TOTAL CALORIES: 24,375 TOTAL GRAMS OF FAT: 1,285 TOTAL COST: $86.47
My patients eat a lot of calories, but are actually malnourished.
Your brain doesn’t count calories–it counts nutrients. But there are few needed nutrients in this photo created for Super Bowl Sunday. The brain is hungry for the right calories, and not for being malnourished: for more on this, see The Brain’s Way of Healing: brilliant, on neuroplasticity, and how the brain can heal.
Your stomach is empty and growling but you just ate. Too many calories, too few nutrients. Brain poop. (Conversely, a low starch, higher healthy fat Mediterranean diet seems to fight brain damage). There is more written about this every day, and sometimes it is hard to know who or what to believe.
Obese people often are deficient in specific micronutrients: if young and female, iron; if older and diabetic, magnesium; either, vitamin D. The food that might bring them (or the time outside in the case of active vitamin D3) simply isn’t available to avoid micronutrient deficiencies.
Belly fat is toxic, and sugar and starch cause its accumulation, not fat. I explain how in REFUEL, for men who want to lose belly fat and raise their testosterone, naturally.
Belly fat lies adjacent to the liver, mainlines fat there and you end up with foie gras as a liver. Which is still illegal in my sweet home Chicago, a true paradox.
The kidneys get squeezed, and you get high blood pressure. The number one hormonal organ in your body, if you’re overweight, may well be your belly fat.
80 million Americans are diabetic, or pre-diabetic. That epidemic is going to destroy our health as a country.
Doctors treat with medicine, because those are the weapons that we were trained to offer. But they’re only band-aids, and as effective as French Fries on a heart patient’s hospital menu. Which is still on offer in many hospitals in America. As if heart patients were not malnourished enough. What should heart patients eat?
Diabetes medicines often cause more weight gain, both the oral ones and insulin itself. So do some common high blood pressure medicine–beta blockers, for example, slow down your pulse and with that, y0ur metabolism. It becomes hard to build muscle, which is where insulin receptors are. Building muscle and HIIT are the secrets to beating insulin resistance, as well as lowering your sugary cereal/bread/chips/dessert intake.
But there is hope. Nearly 90 percent of type II diabetes is reversible. Having high cholesterol is often reversible, without statins, with the right cholesterol diet, and without the diabetes that paradoxically, they may cause. Controlling high blood pressure with your lifestyle and healthy self is within your reach, and it might be your most important health care number.
The environment takes decades to change. Let’s not give up on it, especially as climate changes health. But you can change your own habits tomorrow. One small step at a time.