In this video, Dr. Ekberg discusses the top foods to eat if you want to lose weight and keep it off. He emphasizes the importance of finding a sustainable lifestyle rather than a short-term diet. He explains that hormones such as insulin, leptin, and growth hormone play a role in weight loss and that the right foods can positively affect these hormones. He recommends foods like coconut cream, cheese, fatty fish, butter, olive oil, leafy greens, avocado, eggs, chicken wings, and grass-fed beef as they are low in carbs, high in fat or protein, and fill you up. Dr. Ekberg emphasizes the importance of finding balance and enjoying life while maintaining a healthy weight.
Key Insights:
- Long-term weight loss requires a lifestyle change, not just a temporary diet.
- Calories do matter, but other factors like metabolism and hormones (insulin, leptin, and growth hormone) play a significant role in weight loss.
- Foods that aid in weight loss reduce insulin production, decrease leptin resistance, and increase satiety.
- Recommended foods for weight loss include coconut cream, cheese, sardines, butter, olive oil, coconut oil, macadamia nuts, leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, avocado, eggs, chicken wings, and grass-fed beef.
- These foods have low carbohydrates, moderate to high protein, and high fat content, resulting in a moderate insulin response and increased satiety.
- Eating foods that promote weight loss helps reduce insulin resistance, lower the body’s setpoint, and maintain a healthy weight in the long term.
Transcript
Hello Health Champions. Today I want to talk about the top foods to eat if you want to not just lose weight but you want to lose the weight forever and keep it off. Coming right up. Hey, I’m Dr. Ekberg. I’m a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete, and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss anything.
What is the best way to lose weight? Wouldn’t that just be to eat nothing or to eat things that are the lowest in calories like lettuce and rice cakes? Sure, that would get you some initial results, but how long can you keep it up and would the body start adapting to gain it back? You might keep it up for 3 days or 2 weeks or if you’re really strong-willed then you might keep it up for three months and suffer all the way through, but how many people could keep it up for 5 years or 10 years or the rest of your life? No one can do that.
So if you get on a diet that you can’t keep up forever, then you will eventually gain the weight back. So what we’re really looking for is a lifestyle, we’re not looking for a diet. We’re looking for a way of life that we can maintain. Let me ask you in another way, how many of you are overweight and you want to be skinny next month but then be fat again next year? All right, I didn’t think so because nobody wants to lose the weight just to gain it back. But then why do we diet, why do we do these things over and over, and why do we follow the recommendations of dieting, eating less, moving more, restricting calories, going hungry when we know it won’t work?
What about calories? Do they matter in a physic sense? Yes, they do. You still have to burn more calories, more fuel than you take in. But in the physical body, in the human body, there are other factors. So, do you want to count calories? No, don’t do it. In the body, there are things like metabolism and hunger and satiety that are regulated, that are managed by hormones. And these hormones tell your metabolism what to do, they tell your body how many calories to burn and how many to take in. So, you can’t affect the equation from here, you have to affect it from here. And these hormones are insulin, leptin, and growth hormone, in particular.
So the food that will ultimately help you lose weight forever is the food that will affect all of these variables in a positive direction. Let’s take a look. These foods must reduce insulin because long-term high insulin produces insulin resistance, and in the presence of high insulin levels, there is virtually no fat-burning taking place. So as insulin resistance goes down, fat burning goes up. Another factor that depends on that is leptin resistance. When we’re leptin resistant, then the brain doesn’t hear the message that we’re full. The fat cells are getting fat, they’re making leptin saying we’ve had enough, but the brain isn’t listening. So leptin has to go down in order to reduce the appetite and to lower the body’s setpoint.
So what is the setpoint? Every time that you yo-yo diet, you lose the weight and you gain it back plus 2 pounds. You lose the weight, you gain it back plus 2 pounds. Every time, the setpoint goes up by a couple of pounds, and the body thinks that’s the normal weight, and that has primarily with leptin resistance to do. However, that, in turn, depends on insulin.
The second thing that must happen is that your food has to make you full. It has to increase satiety so that once you’re really full, you can go longer before the next meal. You can have longer fasts. If you go longer between meals, that means in the end you’re eating less. And it also increases hormones. The longer you fast, the longer you go without food and you’re in fat-burning, the more the body will increase human growth hormone, which again is a fat-burning hormone.
The problem with this recommended food pyramid is that it is the opposite of all of these criteria, and that is why this is a perfect recipe to gain weight. Let’s jump right in.
Number 10 is coconut cream. It is a staple in many Asian cuisines. It’s great for smoothies and rich sauces. It’s very low carb, very low protein, high in fat, very low insulin response. It’s quite filling, and it’s inexpensive. Another plus is that very few people have any kind of sensitivity to it, so it’s safe for most people.
Number 9 is cheese, sour cream, creme fraiche. They’re low in carb, moderate to high in protein, so they’re higher than coconut cream, for example, and therefore they have more of an insulin response than coconut cream would. But on the other hand, it is also more filling. One potential problem with dairy is allergies. A lot of people are sensitive to it, and if you are, it can help to eat the cheese rather than the milk, and it can help to use the fermented products, the sour cream and the creme fraiche, instead of just the regular milk.
Number 8 is sardines in olive oil, and this is other fatty fish as well. So you could use mackerel or salmon, any fatty fish, just don’t get it in canola oil or soy oil. If it’s packed in tomato sauce or something, that’s fine too. It has zero carbs, it is moderate to high in protein, so therefore, it is moderate insulin response, but it’s very filling, and as a bonus, it gets you a ton of omega-3s, the anti-inflammatory essential fatty acids.
Numbers 7 is butter, olive oil, and coconut oil. They have zero carbs, zero to trace protein, they’re very high in fat, and therefore, it’s almost zero insulin response. It is quite filling, but it’s not really a meal in itself. So obviously, wouldn’t take a bottle of olive oil and you start chugging it, but you can pour it plenty on vegetables and other foods.
Number 6 is macadamia nuts. They are my favorite because they just edge out the pecans in terms of the numbers, but they’re very close together. So these are the two best nuts in terms of being low carb, low protein, very high fat, and they’re also high fiber, so they’re filling in the sense that they just create some bulk. They’re very low insulin response, they’re quite filling. The only thing to watch for is that they’re so tasty that it’s possible to overeat.
Number 5 is leafy greens and non-starchy vegetables. So even though this is basically pure carbohydrate, it is not a carbohydrate that will raise a lot of insulin. It’s very low carb in the sense that the carbs you’re absorbing is very low. It is low protein, very low fat, and high in fiber. So again, it provides some bulk and it provides some substrate for your microbiome. It’s high in minerals, and that might be the number one reason to eat and to include a lot of leafy vegetables and non-starchy vegetables in your diets because there’s so little fuel that you actually absorb. Then it has a low insulin response, and it is quite filling, especially if you combine it with some fat. So put some good olive oil dressing, rich sauces, or anything together with these vegetables.
Number 4 is avocado, nature’s perfect food. Very low carb, very low protein, moderate fat, high fiber again. It is plenty full of minerals, and it’s very low in the insulin response. And because of the high fat content, it is quite filling even though it doesn’t have a lot of protein in it.
Number 3 is eggs, and especially the yolk. It’s very, very satisfying. The egg white has the protein, the egg yolk has all the other nutrients. It is very low carb, it is moderate to high in protein, it has low to moderate insulin response. It’s very filling, it’s a complete food. You can certainly make a whole meal out of just eggs. Again, some people might have some sensitivities, so watch out for that. If they do, it is usually more against the egg white that they’re reacting.
Number 2 is chicken wings. It has zero carbs, high protein, high fat, moderate insulin response. It is very filling, and it is certainly a complete food. You can easily make a whole meal out of it, serve some vegetables on the side. The only thing to watch for is to try to get the best quality chicken, get it’s organic and pastured if at all possible because all of these meats and foods are only as healthy as whatever they have been fed.
And number 1 on my list is grass-fed beef, for several reasons. It has zero carbs, moderate to high fat. A lot of people don’t realize, they think when they eat a steak or when they eat some ground beef, that they’re eating mostly protein. And they do have a lot of protein, but something that has 10 percent fat, let’s say you’re eating ground beef with 10 percent fat, that is actually 51 percent of the calories from fat, even though beef has about 20 percent protein. The fat is more dense in terms of fuel. So very quickly, even in something lean like 10 percent fat ground beef, you’re actually getting more than half of the calories from fat. If you eat 20 percent fat in the ground beef, now 70% of the calories are from fat and only 30% from protein, even though you’ve got the impression that you’re eating just protein and meat. It is high in protein, it’s moderate insulin response, it’s very filling. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of any food that is more filling. If you just want to get really full for a long time, then I think steak and meat would be the way to go. And a lot of carnivores are finding this out. If they combine carnivore with one meal a day, then there is no problem at all to kind of maintain that one meal because it’s so filling. It is a complete food, and it is virtually unheard of to be sensitive to it. Some people may have a little bit of trouble digesting it if they don’t have enough hydrochloric acid, but you basically cannot be sensitive or have allergies. I mean, you could, but it’s very rare. So it’s one of the safest foods to eat. And in addition, it is becoming more and more available. It’s relatively easy to find good quality grass-fed beef these days. You can find it in Publix and Kroger and Walmart and so on.
So remember, it’s not about losing weight, it’s about losing weight and keeping it off. It’s about allowing your body to return to balance, to reduce insulin resistance, reducing leptin resistance, and allowing the setpoint to go down because otherwise, you’ll be fighting with weight for the rest of your life. This is the recipe to find balance. You can stop fighting and start enjoying life and finding a balance between you and the food you eat. If you enjoyed this video and you’d like to learn more about how the body works and how to get truly healthy, I think that you’ll really love that video. Thank you so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next one.
