exercise is important for variety of reasons but when it comes to weight loss it's the food it's the food and part of the reason that I say that with some Assurance um while I love exercise and it is important I don't want to diminish it at all in our research studies we need to isolate the effective diet so that we know what the diet does to do that we have to ask our participants to keep their exercise levels steady if you're not training for a marathon do not do it now if you're not exercising do not do it we keep it absolutely steady and we' have seen all of these effects from the food alone that's important because you need to know what exercise will do you need to know what food will do separate from exercise in addition there are some people where due to disability or other factors exercise is not going to be a huge thing for them and if those people think well I can't go to the gym and and and run some wait a minute you can do great because these foods are going to work for you whether you do extra exercise or not so there you go um there are sometimes where people have so much weight that they're carrying that for them really I would focus on the foods now bring in the exercise as you're comfortable but let foods do their work because their work is huge yep Stephanie do did you exercise while you were losing the weight you know I didn't and what Dr Barnard said it makes perfectly good sense I was in no physical condition to even exercise uh I went down my stairs once a day I wasn't walking around very much I could barely walk I was pretty sick so if somebody would have said which most doctors did during my years of dieting and trying to lose weight you know if you would just exercise um if somebody would have said if you just exercise the weight would have come off I should have lost weight for the last 30 years because I tried it didn't work and I don't think I got into exercising you know I started in January February March around April was when I started dusting off my recumbent bike so for the first four months it was pretty rapid that the weight came off and the act and once the energy came on and I started feeling better definitely I wanted to start moving and then it just kind of kept going after that absolutely that's that is I'm sorry you know that is such a cool thing because I I think as as the weight starts coming off exercise becomes more possible and maybe in addition to that you start to realize that you've got power that you didn't realize um before you feel more energized and you may be more inclined to want to exercise at that point absolutely agree Dr Barnard what is the thermic effect of food I know you've studied that at pcrm in some of your research yeah the thermic effect of food literally what it means is thermic as in temperature your body cells especially your muscles are creating body heat they're taking in calories and instead of storing it they burn it up at as body Heat and the thermic effect of food is that is really we call it the after meal burn so you eat foods and depending on what the foods are you will get this nice burn where you release a whole bunch of calories and they just dissipate you don't store them now let's say I I I try some butter you're going to eat a pat of butter doesn't do anything to your metabolism there's no after meal burn nothing have two or three Pats of butter nothing eat the whole darn stick of butter and still nothing happens um these fatty foods don't really trigger much of an after meal burn because the fats break up the you absorb them and it's the body doesn't need to do anything other than just store it away on the other hand a food that has healthy complex carbohydrate in it plant proteins in it causes this rapid rise in the after meal burn we we measure it here the participants sit in a chair and we put a mask on them you feel like a jet fighter it's it's measuring your carbon dioxide output and your oxygen intake which with some pretty simple arithmetic gives us your your metabolism how many calories you burn per minute and 6:00 in the morning you got out of the bed you came in here you haven't had breakfast and your metabolism is about as low as it's going to be all day I give you a test breakfast your metabolism if it's got healthy complex carbohydrates and plant protein and your metabolism will rise and it stays High for about three hours but the beauty of this AJ is that let's say I am now going to stick to a plant-based diet and I'm going to keep oils really low something really cool happens which is that inside those muscle cells your muscles are your burners your muscles that's what burns the more calories than anything else your muscle cells are saying okay you're on this vegan diet now I see and there's not a lot of extra fat in here the muscle cells start dissipating the fat that they have accumulated the there is fat inside your muscle cells it starts to go away as that happens the muscle is able to pull glucose out of your blood really easily the glucose goes into your muscle cells the muscles burn it up like crazy so you're after meal burn gets more and more effective now it's not huge but you burn you might burn maybe 200 calories a day and when a person has been on a vegan diet their after meal burn will ramp up maybe about 15% or so not not huge but you did it after breakfast and you did it again after lunch and you did it again after dinner so you kind of get this gentle but really noticeable weight loss effect and this comes from the after meal burn that sounds great um some people are joining us a little bit late so I just want to say that the book that we are talking about with Dr Neil Barnard and Stephany is called the power Foods diet I've been providing links for you to order it and some of you said you already have and they're doing it now and we appreciate it Dr Barnard one of the live viewers is asking you talked about coconut oil how does it raise cholesterol I thought plants didn't contain cholesterol it doesn't contain oh what a wonderful question we're going to be phds by the time this broadcast is finished um plants don't contain substantial amounts of cholesterol or for the most part none and that's true of coconut oil but you notice coconut oil it's not liquid like corn oil it's a waxy solid it's you know and sort of like bacon grease at room temperature it's a waxy solid that's a sign that the fat that's in it is saturated fat that's the predominant fat when that goes into your body your body makes more cholesterol and that's the problem with it so take coconut oil put it in your hair wax your car wax your shoes but I wouldn't need it that makes sense Dr Mar I recently listened to a podcast you did you have a wonderful podcast pcrm exam room hosted by the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll and you mentioned and I wrote it down because I couldn't believe it that they pay doctors $27 million to promote weight loss drugs how can they do that you know it's not a good thing um that figure is from one company alone the true figure is much higher Novo Nordisk um and the reason we look this up is last January January 2023 um year ago uh CBS 60 Minutes ran a program all about wovi and the program was 12 or 13 minutes and it was really enthusiastic a little bit too enthusiastic and so we looked up that there they quoted a couple of doctors and we looked them up and they were both paid by the wovi manufacturer noo Nordisk and CBS itself was paid by Novo Nordisk as a sponsor and there wasn't anybody there was no medical experts who weren't paid paid by Novo Nordisk in the program um and so we then started looking at Novo nordisk's payments to Physicians generally and it's about $27 million a year now you C in in the us alone now you cannot pay a doctor for prescribing the drug that's illegal so what you do is you pay them for doing a conference presentation to their Hospital staff about how great these drugs are or you pay them a consulting fee um and it adds up to that figure uh which is really troubling because I I don't care who you are when you're getting paid by a company that makes a commercial product the words that come out of people's mouths tend to talk about that that product um and what I've heard some of these people say on that program was that weight loss uh overweight is genetic and the reason we know it's genetic is because uh a big ISS a a big risk for a child being overweight is having overweight parents there is some truth to that because are genes that affect weight and weight problems do go through families but we don't just give our children DNA we give our kids recipes we have our kids ways of thinking about foods and and that's what we inherited from our parents isn't it you know it wasn't just the DNA it was here's what I have for breakfast here's what's normal to eat and what we don't eat uh those are ideas we learned from our parents and that's why health issues so often are transmitted from one generation to another and that's why I think it is so important to come back to the food because with if we give to our children food habits that are going to help them you giving them such an incredibly wonderful gift you're breaking this cycle that that problems go from parent to child instead the love and care and good health goes from parent to child and there you know nobody has demonstrated that better than Stephany with her family um in kind of a two-way street and Stephanie I hope you don't mind my talking about you in this way but I'm impressed I'm so impressed by how you've done this I want to ask Stephanie a question if she ever considered weight loss drugs but I just want to expound on something you said about genes and and obesity I once heard Dr Baxter Montgomery say it's not just the genes that are passed down but the recipes yeah he's right yeah Stephanie did you ever in in your journey to wanting to lose 100 pounds either take weight loss drugs consider them or consider something like you know a weight loss surgery you know my doctor always suggests you know trying those um I forget what it was called it started with an O years ago um o olestra I think it was or stuff like this was being involved or B12 shots you know they were always suggesting something um but I was nervous or I was leery I think I just instinctively wanted to go to the normal Foods the pasta the grains but these were the the fruits these were the things that I was being told told not to and I agree very much with it's how I learned to eat that was teaching how you know how my kids were eating how I was doing things how we were dieting constantly um yeah I I I didn't take the weight loss drugs I I thought I thought about doing a gastric bypass at one time these things did cross my mind because I was so frustrated but I thought I'll give it one more day one more shot and then this came along save life I'm so happy and you're helping other people do the same you know Dr Barnard a lot of people you you know will think well why not just take the weight loss drugs you know maybe I'll change my diet later um so what do you say about you know wovi OIC is there a place for them well I can understand why people would would would turn to them because first of all it is a frustrating thing to try different kinds of diets and to see that maybe your results aren't the same as you read in the magazine that they're supposed to be um and people are looking for something that's going to work for them and the marketing is hard to resist I mean it's everywhere it's um intense um but the typical experience with them is first of all when you take them there are some side effects nausea vomiting diara the second issue that comes up is plateauing where you you take the drug and you're not quite where you want to be but you're like wait a minute I'm not I'm not at the weight I want why is my weight plateauing and so the doctor gets into a a bit of a Wrangle with you where you say can I take a higher dose and no you're on the highest dose um what am I doing wrong you're not doing anything wrong that's what the drugs do um what else should I do well you should cut calories wait stop isn't that what we got got me into this in the first place um and so then you ask the question that the doctor does not want you to ask which is well if I'm not getting any more benefit can I stop now because then the doctor has to say when you stop you get all that weight back do I have to take it forever then for the rest of my life I just have to keep paying so that I don't gain regain all that weight the answer is yeah you do how much $155,600 per year now that price is going to come down I hope um but it's only going to come down sort of um it's going to come down partly but where it is right now is uh Blue Cross Blue Shield did the numbers and they said that for every 1% of people in your insurance group on wovi everybody's insurance premium goes up $14.50 per month so wait a minute if if 1% of people in my insurance group are on this drug my premiums go up 1450 a month it pretty you you you don't have to do the very much arithmetic before you realize that just isn't that's not our solution now I would be prepared to say that there may well be people with unusual genetic um conditions uh sometimes you'll have you you'll see this is not really common but there are people we have a whole bunch of genes all misbehaving at the same time and appetite is really completely unhooked and it may well be that there are cases where you would want to consider the use of these drugs but the usual scenario is the doctor says okay if your BMI is over 30 which it is for lots of people uh or over 27 with another combination and if you have failed diet then you could start injecting well what diet were they given everybody fails a diet because the diets are not so um but what I would like to do instead is say wait maybe you could go down the wovi road but before we think about that let's describe what a plant-based diet really means let's support the person in doing it you know if a person had an orthopedic injury you know you you wrench your knee every orthopedic surgeon knows okay you know we can do a definitive treatment but I'm also going to give you the support of a physical therapist who's going to help you along the way why don't we do that with obesity we know for sure that weight issues are related to diet diet is a whole bunch of habits and cultural things we need to kind of readjust you need a professional to do it that's a dietitian okay so if you don't have access to a dietitian get one we have a service it's free called the preferred dietician referral um and if you live in SKC New York you go online you find somebody they might be in Albany but they can do tele medicine for you cool I live in Reno I can find somebody in Las Vegas great and and even if insurance doesn't pay for a dietitian you don't need 300 visits a few visits will help you or may even better find a food for Life instructor go to their classes if they are live go to their classes if they are online stick with them they got not just one series of classes they got a whole bunch of them like Stephanie's been describing and they give you something more in addition to that education they give you support they give you understanding you know who they are and that is so much support you put that together a little bit of information a little bit of support and you're on your way you'll H you'll H bumps in the road I'm invited to a party where there's nothing to eat I had to be at work and you know I was hungry or or I thought something was vegan it really wasn't yeah right there everybody hits a bump in the road there are always ways out easier than you can imagine that is the recipe for Success yeah I just dropped something in the chat I don't know if you guys saw your chat on Zoom I somebody sent me article today that Tracy Morgan a very talented comedian gained 40 pounds taking OIC yeah who who knows yeah exactly any anyway I I these are commercial products and there's going to be a never- ending supply of them but um My Hope Is that we'll continue to recognize that that food is really the issue here yeah well the thing is no matter how many wonderful books you write on weight loss reversing diabetes or other topics people are still afraid to eat eat carbohydrates they don't realize that there's a big difference between the complex carbohydrates like potatoes sweet potatoes rice and beans and you know sugar and flour that's true but I learned something from one Stephanie anfo about special magical tacos and things that you can make that happen to have actually carbohydrates in them and they taste great what are your magical tacos anything with beans uh T just regular tacos Bean tacos um and sweet potatoes Tacos yeah sweet potato tacos there's so many things I want to comment on just to say people aren't eating enough carbs you know so many people are restricting themselves and and Dr Barnard when you were given those numbers about calorie burn that really makes sense for people when I say you know eat your plants off what I mean by that is I need people to eat more foods and trust this process and you're really describing it perfectly some people are shocked um to hear in my group or in my classes when you're sticking lowfat high fiber people are reaching 1,800 2,000 calories and they don't understand why they're losing two to three pounds a week like this but over and over and over again this is how this is working exactly like he's saying um it's one I it's wonderful I want people to trust the process eat the eat the complex carbohydrates because because what's been working or what you've been doing maybe isn't working and what I found really exciting was like most diets I thought this was going to end in three weeks I thought in three weeks you know I'd lose the weight that this would stop but I kept eating and I kept eating and I kept eating it all stayed lowfat we kept you know we kept it these power Foods it just kept coming off this was something that I had never seen so this mitochondria talk this burning up these um getting this burning up inside of you this works this absolutely makes sense you know at 50 I'm going to be 53 in a couple months my metabolism has never worked this great and it's same for everybody you know at plant spiration everybody doing this eating lowfat whole whole food plant-based it the results are typical when you're doing it like this yeah you know Stephanie you remind me of something that I think is really cool um you talked about the need to make sure that the complex carbohydrates are there and and there's one more reason that people may not have heard of uh this what wovi does is it's a it's a synthetic glp1 Agonist is what it is it goes to the brain and attaches to this receptor this glp1 receptor and turns down your appetite that's what it does well your body makes gp1 normally um It's Made in your gut that's where it all came from um and noo NIS just copies it uh in effect it's a synthetic but my research colleague here Dr Hana Cova endocrinologist runs our research studies brilliant mind did an amazing study she brought in people and she fed them first a meat meal and the food goes down your digestive tract and it's supposed to trigger glp1 to go to your brain and turn down your appetite the meat meal doesn't do that very effectively but then if you realize that fiber does this complex carbohydrates do it and meat doesn't have those okay wait stop let's do the experiment again but let's put in a meal that's got complex carbohydrates and fibrin the stuff that Stephanie was just talking about goes down your digestive tract it turns on the glp1 and the glp1 spikes and it goes to the brain and it turns down your appetite so this is effectively the wovi effect but it's Mother Nature's version of it within your body that is dormant in you as long as you are trying to be a carnivore um or it's not working as well and when you eat the meals that your body was designed for then that mechanism kicks in more effectively thank you you know I'm curious Dr Barnard we know the right foods to eat but what role does adding things like fat sugar and salt play in people's ability to either lose weight or not lose weight you know a I'm glad you asked that you know you said we know the the foods that we should be eating so many people do feel that way you know or the doctor says you should be eating right and the patient yeah I kind of eat right people think they know what to eat but the truth is they don't they're just all kind of defining it in their own way that's the big problem with it so fat this is not rocket science um every dietitian memorizes this on the first day of dietetic training fat has nine calories in every gram carbohydrates have only four protein has only four so every fat that you eat whether it is dairy fat meat fat fat out of an egg or even vegetable oils it's got n calories so you will fill up on a fatty food but by the time you've filled up the calorie burden that you just took on is huge so that's why fatty fish is a big problem that's why dairy uh meat is a big problem there's no fiber in it no complex carbs just as big lob of calories that we call fat and then with regard to sugar and salt um there are natural salts that we need and they are natural in the foods there are natural sugars that are there as well however the potato chip manufacturer realiz is that if you salt it up a little extra frankly you just can't resist them and if you sugar up the cookies a little bit more you can overpower our brain that evolved with appetite controls before anybody ever figured out how to extract sugar from sugar cane and put it into cookie dough um all the things that we get addicted to are all products of technology that did not exist when human beings were evolving we didn't have tobacco that you could smoke we didn't have alcohol that you could drink we didn't have sugar people weren't milking cows yet so all of these issues all of these kind of addictions came in later because we don't really have very good defenses against them yeah thank you so here's a question from a live viewer named Linda I'm insulin resistant approximately how long will it take on a lowfat whole food plant-based diet to begin to reverse the insulin resistance about 30 minutes um uh now now I I'm not I'm not kidding with you um give me just a minute to describe what insulin resistance is for people who want to know um normally your muscles work on glucose glucose is the fuel that goes into your muscles and that and your muscle is strong because it can take that sugar and it can burn it up and use it glucose goes to your brain it goes to all the parts of the body but for your muscles favorite fuel here's the problem that glucose cannot get into the muscle cell at all the muscle cell excludes it the cell membrane keeps it out until the insulin hormone comes to the muscle the insulin your pancreas makes gets to the muscle it opens the muscle cell Up the sugar goes inside hope this isn't too complicated so to get sugar in the cell insulin opens it up what is causing that system to not work very well is fatty foods that we eat the fat particles get into the blood they get into the muscle cells and the fat particles build up inside the muscle this is not thigh fat this is not belly fat this is microscopic fat particles inside your muscles when the and we can visualize it with magnetic resonance spectroscopy we can see it it's there and when your muscle cells are filled with fat suddenly the blood sugar can't get out of the blood into the muscle because the muscle is filled with fat so you said all right um time frame how long will this take let's say You are young skinny healthy following a great healthy diet if I give you a fatty meal you can be come insulin resistant starting within 30 minutes it can if if um researchers Michael rhen and others have done this that what you discover is that right away after the fatty meal the fat streams into your blood within minutes starts getting into the cell and you start seeing the insulin sensitivity starting to tank and four five six seven hours later you are significantly insulin resistant let's do the opposite your cells are filled with fat let me eat let me feed you a meal that doesn't have any fat in it effectively no added fat no animal fat very little oils the opposite happens and it's happening now minute by minute your cell says all right I got all this fat I guess I better burn it up let it dissipate it happens meal by meal so you don't have to wait eight months for this to happen and this is really important we do diabetes studies where people have diabetes and they're injecting insulin now we have to tell them this diet is so powerful and it's starting now I want to make sure your doctor knows that you're doing this because we're going to have to ramp you down on your medications as you get better so the process starts let it start true I'm going to say true somebody's somebody's texting me right now their numbers continue to go down um everybody's a little different you know what they're eating is a little different but like Dr Barnard said we're seeing people um when they stick to this and get it going get that fiber in keep it lowfat I've had people reverse or get off the medications within as little as 3 weeks from their doctor of course watching them but it could be months it could be it's worth going at it though and stopping this disease from progressing is what I want to tell people get those good foods in and get this under control you a better shot at that than what medicine can do yeah now there is one thing that I there's one caution I should give people um when you're starting let's say you're you're very insulin resistant and then you'll sit down to a meal and you'll eat let's say you eat a meal that has a fair amount of carbohydrate in it your blood sugar Will Rise um and it's it'll rise now more than it will be rising later normally your blood sugar should rise a little bit after you eat a sugary or high carbohydrate meal because the sugars are getting into your blood they're working their way into your muscles you're if you are really insulin resistant the insulin resistance will start to dissipate but in the beginning your blood sugars might rise more than than you would expect because you're eating a lot more carbohydrate uh talk with your doctor make sure your doctor's monitoring you but you will see that that starts to turn around and starts to melt away and we've seen people become High hypoglycemic within the first week particularly if people are on insulin or a sulan ureal drug margerie who's watching live is asking well how many grams of carbohydrate should we get every day I'm at about 200 grams I think I get way more than that never counts take your calculator and just leave it there for doing your taxes that's what it's for yeah one of the viewers is saying well how much fruit can I have in a day if I want to lose weight and when should I eat it I'm Whole Food plant-based very low fat no oil people are afraid of fruit you know because because of the kind of carbophobia that's in the air um especially you know it's really funny is I grew up with an an apple a day keeps the doctor away the apples are healthy but people say I I won't eat it because it's got fructose in and it's got da da da d da wait researchers actually put this to the test they wanted to see how fattening can an apple be and they brought in a group of individuals and they actually had them have three apples a day now I don't know if I ever ate three apples in a day but they said do this every day because you're in a research study so everyone was eating their three apples a day day after day after day after day now with all that extra fruit how much weight do you think they gained zero they lost weight why would you lose weight because you're adding food how could you lose weight you're adding a food that has a lot of water in it a lot of fiber in it that ends up crowding out other stuff and so as a result your calorie intake actually starts dropping so fruit is fine fruit is a okay enjoy it Stephanie you you must be having lots of fruit for your in your family and use it as a a snack or a dessert it's we go through fruit like mad I've got a Fruit Stand that's this high it's our go-to and um also Dr Barnard what I found is all these people that that have the DI that have diabetes or insulin resistance I noticed they're not eating a lot of fruit you know they're not eating those fruits so eat the fruits is what I see people take on that we start seeing Improvement like you said with the water with feeling better I mean where where else are we going to get vitamins minerals nutrients phytonutrients fiber these are the foods people need yeah you know when a person has diabetes they're afraid of fruit because they're so insulin resistant that when they eat Foods including fruit their blood sugar will rise and so they their doctor said well don't eat it they what they what the doctor left out was the fact that their cells are filled with fat and when you start getting that out then your your ability to consume these fruits gets better and better and better it gets back to where it should be gets back to normal right well one of the viewers is worried because of their blood sugar and they're saying they've been eating the way you suggest this is Judith for six weeks she loves it but her blood glucose in A1C have risen significantly is this normal okay um couple things F first of all if you have diabetes do talk with your doctor that's important don't throw your medications away don't cancel your doctor's appointment follow your doctor's advice regarding diet what we what we want to do is we want to try to get the fat out of our cells as I was mentioning we're going to scoop it out and the way we do that is we avoid animal products completely which it sounds like you're doing which is great oils have to be reduced too because oils will do the same thing even a healthy oil like canola oil will cause insulin resistance too uh very rapidly so if you're if you're eating I'm going to break your heart a little bit lots of nuts uh lots of seeds added oils and even guacamole which everybody loves um I'm sorry to say the avocado is the one fruit that just loaded with fat so anyway for right now if you're trying to conquer insulin resistance just set those Foods aside for now um because we want to see what we can do to get the fat out of ourselves cells for most people that'll take care of the problem if you're really insulin resistant and this process is taking a while then what you might want to do is eat your meals a little more slowly rather than have challenging yourself with a huge amount all at one time have half your meal wait a little bit have the other half go for a walk afterwards why because your muscles when they're walking down the road start pulling the glucose out of your blood your blood sugar starts coming down don't forget to drink water eat uh plenty of vegetables and you'll find it for the most part these problems will start melting away right Stephanie there's a question from you um from Porter what course did you take um in terms of n which part I'm not sure because there a lot of courses that um well first it was the T Callen Campbell Center for nutrition courses if that's what we're talking about I I became a licensed food for Life instructor I completed the American College of Lifestyle medicine um lifestyle medicine coaching program and I'll get my hands on any nutrition education um ceu course that I can get um all the ICM conferences International Conference of nutrition and medicine so basically over the past 10 years I've taken thousands of hours of nutrition education any chance and anywhere that I can possibly get and I'm teaching the medical students at ruers I've had the opportunity to bring food for Life classes to them and to the medical students at NYU as well wow that is fantastic you know Dr Barnard we started the discussion earlier talking about whether or not a calorie is just a calorie but I'm curious as a fat gram just a fat gram so we know to avoid oils or keep them low as you say but does it matter if the fat comes from a nut a seed or avocado not necessarily in terms of healthfulness but at least in terms of losing weight because a lot of people feel they've got to really eat a lot of nuts for Optimal Health well you know you could make a a good pitch for nuts um nuts have vitamin e in them um they have the quality of fat is pretty good in a walnut or something like that the the only issue is that nuts are in a tree surrounded by a shell and so the idea that you could get your hands on a huge amount of them is kind of remote Mother Nature thought she had it all figured out but little did she realize that factories can take all those nuts remove all the shells so that you're never up in the tree and you can have a huge amount of nuts in fact they will salt them they'll label them Smokehouse and they will make them absolutely irresistible and so that's that's the problem that we run into uh with nuts is the quantity of them that we have and so if a person has accumulated a lot of body fat or if they've accumulated fat inside their muscles leading to insulin resistance then that's a time we're going to want to really minimize these things these things and and if you're if you're healthy if you're thin if you don't have any hormonal issues um person can have you know an ounce a day of nuts or something like that um but but you by the way use them as an ingredient don't use them as um uh primary food group use them as a flavoring on your oatmeal or on your pancakes or on your salad or something like that so marah is saying oh my God I wish my husband could hear you Dr Barnard he's pre-diabetic and his doctor told him not to eat any fruit and he's afraid to change and eat plant-based how should I make him understand well this is being recorded So for one have him watch this discussion maybe have him read Dr Barnard's latest book or of course he has one on reversing diabetes but do you find that that's a problem sometimes is convincing or having other people make the change it was 2003 when NIH funded our research team to try to find a better way of diabetes and our control group the comparison group followed um limited carbohydrate limited calorie diet the kind of thing that was routine at the time in diabetes clinics and still is today in many areas the experimental diet that we were trying 21 years ago was no animal products and we kept oils really really low and the foods that we favored were not just plant foods but the low glycemic plant Foods the ones that don't spike your blood sugar things like fruit beans lots of vegetables but unlimited quantities unlimited carbohydrate and what we found which we published in diabetes care which is the the the journal published by the American Diabetes Association and what we presented at their conference was the fact that the plant-based diet was three times more effective at blood sugar control compared to the best current diet and it became the state-of-the-art and so there are plenty of doctors who may not have read those journals or been at those conferences and they're still saying sort of some of these things from the past uh but I think it's really time for all doctors and and not only just doctors but dietitians and everybody who's working in the space to understand what caused the diabetes to get worse how do you tackle insulin resistance and it's the things that we've been talking about get the animal products out of your diet not just a little bit but keep them out now AB completely completely and what you'll discover is that that way not only are you helping your body to to lose weight and you're helping your insulin resistance to go away but you're also helping your tastes to adjust if you reignite your taste by having chicken wings on Saturday you're never going to forget it's like a smoker who has a cigarette once every 3 four days let it go use the process of forgetting which is a good thing um and keep oils really low find the foods that you really enjoy and what you'll see is that your progress is is much faster than it otherwise would have been and one way to get started is to get Dr Barnard's new book it comes out on March 26 I've been posting the link below click it now it really helps when you buy it in advance for the first week it comes out any either of you want to say to end this wonderful discussion well I just want to say to everybody um if if there's somebody in your life that you love and you want to see them get better or you you'd like to make an impact or like to see them take on the plants the biggest impact you could make is take control of the grocery shopping that you do and take on the plants yourself because truly you are the biggest inspiration that you can be for your family your friends your neighbors and your loved ones your co-workers so keep eating the plants get the book this is how we do it keep eating your plants often thank you so much oh thank you Stephanie congratulations on your success and thank you for helping other people achieve it as well Dr Bernard Cheryl is live saying she cannot wait to meet you in person in the book signing that you're going to be doing here in Sacramento near where I live on April 25th well I can't wait I have to say I want to say I want to say a big thank you to Stephanie for helping me spread this message and letting me tell your story in the book but AJ I want to say a special thank you to you you have been doing this for a long period of time you've been talking to people about what's harmful to them that they can move away from you've showed people what's good for them and you've shown it by knowledge by example by encouragement so AJ we just look up to you I have looked up to you for all these years that I've known you and I want to thank you for everything you've done and you're gonna be there with us at Sacramento I can't wait to see I am gonna sing your Praises um you because can I can I mention this AJ do you mind say not not at all I have not seen you in person for close to 10 years it feels like well in Sacramento at that event um you and Linda Middlesworth are getting the voice of compassion award from the Physicians committee for responsible medicine I'm coming there personally and I'm gonna give it to you along with my gratitude oh my God I am so honored thank you so much I was going to let you go but there's a question Stephanie how does one either take a pcrm class or become a pcrm food for Life instructor you can um search for a local food for Life instructor you can sign up at PL inspiration and take classes and to be a food forlife instructor you can go to pcrm.org look up foodforlife instu instructor and fill out the application and start getting it back into your community too and by the way Stephanie would you mind giving your website for PL inspiration in case people haven't found that sure I'd be happy to um you guys can find me at plans inspiration.org I have a wonderful lifestyle medicine approach to learning how to prevent reverse disease lose weight and feel great and Stephanie I do have your information in the show notes as well sorry I was going to let you go Dr Barnard but this might be an important question to some people of viewers asking why do you say keep oils low why not avoid them all together okay we're gonna do the next hour right okay um the reason I say that why not avoid oils altogether is because there are natural oils in Foods um if you take a a spring of broccoli you think there's no oil in it send it to a laboratory they'll tell you it's about 7% natural oils if you take a bean it's maybe 4% natural oils what I'm saying that you should avoid is the added oils so you know that bottle of oil that came from Tuscany that everyone is bragging about because it's got the word virgin in it people don't know what it means but it sounds good so you you dribble it all over your plate that added oil you don't need it came from olives the olives have natural oil that's okay uh but it's the added it's the added oils that that were that we're running into trouble with right thank you make sense thank you so much for explaining thank you yeah that's why it's hard to be you can't be fat really hard to be fatty acid deficient if you're eating enough old natural plant food right absolutely thank you Stephanie thank you Dr Barnard thanks all of you for watching another episode of sh AJ live get the book and please come back tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time for my birthday and it will be a special show with Dr Alan goldhammer Dr Doug Lyall and we're going to talk about the hidden force that undermines health and happiness thank

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 24,860

Keywords: aj, barnard, chef a. j., chef aj, chef aj live, chef aj live today, chef aj neal barnard, dr barnard, dr neal barnard, neal barnard, physicians committee, power foods diet, the power foods diet

Id: 26zDh85CCX8

Length: 57min 24sec (3444 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024