Eat Fat, Get Thin!

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. And I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so you can go out there and live that big life you're meant to live. Now, today's show is all about how we got into this big fat mess. Yes, we're going to be talking about diabesity. We're going to talk about whether you should eat meat or not. And also we are going to hear from Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the top 10 most influential people in health right there with Oprah and Michelle Obama, I think sandwiched between the two sandwich, no real pun there. We are going to actually hear what he eats every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. So yes, today's guest is my pal, Dr. Mark Hyman. This guy is the real deal and such a nice guy. He lives it. He walks his talk. I will tell you, I've known him for gosh, I think maybe 15 years now and he keeps looking better. At 56, he's ripped and lean and lives the lifestyle. He is going to be talking about his new book, eat Fat, Get Thin. And let me just tell you a little bit about him. If you haven't heard of him, if you haven't seen him on Dr. Oz or the Today show or CBS this Morning or CNN or the View or the Katie Couric Show. He's a regular contributor on all of those or you haven't read any of his books. He's a nine time number one New York Times bestselling author. Amazing. But also he is an incredible advocate and crusader in the field of functional medicine. And he is now setting up a whole functional medicine center at Cleveland's clinic. It's the Cleveland Clinic center for Functional Medicine. He's the founder and medical director of the Ultra Wellness center and he's the chairman of the for the Institute for Functional Medicine. Yes, he is a rock star and I'm so excited to have him here with us today. So let's do it. Dr. Mark Hyman, welcome to the show.

Hi, how are you?

I am so glad to have you here today. This is such a cool topic and you're always a major fun interviewee. So let's just dive into it. And I think we are going to be talking a lot about fat today, right?

We are. My favorite subject is fat. I like to talk about it and I like to eat it.

Yes. And I will vouch for you that you are one lean, ripped guy in your 50s. So it's clearly working big time. So let's jump into just like, why are we just obese, overweight? Diabetes is rampant. What is going on? What do you think is the real reason for all of that?

Yeah, it's a bit crazy when you look at the statistics. We've like, I think there's been a sevenfold increase in diabetes since I was born. And when you look at the rates from 1980, it's like a hockey stick. It just goes right up. Diabetes and obesity just took off. And when you look at what happened at that time, we got into this low fat craziness with the dietary guidelines that were established to try to help prevent heart disease and obesity, but they actually did the opposite. And we just made them even worse with the food pyramid in 1992, where we told everybody to eat six to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal and pasta. So all of a sudden, pasta was a health food. Bagels were healthy and everybody was cutting out the fat. And what that did was it created a huge epidemic of what I call diabesity, which is this syndrome of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes. We increased our sugar consumption snack. Well, cookies. All that sugar in everything from peanut butter to salad dressing to tomato sauce. It's like we just got drowned in sugar. And that is actually what's driven this obesity and diabetes epidemic. And now it's all shifting.

So I've got to back up and just ask you the question because we've both been in this a long time and I know you've had your own transformation. So back during that whole fat free craze and that high carbs and fats the devil and all of that, what were you doing? Were you eating a low fat diet?

Oh, my God.

I was like eating pasta and bread and no fat. Maybe.

Yeah. And how is it working for you? Because I know you now, right?

Well, you know, I was about 15 pounds heavier. I had those little love handles I was starting to get. You know, I exercised a lot, but I just couldn't keep it off. And if I rode my bike 35 miles a day. I could kind of do it, but it wasn't sustainable. And I also didn't have the greatest digestion. I felt sluggish. And now at 56, I feel fitter and stronger than ever, while even exercising less. And I'm like, sort of shocked when I look at my body in the mirror because I'm like, well, what happened here? And all I've done is really cut out all the starches and sugars and put in tons of fat. And it's like unbelievable.

The exact opposite of what they told.

You to do, right in she lost 98 pounds and her diabetes, or hemoglobin A1C was 13, which is like poorly controlled, diabetic, on tons of meds. And now it's 5.5, which is totally normal. And people get off their insulin level, their insulin, their diabetes medication. It's really quite unbelievable. And what happens is if we actually do the opposite of what we were taught, which is eat a lot of fat, because when you cut out the carbs and sugar, what are you going to eat, right? So you either eat protein or you're going to eat fat. It's actually fat that actually doesn't spike insulin. It's fat that actually speeds up your metabolism. It's fat that cuts your hunger, it's fat that makes you feel good, it feeds your brain. And we're seeing more and more evidence that actually fat can be used to reverse all sorts of diseases from diabetes to heart disease to cancer to dementia to autism. It's even used in epilepsy, super high fat diets to stop seizures because it calms the brain down. So it's really quite fascinating to see how this whole tide is shifting. And I actually just amazed that people are still so afraid. I'm like, I have patients who are like, I don't want to eat avocado because it's going to make me fat. I don't want to have.

It is so amazing that one just will not die. I have my boyfriend, I put him on, dropped his carbs a little bit, upped his fat a bunch and the guy can't keep weight on. Now every morning we have to have a weigh in to make sure he hasn't lost too much weight. And the cool thing about eating fats is they're so, I mean, they're delicious, they're satiating, right? So you're not hungry, they make you feel good. So let's talk about. Because it's not just about eating fat. Certainly it's really about eating the right types of fat. So enlighten us on your favorite fats, which ones you should be eating, which ones you should run from.

Yeah, well, I think I call it the evil, the bad and the good. Right? The evil everybody agrees on those are trans fats. They should just not be part of a human diet or any living thing. It's margarine, shortening. It's basically 20% of our calories are soybean oil and most of that's hydrogenated fats, although it's starting to shift because the FDA has finally declared it is not safe to eat. So that's good, but it's still in the food supply, so be careful. The other is refined oils. So refined oils are now a staple of our diet. 20% of our calories comes from soybean oil. It's 1,000% more than we ate 100 years ago. And we never really ate refined seed and nut oils, sorry, refined seed and grain oils, except for olive oil, and that's a traditional oil. But most of these other oils like canola oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, these are often extracted with high heat temperatures using solvents. And we eat far greater quantities than we ever did and lower amounts of omega 3 fats, which are super essential and anti inflammatory that come from fish. And so this balances off and it creates a lot of inflammation in the body. So I recommend people get their omega 6 oils from the food they eat, from nuts and seeds, directly from. Even from eating chicken or beef, you'll get actually omega 6 fats. And then I recommend people use olive oil, coconut oil, which actually is saturated fat, but that's okay. Grass fed butter. We all thought saturated fat was bad, but there was a review of 72 studies, 600,000 people, they could find no link between saturated fat and heart disease. So I think we've sort of overblown that story as well. I even met with the head of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic. I was a little sheepish because I was like, well, you know, I'm publishing this new book. It's called Eat Fat, Get Thin. I just want to kind of give you a heads up. I know we work in the same center. I just, you know, I just want to be respectful. And he's like, hey, Mark, listen, I think we got the whole story wrong on fat. And I even think we got the story wrong on saturated fat. And I was sort of in shock. My mouth was hanging open. And he just wrote an editorial in the Annals of Internal medicine really trying to take apart this whole myth that fat is bad, even saturated fat. So I think if we're eating saturated fat in the context of a high sugar, high carb diet, it's bad news. But if you cut out the carbs and sugar and get your carbs from vegetables and get your carbs from the nuts and all the traditional foods that we can eat, you really will do a lot better.

So let's talk about. Because you, you've brought up meat and you know, since we're just going to go busting myths here, so we've talked fat and which fats are really great to have. And gosh, the fact that now you've got the cardiologist over at Cleveland writing articles about it. And I, I really credit you for being the person to stand up out there and say a lot of this stuff and get beaten up. So thank you for doing that and clearing up a lot of this stuff. So let's, let's take on meat and what to do about meat, because it's still another one that you hear too, is o, I don't eat any meat. So meat. Yes. No. Where are you at with that?

Well, you know, it's a really great question and it's a very religious subject. There's so much belief about it one way or the other. And for the book Eat Fat, Get Thin, I did a ton of research on meat because I really wanted to know for myself what the answer was. And I wrote 8,000 words on meat in the book. So I cover this in great detail. There's the ethical issues, there's the environmental issues, and then there's the health issues. So from the ethical issues, if you're a Buddhist and you don't want to eat meat because you don't want to harm anything because it could have been your mother in your last life or might be your mother in your next life, I have no problem with that. If you're looking at environmental issues, yes, factory farming of animals is extremely detrimental to the environment. Promotes climate change, degradation of our waters through river and lake and ocean, contamination from pesticides and fertilizers. It creates, it creates dead zones, it depletes our aquifers, it depletes our soil, and on and on. So I think from an environmental point of view, eating factory farmed meat is a bad idea. Then there's a question of does it actually hurt your health or benefit your health. And then you have the whole vegan kind of paleo debate. And I think there's arguments for both Sides, the truth is that I think no one's really done a great study comparing an ideal diet of someone who's eating meat versus an ideal diet of someone who's a vegan. And I think most of the meat studies that show risk have to do with meat eaters who are eating garbage. If you look at the studies where they do the population studies, they find that meat eaters have a high risk of heart attacks, but they also eat 800 more calories a day, they smoke more, they drink more, they exercise less, they eat less fruits and vegetables, more sugar and fried foods, and don't take any vitamins, of course they're going to have more heart attacks. And when you look at studies where they compared meat eaters who actually shopped at a health food store versus vegans who shopped at a health food store, there was no difference because the meat eaters ate a healthy diet and some meat. They had mostly vegetables and plant foods and no processed foods, little sugar and they had some grass fed meat, probably not an issue. So I think we still need more research, but I do think that meat should be downsized. We should have it be a condiment, I call it condominium. But it can be part of a healthy diet. And I think that the research is complicated on it. I think we need more. But I think my conclusion from reading all the research is that actually it's okay.

Right? But the right type of meat. And that's. I agree. It makes me crazy when they sit there and bash meat and they're looking at these factory cows shoved full of corn and soy and it's just ridiculous. You can't compare. That's not comparing apples to apples.

Yeah, right, exactly. So it has to be. It's quality over quantity. And it's the right kinds of meat. And I think ideally it's a little more expensive, but you can just have less of it.

Luckily now it's so much more readily available. So that's the thing. And of course we should always be eating, eating loads of vegetables and starting there. And that brings me to what everyone wants to know is what are you eating? So let's, let's walk through a typical day in Mark's life. You get up and what do you start with?

So what I often have is I've kind of alternate because I'm like, you know, busy. I alternate between two breakfasts. One is what I call a fat shake, which is essentially nuts and seeds and coconut butter and almond butter. So I use hemp seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts almond butter, coconut butter with berries like wild blueberries and maybe some coconut milk. And I blend it all up and it's full of fat and protein and antioxidants. Great way to start the day. Sometimes I'll have some pasture raised eggs, not pasteurized, but eggs raised on a pasture with a side of spinach or greens and an avocado poured with olive oil on top of that to get extra.

Did you hear that, everybody? You did olive oil on top to get extra fat.

So I put fat on fat on fat, right? Eggs and avocados and olive oil and it's a fat, fat, fat. And then dinner is varied, but for example, I had a lamb chop the other night with a grass fed lamb chop with a huge plate of asparagus and half a sweet potato. That was my dinner. Or I. I'll have like the other night I had salmon and wild salmon with roasted fennel and brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes with. Maybe I'll have a little bit of black rice. I like black rice sometimes. Maybe I'll have that every two or three weeks I'll have some black rice. But I like black rice. It's full of antioxidants, low glycemic index, and I love that. And I had a little miso tahini sauce on it. That was my dinner the other night.

What's most impressive here that people don't know is you're actually making this yourself, that you're an awesome chef too. Just to top it all off is to be like superhuman man.

Well, that's the thing. People think it takes a long time, but I'm super busy and I have three jobs and have two medical centers.

And a lot of kids around. Just a lot of stuff going on.

I don't have a ton of time, so I've learned how to make really simple food. And it's delicious and it doesn't take a long time.

And.

And I think it's really a skill. So people say, well, you know, I don't know how to fly a plane. Well, yeah, of course that's a complicated skill. It takes a long time to learn. But like, driving a car is not that hard. Most people can learn to drive a car pretty quickly. It's like that. It takes time. You need to know how to do it. But you have to get focused on learning that skill because cooking is the most important skill. You need to actually take care of your body. And if you have a body, you need to learn how to cook or you need to find someone who can cook for you or marry someone who's going to cook for you.

It's such an easy one to learn, though, and can be fun. So definitely one that I've done some videos with you which are just incredible. You showed us how easy it is to do simple things and how to put your morning together in a little mason glass and use a little handheld blender. So I know on your website you've got a lot of those resources, but what I really want to hear about is you've got a new book out, which I just love the title, Eat Fat Get Thin. Awesome. Maybe that'll start getting people to realize that that is the case. So tell us a little bit about the book.

Well, this book I've written a lot about sugar and carbs. And I realized people are confused about fat. I'm not telling them not to eat sugar. What are they going to eat? And I realized that I didn't really talk about fat. And no one's really tackled this. It's been slowly building over years that we now realize that fat is the answer to so many of our health issues. And for the first time since the guidelines, the Dietary Guidelines were established in 1980, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines completely eliminated any restriction on dietary fat. They even eliminated restriction on dietary cholesterol. And so the book is a journey through the history of, like, how we got in this trouble, why we got here, how are we going to get out of it? And then through all the murky science that people are confused about. Like you said, well, what about omega 6 fats? What about saturated fat? What about meat? What should I eat? I mean, people just don't know. So what I did was not only go through the 500 references, go through all the science, but actually create a very simple 21 day plan for people to follow to help them actually recharge their metabolism and use fat to actually make the food taste good and feel good at the same time.

Awesome. And I love that because you make such simple programs that are easy to follow. And then I know your patients have had incredible results. I'm going to just advise everyone this is one absolutely for your library is Eat Fat Get Thin. And also to go to your website for the book, which is eatfatgetthin.com and you know, I love talking to you, Mark. You're just awesome. You're always full of new information. I always get something out of it every time I talk to you, even though we've been talking together for what, decade plus. So you just stay up on all of the latest research and then you're out there getting it out to the world in simple, simple bite sized pieces. So I thank you so much for that. And again, it's eat fat, get thin. Get the book eatfategethin.com and after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question. So stay with me.

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This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Natalie.

Hi. I would like to know what you're supposed to do when you're sick, when you have a cold or a stomach flu. What am I supposed to eat? Because of course I don't feel like eating beef or veggies or whatever. I just right now I eat processed soup with toast, banana to keep me from having diarrhea, stuff like that. So what are we supposed to do when we're sick? We're just going with everything that we're to supposed, supposed to eat like Gatorade and jello and stuff like that to keep us hydrated. And when we're getting better, then we go back to doing a cycle one and a cycle two to get back in business or what are we supposed to do? I'd really like to know. Thank you.

All right, Natalie, so here's the deal. The most important thing you can do when you're sick besides rest is eat correctly. Because those comfort foods. And I'm saying that if you could see me right now, I've just put little parentheses around the comfort foods. Those can make you worse because most of those are high in sugar, right? They're sugar or starch. And starch is turning into sugar. And sugar can actually compete with vitamin C to enter the cells and sugar can lower the immune system, the very thing that you're trying to pump up to fight off the sickness. So what I want you to think of instead is I want you to create your own new comfort foods. We're going to do a reframe on this. And I'll tell you what, the best way to do a comfort food is to get out a crock pot. Throw in either some organic chicken or veggie broth, throw in some wild rice, it's a grass, not a grain. Throw in some lentils or some butternut squash, a little bit of chicken, you can make a really rich, satisfying soup or stew. I like to call it a stoup. Ultimate comfort food. And you know what, whether you're sick or not, this is one of the best things you can do. And if I were going to really help get you super healthy super fast, I'd start that soup with some bone broth. And I want to refer you back over to my girlfriend Dr. Kellyanne's bone broth diet here. Bone broth is great for. So get the bone broth in. Remember we just talked with Dr. Mark Hyman and loads of great veggies in there. Get some healthy fats in there and do that as your super comfort food. And the other thing that you can do is you can always make yourself a yummy JJ Virgin shake because those are loaded with everything that you need to boost up your metabolism and boost up your immune system. So good clean protein from our shake mix and then lots of healthy fats like Dr. Mark just talked about. Avocado, olive oil, chil chia seeds and then some almond or coconut milk. And coconut milk is great for your immune system as well. It creates has monolaurin or lauric acid in there, which is a great antiviral. So that's what I want to really impress is I want to reframe on your comfort foods to start thinking of things that are low sugar impact because the worst thing you could ever do when you were sick is to hit yourself with a bunch of sugar. Get in the healthy fats, get in the bone broth and you'll feel so much better and that will become your new normal for a comfort food. Now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. And I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. And be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy thee dare to live a life that matters.

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