Search transcript
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If you're hungry all the time, exhausted after meals, craving sugar, gaining
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weight around your midsection, I got to tell you, your body is trying to tell
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you something. And here's the interesting fact. Most people do not
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have a weight problem. You're not you don't have weight loss resistance. You
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have a metabolic health problem. And you are not alone. In fact, we now know that
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4 in 10 Americans, that's about 38% of us, meet the criteria for something
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called metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is where we start to see many
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measurements of your metabolic health are off. And in this video, I'm going to
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show you exactly what metabolic syndrome is. There's four major triggers for it.
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I'm going to show you how it's been probably going on for a significant
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period of time. And most importantly, I want to give you five very key things
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you can do right now to start to change the metabolic health challenge that's
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brewing inside of you. Sound like a plan? Let's dive in.
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So, metabolic syndrome isn't really a syndrome. It's not really like a
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condition. It's a set of warning signs and we just package them into this nice
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little neat container called metabolic syndrome. And typically it's high blood
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pressure, high cholesterol, fasting glucose. I know a lot of you
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here on my channel have been measuring your glucose. Fasting glucose is out of
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control. Liver enzymes are out of control. and you have your total body
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weight is up and you especially weight around your midsection. In fact, many of
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you have probably walked into your doctor's office and had had him or her
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tell you, "Yeah, you got high blood pressure, you got high cholesterol,
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you're gaining weight. It's congenital. It's genetic." And what I want to show
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you is it's not. It is an environment that you have put your body in that now
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has your body holding on to weight, raising the blood pressure, creating
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inflammation, and you can fix it. So, let's start with what I call the
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drivers. What are these drivers that are making you have a metabolic challenge?
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Driver number one is poor blood sugar regulation. Now, I want to give you a
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very simple and clear understanding of what blood sugar regulation is. When you
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eat, your blood sugar goes up depending on what you ate. So, if you eat
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something that's really high on what we call the glycemic index. So, let's use a
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banana as an example. A banana is pretty high on the glycemic index. And what it
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can do is you will start to spike your blood sugar really high. As high as your
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blood sugar goes is as low it's gonna go as it's going to go within an hour to
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two hours. So if you have a banana and you spike your blood sugar and then it
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crashes two hours later, when that crash happens, what your body does is give you
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hunger s signals so that you raise the blood sugar up. So maybe you get the
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idea at midm morning that you need a candy bar or you're going to grab some
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juice because intuitively your body is saying, "Hey, blood sugar is crashing.
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Let's go ahead and bring it up again." And so you go and you reach for a glass
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of orange juice or you grab a candy bar or something sweet because that sugar
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craving is starting to kick in because your body's giving you a signal that the
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blood sugar is low. And so you eat something high again on the glycemic
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index and it spikes again and then as as it goes up a couple hours later it drops
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again. People who have disregulated blood sugar that lead to metabolic
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syndrome are on this roller coaster all day long. And every time you get a
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spike, you are asking your pancreas to release insulin. And that insulin
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escorts the glucose molecule from the food you ate and tries to get it into
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the cell for energy. But the more spikes that you have that are going up and down
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and up and down, the more your pancreas has to work and the less cellular
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availability there is for glucose and specifically insulin to drive glucose
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in. So driver number one is this roller coaster of blood sugar up down up down
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up down. And the good news is you can actually put a combination of food
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together to change this that I I promise you this is not about deprivation. This
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is not about eating things that you don't love. This is about knowing how to
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combine food so you can stop that roller coaster. And I'm going to show you
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exactly how to do that. But the in interesting thing about insulin is that
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insulin's job is to decide what to do with that glucose molecule. So every
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time you call on insulin if it can't get glucose into the cell, you know where it
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stores it? It stores it in fat. So we need to take the burden off of insulin
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so that it stops storing it as fat. Driver number two, chronic stress
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leading to nonstop release of cortisol into your system.
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There was a metaanalysis in obesity reviews that found people with higher
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long-term cortisol tend to have larger waists. The effect on any one person is
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modest, but the pattern across tens of thousands of adults is consistent.
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chronic cortisol tracks with more belly fat. I've done videos on this because so
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many of you are trying to lose weight, especially in that midsection, and you
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already have driver number one handled. You've stabilized that blood sugar, but
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you can't seem to be able to get the cortisol belly to go away. Those of you
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who have not downloaded my nervous system questionnaire, it's a new thing I
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created for all of you. It's free. So, you can start to measure your nervous
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system and see if that midsection is actually coming from chronic cortisol
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release. All you have to do is put in the comments here NSQ, nervous system
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questionnaire, and my team will send you that free link. The important thing that
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I want you to understand is for especially for those of you that feel
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like you're doing everything and you can't lose weight around the midsection,
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is that it could be a chronic stress situation. The interesting thing about
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cortisol, just like insulin is meant to store glucose into the cell and get
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glucose into the cell, cortisol has one job, and that's to make you move. So, if
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you're under chronic stress over and over and over again and you're
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sedentary, you are more likely to store that cortisol as belly fat. Again, we're
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going to talk about how you can unwind that. Driver number three is poor sleep.
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Pretty much goes with chronic stress. And I'm going to give you some really
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concrete street asleep advice. But what I want you to know is that the science
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is saying poor sleep and weight gain, especially around the midsection, is
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very, very common. A 24 metaanalysis in obesity science and practice pulled
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seven long-term studies and found that adults who habitually slept less than
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six hours a night, six hours a night and had an 8% higher risk of developing
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abdominal obesity over time versus people who are getting normal sleep. I
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saw this in my practice all the time where people were doing everything right
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except prioritizing sleep. Sleep is when you burn fat. Sleep is when your body
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starts to get rid of that cortisol. Sleep is when the brain starts to wash
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itself with something called cerebral spinal fluid that starts to move toxins
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out of the brain and reset the brain from the stressful day. Prioritizing
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sleep is incredibly important for losing that belly fat. And I'm going to show
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you how. Number four, and this one's really
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interesting. We have not talked enough about this here on my channel, which is
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when you are carrying extra weight, that actual fat starts to release what we
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know as inflammation. So, it becomes this vicious loop. your
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blood sugar is off, your cortisol is high, you can't sleep, and so you're
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gaining weight, and now that fat that is accumulated around your midsection, that
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fat is releasing inflammation. And when that fat releases inflammation,
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what ends up happening is it makes you even more insulin resistant. It starts
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to throw your blood sugar off even more. It starts to stress you out even more.
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It makes it harder to sleep and you're going around and around in a circle. Put
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in the comments if you have ever experienced this because this in my
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opinion is why we are seeing this 38% of people having metabolic syndrome
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because of these four drivers. So before I go into what you should be doing, I
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want to talk about what you shouldn't be doing because so many of you are trying
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the old diet tricks and you're not getting a good result. So these that I
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bring to you right now are absolutely what not to do. So trick number one,
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crash dieting, restricting or extreme calorie counting. Calorie counting tells
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your body it's not safe. When your body is not safe, it will
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start to move into an insulin resistant state. What your body will do when it
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feels like it is under a threat is it starts to take glucose and move it into
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your larger muscles, your legs, your arms, so you can run away from the
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threat. So crash dieting and extreme calorie counting are not going to be
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helpful. It only tells your body that is under threat.
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Second thing I don't want you to do is only do cardio workouts. Remember back
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in the 70s and the 80s we thought cardio was queen. Cardio is not queen now.
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Muscle strength is is queen and making sure that you are building muscle. I'm
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going to show you specifically how to do that in a way that will help you lose
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that belly fat. But one of the things that we know is it may feel productive
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that you are actually getting on a treadmill and you're going for an hour,
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but you can actually put yourself into more of a cortisol rich state. You can
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break down more muscle. I remember years ago being at the Olympic Museum in
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Geneva and looking at this big picture of all these women that were gold
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athletes that in their sport and when you looked at the marathon runners, they
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were completely thin. They had no muscle tone in it. And when you looked at
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people doing other more balanced activity, they had beautiful bodies with
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extra muscle. Muscle is like a pantry for glucose and you need it. Unless you
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plan on running marathons the rest of your life so you can have that uber thin
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look if that's what you're going for. Cardio in general is not going to be a
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great weight loss tool for your belly fat. So, let's find a different way.
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Trick number three, and this one I'm going to you're going to hear me say
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over and over again. Detox teas, uh appetite suppressant supplements. There
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is no supplement on the planet that is going to help you lose that belly fat
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and help you lose weight. You can't take a supplement and expect to get a massive
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result. Now, there are supplements that are helpful, but they're helpful to go
12:59
with the healthy lifestyle I'm going to map out for you. And right now, we have
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a really interesting situation because of the weight loss drugs. A lot of
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people are looking for that perfect supplement that is going to help them
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stop the food noise, stop the hunger. And what I find so interesting about
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that, a big popular one right now is bourberine. Bourberine's not bad, but
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it's not a solution. It's a supplement. And why we call it supplements is it's
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supposed to supplement a healthy diet. Bourberine on its own is not going to
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help you start to lose weight, especially around the midsection. So,
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with that out of the way, what should you do? You ready? Take notes. If you
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have a piece of paper, write this down. Number one, I want you to start to learn
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to stabilize your blood sugar. So, what that looks like is the first place you
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stabilize your blood sugar is on your plate. When you are putting a meal
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together, I want you to look down and ask yourself, do I have vegetables?
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Do I have a protein? And do I have a good fat? Years ago, there used to be
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there was a great book that explained this like 20, no, it was like 30 years
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ago because I read it when I was in college and it was called the zone diet.
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Anybody remember the zone diet? And he used to say that he used to use
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measurements in in fists. And I think this is really helpful when you're
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putting a plate together. Can you do a fistful of vegetables?
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Can match that with a fistful of protein and then a half a fistful of fat. Now,
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some of you might be like, "Well, what about carbohydrates?"
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What you're going to hear over and over and over again on these videos from me
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is how important it is to put your carbs after you do this blood sugar
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stabilizing trick where you're doing fiber in those vegetables. You are doing
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protein to kill hunger also stabilizing and you're doing fat. Now you are
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feeding your microbes. you are stabilizing your blood sugar so it can't
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go into a big spike and then you can do your carbohydrate. So the order in which
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we eat is really important. But the key part of putting this plate together that
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I'm recommending is the fiber and the protein and the fat. What this might
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look like even for breakfast could look like I do this all the time. I do eggs.
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I do greens, micro greens, and I'll drizzle them with olive oil. This
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morning, I put some really yummy tomatoes on it. And that is a very
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common breakfast that I have. You'll notice I don't I didn't have a carb. I
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save my carbs for the end of the day. But in the morning when I need stable
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blood sugar, that's what I put together. Okay. Second trick you can do to help
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with with your blood sugar is to make sure that you go walking after your
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meals. Think about it. You're eating and all of a sudden your glucose is rising
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and insulin is trying to find that glucose to be able to get it into the
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cells so it could use it for energy. If you go on a walk, what will end up
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happening is that your muscles will say, "Hey, send the glucose to me. Insulin,
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put that glucose to me because I need that glucose." So, for this activity
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called walking, whereas if you're sitting and you're
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eating, then all of that glucose, the insulin will put it towards fat. So
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walking is an incredible tool that you can use to stabilize your blood sugar.
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Step number two, I alluded to it a little bit over here. You are doing
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protein and fiber at every meal. Remember how your grandma used to say
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eat your vegetables every meal. She was right. So every meal I want you to make
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sure you have protein and fiber. If you are a vegetarian, you can do legumes, no
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problem. But I want that salad. I want those vegetables. Put those berries
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together. And it's really interesting because the science says that when you
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order your food up, that's the way we we approach it now is food order. We've
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gone from counting calories, anybody been on this nutrition path for a while,
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counting calories to counting macros to the order of food. I I much I think this
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is a way better approach to food than when we were counting calories and we
17:42
were counting macros. But research is consistently showing that the order you
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eat your food and a short walk after your food blunts how high your blood
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sugar will go. So step number two is I want to make sure that protein and fiber
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goes first. Step number three, we are going to build muscle. Now I want to
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talk about the best ways to build muscle because one of the best ways is through
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something called resistance training. So when you pick up a m a weight what what
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ends up happening is if you pick it up and then you do like an overhead press
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there there when you're pushing that weight up you're having to actually
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exercise the muscle on the way way up. But what do most of us do on the way
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down? On the way down, we let those weights fall. And as we let those
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weights fall, you are not building muscle. They call it a concentric
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contraction and an eccentric contraction. And there's only one way to
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get consistent contractions from both of those. So you're getting the front of
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the muscle and the back of the muscle, and that's with resistance training. A
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pushup is a resistance training. You push yourself down and then you got to
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push yourself up. Resistant bands, TRX, is a great tool where you're having to
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actually do a movement in one direction and you can't f you can't slack in the
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opposite direction. So, resistance training is key for building muscle.
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It's one of the most efficient ways. And what the science is saying is two to
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three times a week, 20 to 30 minutes of resistance training. This can be rows,
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this can be presses, this can be light dumbbells that you just don't let fall
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down. It can be body weight squats where you have to squat down and then squat
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back up. And if you combine that with 20 to 30 grams of protein after that
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workout, within an hour, you're fueling those muscles back up, making them
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bigger. The bigger they are, the more storage for glucose they have. If you
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have more storage for glucose in your muscles, then your body doesn't have to
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store that glucose as fat. Here's what the science is saying. A 22 metaanalysis
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in the BMJ open diabetes research and care publication looked at over 20
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randomized trials evaluating over,00 people and what they found was that
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resistance training significantly dropped hemoglobin A1C and the more
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strength people gained, the bigger the drop. So I don't want you just lifting
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weights. I want you doing this form of resistance training so that we can make
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sure we get you as strong as possible again so we can bring that hemoglobin
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A1C down but we can create more more usage for the glucose that your body
20:48
wants to store. Number four is sleep. Now if you're menopausal I get it. Sleep
20:55
is hard. I've been there and there are hacks you can do. So let me give you
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some of them. For starters, it's really important that you wind your day down.
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Now, I didn't say wine. I said wine. W I N D. We need to get you to start to slow
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your day down at the end of the day. You can't go rushing in from work and family
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and then put your head on the pillow and fall asleep, especially as if you're in
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your permenopausal years or into your post-menopausal years. So, you've got to
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train your body to start to know that it's time to go to sleep. You can do
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this with red light. I have red light bulbs that I put in my lamps up in one
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room. That is my get ready for bedroom and I put on chanting music, chanting
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music. That repetition starts to prime the parasympathetic nervous system.
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Sometimes I do yoga. Yoga has been has been researched that it can bring down
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cortisol levels, but create an environment where you can start to wind
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down. Second thing that I want to and probably one of the most important
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things you can do is keep your room cold. This isn't just for menopausal
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women, but it's especially important for menopausal women. So, you need to have a
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significant temperature drop when you get into bed. And one of the best ways
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of doing this is to take a hot shower before you go to bed. It's going to
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relax the nervous system and then keep your windows open in your room. So, it's
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nice and cold in there depending on where you're at and where on and where
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you live. And then get into bed. That temperature change initi tells the body
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it is time to go to bed. There are signals we can send to the body over and
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over and over again. My third recommendation for sleep is expose
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yourself to the light during the day. When you see morning light, it has more
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red to it. When you see midday light, it's a full spectrum light. When you see
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a sunset, has a lot of red. Those three things tell your brain where it is in
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the day. If you're inside with LED lights all the time, what ends up
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happening is you disrupt your circadian rhythm and you don't your body doesn't
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know if it's night or if it's morning. So, we have to train your body to wake
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up in the morning to red light to see that midlight and then go to bed to red
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light. And that's how you your body knows how to secrete melatonin. So sleep
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is about training your body to get to sleep if you're really struggling with
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that. And I promise you it can be trained. I'm I'm a living example of it.
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Step number five, and my favorite, which is flex fasting. Now, flex fasting is a
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new term I've been using to help you understand that you control your eating
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window and your fasting window. And you control how long of a fast you are going
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to do. Those of you who have taken the nervous system questionnaire, if you
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scored on the questionnaire that your nervous system is maxed, I want you to
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keep yours fast lower. I want them to be no more than 15 hours. keep them 12, 13,
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14 hours every single day except women who are the week before your period, we
24:36
do not fast. So everything I wrote in fast like a girl still applies. But the
24:42
reason that flex fasting is so important for this situation is if you do know
24:47
your nervous system uh marker and how it's doing, then you know how to map
24:54
fasting to it. So if you are maxed out and you just stress is building then you
25:00
keep those fasts lower. But if you're not maxed out and stress is not building
25:06
then I really want you to go into some of the bigger fasts that I wrote about
25:10
in fast like girl like 36-hour fast. It is one of the best for losing belly fat.
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But I don't want you going there if you have a maxed nervous system. I want you
25:20
to stay into a lower fast. And we know there's inc I mean research after
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research I this is what this whole channel was built off um shows that
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fasting is incredible for improving metabolic syndrome. There was a 24
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randomized controlled trial in the annuals of internal medicine that
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followed 108 adults with metabolic syndrome this exact topic that we're
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talking about. And what they found was that they put one group that just ate
25:53
all day and one group that ate in an 8 to 10hour window leaving the rest of the
25:59
time for fasting. And that group in the 8 to 10 hour window showed the most
26:05
amount of improvement in hemoglobin A1C compared to those that just grazed all
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day long. I have been here on YouTube teaching you all how to fast for over a
26:18
decade. I have written books on fasting. This book sold over a million copies and
26:24
I am still a fan of fasting. My new my new elevation of of teaching is make
26:32
sure you map it to your nervous system state. So just put NSQ in the comments
26:37
and we'll make sure you have that evaluation so you know where you are.
26:41
Now, what can you do today? That was a lot of information. So, here are the
26:45
five things I want you to do today so that you get the result you deserve to
26:50
get at your very next meal. Go ahead. Whatever the next meal is, you're doing
26:55
protein and vegetables. After your biggest meal, number two, you're going
27:00
to go on a 10-minute walk. Number three, you're gonna go look into your pantry or
27:06
your desk, depending on where you're watching this, and you are going to
27:10
remove one processed food item. Chips, crackers, desserts, candy, just one. I'm
27:18
not telling you to remove them all. I'm just telling you to remove one and get
27:21
that out. You might swap it out. I know it's not considered the the most
27:26
tastiest swap compared to the ultrarocessed foods, but get to know uh
27:31
carrots and celery and hard-boiled eggs and nuts. Over time, your your you will
27:37
crave that because you will feel the difference. Number four, tonight before
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you go to bed, 60 minutes before you go to bed, no phone, no scrolling, no
27:48
talking. Let's start to train the nervous system. It's time to go to bed.
27:52
And tomorrow when you wake up, I want you to push your breakfast back an hour
27:58
so we can start to work on compressing your eating window and getting you
28:04
fasting longer. Now, two little bonus things I want to mention. I always say
28:11
food and lifestyle first, but for I know a lot of you love supplements. So, I'm
28:16
going to give you two if you are a supplement fan, but I'm not telling you
28:21
you need to have these. I'm giving them as options. So, one for the nervous
28:25
system is called minex by standard process. I'll put the link in here. It
28:30
starts to calm your nervous system along with magnesium by qualia. I'll put that
28:36
links in here. Those are great for those of you who are crazy stressed out. Take
28:40
them before you go to bed at night and it'll start to calm the nervous system.
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Most importantly, don't give up on yourself. You are not out of answers.
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You just need a new strategy. As always, I hope that helps.