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Transcript:

Episode 2: Diet Restriction and Weight Loss

Dr. Pompa:

All right, Warren.

Warren:

Yeah, I’m here. Welcome, everybody, Health Hunters, Episode 2. This is going to be a powerful episode. We just talked about this off camera, Dr. Pompa, and off radio because we have a video log going right now, both of us. Last week, if you go back and watch Episode 1, we went over Health Hunters, “Health and Gatherer Truths, Part 1.” We’re going to do a three- or even four-part series. Let’s see how much we get through on this today.

We talked about introduction to how exercise and calories actually lie to you, and we brought up that Scientific America study where no matter how much you exercise, your caloric burn is about the same. It’s set in your metabolism as a human. Go back and watch that show, but health—for everybody on this show, we’re going to do Hunter-Gatherer Truth Part 2, and we’re going to go after how diet restriction is a paradox for weight loss. We have some really great science to share with you on that. Dr. Pompa, let’s get into this Health Hunters, Episode 2 with the topic of diet restriction for weight loss.

Dr. Pompa:

Look, if we looked at the government’s advice and all of our protective bodies, no doubt, we are going to find 180-degree solution or 180-degree thought, if you will, because this is the message: Eat less; exercise more. That message communicates we’re gluttons, and we’re stinking lazy, doesn’t it? I guess the criticism there, as personal as that is, we’re lazy, and we should—and frankly, we’re gluttons, it’s okay if it were true. Unfortunately, according to studies—this is not my opinion, Warren—it couldn’t be further from the truth, 180-degree solution. Just so you all remember what that means, if you take what the media and all of our protective government bodies, usually the truth lies 180 degrees opposite of what they’re telling us.

Warren:

Let’s define that for the team. We do have our language here. This is Health Hunters Radio, so we’re seeking, we’re hunting truths. We want to bring them to you in the health and wellness. We’ll get into some spiritual and mindset stuff as this show grows. When we find a truth, it usually lies 180 degree the opposite, so part of our language pattern moving forward, just for our Health Hunters followers, we’re going to bring up these 180-degree concepts, which is a very powerful concept.

We brought up a 180 truth. As Health Hunters, we find these 180 truths. We take the arrow that’s been shot at us, and we turn it around, and we point it to them, and say uh-uh, the science doesn’t show that. We turn the dial back around 180 degrees to bring you the truth of what we’re finding in our Health Hunter episodes. That’s a great definition.

Dr. Pompa:

We like to call them 180-degree solutions because people are looking for solutions. The concept is your solution is typically 180 degrees opposite of what you’ve been told in the media, whether it’s magazine articles, whether it’s the news stations, or whether you go on the—for example, diabetics, if they go to The Diabetes Foundation diet, et cetera, it’s remarkable the recommendations they’re making, and it is 180 degrees opposite of what the science really shows.

When people ask that, why. It’s often—the answer’s simple. The government is a big ship, and it takes a while to turn it. Things get in government, things get in the media, and it just doesn’t turn very quickly, if at all, if ever. That’s why we’re still stuck with a paradigm that’s incorrect for years, whether it’s low fat, low calories. That’s what we’re talking about.

Warren:

It supports the economy, the margarine, the sugar, and low fat. Economy is built around it. All the media, all the other radio shows, a lot of the things you’re going to find online are going to contradict this. In media, they’ll release things so that we’re manipulated by it. That’s true. We’re airing on GCN network, and that’s what they’re about. They’re a counterculture bringing these truths. That’s why we love this network, and we support, and they support us.

Just the other day, Dan—I’ll tell you this story, and we’ll launch into this amazing research that we talked about earlier. I went around to everybody in my community and asked them a question about calories in, calories out, about calorie restriction, exercise, and they all—every single person here—and this is a great area. These people are upper class, upper middle class. They do very well. They’re influencers. They go to church. They’re a good group of loving people, but they said the same thing that we discussed last week when we asked—told that guy, “How much exercise isn’t going to change your calorie burn.” He’s like, “I see that you have the science there, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

The same thing happens when I share them with this. This calorie restriction, it just doesn’t make sense to them. What does the science say so that we can set these health hunters free into a new way in breaking down this paradox of calorie restriction for weight loss [00:06:11].

Dr. Pompa:

I find a lot of these 180-degree concepts, they’re just kind of intuitively—they kind of make sense to people. For example, and we’re going to talk about this on a future show because another 180-degree concept is about low fat, it seems very logical to people that fat would make you fat. It just does. It catches on, and it never comes back.

Warren:

Makes sense, so much.

Dr. Pompa:

Right. Calories, the same way. I think even with this, it gets a little deeper because people go okay, calories, I’m eating too much. We’re told to eat less, so they cut back, and it works, and they lose some weight. Now, we’re going to get into why that happens but why it doesn’t work long-term. Therefore, because there’s a short-term success, then surely the philosophy is right. “I must have just given in. I broke. It was me.” It becomes about your fault, and we blame ourselves because it worked. “I lost 8, 10 pounds, but I just wasn’t strong enough to continue.”

Continue to listen to this show because you’re going to find out why it’s not your fault, why you broke the diet, why you stopped losing weight. You’re going to get the answer to this because it really is a hormonal answer. Weight loss is more about hormones even than what you eat, and weight loss is absolutely a cellular issue. You’re going to get that answer during this show.

Warren:

The other cool thing is a lot of our listeners have done calorie restriction. They have lost weight. Again, you’re saying this, and I’m kind of repeating what you said. Then they gain the weight back, and they think it’s their fault. There’s a mindset, guys, health hunters that are looking. This is like, it still doesn’t make sense because every single I do that calorie restriction over the past—if I get my meals in the mail, or if it do XYZ program that has a calorie restriction thing, portion control, all this stuff, I do lose 10 to 12 pounds. Every single time I do it, it does work, Dr. Pompa and Warren, so really, what is the truth here? How can you set my mind free because I’m going back—they go back to that habit.

It’s so in their culture. It’s ingrained in what they believe almost at the cellular level, if you will, especially when it speaks to hormones. They just can’t break that—almost becomes a bad habit, this calorie restriction. Let’s dive into some really cool culture codes. I know that we’re discussing the show and the study with The Biggest Loser. Why don’t we launch into that because I think that’ll help bring perspective to our listeners today.

Dr. Pompa:

I want to start that. Yeah. I think it’s a great place to start because I think everyone listening has watched The Biggest Loser—well, maybe not watched it. At least you heard of it, right? Look, when we look at the stats—someone I respect—let me read this from—

Warren:

We’re not attacking the show. It’s a fun show, but there’s things to learn here.

Dr. Pompa:

It’s a fun show, but let’s—there was actually a study done on The Biggest Loser contestants. When you look at the 30 weeks of filming, which they did, the average weight drop was 127 pounds.

Warren:

Wow! That sounds incredible.

Dr. Pompa:

That’s a success, man. Yeah, exactly.

Warren:

Massive success.

Dr. Pompa:

Body fat on average dropped from 49% to 28%. That’s a huge drop of body fat. By the way, almost all of that weight loss was from fat, so they weren’t losing muscle. People are going to say, well, how much of that weight loss was muscle? According to this study, not a lot. This sounds amazing, but when we come back, you’re going to hear why it may not been as amazing as those amazing results that I just read you. Wait until we come back, and you’re going to get the answer.

Warren:

All right. Welcome back. Let’s head back down this Biggest Loser path that we were heading on, Dr. Pompa, and let’s bring them right back around to the truth here.

Dr. Pompa:

Look, when I said these amazing results, 127 pound decrease on average according to this study, hey, it was fat loss, right, so 49% to 28% fat loss.

Warren:

Right.

Dr. Pompa:

Man, those are really some good statistics. In the study, though, they followed 14 of the contestants. They did that six years after. Six years after the miraculous weight loss, 13—

Warren:

Did you ask them why it wasn’t 15?

Dr. Pompa:

I have no idea. Probably one dropped. It was probably sending that, and then one said, I don’t want to do it.

Warren:

“I don’t want to be—I don’t want anyone to know.” Maybe that was why.

Dr. Pompa:

If I was doing this study, I would have said, okay, let’s just get 15 of these people. How did it end up 14? Who knows? Anyways, the bottom line was 13 out of the 14 contestants that they studied had regained their weight loss. Basically, that’s a 93% failure, which by the way—and people are going to ask well, why is that? I’ll give you the really simple answer.

What happens is they basically decrease their caloric intake by 70% from baseline when they looked at it. That means that they were giving these people 1200 to 1500 calories a day. By the way, vigorous, vigorous physical exertion six days a week for hours. You watch the show. You know what I’m saying. It’s literally hours. They’re basically doing exactly what we’re saying. They’re cutting their calories, 1200 to 1500 calories per day, and they’re exercising them to death. Of course, what happens is just what I said. The weight starts coming off, so it looks like success.

The problem is this: When you restrict calories, the body thinks it’s starving for a length of time. The body thinks it’s starving, and the metabolism gets lower, and lower, and lower, and lower, and lower, and then it takes more—

Warren:

There’s a hormone shift happening—going on.

Dr. Pompa:

No doubt, the hormone shift. The body wants to survive; therefore, to survive, because it doesn’t want to eat itself, basically, it will continue to lower the metabolism. Now, all of a sudden, 1500 calories a day is not working. Then you’ll hear the coach saying, “We’re going to lower your calories more.” Then they lower them to 1200, then 1,000. Many of these contestants get down to 500, 800 calories a day, and it’s simply not maintainable. The metabolism is getting lower and lower.

What happens? The moment they don’t have this person hanging over their head and telling them to exercise, exercise. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. What happens is they go back to—

Warren:

It’s one of those great coaches.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah. They go back to a normal life with a metabolism that literally the moment they go above 800 calories to 1,000, now the weight gain starts. Now to 1,500. Now they’re not exercising three hours a day. They’re living life. Now they’re not exercising three hours a day, and guess what? Now, boom. The weight just keeps coming on. Again, 13 out of the 14 contestants regained their weight. It is a metabolism shift, and we’ll talk more about that in a second. That’s The Biggest Loser.

If we look at one of the earlier studies, one of the earliest studies done on caloric restriction—it was all the way back in 1959. The study basically showed very similar statistic. It was a 98% failure. Only 2% of the dieters using caloric restriction were able to maintain the 22-pound weight loss that they gained for the two years. Very similar. Now a more recent study. You’re saying okay, that was 1959. 2015, this one was done out of the United Kingdom.

Warren:

We’re going to have all these studies down below.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah, we’ll put them on. Basically, .8% in women—caloric restriction alone, .8% of the women—.4% of men were able to achieve weight loss, meaning lasting weight loss more than two years. This was a 99.2% failure rate. We have a 98% failure rate. We have a 99.2% failure rate. If you just look at the little 15 people on The Biggest Loser—

Warren:

Fourteen.

Dr. Pompa:

Right, 14 people. That was a 93% failure rate.

Warren:

I knew I’d get you, Dr. Pompa, if I dropped that 15 in there, so [00:14:37]

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah, you pulled me right in. Something happened to that one. The point is this: These are studies. We’re looking at a failure rate. Now, let me give you the best study that ever portrayed caloric restriction, and then we can talk more. The very best study ever done on caloric restriction, they looked at—this was The Women’s Health Institute, so this was a huge randomized controlled trial, 50,000 women over seven and a half years. That’s a pretty good study, I would say.

Warren:

That’s better than 14 or 15.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah, that’s better than 14. I would assume that this result would give us a more clear result, for sure. In the study, they did a few things here. Let me talk about it. They absolutely lowered their caloric content by almost 15%, so dropped calories by 15%. They exercised them more. They increased exercise by 14%, so all these things, down calories, up exercise. They reduced their fat intake, so they developed—

Warren:

Excellent.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah. Oh, but their carbohydrates did go up, of course, because they’re reducing fat. They’re doing all these things. That actually rose up, not by a lot. If I dug in, I could actually see exactly what that was. Their fat calories was reduced to 38 down to 29, so fat dropped that bit. You can read it in the study. The bottom line is this: I don’t want to bore you with the details.

The bottom line was the final results shocked everyone because they compared this to the control group who basically kept their diet the same, and they weren’t really exercising. Surely this group that they dropped the calories, lowered their fat, they did all these wonderful things was going to lose the weight. What happened was weight loss between the two groups was not even a two-pound difference. Here’s the worst part:

You would say well, it’s still two pounds. The problem is the caloric restriction and exercise group actually gained weight size. They went from, on average, 35 to 35 ½. They gained a half inch around their waist eating less and exercising more. That’s 50,000 women over seven and a half years. How did that work out? It didn’t work out at all.

Warren:

You brought up two Health Hunter truths here. One, in the short term, in that first three to four weeks, you are going to see a weight loss. When you do a long-term use of this, it’s not going to work. It works for that one-time shot, changes your hormones, lowers your metabolism. It’s in starvation mode. It’s like you’re in the—once again, we’re a hunter/gatherer society. We’re not eating foods, so your body’s hormonally saying we’re not getting food right now, but as soon as we get food, your body’s going to say let’s pack on the fat. Let’s store this stuff because we got to—we’re scared. We might not survive.

If you do this diet in the short term, and many do this—we’re not going to—it’s not good for you, but if you do need to lose ten pounds, there’s better ways that you’ll learn on this show. When you go to HealthHuntersRadio.com, you’ll be able to get some of those other answers and other solutions, and we’re going to look at those at the end of this show. What does hunter-gatherer society do? How do they stay lean, fit, energetic? These long-term things do not work when you use calorie restriction. You might be able to do it once or get away with it once, but if you keep doing it over and over again, you’re just messing up your hormones. We’ve had so many people come to us that have destroyed their hormones and can’t lose weight.

I remember one of our friends, Dr. Pompa, coming to us in tears, emotionally scarred. She’s like, “I did the ACG diet because I wanted to look this way for my sister’s wedding, and now I’m all messed up. I have anxiety. I have all these problems. I’m as big as I’ve ever been. Dr. Pompa, can you help me?” That view if you’re a health hunter—and we’re going to hear from our sponsors right now. When we come back, we’re going to start bringing you some of the real solutions and even how we helped this gal get her life back.

Warren:

All right, welcome back. These truths lie 180 degrees opposite of what you’re going to hear on other radio shows. We want to bring you the real deal. I know if you’re listening to this, and your friend sent this to you—listen to this radio show on calorie restriction. You’ve been doing this, Sally, and that’s why. Warren is telling about his crayon, and he’s taking notes. That’s what I’m doing right now even from Dr. Pompa. I have my crayon here, and you’re gathering all these notes, and you’re taking all this, and you’re going to send it to your friend. They’re going to be like, there’s no way because this works for me.

As we discuss as we move through this, it may work once or twice, but you’re literally hurting your body and throwing it off how it was designed to be. We keep coming back to that. This stuff makes sense, Dr. Pompa, when we look at it to us. When you walk around and you talk to the community, the media is polluting them with lies that actually keep those businesses running. God bless them. That’s what they’re trying to do.

When they make that Pringle or potato chip, I would say—I never said Pringle. When they make that potato chip that’s out there that you can’t just put down, that’s not on accident. That’s called excitotoxins. That’s called things that make you addicted, and that’s how they determine what their natural flavors are. They want to addict you to food. They want you to be addicted to carbohydrates. That’s why we’re doing this show. We’re going to give truths, and you’ll change it as you change the economy through your choices. We’re trying to give you those solutions. Dr. Pompa, where can we go from here? We’re starting to lay this out. It doesn’t work. What does work so that these health hunters can really dial in their next diet or their next lifestyle shift?

Dr. Pompa:

Let me bring a little more logic to it, too. One of the mistakes that—

Warren:

I like logic.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah. I want people to understand, and then we can understand the solution better. When we look at the mistake that they’re making, they’re making that all calories are the same, meaning that all carbohydrates are created equal. It’s not true. If we just restrict calories, what are we actually eating? Again, all carbohydrates are not created equal. Fats are not created equal. That’s an assumption that’s being made. People are reducing their caloric intakes, but oftentimes their insulin levels are remaining up. Insulin plays a big role. It’s a fat-storing hormone. When insulin is up, your body’s storing fat.

What happens is that we restrict our calories, and when we’re restricting our calories—look, the bottom line is we store energy either as stored sugar and glycogen that’s stored in our liver or muscles, or we store it as fat. We have to access one or the other. When we’re starving ourselves down, our glycogen is low, but the problem is if our insulin remains high, now all of a sudden, we store hungry. Our metabolism is slowing down so our body doesn’t die. These things are basically setting us up for—here’s the problem.

Your hunger starts to increase, so therefore it’s not your fault, meaning that your body is saying feed me. It’s giving you a hunger you can’t resist. Hormonal shifts take place. It’s not your fault. Your body’s responding out of a survival mechanism. Basically, the bottom line is you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail because your body’s that intelligent. It’s not like you just have bad discipline. It’s not the case. It’s a hormonal shift that occurs. Your metabolism drops. That’s why your weight loss stops. That’s not your fault, either, and your hunger goes up. None of it’s your fault. It’s hormonal adaptation.

The question remains, what do we do? I’m going to give you a simple line that I have actually coined. Don’t eat less; eat less often. Now, I’m not going to give you exactly what that means. This is a future show. If we eat until full, we always remind our body that it’s not starving. That’s magic, and we’ve filled that glycogen tank up. When we starve, and just kind of push a meal away, and eat less portions, and eat more often, and less, basically our body always is still under the starvation hormonal mode. It’s adapting to starvation. Don’t eat less. We’ve proven to you that that doesn’t work. The answer lies in eating less often. Therefore maybe, just maybe, the five, six meals a day thing that we’ve been taught is a lie.

Now, on average—and I know that most of you say, I don’t eat that much, but when they looked at America, it’s on average that the average American eats at least six meals a day. I know most of you listening are saying that’s not you, but it is. The hunk of cheese that you ate passing through the counter or the handful of nuts—

Warren:

The healthy nuts.

Dr. Pompa:

Absolutely. The little bar that you ate on the way to work or sitting at your desk, that is a meal because every time you eat, even if it’s healthy—I don’t care if it’s a salad—you’re raising insulin, and you’re stopping your body from burning its fat for energy. The key is doing that less. One of the first things—Warren, you’ve heard me educate my doctors on this. One of the first things we have to do with the average person is getting them to stop eating snacks and just simply go to a true three meals a day.

Now, we go beyond that into what—even we eat less than that. However, just by stopping all food—that means the kombucha between meals, the drink, if it has any calories et cetera, stop eating between meals completely. That’s step number one. Now again, it’s going to take time, but it will start to shift your hormones to actually starting to use your own body fat for energy as opposed to every meal you’re eating.

Warren:

Look, we haven’t adapted yet from our hunter-gatherer past. We still have those same genetics. We might have triggered some bad genes in the process and created some snips with toxins and everything like that, but if you look at a hunter-gatherer society—and this is part two—when they were out gathering for the day and hunting for the day, they weren’t eating nuts and seeds.

They would grab, if anything because they’re on the move chasing the prey, if anything, they would grab herbs. We’re going to talk about that next week. They didn’t eat throughout the day. They typically ate one meal a day, if that, and some days they didn’t eat at all. Those little snacks really aren’t set up inside of our—how we were designed, right, Dr. Pompa?

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah. The bottom line is no matter what you eat, it spikes an insulin spike, and then it stops your body—it starts your body into storing the energy, not using your stored energy. Simple as that. When we go with eating less often, not eating less, when we go with eating less often, it maintains our metabolism, reminds our body it’s not starving because when we do eat, we eat until full. The body thinks we’re good. We want to not do these little meals because it raises insulin. Our body stops burning its own fat for energy.

The bottom line is this: If you give your body time to burn its own fuel sources, that’s the key. I say this, as well. If you want to live—we have many people who are interested in not just living longer, but living healthy. The key is this: If you want to anti-age literally on the outside and the inside, the key is yes, eating not just less. Eating less often is the key to doing it. Here’s the thing: The reason why is because it really controls your insulin and glucose. When your body’s feeding from its own body fat, you have perfect—no insulin spikes, no glucose spikes. That is the key to down-regulating inflammation, aging slow, no oxidative stress. It’s magic.

Now, I have to say this because I opened up that door. When we look at studies—when they look at animal studies, the key to truly life extension and anti-aging is eating less, which becomes confusing. However, again, it’s not maintainable long-term. When we look at ancient cultures, they do eat less at the end of a day—so do I—than the average person. However, I do it by eating less often because that keeps your metabolism firing as opposed to just trying to eat less by pushing food away. No ancient culture does that.

Man, when they eat in those African tribes, they eat. It’s a feast just like the Romans, the Greeks. They would eat. They would eat for two-, three-hour periods. It was a big deal. Trust me, they at until full. Their body knew there was plenty, and therefore it felt efficient to keep burning its fat. That’s key. You’re going to learn that in something that I call diet variation, feast/famine cycles. If we remind the body it’s okay. We have plenty, and that’s by eating that big meal, then the body will continue to burn fat. The moment it thinks that there’s not a lot coming, then it would stop. It slows down fat metabolism. Warren, I’m going to give our listeners a quick example.

If you live in the middle of the mountains, and fire is your only heat source, and it’s a harsh winter, you can’t even get out to get more wood, or everything’s buried. You can’t get more wood. It’s getting colder. Things look bad. You’re going to burn less fires. You’re going to start saying, I don’t want to use my wood, and you start becoming very efficient with it. This is what your body does. Warren, if you called me up and said, “I’ve got a thing of wood for you,” I’m going to start burning more wood. We’ll talk more about this when we come back.

Warren:

You’ve been giving us a lot of studies, Dr. Pompa, and I want to remind our listeners as we’re coming back around here from our sponsor break, they can go to HealthHuntersRadio.com and watch this episode, too, and down below, a lot of the studies that we’re talking about are down there. They can forward that page on to your friends with these unbelievable 180-degree truths on Health Hunters Radio.

You’re talking about burning fire, Dr. Pompa. I like fire. I remember a guy one time, I was looking at him. He was ripped. It was an AC/DC concert. This was the funniest thing. He looked at me and my buddy, Ryan because we were working in a gym. It was the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. He’s like, “You’re looking at me like I’m on fire or something.” The dude looked like the ultimate warrior. He had the bands. Of course I’m going to look at you. He was a hunter-gatherer. He was ripped. I wonder if he was eating a tribal-type diet. We’ll have to go ask him. He would beat me up, though. He didn’t like me looking.

Dr. Pompa:

I don’t know. I think he was flattered. Anyways, I think when we look at that example, though, you’re in the woods—I’m in the woods, and I’m conserving my fuel. Why? I see it running out, and that’s what the body’s doing. It thinks that the wood is dropping, and the fuel is getting less and less, so we start using less and less. The body does that with its fat stores. As my fat—the energy coming in decreases, I can’t get more wood, I’m thinking, so I’d better start using less. I should start burning less. The body’s metabolism is the analogy of you burning less wood. Now, Warren, somehow you show up, and you say, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I’ve got wood in my truck, and you dump all this new wood for me.

Warren:

Lots of wood.

Dr. Pompa:

That’s the big meal, right? That’s the big meal that I get. Oh, my gosh. What do I do? I start burning more wood. I fire up my metabolism. My house is hot again. Why? I realize, oh, I had more, or I find some wood that I didn’t realize I had, and now I start burning more fat. The big meal, eating until full, is key to keeping our metabolisms firing. The moment we start thinking we don’t have as much wood in the fire—or wood to burn, I should say, then we start conserving. The body’s smart. It does just that.

The bottom line is don’t eat less; eat less often. We’re going to give you more of these strategies and how we do that. We’re only just emulating what hunting-gathering groups—basically very, very successful tribes health-wise have done.

Warren:

Longevity, energy, they got it all.

Dr. Pompa:

American Indians—

Warren:

No disease, yeah. It’s nuts.

Dr. Pompa:

Absolutely.

Warren:

The poor people—

Dr. Pompa:

We’ll give it about—go ahead.

Warren:

I was going to say that I feel so bad because they truly are addicted. It’s almost like their hormones are controlling them. I don’t know how else to say it. When a dog’s in heat, they’re going to go do what their hormones are telling them to do. That’s a strong analogy. When you’re doing these little snacks, and insulin, and glucose, and your cortisol is off, and you get the—you’re hangry. A lot of you can be hangry, but that’s your body just telling you you need to eat to survive. You’ve trained it to be that way. You’ve trained your body in a way it wasn’t designed, and it’s adapting well. It’s a brilliant body.

What you’re saying, Dr. Pompa, is you can retrain your body to no longer think that it’s starving and dying, and actually feeding it the way that it was designed to do, to have these big meals once a day. The other important part is what type of fuel are you putting on that fire? Are you putting fast-grown pine that flashes up in a second, or are you putting on that coal that burns slowly like fat would when you eat those calories? The type of calories that you’re consuming is really important, as well. You’re going to break that addiction. We know that cocaine will light up your brain and stimulate your brain, and that’s why you get addicted to it. It’s the same thing sugar does. It lights you up [00:32:28].

Dr. Pompa:

The key is really controlling insulin, which is a hormone. There’s other hormones, but the—when we eat a lot of carbohydrates, which even when they do launch studies in this country, by the way—I’ve read so many studies where they consider 150 to 180 calories—I’m sorry—150 to 180 grams of carbohydrates a day a low-carbohydrate diet. It’s hard for me, even when I’m trying to increase my carbohydrates. Again, there’s a reason why I do that oftentimes. The point is it’s hard for me. What they call low-carbohydrate diets in some of these studies is ridiculously, to me, high.

My point is this: In America, we eat such high-carbohydrate diets that even when we’re calling it a low-carbohydrate diet, to me, it’s not low at all. The point is this, as well, is that we raise insulin, and insulin absolutely will keep us in this fat-storing mode, and shut off fat burning. When we caloric restrict, we burn our stored glucose down, our glycogen. When it gets lowered and it never gets replenished, our body goes into the starvation mode. That’s where the big meal replenishes glycogen stores. Then the body will start to say I can burn fat.

This is all a hormonal thing. I call it hormone optimization. If we optimize our hormones, we’ll become efficient fat burners. There’s so much to learn here we’re not going to cover it in one show, but we have many strategies we’re going to share with you. I’m in my 50s, and I’m leaner now than I was even in my 20s. That is hormone optimization. That’s a cellular issue, and I’ll say this: You’ll hear me say it all the time. You won’t get well until you fix the cell.

I can say this: You won’t get lean and stay lean until you fix the cell. It is hormones, but the receptors to the hormones around the cell, we’re going to keep building on that because, really, that’s the magic of becoming this hormone-efficient, and becoming fat efficient, and efficient fat burners is hormones. That means we have to pay attention to what’s happening at the cell.

Warren:

Let’s give them the three secrets that you developed, I think, probably 15 years ago when you started writing, and researching, and writing books. You created this cellular healing diet. This is version 20. Hundreds of thousands of copies sold. We do have that available at RevelationHealth.com—is one of the vendors for this show and a sponsor of this show. They have that book.

There’s three things that you say in that book. I want to give them those three things when it comes to what you do if you don’t want to eat those high carbs. This is a low-carb, high-fat type diet that has produced massive weight loss results that have sustained. We’ve had 100-, 150-pound people that were really overweight, and they maintained it for years. The problem there is from a psychological standpoint, this is not what we do.

Sometimes you visualize yourself as that fat person, and you lose that psychological side that wants you to go back there because you kind of lost yourself, too. That’s another thing that we’ll maybe bring an expert in that area on to help our viewers—I mean our listeners and viewers with. Let’s give them those three takeaways that are included in that diet in this short window that’s left here.

Dr. Pompa:

If I said insulin’s the key, controlling insulin, and every time you eat, you raise insulin no matter what—however, there are foods that really raise insulin. Obviously, I think, most of us, number one is sugar. We get that. You eat sugar, processed sugar, you’re skyrocketing insulin. That means you’re just storing fat like a madman. The next one, though, is surprising to many. I’ve had the pleasure of just interviewing Bill Davis. He wrote the book called Wheat Belly. In his book—

Warren:

Wow. That was everywhere, Costco, yeah.

Dr. Pompa:

Yeah, absolutely. In his book it was basically saying it’s grains. They’re even worse that sugars. Matter of fact, grains are super-sugars. I know most of you are saying yeah, but I eat whole grains. He said that two pieces of whole-grain bread is equivalent to how it raises your glucose and therefore insulin—the equivalence of drinking a 12-ounce soda, meaning that your two pieces of whole-grain bread, or that bagel that you have in the morning, or a bowl of oatmeal, all of those things raise glucose the same as a 12-ounce soda. That shocked America. It didn’t shock us, but it shocked America because they thought they were doing well. See, America—

Warren:

Yeah, oatmeal and whole-wheat bread—we could call it XYZ nuts, cereal. We thought that that was healthy, everything that I grew up on. I thought when I was eating a type of raisin cereal that it was the healthiest. I was away from the fruity cereals—I’m not trying to throw people under the bus—full of food colorings and X, Y, Z products that my mom wouldn’t—only let me do on a special occasion. That’s still rampant within our society. We think when we’re eating the bran flakes that we’re nailing it.

Dr. Pompa:

The whole grain.

Warren:

We’re having a bowl of oatmeal, we’re nailing it. We’re actually training our bodies to store fat. It’s sad. It’s a sad reality.

Dr. Pompa:

It’s another 180-degree concept. Whole grains are healthy. The fact is, look, certain ancient grains—and that’s another show—can be healthy. However, humans are eating too much of it. Bill Davis thinks that humans aren’t even meant to eat grains. He said in his diet—now, I don’t know if I agree with that. I think that genetics plays a role. Some of us can tolerate more ancient, healthy grains than other people.

The bottom line is this: No matter what we say, America, we are eating too many grains, even whole grains. They really raise the insulin and glucose, and it’s devastating to what it does to our fat stores. It is absolutely a grain America. Think about how we start our days with the bowl of oatmeal or the whole-wheat toast, whatever it is, the bowl of cereal. All grain, massive glucose insulin rise. Think about lunch. Think about dinner. It’s all around grains, carbohydrates. According to these studies, it’s driving up insulin, making us fat, and aging us prematurely. We’re going to build on these concepts in future shows.