 You're not able to lose weight because you have a slow metabolism, or tough luck. Your whole family has horribly sluggish metabolism and you'll never have a healthy one. Or welcome to menopause. A slower metabolism is part of the change. Any of these sound familiar? Well today we're going to do one of my favorite styles of discussion, myth busting. Because there's a good chance that everything your well-meaning MDs and family members have told you about, your metabolism is wrong. For example, a slow metabolism isn't caused by eating too little or not exercising enough. But before diving right in, let's discuss what the heck metabolism is anyhow and its true function. Okay, ready for some myth busting? I printed a list of reasons. WebMD says you have a slow metabolism. We'll run down the list one by one and I'll explain why this simply isn't true. Plus, I'll share two methods to fix a slow metabolism that work, no matter your age. Okay, so this is from WebMD. Number one, your genes. Metabolism is how your body changes food into energy. If your body is slow at burning calories while you rest or sleep, you probably got that from your parents through your genes. I got news for you. Your parents and your genes did not tell you how to turn food into energy. That's actually a part of what your gut microbiome is doing and the types of foods that you're eating. As I explained in the energy paradox, ultra-processed foods literally cause a backup at rush hour in the way your mitochondria take the food you eat and turn it into energy. So the more processed foods that you eat, it's guaranteed to slow your metabolism, not the genes that your parents gave you. Number two, hormones. A shift in your hormones can put the brakes on your body's energy use. That can make you feel tired. Some conditions like an underactive or overactive thyroid and diabetes are hormonal diseases that affect your metabolism. Stress also releases hormones that contribute a slowdown. Well, first of all, as you've heard me write in the energy paradox, cortisol, the so-called stress hormone that makes you gain weight, has absolutely no effect on weight gain and your metabolism. In fact, the vast majority of people who tell me that they have a slow adrenal gland or they have adrenal fatigue have absolutely normal cortisol levels. I also have a number of people with high cortisol levels that are not fat, that are not sluggish, and that is not the reason for the problem. Now yes, if you are hypothyroid, that will definitely slow your metabolic rate. And we have an epidemic of hypothyroidism in this country. A lot of it is the fact that we do not have iodine in our salt anymore. That's an easy fix, but hormonal changes, I have women who go through metaphors that gain weight, but it's not because of hormonal changes in estrogen. It's actually because their microbiome during menopause changes dramatically. We also now know that the microbiome is responsible for making much of the hormones that drive our energy production, and you can read all about that in the energy paradox and unlocking the keto code. Lack of sleep, well lack of sleep, good shut eye helps your metabolism stay steady. No, that's not true. Good sleep actually stops you from becoming insulin resistant, and good sleep stops you from becoming carbohydrate hungry. If you don't get good sleep, you will seek out high sugar calorie foods, and that is what's going to prompt your weight gain, not the slowing of your metabolism. Number four, strict diets. How you lose weight matters, I agree with that. If you don't eat enough, your metabolism switches to slow-mo. No, that is actually not true. That's been shown over and over again that you suddenly don't slow down if you don't eat enough. In fact, some of my people who gain so much weight are supposedly not eating enough, but when we actually look at what they're eating, they're eating the perfect combination of foods to promote weight gain, and it's not because they're eating too little. What you can do, make your weight loss plan realistic, not drastic, that's very true. Weight off fast will never last. Weight off slow, you're good to go, and that's what I do in all my books. Trendy salt. Trendy salt is the cause of your slow metabolism. But it lacks iodine. I finally found one that I agree with. Iodine is critical for your metabolism. Please get iodized sea salt. There's so many of them out there now. They're great. Oh, I love this one. Your parched. Without enough, HDO, your metabolism can stall. How about a tall, cool glass of water? Now, do you really want cold water or do you want warm water? It turns out that drinking something cold will actually make you burn more calories to equilibrate your body temperature. This idea that warm water will help you burn calories is exactly the opposite. You want the thermogenic effect of cold water, but here's the problem. The more water you drink, the more you dilute out sodium chloride, potassium, and magnesium, which are the essential minerals that drive your metabolic rate. So you can do horrible things by drinking too much water. On the other hand, studies show that having too much salt will actually drive hunger. And as anyone knows, after eating a big bowl of salty popcorn, you want a lot of water and more water, and you shouldn't be eating popcorn anyhow. Seventh reason you have a low metabolism. You drink decaf coffee, but you'll miss out on the jolt of caffeine that gets your metabolic motor running. Now, folks, as I showed in Unlocking the Keto Code, coffee and tea for that matter, whether it has caffeine or not, is loaded with polyphenols. And those polyphenols in themselves are what are going to produce a higher metabolic rate. Now, if you want to add caffeine, I'm a big fan because caffeine in itself is a mitochondrial encoupler. But if caffeine gives you the jitters, if you notice issues with heart jitteriness, don't worry about it. Your decaf coffee is not slowing your metabolism down. In fact, it's actually raising your metabolic rate. Number eight, not enough calcium. You need it for more than your bones. It's a key nutrient for a swift metabolism. Now, here's what they tell you to do. You can get calcium from milk and dairy products. You can also get it in fortified foods such as cereals, a sugar bomb, orange juice, lots of orange juice has more sugar in it than a candy bar. So my gosh, if you want to slow your metabolism right down, please have some cereal, have some milk, which is pure sugar, and have some orange juice. Again, it's the exact opposite recommendation of what you should do. You can get plenty of calcium from green, leafy vegetables. You can get it from, for instance, canned salmon. Don't swallow any calcium tablets. Your thermostat is set too high. Now, we are having an energy crisis, and I'm the first to tell you that one of the things we've learned about longevity is that people who live in longevity regions actually live in mountainous regions, and they actually live in at least part of the year very cold temperatures, and some of the longevity that's attributed to Americans in Minnesota and Michigan in northern climates in Canada is because they are existing in lower temperatures, and the exposure to cold, as you've read about in Unlocking the Keto Code, uncouples your mitochondria, and when you uncouple your mitochondria, your energy rate goes up. Your metabolic rate goes up. So exposure to cold, living in cold climates is an excellent idea. The other thing is, do me a favor, don't set your thermostats too high in the winter, and for goodness sakes, at least in the winter, open the windows and bring in cold air. Your body has to drop at least a degree in temperature to stimulate good sleep, and as my wife's mother always told her, you have to sleep with the window open, and it was because to get that drop in temperature. Your medications. It's true, medications can slow your metabolism. For instance, many people on antidepressant medications notice that they have weight gain. One of the things that I pointed out in Unlocking the Keto Code is melatonin is incredibly important for getting your mitochondria, those energy producing organelles in all of your cells, to have maximum energy efficiency and maximum production of energy. We are very deficient in melatonin. Interestingly enough, those of you on a beta blocker for high blood pressure or heart failure or coronary artery disease, beta blockers block your production of melatonin by up to 80%. Thus being on a medication, which is supposedly going to help you, may be the cause of very low energy. Cutting carbs. Oh, I love this. Sure, easing up on unhealthy carbohydrates can help you manage your weight and burn fat faster. That sounds like a good idea, but your body needs them to make insulin. No, your body doesn't need carbohydrates to make insulin. Your body makes insulin to handle all those crazy carbohydrates. Go low carb all the time and you make less of this key hormone. Yes, that's right and that's a really good thing. But these guys say your metabolism stalls when your insulin goes low and you don't burn as many calories as you once did. Are you kidding me? Where do they get this jump? The number one test that I get people to get is a fasting insulin level and if your fasting insulin level isn't below 10 and preferably isn't below 6, you have trouble ahead in the short term and in the long term. Insulin should be low. That's showing you that you're handling the food you eat without raising insulin. An insulin remember is a growth hormone and I got news for you. After teenage years, there is nothing in us we want to grow. Number 12, being nocturnal. Catching the red-eye flight or working the night shift messes with your body's natural sleep wake cycle. These changes can lead to a sluggish metabolism and other problems like diabetes and obesity. Yes, that's called our circadian rhythm and we know that shift workers and doctors and nurses who work nights and laborers who work nights have dramatic alters in their metabolism and believe it or not, it comes down to elevated insulin levels. The other thing that nocturnal workers do is they keep themselves awake with sugar. One once again is the problem here, not necessarily the shift work. Number 13, changing meal times. When you eat is as important as what you eat. Skipping meals or grabbing a bite on the go creates metabolic jet lag. Shifting meal times can wreak havoc on your metabolism and raise your risk of heart disease. Folks, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. Do we really think our ancestors crawled out of our cave and said, what's for breakfast? There wasn't any breakfast. Breakfast actually was developed in the late 19th century during the industrial revolution in England to give shift workers, workers, something to eat before they spent the entire day working without a break, without lunch, and that's where break fast comes from. Break fast is the worst meal of the day and the more you skip break fast and have breakfast at lunch, you want your metabolism go through the roof. This was recently proven in the Italian athlete study that athletes who skipped breakfast but ate the same amount of food that athletes who ate breakfast had more weight loss and much better markers of longevity than the people who ate breakfast. So the idea that skipping meals is a bad idea doesn't jive with science. Chronic stress, you're making more cortisol, high levels of this hormone make it harder for your body to use insulin. That's absolutely not true. Cortisol is actually not the cause of weight gain. I've been measuring cortisol levels for 25 years in my patients and it is not the cause of weight gain and it is not the cause of high insulin levels. A high fat diet, eating loads of fatty foods like greasy burgers and buttery goodies is never a healthy idea. It changes how your body breaks down foods and nutrients. Your body's ability to use insulin is affected too. That's called insulin resistance. I got news for you. The right kind of fats are essential to break insulin resistance. It's the carbohydrates and often the high process proteins that you're eating that are causing this problem, not the fats that are going along with it. All right. So we have just debunked 15 myths from why you have a slow metabolism from WebMD. Is it any wonder that we are so confused about the advice of healthy eating when even a trusted source like WebMD is about 180 degrees wrong from the science? And that's why I'm here and that's why I'm bringing you this message. There are great ways to rip your metabolism. One of them we just mentioned is to practice time controlled eating, intermittent fasting. It's one of the easiest ways to do it. The other way is to get high polyphenol foods or supplements in your diet. For instance, like I mentioned, coffee and tea. They're called thermogenic because they actually uncouple your mitochondria and the more you uncouple your mitochondria, the more your metabolism will soar. Just recently I taped our new public television special, Just One Thing. Two members of the audience came up to me after the show. Nice thin older couple. They said, boy, we did everything on unlocking the keto code. It was so successful that we lost so much weight that people were really worried about it. And we actually went and added a few things back into our diet, but they can testify that once you unlock your mitochondria, the weight falls off, your metabolic rate goes up, and that's what you're looking for. So it was great to hear two people who I'd never met who were not my patients come up and say, boy, does uncoupling mitochondria work and it'll work for you. Are you one of the types of people who need more vitamin D? Well, first of all, it's important for you to know that vitamin D is one, if not the most essential vitamins for good health. In fact, vitamin D is actually not a vitamin at all. It's a hormone that has effects on almost everything that happens in you and to you. Interestingly enough, we know that people who have the highest levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream have the longest telomeres, those little end caps on chromosomes. And if you like the telomere theory of longevity, then long telomeres are much better for you than short telomeres. And vitamin D level correlates with telomere length. Interestingly enough, all five of the blue zones are in high sun exposure areas, including my blue zone Loma Linda, where I spent half my career as a professor. The other thing that's fascinating is that vitamin D is essential to activate the differentiation of stem cells in your gut to provide gut cell lining. And without vitamin D, the stem cells that repopulate your gut lining, which is damaged every day by all the things you eat, by all the things we do, by all the toxins in our food and by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, we are very deficient in replacing the wall of our gut. And early on in my career in leaky gut, I noticed that most of my patients with autoimmune diseases and leaky gut had extremely low levels of vitamin D. And it wasn't until we got their vitamin D levels higher and higher and higher that they began to repair their leaky gut and their autoimmune diseases began to dissipate. Now unfortunately, vitamin D deficiency is a common global issue. And it's safe to say that pretty much everyone can benefit from more vitamin D. Now that's not just me talking, I'd love to tell you about the story of Professor Hollick from Boston University, who was a professor of dermatology, who came out with the bold statement that most of us should not use sunscreen and that we should expose ourselves to the sun. Now for a dermatologist, a tenured professor of dermatology, that's heresy. And in fact, poor Professor Hollick was fired from his job, which you can't do to a tenured professor, and it spent him years in the courts to get his job back. Why was he fired? Because telling people to avoid sunscreen and to get more sun if you're a dermatologist doesn't seem like a very good idea. But Dr. Hollick's research substantiated the fact that vitamin D and sun exposure is critical to our functioning as a human being. Now his research has subsequently been confirmed by the University of California, San Diego, which has one of the biggest research units in vitamin D. And they've published papers showing that the average American should be getting 9,600 international units of vitamin D3 per day to have a safe level of vitamin D. Not only for health, but in their studies to diminish the chance of cancer. Yes, you heard that right, diminish the chance of cancer. In fact, the same study, the same center, has shown that they have not seen a case of vitamin D toxicity up to 40,000 international units a day. Now you heard that right, they've seen patients taking 40,000 international units a day of vitamin D3 and not experiencing any vitamin D toxicity. I've now been measuring vitamin D levels every three to six months in all of my patients for 25 years and I've yet to see vitamin D toxicity. And you would think that I would see it because as many of you know, we use a lot of vitamin D, particularly in our patients with cancer and with any autoimmune disease. Now interestingly enough, as you might imagine, studies have shown that people with darker skin pigmentation are at greater risk for vitamin D deficiency. In fact, a few years ago, it was found that over 80% of black people have profoundly low levels of vitamin D. Now it should be obvious that melanin in our skin blocks UV light from forming vitamin D in us. So that's how we convert the sun's rays into vitamin D. So if you have dark pigmentation and more melanin, it would seem obvious that you would have less vitamin D. And yet knowing that, we have not gotten out the word to anyone with dark skin, brown skin, that they are probably from the start vitamin D deficient, even if they work outside. In fact, early on in my career, I found that 80% of Southern Californians are vitamin D deficient. And you go, well, wait a minute, how in the world could that be? Because sadly, most Southern Californians are putting sunscreen on themselves or are covering up to protect ourselves from sun. And that's hurt us because of what we now know about how important vitamin D. Well, so what can you do? Certainly sun exposure is a reasonable thing to do. But I've recommended to my patients that early day and late day sun exposure for about 20 minutes at a time is certainly a good place to start. Now, obviously, you don't want to go out in midday sun and spend hours in the sun. That's not what I'm saying. You want to play safe with the sun. I haven't used sunscreen in over 20 years, and yet I spend a great deal of time out in the sun. How do I accomplish that? Well, before the days of sunscreen, my parents were pretty smart and allowed us to gradually increase our time in the sun. And we would get 15, 20 minutes in the sun and work our way up. We would build a what was called a sun callus. We would tan, and as that tanning increased, we would spend more time out in the sun. And that's still a reasonable way to do it, but we're much too eager to get into the sun. So one of the things I do is eat my sunscreen. I take time to release vitamin C so that I constantly have vitamin C in my skin. I take polyphenols, which have been shown, and I eat polyphenols like olive oil. Polyphenols increase the repair and blockage of UV light. There are even products that are made from ferns that have been effectively shown to block UV light absorption in the skin. Now why shouldn't you use sunscreen? Well, besides the obvious effect that we need sunlight, most of these sunscreens contain hormone disrupting compounds that have now been shown to be absorbed directly through our skin that produce some really bad estrogen-like effects in boys and girls and adults. If you've got to use sunscreen, please use a zinc or titanium-based sunscreen that doesn't have all these other ingredients. Now, doesn't the sun cause wrinkles? Well, interestingly enough, sunlight can damage collagen, and collagen can break. But collagen can be re-knit together with vitamin C. One of the interesting things about smokers, and smokers, as most of us know, have a lot of wrinkles. Smokers, the oxidative stress of tobacco smoke uses up all the vitamin C in smokers, and so there's no vitamin C left to re-knit the collagen breaks that occur from sun exposure, and interestingly enough, as I've written in my books, one of the reasons smokers get a typical type of blockages in their coronary arteries is that it's caused by the collagen breaking in flexible areas in coronaries that doesn't get repaired with vitamin C. So eating your vitamin C in the form of timed-release vitamin C is one of the smartest ways to protect yourself from sun damage. And let's take a tip from Sophia Loren, who always attributed her great skin to consuming huge amounts of olive oil and using olive oil on her skin. The benefits of olive oil on your skin when you're out in the sun or after your sun will really go a long way at making you tolerate sun. Okay, so how do you get vitamin D? Vitamin D is easy to purchase. Vitamin D in general comes in 1,000 international units, 2,000 international units, 5,000 international units, there are now 10,000 international units, and there's even 50,000 international units. Right now the University of California of San Diego says the average American should take 9,600 international units a day. I certainly find that's true in my practice. I take 10,000 international units a day. I have, for the last few years, for obvious reasons, as a defense against viral illnesses. Contain a good amount of vitamin D. Now, I personally believe that most people taking vitamin D should also supplement with vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is very different than vitamin K1. Vitamin K1 is prompt clotting factor formation in us. Vitamin K2, on the other hand, takes the calcium that we eat and the calcium that could potentially deposit in our coronary arteries and deposits it into bones. In my patients with osteopenia, osteoporosis, vitamin K2 is a major part of our regimen. The good news is you don't need much vitamin K2. 100 micrograms will usually do it. If you want to take more, it's not harmful. But the combination of higher vitamin D and vitamin K2 is a win-win. Now, can vitamin D bother you? I have some women who swear that vitamin D makes their stomach queasy and even gives them diarrhea. If you are one of those rare people and I have you as my patients, I like you to try a sublingual form of vitamin D, vitamin D drops. Interestingly enough, I don't find the drops as effective in elevating vitamin D levels because it does seem to ward off those few instances where vitamin D seems to give you queasy stomach. Lastly, I've seen a couple of women, not men, who they swear that vitamin D gives them palpitations, skipped heartbeats. And we've done the experiment where we've lowered their vitamin D and their palpitations got better. Is that a placebo effect? I don't know, but their vitamin D levels in their blood really didn't change very much. So if you're one of those rare people who notice either the queasy stomach or palpitations, skip heartbeats, then consider lowering your vitamin D dose or trying it under your tongue. But in general, most of us should be taking somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 international units of vitamin D3 and you'll be in great shape going forward. From Instagram, at Timothy George asks, can you go over the most important but not so common blood tests that we should be adding to our yearly physicals, like the ones you mentioned in the energy paradox? Or perhaps are there others as well? Amazing book, by the way, Life Changing. I'm lucky to have a general doctor who is very open to your teachings and will order labs that you say. Thank you. Okay, so that's a great question, Timothy George. I put a whole list out in the energy paradox for those of you who have not gotten it yet. So there's certain tests that you really should get from your doctor or your healthcare provider that are cheap and easy to obtain and then we can go into more esoteric ones. First of all, your doctor is almost certainly going to get a fasting blood sugar, a fasting glucose. Quite frankly, that isn't half as important as a fasting insulin level. Now I can tell you, training third year family practice residents like I do in my clinics that most of them haven't even heard of a fasting insulin level. So if your doctor looks at you funny, just say, humor me, please order it. Fasting insulin level. It'll cost you about $8, quite frankly. That's number one. If that fasting insulin level is above 10, then you're in trouble. You have insulin resistance. It's useful to get a hemoglobin A1C. You see, I got my A1C down on half the commercials on TV. Hemoglobin A1C looks at how you're handling sugars and proteins for the two months prior to the test looking backwards in time. But what's surprising is, a hemoglobin A1C should be 5.6 or less. The closer you get to 5.0, the better. But you wouldn't believe the number of people I see with a normal hemoglobin A1C who have elevated insulin levels. The other test that some doctors can order is a HOMA IR. Capital H, capital O, capital M, capital A, dash, capital I, capital R. The IR stands for insulin resistance. A HOMA IR is another really good way to see whether or not you have metabolic flexibility, which of course is one of the major subjects of the energy paradox. And about 80% of us in this country have no metabolic flexibility. Our mitochondria don't have the ability to switch on a dime to burning sugar for fuel, to burning free fatty acids for fuel. But the longer all of us study the various chronic diseases, including dementia, including diabetes, including heart disease, the more and more we're realizing that this is a mitochondrial dysfunction problem. So all of these will actually help you point to mitochondria dysfunction. Now there's some good general purpose inflammation markers. The easiest one to get is HS-CRP. The HS stands for either highly sensitive or heart specific. Either one is just fine. It's the same test. It'll give you a generalized marker of inflammation in your body. Another useful one is fibrinogen. If you're a woman, ferritin is actually a useful marker for inflammation. Now most doctors associate ferritin with iron levels, but I can tell you it correlates very poorly with iron levels. So if you're a woman and you have an elevated ferritin level, that means we need to look further into inflammation markers. So those are some simple markers to get. We can get more esoteric. One thing that I urge everybody to get is to have their ApoE4 genotype measured. You've heard me talk about this, you've heard Dr. Dale Bredesen, you've heard Dr. Promiter talk about this. The ApoE4 gene determines whether you're going to make a lipoprotein that carries fats around your body. The ApoE4 genotype, which about 30% of people carry, is sometimes called the Alzheimer's gene. Now you really want to know whether you carry that, because whether you follow me, whether you follow Dr. Promiter, whether you follow Dr. Bredesen, this is not sealing your fate that, oh my gosh I carry the Alzheimer's gene, I don't want to know I have that, I'd rather not know. You can actively do something to prevent the development of Alzheimer's if you carry this gene. And it's well worth your money to find out about that. The other one I would get in terms of a genetic test is the MTHFR mutation. And if you say that out loud we would bleep you from network television. We laughingly call it the MTHFR gene for obvious reasons. It determines whether or not you carry a mutation that you can't convert vitamin B12 and folic acid into their active forms, which are methyl B12 and methylfolate. And knowing that actually gives you power to get methyl B12 and methylfolate into you as supplements. So if you have, for instance, anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide tendencies, you may in fact carry one or more of these MTHFR mutations. And it's a really good idea to figure out if you have that. Now for the real nerds in the audience, ask to get an insulin like growth factor level. IGF-1. It's one of the best ways of looking at how slow or fast you're aging. And there's some fun tricks to play with influencing IGF-1, just a word of warning. If your IGF-1 is high above about 200 to a 250 and you're over the age of 40 or 50, that increases your risk of developing cancer. On the other hand, if your IGF is very low, it's very unusual to develop cancer. Insulin like growth factor is simply that. It is a growth factor that stimulates cancer cells to grow. So that's a good start and thanks for asking that question. David Fevella from Instagram asks, do I need amino acids? If I am a vegetarian, where can I get them from? Any specific foods or supplements? Is it true that if I don't eat meat, I need to supplement because they are only found in meat? Well, here's the good news. Gorillas and horses don't ask about where they can get their amino acids and as far as I can tell, gorillas and horses do very well with muscle mass. So amino acids are present in plants and in animals. They are the building blocks of protein. There are essential amino acids that we do not manufacture our cells and so we have to obtain them from our diet. Now so much emphasis in the vegetarian and vegan community is combining foods so that you don't miss out on certain essential amino acids. And so much, I think, wasted time is devoted to, okay, grains are devoid of a couple of essential amino acids and beans are devoid of other essential amino acids. But if you combine grains and beans, you'll cover the base for essential amino acids. Believe me, there are plenty of essential amino acids in a vegan or vegetarian plant paradox program. You will get it from the leaves that you eat. You will get it from the roots that you eat. You will get it from the nuts that you eat. There are, for instance, several nuts like sacha enchi and baruka nuts, baru nuts that have all the essential amino acids covered. And so you don't have to go looking anywhere else. One thing that is very interesting about vegans is vegans actually have low levels of creatine, which is a protein. And there are interesting studies that vegans are deficient in creatine. And there are some interesting studies that vegans have smaller brains than non-vegans because they're lacking creatine. So if you're a vegan, I do recommend supplementing with a creatine supplement. And they're not animal derived. You can get vegan creatine and just supplement with creatine as part of your diet. Great question, though. From Lukas Wozak on Instagram, what's the ideal age to begin fasting? Well, so fasting covers a lot of territory, as I talk about in all my books, particularly the energy paradox. So as I've talked about before, if you're a woman of childbearing age and you want to get pregnant or you're planning to get pregnant, then quite frankly, time-restricted eating, water fasting, juice fasting is not for you. I've seen so many patients that fasting or intermittent fasting has actually prevented them from getting pregnant. And when we had them stop that practice, that started things. Also if you or a family member have a tendency to focus on controlling your eating habits, then this is not for you. This absolutely is not the direction you want to go in your relationship to food. On the other hand, if you look at hunter-gatherer societies, I got news for you. They're not waking their kids up at 8 o'clock in the morning for a bowl of oatmeal to send them off to hunt berries. The kids don't eat until the adults eat, and many of them do not eat until 10, 11, or 12 noon with their first meal. And in fact the idea of eating breakfast, as I've talked about before, is a modern nuance that was actually fostered in great part by the Kellogg's Cornflakes Company in 1906, telling you and convincing you with a massive advertising campaign that breakfast is the most important meal, and it simply is not. So if you want to make this a part of normal family activities of skipping breakfast, as an example, or eating an early dinner and not snacking at night, that's a normal healthy practice. And the more you introduce your kids to this style of eating early on, you're going to set them up for a much healthier lifespan to come. Holly Boiko from Instagram asks, what is the best fiber you would suggest to eat weekly daily? Thank you, Holly from Ohio. Well so there's so many great sources of fiber, it's hard to start. Certainly the fiber in vegetables, in leaves, in radicchio, in Belgian endive, in curly endive. I posted on Instagram recently a salad that I had from a chef outside of Missoula, Montana for their wellness weekend that was just every last wonderful, chicory family of vegetables that was absolutely delicious, and I've mentioned before whenever we're visiting southern France and Italy, there are chicory vegetables in every salad on every plate with every meal. So we're beginning to see radicchio, which some people call this Italian red lettuce, it's this bright red and white firm ball that's in many, many, many grocery stores now. Belgian endive is everywhere now, it's in Trader Joe's, grab yourself ahead of those, pick up some Belgian endives, and just mix them in your salads, it's an easy way. On the other hand, ground flax seeds is a great source of fiber, it's a great source of a short chain omega 3 fat called alpha linolenic acid, but if you're going to buy ground flax seed the minute you open the package, put it in the refrigerator because it goes rancid. Preferably buy whole flax seeds, grind them in a coffee grinder, and then sprinkle them on your salads, put them in your coconut yogurt, put them in your goat or sheep yogurt, great way to introduce fiber. Cillium husk, you can get ground cillium husk anywhere. And don't forget that resistant starches, for instance like a purple sweet potato that you cook, then cool and reheat, is another great source of fiber. And not to forget hecuma, get yourself some hecuma, many places now have it pre-sliced, use it as a dipping chip for guacamole. And guacamole has a lot of fiber, avocados are a great source, plenty of places to get your fiber. And remember you're eating the fiber to feed your gut buddies, and the more you feed them the better your health. This next one is sure to surprise you. Buyer beware, the less sugar the better off you are, the more sugar this becomes a dangerous superfood.