Top 12 Foods & Herbs for Weight Loss (BETTER THAN OZEMPIC)

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Hey everyone, welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week we explore the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, and spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. This week, we'll be diving deep into the downsides of drugs like Ozempic for weight loss, including the negative effects of losing muscle mass. In fact, did you know that taking Ozempic for just a few months could age your muscles and your body by 20 years in a few months? I'll go through how that is, and I'll go through how to actually lose the weight and keep it off long-term using vitamins and supplements and the right type of exercise and the best foods for changing your body composition in order for your body to burn fat, and so you can feel great. And so I'll get into that in so much more in today's episode. Before I dive in, though, make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the link in the show notes to subscribe to my weekly newsletter so you can get my top tips for natural healing delivered straight into your inbox on a weekly basis. Now, I'm gonna start off here talking about these weight loss drugs like Ozempic and other GLP-1 medications, but I also wanna mention I am going to go through, again, the top foods, the top supplements, the top exercises, and everything else you need to know on how to lose weight the healthy way and keep it off. For starters here, though, let's talk about Ozempic and other drugs that are semi-glutide drugs. This is a prescription medication primarily used for the management of type 2 diabetes, and it works by mimicking a hormone in the body called GLP-1 which helps regulate blood sugar levels and slows down gastric emptying. Now, your gastric system, that's your stomach, and so it's how quickly your stomach empties into your intestines, and so really it's how fast your digestive system, part of your digestive system, is working and operating. And Ozempic was not originally intended as a weight loss drug, but many people use it for this reason due to its appetite-suppressing effects. So one of the side effects is you feel like you're full, okay, and it works by helping people feel less hungry and so they actually consume fewer calories. But here's the reality, Ozempic is not ideal for weight loss long-term because you're losing more muscle mass. And listen to this long-term medical study. Clinical studies have shown that these drugs like Ozempic and Legovy, also very similar drugs like Monjaro and ZepBound, have shown that significant weight loss can come at the expense of muscle mass. In particular, participants that were included in a trial that lasted between 68 and 72 weeks lost 10% of their muscle mass, equating to approximately 20 years of age-related muscle decline. Now I want you to think about this. If you're taking a drug like Ozempic or Legovy or Monjaro or ZepBound, you are aging your body possibly 20 years. So think about this. Your muscle mass, the amount of muscle mass you should have or the amount you're losing in that period of time is the equivalent of aging your muscles 20 years. So if you're taking this drug and you're 40 years old, you now have the body of a 60-year-old because you've taken this drug. And this muscle loss has raised concerns among even the most notorious health experts, people like Peter Atiyah, Gabrielle Lyons, and many others. And these are medications that actually target your body losing not just fat, but also muscle. So when we break down this clinical study, what you find is is that patients that took this semaglutide drug lost close to 38 pounds. However, 15 to 16 pounds of their weight loss was due to losing muscle mass. Think about that, losing 15 to 16 pounds of muscle. So 40% of the weight loss is muscle. And what they found was is that if somebody were just losing weight by maybe walking more, eating a little bit better over time, they would only lose about maybe 25% of muscle max. However, in there are some cases, and I'm gonna teach you how to do this today, if you do it the right way, you'll lose maximum to five to 10% of muscle along with losing way more body fat. So what's happening in this study is, I mean, again, you could lose closer to five to 10% of muscle versus 40%. So you're really aging your body when you're taking this drug. And here's what I'm gonna tell you about this drug right now. It is not a good longevity drug. It's likely gonna take years off a lot of people's lives, causing major, major health declines long-term. And so the reality is, as I shared, you can lose just a small amount of muscle and lose mostly body fat if you lose weight the right way. And here's how you do it. You do it via a high-protein diet that also includes a lot of vegetables and a lot of fiber. And then you do some working out via some weight training and a little bit of HIIT interval training. And that's it. That's the way to lose weight, the healthy, real way. The problem is is that we don't, people don't wanna go out and do the work. They don't wanna make any changes in their lives. And so you can't believe that taking a simple pill is going to fix your problems. There are other things going on for most people that are imbalances in lifestyle. It's working too much, not prioritizing their health. You can't keep eating ding-dongs and bacon and seed oils and sugar and think that you can actually be healthy. What's happening for most people is, again, they take Wagovi or they take Ozepic and they take these weight loss drugs. They lose a lot of their muscle mass. And by the way, it's just a calorie thing. So what they do is, well, I'm hungry, so I'm going to eat, again, seed oils and sugar and ding-dongs and McDonald's and think that, hey, I'm okay because I'm just looking at the scale so I'm actually healthier now. You're not healthier. You're sicker than you were before. You're actually sicker. You just aged your body 20 years in three months by taking this drug. The reality is if you are on a weight loss drug like Ozepic or Wagovi or Monjaro, you are aging your body and creating illness. And the right way to do this is via high-protein diet, high-fiber diet, lots of nutrients, and do a combination of weight training and some cardio. With that, you'll lose closer to 5% to 10%, not 40% of your muscle mass, and you are going to lose the weight in a healthy way. And so there's really, you have an option here. You could do it the Dr. Axe medicine way or the cellular medicine way that I'm teaching you or the conventional medicine way. Do you want to lose 5% muscle mass or lose 40% muscle mass in that way? By the way, there are ways in some people where you can lose really no muscle mass. You build muscle, you lose weight. Do it the right way and transform the way you look and feel. Now, in addition, I want to share with you some other big side effects of drugs like Ozepic that people aren't telling you today. One of the things that starts to happen when people start to have a body composition change by when you take a drug like Ozepic or Wagovi is that they'll start to notice that, let me just say this, they feel good because they look at the scale and they see the numbers declining. However, if they actually look at themselves in the mirror, they look what you call a skinny fat. That's what a lot of the experts are saying is you start to look skinny fat because you're losing so much muscle. And so there's actually something called Ozepic butt because your butt is where your body stores a lot of muscle, okay? It's one of your largest muscle groups, your butt and your legs. So when you're losing muscle in your butt, you start to have a flat butt versus a nice round butt, which is good for squatting and running and exercising and just living life like we need to, being healthy. And so you start to lose the mass in your butt and in those larger healthy muscle groups and you start to look skinny fat. Many experts also talk about something called Ozepic face, which is a combination of you losing some muscle in your face, but also being malnourished. And in Chinese medicine, that's what they say is when you start to get that sunken in look in your face or Ozepic face, you start to look older due to the volume loss and also malnourishment because one of the side effects of gastroparesis, which is what Ozepic and other weight loss drugs cause is there's signs of malnourishment. And there's actually a medical journal, it's the Journal of Facial Plastic Surgery and here's what they said. Rapid weight and fat loss with drugs like Ozepic can lead to the characteristic Ozepic face where facial volume and fat are depleted resulting in wrinkles and sagging skin. Providers prescribing Ozepic seldom counsel patients about the potential impact on their face and appearance and beauty. And so people think, well, I'm gonna lose weight so I'm gonna look more beautiful. No, you're going to look older like you've aged because you're losing the muscle in your face. According to another medical study, this is in the Journal of Frontiers in Endocrinology, they said the most common side effect of Ozepic is what I mentioned earlier is gastroparesis but can also lead to gastrointestinal issues. So digestive health issues, gut issues. These side effects are often a primary result of Ozepic when you're on it but also the discontinuation once you get off of it. This is something nobody's talking about. Well, one, if you stay on it, there's side effects but also when you get off at their side effects, more than half of the people taking Ozepic report symptoms such as nausea. In fact, listen to this, around 50%. Okay, so half the people taking Ozepic report nausea. Also some report vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, constipation. Now in any normal person, if you have any of those symptoms you would say, hey, that's a medical issue. You struggle with constipation, there's a toxicity issue going on there. There's a liver issue going on there. Abdominal pain, diarrhea, you've got IBS, that's a major digestive issue. You're nauseous all the time, there's something going on with your gut. Well, these are all side effects of taking drugs like Ozepic and I mentioned earlier gastroparesis. This is where over time you start to delay the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine. And when this happens, again, it can cause bloating. In fact, this is part of what happens in SIBO. Have you heard of this? Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. When food sits in your stomach longer than it should or small intestine, bacteria will start to build up. That's why you get bloating. That's why you feel nauseous, okay? So these are issues when you take this drug and whether you have the symptoms or not, it's damaging your body. And also, by the way, gastroparesis, one of the side effects there is poor nutrient absorption. So now you're not absorbing your vitamins and minerals as well. These are all side effects. That's one of the number one issues caused by drugs like Ozepic. Another big side effect people are experiencing aren't just the gastrointestinal issues which are reason enough to never take it or the muscle loss, aging your body 20 years in two to three months. That's reason enough to never take it. But in addition, people have noticed feeling fatigue and weak and including headaches when they've taken this drug, sometimes a drop in blood pressure. Other medical side effects of it include bone loss, low nutrient intake and undereating can cause both muscle and bone loss, contributing to osteoporosis and osteopenia. Now, again, we don't have any long-term studies on these drugs looking at, hey, what's the 20, 30-year effect of these drugs? Well, we can tell you what's going to happen, weak bones, which weak bones leads to early death. Eye disease, recent studies suggested a potential link between Ozepic and a rare eye condition which is a type of optic neuropathy, which is nerve degeneration that leads to vision loss is a side effect of Ozepic as well. Pancreatitis, I mean, your pancreas is one of your body's most vital organs. You cannot survive without it and it's causing inflammation of your pancreas. Hypoglycemia, okay, we know this is an issue there with your blood sugar levels. Diabetic retinopathy, which is very similar to the eye issue we talked about earlier. And then here's the other thing, less calories equals less nutrients, okay, in most cases. And so it's malnutrition for people. And so I would warn you, and if you know anyone who's on a weight loss drug or a GLP-1 drug like Ozepic, like Wigovi, like Manjaro, I urge you to share this episode with them so they can know the truth because most people don't know that it's aging them 20 years in two to three months by taking these weight loss drugs. And I estimate that there's about 95% of people that don't need to take a drug like Ozepic at all or peptides like Ozepic. And I do wanna say, when you look at the experts out there that are doing it the right way, they are, there are some peptide experts and weight loss experts that are very responsible that also when patients come in, they're recommending that they change their diet. They're recommending an exercise routine. And if they do prescribe the drug, they're recommending it at one-tenth the dosage that most other irresponsible physicians are today, one-tenth the dosage, okay? And so, you know, about 0.25 milligrams versus 2.4 milligrams is what most people are prescribing it at today when we're talking about Ozepic and Wigovi. And so listen, there is a time and a place possibly for somebody to take a peptide like this for a short period of time at 10% of the dosage. However, they're going very high doses. So people lose more weight in a shorter period of time. However, they're losing way more muscle mass because of it. And so I just wanna say, and by the way, like here's the reality. I have worked with tens of thousands of patients and I've helped a lot of patients lose well over 100 pounds. I've had a few patients lose well over 200 pounds. In fact, I'll just tell you recently, I was in the mall here in Nashville, Christmas shopping, and I had a patient come up to me, this was a couple of years ago, and she gave me a, and she walked up, she said, Dr. Axe, it's so good to see you. I gave me a big hug and she said, I wanna let you know that my husband, Robert, he's lost over 200 pounds now. I'm like, that's amazing. She'd lost 80 pounds herself. And you know what we did? We changed their diet. How to eat mostly meat and vegetables and just, you know, a high protein, high fiber diet, get rid of the excess sugar and carbs. And then they started exercising regularly. Boom, lost the weight. That's how to do it. Making those lifestyle changes. And here's the other thing is they feel younger. They looked so healthy. When I looked at her, she looked so healthy and she didn't look like her face was sunken in and her body had aged 20 years. She looked really healthy. Her husband was incredibly healthy. They had added probably 20 years to their life because they lost weight the right way, not aging their body 20 years. Now I wanna go through the crucial pathways. If you are a person now, you're saying to yourself, I wanna lose weight or body fat. Now listen, whether it's five pounds or it's 50 or a hundred pounds, whatever it is, here are some things you need to activate in your body if you wanna lose fat the right way. Number one is thermogenesis. This involves increasing the body's heat production, which boosts metabolism. And high protein foods, including spicy foods like cayenne pepper, ginger, and other warming foods are excellent at promoting thermogenesis. So getting some more spicy foods, especially ginger, cayenne pepper, black pepper are a great way to do that. Number two is hormone balance. You know, one of the biggest things that's keeping people from losing weight today are issues such as hypothyroidism or imbalances in their insulin levels or cortisol levels. And this leads to weight gain and also making it harder to lose weight. And you might be one of those people who maybe you have started eating healthier and you have started doing some exercise and the weight's still not coming off. Well, why is that? Well, we really need to go and address the hormonal issues. And addressing these issues with diet and herbal interventions can have a really, really big impact. I'm gonna go through exactly how to do that today. Also, here's another big one, calorie control. Here's the reality, calories do matter. Now, I do wanna say that it is not, the calories in a Snicker bar are not the same as the calories in an apple, okay? Even if it was the exactly equal amount of calories, the calories in an apple will help you lose more weight. However, for some people, you do need to be a little bit calorie conscious, but it's not everybody. Most people will lose weight without counting and focusing on calories. However, some people, you do wanna look at the calorie. And what I found with most people, if they're having an issue with weight loss and they're eating healthy and it's still not coming off, the calorie issue tends to be, though they're eating very healthy, they're eating too many fats and carbs together in meals. This is a secret not a lot of people talk about. If you wanna lose weight, you can do high protein and high fat, you'll lose weight. You can do just high protein, you'll lose weight. But doing high fat and high carbs together, or even moderate of both makes it hard to lose weight, okay? You always wanna focus on high protein and then you can kind of do moderate to low fat and carbs or just moderate to high fat with very low carbs. Those are the two ways to lose weight for most people, if you are running into an obstacle, though you're eating healthy. So for instance, even though almond butter is considered a healthy food and sourdough bread and bananas maybe are considered healthy food, if you're eating a lot of nut butter and bananas or nut butter and Ezekiel bread or sourdough bread, it's gonna cause you to gain weight, okay? Carbs plus fat a lot of times in meals together is not ideal for weight loss. But here's the reality, if you're eating, again, here's the thing I wanna tell you, eat a lot of protein, eat a lot of high fiber vegetables, then sprinkle in some things like other high fiber foods like berries, maybe some nuts and seeds, avocado, coconut, olives, that sort of thing, you will lose a lot of weight and you will lose it fast, okay, because they're very nutrient dense, they're high in protein, they're high in fiber, and some of those are high in healthy fats, that's gonna help you lose weight the fastest. And so let's go through exactly how to do this a little bit more. Okay, so my number one tip to help you lose weight the fastest way possible is eat a high protein diet, okay? You wanna consume at least 25 grams, some of you up to 40 grams of protein per meal. So 25 to 40 grams of protein per meal if you're eating three times a day. And protein is essential for muscle maintenance and growth. And the more muscle your body has, the higher your metabolism is, because muscle burns more fat than fat burns fat, okay, in terms of the way your metabolism works. And so eating more protein supports more thermogenesis in your metabolic rate, so how much you burn fat. And high protein diets increase something called TEF, so that's, as we talked about, is thermogenesis, meaning the body burns more calories digesting protein. And protein increases thermogenesis by 15 to 30% compared to carbs at five to 10% or fat at around 3%. So if you're eating protein versus fat or carbs, you're typically burning about five to 10 times more body fat by eating protein, okay? So the more protein for most people, the better. And consuming about one to two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight can help you preserve lean muscle mass, or again, as we've talked about, take half of your body weight to around your body weight and consume that in grams of protein daily. Studies show that these high protein diets enhance weight loss, as we've talked about, support your metabolism, and they're also good for reversing diseases like type two diabetes. It's good for building bone density and overcoming osteoporosis. It's good for almost everything, so you wanna focus on getting more high-quality protein in your diet, again, as I talked about, aiming at least 25 to 40. But some people, by the way, that's for women. For men, it's probably closer to 30 to 50 grams of protein per meal. And this includes grass-fed beef, bison, lamb, chicken, turkey, eggs, things like raw organic yogurts, wild fish like salmon and tuna. And then you can get some plant-based protein sources like nuts and seeds, lentils, chickpeas, even quinoa. I mean, these do have some protein in them as well. And you also wanna do some protein powder. I recommend collagen and bone broth-based proteins. I also recommend plant-based proteins from things like peas and pumpkin seeds, sprouted grains, those sort of things. And so you also wanna get some plant-based proteins, animal-based proteins. But the key here is get men 30 to 50 grams of protein per meal, women 25 to 40 grams of protein per meal three times a day. The second type of food group you wanna focus on to lose weight fast is fiber. High-fiber diets promote feeling full. Okay, so that's what that drug, the drugs like Ozempic do is they make you feel full, but it's not actually doing anything. It's just manipulation. High-fiber, you actually are feeling full the natural, real way. And fiber supports, here's another great benefit. Fiber supports the diversity of good bacteria in your gut. It helps maintain your blood sugar levels. It actually reduces cholesterol, supports healthy bowel movements, cardiovascular disease, it fights. I mean, there's all kinds of benefits there of fiber. The American Heart Association, which by the way, I don't put a lot of stock in, they recommend about 25 to 30 grams of fiber daily. However, the average person is getting around 15 grams of fiber. It should be closer to 30. I mean, really, I mean, it's sometimes even up to 40, but you should be getting about 10 grams of fiber per meal if you're going to be healthy. But the more, the better, okay? Research shows that increasing fiber intake by 14 grams per day is associated with a 10% decrease in your caloric intake and more than four pounds of weight loss over a couple of months. So just by increasing your fiber, it shows you're going to lose weight by doing that. Best sources of fiber are vegetables, berries, nuts and seeds for the most part. And then beans can be a good source as long as you don't overdo it. A little bit of beans like lentils can also be a good source. The third thing is you want to get some more healthy fats, okay, and you don't want to go overboard, but you do want to focus on wild caught fish like salmon, getting some of those omega-3s, getting some of the extra virgin olive oil, which isn't only packed with monounsaturated fats, it also is really chocked full of polyphenols, a type of antioxidant that's good for weight loss, good at fighting heart disease, good for anti-aging. In addition to olive oil, coconut oil, avocado, again, nuts and seeds, especially walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, almonds, seeds like flax, chia and hemp and sesame. And then doing a little bit of things like grass-fed butter and animal fats, that's all fine. Now, I do want to say, again, remember, don't go overboard on the carbs and the fats together, okay? Really, you're best off in the morning focusing more on protein and carbs, and in the evening doing almost zero carbs and doing mostly protein and fat, mostly, okay? Now, everybody's different, and this has to do with sort of my background and studying a lot of Chinese medicine and looking at the medical literature and working with patients, but everybody's body is different. Some people do better with high protein and moderate carbs and low to moderate fat. Some people do better with a diet that's higher in protein and higher in fat and doing very little carbs. And so, again, some people can do more carbs, less fat. Some people are better doing more fat and less carbs. You just need to listen to your body with that weight. People with higher metabolisms, people with my body type who don't really have a weight problem in the first place tend to be able to tolerate and consume more carbohydrates and do more moderate fat in their diet, moderate to low, whereas people that have trouble losing weight, they tend to need to do the lower carb, moderate fat, high protein, long-term ideally. And listen, there is a time and place for a ketogenic diet. When I'm working with patients who have brain tumors, children with epileptic seizures, people with MS, so certain neurological conditions in certain weight loss conditions, I really like a ketogenic diet, but I don't typically like it long-term for more than three months at a time because it's a form of sort of stress for your body. So I think in that case, then you add in some more carbs, you keep your fat more moderate, and that's ideal for a lot of people long-term when we're talking about the amount of fat in their diet. Now, I do want to talk about a few supplements that are also good for weight loss, and I think that this supplement is as good or better for weight loss and maintaining muscle mass than Ozempic, Wagovi, Monjaro, and any of the GLP-1 semi-glutide drugs, and it's called Berberine. Berberine is an herbal extract that comes from the bayberry leaf plant, and this has been a plant that's been used in ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years to support metabolism in people and balance blood sugar levels. There's a study published in the Natural Center for Complementary and Integrative Health in 2022, and what they did is they reviewed 18 different studies together, and they found a decrease in both weight and BMI in people who took Berberine regularly, especially when they took at least one gram per day for more than eight weeks, and so we're seeing body mass index improvements, so we're seeing body fat, we're seeing weight improvements simply by taking one gram or 1,000 milligrams of Berberine daily, and so to me, that is a better option than if you want to be a pill person and just take a pill, take Berberine. Hey, do you want to have the most comfortable sleep of your life? I have been loving Cozy Earth's Bamboo Sheet Set. 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Wrap yourself in Cozy Earth. Another herb that has an amazing history, I mean, this herb was used in Chinese medicine, Ayurveda. It was used in American medicine, European medicine. It's cinnamon, and cinnamon has been used to help balance blood sugar levels, reduce cravings. It also has powerful antioxidant properties. It has blood-building properties. I mean, so many benefits. It actually has antibacterial properties, helps fight even flus and colds. And so cinnamon, and specifically Ceylon cinnamon, is a great thing to add to beverages, to drinks. One of the things I've had my patients take for years is pumpkin pie spice, and it's a blend of cinnamon, clove, ginger, and then sometimes herbs like nutmeg or allspice or some other there, but primarily it's cinnamon. And so taking cinnamon, around 1,000 milligrams a day, I believe that's about a fourth a teaspoon or so, fourth to half a teaspoon, is ideal, and you can do that in a smoothie in the morning. You can mix it with applesauce. You can mix it with all kinds of things, and it has tremendous benefits, and that's another great thing to do to balance blood sugar. Some other essential nutrients I wanna mention, and I wanna dive now into a little bit of hormonal weight loss. If you're a person and you have made changes, you started exercising, you started eating better, and maybe you lost five, 10 pounds, but you need to lose another five or 10, and now you're stuck and it won't come off. And you know it's due to your thyroid or cortisol or insulin. Here are some tips. Let me hit on insulin here first. If you have an insulin issue, you know you have a blood sugar issue. The first thing you need to do if you have an insulin issue is, of course, for all of you, you need to change the diet like we've talked about, okay? If you've got an insulin issue, focus mostly on protein, high protein. Get some moderate fat, low carb, and then start walking and moving regularly. In addition, start taking berberine 1,000 milligrams a day. Start doing pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon twice a day at least, so at least a full teaspoon, if not two teaspoons daily of that. And then also take fenugreek. That's good for blood sugar balance. Holy basil, drinking that as a tea is good. Ginger is good. But especially you need to take the berberine and cinnamon and fenugreek in particular. And then you also wanna take chromium picolinate and magnesium, okay? So if you have an insulin issue, if you take those supplements and follow a healthy diet like we talked about, your insulin is gonna drop. You're gonna notice a big difference. And it'll help 90% of you. The 10% of you that doesn't need to drop, that doesn't drop immediately or within a couple weeks, your issue is not insulin. It's cortisol is impacting insulin. So then let's talk about cortisol. So when your cortisol gets high, that's related to stress in most cases, okay? So then you need to really focus on, okay, you're too busy. You're doing too much all of the time. You're not sleeping enough, okay? You need to address sleep. You need to address stress. And so what you wanna start doing is first thing when you wake up in the morning is don't go and run and look at your phone. Have a rule. I don't look at my phone the first whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hour in the morning, go and crack open your Bible. Read your Bible. Spend some time in prayer. Spend some time in meditation. Take a little lemon juice and hot water with a little tea. Drink that and then go for a walk, okay? Do a gratitude practice while you're out on that walk. Do things to reduce stress. Look at your schedule and write down the things you wanna start doing that are gonna reduce stress. And then write down the things that are stressing you that you can start moving out of your life, okay? Do things to get that stress under control to better take care of stress. Do some biofeedback. It's a great sort of natural practice that you can see a practitioner for that will help kind of start to lower those cortisol levels as well. But again, cortisol is the problem there. And then take adaptogenic herbs. Ashwagandha, Romania, rhodiola, astragalus, all these adaptogens, cordyceps and reishi mushroom. You wanna start lowering those cortisol levels, okay? So cortisol, when that gets up, that's another big cause of weight gain. And if you are going through a stressful time in life, a divorce, maybe you lost a loved one, maybe you have work stress, financial stress, stress of your health, do your best to deal with it. Turn to God. Get around positive, encouraging people that are gonna lift you up and support you, okay? So it's cortisol. So again, biggest hormone or reasons why people can't lose weight. Number one, insulin. We just addressed that. Number two is cortisol. Number three is thyroid hormones, okay? When your thyroid hormones are off, that'll cause you to hold onto body weight. In that case, what you need to do is follow a diet that we're talking about. I mean, you really wanna focus, your carbs should be sweet potatoes and rice. Rice should be cooked for a long time, so it's like mush. You wanna do high protein that we've talked about, a lot of fish, a lot of grass-fed beef, things like that, okay, so high protein. You wanna get some rice and sweet potatoes and berries as your carbs, rice, sweet potatoes, berries. Really do almost no other carbs. And then you wanna do a little bit of healthy fat from olives and avocado and coconut, okay? And you can do a little bit of seeds, like some flax and chia, and that's your diet, okay? And if you do that, then you wanna do high-dose probiotics. That helps thyroid hormones. 100 billion CFU daily, at least, if not higher. And then you wanna do a methylated B-complex vitamin, okay, that has all these Bs, like methylfolate in it. And if you do that, that's gonna help the thyroid issues tremendously, okay? But again, a lot of people can't lose weight because of these hormonal issues. And there's a couple nutrients I wanna mention as well. Iodine, selenium, zinc, okay? If you have a thyroid issue, iodine, selenium, and zinc are all crucial for thyroid functions. And you can get iodine by doing some seaweed, like spirulina, or bladderwrack, or kelp, something like that. You can find iodine also in pretty good amounts in only organic strawberries, okay, but organic strawberries. And then for selenium, doing things like tuna, eggs, Brazil nuts are very, very high in selenium in particular. Just doing three, you know, just two or three Brazil nuts are very high in selenium, and that will help as well. By the way, if you're a person listening to this and you're saying to yourself, okay, I need more help than this, I know I've got hormonal issues, I've got a lot of issues, I do wanna mention that I have a virtual practice where I take care of thousands of people on a regular basis via the health coaches and practitioners that I've trained. And so if you are a person saying, hey, I would be interested, you can go to the Health Institute and you can learn more on there about the practice that I have and helping people. Because some people, you just need a practitioner. You need a practitioner to help you. And so obviously, I give a lot of information on the show here on exactly what to do that you can do on your own, but also if you need somebody to really dial it in for you and give you a meal plan and everything laid out for you, then you can go to the Health Institute, you can look up Dr. Axe Health Institute and set up a call with one of our practitioners that'll walk you through some things and see what you can do if you are interested in becoming a patient or client and you need some help. So I just wanted to reference that because I know I'm gonna get questions about that if you want or need a practitioner. As I mentioned there, the methylated B vitamins. Another good thing to do is organ meats as a supplement, I think, for getting, supporting your body's methylation. I mentioned ashwagandha. I do wanna reference a study with ashwagandha. There was a study published and it was done, listen, it's a smaller study, but there are many studies like this on ashwagandha. And it was on 52 chronically stressed adults that started taking ashwagandha, 600 milligrams daily. And they did this for eight weeks. And what they noticed was a significant reduction in stress levels, food cravings, their happiness scores went way up, and it also helped them lose weight. In fact, they lost twice as much weight as the placebo due to it also improving their eating behaviors. And so we do see herbs like ashwagandha lower cortisol and have some other benefits that can support weight loss. There's another herbal supplement I love for thyroid health along with ashwagandha, and it's called ferscoli. This is a plant that was used in Ayurvedic medicine for fat breakdown and for energy and as an adaptogenic herb. And there was a 12 week study done on ferscoli extract. And they combined it with a lower calorie diet. And in this combination study, people showed improvements in their waist and hip measurements, as well as beneficial changes in insulin levels. While both the supplement and the placebo group saw some positive changes, the extract appeared more helpful for the insulin-related factors in managing metabolic health. So there were two groups. Both groups lowered calories. One did ferscoli. There were better improvements in the people that took ferscoli while following a healthier diet as well. So I do wanna mention that doing the ferscoli does have benefits there. And it's one of my favorite herbs combining that with ashwagandha when it comes to hypothyroidism in particular. One other food that's pretty amazing for weight loss is apple cider vinegar. Now, listen, I do wanna say this. With all of these supplements and all these things that are just really easy to do, like a shot of apple cider vinegar a day, you're not gonna go and lose 50 pounds doing apple cider vinegar or doing ashwagandha, okay? But could you lose two pounds or five pounds? Yeah, that's possible. Or could it help you in combination with other things lose a few more pounds? Yes. The other thing though, it can also help you feel younger and actually live longer and all these other benefits you're gonna get from taking a lot of these herbals. And apple cider vinegar sort of lives in that same realm, okay? Apple cider vinegar promotes healthy blood sugar levels, has antimicrobial properties, antioxidant properties. It's really good for liver detoxification. And some find it has an appetite suppressing benefit when consumed about 15 minutes before a meal. So one thing I'll have patients do is take either a teaspoon or full tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, drink that in about a half a glass of water 15 minutes before a meal. And some people will notice digestive benefits. Some people will notice weight loss benefits. So there are some benefits there. And the last supplement I wanna talk about when it comes to weight loss are probiotics. You know, I think that probiotics are probably one of the top three nutritional deficiencies we have today due to our over-sanitation. I mean, coming out of COVID, that became worse than ever before. And there was a study published in the medical journal, Nutrients, and here's what it says. It said the intake of probiotics or symbiotics could lead to significant weight loss reductions either by maintaining habitual lifestyle habits or in combination with energy restriction and or increasing physical activity for an average of 12 weeks. Specific strains of bacteria like lactobacillus and bifidobacterium were the most used and those that showed the best results in reducing body weight, okay? So there are several studies that show that probiotics support weight loss, whether that be through healthier bowel movements, better nutrient absorption overall, supporting your metabolic function. Foods that are great that are high in probiotics include yogurt, whether it's goat's milk yogurt or raw yogurt from the farmer's market or some organic Greek yogurt from the health food store, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kvass, even raw cheese in small amounts. These are fermented foods that are good for your gut bacteria. And I would also recommend taking some soil-based, organism-based probiotics, things like that are gonna be tremendously beneficial when it comes to weight loss. Also, the detoxification benefits are tremendous. You know, there was a study done on a particular type of soil-based organism called AB22. This is known as bacillus, it's a specific strain of bacillus subtilis. And it was shown to detoxify your body of glyphosate and other chemicals in your body and forever chemicals. So you wanna get rid of chemicals and detoxify your body. Taking soil-based organisms and probiotics are powerful. I recommend you do both. Eat more probiotic-based foods like the sauerkraut and yogurt and take a probiotic supplement that's high in these SPOs. And if you are really sick or you know your gut is very compromised, I'd recommend taking up to a trillion probiotics daily, very high dose in order to heal your body. A few other things I wanna mention here are, I wanna mention tea. I'm a huge tea fan. You know, when you look at the countries where people are the thinnest, like Japan and areas in Asia, they consume a tremendous amount of green tea. And the catechins, the polyphenols, even the caffeine, within tea boosts metabolism and supports fat oxidation. It helps you burn fat. There was a 12-week study done on green tea and they found it actually improved weight loss significantly, reduced waist circumference, and lowered LDL cholesterol levels. And so big benefits there. By the way, if you're buying green tea, make sure it's quality. Make sure it's a certified organic or ceremonial, one of the two. Either organic or ceremonial grade green matcha tea. Now, if you're doing another form of matcha that's sort of the loose leaf, sencha is one of my favorites to do in that form, but either do a sencha or a matcha-based tea for that green tea extract. And as I mentioned earlier, I do wanna mention the diets here, carnivore being one. Listen, I think carnivore diet is okay in the short term for somebody that has mold poisoning or major autoimmune reactions, and it's the only thing that's working for them. But you don't wanna be on a carnivore diet ideally your entire life because I think there's an issue with the acidity there. And because of that, you're better off doing carnivore the way I know Paul Saladino has transferred into doing it, where he's also now eating some fruit and honey and raw dairy, that type of thing. But at least being able to balance out a carnivore diet with some fruit like pears or blueberries, something that's very easy to digest, easier on your system, is better in the long term. But listen, doing a lot of meat as your primary thing you're getting in your meals, that's a good idea for almost everybody. Okay, that's a good idea for most people. But again, I do prefer doing a diet where it's meat, vegetables, and fruits. That's the basis. That's what your diet is mostly made up of. And as I mentioned earlier, I think the keto diet's good doing temporarily for brain tumors, for weight loss, for diabetes, for a number of issues, but it's not the diet you stay on long term. You do add in some healthy carbohydrates, lower the fat over time, while still maintaining maybe high to moderate fat, just not 70, 80% of your entire diet. But again, these diets can work in the short term for weight loss for three months to six months in a really tremendous way because of that. So now let's talk about intermittent fasting for weight loss. I have written a book on fasting, intermittent fasting. I have talked about fasting quite frequently. However, I do want to say my personal opinion is that it's a very personalized thing when it comes to fasting. And I found men tend to do better fasting than women. But some women can do very well. Here's the thing, again, it comes down to you. You need to listen to your body. When I have a person come into me that's sick, here's the other thing. People that are generally healthy, but just need to lose weight, those are the people that do the best with intermittent fasting. When I have somebody come in and they have Lyme disease, they have hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, PCOS, infertility, low test, somebody's sick, they've got a chronic illness, especially hormone-based. I don't like doing the very, very short eating window of intermittent fasting in that case. The way that I have most people intermittent fast, by the way, this is the way that I personally typically do it a little bit more so, is that I might wait to eat breakfast till around 8.30 or 9 a.m., but then I'll eat again around noon or one, and I eat an early dinner around five. So my eating window might be within nine hours, but I'm still getting three meals in a day, and there's about four hours in between my two meal, between those meals. And that way, I can still get a lot of calories in that I need to build muscle and a lot of nutrients in. That's how I feel good and do well. And so, listen, I'm still not eating for about 14 hours a day. I'm still on a 14-hour fast, 14 to 15 hour. That's the way I think most people should do intermittent fasting. However, some people can do that eight-hour window, six-hour window, four-hour window, one meal a day, and do really well as well. I've got friends, Dr. Daniel Amen, Jordan Rubin, close friends of mine, Dr. David Perlmutter. These are doctors that do more of that four to eight-hour eating window, much shorter, they might eat one meal a day or two meals a day, and they thrive and do well on it. I'm not one of those people. I know that my wife, Chelsea, is not one of those people. And so, and by the way, I have done that before. I did it for a year or two years, the more intense intermittent fasting, not eating breakfast in my body. I just noticed I just physically wasn't as healthy. And so, it's not for everybody, just remember that. However, if you're generally healthy but just need to lose weight, intermittent fasting could be great for you. And what I would recommend is, you know, essentially just skip breakfast, okay? Skip breakfast, or just have protein at breakfast, and that's it, okay? Just get that 30 grams of protein. So maybe you just do some collagen protein and plant protein, get 40 grams in, and then do your coffee or your herbal tea, okay, in the morning, okay? So you got your protein, and then lunch, eat that around noon or one, try and eat an earlier dinner around five or six at the latest, and eat like that, okay? Or fast completely and then eat around one, eat again at, you know, five or six, and do intermittent fasting like that. But again, listen to your body. So the reason I bring this up is, I've had people who, you know, they read the books, they listen to podcasts, they listen to all the experts talking about how great intermittent fasting is, and they felt worse on it, but they kept doing it because they heard how great it was. Listen, if your body is not responding well to intermittent fasting, do not keep doing it. Now, I want to mention another type of fasting, which is a form of intermittent fasting, that I do more than I do intermittent fasting, and that is spiritual fasting, or fasting one to two days a week, okay? When you look at some of the Jews, if we go back 2,000 years, the Jewish people that were very spiritually responsive to God and following the feast days, when you go back and look at the early Christians and Christian fathers of the church, you'll see that they fasted either one day a week or two days a week. They would tend to fast either on Wednesdays or Fridays or both. And what they would do is, there was one group of them that would fast two days a week, and they would wait until three o'clock, and they would eat at three o'clock and maybe again at six or seven, or just eat the one time, and they would do that on Wednesday, Friday, and another group would just fast on Fridays, and they would wait until the sun was setting and just eat an early dinner around five or six, okay? And that was the fast. So they ate normally. So they ate breakfast, they ate lunch, dinner, six days a week, but one day a week, they devoted to spending more time in prayer, more time focusing on God and fasting those days. We also see around the Jewish festivals and feast days, there was fasting and feasting, right? So they did fasting certain times. We know around certain Protestant denominations, a lot of the Catholic church, a lot of the Orthodox church practices Advent and Lent, and also giving up certain things certain times of year, which sometimes a lot of the monks, a lot of the priests, and a lot of people in these church congregations practice fasting. And so I would say another option for you is, hey, eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but take one day a week and just eat dinner and practice that type of fasting and focusing on growing spiritually. And that's good for cortisol. It's good for the thing that matters most. You're, you know, you becoming more like Christ. And so I wanna encourage you to consider that type of fasting as well. I do wanna mention a study here with fasting. There was a meta-analysis done on 27 studies combined about fasting. And the adults who did intermittent fasting experienced weight loss of about 1% to 13% of their baseline weight with no serious adverse events. 12 studies compared intermittent fasting to calorie restriction and found actually about equivalent results. So it's important to know sometimes intermittent fasting, it's not about you're eating windows. Sometimes it's more about you're eating less calories. However, I do wanna mention, I do believe there are benefits of just giving your body time off because some of your organs, I believe, might be able to cleanse and remove senolytic cells and that sort of thing's a little bit better during those times. And senolytic cells are those sort of zombie cells that cause your body to age, cause inflammation there as well. So just some things to consider there. One of the last things I wanna reference here is exercise. You know, if you're a person like me and you're saying, hey, what will give me the most bang for my buck? Maybe you're saying to yourself, okay, I can exercise three days a week. I got one hour, three days a week. What do I do to lose the most weight? Here's what you do. You combine, and by the way, for me, it's never just about losing weight. It's about losing body fat and looking and feeling healthier and younger. If that's you, typically your best bet is to combine weight training with interval training cardio, known as HIIT training or Tabata, okay? You wanna combine those two together to maximize your results. Now, listen, there are benefits of Pilates, there are benefits of barre, there are benefits of running and cross-country skiing and rock climbing, and there's benefits of a lot of types of exercise. But in terms of the actual studies of what will cause you to lose the most body fat, weight training with HIIT training combined will help you lose the most weight from all the clinical research that I've looked at. There was a meta-analysis which pulled a lot of studies together that was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, and they found that HIIT training reduced body fat by 4.1 pounds on average while increasing 1.1 pounds of lean muscle mass. So doing HIIT training like sprints was the most effective for fat and weight loss while cycling increased muscle mass the most. So here's a reality, for instance. If you can go and do a Peloton or a Karo bike, something like that, where you're doing really HIIT training or Tabata, that's about the best form of cardio you're gonna do for losing body fat. And I wanna say, if you're a person, and let's say you have one hour, okay, you've got one hour total, what I would encourage you to do for the most part is start off with your weight training, okay? Do about 40 to 45 minutes, and then end with about 15 to 20 minutes of interval cardio, whether that's on a treadmill or a spin bike. I think, let's say, for instance, you wanna maximize the results. Hey, do 40 minutes of weights, your largest muscle groups, and then jump on a Peloton and do one of those 20-minute class. That's gonna help you lose a lot of weight, okay? And if you're gonna lose, like what I would try and do is, and this is what I'd have patients do, if you have enough time for this, it might go a little over an hour, but not much, do three rounds of three body parts and superset them, okay? So, for instance, let's say you're gonna work out three days a week, pick two body parts and couple those together. So do like back and shoulders one day, do like butt and core another day, and then do legs and arms another day, something like that, okay? And on the days you do butt and core, do squats, do hip thrusts, do lunges, and then do planks, do sit-ups, and do some other ab exercise, okay? And do, superset those three rounds of three each, and then go into a 20-minute Peloton, a HIIT, or Tabata, okay? If you do that, you will lose a lot of weight when you combine it with the other things we've talked about, the diet. If you ate mostly meat and vegetables, and then did some berries, and did some of the other things we've talked about, and you did this, you're gonna lose weight so quickly. And it really won't take you much time. The eating doesn't take you any more time. This exercise takes, I don't know, three to four, you know, three hours a week total. You can do it, and you're gonna get tremendous benefits. You're gonna add years to your life. Remember this, taking these weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, like Wigovi, like Monjaro, could cause your body to age, your muscles to age, essentially, because of the amount of muscle you're losing. 20 years is the equivalent. You're aging your body, you are losing the amount of muscle mass that most people would lose over a 20-year period of time when you take those drugs. So you're going from a body of a 40-year-old to a body of a 60-year-old, or a body of a 50 to a 70-year-old, or a body of a 30-year-old to a 50-year-old. Do you want that? No, none of us want that. We don't want you to be that aged by doing that, having Ozempic butt, or Ozempic face, or Ozempic organs, because you're aging those as well by slowing your digestive system down. Instead, practice food as medicine and lifestyle medicine, and simply, again, focus more on organic meat, vegetables, berries, a little bit of high, some more high-fiber foods. Take berberine, take ashwagandha, take some cinnamon, drink some green tea, get some more probiotics in, and then exercise a little bit more, mostly weight and interval training. If you do that, you're gonna get in the best shape of your life. You're gonna look younger, you're gonna feel younger, you'll actually be younger, and you'll reach your ideal body weight that way. Hey, listen, there are millions of people that don't know the truth of the side effects of these dangerous drugs, these GLP-1 drugs, the semiglucatetide drugs, like Wigovi, like Ozempic, like Monjaro, and it's taking years off people's lives. It is causing them to age more quickly. Do me a favor, share this episode. Share it on social media, on a text thread. By the way, I'm so grateful for all of you that have been on mission with me and helping share this, because most people don't know this, but we gotta get the message out there, so thanks for doing so. And if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe. We have so many incredible guests coming up here this year in 2025. I think it's just gonna blow your mind. The podcast is growing leaps and bounds, so I just wanna say thanks so much. And I will see you on the next episode. Remember, each and every week, we're diving deep into the science and principles behind how you can take your life to the next level, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I'll see you on the next episode.