Never Eat These Foods Again To Lose Weight & Live Longer w/ Dr. William Li EP 1410

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today! Dr. William Li is an internationally renowned physician, scientist and best-selling author. His groundbreaking research has led to the development of more than 30 new medical treatments that impact care for more than 70 diseases including diabetes, blindness, heart disease and obesity. He is President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, and he is leading global initiatives on food as medicine. His newest book, “Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer” is available now. In this episode you will learn:The foods you need to eat and the foods you need to avoid for a longer life. The surprising science around fat. The truth about diet soda versus regular soda. Everything you need to know about how metabolism actually works. How to actually change your health habits to start seeing consistent results. For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1410Get Dr. Li's book: https://drwilliamli.com/Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. William Li?

  But actually, knowing what to do is, I think, compromised if you don't know the why. Why should you do it? Because that internalizes the reasons, you know? And that why should give you the motivation. So, again, you know, back to this whole idea of...

• 0:16Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:39Lewis Howes?

  We are about to dive in in this episode, all things healing the body and losing weight and preventing disease. That's what this is going to be about. And I'm curious, before we get into these insights...

• 0:51Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  If people follow the advice we give them today, if they start following some of these principles, how many more years do you think they'll be able to extend on their lifespan if they just start applying some of the things that we're going to talk about and also the things that you have in your book?

• 1:08Dr. William Li?

  You want a number?

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11Dr. William Li?

  Twenty.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  Twenty years?

• 1:13Dr. William Li?

  Yep.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  You think we can extend life?

• 1:15Dr. William Li?

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:17Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. We ought to be able to actually get...I mean, look, I'm a medical doctor. We ought to be able to get people well into their 90s in really vibrant health. And the only things that actually keep us from getting there really are the impediments that we create for ourselves.

• 1:30Lewis Howes?

  What are those key impediments that we create for ourselves?

• 1:33Dr. William Li?

  Habits, and that is a big umbrella for a lot of things that can actually take down and cripple our health. I would say access, that's, you know, an issue of society. More people need to have equal access to things. And then I think...

• 1:53Dr. William Li?

  Something that you talk about, which is self doubt.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:56Dr. William Li?

  A lot of people doubt their ability to to claim their health, to be able to command their health. And one of the things that I really believe in, I mean, because I I've seen this myself. I really try to get other people to practice it is, how do you overcome those self doubts so that you feel armed? So that you are capable and you're confident be able to go out there and and take back your health?

• 2:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of us have basic knowledge that you're supposed to eat good things. You're supposed to sleep a certain amount of hours. You're supposed to drink mostly water. And you're supposed to move your body. I feel like a majority of at least Americans know or heard that at one point, right? Middle America has heard that at one point, if not many, many times. So we have the basic knowledge of living a healthy life. But why do you think we go against medical advice, holistic health practices and wisdom of extending our life?

• 2:59Dr. William Li?

  Because I think the idea of eat, move, sleep, smile, right? Those are the, that's a bumper sticker.

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 3:05Dr. William Li?

  All right, and everyone can wear that T shirt or drive around with the bumper sticker. But actually, knowing what to do is not, is I think compromised. If you don't know the why, why should you do it? Because that internalizes the reasons, you know? And that why should give you the motivation? So again, you know, back to this whole idea of you have to be confident in order to be able to go out there step by step every single day to be able to take your health, you know, what belongs to you. What I tell people is that health does not happen in the doctor's office, health care does not happen in a doctor's office. That's sick care.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 3:41Dr. William Li?

  Health care actually happens when you're between the doctor's visits. That's what we got to do for ourselves. And finally, the science is beginning to deliver on the whys. That's what's important.

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  The science you said are delivering on the whys?

• 3:54Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, we're starting to understand why we should be doing things.

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:57Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, why we should be sleeping, why we should be moving, why? And you know, they're also adding nuances to the whats because, you know, eat healthy things, whatever that means. Even when people talk about eat plant-based foods, well, why? You know, what is it exactly? And to go beyond, you know, the hand-waving, kale-waving kind of stuff. I think that's, well, that's what I'm all about.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Dr. William Li?

  Getting to those details.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  And what would you say are the three or five foods that people should avoid that will take care of a lot of these problems? If they just avoided a few key foods or ingredients that would help them extend their life tremendously?

• 4:34Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, well, look, I'm gonna tell you them, but I want to first say my research and sort of really what I've been trying to do is to tell people what they should add to their lives. Because if you spend more time adding the good stuff to your life that you enjoy, there's just less room for the bad stuff. But if you want actually the answer to what are the sort of unquestionably bad things that if you were to really systematically remove, you're gonna be better off for it and live longer and better? I can tell you, ultra-processed foods is one of them, okay? Anything in a box that has like, you know, 20 ingredients that you can't pronounce, that's a pretty good sign. And if you look more closely, they're artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavorings. You know the drill.

• 5:14Dr. William Li?

  That's the stuff that's been, you know, flooding our nation really since the 1950s. And with a lot of marketing associated with it. So then it kind of like hypnotizes you to go for that. That's one. Number two, I would say processed meats.

• 5:30Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 5:31Dr. William Li?

  Now, look, I mean, we all grew up eating different kinds of processed meats, but you know that lunch meat? That, you know, the baloney sandwich that, you know, cafeteria lady, you know, your mom's put in your lunch boxes? Look, um... The World Health Organization considers that a level one carcinogen.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:50Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. And so, think about what that means, that a world authority on health has put a label on it. All right. Doesn't mean that you can't eat it sometimes.

• 6:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:01Dr. William Li?

  But if you eat it regularly, like a lot of people do, that's you want to cut out. That's number two. Number three, soda. Both regular soda and diet soda.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 6:10Dr. William Li?

  Now, look, I enjoy a soda every now and then, just like the next person.

• 6:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:16Dr. William Li?

  All right. However, most people don't realize, there's like nine teaspoons of refined sugar in a typical can of soda.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 6:25Dr. William Li?

  And that overwhelms your metabolism, all right? And your body just can't handle that. It can handle a can, but you know those people who say like, "I have a, I have a six-pack of soda every day."

• 6:38Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 6:38Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it's crazy. Like, clearly, you're not able to, forget about the word calorie. It's just that you're flooding your system with things that challenge your metabolism. And there's no way you can actually handle that.

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  And what happens to the system when you flood it with that much sugar at once? And then if you do it over and over every day for years?

• 6:58Dr. William Li?

  When I, okay, so, when you put sugar in your body, it the same, it, what happens is the same thing that happens if you put any kind, a piece of fruit in your, in your body, or anything healthy, broccoli.

• 7:13Dr. William Li?

  Your body will sense that it has food, that's fuel, that's energy, calories, all right? And immediately, your body secretes hormones like insulin.

• 7:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:25Dr. William Li?

  And that insulin basically says, "Hey, let's take any energy you got, and let's put it into the fuel tank." All right? That's like pulling your, your car over to the filling station and putting that nozzle in the gas tank. And so, the insulin rises, and you're, you're taking the energy you need and storing everything that you don't need at the moment. All right? Now, your, uh, regular cells are running off this fuel. Anything extra are gonna get stuffed into these tiny little fat cells, normal, healthy fat cells. We need our fat, okay? There are, there are fuel tanks.

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:55Dr. William Li?

  But if it, but nine tablespoons of sugar, you're gonna be filling it more and more and more and more. Those fat cells are gonna expand. And when they run out of space, because you've actually filled up the water balloon, your body's gotta make more fat cells.

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:07Dr. William Li?

  All right? And they, those get filled up as well. And that's what happens day after day after day, after case after case of soda. And I'll tell you, people say, well, then I'll have the non-nutritive soda, the diet soda.

• 8:21Lewis Howes?

  What does that do?

• 8:22Dr. William Li?

  It's worse.

• 8:23Lewis Howes?

  Diet soda's worse?

• 8:24Dr. William Li?

  Ironically, it's worse.

• 8:25Lewis Howes?

  Come on, how so?

• 8:26Dr. William Li?

  The reason is, diet soda with artificial sweeteners actually doesn't overwhelm your metabolism directly. What it does is that the non-nutritive sweeteners that don't get absorbed in your body as calories, sugar-free, go down and poison your gut microbiome, your gut bacteria. Now, a lot of people say, well, you know, the evidence isn't really there. I can tell you as a scientist, following this field, that the evidence is stacking up. You damage your ecosystem of your critical health, your healthy bacteria. And that healthy bacteria commands our immune system, lowers inflammation, helps us heal from the inside out, and even controls how we feel, our emotional wellness. All right, so the bottom line is that, either way you cut it,

• 9:11Dr. William Li?

  if you need to slake your thirst on a super-hot day, you know, there are other things that you can drink. If you need to drink a soda, and listen, I've been in that spot, it's super-hot, I just gotta have a...

• 9:23Lewis Howes?

  Something.

• 9:23Dr. William Li?

  Something, all right, you name the brand. One can, and then realize that, you know, your body's gonna have to recover from that.

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's gonna take a day or two until you get back on track. Wow, and so if you had to choose between regular soda with all the sugar, or diet soda with all the other ingredients, which do you prefer?

• 9:43Dr. William Li?

  I used to play this game with a friend of mine. You know, would you be eaten, rather be eaten by a white shark or drop in a volcano?

• 9:50Lewis Howes?

  Which one? They're both bad.

• 9:52Dr. William Li?

  You know what, honestly, from what I know as a scientist, I'd rather have the regular soda.

• 9:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:57Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, one can.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  One can, if you had to choose one can of each?

• 10:00Dr. William Li?

  Listen, my metabolism, because I don't have diabetes, actually will spring back. It'll take a little while, all right, it'll be resilient. I've got 39 trillion bacteria in my gut microbiome, and that's gonna take a lot harder to recover that.

• 10:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Is there one more thing you would add to this list of what to avoid?

• 10:21Dr. William Li?

  Well, I mean, I guess, again, all these things in moderation will be okay. I would say alcohol.

• 10:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Dr. William Li?

  Now, and I'll tell you, this is, I was just telling some folks about this. I have a very specific philosophy about alcohol because you know you've heard about well, one or two glasses of red wine a day lowers your risk. Okay. In no case is the benefit coming from the ethanol, the actual alcohol, coming from the stuff that comes out of the fermentation.

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:51Dr. William Li?

  In the red wine.

• 10:51Lewis Howes?

  There's veratrol.

• 10:52Dr. William Li?

  There's veratrol and the other polyphenols and even beer, you know, I mean beer has hops, those hops actually ferment out some of the really great stuff. It's not the alcohol in the beer either. And so what I tell people about alcohol is as far back as humans have been cultivating grain, they've also been fermenting it. Alcohol is very part, much part of humanity. We celebrate births, deaths, weddings, holidays with alcohol. And so I'm a big believer in being who we are, right?

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  Traditions.

• 11:24Dr. William Li?

  Traditions and I believe in that. So what I would say is, you know, if that's important to you, go for it, but be moderate and recognize, again, this is the why part of it, that in no case is it the ethanol and the alcohol that's good for you. It's the other stuff that's good for you. But you know what? I totally respect the fact that it plays a role in our humanity.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

  Right. And I have a hard time with this because I've never been drunk in my life. You know, my parents didn't drink and they were just like, you want to have a clear mind as frequently as possible. Life is hard enough with a clear mind, trying to make good decisions consistently and managing stress.

• 12:01Dr. William Li?

  Absolutely.

• 12:02Lewis Howes?

  When you flood your mind to be weaker and the brain to literally be weaker and the body to be weaker with alcohol, it just makes it harder to make conscious decisions.

• 12:13Dr. William Li?

  So I'll kind of give you a little refinement on the medical side. It is weaker, but it's actually less coordinated.

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 12:23Dr. William Li?

  To make good decisions, we need really good coordination. We need to have situation awareness, good coordination, alignment, strategy, execution.

• 12:31Lewis Howes?

  Speech awareness.

• 12:32Dr. William Li?

  Speech awareness, everything. All that kind of goes with the fog. You know, when we actually have mind altering substances.

• 12:40Lewis Howes?

  What does alcohol do for the gut microbiome? How does it affect it positively or negatively?

• 12:47Dr. William Li?

  You know, I would say that by and large, if you drink a lot of alcohol, it's negative. Most of the studies so far, and we're just still learning how to study the microbiome. Fairly neutral. If you, you know, like if you, because you're drinking alcohol with food oftentimes. All right, like we're not talking about, you know, Las Vegas kind of stuff.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:06Dr. William Li?

  All right. And, and actually, some of the, some of the polyphenols that come from fermented alcohol products actually help the gut microbiome. So it's not a simple picture.

• 13:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:18Dr. William Li?

  Right? Different than a soda.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Different than a soda?

• 13:21Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Lewis Howes?

  There's no.

• 13:22Dr. William Li?

  Ironically.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  There's no benefit.

• 13:23Dr. William Li?

  Right.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Just a straight sugar bomb.

• 13:28Lewis Howes?

  What are the things, but I love, I love that you said alcohol as a doctor, that this is not something that we should, this is something we should avoid. You know, if you want to do it for a traditional base or things like that, cool, but just know, it's not really adding a lot of nutritional value to your life.

• 13:42Dr. William Li?

  Zero.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  Zero nutritional value. So it's the same thing with me of wanting to have a candy bar. It's not adding any nutritional value. But I'm going to do it from time to time.

• 13:50Dr. William Li?

  And you're going to enjoy it that time?

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Dr. William Li?

  But you're not going to continuously abuse that.

• 13:55Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 13:56Dr. William Li?

  You're not going to be a glutton about it.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 13:57Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Lewis Howes?

  And what about the three to five things we should add? Or use more frequently to help us improve the quality of our health?

• 14:05Dr. William Li?

  In my first book, I wrote about 300 different foods. And it's my new book, I wrote, I write about 150 foods that improve your metabolism. So I've got quite, I got quite a choice, a list to choose from for, for a choice.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  What are the, what are the five most powerful to burn fat and heal your metabolism?

• 14:25Dr. William Li?

  And live longer.

• 14:25Lewis Howes?

  And live longer. What would you say if you could only choose five foods consistently?

• 14:30Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Lewis Howes?

  And obviously, variety plays a big part in, you know, nutritional value and the gut microbiome. But let's just play devil's advocate.

• 14:37Dr. William Li?

  Let me give you, let me give you two for sure.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 14:40Dr. William Li?

  And then I'm going to come up with five as sort of a, a flyby of things that I enjoy. Two things for sure, coffee and tea.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  To add.

• 14:50Dr. William Li?

  To add, yeah.

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:51Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. Tea in every way activates your body's health defenses and improves your health defenses. And not just green tea, not just straight on green tea in a bag. Matcha tea, ceremonial tea, oolong tea, the fermented, slightly fermented tea. And even the ultimate fermented tea, which is Pu'er tea. Comes from a little village in China and it's a ultra fermented, dark, smoky digestive tea.

• 15:15Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 15:15Dr. William Li?

  It's a probiotic tea, good for your gut microbiome.

• 15:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 15:18Dr. William Li?

  Improves your metabolism.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 15:20Dr. William Li?

  All right, so, so tea as a category would be one.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  But not like a tea, like normal tea bags that you get at a store, but specific types of tea? Is that what you're hearing?

• 15:29Dr. William Li?

  Well, but you can get them in tea bags.

• 15:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 15:31Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 15:33Dr. William Li?

  The other thing is coffee.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Now, why coffee? Why, I mean, I've heard from different individuals. I don't know if they're actually nutritionists or scientists, but I've heard different people talk about this from a sports performance point of view, that coffee in the morning causes the body to be more acidic and you don't want it to be acidic, you know, for performance. But I don't know, again, I'm not a nutritionist or scientist, so can you speak into that?

• 15:58Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, well, let me first address what you just were describing from a medical doctor's perspective. There's a lot of discussion about acidic blood and basic blood. I can tell you as a physician who's taking care of people in the ICU, all right? Our body is a perfect balancer of pH in your blood at all times. Very narrow range. You cannot acidify your blood. If, if you had acidic blood, you'd be in the ICU with sepsis and you'd be on your way out. Guarantee you that.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 16:32Dr. William Li?

  All right, so this whole idea that the food you eat can acidify or neutralize your blood, not true. It's, I mean, I've never seen it as a physician.

• 16:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 16:39Dr. William Li?

  I don't think it can be done because. A bacteria can do it, like when you're, when you're septic, you have overwhelming infection. That will acidify your blood. Cup of coffee, absolutely not. Now, I'll tell you though, there is acid in coffee. It's called chlorogenic acid. But unlike a harmful effect, in fact, it gives you all benefit. Really? Couple of things that chlorogenic acid does. And then I'll tell you something really interesting about, about the organic versus a conventionally grown coffee. Okay. So chlorogenic acid actually, first of all, activates your circulation. Makes your blood flow better. All your brain, your, your muscles, your organs that have better blood flow over time. Okay, not, it's not like an instant hit and boom, you got better circulation. But over time, when you say regularly drink. Yes.

• 17:24Dr. William Li?

  That's what it actually does. Number two, it actually protects your stem cells. So it helps you renew yourself from the inside out. So we're healing ourselves, continuously replacing the injured and the dead and the sloughed off stuff. Just more tissue. Chlorogenic acid actually helps your gut microbiome, makes a better gut health. All right, which then helps your immunity and everything else. Chlorogenic acid also slows down the degradation of your telomeres. Really? Which means that it slows down cellular aging. And it improves your immunity. All right. On top of that, chlorogenic acid helps to fat, fight excess body fat. One of the ways it does it is prevents new fat from being made.

• 18:09Dr. William Li?

  It slows down the loading up of existing fat cells with extra fuel. So your balloon doesn't blow up quite as much as it normally would. And the other thing it does is it turns on brown fat in your body, which is a special kind of fat. It's not jiggly fat. It's wafer thin fat. It's around your neck, it's underneath your, your, your breast bone. It's under your arms, a little bit behind your back. When, when that brown fat lights up, it is like putting a, it's like putting a lighter to your gas range. Whoosh, you got flame. And the energy it takes to burn that flame is drawn from bad fat. So this good fat can burn down bad fat.

• 18:51Dr. William Li?

  And chlorogenic acid does that. So coffee actually has all of these benefits. So coffee.

• 18:57Lewis Howes?

  Can help you burn fat.

• 18:58Dr. William Li?

  Absolutely.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  Now, is it the type of quality of coffee? Is it all coffees? Is it generic brand coffee? You know, you scoop in and you pour instant coffee? Or is it what types of coffee?

• 19:11Dr. William Li?

  From everything that research has shown, it is the chlorogenic acid in coffee. So you're asking the right question. So what is the different levels and different types of coffee? So that has not been exactly studied, yet to know if one brand or Folgers or whatever. Okay, but I will tell you one thing that has been studied. Chlorogenic acid is much higher, the good stuff. There's a lot more of it, three times as much in organic coffee compared to conventionally grown coffee. And the reason why is that chlorogenic acid is one of those natural chemicals, bioact as we call it, that's made in response to injury. So basically, in organic plants that don't have pesticides,

• 19:56Dr. William Li?

  you've got normal bugs that nibble on the leaves and the stems. And so as a response, they're making chlorogenic acid, lots of it. Okay? Add some pesticides there. Fewer plants, fewer bugs, fewer pests, less nibbling. Doesn't make as much.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  But the plants aren't as strong defending themselves. Is that what that means?

• 20:15Dr. William Li?

  That's right, exactly. It's just they don't need.

• 20:17Lewis Howes?

  They don't need to defend themselves.

• 20:18Dr. William Li?

  They don't need to defend themselves.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 20:20Dr. William Li?

  You take away the ability to defend yourself.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So it's called chloro... what's it called?

• 20:25Dr. William Li?

  Chlorogenic.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  Chlorogenic acid. Acid. Now, is this a similar case where, you know, people say it's good to drink a glass of wine every night because of the rosveratrol, but the potential, the side effects of having alcohol can outweigh just having the supplement of rosveratrol? Is there any side effects to coffee that outweigh the benefit of the chlorogenic acid? Where you could pull that from some other source, a plant-based source or a supplemental source instead of also having the coffee? Caffeine and the other things that come with it.

• 21:04Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it's different than wine because coffee doesn't have the alcohol, which is a, which is toxic, toxic to your system. Coffee does have caffeine if you have a caffeinated version. Some people are very sensitive to caffeine, right? So coffee isn't right, caffeinated coffee isn't right for everyone. All right, so there's no absolutes here, right? It's all individualized. That's what we're learning about health across the board. It's all about who we are and what's right for our body.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  Decaffeinated coffee get the same benefit?

• 21:34Dr. William Li?

  It's gotta be wa, it's gotta be decaffeinated using a water process, all right? Now, most decaffeination processes used to be used solvents to remove the caffeine. So they actually put chemicals into the tea or coffee to remove the caffeine. In so doing, they leave some of the residue of the solvent in the coffee or the tea.

• 21:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's not good.

• 21:53Dr. William Li?

  And they also take away the polyphenols as well, including the chlorogenic, right?

• 21:57Lewis Howes?

  So what's the point of it then?

• 21:58Dr. William Li?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  The placebo of having coffee taste.

• 22:01Dr. William Li?

  You don't have as much caffeine.

• 22:03Lewis Howes?

  All right, all right.

• 22:03Dr. William Li?

  But, but you're not getting the good stuff. You get less of the bad stuff, you still don't have the benefits. So what's, what's interesting is that there, so coffee generally safe to drink. You know, there's a lot of people used to think, well, it'll cause esophagitis. It'll actually, you know, cause your heart to race. Not for most people. Actually, it doesn't increase heart disease in most people. Obviously, if, if you're a particular person, you're sensitive to it, you gotta be careful. But there's other sources of chlorogenic acid as well. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples have chlorogenic acid.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 22:34Dr. William Li?

  But so does a pear. A pear has chlorogenic acid as well. So you don't have to, you know, I try to encourage people not to get fixated on only one food substance and try to go at it like crazy, like mad. Learn that, you know, just know that we're beginning to discover what's in certain foods that are good for us. And many times those elements that are good in one food are also found in other foods as well.

• 22:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:00Dr. William Li?

  And that opens up the gateways to be able to have diversity.

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I love that. Now, speaking of fruit. And you're gonna, you're gonna, these are your top two is like the coffee and tea.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  Which I think is powerful that you explained all this, but speaking of fruit. Eat to beat your diet, burn fat, heal your metabolism and live longer, which is what you talk about in the book. How important is fruit in this factor? Or does fruit have too much sugar spiking? Which I've heard from some nutritionists over the last couple of years that I've interviewed where, you know, you take a handful of grapes and the glucose monitor spikes through the roof. Is that really healthy for metabolism and living longer? Or how do we manage our fruit intake so that it's not too much?

• 23:46Dr. William Li?

  All right. So there's a kind of a myth out there that the sweet fruits, the sugar in fruits, actually are just as bad as sugar in candy. All right. And that's not necessarily the case. First, candy is just sugar and other stuff. Fruits are nutrient dense, which means that not only does it have sugar, but it's got all these other polyphenols and dietary fiber and other aspects, small molecules and other things, other natural chemicals are actually good for our body. Most of those net-net actually benefit us, okay? For the average person who eats reasonable amounts of fruit.

• 24:30Dr. William Li?

  The, even a sweet fruit like a mango, which is one of the sweetest fruits that I know of, totally fine. When you eat it, it'll taste really sweet. Or pomegranates, for example. Your, your blood sugar will spike, but I want to come back to that in a second. But you're also getting all these other polyphenols that actually will work on different parts of your body, including your metabolism to benefit you. And so, and by the way, our body needs sugar. We, our brain consumes sugar like crazy. Even outside of the diet, outside of candy, and so we actually need actual sugar. If we don't have it, our body will make it. All right, so this is the whole thing. You know, in the wellness space and health and wellness space,

• 25:14Dr. William Li?

  there's sort of two categories that people veer towards. They tend to make something a hero or a demon. All right, and I think that's really, the God is in the details. We need to know these details. And that actually allows us to be more reasonable.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Dr. William Li?

  And so for me, eating fruit is perfectly reasonable. If you don't have diabetes and, okay, spiking sugar, sugar spikes. All right, if you're an average, normal person, no problem. Your body is fully capable. You know, spiking sugar is kind of like character assassination of the food. It actually doesn't matter. Your body is supposed to have a sugar spike and then it'll actually take it down. It's just drawing energy into your cells. What I tell people is like, spiking sugar is basically like what happens in your car when you're filling it with gas. Gas tank's gonna go up, all right? But then you're gonna burn it down. And your body actually stores it. So I wouldn't get, I wouldn't get wigged out about, you know, people that are monitoring like moment to moment their sugar spikes.

• 26:14Dr. William Li?

  That's interesting, but it's less important than overall what actually happens. If your body's unable to take down that sugar.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  That's a problem.

• 26:23Dr. William Li?

  That's a problem. The spike isn't the problem. It's the long tail of your body's not, if your insulin's not working, you're not sensitive to insulin, or if your metabolism's not working, you can't take that energy in. Now you got a problem.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How do we maximize our metabolism to take in the sugar spikes of life?

• 26:44Dr. William Li?

  That's a good question. The way to actually do it, honestly, is the, not only what we eat, which matters a lot, but how we eat and when we eat. So you know that, okay, let me give you the analogy. And this will actually get a little bit into the topic of intermittent fasting, which we'll talk a lot about. I like to explain metabolism in a very, very simple way.

• 27:10Dr. William Li?

  Our body is just like a car. When you're driving your car, you've got an engine. You check out the fuel tank. When the fuel tank is running low, pull over to the filling station, take out the nozzle, fill up the tank. All right, when the tank is full, click, nozzle stops putting gas in, put it back, get back in the car and drive off. And your gas tank is full. Our body's the same way. Our body's an engine, it runs, okay? And when we're low on fuel, all right? And fuel for us comes from our food. What we've got to do is pull over to the dinner table, or to the restaurant, or to the refrigerator, in order to load up on fuel. Now, our fuel comes from food, and we call it calories. But I tell people, don't get fixated on the word calories.

• 27:54Dr. William Li?

  You don't need to count every calorie you actually have. All right? The quality of the fuel matters, for sure. We talked about that a little bit, all right? So, you do want the highest quality of fuel that you can put in your body. Just like if you actually put crappy fuel in your gas tank. Right. You know, your car's gonna run, but eventually, over 10 years, five years, 10 years, you're gonna be screwing that engine. All right, your car's not gonna run as well as if you took care of it. That's kind of like the analogy for our body. All right, so how do you actually maximize your metabolism? Our metabolism is how our body takes the fuel, the food, energy from food, moves it in ourselves, and then allows our engine to power it up to do whatever it is we're doing. Blinking, speaking, jogging, running, lifting, whatever it is you're doing. All right?

• 28:39Dr. William Li?

  That's what our metabolism actually is. Now, we put food in your mouth, that's fuel. Your body senses the fuel, produces the hormone insulin. Insulin actually takes that fuel in, right? If you put it into your fuel tank, your fuel tank, your body's gonna run on it, but then any extra goes into your little fat cells, your fuel tank, your gas tank. No big deal. And the little gas tank gets a little bit bigger because it's filled with fuel. All right? And then, when you stop eating, and the fuel gets loaded up, the insulin levels will go down. All right? And then you're off. You're driving away from the filling station. That's simple. All right? Now...

• 29:17Dr. William Li?

  Our body is rigged so that when we are putting fuel into our system, eating, all right, it's like putting gas into our tank of our car. You can't burn the fuel. It doesn't want to burn the fuel. When you eat, it doesn't want to burn it. Right, right, because it makes sense. You want to actually load up, not deplete. You're storing up, all right? And that's like your car in the filling station, you turn off your engine when you're filling up your tank. Rest. Rest. And then when you're filled up, then you can drive off again. So we shouldn't be moving while we're fueling? Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Can, you can, but you shouldn't be. It's an override, right?

• 30:00Dr. William Li?

  So we can override that stuff, but you shouldn't be. So you're asking about how to optimize it. How do you take advantage of what your body's hardwired to do? Now, think about it. When you're at the gas station, you're filling gas in your tank. When the tank is full, there's a click, no more fuel comes out. Imagine what would happen if there was no click. The tank would fill up, it would come out of the tank, overflow down the side of the car, around the wheels, pool around your feet, and you're standing in a dangerous, flammable mess, right? Yes. Now, when we eat food, we don't have a clicker to stop us from putting food in our mouth, okay? It should. We should, but we don't, all right? And so what happens is when we actually overeat, okay, eat too much.

• 30:44Dr. William Li?

  So this is the how. Eat too much. What winds up happening is we're putting a ton of fuel into our system. Now, there's no leaking of the food out. It won't pool down around our feet. Our body quickly stuffs it, right? So it has all the energy it needs, it stuffs some excess into the existing fat cells. Existing fat cells get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, all right? Oops, now you fill them up. They're like tight water balloons, about as big as they'll get. Now the body, still got fuel to store, what does it do? It makes more fat cells. And now it fills those up, and then makes more, fills those up. Now you can see why when you overeat, you have too much fuel, why you gain weight, and you develop too much body fat. Now, what happens, that fat grows bigger and bigger and bigger over time.

• 31:28Dr. William Li?

  It's a big, it goes from a little bit to a bigger mass. It needs a blood supply. Okay, so it actually reaches out to try to grab more blood vessels to feed it. But if you're overeating and a fat is expanding so fast, because you're just storing fuel, and you're not able to, it's not able to get blood vessels fast enough or blood supply fast enough. Guess what? The middle of it starts to die. It's called hypoxia. And that middle of the fat behaves like a tumor. It starts to die, and when it dies, it becomes inflammatory.

• 32:01Dr. William Li?

  This is why, when you have too much body fat, it becomes an inflammatory, dangerous inflammatory situation, just like if you're standing in that filling station with the gas overloading, spilling out over on your feet.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  And what happens when the body stores too much body fat, and we have that much inflammation in the body fat?

• 32:20Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, well, first is it derails your metabolism. All the hormone, natural hormones. We should talk about what fat normally does, because that's another big myth that has been, you know, that science has actually started to help us rethink what body fat actually is. But basically, our body fat normally protects us, it's a cushion, it's a space heater, it'll burn extra energy. But it also is an organ in the body. I don't know, people don't realize that.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  That is an organ.

• 32:48Dr. William Li?

  Fat is an organ, like your pancreas, like your liver, like your kidneys. Your fat is now really, truly an organ. It's an endocrine organ, which means that it secretes hormones. All right, the three hormones, it secretes 13 hormones that we know of, but the three that are most important. One is leptin, which basically is a volume switch to your brain for your appetite. When your fat makes leptin, it tells you, you know what, slow down there. Hey buddy, you're not that hungry. All right, so it turns it down, so the volume goes down. So you need that.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  I got more of that, I need more of that to turn it down for me.

• 33:21Dr. William Li?

  Now, the other hormone it makes is called adiponectin. Now, many people won't have heard of, some people might have heard of leptin. They may not know adiponectin. Adiponectin is the hormone that if I were to take a vial blood from you and measure it in a lab, is 1,000 times higher in level than any other hormone in your body, 24/7. And the reason is, adiponectin Allows insulin to pull energy into your cells. So you need that. And your fat, healthy fat, makes adiponectin.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  All right.

• 33:55Dr. William Li?

  Very, very important.

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 33:56Dr. William Li?

  And then the third hormone that is of utmost importance is called resistant. And resistant, basically, is the brake to the adiponectin. What's a gas pedal? Gas pedal, adiponectin, lots of energy. Brake, resistance, slow down there, buddy. All right? And so these three, leptin, adiponectin, resistant, they're made by normal, healthy fat. So what happens when fat overgrows and it becomes inflammatory? All of those hormones get, go haywire. They don't, they're not behaving the way they should behave. You're not pulling in energy. All right? You're not actually absorbing, you're not absorbing energy. Your hunger mechanisms are not working right. You're overeating. All right?

• 34:37Dr. William Li?

  And then you can't stop your, your, your, your ability to sort of trigger your metabolism when it needs to start, start and stop. That, that gas brake thing, completely messed up. On top of that, you've got inflammation that spills out from your fat. All right? And when it spills out from your fat, that's kind of like the gas, gasoline leaking out around your shoes at the gas station. In the gas station, it's flammable. In your body, it's inflammatory. It screws up your immune system. It sets you up for diabetes, sets you up for cancer, sets your blood vessels up to narrow, so you want to, are set up for stroke and heart attack.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:19Dr. William Li?

  It's all bad.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  Excess fat is all bad.

• 35:22Dr. William Li?

  Excess body fat. But, but don't forget, one of the things that I started saying is that some fat is absolutely critical. In fact, we, we need normal fat. Fat is good until it's bad.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:34Dr. William Li?

  So we don't want to fear it, we want to tame it.

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  If someone has got, I mean, if someone's listening or watching this right now, and they're thinking to themselves, Man, I've just struggled my whole life with with my body weight. And I've, you know, life happened and, you know, kids and or divorced or just career changes and just life just happened and just it got away from me. And they're 50, 70, 80 pounds overweight. They've gained that gained that excess body fat that they know they don't want to have. But they don't want to beat themselves up because that doesn't help them either. You know, they've beaten themselves up for too long.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  And that almost makes them want to eat more bad foods because they don't feel good about themselves. How can they emotionally, psychologically break free while also changing their habits? And know that this is a journey. It's not going to happen in two weeks and lose 50 pounds and stick. But it's like, it's going to take time and it's going to be a journey. What can someone in that position start to think and do to start seeing consistent results, do you think?

• 36:36Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, well, there's two main things I talk about in my new book. One is actually time your food. Figure out what time you eat and don't eat. And secondly is choose foods that actually can help your body fight fat. That's a little bit of a surprise that you can eat foods to lose weight, to fight extra body fat. But it turns out, science tells us that's actually true. And it's studied in people as well. Let's talk first about the timing of food. All right, remember I told you when your insulin is level levels high? Because when you're eating, you can't burn fat. So when your insulin level is low, when you're not eating, your body switches into fat burning mode. When does that actually naturally happen? When you're sleeping. Most people, when they're sleeping, are not eating.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:21Dr. William Li?

  Right? And then what happens when they get up in the morning, they eat breakfast, they're breaking their fast. So sleeping is fasting. It's very normal. It's not, it's not necessarily invented as a new fad or a trend. It's actually how our bodies wired. And so if you follow the wiring, the hard wiring of our body, the operating system of our body, when you're sleeping and not eating, your body is burning down fat. You've got extra weight, extra body fat? Take advantage of what your body naturally wants to do.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:48Dr. William Li?

  Now, how do you actually give your body the most chance to burn down extra body fat? Sleep. Let's just, let me just kind of like set out some hypotheticals. Let's say you sleep eight hours. You go to bed 11. Wake up at seven, alright. During that time, your body is actually burning fat, okay? Which is good. That's gonna get you over time to get to your fighting weight, so to speak.

• 38:12Lewis Howes?

  How much fat do we burn with eight hours of sleep, do you know?

• 38:16Dr. William Li?

  It actually depends on how good your sleep is. It also depends on when you ate before you went to bed. It also matters who you are, right? And lots of other stress factors.

• 38:26Lewis Howes?

  The way you think about yourself, your identity.

• 38:28Dr. William Li?

  Totally, totally. So the things that you talk about, sort of like this really harnessing your knowing yourself and harnessing your strengths and healing from the inside out. That is critical for getting good, using those eight hours. Now, let's talk a little bit about when you're actually eating last. Because if you're sleeping eight hours, 11 to 7, okay? Because you're not eating and you're burning fat. Let's say that you...

• 38:56Lewis Howes?

  One shred of your last bite be and by.

• 38:59Dr. William Li?

  Exactly. So I'm just trying to give you analogies that people can understand very easily. Let's say you eat dinner at 7 o'clock, alright? And you finish dinner at 8, alright? You put your dishes away at 8, alright? That seems pretty reasonable for most people. After 8 o'clock, and you go to bed at 11, do not snack.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  No nibbling.

• 39:20Dr. William Li?

  No midnight snack, no nibbling.

• 39:21Lewis Howes?

  No cookies.

• 39:21Dr. William Li?

  No waiting for the dessert at the end, alright? Now you've gained three extra hours from 8 o'clock, when your dishes get put away, all the way till you go to bed, don't eat. I don't eat, it's fine. You know, in the beginning, you might have some habits, like, oh man, I should... Don't. That's a habit you wanna break, okay? Because, and here's the why. Because if you don't eat, your insulin levels will go down quickly, alright, from dinner. And then what will happen is you get those three extra hours added on to the eight hours that you have, that your body's doing what it's doing.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  So does that mean you can still have tea, or like a carbonated water? Or like a sparkling water? Just nothing, zero calories?

• 40:03Dr. William Li?

  No calories, right, no food, okay? Especially no desserts. No gnawing on those little sweet things, nibbleies at night.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  What if there's a little lemon in the like water?

• 40:11Dr. William Li?

  Lemon's okay.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  That's okay.

• 40:12Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, yeah. No sugar, and like... So then what happens? Now you've actually built yourself eight hours of sleep, three hours of extra time. That's a bonus, okay? Get up in the morning, let's say you get up at 7, right? Don't do what your mommy told you to do when you were a kid. Which is roll out of bed, eat breakfast, get on the school bus to get to school. Right? That's how we're all conditioned. Here's what you want to do. Get up.

• 40:39Dr. William Li?

  Brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed. Take your time to get oriented to the day. I usually don't eat anything for about an hour. After I get up and I'm perfectly fine. You know, it's really habit that makes you want to sit down and pull a poor bowl of cereal. All right? Now you've gained an extra hour.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  So that's 12 hours now, right?

• 40:58Dr. William Li?

  Now you got 12 hours, okay? You got 12 clean hours, that's half the day.

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  With no food.

• 41:03Dr. William Li?

  With no food, your body's burning. It's different than 16 and 8, but it's the same principle. 16, 8, intermittent fasting, like now you gotta really push it. So you're squeezing all your foods in eight hours. May not work for everybody, but what I'm trying to empower people, you know? To be great. You don't need to go to 16. 12 gets you into great zone.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow, really?

• 41:25Dr. William Li?

  And think about it, and because, how many people do you know say? You know, I get eight hours of sleep, but then when you really talk to them, they're actually eating late at night.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Right before they fall asleep.

• 41:35Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, now you're cutting into your burn time.

• 41:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 41:38Dr. William Li?

  All right? So lots of, so that's, that's one thing is really sort of the timing of your meals. Oh, by the way, I mean, I'm sure this has happened to you as well. Busy people, sometimes skip breakfast. For whatever reason.

• 41:51Lewis Howes?

  Skip breakfast.

• 41:51Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, or sometimes skip lunch. All right? Totally fine. You can think about that when it happens. That you're buying yourself extra fat burn time. All right? And so for people who, you know, in that scenario you gave, you know, somebody who's overweight and has been struggling with it and say like, you know, this is what happened to me. Here's a really simple way, just to get a little bit disciplined. Diary out, journal out, when you normally eat, when you stop eating, when you go to bed. And what I say in my book is that, you know, try to create a 12 hour food window that you, that you're gonna open up in the morning. What time do you open the window that you're gonna eat? And then what time are you gonna close the window that you're not gonna eat anymore?

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Dr. William Li?

  You'll be, believe me, you'll be fine if you don't eat after dinner when you put your dishes away. And you'll be fine if you take a little extra time before you sit at the breakfast table. Guarantee you, you know, like you're gonna be just fine and you're gonna be healthier for it.

• 42:49Lewis Howes?

  And some people think like eating in an eight hour window is too short for them. But 12 hours is much more manageable. It seems like it's really not that hard to do.

• 42:57Dr. William Li?

  It's been studied actually in clinical trials in people. They actually compared 12 and 12, 12 fasting, 12 eating with 16 fasting and 80.

• 43:05Lewis Howes?

  Oh, oh, what happened?

• 43:07Dr. William Li?

  Both lost weight, both burned fat. You got about 40% more fat burn when you went 16. All right, so you know, you're fasting more. It makes, it makes sense, right? You're just having more time to burn.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:20Dr. William Li?

  If you can manage that. But the problem is that most people can't sustain that. And for me, what I sort of practice reasonableness, you know, like.

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  Don't be so extreme.

• 43:31Dr. William Li?

  Don't be extreme.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Dr. William Li?

  Human nature's not extreme. We can all do extreme things once in a while.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Dr. William Li?

  But if you really wanna kind of level set to be good all the time, great all the time, frankly. If you head towards greatness, you wanna be good all the time.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  And it's consistency.

• 43:46Dr. William Li?

  Consistency.

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  That's the key.

• 43:47Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. And be committed to it.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay, so 12 hour window. And what about if you were gonna skip one meal? Is it better to skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner? Is it better to have like a, I'm gonna eat my protein and veggies in the morning after an hour waking up? And have, you know, solid meal to fuel me for the day? I'm gonna have like a lighter lunch and then no dinner? And have a longer burn time before you go to sleep? Or is it better to skip breakfast and have lunch and a lighter dinner?

• 44:19Dr. William Li?

  You know, I think whatever works for people. But I will tell you that it's better to, probably for me, the way I look at it. I encourage people to skip breakfast. Just because you're burning fat all night long, just keep the burn going.

• 44:31Lewis Howes?

  Keep burning.

• 44:32Dr. William Li?

  Keep burning.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Dr. William Li?

  Okay. And then, and the key though, if you're gonna skip a meal, all right? If the key is if you're gonna skip a meal is not to overeat. The next time you sit down for food.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  And think, I'm starving. Ah, yeah.

• 44:46Dr. William Li?

  Don't do it. I mean, again, you know, these things take a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of self-actualization. You just have to recognize it's in your control.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  Right. What is the, okay, so we're talking about fat and we're talking about your new book, Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer. Make sure you guys get a copy of this, packed with tons of research, wisdom, and practical application that you can do for your daily life. What is the most surprising science around fat in your mind? And you talk about fat not being the villain we've made it out to be. In what ways does it support us?

• 45:28Dr. William Li?

  Okay, so I want to tell people, because I'm a scientist, I'm a vascular biologist, as well as a doctor. As scientists, we like to look at origins of tissue, of organs, okay? What's the origin of fat, right? Well, so a lot of people don't know this, but it's been studied. Your mom's egg met your dad's sperm, you were a ball of cells in the womb, okay? And when you started to form who you will later be, the first tissue gets laid down are your blood vessels, your circulation. Every cell, every organ needs a blood flow, right? Otherwise, it's not going to survive. Blood vessels. Second tissue that gets laid down are nerves. Because every organ needs a signal pathway.

• 46:11Dr. William Li?

  You need to be able to send commands to the organ, through your nerves, yeah. All right. Third tissue that gets laid down: fat.

• 46:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:17Dr. William Li?

  Little tiny fat cells start to form like bubble wrap around your blood vessels, okay? And the reason it does this is because, remember, we talked about this, your fat cells are your fuel tanks. And your blood receives the fuel, so it's got to load it right into the tank. It's, you know, like if you were designing a car, that's what you would do, right? Okay, so.

• 46:39Lewis Howes?

  So this is over muscle, this is over tissue, this is over bone?

• 46:42Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, this is the primordial system, all right? So you had fat before you had a face you could stuff with food.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 46:50Dr. William Li?

  That's a key thing, because we don't start to think about fat until later on in life, right? Now, when you're born... What is a hell, what gives us joy when we see a baby? It's a fat baby, chubby baby. Chubby cheeks, round belly, arms and legs that look like a circus balloon. Sure, like Michelin Man. Michelin Man, right? That's the, and we know that a baby is healthy if it's kind of pudgy and chubby. Now imagine if you saw a baby that had chiseled cheekbones like a fashion model, thin arms and long, thin thighs, long, you'd say there's something seriously wrong with that baby. And you'd be absolutely right. So I'm just telling you, we have to rethink what we know about body fat. It's not bad. What does it do?

• 47:33Dr. William Li?

  Well, I mentioned to you, it actually is a, it's an organ that secretes these critical hormones that turn up or turn down our appetite, that allow us to suck in energy along with insulin. It can be the brake for sucking that energy in. Very, very important. In fact, 13 hormones, three, those three are the most important ones. What else does it do? It's a cushion. Now, if we didn't have fat in our body, if we tripped on a rug and it fell on the floor, our organs would rupture. Wow. Okay, got in a car accident, bam, your organs would rupture. Thank goodness, we've got some padding in there so that we can, it can be a shock absorber for us. All right, that's very, very important. And then the brown fat, okay, which is not the jiggly fat.

• 48:17Dr. William Li?

  There's two colors of fat in our body, brown and white. White fat is the jiggly fat. The fat under your arm, under your chin, the muffin top, all right, around your thighs and your butt. That's the stuff that people kind of like. They want to get rid of. They want to get rid of, okay. That's actually not that, it may not be pleasing. You might want to get rid of it, but it's not the most harmful part. The most harmful part of fat is, is lumpy, bumpy, and it grows inside your body. In the organs. In, around your organs. Okay. Yeah. It's not the external fat on your body. It's actually inside. That's the scary fat. Yeah, because you could have a big body size, okay, like a heavyweight boxer, or you could be rail thin, all right, like a javelin thrower,

• 49:02Dr. William Li?

  and you could still have excess body fat packed inside your thin, skinny.

• 49:06Lewis Howes?

  How does that happen if you're skinny and you still get fat on the inside?

• 49:10Dr. William Li?

  It has to do with your body frame. Some people have thin frames. Think about it this way. You go to the FedEx and you're going to ship some fluorescent light bulb. It's kind of delicate. You don't want it to break. So you're going to get a big thin box and then you're going to actually get some peanuts and you're going to pour the peanuts in there to pat it, right? Now, let's say you get an extra bag of peanuts. You're going to really cram those peanuts in there. So that light bulb is being pressed by the peanuts and you're going to force that thinning box to be shut, tape it shut. An arm's like the skull skinny box. Inside, it's bursting, about to burst. That's what can happen with

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 49:46Dr. William Li?

  That's what can happen with visceral fat.

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So how do we get rid of the visceral fat around our organs?

• 49:51Dr. William Li?

  It's one of the first fats that energy is drawn from when your brown fat fires it. So let's talk about the hero fat, the good guy. So I talked, I told you the white fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat, the stuff that grows inside you, actually is lumpy, bumpy, jiggly, wiggly. All right? Brown fat is wafer thin and it's not close to the, it's not close to the skin. You can't see it. It's close to the bone around your neck, behind your chest. Okay, so it's really deep inside you and it fires up whenever you actually need it to fire up. Originally, we thought, we think actually was intended for cold temperatures.

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:29Dr. William Li?

  All right. So basically, when you're really cold, it lights up your brown fat. And the brown fat, again, as a space heater, takes fuel from wherever it can get, like your visceral fat, and it burns it down in order to generate heat. All right. Keeps your core body temperature warm. Where does it get that fuel? From your excess fat. Draws from there first. All right? That's why when you see there's certain foods that you can eat that turn on your brown fat, they also decrease your waist circumference because they are shrinking.

• 51:01Dr. William Li?

  The harmful fat that's inside your body. That's the fat you want to get rid of.

• 51:04Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Wow, okay. And the easiest way to get rid of it is, is how?

• 51:09Dr. William Li?

  The easiest way to get rid of it is actually to allow your body to normally burn, as we talked about with, you know, the timed eating.

• 51:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:17Dr. William Li?

  All right. But another way that you can add on top of that is choosing foods that I write about in my book, 150 of them.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 51:24Dr. William Li?

  That when you eat them, ignite your brown fat.

• 51:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 51:27Dr. William Li?

  So it ignites extra burn. You get, you know, it's sort of like putting nitro into your body. It actually, it actually helps your body burn extra fuel. Where does it get the fuel from? The brown fat burns down fuel and it gets that fuel from the white fat, the harmful fat. Good fat fights bad fat.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  So you've got 150 of these foods in Eat to Beat Your Diet, the new book, and I'm curious if you could share five that help burn fat. The foods that you should eat to help burn fat. What would those be?

• 51:57Dr. William Li?

  So this is the second section of my book where I actually tell people about the foods. And the way I wrote this, by the way, Louis, is I take the reader into a trip in my grocery cart. It's like when you were a kid, you know, you rode your mom's grocery cart?

• 52:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:14Dr. William Li?

  And she pushed you around?

• 52:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was the best.

• 52:15Dr. William Li?

  So what I, what I do is I put you in the grocery cart and I wheel you around the store, a grocery store, and I narrate into your ear, whisper to you what foods you should put into the cart. All right, so we go to the produce section, we go to the beverage section, we go to the middle, the forbidden middle aisles.

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 52:30Dr. William Li?

  I tell you how to find the good stuff in there.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  The box aisles.

• 52:33Dr. William Li?

  And then we go to, and then we go to the seafood section.

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Dr. William Li?

  And we pick up different foods. So let's, let me, let me come up with five, just going through, cruising through the, the section of the grocery store. Produce section. I look at tomatoes that contain lycopene. And the lycopene actually dissolves in your fat. So when you eat a tomato, the lycopene naturally dissolves in your fat to fight fat.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Now, what about the case about lectins with tomatoes?

• 53:01Dr. William Li?

  Big urban legend. Tomatoes do have lectins, or hundreds of lectins. The ones that are in tomatoes are harmless.

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 53:08Dr. William Li?

  All right, that's it. That ends the story.

• 53:09Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 53:10Dr. William Li?

  You know, I mean, so, again, well-meaning people try to interpret things and they tend to kind of miss... They try to put together a story that actually doesn't, isn't supported by science.

• 53:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 53:21Dr. William Li?

  All the evidence for tomatoes show that, in fact, you get net-net health benefits from it.

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Positive, okay. So tomatoes. Now, is a tomato in any form, is that in tomato sauce?

• 53:29Dr. William Li?

  It could be raw tomatoes, it could be tomato sauce, tomato paste.

• 53:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 53:33Dr. William Li?

  Double-concentrated tomato paste in a tube, even more concentrated because it's got even more lycopene. There's even tomato powder you can find, all right? The tomato sauce, the canned tomatoes, tomato paste, you don't find that in a produce section, you find that in middle aisles.

• 53:49Lewis Howes?

  Right. So tomatoes help you activate the process of burning fat?

• 53:53Dr. William Li?

  That's right, exactly. And what's really cool about tomatoes is that the stuff that is in tomatoes, lycopene, that does the fat burning, okay, dissolves in fat. So when you eat it, it immediately travels into your fat, okay? It embeds itself in your fat to fight the fat. Pretty powerful.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  That's great. Okay, so tomatoes fight the fat.

• 54:14Dr. William Li?

  All right, now we're still... I want to show another one that's actually pretty powerful. There was a study that showed eating just two pears a day would help you lose three pounds.

• 54:24Lewis Howes?

  Come on, really?

• 54:25Dr. William Li?

  Okay, yeah, over, you know, over about a month, and the bottom line...

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh, only eating two pears a day?

• 54:30Dr. William Li?

  No, no, no, you eat everything else, but you just add two pears a day. Now, why? Because pears have the same thing as in coffee, chlorogenic acid that fights body fat. But pears, in addition, have six grams, a medium pear has about six grams of dietary fiber. The fiber is prebiotic. It feeds your gut bacteria, your gut microbiome. And your gut microbiome is very, very happy, gets happy and pays you back by helping to up your metabolism. Streamlines your lipids, your blood cholesterol, actually helps to lower your blood pressure, lowers inflammation, and it actually improves your metabolism as well, and helps you burn body fat. And so, as a fruit, pear's got the fiber, it's got the chlorogenic acid, also not too sweet.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  It's not too much sugar, right?

• 55:16Dr. William Li?

  Not too much sugar either.

• 55:17Lewis Howes?

  Compared to an apple, which typically has more, right?

• 55:20Dr. William Li?

  Compared to a pineapple, or compared to a mango.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. What about apples compared to pears?

• 55:24Dr. William Li?

  Uh, you know, it's also, it's about, apple and pear is about the same.

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  About the same. Okay, cool. Does it depend on the type of apple? Because some apples are like filled with a lot of sugar, they're huge and they're...

• 55:33Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, so again, I think that the focus on the sugar is sort of a little bit of a bogey.

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  Okay, got it.

• 55:39Dr. William Li?

  What you want to do is to focus on the good stuff in apples. And I'll tell you for the polyphenols in apples, that has been studied. All right, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and the Renette apple are the three varietals that actually have the highest polyphenols.

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  What are those again? Golden?

• 55:57Dr. William Li?

  Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and the Renette. R-E-I-N-E-T-T-E. That's a smaller European apple. You'll see, if you go to any European market in the fall, it's all over the place.

• 56:11Lewis Howes?

  So these have more

• 56:12Dr. William Li?

  Polyphenols.

• 56:13Lewis Howes?

  than say the Fuji apple or the other?

• 56:16Dr. William Li?

  Oh yeah. Fuji has actually one relatively little... They're on the lower end of the polyphenols.

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  Right. It's just more like candy bar. It's like just sugar, is what it tastes like. It tastes so good.

• 56:27Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it's light. I mean, I would say that it's got kind of a light flavor. It doesn't have, it's not as dense and it doesn't produce as much polyphenol.

• 56:34Lewis Howes?

  Got it. Okay, so Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and the other one. Okay, so pears and apples?

• 56:41Dr. William Li?

  No, well, we added tomatoes.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  Tomatoes, pears?

• 56:43Dr. William Li?

  Those are my two picks. Let's dive into the middle aisle.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  All right, let's bring it.

• 56:48Dr. William Li?

  The first place I'd go in the middle aisle actually is the spices. And I always get a bag of dried chili. Chili powder, poblano chilies, ancho chilies, you know, any kind of chili. And by the way, it's chili, so you could get the powder, you could get the dried pods. Or if you wanted to get a salsa, chili salsa.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Chili salsa.

• 57:13Dr. William Li?

  That would also work. If you want to go to get sriracha sauce, that also works. I'm just telling you, this is how you get to 150 different foods. There's a, it's the chili in it. Now, what's in chili? You're gonna love this. Now, there is something called capsaicin. Capsaicin and capsaicinoids, alright. Those are the two things in chili that give you the burn. Alright, now.

• 57:38Lewis Howes?

  Make you sweat too.

• 57:39Dr. William Li?

  They make, uh, tell you.

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  For me, as a, as a white boy, makes me sweat a lot when I have chili.

• 57:43Dr. William Li?

  And now I'm gonna tell you why.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  I like them, but I'm like dripping sweat.

• 57:46Dr. William Li?

  I'm gonna tell you why now. Because the capsaicin in chili binds to, act, turns on a switch on your tongue. And in your mouth. It's called, um, trip V1, okay? Don't worry about the name of it, just know that there's a switch. Cap, pepper, capsaicin goes to the switch, turns on the switch in your tongue. Your tongue then sends a text message to your brain. And your brain releases two kinds of hormones. One is an endorphin. So it's a feel-good hormone, that's why you love it. Okay, that's why some people are addicted to chili. Alright, hot spice. The other one is called noradrenaline. Noradrenaline is a stress hormone, actually. Alright, and so, and you can feel this, next time you have something spicy. Um, put it in your mouth.

• 58:31Dr. William Li?

  Feel the burn, and if you pay attention to it, like in a quiet room. Or if you can, if you can like kinda go into a zen state. You'll feel the text message go to your brain.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:40Dr. William Li?

  You will feel the hormones being sent down the nerves of your neck. Like literally, you'll feel it. And those nerves and those hormones light up your brown fat. They turn on your brown fat, like a key into an ignition. Boom, turn it on. And, and you, and you, and by the way, that noradrenaline, nor, noradrenaline actually causes you to sweat.

• 58:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:59Dr. William Li?

  Right? So now you understand. Exactly, was it, but you're also turning on your metabolism. And that brown fat it's turning on is burning down harmful.

• 59:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 59:07Dr. William Li?

  Extra fat.

• 59:08Lewis Howes?

  So sweating when you eat is not a bad thing?

• 59:10Dr. William Li?

  It's a reflection of the fact that your brain is doing something.

• 59:14Lewis Howes?

  It's working.

• 59:14Dr. William Li?

  It's working.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  It's burning calories. It's connecting to the fat, the brown fat, right? It's starting to activate the metabolism. Is there any side, like negative side effects to having? In, you know, in chilies, in the. In your gut or in your intestines where it's like inflaming something or it's impacting it in a negative way?

• 59:33Dr. William Li?

  So it turns out that

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  Kind of feel it burning?

• 59:36Dr. William Li?

  First of all, everyone is a little bit different. So let's recognize that it's super important to listen to your body. And if something is, you're not responding well to something, cut it down or cut it out or try it in a different way, for sure. So some people will be very sensitive to chilies, other people not. Right? Now, here's the thing, that switch that I told you, the trip V1 that chili activates in your tongue, the text message to your brain, it's present along your entire gut. So it keeps on, as it's rolling down, it keeps on sending that message all the way to the end, which is, you know, why some people feel it burning.

• 1:00:10Lewis Howes?

  I feel that burn on the way out, too. Now, what does that mean when you eat something and the next day it burns too on the way out? And sometimes I'm sweating again. Is that a good thing?

• 1:00:20Dr. William Li?

  Well, I mean, it just shows you that what you ate is actually doing something, it's your body's response to what you ate. And yeah, it's actually turning on your metabolism.

• 1:00:27Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:00:28Dr. William Li?

  Okay. So it doesn't mean that you want it to burn on the way out. Right? You want to tune it to

• 1:00:33Lewis Howes?

  Have a little bit less in the end.

• 1:00:34Dr. William Li?

  Have a little bit less. All right? Now, the other thing that's really interesting about, so anyway, so that's a middle out one, that's three.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  Dried chili powder or salsas, chili salsas, sriracha sauce.

• 1:00:45Dr. William Li?

  Fourth?

• 1:00:46Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:00:47Dr. William Li?

  I'm gonna pick can of beans.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  A can of beans?

• 1:00:50Dr. William Li?

  Or it could be dried beans.

• 1:00:51Lewis Howes?

  A can of beans. What type of beans? Black beans, pinto beans?

• 1:00:55Dr. William Li?

  So actually, any of these beans are all legumes. So it could be, it could be navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, black beans, could even be lentils, frankly. But the point is that they're beans, and these legumes actually not only have healthy fats, they are very rich in dietary fiber.

• 1:01:15Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:16Dr. William Li?

  Now, why is it good for your metabolism? When you eat beans, not only are you feeding that, your gut microbiome with a fiber, it turns out that beans actually make you feel a little more full.

• 1:01:26Lewis Howes?

  And they fill you up?

• 1:01:28Dr. William Li?

  Fill you, well, they give you the sensation that you're filled up. You feel that way. They don't necessarily cause you to bulge out. Okay? So if you even eat a spoonful of beans slowly, or bean soup, bean stew, if you eat it slowly, don't chug it, all right? Even a few spoonfuls will make you feel like eating a little bit less. That's playing in your brain. That's actually helpful, right? It's your body just helping you. You're using your operating system to basically say, eh, don't eat so much.

• 1:01:57Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 1:01:57Dr. William Li?

  And yet, those beans are feeding your gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome is lowering inflammation, helping your metabolism, making your body more sensitive to insulin, so your metabolism is more efficient. All right, helping you heal better, text messaging your brain to release social hormones. All good things. And so, it's been, and by the way, it's been studied at the University of Toronto. Basically, one cup of beans eaten five days a week, right? So, that's not every day of the week, and it's not whole can. It's about a half a can, three quarters of a can. Actually, will shrink your waistline by about almost two inches.

• 1:02:33Lewis Howes?

  Come on, wait, wait. One cup of beans a week?

• 1:02:36Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, this has been studied.

• 1:02:38Lewis Howes?

  For how long?

• 1:02:39Dr. William Li?

  About a month.

• 1:02:40Lewis Howes?

  A month?

• 1:02:40Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, and that's the only thing you do. No workout, no special dietary risk, no caloric restriction.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  Eating the same amounts of foods you normally eat.

• 1:02:47Dr. William Li?

  Yep, just adding the beans.

• 1:02:49Lewis Howes?

  Just adding the beans?

• 1:02:50Dr. William Li?

  I'm telling you, this is why you can eat to beat your diet.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:53Dr. William Li?

  Like, you know, the whole idea about dieting is right, is cutting out, deprivation, elimination, doing something you don't want to do. I'm telling you, like, you can lean into this, and you can actually find foods, and again, you know, beans are one of them, chili is another one, chili peppers.

• 1:03:08Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:03:09Dr. William Li?

  Chili peppers and beans, now you got chili.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  Well, there you go, there you go, it's chili, yeah.

• 1:03:13Dr. William Li?

  Right, so again, combining them, you can actually get all this other stuff. It's just really interesting what the science is showing us.

• 1:03:19Lewis Howes?

  Now, there's so many different diets out there. I can't remember which one says, don't eat legumes. If that's the paleo diet or something else like this, that's saying, like, legumes are bad for you, or whatever it is. What is it about legumes that some people say you shouldn't eat?

• 1:03:34Dr. William Li?

  I think people talk about lectins again in legumes.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  Lectins and legumes, of like, you should remove these, or have them a certain way.

• 1:03:40Dr. William Li?

  You know, you want to soak your beans. That'll actually neutralize everything.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:03:44Dr. William Li?

  No, no biggie. Like, you know, I want to basically communicate how It's a non-issue.

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:03:51Dr. William Li?

  You know, and electives are not poisonous.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:03:53Dr. William Li?

  They're not, they're not poisonous to the beans. So soak them in the, if you soak, the longer you soak them, the less gas they can cause. Right? That's also helpful.

• 1:04:00Lewis Howes?

  That's nice.

• 1:04:01Dr. William Li?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:02Lewis Howes?

  Are there certain beans that are already pre-soaked that you can buy?

• 1:04:05Dr. William Li?

  You know, honestly, a can of beans is already pre-soaked, like ready to eat can of beans.

• 1:04:09Lewis Howes?

  Canapinto beans or black beans?

• 1:04:11Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. Now, we can get into all the, you know, are there plastics in the can and all that.

• 1:04:15Lewis Howes?

  They're organic and this and that.

• 1:04:17Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, yeah, and we can get into that. But I can tell you that like, this is pretty simple stuff. You know, we were talking about the dude out there that has got a lot of extra weight and wants to know, what can I do for myself? In addition to timing your eating and with the things we talked about. Look, get into the grocery store and start picking selectively and stuff. And it could be, by the way, it could be dried chili peppers. Or it could be fresh chili peppers. You wanna make some Thai food?

• 1:04:39Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:04:40Dr. William Li?

  Right.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  I like it. Okay, great.

• 1:04:42Dr. William Li?

  I think I owe you one more.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so those beans, so the fifth one. Food that will help you burn fat and lose weight.

• 1:04:49Dr. William Li?

  I'm actually gonna go to the seafood section. And I know seafood can be controversial because a lot of people say, I don't like fish.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Dr. William Li?

  But I can tell you that if you don't like fish, you haven't had, if you don't, if you say, I don't like seafood. You just haven't yet had seafood cooked the right way. I'm just telling you that.

• 1:05:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:05:07Dr. William Li?

  There are people that live along the coast that eat seafood and it is so.

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Dr. William Li?

  Delicious.

• 1:05:12Lewis Howes?

  The Mediterranean diet is one of the diets that helps people kind of live longer in certain blue zones.

• 1:05:17Dr. William Li?

  Right, yeah. And also in Asia as well. So, and that's why I call my approach to eating Mediterranean.

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  Mediterranean, I like that.

• 1:05:24Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it's kind of like a mix, a blend of both. It's how I naturally eat. But let's talk about the seafood section. So everybody used to say, think, again, this is a little bit of myth busting. It's you gotta have oily fish. It's gotta be salmon or sardines or mackerel or anchovies.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  To get the omegas, right?

• 1:05:40Dr. William Li?

  Because of the omegas, oh man, like that's too fishy for me. I don't think I could eat sardines, you know? Oh, I, you know, my mom made salmon once and I don't like it. Okay, but here's the surprise. The science has now shown that even non-oily fish.

• 1:05:57Dr. William Li?

  Less oily fish can actually have omega, enough omega-3s to give you the benefit. So salmon will actually cause you to lose weight, but cod, which is a non-oily fish, will also cause you to lose weight.

• 1:06:07Lewis Howes?

  Love cod.

• 1:06:07Dr. William Li?

  A little bit less than salmon, a little bit less weight, but it turns on your metabolism. Omega-3 in cod is enough to turn on your fat-burning system for your metabolism. It activates your metabolism. Now, from that, from the omega-3 in cod, you can then extrapolate to other seafood. Clams, mussels, shrimp. I can tell you, four shrimp will turn on your fat-burning system the way that a piece of cod would, that would actually burn fat, right?

• 1:06:34Lewis Howes?

  Four shrimp, I love shrimp.

• 1:06:35Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. Now, I can tell you, how you cook your food makes a big difference. If you deep fry your shrimp, you know, you take something good, you've kind of gone backwards. But depending on how you cook it, it's about being mindful. But, and this is really the fact that it's pretty amazing. So in my publisher, when I first said how I was gonna set up my book, they're like, "Be careful about the seafood, people don't like seafood." And I'm like, "That's the reason I'm gonna write about it."

• 1:07:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:07:01Dr. William Li?

  Because I'm gonna write about it the way that people love seafood write about it, and I'm not just gonna cover salmon. I'm gonna talk about cod, and hake, and halibut, and then I'm gonna talk about shrimp, whichever, which is what people love to eat.

• 1:07:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:07:14Dr. William Li?

  And clams, and mussels, and squid, calamari, and octopus, and all these other, and I get into some pretty unusual things that you can get in the Mediterranean and also in Asia as well. Like, this is, I think this is the first book that has the word "diet" on the cover. It's an anti-diet book, not a diet book, that actually talks about mantis shrimp and mitten crab.

• 1:07:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:07:36Dr. William Li?

  These are, by the way, if you, if you live in Europe or in Asia, and along the coast, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I wanna push people's imaginations. I wanna, you know, like, when you watch a food channel, you watch Iron Chef or something, like, you're really curious about what these things are.

• 1:07:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:07:51Dr. William Li?

  Or Anthony Bourdain. I want people to approach the seafood section like that. Like, "What's Dr. Lee gonna write about next?"

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:07:59Dr. William Li?

  Just take, I wanna take you on that journey.

• 1:08:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow. I'm kind of, I like certain seafoods, but I feel like if I went to Asia, I'd be like, "Oh, I don't know if I'm gonna try these things," because it'd be too intense looking for me, right?

• 1:08:10Dr. William Li?

  Trust the locals.

• 1:08:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:08:11Dr. William Li?

  And this, and this is what I always do when I travel and I do my research. I find, you know, a local will take me to someplace, and I, be open-minded, learn, be willing to learn, you know? And by the way, you know, like, trust...

• 1:08:26Dr. William Li?

  The experience that you just might discover your new favorite thing.

• 1:08:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 1:08:31Dr. William Li?

  All right, that's a, that's a big leap of faith.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  It is, it is.

• 1:08:35Dr. William Li?

  But to me, that's actually an important thing to be willing to do to be able to conquer your fear. In order to be able to actually master your, your.

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  That's true, that's true. I love these five foods, so let me rephrase, recap these tomatoes, pears, dried chili powder or chilies, beans and cod or you said salmon and four shrimp. Yeah, four shrimps, so those are beautiful. These are five foods that will support you in burning fat and optimizing your metabolism. Five of 150, which you're talking about in this book.

• 1:09:09Dr. William Li?

  With the doses, by the way.

• 1:09:10Lewis Howes?

  With the exact.

• 1:09:11Dr. William Li?

  With the exact dose that research would dictate will be helpful to turn on your fat burning.

• 1:09:16Lewis Howes?

  I love that.

• 1:09:16Dr. William Li?

  That's a key thing, food dosing, by the way, very important concept. Because not only do you want to know what to eat, you want to know how much to eat. That's based on science.

• 1:09:26Lewis Howes?

  Right, now, there's a lot of experts, you being one of them, obviously, who is doing the research, working in the science, seeing the studies that other people are doing, testing the studies, using it with different clients and patients, using these things yourself, seeing how it is. How can we know? How to trust our own selves as the expert? When there is lots of experts out there saying different things and different research and different methods to apply? How can we see all the things that are out there and everything in the fitness and nutrition industry in general? And still say, okay, I know everyone's saying all these different things and there's different research for things.

• 1:10:12Lewis Howes?

  But how do I learn to trust myself as the expert for optimizing my nutrition in my body?

• 1:10:19Dr. William Li?

  I read about this, there's a whole chapter in here that I write about Bruce Lee. And I wrote about Bruce Lee because I was a big fan of Bruce Lee when I was a kid. And I loved the martial arts and I studied martial arts. But actually, it's less about, as I've sort of gotten to be an adult, what's really still amazing about him is really his philosophy and his approach to fitness and health, and actually, approach to life. And one of the most important, I think, concepts he talks about is really knowing yourself, like being very honest with yourself, taking the time to really have that self-knowledge.

• 1:10:59Dr. William Li?

  And I think you talk about this as well, about self-knowledge and understanding what makes you tick, what injuries you've had, what your preferences are, who you are inside. That's the key to the unlock, and I think that's true for food as well. By understanding who you are, what you respond to, what your origins are. Look, we all are connected to food from the time we were a kid. Every one of us, no matter who it is, who's watching this, you have some food, some smell that came out of your mom's kitchen that makes you feel good. Mmm, my mom's lasagna, so good. Right? Okay, and so that's part of who you are, that's part of self-knowledge.

• 1:11:40Dr. William Li?

  If you do more of that, you actually can trust yourself to know what your preferences are. The other way you can trust yourself is to really find, learn how to find trustworthy sources. You know, look at credentials, look at what else people are doing. But what I would say is that, look for people who are not offering you quick fixes. You know, when it comes to your health, it's never a quick fix, it's a journey, as you said. And so anybody who basically says, "Just eat this and you'll be all set," or "This is super food," or "Super supplement," that's a promise they can't deliver on. Interesting. And so what happens when you try that, it doesn't work, you learn to not trust yourself. Right. Right? Interesting.

• 1:12:22Dr. William Li?

  So, look at your, learn how to trust yourself to trust other people. Who do you learn to trust? Think about it, you're at school, which teachers are you gonna trust? Which coaches are you gonna trust? What friends are you gonna trust? Same deal, I think, when we get all this other information that's out there. I actually think that part of the confusion that we actually have on health and diet and nutrition...

• 1:12:49Dr. William Li?

  It's not that we have too many voices out there. It's that everyone has their own philosophy of what should be done. Look, even veganism, let me just explain this. Like, I'm totally all for people that decide to go for veganism. But understand that the choice of being a vegan is not really because of health. It's really an ethical decision. That's not a health decision. That's not based on science. That is your ethics, that's your morals. Go for it. Yeah. I support you with that. And own it, yeah. And own it, okay? And I think that to really then, people trying to twist that into say, eh, it's gonna be healthy for you, now you gotta do it this way. And even, you know, things that we talked about, like intermittent fasting. You know what? It's not a trend. It's what we do.

• 1:13:33Dr. William Li?

  It's how our body's wired. Sure. And so what I try to do is to really take down some of this mystery. Make it non-mythical, you know? And if there's an urban legend, I wanna bash it because it doesn't believe there, it doesn't belong there. It's gonna confuse people. So I think that's another way to have people trust themselves. And then, you know, I think the third thing that is absolutely vital, to learn how to trust yourself, to move forward, to continue to trust yourself, is do things that you enjoy. Things that bring you pleasure, enjoy. When it comes to food, human nature abhors deprivation. Don't do this, don't do that, you're a bad person if you do this. You know, and then, and you associate that with foods that you love? It's terrible.

• 1:14:18Dr. William Li?

  You're not gonna stick to that. You're not, then you don't know who to listen to and you can't trust your inner, inner voice. What I try to do is to say, look, I, in my books, I should put lists of food out that I've done all the hard work to tell you and I show you what the science is showing that are good. I tell people bust out a Sharpie, or, you know, or however you actually, digital, and circle the foods that I've listed, that I've already done the homework for you, that you already like. Start with those. You're already ahead of the game. You're already eating foods that you like. Then you can start to trust the information. Now you want to kind of explore more. Look, there's a lot of other foods you didn't circle. Give it a shot.

• 1:14:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great. I'm curious, how long have you been doing this work for? It's been what?

• 1:14:59Dr. William Li?

  Thirty years.

• 1:15:00Lewis Howes?

  Three decades. And I feel like there's things that have evolved in science and research in the medical field over the last thirty years, right? I'm curious, what is the thing that when you started your medical practice and started science and research around nutrition and healing, cancer and all these different things? What has come out in the last decade that we didn't know thirty years ago? That you didn't even know was possible thirty years ago? And now we're saying, oh, this is a common day practice. So we'll start with that. And then the second thing would be, what do you see is going to be possible over the next thirty years that seems impossible or we just don't know the answer to yet?

• 1:15:42Dr. William Li?

  All right. The single most mind blowing thing to me about nutrition that's come out, not just in the last ten years, how about the last two years, last twenty-four months? Has changed our entire understanding of metabolism. So I can tell you this, just two years ago, in 2021, all right? There was a research paper that was published, a research study that was published, that was an epic study, the most ambitious, largest, most impactful study of human metabolism ever conducted. And it was published in the journal Science, which is one of the top peer reviewed credible journals.

• 1:16:26Dr. William Li?

  In the Science, that journal publishes discovery. So this is a discovery in the last two years that completely changes everything that we knew about human metabolism. It's so new, so profound, that the textbooks on metabolism are being ripped up and thrown out right now. And the new ones haven't even been written yet.

• 1:16:45Lewis Howes?

  Come on, wow.

• 1:16:46Dr. William Li?

  All right, so let me tell you what it is.

• 1:16:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:16:47Dr. William Li?

  All right. So there was a researcher named Herman Ponzer out of Duke University who worked with ninety other collaborators. This is a big research project, all right? Across twenty countries, global, and they studied six thousand people.

• 1:17:08Dr. William Li?

  In exactly the same way for metabolism. All right, now this wasn't possible until a few years ago.

• 1:17:13Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:17:14Dr. William Li?

  And the way they studied them is they gave everybody a drink of water.

• 1:17:19Dr. William Li?

  H2O, right, water. The hydrogen is H, oxygen is the O. And they tweaked the hydrogen and the oxygen just a little bit, so you can measure it. All right, so you, they drank the water and then the body metabolized the hydrogen, the oxygen. And you can measure the metabolism in the breath, in their breath. You can measure it in their blood and you can measure it in their urine.

• 1:17:40Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:40Dr. William Li?

  All right, and studied this exactly the same way in 6,000 people. Now, here is the, uh, kind of the mic drop part of this. They studied the entire human lifespan from two days old to 92 years old. They, they studied people from across 20 countries.

• 1:17:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:18:00Dr. William Li?

  From this entire age range, different body sizes, different races, ethnicities. Everything is different, different sexes, genders, all right. Now, and they measured the metabolism, what do you think they found at the beginning? At the beginning, for metabolism, what do you think they found?

• 1:18:16Lewis Howes?

  They probably found, from all the different types of people, they probably found.

• 1:18:19Dr. William Li?

  6,000 people, 20 countries.

• 1:18:22Lewis Howes?

  I mean, this is just a very uneducated guess, but they probably found that the metabolism is different for different people. I mean, based on age or, or.

• 1:18:32Dr. William Li?

  Well, so that's what they found, the results.

• 1:18:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:18:34Dr. William Li?

  The results were all over the map.

• 1:18:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Dr. William Li?

  All right, just like you would expect, right? So you, you had an honest guess.

• 1:18:39Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:18:40Dr. William Li?

  Based on common sense.

• 1:18:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:18:41Dr. William Li?

  And based on what we kind of observe around us.

• 1:18:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:18:44Dr. William Li?

  However, that we now live in the age of artificial intelligence and supercomputing. So this group designed an algorithm that would be able to go into the data set and correct the result based on the metabolism as it should be, as it is, if you remove the effect of excess body fat.

• 1:19:06Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:07Dr. William Li?

  And when you removed every person's excess body fat from this completely natural study. All right, what they revealed, it was, the results were not all over the map anymore.

• 1:19:16Lewis Howes?

  They're all the same.

• 1:19:17Dr. William Li?

  It was, no, there was only four phases of human metabolism that were revealed across our entire lifespan. So now we know humans go through four phases of metabolism. And depending on your age, you go through exactly the same four stages. All right, this is how we're hardwired. This, Louis, is our operating system for our metabolism. All right. Now, what are those systems? What are those four phases? This first stage is when you're born. So when you're born, you come out of your mom. Your metabolism is kind of synced up with your mom like a menstrual cycle. All right, you pop out and your metabolism from zero to one. Stage one skyrockets like a rocket ship blasting off. All right.

• 1:19:58Dr. William Li?

  And your metabolism, by the time you're one year old, is 50% higher than when you're going to be an adult. That's how high it overshoots. All right. Now, stage two is from one year old to 20 years old. One to 20. And your metabolism goes down, down, down, down, down, down. From one to 20, down through teenage years, through adolescence to 20. Now, the reason that's important when it's going down is because teenage years, adolescence, that's when your height skyrockets. People put on muscle. They're eating two dinners. They're bouncing off the wall. Every parent says, my kid must be, metabolism must be going through the roof.

• 1:20:39Dr. William Li?

  No, it's actually coming down, down, down, down, down to age 20, which is when you hit your adult level.

• 1:20:45Lewis Howes?

  Did we not know this before two years ago?

• 1:20:47Dr. William Li?

  No.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  We didn't know that the metabolism goes down in your teens.

• 1:20:51Dr. William Li?

  No, this is completely spanking new discovery. Okay.

• 1:20:55Lewis Howes?

  It's still high, but it's going down.

• 1:20:57Dr. William Li?

  It's going down.

• 1:20:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:20:58Dr. William Li?

  Okay, it started from 50% higher. Now it's going down to adult level. Now 20 hits your adult level. Now, here's the big surprise.

• 1:21:05Lewis Howes?

  Is everyone at 20 or sometimes 19 or 21? Or is it kind of around this?

• 1:21:09Dr. William Li?

  They, they hit the spot at 20.

• 1:21:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:21:12Dr. William Li?

  Okay.

• 1:21:12Lewis Howes?

  Everyone is?

• 1:21:13Dr. William Li?

  That's what they hit.

• 1:21:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay.

• 1:21:15Dr. William Li?

  Now, let me tell you, from 20 to age 60, human metabolism, your operating system for metabolism, is rock stable through pregnancy, through menopause, through middle age, up until you're 60. It doesn't change. It's hardwired to be the same. Okay, now, that means that 60 can be the new 20. Interesting. If you allow your metabolism to do what it wants to do. That's amazing. That's what's inside us. That's our operating system, okay? And we didn't know that for sure. Most people say, "Oh, when I'm middle-aged, I'm gonna have struggles with my weight." Yes. Okay, it's all of these external factors and some internal factors changes your behavior, marketing, the bad choices you make. And then, I'm gonna come back to that for a second to explain that.

• 1:21:59Dr. William Li?

  So then, at age 60, that's the third phase, age 60 to 90, the final stages, is stage four. And guess what? Your metabolism from 60 onwards does slow down a little bit. By the time you're 90, it slows down 17%. So when you're 90, your metabolism is only 17% of what it was at 60, but it was also 17% of what you were at 20. Wow. All right? Interesting. This is the pattern of human metabolism. This is what the new textbooks are writing. This is the new discovery about how humans actually work across our lifespan. Very important. Now, one more thing about this. You only reveal this when you remove the effects of excess body fat. What happens is when you put the effect of excess body fat back in, you smash your metabolism.

• 1:22:44Dr. William Li?

  You suppress it. Wow. So it's not that a slow metabolism that you're born with makes you gain weight and get fat. It's the other way around. Excess fat slows your metabolism. So if you burn the fat, or if you get rid of the fat, then your metabolism goes up? Goes up, because that's the operating system. You unleash your inner metabolism. Interesting. That's powerful. That's very powerful. And why do we want to have a powerful metabolism? What's the importance of it? Energy, mental clarity, cognition, better muscle strength. I mean, all the things you want over the course of your life. Metabolism is our body's ability to run the engine of your body like a car engine. Right. You want to be able to drive.

• 1:23:27Dr. William Li?

  At 90, the same way that your car was when you bought it, when you rolled it out of the, out of the, off the, out of the car shop.

• 1:23:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:34Dr. William Li?

  Right?

• 1:23:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:23:35Dr. William Li?

  So that's what I'm saying is that this, and this hardwired pattern, you know, which I have in my book, it's, it's like a drawing of exactly how it works. This puts the power back into our hands. So for the person who says, you know what? This is my life and I've been struggling with weight. I'm telling you, in your body, your operating system wants to operate at a higher level. You've got extra some, extra body fat.

• 1:23:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Dr. William Li?

  Okay. You gotta unleash, you gotta work to unleash that inner metabolism. It's gonna rise. Your water level will rise when you actually fight that body fat. And by the way, you don't need to suck it out or burn it out or chop it out. Most people don't. Now, some people who are morbidly obese, they might have a medical, a serious medical problem. But what I'm saying is that the behaviors that we take, the accountability, the commitment that we take.

• 1:24:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:19Dr. William Li?

  To just adjust our life pattern. Look, finish, put your dishes away and don't eat until you, until you wake up in the morning.

• 1:24:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:24:27Dr. William Li?

  Don't eat breakfast for like an hour after you get up. That gives you 12, that gives you 12 hours of fat burning. You'll start moving in that right direction. Then add some of these 150 foods that you can find in the grocery store.

• 1:24:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:41Dr. William Li?

  You don't have to order this online from some special, you know.

• 1:24:45Lewis Howes?

  Exotic place.

• 1:24:46Dr. William Li?

  Exotic place. This is in the grocery store. That's what I'm talking about. That's where you can eat to beat your diet.

• 1:24:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love this. Uh, I'm so inspired by this and I want everyone to get a copy of Eat to Beat Your Diet. Again, if you're looking to burn fat, if you're looking to heal your metabolism and live longer, then this is the book for you. Uh, again, I'm, I'm inspired by all of your work. You've got another Ted Talk that's got, I think, over 11 million views. It's called Can We Eat to Starve Cancer? And in our previous interview, we talked a little bit about, you know, some of these concepts as well. So if people want more from you, check out that other interview we did. Get this book and also follow you at DrWilliamLee.com.

• 1:25:32Lewis Howes?

  And also all over social media, DrWilliamLee, that's L I, uh, everywhere on social media. This is inspiring work and I'm curious, how else can we be of support and service to you?

• 1:25:44Dr. William Li?

  Well, look, my mission is to get information out. So I want to invite everybody to sign on to my newsletter. I pump out new information, new research I'm seeing every single week. I'm sort of like drinking from a fire hose of the new research. I do all the heavy lifting to translate everything, to figure out what's important, what's ready for prime time or not ready for prime time. But what I do in my newsletter is I put it out there so you can actually see for yourself. Look, I've been involved with biotechnology and drug development. Okay, that can take a decade and maybe it won't work. All right. Food research that is credible has immediacy because something that you hear, that I tell

• 1:26:26Dr. William Li?

  you, that's based on science, once you hear it, you could put it in action that evening.

• 1:26:31Lewis Howes?

  And start getting results.

• 1:26:33Dr. William Li?

  And start getting results. And it becomes self-actuated. That's why I really got into food as medicine.

• 1:26:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:26:41Dr. William Li?

  And so I think, you know, sign on to the newsletter. I do these free master classes. And I love the fact that I've got people from all around the world that sign on. Everybody's united by their love of health and their desire to see if there's some way to make food work out. And so what I tell people is to love your food, to love your health. And then if you're really serious, you want to do a deep dive with me, come with me on one of my four-week online digital courses that I teach. I come on and do office hours and I talk to people and it's Q and A. Or I have these little mini-courses that you can actually do as well. But the point is, this is all part of my mission to get that information out there.

• 1:27:19Lewis Howes?

  And that's all at DrWilliamLeed.com, right?

• 1:27:21Dr. William Li?

  That's right.

• 1:27:22Lewis Howes?

  All that information. So sign up for the newsletter, courses, all that stuff. How often are you sending out the research? Is it weekly in the newsletter?

• 1:27:29Dr. William Li?

  Weekly.

• 1:27:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay. This is inspiring stuff. Dr. Lee, I want to acknowledge you for your constant commitment to knowledge, science, and research to helping people improve their life. For me, that's what I'm excited about. I don't have the skills to do the research like you and understand the science, but I'm grateful that you are doing it so that I can have you on this show and share this with the world as well. And I really acknowledge you for... Or taking the time to do all the research for this book because I know how much energy it takes to create a book. You've done a few of them and so thank you for putting this together. So we can understand it, hopefully conceptualize it and apply it and take consistent action. So I really appreciate you creating this and adding so much value in the world.

• 1:28:14Lewis Howes?

  I asked you this last time, but I'm curious if it's different because it was over a year ago when we had you on last time. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths question. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day. You've applied all of your wisdom and you've extended more than 20 years of your life, right? You live as long as you want. But for whatever reason, in this hypothetical scenario, you've got to take all of your message with you. Your books, this interview, all your content you've ever created has to go to the next place, hypothetical. So we don't have anything to remember you by, except for these three final truths that you would share with the world or three lessons from all your wisdom that you would share. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:28:59Dr. William Li?

  One of them is to try to align your

• 1:29:06Dr. William Li?

  health with the things that bring you joy. Very important because that way you can do it the whole time and always feel good about it. Second thing, I would say,

• 1:29:19Dr. William Li?

  take the time to know yourself.

• 1:29:22Dr. William Li?

  It's so easy not to take that time, but it's so valuable and so worth it to take that time. And the third is to listen to your body. You know, we run around doing things all the time and we sort of treat our bodies as if they were this passive engine. We can push through, you know, a snowstorm. And actually, if we paid attention and listened and learned how to be in tune with our bodies, we're going to actually be a lot healthier, no matter what.

• 1:29:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, those are beautiful. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:29:55Dr. William Li?

  Joy.

• 1:29:57Dr. William Li?

  When you can actually find a place where and or or an area in your life where you really truly feel joy, you're great.

• 1:30:06Lewis Howes?

  I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter

• 1:30:49Lewis Howes?

  and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.