 Does this really help melt the fat away? I'm gonna talk to you about four fat burning myths and my number one secret for melting fat fast. All right, myth number one, counting calories helps you lose weight. Here's the bad news. A calorie isn't a calorie. The idea that calories count came from a time when none of us knew about the existence of the human microbiome, that huge collection of bacteria, fungi, parasites that live in our gut. We didn't know how much food, how many calories the microbiome was potentially able to eat for themselves. We also didn't know that types of bacteria are really good at extracting calories from the food you eat and giving them to you. We also didn't know that bacteria are really good at controlling your desire for certain foods, particularly high calorie sugars and concentrated sugars and fats, like saturated fats. So we didn't know any of this. The fact is that if we have a proper microbiome and we give the microbiome the types of calories in fibers that they wanna eat, they can eat much of your food and actually control your appetite. As you know, from unlocking the keto code, there's a beautiful experiment that was done with Chinese where they were put on either a seven or 14 day water fast. Half the group got 100 calories of prebiotic fiber. Now, if you listen, prebiotic fiber, we cannot digest, but our gut buddies, our microbiome, loves it and they eat it. The group that was given the prebiotic fiber had no hunger despite a seven day or 14 day water fast. That's because the bacteria said, hey, we got what we need to eat. You don't have to go looking for food. It's called the gut-centric theory of hunger and it's really empowering to know that you can give your bacteria control over what you eat. And again, you want calories eaten by your bacteria. That way you can eat more calories and not worry about it. So the other thing, please, everybody wants to know why aren't there any calorie counts in my books? Why aren't there any macros? Why don't I say there's this many carbohydrates, there's this much fat, there's this much protein. When you're doing this right, none of this matters and I stand by that. Myth number two, exercise long and often for weight loss. Well, I got news for you. Exercise, as you know, I am a big fan of and I like to exercise, but does exercise help you lose weight? Couple reasons, no. Number one, animals exercise for one of two reasons. To find food or to not be someone else's food. And we actually come from the same lineage. My dogs go for a run or a walk with me every day. When we get back, they look at me and say, okay, we did our work, we've caught our kill, let's eat it. And that's when they eat. Interestingly enough, if we don't take a log or I gotta run out the door or something, they're not even hungry. They don't even look at me like, okay, we did it. And I see so many people who exercise strenuously and they're really hungry and they overeat from their exercise. I'm a perfect example. When I was 70 pounds overweight, I was what was called a Clydesdale runner. I ran 30 miles a week. I was doing 5K, 10K every weekend and yet I was 70 pounds overweight. Why? Because quite frankly, I was always hungry and I was eating the wrong foods. When I stopped that and actually reduced my exercise program, that's when I really started to lose weight and keep the pounds off. Now I was in a study years ago. People have looked at people who had sustained weight loss over a period of time, long period of time. Sadly, as almost everybody knows, diets don't work for sustained weight loss. In fact, most studies show that anywhere from 95 to 98% of people who lose weight on a diet quickly regain that weight within a year. Now long-term successful weight loss, it turns out that the difference between the long-term successful weight loss folks and the people who couldn't keep it off was the long-term people had an exercise program that they could stick with. And that was the one fundamental difference in long-term weight loss. We've seen that during the pandemic. A lot of people, their exercise programs fell in the toilet. The gyms were closed. There was no way to get to a spin glass, a Pilates glass, a yoga class, a weight training routine. And people's weight really started to go up. And I have a fun time watching my patients as each wave of COVID has gone by and we return to those activities. We can actually see people stabilize in their weight and lose weight, but with each wave we see the exact same thing happen when everything shuts down again. So exercise is a great way to keep fat away, but not to lose weight initially. Myth number three, eating fat will make you fat. Now I've talked about this on a previous podcast, but in fact, if you eat the right kinds of fat and if you eat them during the right times and you don't eat fats with refined carbohydrates, fats can actually help you lose weight. So extra virgin olive oil helps you lose weight. Very good studies comparing two groups of people where one group got extra virgin olive oil, the other group didn't. The group that got the olive oil lost two to three kilograms more than the group that didn't get it. As I talked about in Unlocking the Keto Code, you can take people with extra virgin olive oil as their standard, change them over to MCT oil in the same amount. And MCT oil, medium chain triglycerides, gave an additional two to three kilogram weight loss compared to what was experienced with extra virgin olive oil. So here's a great trick that I talked about in Unlocking the Keto Code. Take your olive oil, mix in some MCT oil, it's flavorless, and then use your dressing, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, any vinegar, and use that on your dressing, on your salads. Gradually build up the amount of MCT oil, so it's about half and half olive oil, and watch what happens. So fats don't necessarily make you fat. One avocado a day is shown in human clinical trials to make you lose weight. Part of the reason is that avocados have a lot of fiber that your gut buddies love and they'll take care of you. Final myth, being in ketosis 24-7 is the best way to melt fat. The problem is we were never designed to be in ketosis 24-7. Can you imagine our ancestors who were trying to stay in ketosis, like so many people claim we were, and we killed a buffalo? Can you imagine we'd say, oh my gosh, I should really only eat four ounces of that buffalo because I'm starting to maintain ketosis? Of course not. We would eat our full. We would try to fill up with as much and restore fat. The studies in animals and in humans show that 24-7 ketosis is really one of the worst ways to improve your health, and because of a lack of time, check out Unlocking the Keto Code and find out why. That's all for today, because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here. And one of the reasons we are getting sicker and sicker and sicker in this country, and fatter and fatter, is our year-round availability of fruit.