Ep 167 - Dr Ekberg | You Won't Lose BELLY FAT Until You Do This...

low energy unfocused foggy you might be dehydrated whether it's hot yoga over 100 degree weather or too much sun gator light with a specialized blend of five electrolytes was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration shop now at retailers nationwide gator light hydrates faster than water is it in you symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration consult a health care professional if symptoms persist i get so many headaches every month it could be chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more botox on a botulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month prescription botox is injected by your doctor effects of botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing speaking breathing eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk side effects may include allergic reactions neck and injection site pain fatigue and headache allergic reactions can include rash welts asthma symptoms and dizziness don't receive botox if there's a skin infection tell your doctor your medical history muscle or nerve conditions including als lugerig's disease myasthenia gravis or lambert eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects why wait ask your doctor visit botox chronic migraine dot com or call one eight hundred four four botox to learn more if you're gaining weight you are most likely insulin resistant if your belly is growing you are most likely insulin resistant because that's the process you can't just eat less it's going to backfire Dr. Sten Ekberg is a former Olympian and owns one of the biggest health channels on YouTube. Today, he'll reveal the five steps that will finally help you get rid of stubborn belly fat. Visceral fat has more cortisol receptors. And let's say that you are low carb, but then you get stressed a lot. The cortisol and the stress is going to make you want carbs. What do you think about five-minute HIIT training if they want to take it up a notch? It creates growth hormone. That's one of the biggest problems as people age is their growth hormone declines. And growth hormone is also a fat-burning hormone. Virtually everybody can lose belly fat, but you have to understand the steps we're going to talk about. And you have to be very, very consistent. Dr. Ekberg, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to speak to you. I have been wanting to speak to you for so long because I'm sure that many people watching right now, including me, are going to be like, I feel that you are one of the biggest influencers on health for all of us. And you've touched on so many different topics. But one big topic everybody wants to know, how can we lose belly fat, including visceral fat, and get it off for good? So I want to start this conversation by you speaking to the person watching right now. They want to lose belly fat. They've tried everything. Nothing is working. If they follow the five steps that we're about to speak about right now, will they start to lose belly fat and visceral fat? Everyone wants to lose belly fat. Everyone wants a guarantee, and they want it quick. But the way I would want to frame this is that the more of the right things that you do, the more you're going to increase the likelihood or the probability. As people, we are all so different, and there are so many different factors that influence. So yes, we can eat right, we can exercise right, and the more that we do, the better our chances. But then there's. There's individuality, there's genetics, and there are emotional aspects as well. So the more that we understand and the more that we can apply, the better off we are, the more likely we are. So I'd say, I don't want to put a percentage on it, but I think virtually everybody can lose belly fat. But you have to understand the steps we're going to talk about, and you have to be very, very consistent. Yes, that is such a well-rounded answer, because we don't want to say to people, just follow this, it's guaranteed. But if you understand all five steps, which you outline, and it's your work that we're going to discuss, then you can start plugging away at the things that matter to that person, and they can start feeling better and losing belly fat. Let's start with the first step. It's understanding calories. Calories in, calories out. Now, somebody is going to go see their doctor, and they're going to say to them, just drop it. Drop your calories, about 500 less a day or so, or exercise more, or eat less. Do you think, as a doctor, that that is the best advice for somebody? No. And this is also very confusing to people, because in the long run, calories in, calories out, are the most important factor in losing weight. However, it is not the thing you should focus on. And this gets. people very confused, because that sounds like two completely different answers. But it can't be the thing you focus on, because it's going to backfire. But in the long run, it is the most important factor. So, what you have to do is you have to change your behavior in a way that calories drop. And I'm sure we're going to cover that as we go here. But it's. you can't just eat less, because then the body is going to adapt. If you cut back, the body is going to feel deprived, and now the body is going to lower its metabolic rate, and it's going to feel threatened. And this has been shown over and over and over and over. And everybody who just goes on a calorie deprivation, a low-calorie diet, everybody loses weight initially. And then, it plateaus and then it reverses. And now people feel like failures, and they get off the diet, and they start eating like they used to before, because they're disappointed that nothing works. And then they gain everything back, and then some. And now they're in the worst place than they were when they started, because they've changed their body's perception, and they didn't lose any weight. When you said that, I was thinking about The Biggest Loser, because I feel like that is exactly what they do, that they drop the calories, exercise a lot, and if you fast forward to how they might look like later down the track, they've gained weight and even more. So part of step one, which is calories in, calories out myth. So as you said, it's something that in the long run, it will probably take care of it by itself when we follow the other steps. But step 1.1, still in step one, is to understand who you are, because as you said, if you just follow any diet, it's not going to work. And you mentioned that there's two types of populations. There's the insulin-sensitive population and the insulin-resistant population. Can you explain the differences in these two types of people? Insulin-sensitive, first of all, it means that your body responds well to insulin. Every time you eat something, your blood sugar goes up. Depending on what you eat, but if you eat real food, then it goes up very slightly. Your body releases a small amount of insulin, and that small amount is sufficient to process the food that you just put in. And then after the meal, your blood sugar quickly returns to baseline, and you're okay, and you're ready for the next meal whenever that is. But when you're insulin resistant, now you eat and your blood sugar goes up, and you get the insulin isn't really working well, because you pushed your body into an adaptation where the cells are saying, "No, we've had enough. Don't give us more right now." So now the cells are resisting, and the body releases even more insulin to try to lower that blood sugar. And over time, the levels of insulin rise higher and higher, and higher, and higher, and it works less and less and less. And with that insulin resistant person, now what happens is insulin resistance, that's a metabolic state that also drives inflammation that will now start increasing the probability. It's going to drive most of the chronic degenerative diseases that we suffer from. So it'll be diabetes, type 2. It'll be high blood sugar. It'll be high blood pressure. Cardiovascular disease. And even dementia and some other side effects of type 2 diabetes, like kidney trouble and swelling and so forth. And those are all results of overfeeding, of ingesting the body, if you will. And the problem is that the insulin does two things. It promotes fat storage, and it prevents fat breakdown. So when you develop strong insulin resistance and chronically high insulin levels, now that insulin is going to have an increased tendency to store fat. it's stored you also can't retrieve it and when you can't retrieve it now you end up getting more hungry because you put all of those resources away but they're locked away it's like they're in the freezer now and and it's going to take a long time to thaw that out so what you end up doing is you go you end up eating something that's already thawed out so to speak which is something something new so somebody is watching this and they're thinking which one am i most likely am i insulin sensitive or insulin resistant do you think somebody watching this episode knowing what you know about the stats in terms of obesity and everything in the u.s particularly do you think they're more insulin resistant or insulin sensitive the vast majority of people are insulin resistant but again it's it's a matter of degrees it's it's a long spectrum you can't do anything about it you can't do anything about it you can't do anything about it and there's different ways that you can measure that and what they used to measure was just blood glucose and then they started measuring a1c which is now sort of the official marker which is a whole lot better than than just glucose but what they really need to measure is fasting insulin because that response if let's say this is a a 20 30 year process for a lot of people the insulin will tell you where you it will show you changes it will show you problems after five years into the 30 whereas the blood glucose and the the a1c will take 25 years out of the 30 so it'll only start changing very late in in the process and that's why most people have no idea that they're insulin resistant because the blood tests will tell you that that they run it's just blood glucose and a1c so they don't really know for the first 25 years of this process they're in the dark and if they instead had tested fasting insulin now they could find out much much earlier and do something about it so do you think that person if they have insulin resistance or a level of insulin resistance that they would be developing more and more belly fat because insulin is a hormone that's not a hormone that's not a hormone that's not a hormone that likes to store fat if it's too high do you think so oh absolutely that's that's like the first and easiest sign is if you're gaining weight then you are most likely insulin resistant if your belly is growing you are most likely insulin resistant because that's that's the process now there are also people who are skinny and insulin resistant that's why i'm i'm not saying that that's the only thing you should go by the blood test is always better but if you do have a belly then you're you are insulin resistant okay so let's that was step one which is to understand don't focus on calories so much first it still matters because for example somebody can't eat 5 000 calories of butter because they're on a ketogenic diet and think that they're going to lose weight it's not magic um so we need to focus on the hormones and we need to understand which bucket we're in insulin sensitive or insulin resistant as you said most people watching this the person is going to be insulin resistant let's focus on insulin so step two is to focus on the hormones is insulin so do you think that's the main hormone that somebody wants to lose belly fat and visceral fat that they should focus on insulin yes there are other hormones involved but that's that's the main one it's it's sort of the sledge hammer that that overrides just about everything else but then there are other hormones that influence insulin in turn that we need to understand like cortisol because cortisol is a stress hormone and whenever we're stressed whether it's a bear chasing us or whether we're sitting in traffic and we're late for work and it's gridlock and everyone's cutting in front of us those are still stresses and we make cortisol and the body doesn't know the difference there's there's a magnitude difference but there's not a directional difference the body's response is the same and once we make cortisol the body is in fight flight and it's preparing to to fight or flee and now it's going to need energy and where does that energy come from well baseline energy comes from from fat primarily but emergency energy comes from blood sugar so the main purpose of cortisol is to raise blood sugar that's what it does and once blood sugar goes up now of course the follow-through of that is insulin because anytime the blood sugar goes up the next response from the body is blood sugar sorry in insulin and interestingly think about this the way the system was set up historically going back hundreds of thousands of years they didn't did not have traffic and gridlock whenever they had their cortisol release whenever they had their stress response it was because they were chasing something or something was chasing after them all right so now the body makes cortisol it raises blood sugar but what are you going to do you're going to use up that blood sugar you're going to run or flee you're going to chase or flee and you're going to use up that blood sugar the way it was intended it was produced so that you got extra energy now you're using the extra energy and you don't need that insulin to lower the blood sugar because the muscles are going to absorb that glucose without insulin so that that's the perfect setup that's how nature intended it for us to have a stress response raise the blood sugar use up the blood sugar and then we're back to normal baseline but in modern stress we don't get that we just raise the blood sugar and we don't move we just sit there and and boil and now we need insulin to bring that down so that's how stress and cortisol promotes insulin resistance in in modern people wow what i'm hearing is that it's not even about eating like for example too many carbohydrates or processed foods it's that you could even be low carb and just be really stressed and because you're not exercising or being sedentary and seated and you just have this intense stress raises your blood sugar raises your insulin and therefore your cortisol is also in the mix and then what you get more belly fat even though the person is doing low carb that's crazy but here's the other side of that let's say that you are low carb but then you get stressed a lot once you get stressed your body produces cortisol and it tries to raise blood sugar well if you don't eat a whole lot of of carbs the cortisol and the stress is going to make you want carbs it's going to create cravings because if you can't if you don't have a bunch of glycogen if you don't have a bunch of ways to generate glucose your body's going to tell you go out and find them right and sure enough there's a vending machine on every corner and they don't exactly have chicken wings in them they they there's all carbs it's all sugar and carbs in in those vending machines so when people are are stressed that stress changes your eating behavior okay so that's kind of where i was alluding to in in the beginning with calories that it's not about the calories it's about your behavior and the body's behavior so we said that if you drop 500 calories your body is going to change its behavior it's going to burn less but it's going to change the types of foods that you eat and your lifestyle is also going to change your behavior your your cravings your appetite and and so forth so that's why we can't just look at calories we we have to create a lifestyle that allows the body to be in balance and that allows the body to to keep burning calories at a calorie deficit without increasing hunger that is the biggest question in terms of how you do that and as a side note i think anyone just listening to you dr ekberg can sense your calming relaxing vibe and they just feel calm just listening to you just because you can tell if somebody feels a little bit more on the stress side maybe they speak faster faster or they feel like you can feel that tense feeling but your aura is just so relaxing and so fantastic um let's go deeper into we're in step two the insulin so what are the two things uh putting cortisol to the side we're going to talk more about that later the two things that are going to raise insulin and the first one is food and the second one is how often that you eat and you say this is the first thing that you eat and you say this is the the 95%, if you focus on the end, these two things, it's really, really important. Let's first talk about food. So if somebody's going to eat, what are they eating? What are the different macronutrients and which one stimulates insulin the most? Every time you eat, you will increase insulin, but how much varies dramatically. So if we start with carbohydrates, there's something called a glycemic index, which is a measurement of how quickly a food enters the bloodstream and raises blood sugar. There's also something called an insulin index. So that's like the next step, where how soon after you eat and how much does that insulin rise? So we can think of processed carbohydrates basically as having a vitamin C. So if we start with carbohydrates, we can think of processed carbohydrates, where how often does that insulin rise? How often does that insulin rise? And if we start with carbohydrates, we can think of processed carbohydrates, where how often does that insulin rise? And if we gets converted to glucose that's called gluconeogenesis that's just how the body is set up and that's why protein can also trigger blood sugar and and insulin but not nearly as much as carbs so for protein we can assign numbers in the teens like 10 10 15 20 points compared to carbs being at a hundred and then fat by itself pure fat is in the single digits like three four five so that's what we need to understand when we're talking about triggering blood sugar and insulin that and this holds true both for blood sugar and and insulin for different foods that carbs run in in the hundreds basically protein runs in the tens of thousands of calories and that's what we need to understand when we're talking about protein runs in the tens of thousands of calories and that's what we need to understand teens and fats run in single digits so once you eat a diet of protein and healthy fats your blood sugar responses are minimal i mean if you're if you're metabolically healthy and you have a a significant meal your blood sugar probably won't even hit a hundred like if you if your and it's not going to hit a hundred or or maybe like 105 110 but it's not going to hit 130 140 150 whereas with a high carb meal a lot of people will have numbers that they'll they'll go from 90 to to double like 150 180 in in a matter of minutes and that's that's very very damaging to the body that's a shock to the body and that's a shock to the body and that's a shock to the body and that's a shock that's a crisis because really high blood sugar and really really low blood sugar both can put you in a coma right type 1 diabetics that's that's what they they they teach them like if you pass out or if you see someone passed out they just had extreme they got an insulin overdose and their blood sugar crashed and you need to give them some sugar orange juice or a candy bar or something like that and you need to give them some sugar orange juice or a candy bar or something something and they'll come back to life and the same thing holds true at the top end though if their blood sugar hits like five six seven eight hundred you can also pass out so the brain works the best in a very narrow spectrum it loves to be between 70 and 100 that's where the brain thrives so as soon as you eat something that's going to put it way outside that range that's that's an emergency and that's where the body is going to burn the carbohydrates first because it has to get rid of them and a lot of people who bought into the low carb the the low fat high carb bandwagon they're going to say oh no no no we we need carbohydrates we should base our diet on carbohydrates and that's the best source of of energy no it's not it's the thing the body burns first because it has to get rid of it it has to bring it into that narrow range for the brain to be happy low energy unfocused foggy you might be dehydrated gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors great tasting hydration no matter where you're going shop now online or at retailers nation wide gatorade hydrates better than water is it in you symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration consult a health care professional if symptoms persist i get so many headaches every month it could be chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more botox autobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month prescription botox is injected by your doctor effects of botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing speaking breathing eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk side effects may include allergic reactions neck and injection site pain fatigue and headache allergic reactions can include rash welts asthma symptoms and dizziness don't receive botox if there's a skin infection tell your doctor your medical history muscle or nerve conditions including als lugerig's disease myasthenia gravis or lambert eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects why wait ask your doctor visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more wow so the brain likes to operate between 70 and 100 in terms of blood sugar so if somebody is below that or they're above that from eating too many carbohydrates they're not going to feel so good they're not going to have a clear brain function thinking clearly stable energy correct and this this affects mood and energy and focus as well and that's why the people on high carb diets have to eat all the time because they crash all the time you get this blood sugar spike now the body has to get rid of it this emergency you got to pump out tons of insulin to bring it back down well very often it overshoots and it crashes a little bit so that's where people have these roller coasters in in blood sugar but also in energy and in mood now as we've discussed whatever health concern you're experiencing right now whether you're experiencing stubborn weight gain pre-diabetes or even if you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes it all comes down to one thing lowering your insulin levels now that is key but we can do this by dropping our carbohydrates or incorporating fasting and we can even use a tool you might not have heard of red light therapy and you might be thinking what how does that work well red and near infrared light has actually been shown to boost your cellular energy helping you process sugar naturally and lower insulin now to get this naturally you'd actually need to go and get full body sun exposure at sunrise and sunset now the thing is for most of us that's not always possible and that's where i rely on this high quality mini red light therapy device from bond charge and they are kindly sponsoring this episode now this mini red light therapy device delivers powerful wavelengths of red and near infrared light at 660 nanometers and 850 nanometers and since making this a part of my daily 10 minute routine i have found that my deep sleep has significantly improved and my skin is noticeably clearer and i love the mini version because it's really travel friendly so i can just take it anywhere but the thing is light optimization doesn't just stop with red light you see the fake blue light from our screens at night tricks our brain spiking our cortisol and knocking out our insulin levels right out of whack before we go to bed and that's why i wear these brooklyn blue blocking glasses from bond charge every single evening to protect my sleep quality now what i love about bond charge is that everything they make is backed by science and it's really high quality a quality that i can trust and if you want to try their red light therapy devices or their blue blocking glasses for yourself just head to this link bond charge.com forward slash the primal or use code the primal for 15 off so somebody then were to think about okay i can pick between protein fats and carbs but i want to lose belly fat what do you think they need to get rid of first white sugar added sugar because for two reasons it meant many reasons we might get a list going here um it's it's insanely addictive all right it it triggers the same pleasure receptors in the brain as opium it it is a drug right so as soon as you eat it you will have cravings for more and and that's where it sort of creates its own dependence so that's the first thing you have to cut out the the next reason that it's so bad is like what we just talked about it creates blood sugar roller coasters but the third reason is is even maybe the biggest and that is that 50 percent of added sugar is fructose and fructose is like alcohol it is it can only be broken down in the liver so it used to be they call it a fatty liver was always an alcoholic fatty liver before 1970 but then they introduced massive amounts or i don't know the exact year but like modern modern times with with massive amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup these numbers have just skyrocketed but it used to be only alcohol and now 90 percent of fatty liver is due to fructose and this is why we see pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes in in children i mean 10 year olds can get this one in three people between 12 and 17 are pre-diabetic today and that is mostly because of added sugar which is 50 percent fructose or 55 percent in in high fructose corn syrup which clogs up the liver it's it's like this congestion that we started talking about and it's like it's like a big congestion and it's like a big congestion and it's like a big congestion about they're starting to congest their their body as children so already by by their early teens they're starting to develop this congestion and fatty liver and once that liver starts getting fatty it changes its metabolic signaling it becomes more insulin resistant but it's also signaling more insulin resistant and this fat in the liver starts spilling over and it's like over and creating visceral fat and and the beginning of a belly do you think that for these children that are developing pre-diabetes type 2 diabetes because they're having too much processed food and too much white sugar i'm just thinking of their parents mom or dad looking at that child do you think that they know what's happening no no and that's the problem with like when i make a video on on foods you should should avoid there's always a dozen comments that says well what else is there to eat right that has become the norm for them because that's what people do today and they can't even conceive of eating meats and meat and vegetables or an omelette because it's like no what do you eat you eat peanut butter jelly sandwiches you eat crackers you drink soda you eat fast food that's their norm that's the standard food so they're not even aware of of other types of food and and that's the problem i think that needs to change with all your work that you do i'm sure people are going to agree that your videos are first of all incredible and very simple to understand the complexity of the science as it is but in terms of foods to eat and not to eat so continuing with the foods that we should be eating white sugar toss it out processed food i had a question about lean meats because in the matrix of protein fat and carbohydrates the protein can spike the blood sugar in the teens and then also the insulin but lean meats if you were to eat a chicken breast do you think that's really good for us if we want to lower insulin to drop belly fat okay it's it's still way better than carbs but it's probably the worst meat that we can eat would be lean chicken breast and that's what they've been recommending like the the food pyramid i just dropped a video this morning on the food pyramid and i went through those guidelines what they've been telling us to eat is limited like massive amounts of carbs limited protein or moderate protein but they tell us that that moderate amount of protein should be lean like chicken breast which is not only the worst health-wise but it's the worst tasting it is so dry and boring i have not ever bought chicken breast separately i mean occasionally i'll i'll have a whole chicken um and and then i'll get get the breasts but i basically i only buy wings and chicken thighs and those are the the the ones with a good amount of fat and it's so much juice and it's so much fat that it's so much fat that it's just so much fat that it's so much fat that it's so much fat that it's so much fat that it's juicier but yeah you're right that lean chicken breast will will be absorbed because fat fat slows down the absorption fat slows down the processing so if you have ground beef which is 15 20 fat most of the calories come from fat and that's going to slow things way down whereas with lean chicken breast the vast majority of the calories come from fat and that's going to slow down by the fat and also you're going to get this excess protein that is going to trigger and spike blood sugar you process through it it faster and that's what i'm excited i'll do a little little plug here for the for the video but it's it was exciting because the new the new guidelines from the usda where they turn the pyramid upside down it's the first time in 50 years the the first iteration of those guidelines that are is not based on grain but they talk about the foundation of food being healthy fats and protein and they're not saying to eat the lean chicken breast they're saying to eat all sources of of meat and protein so fatty fatty meat fatty fish eggs it's all fine and those are all the things that people should actually be eating and it sounds weird if you have too much fat or belly fat i want to not eat the fat but no you need to eat the fat in the meats so that you feel full so that goes back to the first step so that you can slowly fix your hormones your insulin and you will have to be in a calorie deficit long term you know but that will naturally get there by not being hungry because you focus on the protein and you focus on the fat let's get to the next one so we know that don't eat the carbohydrates so much focus on protein and fat because that's going to drop your blood sugar keep it stable and keep your insulin down next one is frequency of eating so let's just say that i'm eating carbohydrates and i'm just eating every few hours i'm starving what's happening to my blood sugar and insulin what happens is every time you eat you get some insulin response and the bigger the blood sugar spike the bigger the insulin response and then of course that insulin is going to drop the blood sugar so now it's crashing and now that's why you get get hungry again and that's again why they tell you on the high carb diet that you should have three meals a day and three snacks because they don't understand that the body has a built-in way of regulating these things they think that you have to externally top off the blood sugar with carbohydrates but you only create the blood sugar that's going to drop the blood sugar you created that need because you ate too much carbohydrates and too much processed carbohydrates so with the type of food you create the frequency and then once you keep topping off insulin the the insulin never has any time it doesn't have a chance to drop during the day the only time it could possibly drop is when you're sleeping but because you're eating too much carbohydrates and too much processed carbohydrates you pushed it so high during the day it's going to take longer for it to come down and then you wake up in the morning and you start off with your healthy breakfast of cereal and toast and and you jack it all all up again right so the the type of food is hugely important the frequency is is hugely important but if you eat mostly protein and and healthy fats you're never going to trigger that insulin very far and then what i tell people is that if you look back at your ancestors like hunter-gatherers cave dwellers they did not wake up to a breakfast buffet they did not pop open the fridge in the cabinet for for the cereal right they they had to go out and find something first and maybe they had some nuts maybe they had some meat from from the day before but when you have stable blood sugar you don't don't need to eat all the time. So if you get on what people find based on my recommendations, if you start eating low carb, high fat or lower carb, higher fat, you get less hungry because you're not jacking your blood sugar up and down. And then I tell them, don't eat breakfast if you're not hungry. Just consider the possibility of not eating breakfast. And a lot of people are not hungry in the morning anyway. If you wake up and you don't have breakfast and then you don't think about it, most people don't develop any hunger until well into the day, like 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, and then go ahead and eat. Have a big solid meal and then you're going to be fine. You're not going to have an afternoon crash. You're not going to have cravings for snack mid noon. And then you get home and you eat your dinner. And there's no like fixed time, but you don't want to have your dinner at 10 o'clock. If you can have it at 5 or 6, now that's ideal. So you had your lunch and now you had your dinner and you had those within about 6 hours. Well, that means 18 hours without having any food, without triggering any external blood sugar. You're generating some internally, but you're not throwing in a bunch of food that needs to be processed. You go 18 hours where your insulin can drop consistently. And that is the most powerful intervention is how much insulin drops consistently. And that is the most powerful intervention is how much insulin drops when you're not eating. So with what I just described, you're getting 18 hours of a fasting period. And it's so easy to do. No one is going to have any trouble with that if they start eating real food. And once most people try that, they'll report back. They'll say in the comments, it's like, I can't believe I ever ate more than two meals. I can't believe I never had a fasting window. And for most people, that seems kind of excessive. It's like, oh, 18 hours. Will I survive? Yes. Not only that, but it's so natural and it's so easy. Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero Powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, autobotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. That sounds like super easy and very delicious foods. Because if you think about it, bacon, avocado, eggs, steak, a salad. If you want to have vegetables, sounds very delicious. Eat until you feel full twice a day between, you know, six-hour window and then you're fasting. So let's just say that somebody's doing this and they're looking down at their belly. They're like, Dr. Ekberg, is it coming down? Is it coming down? But I want to ask about visceral fat because visceral fat is really, really important because it promotes a lot of inflammation. If somebody starts doing this process that you exactly described, how do you know that you're getting rid of the visceral fat? You don't. Not exactly. There are various proxy tests, like there's scales that can measure. But there's no exact way except cutting you open. Like with a cadaver, they can figure it out. Oh, that's depressing. Don't say that. Yeah, yeah. But there's no exact test. But the good thing to know is that they, they, the mechanism, the mechanism is virtually identical. Your body burns fat from all over and from inside. The only difference that would promote belly fat a little bit more than other fats is cortisol. Because that belly, the visceral fat has more cortisol receptors. So for people who are extremely stressed, and they try to do everything right in terms of other diet and lifestyle, they may lose more of the other fat and keep some more of the belly fat. But other than that, the mechanisms are identical. So if you lose one, you're going to lose the other. So it's still, 90% of it is probably still about insulin. And the cortisol, the cortisol thing is just something people have to start appreciating the impact. Because the biggest detriment of stress and cortisol is not the metabolic health. It is that your body is, when you're under stress, you're shutting everything else down in terms of healing, in terms of health. Your body is just trying to survive. It's burning bridges. It's fighting an external battle rather than taking care of the insides. So whenever you have a stress response, you increase your heart rate, you increase your blood sugar, you increase your cholesterol, etc, etc. But you also decrease your digestion, your immune system, your reproduction, your healing, your DNA repair. So stress is involved in virtually every disease process there is. So yes, it also affects belly fat, but that's not the biggest reason to take stress seriously. And the thing to understand about stress is that stress is not out there. People think, oh, I have so much stress in my life. There are so many stressors. Well, nothing happens until you have a stress response. So it's your response to it, and there you have a choice. You don't have a choice in the moment, but you have a choice long term to learn how to deal with it, with breathing exercises, with meditation, with tools and gadgets. There's so much you can do to control that stress and to program the body to have different stress responses. And that's maybe the most important thing that we can do for our health, other than maybe metabolically, because that's such a huge deal. Yeah, well, I do want to just elaborate on that, because you mentioned something quite interesting. The second step, which was insulin, which is focus on lowering your carbohydrates and fasting, that's quite overt, meaning that on the outside, you do that. And you can do that with people, like when you're eating and your kitchen and everything. But when you think of stress, it's really hard to know if you are stressed, because it's just your everyday life. And you said the example about being in traffic. I think of my sister-in-law that she lives in Canada and she actually lives in Calgary. It's a beautiful place, but there's not much traffic. Can I just tell you, she's like, oh, oh, oh, like she's stressed. She's stressed. I want you to speak to the person that says, I'm not stressed. I'm fine. I just live a normal life. How do they know that they're stressed and what they can do about it? It is hard to know because it's all part of a program. Our stress responses are conditioned responses. They're neural networks that we have a certain trigger, something pushes a button, and we don't even know a button was pushed, but there's still a physiological response. And a lot of this conditioning takes place before we're two years old. And by two years old, we don't even, we're not aware of anything. Our brains haven't started functioning. At that level, but we have mirrored our parents. We have something called mirror neurons that. that are very active very early where we start patterning things and that's why we we gesture like our parents and we walk like our parents and our postures like our parents so we're not aware of it but we take after their their stress responses to how how we respond to things how we interact all of that gets gets stored and and conditioned so no we're not aware but we can just assume that if we live on planet earth today we're going to be stressed and and the current generation is probably that that are more out of touch with nature because nature is an outlet when you get to physically move and interact with nature you you release a lot of that but you're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it and so that's why we're not aware of it but when you don't and you spend all your time on electronic gadgets and with with emails and social media that are not productive like youtube and and long form content where people can learn things uh where people's attention span goes down and down and down and down like it used to be the the average view was like 14 seconds and now it's down to six seconds on on some of these short form social media and and if if you don't get someone's attention in a couple of seconds they're they're gone and that is extremely stressful for the brain the brain has no idea how to just be how to just exist and and be it needs to be constantly stimulated and when you withdraw that stimulus it's extremely stressful that the brain never learns to to wire properly so we can assume as as modern people that we are stressed and we need to practice ways of of reversing it of of counteracting it they did a they did a study they had people imagine getting cut off in traffic or getting flipped off or someone was rude to them in traffic and then they measured the their stress hormones like cortisol and they measured their immune hormones like immunoglobulins and the stress hormones shot through the roof and the immunoglobulins dropped way way down okay now if they didn't do anything about it those hormones and the immunoglobulins stayed at those poor levels for throughout the rest of the day for hours and hours and hours so you could drive to work and have a stress response and you're stressed all day and then you drive home and you have another one and you're stressed all night and that's that's because people are conditioned into this state and they don't know what to do about it however then they had a control group or or another group in the study where they had them imagine the stress response they saw the changes but then they had them do some breathing exercises and some appreciation for just a couple of minutes and the levels went back to normal within minutes so these stress responses can stay with us for an entire day or we can learn to do something about it and they're gone in minutes and the if we the more we learn to do this and the more that we prepave the way by practicing this then the stress rolls off like water off a duck let me just give a moment to give gratitude to you because i'm so excited to talk to you so that's just going to be my gratitude for today uh it's true that if you feel the stress and then if you just have like a gratitude moment or something that you're thankful for it just kind of relieves that i think that people just need to have that moment um i was just very excited to talk to you i was like yes dr ekber is amazing and i just love him so much so that you see my energy and i'm just so excited about it so if i'm stressed that's just going to dissipate and as you said the hormones or you're feeling inside it's just going to go down if i didn't do that it's just going to be up the whole day so that's a really great takeaway to try to relax calm down don't be on the phone all the time i even heard about grounding techniques what do you think about that putting your feet on the soil yeah um i haven't studied it in in depth but besides sort of connecting with nature they're supposed to be like an ionic exchange like an energy exchange and i mean all all in all i all i can say is that in nature is is very beneficial i think we should definitely put aside time to to spend time in nature now as we've discussed going low carbon fasting are absolutely huge for fixing your health from the inside but once you've done this it is time to look at your skincare now you might be wondering well why would that matter well let me tell you a story about myself so that this might help you understand a bit better you see i used to use seven different skin care products but my skin was still super dry and so sensitive and it's no wonder because those products were actually packed with synthetic chemicals that over time can wreck our hormones and when i was diagnosed with Hashimoto's i literally had enough because i learned that our skin barrier is actually made up of healthy fats and when i realized that nothing on the shelves was actually working for myself i decided to create my own solution and that's why i created the primal tallow balm and i wanted to go back to the basics using 100% grass-fed grass-finished tallow now that might sound weird to put something that we cook with on our skin but it's exactly what our skin needs and it actually matches our skin's natural oils perfectly and it's packed with fat soluble vitamins a d e and k2 and since chucking out the rest and actually switching to this balm right here my skin is so soft and it's no longer sensitive and it doesn't react anymore and i really want you to try this for yourself with a special discount just head to theprimal.com forward slash balm for an extra 20 off and hey while you're there check out our natural soaps to go with it that was step three stress step four you are a former olympian so you can really answer this question dr ekberg do you think that exercise is really good to burn belly fat especially ab crunches especially not ab crunches but yes exercise is not going to be the main thing to burn belly fat but it's certain it absolutely will help if you do it right and what you want to do is you want to do gentle exercise aerobic exercise like walking or or gentle hiking where you can breathe you can keep up a conversation not not like i can speak multiple sentences on a single breath but you could say a phrase and maybe be a little bit like a little winded but you can still talk but you're not panting heavily right that's aerobic exercise and what that means is when you're burning when you're generating energy with air that's aerobic you're burning almost exclusively fat i mean it's in the 90 percent of energy is is retrieving fat so yes you are burning some of that fat and then the key is to not go too hard because once you start huffing and puffing what does that mean it means that you don't have enough you can't supply enough oxygen to keep burning that fat and now you have to switch energy sources and of course the next energy source is going to be glucose so now you're starting to burn carbs that's not too terrible necessarily except though the way that you generate those carbs and get to them is through cortisol which again is a stress hormone that has many other effects but again you're using up the blood sugar so it's not too terrible but here's the thing and this is going to vary with with individuals that if you're mostly like in low carb and you're trying to do things right and then you go out and you do a hard exercise where you're huffing and puffing and you use up carbs now your body is going to want to replenish those carbs so again you get cravings and you're not going to be able to stick to your program as easily and this is why it's so important long term the most important thing that you can do to lose belly fat is to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet and you're going to have a good diet is to like like we said you need to create a deficit and you need to do it without lowering basal metabolic rate but you have to do it in a way that controls your hunger and it has to be something that you can do forever low energy unfocused foggy you might be dehydrated Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors great tasting hydration no matter where you're going shop now online or at retailers nationwide Gatorade hydrates better than water is it in you symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration consult a health care professional if symptoms persist I get so many headaches every month it could be chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more Botox on a botulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month prescription Botox is injected by your doctor effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing speaking breathing eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk side effects may include allergic reactions neck and injection site pain fatigue and headache allergic reactions can include rash welts asthma symptoms and dizziness don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection tell your doctor your medical history muscle or nerve conditions including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including Botox and Botox botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects why wait ask your doctor visit Botox chronic migraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more so that would yeah that so that would make sense that if you focus on the step two which is 95% which is the food and how frequently you eat fasting that is the big bucket and then whatever you're doing the exercise is just a breeze you go for a walk outside with your husband and wife or your friends you go for a leisurely walk not huffing and puffing it's very relaxing and have you noticed that when you go walk outside let's just say with your wife you don't get cravings after you actually feel really happy and maybe you want a glass of water so I think that would be the first step for people to start with if they just can't exercise but I want to get into some technical short burst exercise what do you think about five minute HIIT training is that great if they want to take it up a notch yes so that that's basically what i tell people you want to do long duration low intensity like walking because you're burning mostly fat and you're also the the little glucose that you're using up the muscles are pulling out of the bloodstream without the need for insulin so now you're you're using up some of the pool of glucose that that you have but not in a stressful way so you're you're kind of helping the body process through that without insulin now the HIIT training the high intensity interval training what it does in addition is it creates growth hormone and HIIT training needs to be very very intense right the the growth hormone the body produces the growth hormone in proportion to the challenge so if you go at 70 percent it's like okay that was a little bit of challenge we'll make a little bit of growth hormone but if you go all out if you totally max out you push yourself to to failure basically now that's a challenge where the body goes oh my god that that was rough i gotta get better and then it makes a ton of growth hormone so it can repair stuff but it can also build everything that you used it wants to build it a little stronger so it can deal with with that challenge next time you bring it on okay so the growth hormone is it's a rejuvenating hormone it's very very healthy that's one of the biggest problems as people age is their growth hormone declines and growth hormone is also a fat burning hormone so that's that's a good little parentheses in there now here's the thing we need to understand is about cortisol that cortisol chronically high cortisol is a bad thing uh going to a a spin class and huffing and puffing for 45 minutes is okay for a for a metabolically healthy person but for someone who's not metabolically healthy and insulin resistant you're going to drive up a lot of cortisol you're going to create a lot of cravings you're going to stress your system more than it likes to now with hit you're going to drive that cortisol even higher but you're only doing it for a few minutes and that's the key so it's it's it's magnitude and duration that matters so if the magnitude is high but the duration is very low now it has a very small negative impact so that's why we can do that super intense but when we go intense we want to keep it so so short and when i do it then i will do something like 15 to 30 seconds of intense activity and my favorite thing now as i get older is to sprint uphill because if you sprint uphill you don't have to go so fast that you hurt yourself whereas if you run on the flat you might pull a muscle or start hurting your joints more and then i like to go i just like to walk back like i do a sprint uphill i walk back so that might be a minute rest for the first one and then i do another one and i walk back and i'm not real picky about how long i rest sometimes i'll i'll go toward the end of it i might do two minutes and that's still fine because if they're intense enough you're still going to hit that that maximum level so i'm going to do a sprint uphill and i'm not going to do a sprint uphill and i'm not going to you could also go if you did jumping jacks or you did something else you could just go shorter rest and do like 20 seconds intense and 20 seconds rest and 20 seconds intense it doesn't really matter how you do it as long as you get a little more tired for each interval until you just basically fail like you the last one you should push yourself to where you can't do any more do you look at heart rate when you do the intervals or is it just how tired you feel to perceived rate of exertion both but heart rate is very useful if you can monitor it accurately and i think to really monitor accurately you need something with a chest strap and there are fewer of those devices out there but if you really want to understand it i think you should get something that you can use a chest strap and you want to get as close to maximum heart rate as possible and usually they define that as 220 minus your age so i'm a little over 60 and that would put my max heart rate at 160 and that's a ballpark all right a lot of people especially if they're reasonably fit they can go a lot higher than that so i can still get mine to about 175 even more and that's a lot of people who are 180 but it's it's different it gives people a a sense of of where to go but if you if you manage to get higher than that then that's still fine because there's always a question how hard are you actually going but i like the fact that you offer other solutions which is sprinting uphill so the impact is not as much i'm jumping back jacks if somebody has good knees but even if they want to do some swimming no impact that could be good yeah so swimming if you get in the pool and and it's kind of hard to to unless you're a really really good swimmer it's hard to swim at that maximum rate but what you can do is you you can just sort of float and start sprinting where you are just like you're sprinting on on ground you do the same exact motions and you will typically stay afloat and if you need to you could put a noodle between your legs and you can do that but if you're not able to do that then you can do it with your legs or some little floatation device and you just sprint all out for 30 seconds and then with those you probably want to do a little bit shorter rest but you'll you'll be able to get your heart rate way up there well that's very easy i think dr eckenberg there's no excuse for anyone not to do this five minute workout it's just five minutes and it's going to increase growth hormone and not spike cortisol consistently it's going to give that positive result and one important note here is if you do high intensity at a really high intensity you absolutely do not want to do it every day two to three times a week because you're stressing your body to a level where if you did it every day, you're going to start breaking things down. So even that short duration, it works because you get that growth hormone spike, you get a little boost in fat burning, you get a boost in muscle building, and those benefits are elevated for a few days, right? So two to three times a week for five minutes plus warm-up, I would have to say also. You do something to warm up to make sure that your body is ready for that intensity, and then that intense period is five minutes, two to three times a week. Do you know that you've just saved us so much time? Eating twice a day, so you're not cooking six times a day, you're not eating all the time, and you're exercising 15 to 20 minutes a week, and then you're going out for a walk with some friends and socializing. That's a damn good life to lose weight and get healthy. And burn some belly fat. I wanted to ask you about, you did a fabulous video about what happens when you do 25 push-ups a day. Do you think that push-ups are really good for someone if they do that every day? I think anything you can do consistently, and I do those videos to just get people to do something, because once you do something and you can make it a habit, then you could add on something else. So if I did a video on squats, and then if people start doing squats, then you can add on the push-ups. And yes, those are excellent full-body exercises. You're engaging so many different muscles. You don't need equipment. So we just want to try to make it easy for people to get started, to make some changes. Perfect. And just to say a push-up, a bodyweight push-up, I can just do, I think, 12 of them now. So it does take time, and it's a little bit difficult, but it uses all of your muscles. Step number five, which is to create a holistic lifestyle. Now you mentioned the chemical side, the structural side, and the emotional side. Can you just explain to us what that means, and how we can pack that together to create a holistic lifestyle? So your body depends on different inputs. There's different aspects to your health that affects your physiology. So what you eat affects your physiology. Obviously, we've talked about this. How you if, and how much, and how you move affects your physiology, right? And what most people don't think about enough is the emotional aspects affect our physiology. Like I mentioned that experiment with imagining stress, and your hormones, your immune system, you have physiological responses to your thoughts. So we need to understand that all three, we want to think of them as thirds. They have equal importance. Like they're 33% of your health. Could be a little more, a little less for different people, depending on where they're stuck. But you want to think of it as being a triangle where each side is equally important. So what you eat, how you move, how you think, is something that you need to work on. And a lot of people, so here's a good example. If you have a plant, and okay, so let's just ask, what do plants need? Light, water, and if you sing to it, it grows better. Yeah, that's part of the light, I think, but. Okay. They need good soil. Good soil. Good soil. Good soil. Good soil. Yes, yes. They generate resources from the light, but they also need good soil. So they need three things, right? So now you have a plant, and it has really good soil, and you water it, but you put it in the closet and close the door. Are you going to have a healthy plant long-term? No, right? None. And then you have another plant and you give it healthy soil and you put it in the sun, but no water. Is that plant going to stay healthy? No. And same thing with the soil. Like if you don't give it any nutrients, you just give it sunlight and water, it's not going to get healthy and stay healthy. So plants need three things. They have that as a requirement. If you give them two out of three, out of a million plants, you're going to have zero healthy plants long term. And that's how we need to think about the body. Humans have nutritional needs, we have movement needs, and we have emotional needs. They're laws of nature, right? They're not optional. It's not something we can do that's nice to do once we get around to it. They're requirements. So in terms of the chemical side, the nutritional side, it's everything that we talked about. Eat real food, avoid sugar and additives and processed foods. The other side, so we need to put in some good stuff and we need to avoid some bad stuff. And avoiding the bad stuff includes chemicals and pollution and not putting, excess pesticides and poisons in our environment. Then with the movement, the positive is moving and that's what we talked about. You do some push-ups, you do some stretching, you do some squats, you walk, you do some HIIT. You're moving your body, you're providing. That movement is the most important nutrient for your brain, right? Your brain needs nutrients. It needs like substrates, it needs oxygen, and then it needs stimulation. And most people don't understand the stimulation, but that's the most important thing to keep your brain alive is movement. On the negative side of movement is trauma that changes the body's movement patterns that interferes with the signaling, a sedentary lifestyle, being a couch potato and just not moving. And you could also actually have a stress if you over-exercise, if you break your body down and don't give it enough time to recover. And then the emotional is we need to feel good. You have to, but it's not optional. You have to feel good. So do what it takes. Do breathing exercises, do meditation. Watch a funny movie, read a good book, read something uplifting, because we need that, that peace, that upliftment, that, that bliss, it's necessary. And of course, then the, the opposite, the negative of that is everything that makes you feel bad, which is overwhelm and anger and fear and so on. So that that's it in a nutshell. Yeah. There's, there's three components we need to understand. They're equally important. And even when it comes to belly fat or especially when it comes to belly fat, uh, when people have trouble burning that belly fat, getting rid of it or wherever whole body fat, we need to maybe look more at the things we don't think are important and, and now I kind of spelled it out there, they're equal thirds. You pay. Equal attention to, to all three. Low energy, unfocused, foggy. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration. No matter where you're going shop now online or at retailers nationwide Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Consult. Consult a healthcare professional. If symptoms persist, I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more Botox on a botulinum toxin. A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit Botox chronic migraine dot com or call one. Eight hundred for four Botox to learn more. That I could not have understood that better when you made the planned analogy. because no one is going to say, let me have a plant and let me give it a good soil and let me give it water, but let me put it in the dark. It's obvious. But what do we do as humans? We stay indoors and don't go outside. So I hope people can really, really understand that. I just had a question that I thought about right now because I wanted to know how has your understanding of health with regard to hormones and belly fat and health, how has that changed from when you were an Olympian and when you were competing? What's the difference now? Everything, because I'm genetically fortunate. I worked out six hours a day. So there was absolutely no way for me to put on weight, to not stay lean. It didn't matter what I ate. And I had no idea. At the time, this was in the 80s, the bandwagon wisdom was athletes should eat as much carbs as possible because that's your fuel. And I did. And I don't think it affected my health or performance. I think it affected my level of injuries and maybe the resistance. I think it affected my ability of my body, my body's ability to resist things. Because I didn't, I should have eaten much more vegetables and probably more meat. But I ate tons and tons of sugar. I ate tons and tons of carbs and cereals and ice cream. I probably ate a thousand grams of carbs per day. What? Yeah. But I was still 3% body fat because I was genetically fortunate and I worked out six hours a day. There's no way the body can put on fat during those circumstances. I probably ate six to 8,000 calories. So when you stopped competing, then what happened? Did you have to change your diet or what did you do? No. Well, gradually I started learning. Once I stopped competing, then I basically went straight into chiropractic school and started learning about health. So there wasn't very much time in between. But I didn't change so much what I ate, but I ate till I was full. And that was probably less than half as much food at that point. Because I didn't eat as much as I should have. I didn't use it. I still exercised also, but just not at that level. A thousand grams of carbohydrates. That's crazy. But that's also what a lot of people need to understand that you can't compare a 20-year-old to a 60-year-old. You can't compare an athlete to a sedentary person. The biggest thing about eating that much carb is that you're not getting. You're not getting the broad spectrum of vitamins. You're not getting the essential fatty acids or enough maybe essential amino acids from the protein. But metabolically, it's not going to hurt you if you are insulin sensitive and if you're that active. You're just going to burn through it. But it doesn't make it healthy food. I would have been so much better off if I had eaten more of whole food, more of other things, and especially probably less sugar. That's incredible. What would you want somebody to take away from this conversation about losing weight, losing belly fat? They feel hopeless. They don't know where to start. What would you tell them? The most important thing is to control your hunger and do it in a way that you can do it forever. Because it doesn't matter how good the diet is. If you consider it a diet that you're going to get on and then you're going to probably get off, it doesn't matter how good it is because it's still going to bring you back to where you were. So the changes have to be things that you can keep up forever. And if you eat more meat and fat and non-starchy vegetables, what's going to happen is you create a satiety level automatically that's going to make you start eating less. All the people who say that they lose weight on keto or paleo or whatever, they say calories don't matter. Yes, they do. It's just that you eat less automatically, but you're also lowering insulin so your body doesn't lower its metabolic rate. Because if you lower insulin, now you have access to that fortune of energy that you have stored on your body. Like a lot of overweight people will have half a million calories stored on their body. That's a fortune. Your body put that there as a resource, but when insulin is high, you can't get to it. And instead, you get hungry. And that's why the diets fail. So you have to do something to keep you satiated and bring down insulin. And you have to find a way to do that, that you can keep it up forever, where it doesn't feel like a challenge. And you said at some point here, well, that sounds really delicious. And it is. Like a ribeye steak with a salad, it's delicious. That's what I had last night. I made tabbouleh with parsley and olive oil and onions and lemon and some walnuts. And then I had a ribeye steak. And that's food. That's the stuff that you need. If you eat that twice a day, maybe a larger meal and a smaller meal, you're going to be satisfied and your insulin will drop. And it is delicious. And as soon as you cut out all the sugar completely, you're not going to crave it anymore. Best words I've ever heard, ever, from the wonderful Dr. Ekberg. You know what? I'm going to link all of your videos pertaining to belly fat so that if people want more detail about what we spoke to, it's going to be in the description, as well as your products and everything about you so that I want people to, if they haven't heard of you, who hasn't? But if they haven't, they can find you. Dr. Ekberg, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. I had a wonderful time. Thank you so much for watching right to the end. Now, you might be thinking, well, Reena, what should I watch next? Well, I think you're going to love this episode right here.