"Try It For 1 Day" - Most Effective Way To Burn Stubborn Body Fat I Dr. William Li
GbXJhP6ZFV4 • 2025-10-25
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When you are actually not, what actually
happens is that your insulin levels are
down. When you're not, your metabolism
switches gears. Your body is in fuel
burning mode. So the longer you don't,
the more excess fat you can burn. Our
gut bacteria have, believe it or not, a
circadian clock. They know what time it
is. So when you eat late at night and
you disrupt your gut bacteria,
inflammation rises as well. I actually
love it's got chlorogenic acid.
Chlorogenic acid also takes your white
fat, the harmful wiggly jiggly stuff,
and says, "Here's what we'd like you to
do. We'd like you to start turning more
into brown fat, [music] healthy fat." If
you want ultimate health, what you need
to start with is understanding.
There's three kinds of vein fat. [music]
There's white fat which is wiggly and
jiggly uh and it can be visceral or it
could be subcutaneous meaning under the
skin. And then there's brown fat which
is paper thin and it's close to the bone
and it actually is good fat that
generates heat to burn down harmful fat.
But visceral fat is really the f first
kind. It's wiggly jiggly and and it's
found inside the tube of your body.
Visceral meaning gut. Gut fat. Visceral
fat's the same thing. And if you think
about it, it starts off like packing
peanuts in inside the tube of your body.
It's a cushion to prevent if you tripped
on a rug and you fell on the floor, your
organs are cushioned by a little bit of
these packing peanuts. And so it's going
to be fine. Now, visceral fat, by the
way, has another function. It actually
contains part of our immune system. I
want to talk about the good part first.
Our immune system, um, and and I can
tell you what it does. There's a
specific organ. There's even an or a
suborgan of of fat. Our whole fat is an
organ. There's one part of our fat
called the omenum. O m e n t u m. Most
people who are not doctors will have
never heard of it because it is actually
what we it's like an apron of fat,
healthy fat that crawls around our body
like an octopus. You know, if you see
those uh videos online or on on like
Discovery Channel, the octopus is going
around the rock and the reef just
looking for places to crevice crevices
to go into. That's the um made out of
body fat. Here's what it does. It
patrols our abdomen, our our belly on
the inside around our intestines doing a
couple of things. Number one, it
conducts surveillance to make sure there
are no leaks or cracks or injuries to
our gut. You know, our gut is full of
bacteria and our gut is actually full of
poop. Can you imagine if there's a
perforation, a tiny hole or an injury
and all that bacteria seeps out from
inside from the tube of your intestines
into the visca into the open cavity of
your body. I'll tell you as the doctor
what would happen. You would get septic.
You would go to the ICU and there's a
good chance you would die. All right?
So, thank goodness for the the um this
healthy fat, this octopus. Um it's kind
of like a mix between an octopus and a
baseball glove. And it basically cruises
around your belly silently. You can't
feel it. And it can get in between the
intestines. Now look, your intestines is
about 40 feet of a tube all folded up
like packed into a suitcase, which is
our our belly. And the um conducts
surveillance to make sure that
everything is hunky dory and actually
fine and there's no inflammation. Now
the the the um also this is visceral fat
also secretes those hormones. Leptin to
help control our appetite, adiponectin,
which is another hormone to allow
insulin to draw our uh energy in our
fuel, our glucose more efficiently into
our cell, and resistant, which is
actually to allow us to have a little
bit less versus a little bit more um
energy drawn in. Okay, this is all
healthy stuff. Now, the other thing that
momentum contains, it actually contains
part of our immune system. So think of
it our momentum like a battleship that
contains ready to roll super soldiers
inside its um inside its cav inside the
ship and basically it was waiting there
and if it actually finds a little hole
in our intestines right think about all
the stuff that we actually throw down
our gut if there's a little hole little
perforation immediately that octopus the
momentum will crawl over there it'll
stick out of the tentacle and it will
cup that area and it will blast the
super soldiers, the immune system to
clean up that area and kill the
infection until it heals. All right, we
used to call this the policeman of the
abdomen, the omenum. So, it's quite
amazing. So, okay. So, what happens? Um,
that's normal. I'm I want to tell you
normal because everybody thinks of fat
as bad. That's all normal. If you
actually grow too much visceral fat, and
visceral fat also being fuel cells, and
you just keep on piling up fat, fat,
fat, fat, fat, by overeating, by eating
the wrong things, by disrupting your gut
health, which then causes your
metabolism to go haywire, and then it's
easier to gain to develop body fat. Then
what actually happens is that those
hormonal functions are disrupted.
Basically, think about it like uh
disrupting the hormones, like getting
too much visceral fat is like you walk
into a symphony hall that's in the
middle of a performance of, you know,
Beethoven's
symphony and you get in there and you
just jump on stage and start throwing,
you know, stuff around, uh, amping a
garbage can on stage, you're going to
disrupt everything. The music is not
going to flow. And that's what actually
happens when you develop excess visceral
fat. It's dangerous for several reasons.
Number one, those hormones, leptin,
adipeneectin, resistant, all the things
that control how well and efficiently we
use our energy, all thrown off course. I
don't know. Do we want to absorb more
energy or less energy? I can't tell.
It's too noisy in here. All right, that
that immune system super soldiers, well,
guess what? They're thrown out of whack
as well. They're like, whoa, I can't I
don't know what's going on. And so,
basically, your fat unleashes these
super soldiers as inflammation. All
right. Now you've got inflammation
instead of defenders of the of your
body. Now they become inflammatory cells
and they are all over the place spilling
out over your uh guts. On top of that,
when you if you grow too much visceral
fat and remember fat normally is a fuel
tank that stores the energy into fat
cells. If you if you over stuff that
area, the fuel the fat will leak out.
Okay? It's just like overfilling your
gas tank at a gas station. Boom. It
comes out full rolls down the side of
the of the car on your tires or on your
shoes. You're it's a toxic, dangerous,
flammable mess at the gas station. Same
deal. When you have overflowing fuel,
fat will leak out of fat. A liquid will
leak out of fat cells which is supposed
to contain them like a fuel tank. And
that leaking fat poisons your liver.
It's called lipo, meaning fat toxicity,
meaning it's poison to your liver. And
in fact, that's actually the cause in
our world of abundance of something
called non-alcoholic fatty [snorts]
liver disease, NAFLD. That's is this is
actually a hidden epidemic that is
leading to hepatitis and leading to
liver cancer. When you poison your
liver, and by the way, your liver
detoxifies your whole body, detoxifies
your blood. You damage that organ with
leaking excess fat, man, we are in a
world of hurt. So what I'm telling you
is that normal healthy fat, think about
it like a orchestra um with a conductor
that plays a beautiful symphony.
Everybody's in harmony doing their thing
and it's a performance for the your
whole life. And when you actually grow
too much visceral fat, it's like rushing
on stage with garbage cans and dumping
them out and completely disrupting the
performance. That's how bad it actually
is. Imagine if you are somebody who
doesn't get a chance to eat very much.
Maybe
Maybe you're on a budget and so you have
to watch what you're buying and what
you're eating. Like many people are like
that. Um you're going to be really
grateful when you actually have
something good to eat, right? Um and
maybe you'll eat three times a day,
maybe you won't. But every time you have
food, you'll be appreciative and you'll
um think about the value of what the
value of what you're actually eating.
Now, let me give you a different
scenario. You're a kid thrown into a
candy store. All right? Now you're
surrounded by everything. And someone
tells you, "Go ahead. There's no limit.
Get anything you want, right?" So you're
going to go first. You're going to be
excited. You're going to dive in and
start eating everything. But pretty soon
you don't you're confused. You don't
know what to do anymore because you're
just surrounded by overage. And I think
this is true on the behavioral level,
but it's also true on the cellular
level. When we actually have are are
surrounded with overabundance,
it confuses the system in our body. It
can overwhelm our metabolism. And so
what we want to do when you asked you
like, "Oh, how do you eat? When do you
eat? What do you eat?" One of the things
we want to do is to be moderate. Don't
don't overeat. That's easy. Quit the
clean plate club. All right? Um don't
take don't pile on to your plate. You
know, uh you're not preparing for
hibernation. So you want to actually be
careful that you are taking just the
right amount. Stop eating when you're
80% full. There's a Japanese saying
called harahachi buni and it basically
means you know if you eat slowly and you
feel like you're satisfied but not full.
Push the plate away. You're not a member
of the clean plate club anymore. You're
fine. Thank your host, you know. Thank
whoever cooked the meal and and and be
grateful that you had it. You don't need
to keep on eating. That's the whole
thing. All right. You can just stop.
That's the sort of like how to eat. When
to eat. Look, remember I told you when
you are actually not eating, for
example, sleeping, what actually happens
is that your insulin levels are down
when you're not eating, your metabolism
switches gears to fuel burning mode. So
when you're sleeping, you're also not
eating, which is also called fasting. We
get up in the morning, we're breaking
our fast, which is why we call it
breakfast, break fast. When you're not
when you're not eating, your body is in
fuel burning mode, burning down extra
energy in those fat cells that got
stored up. Remember, so the longer you
don't eat, the more energy, excess fat
you can burn. And it draws it f first
from visceral fat. Now, this is a this
is sort of like a when to to eat. If for
example, you sleep for eight hours a
day, and I've talked about this with
many people, you should try to eat sleep
8 hours a day. That's best for your
health. Let's say you sleep from 11 to
7. If you eat dinner the night before,
let's say it's 7:00 and the time isn't
so the exact hour time is less important
than the concept. You eat dinners at
7:00, you you finish at 8, put your
dishes away. Don't eat a late night
snack. No midnight snack. Noing. Don't
wait for your dessert to eat later. So
many of us were trained over time to
have this habit of finishing dinner and
just eating continuously, maybe through
the night or definitely before sleeping,
eating something. Look, every time you
put your dishes away and then you're
still snacking, your insulin is going
up. Now you're cutting into the time you
want to actually get more fat burning
time. This is the how to eat. Stop when
you put your dishes away. Don't eat
anything else. And now let's say you go
to bed. You eat at 700. You get put your
dishes away at 8. You go to bed at
11:00. just gained three extra hours of
fat burning time. How awesome is that?
And it's very easy to retrain yourself
to having you're not going to, believe
me, you're not going to perish in those
three hours. And then what I do myself
is I I, you know, I keep track of this.
So I get three hours before bed. I get
my eight hours of sleep. In the morning
when I get up, I don't immediately rush
off and eat breakfast like I was when a
kid. I take my time to get ready, to get
showered, uh to change, get dressed, and
I might go out for a walk or I might
read a book or I might check my email or
something, and I'm not eating yet. I
usually wait for an hour after I get up
before I eat anything. Maybe even longer
sometimes. Like this morning, I didn't
eat for a couple hours after I got up.
Guess what? I just gain one or two extra
hours of fuel burning. Do the math. 8:00
to 11:00, 3 hours. 11 o'clock to 7
o'clock, eight hours, that's 11 hours.
Now you give yourself one extra hour in
that morning, it's 12 hours. There's 24
hours in a day. And now you have spent
half the day allowing your hardwired
metabolism to be in fuel and fat burning
mode. How good and how easy is that? And
I'll tell you one more thing. Um they've
actually studied this late night eating
food late night. So, you know, we get
extra glucose, high levels of insulin.
Just you said it's not so good for our
metabolism. But guess what? We're also
feeding our gut microbiome. And studies
have shown when you eat late at night,
like snacking late at night, like
midnight snack. All right? What happens?
You're feeding our meta where our gut
bacteria, our gut bacteria have, believe
it or not, a circadian clock. They know
what time it is and they know very well
that when it's time to get ready for
bed, they shouldn't be fed. When they
are fed, your gut bacteria are fed late
at night. They have trouble digesting
and metabolizing the food that they're
eating to create their short- chain
fatty acids, which by the way, they
normally do to lower inflammation. So
when you eat late at night and you
disrupt the circadian cycle of our gut
back your gut bacteria, they don't make
the same degree of short chain fatty
acids and guess what? Inflammation rises
as well. So not only you not getting a
good night's sleep, your inflammation in
your body is rising as well. And and on
top of that, your gut bacteria is
getting confused. Like this is by the
way why shift workers often have
difficulty with their metabolism. If
you're setting out to try to lose weight
and burn fat, okay? And by the way, you
want to do this to gain inner health,
vanity. I'm totally cool with vanity.
You know, should you feel if you feel
good by looking good, go for it. But
what I am concerned about is really as a
doctor and as a scientist, how do we
actually gain inner health? If you're
good on the inside, by the way, you're
going to be you're going to look better
on the outside no matter what. It's just
that if you only work on the outside,
but you're really kind of having
problems on the inside, that's just
cosmetics and inside could be have a
real problem. So, what I always tell
people is that if your goal is to
actually lose weight, intermittent
fasting, it's it's a trend, but it's
really not something that was invented
in order to create a trend. It's the
most natural thing we do. Just eat. We
intermittently eat and we intermittently
don't need eat. Um, so we fast and we
don't fast. So but but research has
shown if you actually go 12 and 12
eating 12 not eating as I told you
totally fine. Um in fact studies have
shown that you can you can lose about uh
you can lose about 10 pounds you know by
by intermittent fasting like that 12 and
12. If you want to lose more you got to
you got to up your fasting period you
can ramp it up almost 30%. If you
actually then crank it up to 16 hours of
fasting. So 16 hours of fasting is
basically like going to bed the same
time I told you. But remember I told you
you got 12 hours if you um don't eat uh
breakfast until 8. Now you got to gain
an extra four hours. So you got not eat
so you skip breakfast and don't eat till
lunch the next day. You'll get your 16
hours. Now research has shown if you do
that and yes you are giving your body
extra fat burning time. You will lose
extra weight but you'll actually start
losing weight just with a very
reasonable 12 hours. But don't forget
intermittent fasting, fasting is a
continuum. It's a it's a scale all the
way to starvation. All right? If you got
shipped on wrecked on a desert island
with no food, yeah, you'd be
intermittently fasting, too. But
eventually, you would actually be
starving. And when you starve and you
overfast, the problem is that you can
actually cut into your muscle mass and
you'll start to destroy your muscle
mass.
What's worse than actually gaining body
fat is gaining body fat while you're
losing muscle mass. So, got to be really
careful about this stuff. Um, you know,
and and I think that just reasonable
approaches for reasonable people usually
is something that people can stick with
and that's how you get better health. If
you fast for an extraordinary long
period of time till you're starving,
your bacteria are actually going to
start dying as well. They're not being
fed. They need food. It's like not
feeding your goldfish, you know, in your
tank for a long time. So, that's the
extreme. Reel it back. Okay. And now,
what's amazing is actually when you give
your gut bacteria a break, proper break,
and you're but when you're when you're
eating, you're eating healthy things.
During the fasting time, your bacteria
reboot themselves. That's really quite
amazing. They reboot themselves by first
getting rid of bad actors. It's like
purging the neighborhood of the crack
dealers. All right. And our gut bacteria
39 trillion. They've got um they've got
a whole variety. It's a very diverse
ecosystem.
But the problem that we have when we
have when we suffer from bad gut health
is really we have got a few bad bacteria
that are growing. Some of these bacteria
when they overgrow can actually be even
lethal uh if if we don't watch out like
like cadiff and sudamonus. other types
of bacteria that we see in the hospital
as doctors. But generally speaking, when
we give our gut bacteria a break so that
they're not overly taxed all the time
with food, then they can actually reboot
themselves. When they reboot, they're
also lowering inflammation more
effectively. They're supporting your
immune system. They help your immune
system uh reboot as well. And they also
um participate in all kinds of other
healing functions that are also
beneficial as well. So again, this is
all just um leveraging the systems that
are already present in our body. You
know, we talked about the eating and the
time restriction of of timerestricted
eating and fasting. Um we talked about
all these other tricks as well in terms
of of um of how not to overload your
food and whether you should snack or
not. But all these other factors that
you're bringing up, staying physically
active so you can burn that fuel,
getting good enough sleep so that your
your metabolism is switched into fuel
burning mode and managing your stress so
you're not in a chronic state of tonic
stress so that your metabolism is is is
derailed and you're in a chronic state
of inflammation from your body fat. All
these things play into each other. If
you want ultimate health, what you need
to start with is understanding how do we
orient our body and our behavior in that
direction. Right? You want to head
north, you got to figure out where north
is first. So I think number one,
understanding that our metabolism is
very very important. That's why I chose
to write the sequel to my first book,
Eat to Beat Disease. I chose to write it
about metabolism and I called it Eat to
Beat Your Diet, which is a trick title
because it's not a diet book. It's an
anti-diet book, which is how do you find
your north star when it comes to health
by looking for your metabolism? Our
metabolism is something we're born with
and and it functions helps us keep going
until the day we die. And we want good
energy. We want efficient use of energy
and we want to actually use every body
part um in its perform every organ in
the best way it can over the course of
our lives. So to get towards that
ultimate health, understand your
metabolism, the en the engine that
drives you um in the right direction
towards ultimate health. And if you want
to take care of your metabolism, allow
your body to do what it is hardwired to
do. Go through those four phases.
Leverage the fact that when you're not
eating, your body is burning down fat,
which elevates your metabolism
naturally. Make sure you're taking care
of good care of your gut, your gut
health. Don't eat too late. In addition
to the effect on your metabolism, also
can mess up the circadian cycle of your
gut microbiome where then they get
confused and now they're not playing
ball with you either. And so all these
different kinds of as aspects, you know,
play into adding exercise, physical
activity, making sure you're getting
good quality sleep, and finding ways to
cope and manage stress. Um, I have a
chemistry background, biochemistry
background. So, I'll tell you, vinegar
is actually made of acetic acid. Acetic
acid is what gives vinegar its pungent,
potent smell. And it's the same thing.
It's an apple cider vinegar, any kind of
fermented fruit will actually do it. Red
vi wine vinegar will do it. Raspberry
vinegar will do it. Um, black vinegar,
balsamic vinegar will also have acetic
acid. And it's the acetic acid in
vinegar that's now been discovered in
research both in the lab and in the
clinic with humans that actually burns
down harmful body fat. Okay? Burns down
visceral fat. What does it actually do?
It actually slows the ability of your
metabolism to load up fat cells as fuel
tanks. Remember I told you you load it
up, it gets bigger and fatter and fatter
100 times. Yeah. ACV, but the acetic
acid in all vinegars prevents that from
blowing up. so quickly. So, the fat
doesn't expand quite as fast. That's
just preventing fat from growing. But
what about burning it down? It turns on
your brown fat. Brown fat actually is
like the space heater. And when you
actually have the space heater going on,
what you're actually doing, and again, I
I I'm going to show you a little demo.
This is that mention this is your brown
fat and you have apple cider vinegar. It
actually turns on the brown fat. It's a
special kind of fat. It's paper thin,
pressed close to the bone, and it turns
it on. Look at that. Look at this flame.
Okay, that flame has to consume energy.
Where does it get the energy from? From
your visceral fat. It just steals that
energy and it burns down harmful fat.
So, apple cider vinegar will actually do
this. Now, we know um in the lab. It'll
actually cause obese diabetic rats to
lose weight. In humans, it'll decrease
body fat. Um and it'll decrease waist
size, which is your visceral fat, the
fat inside the tube that we started
talking about at the beginning of this
podcast. And so, and you don't, by the
way, you don't need to have very much
apple cider vinegar. I was very, very
surprised to see how modest of amount of
vinegar you need to take to have an
effect. Even one tablespoon of ACV, and
this is from a clinical trial, that you
split up into drinking half of it in and
glass of water or kombucha or something
um and after breakfast and one after
dinner. That's enough to start
triggering weight loss and fighting body
fat. You double that and you go to two
tablespoons a day. Split it up, put it
into a beverage so you don't dissolve
your teeth when you're actually swinging
it. Um, tomato juice is a great way
because now tomatoes also have some
extra fat fighting. You'll actually um
improve and increase the amount of
weight and body fat you're going to burn
down. So again, that's a an example of a
food that actually is mighty in terms of
its effect on your metabolism. I
actually love pears, you know,
especially in the fall and winter. I
There's nothing I love more than like a
really ripe pear
when it's in season. And what does pair
What do pears have? Um pears have a lot
of dietary fiber. Dietary fiber helps
your gut microbiome, help feed your gut
bacteria, your healthy gut bacteria,
helps to streamline your metabolism,
helps make your body more sensitive to
insulin so your glucose, your fuels
absorb more efficiently. But also, it's
got chlorogenic acid, which is different
than acetic acid. It's a different acid.
Chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid, by
the way, also turns on your brown fat.
But chlorogenic acid also takes your
white fat, the harmful wiggly jiggly
stuff, and says, "Hey, by the way," taps
on your shoulders, "Hey, by the way,
here's what we'd like you to do. We'd
like you to start turning it more into
brown fat, healthy fat, helpful fat,
useful fat." And literally, you know,
your wiggly jiggly stuff goes, "You know
what? Okay, I'll do that. And so you can
actually use pairs, the chlorogenic acid
in pairs to help to convert some of your
harmful white fat towards brown fat. And
in fact, it will also tell your stem
cells that might turn create another
fuel tank. And rather than making more
white fat, it might say, "Hey buddy,
open that the other direction. Don't
make more fuel tank for white fat. Go
ahead and make some brown fat." It can
actually have stem cells make more brown
fat. So, I'm going to come up with a a a
fairly complicated food, but it's very
tasty, and that's pomegranates. All
right. Now, pomegranates are they've got
seeds with a little rim, a little little
um little layer of juice around it. And
um and pomegranate juice is really
pressed from those seeds. Some kinds of
pomegranate juice actually is pressed
through the skin of the pomegranate. And
most of the polyphenols are actually
found in the skin. And so how the juice
gets pressed can make a big difference.
You get a lot more polyphenol with juice
that's pressed through the skin. All
right. Now um pomegranate juice we know
contains a natural bioactive called
elagitanin.
Elagotanins actually do some pretty
amazing things. One of the things that
it does is it actually um fights harmful
body fat, white fat. It activates brown
fat. Lowers inflammation in fat. So all
these good things that we actually know
it also affects the stem cells of fat as
well. So these mechanisms are redundant.
Okay. So that way you can swap and
switch and it's not like you got to eat
the one thing all the time. Thank
goodness that we can actually have
diversity. Now the other thing that
happens with the laganins is that when
we actually um consume them from
pomegranate juice or seeds it actually
when it gets to our gut our colon it it
helps our colon secrete mucus. Mucus is
very normal and healthy and it help and
that mucus loves there's a particular
gut bacteria called acromancia in fact
it's called acrimansia mucinophila it's
the first name is acromancia the last
name is mucinophila that's genus and
species and the mucinophila means that
this is the bacteria that loves to grow
in um in mucus and your gut normally
makes it the more acromancy you have
acromancy is a guardian of your met
metabolism all right it helps you burn
down body fat helps your metabolism be
streamlined. In fact, people who are um
uh very uh slim. If you look in their
poop and you look at how much acromancia
they have, they tend to have a lot of
acromancia. You go to somebody who is
overweight or marketkedly obese and you
look for acromancia, it's hardly there
at all. Just shows you the power of just
one bacteria in your gut bacteria that
can be grown like fertilizer with
pomegranate juice. Now the other thing
about pomegranate juice that actually is
really important about these elagitanins
is that it actually helps to control the
blood vessels that might be growing into
feed expanding fat. Remember I told you
the more the bigger the fat you're
growing the more it it will try to
outgrow its blood supply. So the way one
way you can actually tame it so it just
can't grow that large is by cutting off
those extra blood vessels it's trying to
grow. It will still get a little
inflamed eventually it's going to die
back. It's like, "Oh man, we give up. We
can't get any bigger." And so, turns out
that elagitanins from pomegranate juice
are anti- angioenic, meaning they
prevent extra blood vessels from growing
to feed body fat as it's trying to
expand. And so, here's a way to yoke
back expanding fat that's trying to grow
out of control by keeping them from
growing, getting their own private blood
supply. By the way, this is the same
approach that's been shown to have an
effect, a beneficial effect in cancers
that are trying to grow out of control.
You can yoke back the growth of these
undesirable tissue by actually
preventing blood vessels or preventing
androgenesis, excessive andogenesis from
happening so you can have just the right
number of blood vessels. Not too few and
not too many. Hey, if you like that
video, then you're going to love this
one. Check it out.
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