--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so glad you hit play on this episode because I just finished one of the most eye-opening conversations I have ever had on this podcast. What was the topic? Burning fat and losing weight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're sick of dieting, if you're tired of all the fads, if you're like me and you're just frustrated because you're not quite sure what to do anymore and the things that you used to eat or that you used to do, they're just no longer working... the conversation you're about to hear is going to blow your mind. I actually thought I knew what I needed to do to burn fat and lose weight. I just had my mind blown.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The person you're about to meet isn't here to sell you anything except for what he calls smoking hot research and a whole lot of science that is gonna help you jumpstart your metabolism, activate your body's natural fat burning ability, simply by, get this, eating the right foods. His message is so empowering. His passion just comes through in every word he says. His advice is specific and science-backed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So wherever you are in your health journey or your weight loss journey or whatever journey you're on, world-renowned Dr. William Lee is here to tell you, based on 30 years of scientific research, that yes, your body can lose weight, you can burn fat and yes you can rewire your metabolism. And by the time you're done listening, you're going to look at your body and the topic of burning fat in an entirely new way. It is time to ditch the diets and start using science.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your buddy Mel Robbins. I am so fired up that you're here. Can you tell? You know, there are moments where you tune in and you're like, "Whoa, Mel has eaten something today." Well, I've eaten up our guest and everything he's going to share with you. It is so exciting what we're about to talk about. And it is such an honor to spend time with you and to be together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're brand new, I want to welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I think this is going to be one of those episodes that can change the trajectory of your life. And I know you're going to share it with a ton of people that you care about. And I also know you're the type of person who values your time and that you're interested in learning about ways that you can improve your health. I love that. And I love that for you. I love that for the people that care about you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you or anyone that you care about is interested in losing weight or burning fat or just feeling better and getting healthier, holy smokes, you chose the exact podcast episode to listen to at the exact moment because Dr. William Lee is in our Boston studios. So let me tell you a little bit about him.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee is a renowned physician scientist and the founder and president of the Angiogenesis Foundation here in Boston, where he's educated over 40,000 physicians and is currently working on cutting-edge research on blood vessels and clinical applications of angiogenesis. His foundation has over 100 scientific publications in leading medical journals and textbooks. He's also served on the faculties at Tufts, Dartmouth, and Harvard Medical Schools.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee's work has impacted more than 50 million people worldwide, and his work has led to effective prevention, novel treatments, and even reversal of diseases that span cancer, chronic wounds, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and vision loss. And today, this *New York Times* bestselling author of two books, *Eat to Beat Disease* and *Eat to Beat Your Diet* is here in our studios to teach you the science that you need to know to unlock your body's natural ability to burn fat, lose weight, and be healthier.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So please help me welcome Dr. William Lee to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Dr. Lee, I'm so excited that you're here. And the way that I wanted to start is, could you tell the person that's listening what they might expect to change in their life if they take everything that you're about to share with us today to heart and they apply it?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You know what I always tell people is that it's possible to love your food and love your health at the same time. So you don't fear your food, you lean into it, and you get to really enjoy your life finally.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I actually love that you're starting there because I feel like so many of us have a very conflicted love-hate relationship with food. And I think you're about to empower us to be able to understand how to love food and also have it love your body and your health.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah. And by the way, it's not about giving permission. It's really about allowing our own human nature to take over our being because we're all hardwired. Part of our humanity is based around food. That goes back to history. And what I try to do is to bring it right to the present because we all have it inside us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. I've never heard anyone say it like that. So Dr. Lee, according to our research, about a third of our listeners have set a goal to either lose weight or to start a new diet in the new year. And I would love to have you connect the dots between metabolism and how it functions and what your research has shown about those of us that have excess body fat and that are carrying more extra weight around.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah, well, look, losing weight is a natural goal. Most of us think about losing weight in terms of the number on a scale or maybe the size of your clothing or fitting the comfort of fitting into your clothing or maybe how you look in the mirror, right? It's pretty crude. And it turns out that if you care about your health, if that's really your priority for losing weight, you want to burn down the kind of fat that you can't see.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And fat that you can't see is not wiggly jiggly. It's actually located deep inside the tube of your body. Our bodies are really, if you stand up straight, you know, and you were to do a scan across our body, it's like a tube. We've got an oval. Our organs are inside there. And really, really harmful body fat that expands is called visceral fat. And it wraps around our organs like a baseball glove. And when it grows, it expands everything inside the sack of your, the tube of your body, which is why your waistline increases, right? So the more visceral fat you have, the bigger your waistline has to be. The belt is just being expanded more and more and more. That's different than the fat that's under your arm.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I just want to kind of unpack this a little bit because I think if you're a person that has struggled to lose weight, you feel very discouraged and you feel a lot of frustration that the weight's not going to come off. And you're making a very big distinction between the kind of fat that might be flabby arms versus that very stubborn fat that starts to gather around the midsection of a lot of people's bodies.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah, well, look, body fat isn't all just what we think it is, right? So look, we've all done it. You're taking a shower in the morning, you step out, you're drying yourself off, you're naked. Out of the corner of the eye, you look in the mirror and you see a lump or a bump that you didn't like to see. And you're like, "Ugh." Then what's the next thing you do? You step on the scale. And if that number is the exact number you were hoping for, damn.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's not what I do. I put a towel on and hide from the mirror. And then I go eat a donut because I'm depressed. So I'm like making all the wrong choices.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Well, but then you say like, "Man, I got to do something about this," right? Like it's a realization. But the body fat you can see is not the part that's harmful to your overall health.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? Okay.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Because fat comes in two different types of fat. You've got white fat, which is what you can see. And you've got brown fat, which you can't see. But I got to explain a little bit further.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: The word "fat" immediately stimulates kind of this negative reaction in our minds, right? That's how we've been trained in society, right? But there is a situation where body fat is actually good and it makes everyone smile. And you know when that is?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Babies.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, that's true. They're so cute.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: When you see a big fat baby, pudgy, cute, you want to pinch its cheeks, all right? And big balloon-like arms and legs, everyone smiles. And that's how we know that fat can't be all bad, right? In fact, if you saw a baby that had chiseled cheeks and long, thin arms and thighs, like a runway model...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, I'd be like, "Somebody call child services. 911," right?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. So the fact of the matter is that our body fat is really, really important. It actually releases hormones. It's one of the endocrine organs. Our body fat's actually an organ in our body.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, your body fat is an organ?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Body fat's an organ. It actually produces hormones, and these fat-produced hormones actually help our body absorb blood glucose. So the fuel tank actually produces the stuff that our body needs to run the engine glucose so we have energy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee, that is so cool.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And in fact, one of these hormones is called adiponectin. Now, you might not have ever heard of adiponectin. Actually, a lot of doctors never heard of adiponectin. But what have I told you? Adiponectin works with insulin, and we know insulin basically helps your blood glucose, takes all that energy. And, you know, people talk about glucose spikes and high glucose and low glucose and insulin insensitivity. Look, insulin is the hormone that is made by your pancreas in order to be able to draw blood glucose into your muscles so you have energy, so you can run. If you've got problems with your insulin, that can lead to diabetes, right?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: But do you know that insulin can't do the job by itself very well?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. Insulin needs a partner. It's like two cops on a beat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Don't tell me it's fat.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It is. Adiponectin is the hormone that insulin... which is made by fat... helps insulin do its job. Adiponectin is so important, by the way, Mel, that if I were to take a sample of your blood and send it to the lab and ask it to measure every hormone in your body, everyone, okay? Estrogen, thyroid hormone, you name it. I will tell you, your adiponectin will be 1,000 times higher in amount than any other hormone in your body. 1,000. Tells you it's important. Fat made by fat, by body fat. So body fat actually is good. It actually helps us, not surprisingly, use our energy.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, if you have too much fat, guess what happens? The fat gets really, really big. It gets really, really inflamed. And now the hormone engine doesn't work anymore. You're not producing the right amount of adiponectin. Now insulin is not going to work very well. Now you're going to have a metabolic problem. And this is why overeating, and overeating especially low-quality food, is so damaging to your body. But because it's all hardwired into us, if we realize we have the agency to be able to make those choices for better quality fuel and don't eat too much and get a little more active...
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, that makes me think of another question, Dr. Lee. Is there a way to lose weight and still enjoy food? I mean, how do you want us to think about this?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. So I like to think about it in a much simpler way.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Metabolism is how your body gets energy and burns down energy, just like if you were a car.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Human metabolism is really about just putting fuel in your body. Right. Once you're done eating, it's kind of like you've stopped filling up your tank. Now you're driving back on the road about your way, you're burning fuel. And that's what we do when we finish eating. We're loading up in the fuel. We're finished. Now we're burning the fuel. And basically that's how we live day in and day out. That's how we work. And the quality of fuel actually matters.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, I want to say one thing about besides quality of fuel, it's quantity of fuel. You fill up your tank, it's a metal tank, all right? And you fill it up. When a gasoline reaches a certain level, it'll force the nozzle to go click and no more gas will come out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I feel like I don't have a click, Dr. Lee.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. Well, imagine what would happen. And this is what happened used to be in the old days with filling stations. No click. What's going to happen? You're going to easily overfill your tank. If you're not paying attention, the tank's going to overflow. The gasoline comes right out of the car, runs down the side of the car, around the tires, and pools around your shoes. Right. Now you are standing in the midst of a dangerous, toxic, flammable mess.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Right? Okay. Now that's what happens at the gas station. At the dinner table, or the pantry, or the drive-by convenience store, all right? If you don't actually control the amount of fuel that you put in your body, because we don't have a clicker, just as you said, we can keep filling it up. What happens is that our fuel tanks are our fat cells. Our metabolism uses body fat. Body fat's very, very important. It's healthy. We want our fat cells to be what they serve as our fuel tank.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: When you eat, you use some of the energy just to run around, but the rest of it is stored in the fuel tank, which is our fat cells. We call them adipose cells, adipose tissue, and you add up a lot of little tiny little fat cells, you get a chunk of fat. Now, because we don't have a clicker, the more you eat, you're going to fill up your tank. Oh, you're still eating? Let's fill up another tank and fill that one up. And by the way, each tank car is metal and fixed. It won't expand. Body fat, fat cells can expand to three times, 300%.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You can really blow up a fat cell with fuel, meaning food that you eat, up to 300%, like a balloon, like a water balloon. So now you're still eating, let's blow up another one. Oh, you're still? Another one. One more piece of cake, one more second helping, another one. Oh, and by the way, once you run out of fat cells, guess what? Your body will look for stem cells to create brand new fat cells, and now you can keep on loading them up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, so you're basically, if you eat beyond the click in terms of what you actually just need for fuel, your body is designed to, through fat cells, to create storage tanks for all this fuel. And when you run out of the storage tanks in your fat cells, your stem cells actually kick into gear and create more cells to hold this energy.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: More fuel tanks, exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. And this can happen over the course of your whole life.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, excess body fat in this situation is exactly the overfilling of your fuel tanks. So if you follow your hard wiring, if you fill up your tank only to what it's supposed to be and don't overflow, you will actually follow those four patterns. But how many people do you know who control their eating in a way that's mindful so you're not overflowing your fuel tank?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And the reason I'm actually saying this is that over the course of the year, you pick the holiday. All right. You could talk about the winter holidays. You can talk about Easter. You could talk about the summer of Fourth of July. You could talk about any holiday you want. All right. Thanksgiving. You're talking about the experience we've all had, which is sitting down with family and friends with incredible food in front of you. And what you want to do is fill that plate up and eat it and then go back for seconds. Right.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And how many of us have felt this? Every one of us. You have one more or two more forkfuls after that second plate. And you're like, "Wait a minute. I shouldn't have done that." You know that you've actually overfilled your tank.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Right. That's like not the click. That's the leak. You're now you're sitting in this toxic, flammable mess. And in fact, by the way, that extra fuel will indeed leak out of your fat cells eventually. And when I use the word flammable, it is very inflaming. So in other words, when you overeat too many calories, you blow up your body fat, it'll eventually be like a water balloon, like it can't hold anymore. It starts to leak out. And now you've got fat that leaks out all throughout your body.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You know the organ that actually picks up all that fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It's the liver. So you've heard of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, I hadn't.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That is a condition where you overeat. The fat flows out of your fat cells because they can't hold anymore. You've strained the storage capacity to the limit. The fat leaks out into your cells, gets trapped in your liver, and your liver cells become replaced by fat. It used to be alcohol and hepatitis that were the biggest causes of liver transplant.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, livers are failing all around the country because of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So this is the silent epidemic. It's nasty because when your liver fails, that's your detox. People talk about going to detox, you know, going to the spa for a cleanse, detoxing. Your liver does it every single day. So we need to do that.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: The good news is all of this, the extra body fat, the leakiness, the inflammation, the clogged up liver that's going to fail on you... it's all reversible if you make good choices. Even if you have a lifetime, decades of making bad choices, you can actually work your, swim your way back to your baseline operating system.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, I want to offer up a visual for the person listening. And I want to see if this could be helpful. So as you were talking about the fact that we all have, that food is fuel, that we have a tank for fuel inside of us. And when we overeat or we just have too many calories or we're too sedentary and we're not intaking enough calories for the fuel that we need, but we're taking in more, it's like your body finds all these extra fuel tanks inside your body. And that's basically the purpose of fat cells, storing extra energy and fuel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I all of a sudden got this visual of a pickup truck. And the pickup truck is barreling down the highway and it's not just got a full tank of gas, but in the back bed of the pickup truck, there are all kinds of fuel cans just piled high. And if I'm listening to the good news and I'm listening to your excitement about the fact that your metabolism, based on research, your ability to burn the calories and burn the fuel effectively, that it's basically the same for your life, no matter how many fuel tanks you got in the back of the pickup truck. And then if you were to start to follow the advice, slowly but surely, that pickup bed would become empty because your internal body's ability to just drive down the highway, it is always there, no matter how much fat is stored in your body. Is that true?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That is completely true. And that means you can offload that fuel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Okay, so if you exercise and you're burning more fuel, that's basically throwing some of the tanks off the pickup trucks. You're lightening the load, so to speak. So now I want to know, Dr. Lee, how the hell do I lose this fat? You know, I see all over the place, "10 days to shed 20 pounds" and all these diets that, you know, keto this and do that over here and do this. What do you actually do?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Let me give you some really simple tools that anyone can actually use that they probably even heard about. One is called intermittent fasting.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: But I'm going to debunk that too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God. So you're telling me to do it, now you're debunking it?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Let me tell you, first of all, intermittent fasting is thought of as a health fad, a trend that everybody does. And you got to go, "Oh, what is it? Like 16 hours of not eating and squeeze everything in eight hours?" Hey, listen, very hard for someone like me and probably like you running around all the time, okay? It doesn't work very well. But let me tell you that there's more than one way to get at it. And the best way to intermittently fast is to take advantage of the fact that when you're sleeping, when we're sleeping, we're not eating.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: We're not eating, we're fasting. Okay. So sleeping is intermittent fasting because we don't sleep all the time. And when we get up and we break our fast, which is called breakfast. All right. And that's the best way to get intermittent fasting. But I got to give you a little understanding of this. Okay. Because after you eat the last bite of food the night before, all right, your body is like, "Okay, is that it? That's the last drop of fuel we're going to get tonight?" The moment it realizes you're not going to put any more fuel in your body, your metabolism recognizes, it goes from fuel storing mode. "Come on, give some more. Let me put it in my fat. Oh, no more food. Let's now switch gears," okay? Like literally like a gearbox in a car. If your body's a Ferrari, all right, and you're going to switch gears when you're no longer eating, it switches into fuel burning mode from fuel storing. "Let's load up that body fat to fuel burning." So when you're sleeping and not eating, your body's burning down fuel from your fat cells. You're actually losing weight, burning fat while you're sleeping.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, how long do you have to not eat for this to work?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So this is actually the important part. We know that eight hours of sleeping is the healthy amount of sleeping for all kinds of things, brain health and metabolic health and anti-aging and everything else. You want to sleep eight. It's more like seven to nine. Eight's like right in the middle. Eight hours is where you're going to start to get that benefit. But let me tell you how anybody can expand their body's own hardwired fat burning period.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: What you do is you expand it on both sides: before you go to bed and when you get up in the morning. Let me talk about the night before. All right. So like if you eat, sit down at seven and you're done at eight. When you put your dishes away, no more eating. All right. There's no midnight snacking. Don't take a bag of chips with you and sit on the couch and watch the game or whatever else you might do. All right. Don't be nibbling. No last minute before bedtime. Open and get that piece of pie. When you're done at eight, when you put your dishes away, that's it.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, let's say you go to bed at 11 o'clock. I'm just going to give an example. Eat dinner at seven. Stop eating at eight. Put your dishes away. No more food until the next day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And no drinking?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And no drinking. Actually, tea is OK. All right. As long as you don't put milk in there. No drinking for sure. OK. Anything with no more calories. OK. OK. Eight o'clock. Let's say you go to bed at 11. That's three hours between eight and 11. Three hours. You just bought yourself three extra hours of fat burning time. 11 to seven in the morning. That's eight hours. Okay. So that's three hours plus eight hours. That's 11 hours of fat burning that you've given your body just by not eating after you put the dishes away.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, when you get up in the morning, this is like a super little easy tip that I tell anybody. I practice it myself. Get up in the morning. Don't do what your mom told you to do, right? So when we were growing up, "Get out of bed, get down to that breakfast table, eat something quickly so you can actually go to school and learn something. Don't be hungry." No, we're adults. And it turns out you don't need to eat right away in the morning. Get up in the morning, take your time getting ready. And for me, before I eat anything, I will go for a walk, I'll open the door, get some fresh air, maybe read a book, check my email, whatever. Wait at least an hour from the time you wake up until the time that you put the first thing in your mouth.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, that's one extra hour. So three hours the night before bed, eight hours, that's 11 total of fasting, meaning fat burning time. Now add one more hour, okay, by not eating right away. And you've got 11 plus one is 12 hours, 12 out of 24 hours, 50% of your day, you've had your body burning down harmful body fat, extra body fat. That's the simplest way to use intermittent fasting, 12 hours.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now you might say, "Is 12 hours enough?" Yeah, because eight hours is enough. 12 hours is a little bit better. Clinical studies have shown that 12 hours of fasting in a way that I've told you actually is plenty of time to actually lose weight over time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So are you saying that this is a tool that based on the research, anybody can use to eat in an eight hour window from like noon to 8 p.m.?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yep.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that will help you, no matter what your health looks like, that will help you kick into fuel burning and fat burning mode without really having to even worry about the food yet that you're eating.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You don't have to break into a sweat doing that because it's all very easy. I mean, plenty of people are already doing this, but the key thing, Mel, is that you want to make sure that when you finally do eat, whether it's breakfast or lunch, you don't overfill your tank.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, how do you know when you're full? I know this is a kind of an odd question to ask, but I love food. Like, especially if I've got something in front of me that I really love, like a big juicy burger that, you know, the kind you squeeze to try to get in your mouth and some of the juices coming down. There is no way I need to eat that entire thing, especially if it's a smash burger with a couple patties. And so how do you know when enough is enough and the click has happened?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Right. So it's all hardwired inside us. And the problem why we miss the cues that our body sends us that we have actually filled up our tank is because we eat too fast.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, all right.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So when you eat quickly, right? Busy people tend to eat really quickly. Distracted people tend to eat quickly. If you're just checking out social media, you're not paying attention, and you're eating by yourself, you're just shoveling food in your mouth, you're paying attention to something else. That is a common mistake that we all make: we're distracted and we're used to just shoveling all the abundant food that's placed in front of us.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Let me just tell you something that I learned before I went to medical school to be a doctor. I did a gap year. And in my gap year, I went to Italy and Greece, the Mediterranean. And what I was interested in studying there was the connections between food, culture, and health in those places. Now, this was long before people were talking about the Mediterranean diet. I came from America. I landed in Italy. I was staying with a host family. Within a day or two, I began realizing, "Wow, the way that people eat in the Mediterranean is completely different than what I grew up and what I'm used to."
--:-- Dr. William Lee: We in America sit down and we're gobbling food. We're complaining about things we're eating with somebody else. We're conversing about some problems going on. We're eating fast. There's way too much food in front of us or we're eating alone.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And you're eating alone. You're distracted by something else. And before long, you know, you've cleaned the whole plate. You don't even realize what you've eaten. It might taste good, but you're not thinking about it. In the Mediterranean, in Italy specifically, and it's as clear as day for me, you'd sit down for food. You would never eat by yourself. You would always eat with a friend or a family member or a coworker. All right. You would take the time to order the food. And when the food comes, you're not kvetching or complaining about your boss or, you know, the family or the weather or the sports team. You are sitting when the food arrives full of gratitude and talking about the joy of the food. "Man, this pasta was just like my mother made. Is this the right season for it? Yeah, you should see the mushrooms that we have. How do you make it?" People would talk about their food, okay? The food was not just something that was shoved in front. You would engage with the food. And when you're eating the food, you would taste the food and talk about the food and people would enjoy the actual part of eating. The enjoyment of the food, the mindfulness was completely different. And by the way, they never over-serve you. All right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So do you have a rule for that? Like, would you use like a sandwich plate instead of a dinner plate?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So here's what I always tell people: whatever your eye wants to actually put onto your plate, right? So think about a, this is the classic meal I always talk of, the Thanksgiving meal, like you're all getting together, maybe you're having all day. And now it's all this great food that reminds you of all the happy times. You're going to load your plate up, right? What I tell people, that's a mistake. Whatever your eyes tell you you want to put in, only take two thirds of that plate.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Leave a third back. All right. Never go for seconds. All right. You will actually, and just eat those two thirds and really enjoy the taste, savor the taste. You know, if you're a foodie like me, you enjoy great tasting food. All right. Doesn't have to be fancy. It could be super simple. It could be comfort food. Eat it slowly to savor it. Okay. That savoring the food is something I notice is always done in the Mediterranean and also in Asia, you know, two of the healthiest cuisines in the world. And it slows you down.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, Dr. Lee, you have a four-week meal plan that you've designed based on almost 30 years of experience. Can you break down some of the key features for me and the person listening?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah, okay. So wherever your starting point is, this is the key thing. You can always begin a healthier life and get over your own body fat. Like, you can win that battle easily by doing a couple of things. I tell the first thing you do is to do an assessment. A food diary is what I'd call it. Okay. Don't try anything. Just do what you're going to do for a couple of weeks. Take out a piece of paper or maybe even notes on your mobile device and just record what you're eating and how much you're eating every single meal.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why is that important?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because a lot of us don't realize what we're eating and how much we're eating. Every time you snack, pop out that piece of paper or your notes section and write it down. No guilt, no shame. This is all about just recording it.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. Now, after two weeks, go back and look at it. And most of us will be surprised at what we ate, how often we ate, and how much we actually ate. By having that self-realization, by documenting it, it's kind of like you're trying to develop an allowance. You're teaching children how to spend money responsibly. Write down what you spent and then add it up at the end of a couple of weeks, and then you'll know exactly what you did.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And after recommending this to patients and researching this, what might the person who does this find or have a realization other than "I eat a lot"?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Well, I would say first, the amount of food that they ate and how frequently they ate. "Man, I had no idea that I ate that much and that often." So the second epiphany is by identifying what kind of food most people go, "Geez, I kind of eat junky food." But just documenting that for yourself, again, no judgment. This is just so you can see where you are. And that's the first phase. I think then you go on to the swap in phase.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? Swap in? I thought you said swamp. I'm like, that doesn't sound good.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Swap in, right? Because basically people go, "Oh, so now's the part where I actually have to deprive myself, right?" Nope. I'm saying, listen, you know when you're not eating good stuff. Let's talk about swapping in. Take something that you love to eat that's healthy and swap it in. There's all kinds of things that we love to eat that is healthy. And that's in my book, *Eat to Beat Your Diet*. I give lists of 200 different food items, ingredients that are all delicious that you can swap in. The reason I call it swap in is because when you're eating something, you're displacing something that is not so good for you. The more good stuff that you swap in, less room you're just going to have in your life for the stuff that's not so good for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what I love about that is because you hear the word diet or lose weight and you immediately are like, "Oh," and it feels like you're going to have to restrict. And your swap in methodology, it makes a lot of sense because if I think about it, I could eat a bag of chips and not even think about it. I'm not going to eat a bushel of apples. So if I'm adding in something healthy, I'm probably not going to overeat it anyway.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Exactly. That's the other thing. But you might also find you'll be a little bit more mindful. So do an assessment. Step one. Number two, swap in. Number three is then do the intermittent fasting part that I told you. Now, the key though with this, don't overeat when it is time to eat. That's the two-thirds rule. And one thing I'll tell you that's a Japanese saying that came from Confucius is called "stop when you're 80% full." Now, I'm going to tell you how you know this. The Japanese saying is called *Hara Hachi Bun Me*. *Hara Hachi Bun Me* really means just listen to your body when you're about 80% full.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you know when you're 80% full? Well, I have to unbutton my pants usually.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: By the time you feel full, you've already passed 80%. It's true. You kind of just feel that sense that, "Oh, but there's just one more bite," and it's not ever as good as the one that came before. Here's an example, Mel. You know when you're parking a car in a parking lot, and there's those little cement things in front? You're pulling it up a little bit further, a little bit further. When you start hitting that, when you hear that grating sound in your car, you've gone too far. That's what happens when you have to unbutton your pants.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's true.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So, if you eat slowly and then listen, this is a very important point. You want to stop eating when you're satisfied, not when you're full. When you feel, "Oh, that was pretty good." Not when you're full. We're so trained to look at the volume of our stomach, the pouching. We're looking for, we're trained to unbutton our pants. But really, if you eat slowly and mindfully and take your time and savor your food, at some point when you put your fork down, you're going to go, "That was pretty good. I like that." That's 80%.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. Dr. Lee, I have so many more questions I want to ask you, but this feels like a great moment to take a pause and give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. But don't you dare go anywhere. In fact, I want you to share this episode with everyone in your life because everyone needs to learn this, to apply it, to be able to use it. I just have so many more questions. We are just getting started. Don't go anywhere. We will have more with the amazing Dr. William Lee when we return. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are getting to learn the science and the research around how we can boost our metabolism, burn fat and lose weight from the extraordinary Dr. William Lee. So, Dr. Lee, what are the top five foods that we should add in to boost our natural metabolism and lose weight?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. So a lot of people don't know this, but there are certain foods that will fire up your body's extra fat burning machinery. Now, we didn't talk about this yet, so I'm going to quickly slide this in. You've got white fat, which I told you is the wiggly, jiggly kind you see in the mirror.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It's under your chin. It's under your arm.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're looking at me when you say this. Are you saying that I have white fat under my chin?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: The wiggly, jiggly time. The muffin top, the thigh, the butt. That's white fat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, my God. Have you seen me naked? Dr. Lee, you're describing me.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I'm sorry, Chris. And it's also in the tube of your body, the visceral fat that expands your waistline. Look, our body is a tube, right? Think about it. And inside the tube of our body, it's our organs, but our fat can grow inside there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Our guts are called our viscera. So visceral fat is the fat that grows around our guts. The more you load up that extra fuel, the more that fat grows, starts to strangle your organs. And when it becomes inflamed, it's really dangerous. That's a dangerous kind of fat. So you want to burn that fat down. Now, it's called brown fat. Brown fat is not wiggly jiggly. We love brown fat. Brown fat is close to the bone. It's not even near the surface. It's around our necks, plastered around our necks, under our breastbone, a little bit between our shoulder blades and scattered in our belly a little bit. Brown fat is not white fat. Brown fat is a kind of fat that when you activate brown fat, it fires it up like a space heater. Actually, another analogy that's even clearer is that if you've got a gas cooking range in your kitchen and you want to heat up some water to make some soup or some tea, what do you do? You go to the gas range, you turn the knob, click, click, click, whoosh. That's what brown fat does. It burns the jiggly fat. It burns away the jiggly fat when you turn on brown fat. You burn down the white fat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So how the heck do I turn on the brown fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. So we originally evolved brown fat for hibernation. Cold temperatures trigger brown fat and the brown fat burns down the white fat to give energy and heat. It's a process called thermogenesis. So when you hear about cold plunges being good for your metabolism, cold showers, it does. Indeed it does because cold temperatures in our body will trigger on our brown fat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, now I'm motivated. So how long do I have to stand in a cold shower in order to ignite my brown fat to burn the jiggly white fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So listen, I'm a medical doctor. So I am very careful to tell people that before you do something that could create a shock to your system, like cold plunge or super cold shower, you should probably talk to your doctor about it or a healthcare provider to make sure that you're not making a move that's not good for you. You might have a high blood pressure, you might have a heart rhythm issue. So please don't just solo this on your own. You really need to be able to do this. But if you want to actually, if you get into a warm shower, turn that temperature down until it's cooler. So now you're not endangering yourself.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I think if you're in there for 10 minutes, cool. I'm not saying freeze it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, okay. Turn it down. Cool.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Turn it so it is hard to stand it. And you'll start feeling it. Like, go on to the winter without a coat on. You can go out there for a little while, pick up your mail at the end of the snowy driveway. It's all right. And at some point you're like, "Oh man, this is getting a little bit..." When you start feeling this is getting a little bit too much, stop. That's why it's true. Some people will get these ice baths, they're going to do their cold plunges in the morning. Please, when you start feeling like you're going down with a Titanic, you better get out of there. But the brown fat turns on. Now here's a cool thing besides cold temperatures. It turns out that certain foods that you can eat will trigger your brown fat to turn on and to start burning down fat. Eating foods can turn on your good fat to fight bad fat to burn down excess fat and lose weight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, talk to me, Doc. So what are the top foods we need to eat to turn on the brown fat to burn the jiggly fat so I can lose weight?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You can find this in any grocery store, in the produce section, in the middle aisle. Let's go to the produce section. Take a look. Okay. So apples. It turns out that apples have something called chlorogenic acid inside the flesh of the apple. And that chlorogenic acid turns on your brown fat.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And it'll start to burn down your white fat. Okay. What else is in there? What about broccoli or kale or bok choy? I love bok choy. I like to cook. You cut off the bottoms, you wash the leaves, take a wok or a skillet, a little extra virgin olive oil, a little garlic, saute that up, a little oyster sauce, boom. That's a two-minute meal. The sulforaphanes in your greens trigger your brown fat to burn down extra body fat. Now, obviously, how you cook makes a difference, right? I said olive oil. I didn't say butter. Because if you actually use olive oil, guess what? Olive oil, which you find in the middle aisle, extra virgin olive oil has bioactives, like people like me who study this. So I tell people, please don't try to memorize all these terms. Just trust the people like me who do the research. We know what they are. And extra virgin olive oil, you've got hydroxytyrosol and oleocanthal. These are two of Mother Nature's natural brown fat triggering, metabolism activating, fat burning substances. You saute that with olive oil. Now you actually have the greens and the olive oil that will trigger your brown fat to turn it on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You must be really fun to go grocery shopping with. I could see you in the, "Oh, look at the olive oil."
--:-- Dr. William Lee: By the way, if you check out my YouTube channel, I actually did a video where I went to markets all around the world, New York, and I went to one in France to show people what I'm looking at and why I'm looking at it when I'm actually shopping. But it's easy to do. The things that you think are gonna be healthy for you tend to be healthy. And then sometimes there are things that you're not sure would be healthy that are actually turned out to trigger brown fat, like a can of beans can actually do that as well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, let's talk about the five things that you recommend that everybody add. Because the team went to the grocery store and we have here on the table some of the things that you mentioned. And so I would love for you to just kind of point out some of the stuff on this plate. Tell us about the five things that we can add in or things that are really important to add in and why.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay, so let's just dive right in. One of my favorite all-time foods are tomatoes. And I think most people like tomatoes, not just in a garden salad, but think about your grandmother's tomato sauce, or you go out to Italy and you're eating some pasta or Italian restaurant. Who doesn't like some tomato sauce? Well, it turns out tomatoes contain a natural bioactive called lycopene. Lycopene is found in nature. It triggers your brown fat to burn down harmful extra body fat. And a study in Portugal showed this in a totally clear way. It took young, healthy women who are grad students, normal body size, and they told them, "Just go eat and exercise the way you normally do. Don't do anything special for this research study." The only thing they did is they gave them one ripe tomato to eat an hour before lunch every single day. That's it.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And they measured their body composition. So they put them under a scanner to look at how much visceral fat. They measured their waistline. They measured their blood cholesterol and their blood sugars and all the parameters, inflammatory markers. And they found after a month of eating just one tomato a day, this is the only thing, they were able to lose one pound with just one tomato one hour before lunch.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's the power of the lycopene in the tomato. You don't have to do extra exercise. You don't have to limit your calories. Just to eat the way you want. That just shows you how powerful a food actually is. Now, lycopene is what's doing this. If you want the lycopene to really fire up... Pick a tomato off a vine and eat it like an apple. It's going to be good for you. It's going to do its thing. If you want the lycopene to be supercharged...
--:-- Dr. William Lee: What you want to do is you want to heat it up, saute it, 190 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. We'll amp up the power of that lycopene by 250% because the heat will change the chemistry of the lycopene into a form your body loves to absorb. So this is why Mediterranean food, whether you're talking about Spain, Greece, Italy, heating up, cooking up that tomato sauce, simmering it gently, right?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Oh, by the way, lycopene likes to dissolve in body fat. In fact, this has been studied at Tufts University. They fed some young people a tomato with lycopene or foods that contain lycopene. They're able to track where that lycopene goes. You know where it goes?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It goes right to your butt, right to your thigh. It homes in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dude, I'm having a tomato right after this conversation.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Right into the body fat where it triggers your brown fat to fight that fat. This is amazing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Well, you know what's so cool about this is you're using the research and the science, which you are clearly so passionate about, to truly teach us about the extraordinary power of your metabolism and how it's designed to work correctly. And if you feed it what it needs, the proper fuel, it turns on for you. There are some other things that we have on the tray here. What else do these magical things do?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Pomegranates. Pomegranates. You can have the pomegranate seeds on a salad. You could have pure pomegranate juice. Pomegranates are pretty sweet, so you gotta not drink too much of the juice. Actually, you just need about eight fluid ounces, one cup. It contains a natural substance called ellagitannins. Again, don't worry about trying to spell it. It's a complicated word, a lot of tannins. Mother Nature's pharmacy is found in the juice of a pomegranate. And what that does is it activates your gut to secrete mucus, healthy mucus. How do you move stool? How do you get regular? You want to keep it all moving, right? So you need mucus. Mucus slip slides a thing all the way down your other end. That healthy mucus will grow a healthy gut bacteria called *Akkermansia muciniphila*. *Muciniphila* means it loves mucus. *Akkermansia* — this is the name of a gut bacteria that everyone who's listening to this and watching this should pay attention to. *Akkermansia* turns out to be a guardian of our metabolism. *Akkermansia* activates our immune system, lowers inflammation. And this is smoking hot research, Mel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love how you talk about this.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So think about *Akkermansia* like an armadillo. It's got kind of a hard shell on the outside, little pieces on it on the outside. One piece has just been discovered. It's called P9. P as in Peter, nine. That fragment of *Akkermansia*, whether the bacteria is alive or blown into 100 pieces, that bacteria, that piece of that bacteria, causes your body to produce its own GLP-1, which is exactly what Ozempic and these prescription drugs are trying to do. So pomegranates grow *Akkermansia*. *Akkermansia* will cause your body to create GLP-1. And what does GLP-1 do? Lowers your blood sugar, helps you lose body fat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow, okay.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's actually these discoveries that are being made. Food is medicine, right? That's what I do. It's super cool. But if you're going to drink pomegranate juice, be very careful. Here's a practical tip. Go to the grocery store, look for pomegranate juice. I tell people, make sure it's pure pomegranate juice. Always, always, always check the ingredient label to make sure it's not really apple juice with a little squirt of pomegranate and red food coloring. Don't do that. Get the real deal. Or just buy the pomegranate. You know why? Because when you have the whole pomegranate, you're going to get the dietary fiber from the seeds and those seeds, the dietary fiber feeds your gut microbiome, making the *Akkermansia* even happier.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's incredible. What does a kiwi do? Because I see kiwi.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Kiwi is amazing because number one, kiwi is a great source of vitamin C. What does that do? That lowers inflammation. If you're carrying around extra body fat, you're inflamed. No doubt about it. So just having a kiwi, one kiwi a day gives you a big dose of vitamin C to lower that inflammation, and you will feel the difference. You feel just less razzed up inside. Now, the other thing is kiwi has a lot of dietary fiber, and that dietary fiber can change your healthy gut bacteria. If it's not so healthy, it'll start to grow the healthy stuff in 24 hours. A kiwi a day, the next day, you will start seeing those beneficial effects.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? Wait, the next day? 24 hours?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So I eat one kiwi. One kiwi. You'll start feeling the beneficial effects. It'll take an unhealthy gut bacteria colony and start to make it a little healthier just in one day. After four days, you're going to get even more. So this is why it's so important to think about this. A kiwi a day for breakfast is super easy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love kiwi.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Oh, by the way, the skin of the kiwi, amazing source of dietary fiber.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You eat that? Who would eat that? Not me.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I wouldn't do it either, but you know how you do it?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Make a smoothie.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Eat the kiwi with a spoon. Toss the skin into a blender to make the smoothie. It'll disappear and you'll get a huge amount of dietary fiber.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What a great tip. You should have a cooking show. I really think you should have a cooking show. Talk to me about matcha.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Matcha. Matcha is one of my favorite ways of having green tea. Now, we know green tea. It looks like you're drinking some green tea in front of you right now. You have it in a tea bag, so the tea leaves are steeped in the hot water, and the polyphenols, the catechins, come dissolving out of that into the water, and you sip it, and you get the good stuff, the catechins, which, by the way, turn on your brown fat to trigger down and burn harmful white fat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: [Takes a sip of tea]
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, but I got to tell you, matcha is a heck of a lot more powerful than tea in a bag because matcha is the entire tea leaf ground into a powder. Now you get 100% of the polyphenols. There's nothing left inside a tea bag. The whole shebang is in there and the dietary fiber. Good for your gut microbiome. So you want a dose of the polyphenols from tea. Drink matcha. You get the fiber. You get 100% of the polyphenols. It's super, super powerful. And that's been shown to burn down harmful body fat. How do we know it burns down harmful body fat? Because it actually shrinks your waistline. You can actually lose an inch off your belt by drinking matcha. And that's been studied by researchers in Japan in clinical research. All the foods we're talking about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I need to clarify though, because matcha tastes like dirty grass at times. So if I want to add in a little sugar or a little something, am I killing all the benefits?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I would not. Listen, if you are struggling with the taste of matcha, which is, listen, the reason it tastes like grass is because it's the whole damn leaf in there. Here's what you do. Make a smoothie or a shake with it and just pour it in there and it'll disappear right in the background.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee, you're a genius. It's the simplest way.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So matcha is really good. Dark chocolate. Dark chocolate. Who doesn't like dark chocolate? Who doesn't like chocolate? It turns out a lot of people get confused. They're like, "Dr. Lee, you're telling people to eat chocolate?" Yes, I am. And the reason is because chocolate is actually a plant-based food.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Well, chocolate is made with what makes chocolate chocolate: cacao. And cacao comes from the cocoa bean pod that is growing from a tree. And you take these pods, which are shaped like a football. They're heavy. You cut them open. You peel off the outer skin, you dry it, you ferment it, you crush it up into a powder, and now you mix it to make chocolate. So chocolate is a confection, but it's made with a plant-based food. What's in that seed pod? Polyphenols up the yin-yang. One of them is called proanthocyanidin. Let me just tell you, the more cacao you have in your chocolate, the higher percent cacao, right? You've heard about the 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100%. So the higher the percent, and what you want to look for is 80% or higher. You're getting a ton of these polyphenols in your chocolate. And those polyphenols trigger brown fat to fire off and burn down your harmful white fat. Dark chocolate does that. Now, the darker, the more bitter it's going to be. So what I like to do, what I tell people, just get a little square of it and have it with coffee. You've created mocha. Bite of chocolate, sip of coffee, you've created your own mocha. And guess what coffee has? Coffee also has polyphenols, chlorogenic acid. Oh, didn't you hear me say this before with apples? That's right. Coffee has chlorogenic acid. So coffee, a cup of coffee will fire up your brown fat to burn down the harmful white fat every single morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, so coffee with chocolate helps you burn fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yep, that's a double-barreled approach.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Matcha, kiwi, pomegranates, and tomatoes help you burn fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's right. And so does edamame. You have a little thing of edamame on this plate here. Edamame, soybeans, it turns out that soybeans have been shown to trigger the burning of harmful body fat by triggering your brown fat. And so this is actually, if you think about the foods that we talked about, these are not like crazy things you got to spend a lot of money ordering on the internet from some crazy supplement producer. You don't have to be a bodybuilder. You don't have to be a fitness champ. The foods that we love to eat can be really healthy for us. As long as you don't overeat, don't overfill the fuel tank. As long as you're keeping on moving around, so you're burning some of the fuel. And when you're not actually overeating the bad stuff.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, we haven't spent time talking about the bad stuff. Well, let's talk about the bad stuff. Listen, my whole philosophy is that if you spend more time putting good things in your body, you're just not going to have as much room for the bad stuff. But let's talk about the bad stuff. Look, we all know that there are foods that are very common that we've all grown up eating that aren't so good for us, right? And one of the things that I got to say up front is I don't do what a lot of social influencers do. I don't food bash, brand bash. I don't try to shame people for what they eat. Listen, I love some snacks every now and then as much as the next person. And it's totally fine because if you spend most of the time activating your body's healthy systems, the hard wiring, you can afford to take a hit every now and then. It's like just putting some of that crappy gas in your tank every now and then. You're going to bounce right back. We're very, very resilient. That said, I do think it's important for people to understand that we're beginning to understand why certain foods that are not so good are really bad for you. And a great one that I always pick up on is a soda. Whether you get the blue can or the red can or whether you have regular soda or diet soda, any soda is really not healthy for you in the long run.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Even the zeros and the diets?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Especially those.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you mean, especially those?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Especially the diets. The history of soda goes, I think, back to France, where they were serving fruit juices. And somebody came up with this entrepreneurial idea: "Let's bubble some things into the fruit juice and see if we can actually have a crowd pleaser." And I think that was the birth of soda. The soda fountain and everything else. You got to actually put the gas in there. Fast forward 20th century. Now you've actually got mass production of these sodas. Turns out that regular soda, regardless of what kind, what brand it is, actually contains a can of regular soda. It contains seven to nine teaspoons of cane sugar.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You come to my house and I offer you a glass and I put nine teaspoons of sugar in it and say, "Here, have this." You'd go, "That's disgusting. I'm not going to do that." That's what's happening when you're actually drinking soda. That amount of sugar overload, carb overload. We talked about carb overload earlier. Now you're really fleshing out your tanks, filling up real fast now and spilling over. But on top of that, you're overloading your metabolism because remember those hormones that have to collaborate to be able to really bring in the blood sugar to make sure you've got enough energy. When you flood that system, your system doesn't go so well. It doesn't function so well, it starts to derail a little bit. Listen, a single can, even two every now and then, you're going to be just fine. Your body's not going to love you for it, but it'll get back to itself pretty quickly. But you know, when I was in medical school, I remember distinctly, there was a classmate of mine, so future doctor at the time, who was bragging that he would have two six packs of soda every single day to get through the day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I mean, that's 12 cans of soda.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Jeez, think about the amount of sugar that that person was actually putting into a system every day. It's like 180 teaspoons. Just think about it. Think about the big pile. Now, I will tell you that the reason that the zero version, the sugar-free version, was developed is because, well, in the 1970s and 80s, we started realizing that sugar causes you to gain weight. So let's come up with something else. Well, classic to the industrial food mindset. "Let's go invent something. Let's go invent artificial sweeteners." Non-caloric sweeteners. You can eat them. They taste sweet, but they don't actually add any calories. That must be better, right? Well, we thought so, except that research has shown that people who drink a lot of diet soda, they actually gain weight too. They also gain weight, even without sugar.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But hold on, because I thought that we talked earlier about the fact that calories are fuel and there's less calories.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Exactly. You're right about that. However, we also talked about the fact your gut microbiome helps you have good metabolism and burn fuel. And it turns out, and Mel, this is pretty new, like within just the last few years, the discovery that our gut bacteria is very sensitive to artificial sweeteners. And so artificial sweeteners actually kill off some of the good healthy gut bacteria. So something that's well intentioned, non-caloric sweetener, goes right down. We don't absorb any of it because it's not a calorie. It goes down and feeds our gut microbiome. And so what happens is the gut bacteria start to revolt. They don't do so well. Some of the gut die off. And now guess what? Your metabolism isn't functioning normally. You're derailed from that hard wiring and now you start to gain weight. So food number one that I think that you should stay away from are sodas, regular or diet. That's one of the ones that you want to stay away from. Second food that I tell people to try to stay away from are these packaged health foods. Now, you go to the airport and you see the bar and it looks like it's got granola and all that kind of stuff in it. It seems like it'd be a healthy bar. Take a look at the ingredient label. And you will find that there are all these emulsifiers, the glue that holds the things together, sometimes artificial flavorings that are actually in there because, you know, the healthy stuff doesn't have enough sweet hit for you. Sometimes artificial coloring so it looks a little bit nicer. Or here's another one besides the bar. You know, like tree nuts are healthy, right?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So you like almonds, macadamia, pistachios, cashews, right? You go to the airport, you go to the convenience store part. "Oh, let me go look for some in the health food section." There's nuts in a bag, right? And they're barbecued flavored. Well, there's no such thing as called barbecued flavored. Take a look at the ingredient label. Those are red food coloring, yellow food coloring. They've got artificial seasonings. It's not even real jelly pepper. It's like artificial stuff.
--:-- And decide to light it up, anything that's manufactured like that to be healthy, please read the ingredient label. If it seems like it's Greek or Latin or you can't pronounce it quickly, it's probably an ultra-processed ingredient that's going to harm your health. It's going to increase oxidative stress. It's going to stress out your body. It's going to cause inflammation, maybe damage your gut microbiome.
--:-- So again, I think stay away from that ultra processed stuff that's got, if it looks like it might be nuclear colored, that's probably not good for you. It's nuclear for your gut.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Nuclear for your gut. Don't nuke your gut. Don't nuke your gut. I just love listening to you. And I almost hate to say this, but I got to hit the pause button and give our extraordinary sponsors a chance to say a few words.
--:-- And while you're taking a listen to our amazing sponsors who are bringing you Dr. William Lee and all this extraordinary information at zero cost, share this with people that you care about because we all deserve to have the benefit of this research at our fingertips and in our lives. And don't go anywhere because we got so much more to dig into and we're going to be waiting for you after a very short break. So stay with me.
--:-- [Pause for advertisements]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel Robbins. And today you and I are getting to learn from the extraordinary Dr. William Lee. So Dr. Lee, what else should we avoid?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Another thing that you want to actually be really, really mindful of are processed meats. Now, look, we all grew up with processed meats. I can remember one of my earliest memories is going to school with a paper bag, with a sandwich my mom made with processed meats. You go to the deli. Do you know what the, why they call them a delicatessen or a deli?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It's short for delicious. And it was actually coming from the people that were trying to figure out how to actually sell leftover meat products in a way that would be delicious. So a lot of these salamis, bolognese, all the stuff that you would actually see in a deli are all put together from little scraps of meat that come as byproducts of the food industry.
--:-- Mel Robbins: First, I'm going to come back to that. But first, let's talk about why it's not so good for you.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's disgusting. That's what you're getting when you get sliced meat?
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's right. No. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Do you think that a turkey comes in a square? Well, it kind of looks like a breast. I don't know. And I see organic on the package because as you're saying processed meat, you're talking about like sliced meats.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah. I'm talking about the kind that, you know, like at the deli, they move them back and forth.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, what's wrong with that?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Well, it turns out that the World Health Organization has identified that these processed meats, and we're not talking about like freshly butchered, prepared at home or a restaurant. But these processed meats contain all kinds of chemicals to be able to actually get them to where they are. And they have been classified as a class one carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
--:-- We're talking about bologna, salami, pepperoni. And by the way, I remember I had a patient once who was a former USDA inspector. And he was retired by then. And I would love to talk to my patients about their jobs. Things that I didn't know, like the lobster guy would, what happens in a lobster boat? Well, this guy, USDA inspector, I would say, spare no details. Tell me everything about the inspection, meat inspection. He's like, well, you know, let me just tell you, I had to change my boots, my rubber boots, every four months because the stuff on the floor, the liquid from the places that made processed meats would dissolve my boots.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And so that made me, that kind of cued me in that there's probably stuff in the meats that are not so good for you. And it's not just the nitrates. I mean, it's like the synthetic nitrates and that they put in there, other preserves and coloring, but class one carcinogen, abundant evidence that it's likely to increase the risk for cancer, especially colon cancer. Not surprisingly, right? You're eating a lot of this stuff and it goes down to your gut.
--:-- But I learned something recently that, when you go to the deli, and let's say you're ordering bologna or salami, right? It's a meat in a cylinder and animals don't come in cylinders like that. But again, this is the meat scraps. And I learned about this, by the way, from a podcast called Science Versus. It's a really good podcast. And what I found out, and I'm learning about this, is that originally the meat scraps are all put together. And then the U.S. military invented a meat glue that would take scraps that you could pulverize and stick in that. Like the particle board that we actually have for wood?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Are you kidding me?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You go to the big box stores. These deli meats are basically the particles are meat particles that are glued together and then molded into a cylinder.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, it's true. It does come in a tube wrapped in plastic. I just assumed that was a part of an animal's body. Totally not. Wow. So if I buy, though, sliced meats and it says organic, still?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I would just say, okay, look.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're killing me, Dr. Lee.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Listen, by the way, I'm a reasonable list. So if your favorite thing is a bologna sandwich, knock yourself out, enjoy it, but just take the time to really savor it and don't do it very often.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: You know that it's not good. Listen, you know not to speed on the highway, but we all do it every now and then. But don't speed all the time because that's what's going to lead to a car crash. So I'm not endorsing people to go out to eat deli meat. What I'm saying is that just like the soda, just like the nuclear snack foods, processed meat ain't good for you. It tastes good. We grew up with it, but it's not good for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What else should we avoid?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: I'm going to tell you something you're going to be surprised by, and this is new research, and that's bottled water.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why do we avoid bottled water?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: The water isn't the problem. It's the bottle. And we're beginning to realize that these bottled waters, I mean, come on, like I used to carry around bottled water all the time with me. You're supposed to stay hydrated, right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Any vacation you go to, you're getting a bottle of water in your hotel room. Turns out that now we realize that the bottled water, the bottles of plastic bottles are shedding microplastics into the water. So while we don't taste it, we're actually pouring plastic into our bodies. Little tiny particles, plastic particles. And you know how much plastic we are ingesting on average every week?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: A credit card's worth of plastic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Really?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Every week we're ingesting it. Now, listen, we've known this for some years, but I used to be asked this all the time, what's the consequence of the plastic? And I used to, I mean, just only a few years ago say, we don't really know. It seems like it's probably okay. Our body must get rid of it somehow. Now we know just in the last 24 months. So this is new. I'm telling you a bunch of new stuff that microplastics are detectable in the human body and they're associated with badness.
--:-- Let me tell you, it was a study that came out of Italy with neurologists and cardiologists that looked at people with clogged blood vessels, cardiovascular disease, in the large vessels that feed their brain, and they were narrowed down. And what they found is that when they took out the clog, right? So it's kind of like calling a plumber in to clean the drain. When they clean the drain and remove the plaque, the clogging of the blood vessels, they found that they could detect plastic embedded in the narrowing of blood vessels that would be feeding the brain. More importantly, they found a correlation. The people who had plastics embedded in their blood vessels had a fourfold increase, four times increase in having a fatal heart attack or stroke.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Whoa. Okay. That serious stuff.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Subsequently we actually discovered you could actually find plastic in the brain. In fact, you can take a kitchen scale and measure two human brains and you know which one got more plastic and it heavier. You can measure it. Like you know like you measuring flour for making cookies or whatever. You could actually measure the amount of plastic in the human brain. And we found plastic in the blood circulation. We never looked at it before, but in a blood vile blood in a doctor's office, if you look for it, you can actually find plastic circulating in it.
--:-- And we've actually found plastic in human testicles. We found it in human semen. Don't ask me how it gets down there. And it's also found by urologists who are actually doing surgery. They've actually found it in the flesh of the penis embedded in there, probably from years and years and years of being exposed to plastic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I don't mean to, it sounds terrifying, but what should you be drinking your water out of glass?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So number one, let me just give you some real practical stuff. Water, if you want water, put it in a glass container, not a plastic container. And for those of you who are bringing your bottles to the water bottles to the gym, get a metal one or get one that's lined with glass on the inside. Take the plastic ones, toss them out immediately. And when you go back to the kitchen, go root around your drawers and your cabinets and anything that you might have once used to store leftovers, the plastic stuff, plastic containers, the plastic top, out it goes. Replace it with ceramic or glass.
--:-- Cups in your cupboard, you've got the ceramic mugs, you've got the glasses for your guests, you might have some plastic ones that are out there, you got it at a ball game or whatever, out, throw it out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And now I feel like an idiot because I've handed you a silicone glass so it doesn't make, don't drink out of it, Dr. Lee.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Don't, listen, I mean, I'm telling you, microplastics are a big deal. Now I'll tell you, it's almost impossible to get away from microplastics. They're everywhere in the environment. They're in the new carpets, they're in the HVAC systems of our house.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, but that's different than actually ingesting it in your food.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: We breathe it in and it gets into our body as well. But you're right. What I'm trying to say is that for foods that you want to avoid, you want to stay away from plastics whenever you can. That means don't microwave something with a plastic top or with a saran wrap on top. That means don't buy food that's pre-packed in plastic. Those kinds of quick eat meals that you could actually have, it's got a big plastic thing that you nuke in the microwave and you put a fork to let the steam out. All that stuff is just coating it with plastic and obviously impacting our metabolism.
--:-- And we believe that those, by the way, there's people have been talking about this for years. Like maybe these microplastics are endocrine disruptors and that's why we're actually having problems with our hormones. I don't know. I haven't seen enough data on that. I mean, listen, I'm a scientist. So here's the thing about scientists, like a real scientist. And I know you've talked to a bunch of them. Real scientists will tell you what they know, but they'll also tell you when they don't know something. And I don't know enough information about hormone disruptors and microplastics, but I do know, because I'm a vascular guy, I study blood vessels. I do know that the little particle bits that are stuck in your blood vessels are linked to real serious health outcomes and badness.
--:-- And so for me, one of the things besides processed meats and nuclear foods and sodas, I would say stay away from water in a bottle that's water in a container that's plastic because you have a choice. You can get one out of glass.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You have very strong opinions about what we do on airplanes.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: On an airplane?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, what not to drink or...
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. Well, listen, to do my research and to work with my colleagues, I do travel quite a bit. So I know a lot, as I'm sure you do, about sitting on a plane. And one of the things about planes that's kind of crazy is that we're instinctively served beverages and foods. And you know if you're like me I'm working on my laptop and somebody comes by and hands me something my instincts is they take it right I mean and you know it's free what kind of thing well you paid for it but it seems like it's something that I should eat well there's a couple of things that I don't do I don't drink coffee or tea on an airplane and the reason I don't is because a lot of people don't know this but the water from your coffee or tea comes from a tank in the airplane right and they don't clean that tank but once or twice a year.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: And so you know what happens when you actually have a container you don't clean very often it's pretty disgusting and I don't even want to go into the the chassis of an airplane to take a look at the rusty old tank with all the crud that's in the bottom that they are actually using and pouring out listen the the place where the flight attendants are actually making the coffee looks pretty clean you know the coffee looks okay I can't taste anything, but I'm somebody that I know enough that I care about what I put into my body. And I would rather get a glass container of water or coffee or bring your own thermos, metal thermos or glass thermos. Fill up your own coffee, after security and bring it on. And now you know that you actually have something reliable that doesn't have weird stuff.
--:-- Listen, a rule of thumb for anybody listening to this, keep weird stuff out of your body. Any chemicals, anything you can't pronounce, anything you have no idea why it's there. Now that I told you about meat glue, it's stuff that you just kind of don't really want. Even if we grew up with it, listen, there's so many things that we're getting smarter about things that are good for us, but we're also getting a little smarter about things that are not good for us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know, Dr. Lee, I think one of the things that's really confusing is that there's just so much information. Where I want to go next is, since there's a lot of people around the world that may live in a place where it's really hard to find local produce or they can't grow it themselves, what is the optimal place where you should be grocery shopping? And is there a difference between farmer's market and going to your local market or grocery store?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Yeah, that's a big question. I'm a pragmatic person, practical person. So I say, if you're going to buy food, buy the best quality food you can within the most convenient place that you can as well. Whatever you're able to get access to. Again, I try to be very careful not to make people feel bad that they can't go shop at a fancy organic farmer's market. A lot of people can't.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's say you can't. You're listening to this, you can't. How do you, Dr. Lee, go into a grocery store? What have you discovered based on your research? If you're going into a grocery store, how do you shop?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay. So when I go to the grocery store, I go to the produce section first. It's usually in front of the store. And I'm looking at the stuff that they put closer to the entrance, which happens to be, if you read this little sign that they put near the foods, if it's grown locally, like local apples or local strawberries, whatever, it's seasonal. That's the seasonal stuff that hasn't taken an airplane ride from South America, been sitting in the back in a box for a couple of days. That's the stuff that's a little fresher coming in. And local, when food doesn't have to travel, it's going to be fresher.
--:-- I mean, think about when you get on a plane and you fly someplace far away, you're not fresh that same day. You got to take a shower, get a good night's sleep. Same thing with the food. So local, you're fresher. So I look for that. Even in a regular grocery store, usually the stuff they put closer to you, if you read the signs, it's going to be closer. But that doesn't mean that the other foods that they have aren't so good for you. A lot of greens are grown in places where you can get produce grown and farmed and picked all year round. That's fine.
--:-- I go to the middle aisle, by the way, and you're supposed to stay out of the middle aisle. That's also a myth. I will tell you the middle aisle has some really, really amazing healthy foods.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay, you got to actually put your filter on so you're not looking at the chips and the candy and all the ultra processed stuff that you might, snacks you might get there. But you think about it. You get extra virgin olive oil is there. Lentils and legumes are there. Cans of beans are on there. You know, one of my favorite beans are actually simple can of white navy beans. I love them. I don't know why. When I was a kid, I must have had a nice soup or stew with them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Are they going to help me burn fat?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: They are.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So studies have been done by the University of Toronto looking at people that have metabolic syndrome. So they already had a little too much body fat. And it turns out that by giving people the equivalent of one can of beans to eat five times a week, so not every day, five times a week, they could actually shrink the waistline of people by shrinking body fat in the tube of the body, visceral fat, by an inch over the course of a month.
--:-- Now, how does that work? Well, it turns out that there's fiber, dietary fiber in beans. And how you cook them matters, obviously. How you serve it matters. Use a traditional recipe and you get like bean stew with the rosemary and olive oil and chopped shallots or onions in there. I mean, it's going to taste really good. Trust me on this because I can make that myself. And what it does is that that dietary fiber feeds your gut microbiome. You're a healthy gut bacteria. Thank you for doing it. And they release substances that help to streamline your metabolism. So you use your energy more efficiently.
--:-- So middle aisle. Oh, another group of foods in the middle aisle that get bypassed. Obviously dried fruits, you can actually get cranberries, blueberries, apricots you can get in the middle aisle. But here's something that a lot of people don't pay any attention to and that is tinned seafood.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? Tinned seafood.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. What am I doing with tin seafood, Dr. Lee?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, follow me on this, right? When I was a kid and I saw a round can of tuna fish.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, I've been to my friend's house often enough when I was a kid. One of those things get opened up, it smells fishy, and it smelled just like wet cat food.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: So I'd stay away from that stuff like my whole life. Then when I was doing my research, I realized that I was wrong. And that tinned seafood is a delicacy in the Mediterranean with really healthy diets. And they call them conservas, like they're conserving it, they're preserving it. They catch fish on a boat. It could be squid, it could be mackerel, it could be sardines, it could be tuna, it could be a whole bunch of different kinds of fish. They cook it right away, they steam it, and then they pack it in extra virgin olive oil.
--:-- So now the fish has got omega-3 healthy omega-3 is good for your metabolism helps you burn harmful body fat now they're packing in olive oil now it's nice and moist and it's and olive oil has got the hydroxytyrosol and oleocanthal that helps activate your brown fat then they chop up little herbs and flavoring seasoning and they put it into a tin and the reason they did that in the mediterranean is because in the months they couldn't go out fishing they would actually want to have omega-3s. No, they didn't call them omega-3s. They just call them protein. And they call them delicious local foods.
--:-- But if you go to Spain, Portugal, south of France, Italy, Greece, and you go look at some of their little food stores by the shore, they will actually, you'll have stores packed with these conservators and they are delicious. Fastest lunch I've ever had, is you get a hunk of sourdough bread. Sourdough because it's a fermented probiotic food. The sourness of sourdough bread comes from a bacteria called lactobacillus. It makes lactic acid, which gives you the tangy sour of sourdough bread. It's great for you. Hunk of sourdough bread, reach into my pantry, pull out a tin of conservas, pop it open with a fork. And I've got myself a really delicious, you want to open some pickles or something. Now you get some more fermented foods. That's a way of getting a really tasty mouth-watering lunch.
--:-- And what I do, by the way, at night, if I'm so busy, I don't have time to cook dinner, but I'm hungry, right? And I'm like, oh, I got to eat something, but I didn't plan dinner or I missed dinner. What do I do? I'll take a pot, boil some water. I'll look for some good pasta, ideal organic pasta. I'll boil it up. I'll take a stainless steel pan and you know what I do? I heat it up with a little extra virgin olive oil and I will crack open a tinned seafood thing. Might be mackerel, sardines, could be anything. Mussels, clams, squid. And I will just cop those up real briefly and I'll throw them right into the cooked pasta, heat it up, take a little tube of double concentrated tomato paste, a little squirt in there, flip it around a couple of times. And man, my whole house smells great. And now I've gotten like a gourmet meal. I just made myself with conservas you find in the middle aisle of the grocery store. And more importantly, all of those things help me lose weight. And they're not expensive.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. Okay. So this is Dr. Lee, that's the trifecta.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's right. So again, middle aisle, it's got lots of good stuff. You got to filter out all the bad stuff, but go for the good stuff that you can actually find. That to me is really the important thing is that my message is that you should really try to align the foods that you love to eat that research has discovered can help you burn body fat, improve your metabolism, help you stay healthier, get to that next level of health, and eat reasonable amounts of it, prepare it with the other ingredients that are actually going to light up your health, and just enjoy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. Dr. Lee, you have been so generous and so passionate, and I feel unbelievably empowered by everything that you've shared with us. And I know that the person that's listening is like, okay, what do I do? What do I do? There's a lot. What do I do? So for the person listening who wants to lose weight, who would like to really focus on simple steps to take to unlocking the power of your metabolism and losing some weight this year and just generally being healthier, what are the top three things that you would recommend the person listening do immediately starting today in order to achieve those goals using your research?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: It's going to be a lot easier than you think.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: First thing is for your beverages, don't drink anything except for coffee, tea, or water.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Now, I drink coffee all day long. Don't put dairy milk in it. You can use nut milk. It's fine. Dairy contains saturated fats, but more importantly, those saturated fats bind to the good bioactives in coffee and tea, and then you don't actually absorb them. They just kind of like get flushed down your system. So for beverages, eliminate all the beverages for water, coffee, and tea. That's one thing that you can do immediately.
--:-- The second thing that I would actually say is cut down or cut out on ultra-processed foods. Now, ultra-processed foods, basically foods made by a factory, containing 20 or more ingredients, most of which you can't pronounce and you don't know why they're in there. It's that old saying that your grandmother wouldn't recognize them as food. And they don't look like the original food that they were. It sounds like it's not punitive. It's just that if it comes in a box or a can, it's got to read the ingredient label. If it seems like it's not the kind of food that you'd recognize, you couldn't make it yourself. You can't make animal crackers yourself at home. Most people can't. That's an ultra processed food. Cut down or cut out those.
--:-- And instead, swap them in with what I would say plant-based foods. I'm not telling you to be a vegan. I'm saying just start adding some things that are more in the veggie side of things. And it doesn't have to be even green. Green's good. Definitely eat green, but it could be colorful, red, eat the rainbow, as they say. That's a swap in that is actually in with the good stuff and then, cut down or cut out the other stuff. That's the second thing.
--:-- And the third thing I would actually say is don't eat too much. Eat slowly so you can actually pay attention to your body's signals. Eat what tastes good to you, like your preferences, but don't eat too fast. Let your body signal to you when you're satisfied, but before you're full. I'm good. We've had that, right? I mean, you're eating with friends and they want you to keep on eating and you're like, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. That's what you want to aim for. Not that I'm full. I'm full. I'm good. Thanks. I'm good. Aim for that.
--:-- Because that actually limiting the volume that you eat is going to be a big start for helping your own hardwiring start to burn down that extra body fat along with the plant-based foods, along with a coffee and a tea. And by the way, even water, cold water can actually help you burn down body fat by increasing your metabolism. You know why? Because cold water in the core of your stomach, the core temperature, guess what? Triggers your brown fat. Oh, it's cold. That must be hibernating. Let's go ahead and fire up that brown fat so you'll start to burn down some extra body fat just by drinking cold water.
--:-- So those are good food-related things. And then I would say, and this is a topic for a whole other conversation, is get in motion. I'm not telling, you don't have to hire a trainer. You don't have to go to an expensive gym. You don't have to buy workout equipment for your basement when you've got other things to do with your money, but stay in motion. Go for a walk. Got a bike? Go for a ride. You got a friend? Go out and gossip with your friend and go for a walk outdoors. That's the thing you want to do. Those things burn down energy. They take energy. They consume your fuel. Food by alone is very, very helpful. Food plus movement exercise, really good. That's sort of like the, those are two things, a double-barreled approach that anybody can do very, very easily.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How can following your advice about the food to add into your diet this year improve the quality of your life?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Listen, if you felt that some of the foods I was talking about made your mouth water, then you know that following this kind of advice is going to make you appreciate your food. So, okay, here's a, and by the way, by when you appreciate your food, your quality of life automatically increases, right? So this is what I always tell people like, oh man, I don't know if I could eat healthy food. And what I tell people is go to your local Mediterranean or Asian restaurant and just get the menu. Come back home with a magic marker. Probably don't steal the menu. Ask if you could borrow one at home and just circle the foods that you actually like. And then I will tell you, it's very easy to find the ingredients in those foods that light up your metabolism, that can help you burn down body fat and don't eat too much of it. Just savor it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee, what are your parting words?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: The same words I started with. Love your food to love your health. That's my big belief. I think that everyone can have joyful eating if you follow your preferences and just be mindful that you should just really enjoy and savor the healthy food that you already love.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to tell you what I love. I love you, Dr. Lee. I know the audience is just going to go crazy over everything you just taught us. And so I absolutely have to have you come back and talk about metabolism.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And if you love spending time with Dr. Lee, I'm going to tell you something. I want you to send your questions in. Just go to melrobbins.com or put them in the comments below, but melrobbins.com is the best place to put them because I know that you are going to want more from him.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So Dr. Lee, we are gonna have you back. I'll make sure that we bring the audience questions, but I just cannot thank you enough for spending some time with us here in our Boston studios and really, truly empowering us with everything that you just shared.
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I also want to thank you. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to something that is going to improve your health.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I wanted to be sure to tell you, in case nobody else does today, that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And there is zero doubt in my mind that if you take everything to heart that Dr. Lee shared with both you and me and you try it, you're not only going to feel better, you're going to get healthier and that is going to help you live a better life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Alrighty, I'll be waiting for you in the very next episode.
--:-- [Sound of Mel laughing]
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're absolutely... is it normal for somebody to talk to you and be like salivating? Like I feel my mouth watering.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And the fact that you've hit play and you've taken the time to listen to this tells me that you're the kind of person who not only values your time, but you're also... I got too much saliva in my mouth.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Lee is a renowned physician scientist, and he is the founder and president of the... Oh, Jesus Christ. There goes our bloopers. How do you say it? Can you just give me the word?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: Angiogenesis.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That I understand. Okay.
--:-- [Sound of a cup being set down]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Whenever you drink your tea, you never put the tea nearby. This is my husband. It's super annoying. Okay. Keep going.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Don't nuke your gut. Don't nuke your gut. And the more you actually put...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Sorry to laugh. Is that a medical term?
--:-- Dr. William Lee: That's a medical term.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm sorry to interrupt twice. Are you not just loving this? You're amazing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
