January 30, 2020 • 36 mins
It's a new year, which means we all have diets on the brain. But with so many options out there, how can we parse the good and healthy from the fads? On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie gets to the bottom of trendy eating plans like intermittent fasting and keto with Dr. Mark Hyman who explains what they are and how they affect the body. Katie also speaks with health, diet and wellness expert Liz Josefsberg about the psychology behind our food cravings and how making incremental behavior changes can help us stick to our good intentions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to next Question. Today,
we're talking all about bad eating habits. We all love food,
but too often we don't eat the right things. So
how can we do better? You're being triggered all the
time by your eyes, your ears, your nose. If you
(00:21):
see food, smell food, or even talk about food, you're
being triggered to eat food. Later, I'll speak with weight
loss expert Liz joseph Sburg about how to create new
positive eating practices and build a better relationship with all
that food, glorious food. But first, the dreaded d word diets.
(00:41):
It's the beginning of a new year, which means we've
all got them on the brain. Let's talk about the
whole thirty the Adkins diet, without Beach diet, the raw
food diet. Diet. A trendy new weight loss method has
been getting a lot of buzz lately and it is
called intermittent fasting. So my next question are the latest
(01:01):
diets healthy? Can they help us live better and longer
lives or are they just bads? There's so many diet
wars and people are in such confident about it. But
what's fascinating to me, is that a lot of the
approaches to eating now that we're hearing about, whether it's
paleo or vegan or keto or those are always for
people to get healthier. They're not necessarily about weight loss anymore.
(01:23):
How do you enhance performance? How do you enhance health?
How do you treat disease? Which I find amazing. That's
Dr Mark Hymen, a physician who has dedicated his career
to something called functional medicine, a biology based approach to
health that impart uses food to cure what ails you?
(01:43):
You know, said joke, I say people have FLC syndrome.
That's when they feel like crap. And when people go
along with irritable bow or headaches or congestion or achiness
or fatigue or depression, they don't realize how much of
us connected to food. We'll get to more of that later,
but first I asked Mark to walk me through a
popular diets I've been hearing so much about. In fact,
(02:03):
I've even tried, like intermittent fasting. What is it and
how does it work? So? In German fasting is one
of the ways in which you can change your calorie
and take in terms of when you eat and how
you eat to change your biology. And historically we had
hundreds of genes that help us adapt to starvation, but
(02:24):
almost none that help us adapt to abundance, which we
have now. We have more calories per person than we need.
We have about two to five calories more per person
in this country than we actually need, and it's killing us.
So the science of of aging and of performance tell
us that if you use various techniques, whether it's fasting
once a week for twenty four hours, whether it's time
(02:46):
restricted eating, which is eating within a eight hour window,
whether it's a five day low calorie sort of fasting
mimicking diet, or whether it's keytogenic diets, they all do
the same thing. They help to increase your metabolism, so
they speed up your metabolism. But wait time out. I
always heard that when you stopped eating, it's shut your
(03:06):
metabolism down, so you're always discouraged to do that. And
that's what we used to hear the rights to get
your metabolism going. That's not true, not exactly. It turns
out we were wrong about that, and what really turns
on your metabolism is these periods of fasting. Now historically
we did it all the time. There were times of
(03:27):
scarcity we weren't eating snacks. I mean, snacks is a
modern invention, right, there's what we shouldn't be snacking. And
I think that the sign shows us that it. It
increases bone bone mass, it increases muscle mass, It decreases
belly fat, increases cognitive function, reduces inflammation, increases your stem cells,
increases your antioxidant systems, It fixes your mitochondria, repairs your DNA.
(03:50):
I mean, it's a powerful set of strategies that are
available to all of us, and it's not that hard.
So what happens physiologically during that period when you're not eating.
So let's say you're doing an eight hour eating plans,
so you eat between noon and eight at night, or
eleven and seven something like this. Normally, if you're just
constantly filling up your garbage can with waste and you
(04:11):
don't take the garbage out, your house is going to
be a mess. And when you have these periods of
restricted eating, when you're not eating, is when the garbage
collectors come and cleans up your cells. It cleans up
you're all the waste products. It reinvigorates your repair mechanisms
so your body can repair and heal. And the easiest
way to do it is to, you know, eat dinner
at six and don'tate till ten the next morning, right,
(04:34):
or a dinner to seven and don't till eleven, and
so forth. So just as long as you have that
overnight fast, which we're usually doing anyway, you don't eat
up until you go to bed, which most people do.
So breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, necessarily,
necessarily know, all the things that I was raised to
believe are being blown up. Well, you can do at breakfast.
You can need from eight in the morning, you know,
until four in the afternoon. That's okay too, So you
(04:57):
can you can do whatever you want. You just want
to have a period of not eating. So does that
mean that I can't even have milk in my coffee?
Please say I can have milk in my coffee, because
I could do intermittent fasting, but I have to have
coffee and I just don't want to drink it black. Well,
here's a trick. You could use ge or butter and
m C two oil, which will keep you in a
(05:17):
ketogenic state and not basically break the cycle. Of intimating
fast really, yes, is it taste good bullproof coffee, Yes,
it tastes great, yummy, delicious. So not oatmelk, not almond milk,
nothing like that my coffee, because that is a lot
of carbohydrates in it. If you just use fat, fat
is going to keep you. That's why you get in
(05:38):
a ketogenic diet. That's all the same things. The fat
keeps you in this starvation stage because when you're in
starvation or you're doing intimat fasting, that's what's happening, or
increasing your body's ketones, which is a different fuel source. Right,
and then you go into ketosis where you're burning fat
instead of muscles. But wait before we talk about the
keto diet, because that's a perfect segue mark between the
(05:58):
hours when you're eating. Say you eat between eleven and
seven at night, Does that mean you can eat anything
you want? Can I eat ice cream? Garbage? I mean that,
that's the question. I mean. So here here's the truth.
In studies where people don't change what they're eating, they
just change when they're eating, it works, which is crazy.
It helps with weight loss, metabolism so forth. However, if
(06:21):
you eat good food, whole food, real food. It works
far better, So it helps even without changing what you're eating.
But I wouldn't recommend that I do both change what
and when. And you talked about different ways you could
do intermittent fasting. Um, I think probably eating just in
a certain time period every day is probably the easiest
(06:42):
and most popular, isn't it. Yeah, I just start with
twelve hours. I mean it's called breakfast break fast, right,
I mean most of us eat up until you go
to bed. Then we wake up and eat first thing
in the morning. We don't really give ourselves a chance
to have that metabolic break. So just make it twelve
hours to start, then go fourteen, then go sixteen, and
you'll see your body will feel better. Now, if you're pregnant,
if you're anorexic, if you have some disease where you
(07:04):
actually need to eat, it's probably not a good idea,
but you can you can experiment with these these bio
hacking techniques of time restricted eating, fasting, and twenty four
period our period once a week, doing a you know,
maybe five day calor restricted period every three months. It
helps to reset your whole system and increase longevity and
activate all these healing systems. Intermitt and fasting results in
(07:24):
something called atop Yes, so what is that? Okay, this
is this is the key to all of it. So
autopagy means you are eating yourself Fiji means like you fagus.
That tells you you you gobble up all the waste
products and you basically eat yourself and all the waste products,
and you recycle all the things in your body, which
actually extends your life. It actually helps repair DNA, it
(07:47):
helps activate all the energy mechanisms your body. And there's
all the things we talked about. So autopagy is the
key mechanism by which intermittent fasting, time, restricting eating, key
to genic diets, fasting, mimicking dies. That's how they all work.
That gives you your body the break it needs to
collect and get rid of the garbage. Right, I mean, think,
imagine if the garbage system stopped in New York, what
(08:08):
would happen? Pretty quick? All the curves will be overflowing
with giant bags of garbage. You gotta have the garbage
collector come every day to clean the garbage. And that's
what autopogy is. It's the garbage collecting mechanism in the body.
That can heal and repair almost everything. So if you're
not feeding your body food, how do you know that
you don't start to eat away muscle instead of fat
and all the toxins and bad stuff. Well, I mean
(08:29):
it's a matter of time, right if you if you
fast for weeks, that's what's going to happen. I mean
most of us are terrified of going without food or
being a little hungry because I think it's bad for us.
But actually it's super good for us. And no one's
gonna lose muscle within a sixteen hour window of fasting
or fasting once once a week. Let's talk about keto
diets because I did that as well, and I have
(08:51):
to say I think it worked actually, but I started
feeling like this can't be healthy. I'm eating cheese, I'm
eating steak, I'm eating sauce, sage, I'm eating eggs, I'm
eating all kinds of things. I'm not eating fruit, which
I love. I'm eating some vegetables but not many. I'm
not eating any whole grains. How can a keto diet
(09:12):
be good for you? Seriously? Well, it's been studied for years.
It was using kids for epilepsy and these kids stay
on it for decades and decades and they do fine. Um,
it doesn't work for everybody, So I would say it's
very individual, and some people like me, for example, we
call lean mass hyper responders. If you if you're a
certain body type er, you know a lot of lean mass,
you might actually get abnormal cholesterol from it. And it
(09:35):
could be not as great, right, you could be tofy
thin on the outside that on the inside. Right, Yes,
but it also may just have adverse effects in terms
of cardiovask. But you know, there was a large study,
for example, of diabetics and they put them on a
Keta Jack diet and within a year six reverse the diabetes. Yeah,
how is that? If you're eating cheese and you're eating
(09:55):
half and half and stuff like that. We do. We
do a whole foods keta diet that doesn't necessarily have
to have all that dairy. In fact, we do on
dairy free. You can even be vegan keto. There are
people who are doing vegan keto, oil, avocados, nuts, and seeds.
You can have much different kinds of fats that are
good for you instead instead of adding a lot of
things that you may not want to be eating. Otherwise.
(10:17):
But some fat in your diet is very satiating, and
that's why it's good to have some fats. Absolutely, it
makes you feel full. But if you eat the right fats,
it actually speeds up your metabolism. There's a study, large
study of a kind of study is very difficult to
where you actually feed the people the food and then
you track every metabolic factor that happens. David literally did
(10:37):
at Harvard, and you found it in patients who had
six fat cards versus sixty percent carbs and ten percent fat,
they had burned four hundred calories more a day. If
if they were in some resistent overweight, then the group
that ate the high carb diet. So if the high
fat diet even the same exact number of calories. So
(10:59):
let's say that each had two thousand calories a day,
the ones who ate the high fat burned four hundred
calories more day. That literally would solve our entire obesity
crisis of everybody that How do you explain that? Well,
because fat activates all sorts of different mechanisms than sugar.
Sugar activates, fat, storage activates, inflammation activates, fatty, liver activates
(11:20):
all these hunger mechanisms, so you're hungry all the time.
When you mentioned the carbohydrates, you're talking about refined car
behind refined car. I mean, listen, Broccoli is a carbohydrate, right,
and so are potatoes, But you're talking about things like
potatoes and anything. We're fine. And if you look at
our diet in America, you know we need about a
hundred and thirty three pounds of flour. Now, flour, it
(11:40):
turns out, is worse for your blood sugar than table sugar.
So if you have a bread versus tablespoon table sugar
and raises your blood sugar more than the table sugar
because because it's so ground up, so fine, and it's
quickly absorbed in your body and it acts just like
sugar in your body of course, And so so people
are thinking, oh, I'm having a bagel, and um, you know,
it's all good, but no, it's not. It's actually probably
(12:02):
worse than the sugar. And in fact, you told me
that oatmeal is not a good thing to eat in
the morning, which really surprised me. Whole steel cut oats
and you're add in fat and you add in nuts
and so forth. It can be okay, but in experiments
they found that feeding people oatmeal in the morning, these
kids was a group of kids. They gave oatmeal, steel
couldoats or an omelet same calories. The kids who ate
(12:23):
the oatmeal more food in the day, they were hungrier,
their blood sugars went higher, their insolent higher, their stress
hormones went higher. The steel couldoats was the fifty percent
more food, so there was still it was better than
the regular oatmeal, but still not great. And the omelet
kids did the best. So I think when you look
at the biology of what happens when you have a
(12:44):
starch in the morning, I mean, Americans eat dessert for breakfast, right,
Cereal bagels, muffins, pancakes. French does. And he got me
off Cereal forever even I used to Yeah, you are
a cereal killer, right, Yeah, So that's not a good
choice for Breknant. And you know, we were sold a
bill of goods on that by Mr Kellogg and everybody
(13:05):
bought it, Hopline and Sinker. Don't tell the kids it's
one of those nutritional serials you've been trying to get
them to eat. They're made with real oats to make
you strong and full of energy. Real fruit flavors orange, lemon,
and cherry. Every pool fool gives you all days or
than itamins, and I champion good. They're good. We'll return
(13:31):
to Mark later in the show, but coming up after
the break, Liz Joseph s Burg joins me to talk
about the psychology behind your cravings. Liz Joseph s Burg
(13:51):
is a health, wellness and diet expert who is passionate
about helping people bridge the gap between wanting to lose
weight and actually doing it for good. I lost sixty
pounds and I work every day to keep those off,
so I understand that it isn't just about waking up
and being fixed. Liz works with groups and individuals, She's
(14:14):
even worked with me before, and the heart of her
practice is not necessarily the food itself, although that's important too.
It's really our relationship to food and the behaviors we
consciously or unconsciously engage in that can dismantle all those
good intentions. So my next question for Liz, what are
(14:36):
some of the ways we sabotage ourselves when we try
to achieve a healthier lifestyle. The biggest thing that I
see in my my kind of practice at this point
is the not putting yourself first, the not actually spending
the time to look at what you need and what's
right for you and what you should be working on
(14:59):
as the behavior that's standing in your way. Because we're
all complex creatures. But most of the time, when I'm
finding is everyone is putting everything else first. Right their
work comes first, They're putting they would put all of
this effort into their project planning for work, but when
it comes to them, they're leaving all of their skills
off the table that they're bringing into other areas of
(15:21):
their lives. Um for women specifically, I see them giving
away all of their energy and not knowing how to
say no, not knowing how to take time for themselves
and really create that space where we have a piece
of the pie that's made just for health and wellness
and and really thinking of that as a piece of
(15:41):
our job. Do you think that's changing. It seems to
me there's something going on in the culture that's saying
self care is important. And I always think it's a
fine line between self care and narcissism. Maybe maybe that's
not true, but you know, I do feel I mean,
you could spend your whole life caring for yourself too.
(16:03):
I mean, I think there's a balance there, don't you.
Absolutely absolutely. What I think is the mistake is the
the practice of self care being a daily small practice
instead of these large one off retreats or um a
big massage or things like that, but these daily moments
(16:26):
of you know, saying I am going to go for
a walk, I am going to take a minute and meditate,
I am going to take a few minutes to prepare healthemale,
not just you know, UM do these one off large
pieces that are outside of your regular, everyday life and
really making it so large instead of making it these
(16:47):
teen My My practice is all about the smaller that
behavior change, the longer lasting it will be because it
is attainable and then sustainable. So I'm all about stacking
healthy behaviors and once you get one solid, then you
move to the next one. Well, let's talk about some
things that I think I do that probably some of
(17:10):
our listeners will relate to. Um. You know, we have
a lot of snacks in our office. We make trucks
to Trader Joe's and buy all kinds of things and
I might not be hungry, but they're out there, and
I think oh, I'm going to have some of these
honey roasted peanuts, or why not eat a few of
these things. They're not that bad for you. If I
(17:30):
have one Reese's cup, it's not so bad. It's a
little one and it's dark chocolate and blah blah blah.
So I rationalized, you know, so, so how do you
stop that behavior that then can make you feel like, wow,
I kind of cheated, So I didn't do really well today,
so I might as well, you know, Katie bar the door.
I can eat everything that's not nailed down. That's my psychology. Yes, well,
(17:55):
you're hitting on two really important pieces of what we're
learning now. So a lot of my practice is now
centered around the brain science of what's going on when
we're doing what you're explaining. Um, what we know now
is what we didn't know even ten years ago, is
that you're being triggered all the time by your eyes,
your ears, your nose. If you see food, smell food,
(18:16):
or even talk about food, you're being triggered to eat food.
Our system is wired so that if we you know,
when we were cavemen, if we saw the wooly mammoth,
we had to eat the whole wooly mammoth. We didn't
have a microwave, right, we didn't have a backpack that
we could carry it from place to place. So our
system is wired that when we see the food, even
(18:37):
if we've just eaten right, you may have had this happen.
You go to a great dinner, you eat to your
fill and you say it, couldn't eat another bite, and
then they bring the dessert cart around. We have the
ability to over eat when we see food, smell food,
or talk about food. So when you have food laying
around the office, every time you see it, you're going
(18:57):
to want to eat it. It's about learning to navigate
two things. Number one, cleaning up the environment so you
don't see those treats them. Then the visual stimulized and
like hitting you in the phase every time you look
toward it absolutely. And then the other piece that you're
that you're talking about, which is it's so interesting because
(19:19):
I lead a lot of weight loss groups and we're
just talking about this this week, is is that emotional
eating piece? Right? If we could could really scan our
bodies before eating that and say I have no physical hunger, right,
although when we see the food and smell the food.
We do get cues of physical hunger, but they're not
true cues. Our mouth might water, our stomach might grumble,
(19:40):
but we know we just had lunch an hour ago.
So if we can navigate through that and go, okay,
what is this what's happening? Am I stressed and my board?
Am I procrastinated? Am I thirsty? Right? That is just
a huge one. Right. So um, it's this kind of
double whammy of understand ending what emotional eating is. I
(20:01):
think it's got this kind of this feels like that
should be some bad thing, like you're in the corner
crying eating and eating cake or something like that. That's
not it at all. It's for me. The definition is
eating any time that physical hunger isn't present, and in
this new environment where where food is literally readily available
at every moment, Yeah, I I we laugh that that
(20:25):
people are so dramatic about their meals, and many times
when I start working with somebody, they're eating at least
three meals a day, usually two snacks and probably something
after dinner. And we just don't need that much food, right,
So we've just been kind of marketed to and convinced that,
you know, we need to have all of this food
(20:45):
and that we can't just walk down the street to
any you know, any Starbucks and get a full meal.
So it's one of those things where you kind of
have to back away from the drama if if you
can begin to kind of see it for what it is.
What other things have you learned from some of your
success stories who you've helped, I mean, how have they
(21:07):
changed their habits? Well, that's so interesting. It's I've actually
just helped my sister lose over a hundred pounds, which
has been one of the greatest experiences of my life,
right to have her be in my groups and working
through my program and to lose this weight. And she
(21:27):
has struggled with this hundred pounds for most of her life,
and this has been such a dramatic change. And I
think what it does come down to is this understanding
that it's a self love thing, right, what what you
how you feed your body, how you treat your body,
(21:47):
especially when it's over a hundred pound weight loss is
a lot about learning to say, Okay, that's not good
for me, and I love myself enough to say that
I am going to move away from those choices. So
there is this really deep thing. It's an intimate and
deep thing that has to happen for people for them
(22:08):
to be ready. Um, because so much of food is
used perversely as punishment. You know, I referred to kind
of being bad by eating something like a piece of
a doughnut, and then you're like, well, I wasn't really
good today, so I am just gonna, you know, go
whole hog and I'll start fresh tomorrow. I think that's
(22:31):
a real tendency, and it's it is a form of
punishment for being quote unquote bad or making bad choices. Well,
and again, what we now know from brain science is
whenever we feel guilt and shame, we actually highlight the
reward system in our brain. Is that lights up like
like just crazy. So when we feel guilty or shameful
(22:55):
about a choice that we make, right, so, oh, I
ate the cake when I didn't plan on eating the cake,
we feel badly like you're expressing, and then we get
our reward system lights up. For most of us who
have a food love, we go right to more food.
If it's gambling, you've seen it. You're you're losing at
the table. What do you do? You push in? More so,
(23:18):
when we learn this, and and that again was this
big learning for a lot of my clients is that, oh,
that's exactly what I'm doing. I am each time I
feel bad about a food choice or I make it
a punishment for myself, then I go and I do
more of it. So really, the antidote to that is
what we now know gratitude. Gratitude lights up and releases
(23:41):
serotonin and gets it flowing for you. So if you
can kind of say, well, I ate that piece of cake,
but I only ate one and really be grateful for something,
even if it's a tiny little thing, that release of
serotonin can override the reward system and you can be
in to make real change because it was never the
(24:02):
one piece of cake that got you in trouble. And
I think that's what my sister is really talking about.
It was that self loathing, that repetitive self loathing of
eating the cake, feeling terrible, beating herself up and then
eat more. Yeah, and I know it from a life
of I've had a way to shoot since I was fourteen,
(24:23):
So I think that makes me uniquely qualified to help
people because I know what it is. I've done it myself.
I've done what you're talking about a hundred times, So
tell me how to stop that. I, for example, me,
I ate a piece of a doughnut this morning, um,
which I normally wouldn't do. And I'm trying to say
that's okay I ate a piece of a doughnut. That
(24:44):
doesn't mean that I you know, this whole attitude that
I have to eat that all. Now It'll be okay
for me to eat as much as I want today
because tomorrow I'll start afresh. So what can I say
to my help that I ate a piece of a doughnut?
What you're talking about, which is another piece of this
(25:05):
brain science? And are these habit the habit loops? So
people are always talking about habits, right, And a habit
has three parts. It's got a trigger, then there's a routine,
and then there's a reward. What you've created so nicely
in your life is a trigger of one small off
behavior which you've deemed as bad. And I used to
be so neurotic. I would do it when I ate
(25:26):
a piece of gum that sure wasn't that was sugar free?
Sure sure? So this this is just a thought pattern
that you've habitualized, which is do something that is out
of some sort of rule book that you've created in
your mind, which is is now the routine is to
feel bad and the reward is to go further get
(25:47):
more of that serotonin releasing food because of the guilt
and shame. Yeah. Yeah, it's really strange when we look
at the habit patterns in you know, under an m
R I, they live on these sort of embedded roadways
and they don't go away. That's the other part is
you have to create awareness around this new pattern, alternative
(26:09):
or alternative, Yes, exactly. So this alternative habit for you
would be like when there's a perceived mistake, I'm going
to just make a plan around the next meal and
make it a healthy one. When we create new habits,
the other thing to really understand is it's quite uncomfortable
the new habit. You won't be comfortable. You'll still hear
(26:30):
this jargon going on about how you were bad and
how it doesn't matter because you've already messed up and
whatever those words are that that you which is super mean,
by the way, Yeah, like, why are we so freaking
mean to ourselves? Well, I think society sort of imposes it.
You know, this deprivation chic and it's sort of like
it's an all or nothing world, right, You're good or bad,
(26:51):
and there are very few shades of gray, I think
when it comes to life in general. Right, Yeah, so
I think that you have to kind of fight that
talk briefly for us, Liz about the role of technology
and helping either interrupt these habits or establishing better ones. Yeah. So,
I am super passionate about technology and the role that
it's going to play. I believe it will be the
(27:13):
tide that turns this obesity epidemic because not only is
it allowing us to connect to people that we would
never be able to connect to. Right So, I'm going
to run an online course this week where I'll be
able to I'm working with people in Singapore and Australia.
Right So we would never have a have had a
chance to connect. They would never have heard my voice.
(27:34):
And community and support critically important, isn't it. If If
there's anything that I could could have someone take away
from this is like the tendency in weight loss and
weight management is to go it alone. It's just the
natural human tendency to either feel guilt or shame or
like I should be able to do this on my own.
What I've learned over eighteen years in this business is
(27:55):
that really the secret sauce is accountability and support. Find
in community, being with like minded people. It's everything. Liz
has a new book out called Target one hundred, the
World's Simplest weight loss program in six easy Steps. You
can also learn more about Liz and how she might
be able to help you by visiting her website, Liz
(28:18):
Josefsburg dot com. When we come back, Mark Hyman's recommendations
for a diet that could help and heal you. A
lot of Mark Hyman's work is focused on food as medicine,
(28:41):
which can be hard for us skeptics to wrap our
heads around. But as the director of the Cleveland Clinics
Center for Functional Medicine, he's seen the benefits of a
change diet firsthand. We had a patient come into our
center in Cleveland Clinic. She was sixty six. She had
type of diabetes. She was on influent, she had heart failure,
she had kidneys starting to fail, her liver was fatty,
she had high blood pressure. Piliaments in three days, just
(29:05):
changing her diet to a whole foods dies Essentially, it's
a very low sugar, anti inflammatory, whole foods, high fiber,
high fight and nutrient diet whin three days shows offer insulin.
In three months, she reversed her heart failure, reverse to
diabetes or kidneys got better, blood pressure would normalize. She
lost forty three pounds. Any years she lost a hundred
and sixteen pounds, reversed everything, normalize her blood sugar. I
(29:27):
mean her blood sugar was running like three all the time,
and it was just perfect on nothing. And she saved
twenty dollars and co pays for her medication like insulin.
And imagine if we scale that across the country and
use that. But doctors don't know how to use food
is medicine. They eat better, exercise more, and that doesn't
really do anything. So you know, obviously that's a bit
of an obvious thing, type two diabetes because of the
(29:52):
heart failure, kidney failure. Right, But there are other diseases
that I think are really interesting that you wouldn't necessarily
associate with food that you are treating. And give us
a few examples of autoimmune disease is a great example.
So many people suffer from automune disease, whether truma, arthritis, lupus,
and food plays a huge role because your gut is
(30:13):
where six of your immune system is. And when you
damage the gut like we do with our diets and glyphosate, antibiotics,
acid blocking drugs, and processed food, all damages are gut.
It breaks down that immune system and the barrier breaks
down the gut and you leak in food proteins and
bacterial toxins, and that activates inflammation. So by using diet,
(30:34):
eliminating inflammatory foods things like gluten and dairy, getting rid
of all the processed foods, adding whole foods, often autommune
diseases can have dramatic improvements. Well, let's just do some
foodness and closing. Are there any uh dues? And don't
because one of the frustrating things about educating people is
(30:54):
the science seems to be changing all the time, and
sadly it makes people not trust science as much. So
our eggs good for you, or its gluten good for
you or bad for you, is very good or bad,
and if it in fact is highly individualized, how do
you determine what is best for you? Great questions? So
I think you know with all the science we have
(31:16):
and all the different debates and all the different diets.
The best advice I've ever heard was from my ca palm,
which is eat food, meaning real food right, not processed food,
not mostly plants, not too much. So it doesn't mean
be vegan. It just means eat a lot of vegetables
and plant foods, don't over eat, and eat real food.
So I think there are basic foundational principles to break
(31:37):
through all the myths. It should be real food, right.
We should be eating good fats. We should be eating
lots of vegetables and fruit. We should be eating lots
of nuts and seeds. We can have whole grains and beans.
We shouldn't be eating foods that aren't food right, food
like substances full of chemicals added as hormones, antibiotics, processed ingredients.
Obviously those are not good for us. So those are
the foundational principles, like called the Peagan diet, which is
(31:57):
kind of a joke, you know, making fun at pay
you and vegan, but it's essentially just these foundational principles
everbody agrees on, and then within it you kind of
kind of have to think about quality. Right, So what
is the quality of what you're eating. Are you eating
an egg from a factory farm where the chickens have
been abused and where there's lots of antibiotics used and
there's arsenic and the feed or are you getting a
paste ad egg which is dark yellow oak, full of
(32:19):
nutrients and antioxidants and good omega three fats uh you know.
Are you eating a feed lot cow, which is again
processing way that's not good for them the planet? Are
you or eating a re generally raised grass fed beef
with much more nutrient density, without hormones antibiotics that restores
climate rather than harms the climate. So there's a way
of thinking about this where you you don't have to
pay attention all the noise, but you figure out what
(32:40):
what makes common sense for you. And then as far
as personalization, that's really key. Everybody needs different type of approach.
For example, as we age, we need more protein. When
we're younger, we can get away with different kinds of approaches.
So it's real, it's really pay attention to the smartest
doctor in the room, which is your own body. It'll
tell you what it likes and what it does, and like,
you just have to pay attention and one quick thing
(33:02):
that you mentioned aging When I heard you speak about
your last book, you talked about how much muscle mass
you lose as you age. That's why weight varying exercises
are so important, or any food is important to eat
as you age, because I think that's one of the
reasons I'm getting a little belly because the muscles in
my stomach aren't as strong as they used to be.
(33:25):
And that's why men kind of get those big bellies
because some of their muscles because right absolutely, because also
the sugar in the start. I mean, I think that
the the the quick answer is that as we age,
we lose muscle if we don't do something about it.
We have to put energy in the system. And there's
really three key components of that. First, you need adequate
protein as you age, and it can be plant based
(33:47):
protein or animal protein. If it's plant prostein, you might
need to add extra amino acids like lucine because that
is necessary. And and as you age, you need more
to sugar causes muscle loss. Sugar cause and starting yes,
sugar and star arch cause you to gain belly fat
and lose muscle. Just by switching your diet to a
higher fat, lower starch diet. I've done that, and I've
(34:08):
got more muscle and I'm sixty than I did when
I was thirty without changing my exercise routine. So so
it's basically cutting out the starch and sugar, adding more
good fats and having the right kinds of protein and
not and and each me on that that will help
prevent the muscle us as you age. And then you
add on top of that the exercise and strength training, yoga,
you know, things like that can really be helpful. Can
(34:29):
you be my personal health Google? Can you see my coach? Mark?
I know, but I need you on a more regular basis. Seriously.
Can you help me come up with an eating plan
and an exercise plan or a life plan or a
meditation plan. Markheim Is latest book, Food Fix, How to
(34:52):
Save our health, our economy, our communities on our planet,
One Bite at a Time, is out in February. You
can also find more inform nation about Mark's health missions,
his cookbooks, and his own podcast, The Doctor's Pharmacy Pharmacy
with an F at his website d R Himan dot com.
And that does it for this week's episode. I hope
(35:13):
you all learned as much as I did listening to it.
I don't know about you, but I'm trying to do
intermittent fasting. And yes, I'm even drinking my coffee black
and I'm kind of liking it after a few days.
You can keep up with Next Question by subscribing on
Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
(35:33):
get your favorite shows. You can also check out my
morning newsletter It's called wake Up Call at Katie Kurrek
dot com. And of course you can follow me on
your go to social media channel or all of them.
Until next time and my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric.
(35:54):
Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kurrik Media. The kative producers are
Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer
is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The
associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by
Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante, mixing by Dylan Fagin.
(36:19):
Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode,
go to Katie curik dot com and follow us on
Twitter and Instagram at Katie Kurik. For more podcasts for
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to next Question. Today,
we're talking all about bad eating habits. We all love food,
but too often we don't eat the right things. So
how can we do better? You're being triggered all the
time by your eyes, your ears, your nose. If you
(00:21):
see food, smell food, or even talk about food, you're
being triggered to eat food. Later, I'll speak with weight
loss expert Liz joseph Sburg about how to create new
positive eating practices and build a better relationship with all
that food, glorious food. But first, the dreaded d word diets.
(00:41):
It's the beginning of a new year, which means we've
all got them on the brain. Let's talk about the
whole thirty the Adkins diet, without Beach diet, the raw
food diet. Diet. A trendy new weight loss method has
been getting a lot of buzz lately and it is
called intermittent fasting. So my next question are the latest
(01:01):
diets healthy? Can they help us live better and longer
lives or are they just bads? There's so many diet
wars and people are in such confident about it. But
what's fascinating to me, is that a lot of the
approaches to eating now that we're hearing about, whether it's
paleo or vegan or keto or those are always for
people to get healthier. They're not necessarily about weight loss anymore.
(01:23):
How do you enhance performance? How do you enhance health?
How do you treat disease? Which I find amazing. That's
Dr Mark Hymen, a physician who has dedicated his career
to something called functional medicine, a biology based approach to
health that impart uses food to cure what ails you?
(01:43):
You know, said joke, I say people have FLC syndrome.
That's when they feel like crap. And when people go
along with irritable bow or headaches or congestion or achiness
or fatigue or depression, they don't realize how much of
us connected to food. We'll get to more of that later,
but first I asked Mark to walk me through a
popular diets I've been hearing so much about. In fact,
(02:03):
I've even tried, like intermittent fasting. What is it and
how does it work? So? In German fasting is one
of the ways in which you can change your calorie
and take in terms of when you eat and how
you eat to change your biology. And historically we had
hundreds of genes that help us adapt to starvation, but
(02:24):
almost none that help us adapt to abundance, which we
have now. We have more calories per person than we need.
We have about two to five calories more per person
in this country than we actually need, and it's killing us.
So the science of of aging and of performance tell
us that if you use various techniques, whether it's fasting
once a week for twenty four hours, whether it's time
(02:46):
restricted eating, which is eating within a eight hour window,
whether it's a five day low calorie sort of fasting
mimicking diet, or whether it's keytogenic diets, they all do
the same thing. They help to increase your metabolism, so
they speed up your metabolism. But wait time out. I
always heard that when you stopped eating, it's shut your
(03:06):
metabolism down, so you're always discouraged to do that. And
that's what we used to hear the rights to get
your metabolism going. That's not true, not exactly. It turns
out we were wrong about that, and what really turns
on your metabolism is these periods of fasting. Now historically
we did it all the time. There were times of
(03:27):
scarcity we weren't eating snacks. I mean, snacks is a
modern invention, right, there's what we shouldn't be snacking. And
I think that the sign shows us that it. It
increases bone bone mass, it increases muscle mass, It decreases
belly fat, increases cognitive function, reduces inflammation, increases your stem cells,
increases your antioxidant systems, It fixes your mitochondria, repairs your DNA.
(03:50):
I mean, it's a powerful set of strategies that are
available to all of us, and it's not that hard.
So what happens physiologically during that period when you're not eating.
So let's say you're doing an eight hour eating plans,
so you eat between noon and eight at night, or
eleven and seven something like this. Normally, if you're just
constantly filling up your garbage can with waste and you
(04:11):
don't take the garbage out, your house is going to
be a mess. And when you have these periods of
restricted eating, when you're not eating, is when the garbage
collectors come and cleans up your cells. It cleans up
you're all the waste products. It reinvigorates your repair mechanisms
so your body can repair and heal. And the easiest
way to do it is to, you know, eat dinner
at six and don'tate till ten the next morning, right,
(04:34):
or a dinner to seven and don't till eleven, and
so forth. So just as long as you have that
overnight fast, which we're usually doing anyway, you don't eat
up until you go to bed, which most people do.
So breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, necessarily,
necessarily know, all the things that I was raised to
believe are being blown up. Well, you can do at breakfast.
You can need from eight in the morning, you know,
until four in the afternoon. That's okay too, So you
(04:57):
can you can do whatever you want. You just want
to have a period of not eating. So does that
mean that I can't even have milk in my coffee?
Please say I can have milk in my coffee, because
I could do intermittent fasting, but I have to have
coffee and I just don't want to drink it black. Well,
here's a trick. You could use ge or butter and
m C two oil, which will keep you in a
(05:17):
ketogenic state and not basically break the cycle. Of intimating
fast really, yes, is it taste good bullproof coffee, Yes,
it tastes great, yummy, delicious. So not oatmelk, not almond milk,
nothing like that my coffee, because that is a lot
of carbohydrates in it. If you just use fat, fat
is going to keep you. That's why you get in
(05:38):
a ketogenic diet. That's all the same things. The fat
keeps you in this starvation stage because when you're in
starvation or you're doing intimat fasting, that's what's happening, or
increasing your body's ketones, which is a different fuel source. Right,
and then you go into ketosis where you're burning fat
instead of muscles. But wait before we talk about the
keto diet, because that's a perfect segue mark between the
(05:58):
hours when you're eating. Say you eat between eleven and
seven at night, Does that mean you can eat anything
you want? Can I eat ice cream? Garbage? I mean that,
that's the question. I mean. So here here's the truth.
In studies where people don't change what they're eating, they
just change when they're eating, it works, which is crazy.
It helps with weight loss, metabolism so forth. However, if
(06:21):
you eat good food, whole food, real food. It works
far better, So it helps even without changing what you're eating.
But I wouldn't recommend that I do both change what
and when. And you talked about different ways you could
do intermittent fasting. Um, I think probably eating just in
a certain time period every day is probably the easiest
(06:42):
and most popular, isn't it. Yeah, I just start with
twelve hours. I mean it's called breakfast break fast, right,
I mean most of us eat up until you go
to bed. Then we wake up and eat first thing
in the morning. We don't really give ourselves a chance
to have that metabolic break. So just make it twelve
hours to start, then go fourteen, then go sixteen, and
you'll see your body will feel better. Now, if you're pregnant,
if you're anorexic, if you have some disease where you
(07:04):
actually need to eat, it's probably not a good idea,
but you can you can experiment with these these bio
hacking techniques of time restricted eating, fasting, and twenty four
period our period once a week, doing a you know,
maybe five day calor restricted period every three months. It
helps to reset your whole system and increase longevity and
activate all these healing systems. Intermitt and fasting results in
(07:24):
something called atop Yes, so what is that? Okay, this
is this is the key to all of it. So
autopagy means you are eating yourself Fiji means like you fagus.
That tells you you you gobble up all the waste
products and you basically eat yourself and all the waste products,
and you recycle all the things in your body, which
actually extends your life. It actually helps repair DNA, it
(07:47):
helps activate all the energy mechanisms your body. And there's
all the things we talked about. So autopagy is the
key mechanism by which intermittent fasting, time, restricting eating, key
to genic diets, fasting, mimicking dies. That's how they all work.
That gives you your body the break it needs to
collect and get rid of the garbage. Right, I mean, think,
imagine if the garbage system stopped in New York, what
(08:08):
would happen? Pretty quick? All the curves will be overflowing
with giant bags of garbage. You gotta have the garbage
collector come every day to clean the garbage. And that's
what autopogy is. It's the garbage collecting mechanism in the body.
That can heal and repair almost everything. So if you're
not feeding your body food, how do you know that
you don't start to eat away muscle instead of fat
and all the toxins and bad stuff. Well, I mean
(08:29):
it's a matter of time, right if you if you
fast for weeks, that's what's going to happen. I mean
most of us are terrified of going without food or
being a little hungry because I think it's bad for us.
But actually it's super good for us. And no one's
gonna lose muscle within a sixteen hour window of fasting
or fasting once once a week. Let's talk about keto
diets because I did that as well, and I have
(08:51):
to say I think it worked actually, but I started
feeling like this can't be healthy. I'm eating cheese, I'm
eating steak, I'm eating sauce, sage, I'm eating eggs, I'm
eating all kinds of things. I'm not eating fruit, which
I love. I'm eating some vegetables but not many. I'm
not eating any whole grains. How can a keto diet
(09:12):
be good for you? Seriously? Well, it's been studied for years.
It was using kids for epilepsy and these kids stay
on it for decades and decades and they do fine. Um,
it doesn't work for everybody, So I would say it's
very individual, and some people like me, for example, we
call lean mass hyper responders. If you if you're a
certain body type er, you know a lot of lean mass,
you might actually get abnormal cholesterol from it. And it
(09:35):
could be not as great, right, you could be tofy
thin on the outside that on the inside. Right, Yes,
but it also may just have adverse effects in terms
of cardiovask. But you know, there was a large study,
for example, of diabetics and they put them on a
Keta Jack diet and within a year six reverse the diabetes. Yeah,
how is that? If you're eating cheese and you're eating
(09:55):
half and half and stuff like that. We do. We
do a whole foods keta diet that doesn't necessarily have
to have all that dairy. In fact, we do on
dairy free. You can even be vegan keto. There are
people who are doing vegan keto, oil, avocados, nuts, and seeds.
You can have much different kinds of fats that are
good for you instead instead of adding a lot of
things that you may not want to be eating. Otherwise.
(10:17):
But some fat in your diet is very satiating, and
that's why it's good to have some fats. Absolutely, it
makes you feel full. But if you eat the right fats,
it actually speeds up your metabolism. There's a study, large
study of a kind of study is very difficult to
where you actually feed the people the food and then
you track every metabolic factor that happens. David literally did
(10:37):
at Harvard, and you found it in patients who had
six fat cards versus sixty percent carbs and ten percent fat,
they had burned four hundred calories more a day. If
if they were in some resistent overweight, then the group
that ate the high carb diet. So if the high
fat diet even the same exact number of calories. So
(10:59):
let's say that each had two thousand calories a day,
the ones who ate the high fat burned four hundred
calories more day. That literally would solve our entire obesity
crisis of everybody that How do you explain that? Well,
because fat activates all sorts of different mechanisms than sugar.
Sugar activates, fat, storage activates, inflammation activates, fatty, liver activates
(11:20):
all these hunger mechanisms, so you're hungry all the time.
When you mentioned the carbohydrates, you're talking about refined car
behind refined car. I mean, listen, Broccoli is a carbohydrate, right,
and so are potatoes, But you're talking about things like
potatoes and anything. We're fine. And if you look at
our diet in America, you know we need about a
hundred and thirty three pounds of flour. Now, flour, it
(11:40):
turns out, is worse for your blood sugar than table sugar.
So if you have a bread versus tablespoon table sugar
and raises your blood sugar more than the table sugar
because because it's so ground up, so fine, and it's
quickly absorbed in your body and it acts just like
sugar in your body of course, And so so people
are thinking, oh, I'm having a bagel, and um, you know,
it's all good, but no, it's not. It's actually probably
(12:02):
worse than the sugar. And in fact, you told me
that oatmeal is not a good thing to eat in
the morning, which really surprised me. Whole steel cut oats
and you're add in fat and you add in nuts
and so forth. It can be okay, but in experiments
they found that feeding people oatmeal in the morning, these
kids was a group of kids. They gave oatmeal, steel
couldoats or an omelet same calories. The kids who ate
(12:23):
the oatmeal more food in the day, they were hungrier,
their blood sugars went higher, their insolent higher, their stress
hormones went higher. The steel couldoats was the fifty percent
more food, so there was still it was better than
the regular oatmeal, but still not great. And the omelet
kids did the best. So I think when you look
at the biology of what happens when you have a
(12:44):
starch in the morning, I mean, Americans eat dessert for breakfast, right,
Cereal bagels, muffins, pancakes. French does. And he got me
off Cereal forever even I used to Yeah, you are
a cereal killer, right, Yeah, So that's not a good
choice for Breknant. And you know, we were sold a
bill of goods on that by Mr Kellogg and everybody
(13:05):
bought it, Hopline and Sinker. Don't tell the kids it's
one of those nutritional serials you've been trying to get
them to eat. They're made with real oats to make
you strong and full of energy. Real fruit flavors orange, lemon,
and cherry. Every pool fool gives you all days or
than itamins, and I champion good. They're good. We'll return
(13:31):
to Mark later in the show, but coming up after
the break, Liz Joseph s Burg joins me to talk
about the psychology behind your cravings. Liz Joseph s Burg
(13:51):
is a health, wellness and diet expert who is passionate
about helping people bridge the gap between wanting to lose
weight and actually doing it for good. I lost sixty
pounds and I work every day to keep those off,
so I understand that it isn't just about waking up
and being fixed. Liz works with groups and individuals, She's
(14:14):
even worked with me before, and the heart of her
practice is not necessarily the food itself, although that's important too.
It's really our relationship to food and the behaviors we
consciously or unconsciously engage in that can dismantle all those
good intentions. So my next question for Liz, what are
(14:36):
some of the ways we sabotage ourselves when we try
to achieve a healthier lifestyle. The biggest thing that I
see in my my kind of practice at this point
is the not putting yourself first, the not actually spending
the time to look at what you need and what's
right for you and what you should be working on
(14:59):
as the behavior that's standing in your way. Because we're
all complex creatures. But most of the time, when I'm
finding is everyone is putting everything else first. Right their
work comes first, They're putting they would put all of
this effort into their project planning for work, but when
it comes to them, they're leaving all of their skills
off the table that they're bringing into other areas of
(15:21):
their lives. Um for women specifically, I see them giving
away all of their energy and not knowing how to
say no, not knowing how to take time for themselves
and really create that space where we have a piece
of the pie that's made just for health and wellness
and and really thinking of that as a piece of
(15:41):
our job. Do you think that's changing. It seems to
me there's something going on in the culture that's saying
self care is important. And I always think it's a
fine line between self care and narcissism. Maybe maybe that's
not true, but you know, I do feel I mean,
you could spend your whole life caring for yourself too.
(16:03):
I mean, I think there's a balance there, don't you.
Absolutely absolutely. What I think is the mistake is the
the practice of self care being a daily small practice
instead of these large one off retreats or um a
big massage or things like that, but these daily moments
(16:26):
of you know, saying I am going to go for
a walk, I am going to take a minute and meditate,
I am going to take a few minutes to prepare healthemale,
not just you know, UM do these one off large
pieces that are outside of your regular, everyday life and
really making it so large instead of making it these
(16:47):
teen My My practice is all about the smaller that
behavior change, the longer lasting it will be because it
is attainable and then sustainable. So I'm all about stacking
healthy behaviors and once you get one solid, then you
move to the next one. Well, let's talk about some
things that I think I do that probably some of
(17:10):
our listeners will relate to. Um. You know, we have
a lot of snacks in our office. We make trucks
to Trader Joe's and buy all kinds of things and
I might not be hungry, but they're out there, and
I think oh, I'm going to have some of these
honey roasted peanuts, or why not eat a few of
these things. They're not that bad for you. If I
(17:30):
have one Reese's cup, it's not so bad. It's a
little one and it's dark chocolate and blah blah blah.
So I rationalized, you know, so, so how do you
stop that behavior that then can make you feel like, wow,
I kind of cheated, So I didn't do really well today,
so I might as well, you know, Katie bar the door.
I can eat everything that's not nailed down. That's my psychology. Yes, well,
(17:55):
you're hitting on two really important pieces of what we're
learning now. So a lot of my practice is now
centered around the brain science of what's going on when
we're doing what you're explaining. Um, what we know now
is what we didn't know even ten years ago, is
that you're being triggered all the time by your eyes,
your ears, your nose. If you see food, smell food,
(18:16):
or even talk about food, you're being triggered to eat food.
Our system is wired so that if we you know,
when we were cavemen, if we saw the wooly mammoth,
we had to eat the whole wooly mammoth. We didn't
have a microwave, right, we didn't have a backpack that
we could carry it from place to place. So our
system is wired that when we see the food, even
(18:37):
if we've just eaten right, you may have had this happen.
You go to a great dinner, you eat to your
fill and you say it, couldn't eat another bite, and
then they bring the dessert cart around. We have the
ability to over eat when we see food, smell food,
or talk about food. So when you have food laying
around the office, every time you see it, you're going
(18:57):
to want to eat it. It's about learning to navigate
two things. Number one, cleaning up the environment so you
don't see those treats them. Then the visual stimulized and
like hitting you in the phase every time you look
toward it absolutely. And then the other piece that you're
that you're talking about, which is it's so interesting because
(19:19):
I lead a lot of weight loss groups and we're
just talking about this this week, is is that emotional
eating piece? Right? If we could could really scan our
bodies before eating that and say I have no physical hunger, right,
although when we see the food and smell the food.
We do get cues of physical hunger, but they're not
true cues. Our mouth might water, our stomach might grumble,
(19:40):
but we know we just had lunch an hour ago.
So if we can navigate through that and go, okay,
what is this what's happening? Am I stressed and my board?
Am I procrastinated? Am I thirsty? Right? That is just
a huge one. Right. So um, it's this kind of
double whammy of understand ending what emotional eating is. I
(20:01):
think it's got this kind of this feels like that
should be some bad thing, like you're in the corner
crying eating and eating cake or something like that. That's
not it at all. It's for me. The definition is
eating any time that physical hunger isn't present, and in
this new environment where where food is literally readily available
at every moment, Yeah, I I we laugh that that
(20:25):
people are so dramatic about their meals, and many times
when I start working with somebody, they're eating at least
three meals a day, usually two snacks and probably something
after dinner. And we just don't need that much food, right,
So we've just been kind of marketed to and convinced that,
you know, we need to have all of this food
(20:45):
and that we can't just walk down the street to
any you know, any Starbucks and get a full meal.
So it's one of those things where you kind of
have to back away from the drama if if you
can begin to kind of see it for what it is.
What other things have you learned from some of your
success stories who you've helped, I mean, how have they
(21:07):
changed their habits? Well, that's so interesting. It's I've actually
just helped my sister lose over a hundred pounds, which
has been one of the greatest experiences of my life,
right to have her be in my groups and working
through my program and to lose this weight. And she
(21:27):
has struggled with this hundred pounds for most of her life,
and this has been such a dramatic change. And I
think what it does come down to is this understanding
that it's a self love thing, right, what what you
how you feed your body, how you treat your body,
(21:47):
especially when it's over a hundred pound weight loss is
a lot about learning to say, Okay, that's not good
for me, and I love myself enough to say that
I am going to move away from those choices. So
there is this really deep thing. It's an intimate and
deep thing that has to happen for people for them
(22:08):
to be ready. Um, because so much of food is
used perversely as punishment. You know, I referred to kind
of being bad by eating something like a piece of
a doughnut, and then you're like, well, I wasn't really
good today, so I am just gonna, you know, go
whole hog and I'll start fresh tomorrow. I think that's
(22:31):
a real tendency, and it's it is a form of
punishment for being quote unquote bad or making bad choices. Well,
and again, what we now know from brain science is
whenever we feel guilt and shame, we actually highlight the
reward system in our brain. Is that lights up like
like just crazy. So when we feel guilty or shameful
(22:55):
about a choice that we make, right, so, oh, I
ate the cake when I didn't plan on eating the cake,
we feel badly like you're expressing, and then we get
our reward system lights up. For most of us who
have a food love, we go right to more food.
If it's gambling, you've seen it. You're you're losing at
the table. What do you do? You push in? More so,
(23:18):
when we learn this, and and that again was this
big learning for a lot of my clients is that, oh,
that's exactly what I'm doing. I am each time I
feel bad about a food choice or I make it
a punishment for myself, then I go and I do
more of it. So really, the antidote to that is
what we now know gratitude. Gratitude lights up and releases
(23:41):
serotonin and gets it flowing for you. So if you
can kind of say, well, I ate that piece of cake,
but I only ate one and really be grateful for something,
even if it's a tiny little thing, that release of
serotonin can override the reward system and you can be
in to make real change because it was never the
(24:02):
one piece of cake that got you in trouble. And
I think that's what my sister is really talking about.
It was that self loathing, that repetitive self loathing of
eating the cake, feeling terrible, beating herself up and then
eat more. Yeah, and I know it from a life
of I've had a way to shoot since I was fourteen,
(24:23):
So I think that makes me uniquely qualified to help
people because I know what it is. I've done it myself.
I've done what you're talking about a hundred times, So
tell me how to stop that. I, for example, me,
I ate a piece of a doughnut this morning, um,
which I normally wouldn't do. And I'm trying to say
that's okay I ate a piece of a doughnut. That
(24:44):
doesn't mean that I you know, this whole attitude that
I have to eat that all. Now It'll be okay
for me to eat as much as I want today
because tomorrow I'll start afresh. So what can I say
to my help that I ate a piece of a doughnut?
What you're talking about, which is another piece of this
(25:05):
brain science? And are these habit the habit loops? So
people are always talking about habits, right, And a habit
has three parts. It's got a trigger, then there's a routine,
and then there's a reward. What you've created so nicely
in your life is a trigger of one small off
behavior which you've deemed as bad. And I used to
be so neurotic. I would do it when I ate
(25:26):
a piece of gum that sure wasn't that was sugar free?
Sure sure? So this this is just a thought pattern
that you've habitualized, which is do something that is out
of some sort of rule book that you've created in
your mind, which is is now the routine is to
feel bad and the reward is to go further get
(25:47):
more of that serotonin releasing food because of the guilt
and shame. Yeah. Yeah, it's really strange when we look
at the habit patterns in you know, under an m
R I, they live on these sort of embedded roadways
and they don't go away. That's the other part is
you have to create awareness around this new pattern, alternative
(26:09):
or alternative, Yes, exactly. So this alternative habit for you
would be like when there's a perceived mistake, I'm going
to just make a plan around the next meal and
make it a healthy one. When we create new habits,
the other thing to really understand is it's quite uncomfortable
the new habit. You won't be comfortable. You'll still hear
(26:30):
this jargon going on about how you were bad and
how it doesn't matter because you've already messed up and
whatever those words are that that you which is super mean,
by the way, Yeah, like, why are we so freaking
mean to ourselves? Well, I think society sort of imposes it.
You know, this deprivation chic and it's sort of like
it's an all or nothing world, right, You're good or bad,
(26:51):
and there are very few shades of gray, I think
when it comes to life in general. Right, Yeah, so
I think that you have to kind of fight that
talk briefly for us, Liz about the role of technology
and helping either interrupt these habits or establishing better ones. Yeah. So,
I am super passionate about technology and the role that
it's going to play. I believe it will be the
(27:13):
tide that turns this obesity epidemic because not only is
it allowing us to connect to people that we would
never be able to connect to. Right So, I'm going
to run an online course this week where I'll be
able to I'm working with people in Singapore and Australia.
Right So we would never have a have had a
chance to connect. They would never have heard my voice.
(27:34):
And community and support critically important, isn't it. If If
there's anything that I could could have someone take away
from this is like the tendency in weight loss and
weight management is to go it alone. It's just the
natural human tendency to either feel guilt or shame or
like I should be able to do this on my own.
What I've learned over eighteen years in this business is
(27:55):
that really the secret sauce is accountability and support. Find
in community, being with like minded people. It's everything. Liz
has a new book out called Target one hundred, the
World's Simplest weight loss program in six easy Steps. You
can also learn more about Liz and how she might
be able to help you by visiting her website, Liz
(28:18):
Josefsburg dot com. When we come back, Mark Hyman's recommendations
for a diet that could help and heal you. A
lot of Mark Hyman's work is focused on food as medicine,
(28:41):
which can be hard for us skeptics to wrap our
heads around. But as the director of the Cleveland Clinics
Center for Functional Medicine, he's seen the benefits of a
change diet firsthand. We had a patient come into our
center in Cleveland Clinic. She was sixty six. She had
type of diabetes. She was on influent, she had heart failure,
she had kidneys starting to fail, her liver was fatty,
she had high blood pressure. Piliaments in three days, just
(29:05):
changing her diet to a whole foods dies Essentially, it's
a very low sugar, anti inflammatory, whole foods, high fiber,
high fight and nutrient diet whin three days shows offer insulin.
In three months, she reversed her heart failure, reverse to
diabetes or kidneys got better, blood pressure would normalize. She
lost forty three pounds. Any years she lost a hundred
and sixteen pounds, reversed everything, normalize her blood sugar. I
(29:27):
mean her blood sugar was running like three all the time,
and it was just perfect on nothing. And she saved
twenty dollars and co pays for her medication like insulin.
And imagine if we scale that across the country and
use that. But doctors don't know how to use food
is medicine. They eat better, exercise more, and that doesn't
really do anything. So you know, obviously that's a bit
of an obvious thing, type two diabetes because of the
(29:52):
heart failure, kidney failure. Right, But there are other diseases
that I think are really interesting that you wouldn't necessarily
associate with food that you are treating. And give us
a few examples of autoimmune disease is a great example.
So many people suffer from automune disease, whether truma, arthritis, lupus,
and food plays a huge role because your gut is
(30:13):
where six of your immune system is. And when you
damage the gut like we do with our diets and glyphosate, antibiotics,
acid blocking drugs, and processed food, all damages are gut.
It breaks down that immune system and the barrier breaks
down the gut and you leak in food proteins and
bacterial toxins, and that activates inflammation. So by using diet,
(30:34):
eliminating inflammatory foods things like gluten and dairy, getting rid
of all the processed foods, adding whole foods, often autommune
diseases can have dramatic improvements. Well, let's just do some
foodness and closing. Are there any uh dues? And don't
because one of the frustrating things about educating people is
(30:54):
the science seems to be changing all the time, and
sadly it makes people not trust science as much. So
our eggs good for you, or its gluten good for
you or bad for you, is very good or bad,
and if it in fact is highly individualized, how do
you determine what is best for you? Great questions? So
I think you know with all the science we have
(31:16):
and all the different debates and all the different diets.
The best advice I've ever heard was from my ca palm,
which is eat food, meaning real food right, not processed food,
not mostly plants, not too much. So it doesn't mean
be vegan. It just means eat a lot of vegetables
and plant foods, don't over eat, and eat real food.
So I think there are basic foundational principles to break
(31:37):
through all the myths. It should be real food, right.
We should be eating good fats. We should be eating
lots of vegetables and fruit. We should be eating lots
of nuts and seeds. We can have whole grains and beans.
We shouldn't be eating foods that aren't food right, food
like substances full of chemicals added as hormones, antibiotics, processed ingredients.
Obviously those are not good for us. So those are
the foundational principles, like called the Peagan diet, which is
(31:57):
kind of a joke, you know, making fun at pay
you and vegan, but it's essentially just these foundational principles
everbody agrees on, and then within it you kind of
kind of have to think about quality. Right, So what
is the quality of what you're eating. Are you eating
an egg from a factory farm where the chickens have
been abused and where there's lots of antibiotics used and
there's arsenic and the feed or are you getting a
paste ad egg which is dark yellow oak, full of
(32:19):
nutrients and antioxidants and good omega three fats uh you know.
Are you eating a feed lot cow, which is again
processing way that's not good for them the planet? Are
you or eating a re generally raised grass fed beef
with much more nutrient density, without hormones antibiotics that restores
climate rather than harms the climate. So there's a way
of thinking about this where you you don't have to
pay attention all the noise, but you figure out what
(32:40):
what makes common sense for you. And then as far
as personalization, that's really key. Everybody needs different type of approach.
For example, as we age, we need more protein. When
we're younger, we can get away with different kinds of approaches.
So it's real, it's really pay attention to the smartest
doctor in the room, which is your own body. It'll
tell you what it likes and what it does, and like,
you just have to pay attention and one quick thing
(33:02):
that you mentioned aging When I heard you speak about
your last book, you talked about how much muscle mass
you lose as you age. That's why weight varying exercises
are so important, or any food is important to eat
as you age, because I think that's one of the
reasons I'm getting a little belly because the muscles in
my stomach aren't as strong as they used to be.
(33:25):
And that's why men kind of get those big bellies
because some of their muscles because right absolutely, because also
the sugar in the start. I mean, I think that
the the the quick answer is that as we age,
we lose muscle if we don't do something about it.
We have to put energy in the system. And there's
really three key components of that. First, you need adequate
protein as you age, and it can be plant based
(33:47):
protein or animal protein. If it's plant prostein, you might
need to add extra amino acids like lucine because that
is necessary. And and as you age, you need more
to sugar causes muscle loss. Sugar cause and starting yes,
sugar and star arch cause you to gain belly fat
and lose muscle. Just by switching your diet to a
higher fat, lower starch diet. I've done that, and I've
(34:08):
got more muscle and I'm sixty than I did when
I was thirty without changing my exercise routine. So so
it's basically cutting out the starch and sugar, adding more
good fats and having the right kinds of protein and
not and and each me on that that will help
prevent the muscle us as you age. And then you
add on top of that the exercise and strength training, yoga,
you know, things like that can really be helpful. Can
(34:29):
you be my personal health Google? Can you see my coach? Mark?
I know, but I need you on a more regular basis. Seriously.
Can you help me come up with an eating plan
and an exercise plan or a life plan or a
meditation plan. Markheim Is latest book, Food Fix, How to
(34:52):
Save our health, our economy, our communities on our planet,
One Bite at a Time, is out in February. You
can also find more inform nation about Mark's health missions,
his cookbooks, and his own podcast, The Doctor's Pharmacy Pharmacy
with an F at his website d R Himan dot com.
And that does it for this week's episode. I hope
(35:13):
you all learned as much as I did listening to it.
I don't know about you, but I'm trying to do
intermittent fasting. And yes, I'm even drinking my coffee black
and I'm kind of liking it after a few days.
You can keep up with Next Question by subscribing on
Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
(35:33):
get your favorite shows. You can also check out my
morning newsletter It's called wake Up Call at Katie Kurrek
dot com. And of course you can follow me on
your go to social media channel or all of them.
Until next time and my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric.
(35:54):
Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I
Heart Radio and Katie Kurrik Media. The kative producers are
Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer
is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The
associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by
Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante, mixing by Dylan Fagin.
(36:19):
Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode,
go to Katie curik dot com and follow us on
Twitter and Instagram at Katie Kurik. For more podcasts for
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Host
Katie Couric
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