when people read your first book and they read about all these incredible foods that they can bring into their diet to help them fight disease reduce the risk of them getting sick in the future you were getting communication after communication saying yeah but I'm eating all those foods but I'm losing weight and it's great I wasn't planning to but I feel good now that I've lost this excess weight that I couldn't lose for years and I think there's something really powerful about that they weren't trying to but by focusing on the right foods and of
course in your first book they're all Whole Foods they're all foods that come from nature foods that have been consumed by cultures for hundreds if not thousands of years that's fascinating to me how does that and what you just said about chilies and how they and other foods can impact Brown fats how does that fit in with the calorie model because let's say for example Dr Lee those people writing into you let's say they were having lots of ultra processed foods initially and they then moved to a lot of the Whole Foods you recommend well
Whole Foods tend to keep us Fuller quicker right it's very hard to overeat Whole Foods and I'm sure some of the benefit was that they were also naturally getting full earlier so not overeating but some of the studies that you've referenced in your new book where they've controlled calories you know you've been very clear with how you write up these studies and you said they were all calorie controlled they were all doing this so that we can actually draw good conclusions at the end it suggests that for the same amount of calories consumed by changing
the nature of those calories we can have a very profound impact on weight loss is that fair is that have I interpreted what you said in your book correctly do you agree with that yeah no absolutely that's exactly the point is that um you know they talk about empty calories and the quality of your food and whether something's nutrient dense look um I try not to overuse the word calorie in my book because I think there's so much um Association in the public with calories calories in calories out counting calories that it's actually almost lost
its true meaning and so I try to um equate the idea of calories with fuel and again I want to come back to how you can use your body to actually naturally burn calories burn fuel Okay so uh you know there's this current practice that's viewed as a fad called intermittent fasting and I write about this in my book as well I don't call it a fad I don't call it a you know it's not a it's not a new religious practice look I'm interested in fasting is one of the most natural things that we
do in our lives as as humans and the reason is and we're sleeping we're not eating we're not eating that happens to be called fasting and there's a key to the metabolism here that is really really important to understand and that is this when we're awake and we're eating food remember I told you put you put food in your body your insulin goes up with a different neck and draws energy into our body our metabolism is hardwired so that when we're actually eating its focus is really on storing energy including loading up fat all right
when we're awake and eating we're storing energy we're not burning it all right now of course if you're walking around you're exercising you're going to be burning it as well but you're usually not exercising while you're eating right it's sort of like your waking hours all right so um you're then you'd be burning down some of that fuel one but our metabolism is is geared to storing not burning when we're sleeping or insulin level and not eating our insulin levels go down when Islam boils down our metabolism shifts scarce and it says oh you know
what we're not eating anymore we're not we're not getting fuel in let's focus now on burning calories so in point of fact it can draw energy from fuel from the fat stored fat and burn them down so in fact when we're sleeping and we're not eating our metabolism is naturally shifting into fuel burning fat burning mode so that's like at a baseline how we actually work now when we're sleeping when we get up in the morning okay and of course the quality of sleep we want to get really good quality REM sleep that actually works
a lot better and we want to sleep as much as we can eight hours being sort of still very much that kind of General good number uh seven to eight hours of good quality sleeping very very important for your metabolism as well as your immunity and so many other uh aspects but here's where some of the patterns can actually make a big difference in addition to the food that we actually choose for example the more time we give our metabolism to burn down energy and fat burning mode the better off we are okay the more
more we are burning fuel so here's a common thing um if you don't get so get eight hours of sleep let's say that you go to bed at 11 you get up at seven in the morning and say you know I'm just using these numbers as an example I'm going to say it over to sleep now when you eat dinner this is what I do when I eat dinner the night before let's say you know seven o'clock and I put my dishes away at eight o'clock I'm done eating put my dishes away now in the
past and I know a lot of people do this I might have earlier in my life gone to snack in the evening or maybe even gotten a bedtime snack before I go to bed I'm gonna eat one more thing all right I don't do that anymore I do that what I do now is when I put my dishes away whatever time it is let's say I eat I said I eat dinner at seven I said for me on seven I stopped eating at eight when I put my dishes away I don't eat anything after that
I'm done now from 8 to 11 I've gained three extra hours where my metabolism can tap into and burn my fuel down that three extra hours makes a difference because now I'm going to add it to the eight hours of sleep I'm gonna get now I've got 11 hours of fat burning fuel burning time now when I get up in the morning I don't do what my mother told me to do when I was a kid right our mom's always says hurry up get up eat breakfast get on the school bus and get to school
all right and now when I get up I I what I do is I take my time getting ready take a shower I get dressed I might go for a walk I might read a book I might check my emails I'll do something I don't eat breakfast right away out of reflex like we were taught to do conditioned to do but I usually wait for an hour before I sit down to eat something now I've gained an extra hour for my metabolism to burn it do the math three hours after dishes away to bedtime eight
hours of bedtime and one extra hour um in the morning that's 12 hours that's half the day that I've now taken 12 hours over 24 that I've allowed my body to be my metabolism to be in fuel burning calorie consuming mode now it's true we may actually have calories that have a fuel that's accumulated from yesterday from the day before from last weekend from the holidays we've got more and more to do it and it's true we do need to be physically active in fact in my in my book that I write you can work
out you can get a trainer but yeah for 30 minutes will actually be useful in fact even fidgeting you know that shaky the leg tap tap tap tap tap even that burns calories as well so before even talking about what foods we should eat and the volume that we should actually eat the timing it's not just only what we eat but how we eat and when we eat can actually make a difference as well that's actually quite important it's a Nuance within you know showing a list of 150 Great foods to eat that can turn
on your your fat burning and increase your metabolism and heal your metabolism how how and when we eat actually can be also very very important yeah thank you for outlining that I completely agree 12 hours in every 24 hour period without Foods I have seen is achievable for most of my patients it really is very very achievable and for those people who are unable to it's probably because their metabolism is maybe not broken but but not functioning as well as it could do and you know we need to make some improvements so that they can
go for 12 hours of that food so I think that's a very safe and consistent recommendation that pretty much all of us would benefit from there's also studies circadian biology studies Dr Lee showing people having the same amount of foods in the day but at different times there was one study I think in Spain when they front loaded the food so you'd have most of your food quantity in the first half of the day I think by 3 P.M they'd had most of their food in a very light dinner and when they did it the
other way when they had a heavy dinner same Foods there was a significant change in body fat composition for the better when people front loaded again it's highly individual you know everyone's going to react slightly differently we've got to figure out what works for us but I think this Nuance that you speak to in the new book I think so important because it's not just as simple as you know looking at the calorie counter on the food that you're taking in yeah I had I will acknowledge that for some people that seems to work fine
I've never found it helpful in practice with patients but I'm I'm not gonna you know write something off that let's say some personal trainers have found useful with their clients right I understand there's different ways to meet your goal of losing excess fats but I think this idea that certain foods can certainly stack the odds more in your favor I think is a very powerful argument for people to take and a lot of these foods are frankly delicious what is some of your favorite foods to talk about in a relationship you mentioned chilies I get
asked this question all the time Dr Lee what diet do you are you on and I say I'm not on a diet they said well then what do you eat and I actually say you know it's very different I I eat different things every day so I can't give you the one food that I eat all the time that's my secret but I will tell you my secret which is no longer a secret because I read about my book is there's a is there's a way a style I I call it Mediterranean eating Mediterranean is
I naturally gravitate because I've lived in a Mediterranean I've also have a nation background these are two foods that I actually really resonate with I love the taste and by the way they happen to come from two of the healthiest culinary traditions of the world right Mediterranean and Asian at least traditional cultures have been always very very health healthy and healthy ingredients healthy combinations and so to me there's like you can't go wrong by choosing either Mediterranean or Asian genre Foods this isn't necessarily Fusion by the way it's a it's a spectrum yeah and I
I you know that's my answer in present day I will tell you what's really awesome about Med the idea of mediteration um Foods eating is that it's been done thousands of years ago because back in the day of the Silk Road which was the greatest human trading route in history uh it connected China uh Asia with Europe and the Mediterranean specifically people on Camelback were trading goods and selling silk and many other Goods but they were sharing their ingredients and sharing their recipes and sharing food together and really this is this blending in a moment
galmatian dating Back 2 000 years of of culinary Heritage that tastes really great so let me just take you through the grocery store quickly of some of the things that catch my eye I go into the grocery store and approach first thing I go to the produce section I love Fresh Foods I look at Tomatoes okay Tomatoes originally from Latin America but they've been they're now popular not only in a Mediterranean but also even in in Asia in China they cook with tomato salad they grow them I will look at tomatoes during the summer time
avocados I love avocados a great source of dietary fiber surprisingly because they don't taste very fibrousy and they've got Avo cotton B A substance that actually um fights uh white fat and lights up Brown fat tomatoes have lycopene by the way lycopene is a fat soluble substance it actually dissolves it fights it lights up brown fat it fights harmful body fat the really cool thing about lycopene and tomatoes and this has been studied in humans when you eat lycopene lycopene containing foods like tomatoes or watermelon or guava or papaya actually the lycopene gets absorbed in
our bloodstream and you know where it goes it immediately goes to the fat in our body first is our belly fat then in our thighs then in our butt it's in in there it's kind of like a it's sort of like a fat fighting bomb that gets implanted into your fat to fight fat right where it needs to be fought the Battle needs to be fine which is pretty cool um I look at greens I like leafy greens Brassica uh you know what people think about broccoli but I I write about broccolini guyland bok choy
baby bok choy again these are vegetables you saute with a little garlic and extra virgin olive oil um you know you blanch it you can stir fry it add a little oyster sauce or soy sauce man you can make amazing tasty dishes with it you can make a stew out of it you can make a smoothie out of it you can make a soup out of it so many delicious ways of of looking for Chili Peppers I actually like to cook with chili peppers um and it's a whole gamut hundreds of Chili Peppers out there
you can buy in the market you have to find the ones that actually suit your tolerability and your your taste buds to be good mushrooms love mushrooms maitaki mushrooms on the grill roasted um what simple white button mushrooms porcini mushrooms morels enoki mushrooms put them into some miso soup with soy edamame in the market these are some of the fat finding ingredients I'm putting them in the context of how I would love to see them on my plate or on a menu of what I would actually order all very reasonable middle aisle I talk about
studies with canned beans that can actually shrink your waistline by fighting visceral fat um by eating them lentils other legumes dried chili peppers again dried mushrooms in the winter time and you find it hard to find really fresh A diversity of fresh mushrooms get the dried ones amazing tomato paste tomato powder canned tomatoes all have lycopene in them there's olive oils extra virgin oils look for the high polyphenol type with mono varietals I look for picuel from Spain more Iola from Italy koronecki from Greece I look for those mono varietals you can read it right
in the bottle if you look for those barley buckwheat soba noodles these are just some of the examples of the foods the ingredients that are found in either the Mediterranean or Asian kind of genres that are absolutely delicious and it's a small piece of what I write about that are delicious and good for you you yeah there's there's a section in the book which is beautiful where you put the 10 principles for eating mediteration I won't go through them all you've covered a couple of them skip a meal or two go for fresh respect tradition
I really like that section that you wrote about and you ended it with something that I think speaks to what you what you just said take advantage of the wisdom of centuries when it comes to healthy foods newer inventions are rarely better if you enjoyed that short clip I think you are really going to enjoy the full conversation which you can check out here thank you [Music]
