Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to talk about how to lose belly fat - how do we burn that fat as fast as possible? And I don't know about you but it drives me absolutely crazy with all of the bad and useless information out there.
Is it about carb fat or protein? Do we eat a little do we eat a lot? And can we do crunches to target belly fat or hip fat or thigh fat?
No you can't do that. It doesn't work like that and maybe the worst all these videos that say take a tablespoon of this or a pinch of that and all your problems will go away now what happens when people get bad information and conflicting information is they get confused and they don't stick with it they don't stay the course or even worse they do nothing at all. But after watching this video you will know for sure how certain things work and you will know enough that you can take some action and stick with it and get the results you want.
A really good question to start with is why would the body burn fat or the reverse maybe for some why would the body not burn fat why is the body refusing to burn fat why am I on this plateau all the time and one reason could be that the body doesn't need to burn fat and we're talking about the body fat the fat that are stored on the body as a reserve and if you never need to tap into the reserves then obviously you're not going to burn it if there's always more fuel being supplied than what you're using up another reason could be that there are other types of fuel or the timing of the fuel that something else needs to be burned first before we get to the body fat so we have to understand that in the order of things the dietary carbohydrates that we eat have to burn first the body has to use that first and then it gets to dietary fats and then it gets to the body fat so what we need to do is to create a state in the body where first of all there is a need for energy and secondly where that need for energy doesn't result in an increased appetite if we use more energy and then we just compensate by eating more then it's a zero-sum game and also of course we want to give the body a reason at the cellular level we need to give the body a reason to use up that body fat and of course it also needs to be sustainable it needs to be something that you can do for the rest of your life and we want to put health first we want to do this to enhance health not at the expense of health and when we say extremely fast that's a relative term and why am I saying that because if you're on a bicycle you don't want to compare yourself to a formula one race car so do this as fast as possible for you and what that means is you want to start understanding the different mechanisms and factors that enhance fat burning and what stops fat burning and then once you understand them now you implement them and you do all of them at once at the same time for a period of time because if you do one thing and it gets a little bit result then if you add another thing now it's like compound interest how can we affect the need for energy well first of all we have our basal metabolic rate and that's how much energy the body uses up when you do nothing when you're sitting around when you're sleeping your organs are always doing some work your heart your liver your kidneys they're doing what they're supposed to do and they're using up some energy in doing that and then there are some hormones insulin and human growth hormone that we'll talk a little bit more about that also affect this basal metabolic rate and then above that baseline we add the energy required for movement so any time that you move and do something physical now you're using up a little bit more energy than the basal rate and now you have basic movement which is just going about your daily life getting from the couch to the fridge from the bed to the bathroom from the car over to work and so forth and then you add in exercise and that's something that you do on purpose to increase your circulation and your movement one problem a lot of people run into when they exercise more is that they eat more and one underlying factor here that we have to control is insulin resistance because if you have chronically high levels of insulin meaning insulin stays high even when you're not eating then that high level of insulin blocks fat burning it prevents you from getting to the fat you have stored and if you can't get to it then you get hungry so the whole idea of using more energy and burning fat is that we can get to the body fat stores but with high insulin we can't another factor we have to control is stress because when stress is high that's your perception of the world telling your body that there's something fearful there's something dangerous out there and I need to be prepared in case that thing attacks me and if it attacks me I might have to run really really fast and if I have to run fast I need emergency fuel which is glucose you always have a baseline of fat that you're burning but the more stress you have the more you're going to shift into glucose to do that and then you're going to release cortisol which is a stress hormone which also drives more insulin and a third big factor is carb dependence if you're dependent on carbohydrate if you have trained your body to always receive a fresh big full supply of carbohydrate your body is always going to burn that first and it will never get around to burning that fat so the combination of all these three factors makes it very difficult to control your appetite willpower is just not going to be enough in the long run and then we need to give the body a reason at the cellular level to use up to burn through some fat and we have to ask that question why would the body do that or why wouldn't it if we assume the body is supremely intelligent which it is then it's going to need a reason there's a reason for everything it does I mean you wouldn't for example go and mow your lawn today if you already finished it yesterday I mean nobody would do that well actually my neighbor tends to do that anyway but you know what I mean that in the body everything happens for a reason so dietary carbohydrates have to be burned first carbs turn into blood sugar and really high blood sugar can put you into a coma the brain can't function with high or low levels of blood sugar so they have to be processed through first and some of it can be put into glycogen storage but the body can't store a whole lot so it's going to try to burn through both carbs and glycogen first and then it's going to start in on the dietary fat the stuff that you ate earlier today or late yesterday that's still floating around and only after most of that is gone and processed through is it going to get to body fat and also we want to understand that this is not an absolute it's not going to use 100% of number one and 100% of number two before it ever gets to three and four it's a tendency the percentages are shifting it's a trend so this is basically the priority and here's the action plan and we'll talk about these in more detail first you cut sugar then you reduce carbs you exercise meditate we're going to talk about protein then you add some fat you get into ketosis because that is fat burning and we're going to talk about fasting first of all we cut out the sugar why is that because it is addictive it's a drug and if it's addictive then you're going to over indulge by definition an addiction is something that you use more of than you want so you're going to overeat because of sugar secondly it's also a carbohydrate it's 100 carbohydrate it triggers insulin through the glucose but it also clogs the liver through the fructose and it causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and insulin resistance because the liver is your metabolic factory and once you clog up that liver then it's going to kind of spill over to the rest of the body and that's one of the driving mechanisms behind insulin resistance and then you want to reduce carbohydrates overall because they are in a way addictive not as strongly as sugar for the most part but they do cause overeating definitely they do trigger insulin definitely and whenever insulin is high it prevents fat burning but also like we said when carbs are present you're going to burn those first before you ever get to fat burning therefore you want to keep your carbohydrates probably less than 30 net grams and that's not an absolute number because it's going to differ for different people a lot of people can get into fat burning once they're under 50 grams but other people need to get down to maybe 10 or 15 grams of carbohydrate before their body really starts burning up that fat and here is a carbohydrate that you can eat because this has such a negligible impact on insulin you're not going to overeat it it's not really addictive it doesn't really count as a carbohydrate if it's high water high fiber and very low carb next you want to increase your exercise because exercise is good for so many different reasons your whole physiology is driven by exercise and of course you will increase your energy need you're going to use up more energy that in itself is not going to help you burn belly fat because unless you also work on insulin resistance you will compensate by eating more so the key is to do this to exercise without increasing appetite so on the one hand that's about food on the other it's about doing the right type of exercise and you want to do the vast majority 95-98% of your exercise as aerobic meaning it's with air it's at a low intensity like walking or biking at a pleasant rate so you don't get winded so you don't start huffing and puffing the other type of exercise is called anaerobic that means without air you increase the intensity to where the oxygen in the air can't keep up and now you have to start breaking down glucose to make lactic acid and this is a stressful state and it there's a reason there's a purpose for it but if you do this and trying to burn fat you want to try to keep that to a minimum they should be very very short if you do intervals it should last a few seconds if you do one interval it could be a minute or two and then you're done if you overdo it you're going to create a lot of stress so anaerobic uses up carbohydrates because once you get to that level you have to break down glucose to create that energy when you don't have enough air now some people might ask wouldn't that be a good thing if you use up the carbohydrates then that mean you can start burning the fat instead and theoretically it would except when you do that when you create a stressful state through this anaerobic exercise if you do too much of it now your body is going to be desperately trying to replenish those carbohydrates it's going to be something that's beyond your willpower and it's no good using up the carbs if your body is just going to go look for more and give you cravings i often mention meditation because I think it can make you feel better overall I think it can help you with your purpose and your well-being in life but it also has an impact on metabolism and metabolic health because stress like we said it requires emergency fuel when you're in a state of stress your body thinks it's going to need emergency fuel and that means carbohydrates and glucose and it can also increase cortisol as a way of increasing that glucose now it's going to start breaking down protein and glycogen and so forth to raise that glucose and that of course drives insulin but most of all it's going to give you cravings whenever you are stressed you're going to tend to go look for sugary things for comfort foods for things you're addicted to to change how you feel and meditation will help you reduce that stress and cope and deal with all of those factors when we start a low carb high fat diet where does protein fit in a lot of people are told and they hear that you should eat moderate protein and why do we even worry about protein because protein is glucogenic that means it can become glucose you can turn protein into blood sugar and a lot of the protein you eat the purpose of protein is to become building blocks but the excess protein when you eat way more protein than your body needs for parts then the rest is going to become glucose and therefore theoretically protein can drive blood sugar and insulin and it can keep you out of fat burning so when it comes to meat you want to do the exact opposite of what you've been told for the last 40-50 years you actually want to avoid the lean meat so when they tell you to eat the lean chicken breast then you cut that out instead and why is that because the leaner the meat is the more you tend to overeat on the protein most people get enough protein you just don't want to overdo it so instead what you want to do is you eat the fatty meat the fish the pork the chicken whatever meat you're eating if it's ground beef or steak you look for the fattiest healthy cut that you can find because then it's going to be so much more satisfying and so much more filling that you're not going to eat as much and you're not going to overdo the protein even if you go like a hundred percent carnivore so when I eat chicken it's typically going to be chicken wings or I will also eat chicken thighs if I can get them with skin that's great if not I'll typically add some butter or olive oil or avocado or something to the food and the reason that we're told to eat the lean stuff in the first place is that we have this phobia of saturated fat but saturated fat is not the problem saturated fat is a good fuel source it is very stable it doesn't oxidize it doesn't get rancid it doesn't create inflammation what creates inflammation is insulin insulin is the problem that we're after all the time and the carbohydrates drive insulin which high levels of insulin over time drive insulin resistance so all of these three factors is what's producing the chronic disease and what we have to point out also is that it's not carbs per se it's too much carbs and how much is too much well it depends on the person if you don't have any of this problems then you're not eating too much carbs but if you have these problems then you are eating too many carbs for you next step is to add in some good fat you want to be in ketosis that's what the keto diet is all about and it's not about bacon and cheese crisps and all that stuff it's still about whole food and ketosis simply means that you're in a state of fat burning and that's the goal after all that means you're typically going to have less than five percent from carbohydrates five percent of your calories that means with moderate protein you can still have a lot of steak if you keep it fatty steak or chicken or ground beef and then you'll have 15 to 20 percent of your calories from protein and then fat is the rest whatever else you need to eat to get satisfied and full then that becomes fat but when does that fat become too much and there's a fine line here that we want to be aware of that the whole point is to burn body fat and the fine line depends on the person and if you eat so much dietary fat that the body sees no reason to use anything stored on the body then you're eating too much fat and then you need to cut back on the dietary fat until your body starts burning some body fat so this is where everyone's different and you need to play with it a little bit because at some point if you cut out too much fat it could lead to starvation if you're hungry if your body feels deprived if it's not working well then you're not eating enough so it's a good idea to eat a little bit more to start with and then slowly back off and the way that you want to deal with this is to reduce appetite because if you do this the right way and your insulin resistance goes down and you get into fat burning your body is still eating it's just eating fat off the body instead of the dietary fat and you just need to teach it that so if it's burning body fat you're not starving and now you're not in a starvation that's going to shut down your metabolism or create any harm and the most powerful the most potent way that you could possibly burn body fat belly fat extremely fast is fasting because we talked about carbs well when you're fasting you're eating zero carbs there are no dietary carbs and you're also not eating any dietary fat right so the only way that the body can generate energy at this point is to burn the body fat at the same time fasting is the most powerful way to reduce insulin and insulin resistance and reverse metabolic disease and it's one of the most powerful ways to increase growth hormone human growth hormone which is a fat burning hormone and once you get into fat burning you can monitor that you can measure your level of ketones to see how effective this is for you and then some additional tools that we talked about if you do the fasting or intermittent fasting which we'll talk about in a second and then you combine that with a ketogenic with a low carb high fat diet and maybe even add in some exercise all at the same time now you can drive your body to higher levels of ketones if you only did a low carb diet then you might be at 0. 8 to 1. 5 or something for most people if you add fasting and exercise you could get that into much much higher levels of ketones like four five six or seven and you get much faster burning of body fat but also much faster reversal of insulin resistance and even some chronic disease conditions unfortunately as great as fasting is it has a limitation there comes a time where you just have to eat again and that's where we want to start looking and understanding the balance with all of this so i would suggest first of all that you cut back on the carbs to the point where you become fat adapted if you don't provide the carbohydrates for fuel your body has to start learning has to rewire to use fat again and then you start playing with something called intermittent fasting where you get a lot of the benefits but it's more time restricted you eat certain periods and you fast certain periods instead of eating all the time so first thing you would do is you have breakfast later and this isn't the only way to do it it's just an example that works well for a lot of people so whatever your time for breakfast is you start moving it later whatever time your dinner is you start moving it earlier and you do this gradually and you find it so much easier than you really thought it would be until you can skip breakfast altogether because it kind of coincides with lunch and then you keep moving this until you're eating in a four five six hour time window and the rest of the time you're fasting but you'd be amazed how easy this is your body is so well equipped it knows exactly how to do this and if you give it some time and you're consistent you will find that eventually you will probably want to skip lunch and then you're at what's called OMAD one meal a day and it all depends on your physiology on your genetics how fast you want to get things done some people get really fast results with two meals a day some people say hey that's not fast enough or my body is really stubborn and they want to go to one meal a day and once you're used to that you can also play around with a few longer fasts and this is not something you do all the time but you can go 48 hours or 72 hours to master health, by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life saving video.
