How To Get Started

Speaker 1 (00:05):

Hey, y’all welcome to Metabolaunch part two. This is maybe in my opinion, the most important segment in my journey and hopefully your journey in being more healthy, losing weight, and feeling better. When I read the book that I’ve talked about, The Obesity Code, I guess the most important thing to me was to actually understand what was happening in my body. I told you that I had issues that maybe I had a mental problem, that maybe I had an addiction to food similar to that of an alcoholic or a drug addict. And in the process of learning and studying biochemistry and endocrinology. I learned that I was actually right, that I really did have a problem with… I mentioned that I don’t necessarily believe in addiction as we use it in society like drug addiction, food addiction, sex addiction, and all the above. We’re really addicted to the same hormones.

(01:02):

It’s just different substances and different ways of eliciting that hormone. And so for me to really commit and understand and be able to actually have success, I needed to understand actually what happened. Dig in with me here. Let’s dig into the chalkboard science on hormones and what happens when we eat and all the above. So first things first, I mentioned insulin and so many diets and gurus out there, they talk about insulin-like we all understand it, and they really don’t. Insulin is created by the pancreas, the signal from the brain, tells the pancreas to create the insulin. And what that does is when we eat carbs, sugars, glucose, there are sugars and they’re running in our bloodstream and the pancreas secretes insulin and insulin goes in and it grabs, and it shuttles the glucose into the cells.

(01:58):

Now it shuttles it into the muscles that are used, that’s called glycogen. That’s our readily available energy. So if you’re going to go sprint right now, chances are you’re going to be pulling that energy from glycogen, stored glucose. Well, one of the things that insulin does, as you can see, get the pancreas here and these little dots, those are insulin. This right here is a fat cell. And right here, we have the insulin receptor. I want you to think of that as the keyhole, like in your front door. And then this is the pathway where the glucose enters the fat cell. So, the job of insulin is actually, it’s a storage hormone. So basically with all these fat cells that we have, there’s glucose in every one of them. This is stored energy. The book refers to fat as your checking account.

(02:56):

Okay. It refers to glycogen, that readily a form of energy, that’s usually in your muscles as cash in your pocket. We’re going to go back to that analogy in just a second. So what the insulin’s supposed to do is it goes into the keyhole and it allows the glucose to shuttle into the fat cell. The walls of the stomach produce the hunger hormone, ghrelin. We like to think, you have a hard time remembering that, think of growling. Because when your stomach is growling, you’ve got a lot of ghrelin in your system. Ghrelin gets recognized by the brain and the brain tells us we need to eat. Let me get the stomach growling. And all that comes with that. This is very important. I mentioned in intermittent fasting, which we’re going to talk about more, the magic of what happens in the body, metabolically, and energy wise is actually all in ghrelin. It’s a magical hormone.

(03:59):

So let’s get in and let’s talk about what happens when there are large amounts of ghrelin in the body. Well, basically ghrelin is trying to tell the body, Hey, we need food. We need glucose. We need energy. And so what it does is it’s telling the brain, go get it. And the brain tells us to get it in certain ways. And, when we’re not feeding the body, when we’re ignoring that grin signal, that’s when, as I said, the magic happens. One of the ways that magic happens is serotonin. Serotonin is one of our happy hormones. When you have depression issues, chances are you’re low on serotonin and serotonin starts pumping from the base of the brain, a lot more. Serotonin aids is one of the hormones that actually aids in gluconeogenesis. And in actually going through the body and finding glucose for the body.

(04:56):

The number one hormone responsible for actually helping find glucose within the body when we’re low is actually growth hormone or HGH. This is created in the pituitary gland. The pituitary is in the brain. And this is probably like I said, the number one reason why intermittent fasting is the truth because most of you guys remember when you were a teenager and most of you, I’m not going to say all of you, but most of you were not overweight. When you were injured, you healed quickly, you slept all morning long. You were invincible. And as we get older and older, we get older and older, nothing works the same. Our sleep processes get lower. Our healing ability gets worse and we start to gain fat. This is a reduction in growth hormone, and that’s the primary reason we get old, is our growth hormone goes down and down and down.

(05:58):

Well, ghrelin greatly increases pituitary gland production of growth hormone. Now growth hormone cycles, it turns into what’s called IGF-1 or insulin-like growth factor. I call that the secret sauce, growth factor, the insulin-like growth factor is it’s a miracle, so we attribute it to HGH but really it’s IGF-1. And again, we’ll talk more about that. So as you heard me mention in segment one at 16 hours of a fast, our brain, our pituitary, is dumping five times normal growth hormone. That’s a lot of growth hormone, but what’s incredible is as that fast actually gets longer, just two hours longer. So you haven’t eaten in 18 hours now, instead of 16, that pituitary production goes 10 times normal. And it actually can get even higher than that, which is why 24 or even 36 hour fasts are phenomenal for the body because you can get that pituitary dumping at 20 times normal growth hormone.

(07:01):

Well people… I’m in and out of this clinic. I have some clients that with some deep pockets that can really can afford growth hormone, we sell growth hormone. Problem is, it’s very expensive. And I always tell people the majority of people that can’t afford growth hormone, the number one way you can slow aging, you can heal faster from your injuries, you can have more energy, you can burn more fat, is actually intermittent fasting because of ghrelin. Okay, let’s get into a hormone called leptin. Leptin is a precursor to dopamine. Dopamine is the ultimate. And I mentioned, I talk about addiction. Most of us are all addicted to the same thing. Like I said, whether it’s food, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s sex, whether it’s alcohol, it’s usually a dopamine release. Dopamine is the ultimate happy hormone. We call it a reward hormone. Well, leptin is how we achieve that.

(08:05):

Leptin is the precursor to dopamine. Leptin actually comes from fat cells. Interesting. Huh? So when we drink a Coke or eat something delicious, we get that, ah, that satiety, as you can see right here, satiety is what it’s called. The root of which is satisfied. And it is a reward hormone. So it’s actually our fat that actually is supposed to signal our brain. Thus, the diagram here, that says you’ve had enough, you’ve been satisfied, but the problem is, as you heard me talk about insulin earlier, leptin is just like any other drug, our bodies respond to it the same way. So the more leptin that’s pushed to our brain, the less our brain hears it. And if you guys ever had construction going near your house, or you have an annoying sound, that’s maybe a ring that’s in your ear nonstop.

(09:06):

And after a couple hours, day, two, three, whatever, you stop hearing it, that’s your brain tuning it out. And in a way, that’s what happens in every substance we give to our body, including naturally produced hormones. Leptin, actually your brain can become resistant to it. I remember back when I was nearly 300 pounds and the way that I would treat a Chinese buffet, I love me some Chinese buffet and I would have to keep going back. And the result was always the same. I would be sick walking out of that buffet because I ate too much. And then I have to deal with all the consequences of eating too much. But really what I was doing is it’s almost like a craze, almost like an addicted person’s behavior. I got to have more, I got to have more. I got to have more.

(10:01):

Well, what I learned is just because I was leptin resistant. My wife bought a big jar of M&Ms to sit on the counter, which is an absolute no-no, but we had company in town, it’s kind of a splurge. So, virtually every time I walk through the kitchen, I grabbed a few M&Ms and ate it. And it’s interesting because in the past I would’ve grabbed this giant handful, but instead I was taking three fingers and just kind of grabbing four or five M&Ms. And I’d eat them. And there were times where I would literally stop and just be like, wow, just like enjoying the flavor in my mouth and the leptin and dopamine release that I was experiencing. Whereas before I would just be having to shovel M&M’s in my mouth to get that same hormonal reaction, pretty interesting stuff.

(10:48):

But fact of the matter is the more overweight you are, the less sensitive you are to leptin another important component of the hormone reaction to when you’re hungry, when there’s ghrelin present in the body, is like I said, we’ve got the serotonin dump, that’s increasing. Number one, we got the growth hormone dump, that’s drastically increasing. Lastly will be adrenaline or epinephrine, same thing. And that is produced in the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are just above the kidneys and y’all know what adrenaline is, right? They shoot that in the heart of people that are dying. There is literally nothing that’s going to jack you up, give you more energy, more focus, more anything than adrenaline. Adrenaline is magical. And the combination of adrenaline. So we have adrenaline, that’s going… So all these hormones are feeding into the body and they’re marrying to do one thing.

(11:48):

And that is find glucose or energy throughout the body. And, it’s interesting to me because people say, well, how do you work out on an empty stomach, which I do. I never work out with food in my stomach. I go, hold on a second. I would rather have adrenaline and growth hormone than caffeine and beta alanine. Essentially, when you’re having a pre-workout drink in the morning, you’re basically going, ah, I don’t need adrenaline. Ah, I don’t need growth hormone. I’d rather have caffeine. I work out and I have an incredible energy because I’m fasted in the morning. And my body is… My adrenals are dumping adrenaline. My brain is producing high levels of serotonin. Pituitary is producing high levels of growth hormone. I have no insulin in the body and I am clear focused. Tony Robbins says to come to one of his seminars, fasted on an empty stomach.

(12:43):

Why would that be? Because all these hormones also make you smarter and they make your brain work better. It’s incredible when you start to figure out that actually the process of eating, it actually one creates inflammation. Isn’t that interesting? I didn’t say eating bad causes inflammation. I said, eating causes inflammation. And it slows every process in the body until that food is digested. Insulin is produced whenever we eat, even if that’s something healthy, insulin’s always produced. I like to relate a lot of the way the brain responds and the body responds to things to kind of like a drug addict. And what’s interesting is the more drugs they do, the more they need. And eventually the dose that they used to take, it doesn’t work anymore. And they got to consistently, consistently increase that dose. Well, that’s what happens with insulin or any of these other hormones.

(13:42):

So we’re getting these little, even if it’s a healthy meal, we’re getting these little insulin dumps throughout the day. And the brain, the cells of our body are constantly bathing in this insulin and they stop being sensitive to it. So you have to keep producing more and more. We do things the right way here. We don’t treat blood sugar here. We help people cure insulin resistance. Okay. So I’m sure most of you haven’t done any drugs. Well, isn’t it common sense that if you’re trying to help somebody get off drugs or to even to just be sensitive to those drugs again, doesn’t it make sense to tell them you got to stop doing the drugs for a while? Well, it’s not quite as simple with food and with eating because we can’t fully stop eating, but isn’t it interesting, suddenly were told to eat small meals throughout the day.

(14:39):

What did cavemen do? Cavemen did not have refrigerators. They didn’t have pantries. They didn’t have grocery stores. When they left their caves, the family just hoped they came back with food. They certainly didn’t come back with three meals and two snacks a day. That is a lie created by the food industry. We are not like cows. We’re not supposed to graze all day. We’re more like lions, tigers, and bears, and lions and tigers and bears can go days without eating. And so can we, I’m not saying that’s what we should do. But back to insulin resistance, the way you cure insulin resistance is by going long periods of time every day with little to no insulin. Emphasis on no insulin. You have to make the cells become sensitive to that insulin again. And they have to be starving for insulin for that to happen again.

(15:38):

So basically in my experience, I put this to the test. If you can remember from segment one, I lost 45 pounds in 56 days. It was an eight-week challenge. Well, the challenge was over and it was over on December 23rd, 2018. On December 23rd, 2018. I ate a giant pizza from DeCarlos Pizza, my favorite pizza joint. And I believed in fasting. So I was staying in an eight-hour window, which we’re going to talk about later in the segment. But I started to eat what I wanted to eat. Burgers, pizza, I wasn’t being carb conscious. And I fully expected after the grueling 56 days that I put in, to start putting more weight on. And I figured it was very reasonable to put a quick five pounds on.

(16:34):

So over the next week, I would step on the scale every day, fully expecting it to be up half a pound or a pound. And it was down half a pound and down half a pound and down half a pound. It was incredible that basically, I proved the point that after two hard months of discipline, I was now insulin sensitive and I actually lost 15 more pounds over the next 30 days. And I wasn’t even trying to lose weight. Incredible stuff here. Guys, you have to understand the hormonal side of this because there’s a consequence to everything we do or don’t do with our eating cycles. We’re going to talk more about that in segment three.