Anti-Inflammatory Diet: Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] Do you wake up feeling puffy or like your joints feel stiff or you get out of bed and you're like, oh, just trying to move through the day? Or maybe you wake up and I call it doughy where your brain is just a little doughy.

[00:14] You can't quite think straight. Well, this all can be a sign of inflammation. And I have really good news for you because you can change this by the foods that you eat. and there was a 25 study published in Nature magazine that looked at over 55 overweight adults

[00:34] and they gave them two types of diets. They didn't do any calorie restriction. They didn't have any specific eating guidelines. They told them they could eat as much as they wanted.

[00:46] All they had to do differently was to one group ate ultra-processed foods and the other group ate what we call whole foods or minimally processed foods.

[00:59] And what they found was not only did the brain fog go away, not only did the joint stiffness change and the way the body moved, but the people who ate a whole foods diet, a minimally processed diet, lost double the weight.

[01:18] This is probably one of the most important tools on food that I can teach you is how do you eat to bring inflammation down.

[01:30] Inflammation will cause you to gain weight. Inflammation will mess with your brain and lead you down a path of dementia and Alzheimer's. And inflammation makes you just feel really crummy in your body and you can change it with food.

[01:47] If you are new here to my world, welcome. I do have a food and fasting fundamentals handout for you that's free that gives you the basics on what you should be eating and fasting.

[01:59] I will leave that link here at the top of the notes. Or you could just put in the comments food and fasting fundamentals and my team will send you the link. Here's what I want you to know about this study and how you can reproduce it in your own life and get the results that these people got.

[02:22] Number one, there was no restriction. We have to get out of this idea that we need to restrict our food to get ourselves to lose weight and feel better.

[02:34] That is no longer the game we play in the health world. In this study, what they found is there was no restriction. There was just a difference in the quality of food.

[02:48] Quality of food matters. Ultra-processed foods are packed with chemicals and deficient in fiber. Whole foods like apples, like your vegetables, your beans, even your like sourdough bread, your meats.

[03:07] These are foods that don't take a lot of processing to make in order for them to be tasty. They are packed with fiber, and they are packed with nutrients.

[03:21] So we call both of these foods food, but ultra-processed foods are really chemicals. Whole foods are chemical-free. We'll talk even deeper about this.

[03:33] Finding number two of this study is what I said in the beginning. There was double the weight loss. If I walked into your house right now and I just took all the ultra-processed foods away

[03:46] and I put these whole foods in, yeah, at first your taste buds might have a little temper tantrum, but within a matter of two to three days, your taste buds would change.

[04:01] Your cravings would change. and you would start feeling better. In fact, let me know if you have done that. Let me know if you want to do that. I'll be your accountability buddy. Put it in the comments, and let's make sure that you are starting to build a pantry

[04:19] and a refrigerator that is full of these whole foods so that you can start to feel better. Keep in mind that these ultra-processed foods, which are your cakes, your cookies, your crackers,

[04:34] everything you find in the center aisles of your grocery store, they are built to increase your cravings. They are built to increase the food noise.

[04:48] Your poor little human body does not know what to do with them. And so what happens is it stores all those chemicals as fat. This study that I am quoting showed that there was a significant reduction in food craving from the group that was eating the minimally processed foods.

[05:13] This is 55 overweight adults that had this experience. Finding number four. So what these people who ate the minimally processed food found is they had half the hunger.

[05:30] This food, this ultra-processed food, is meant to make you eat more. It is meant to stimulate dopamine. When we eat nature foods when we eat foods with fiber what we find is our hunger goes away and the fullness stays around a lot longer

[05:53] Fiber, protein, water, these are things you will find in whole foods. Finding number five, and this is probably my favorite because I realize a lot of you

[06:06] come to my channel to lose weight. But what I really want you to experience is a higher quality of life. And the ultra processed food group reported more fatigue, worse sleep, more acid

[06:24] reflux, and more infections and immune system decline. The group that had whole foods did not experience that. That is the power of good quality food. Now mistakes when it comes to inflammation

[06:40] that a lot of us fall into is we have this thought that we are going to have to eliminate all the yummy foods. So put in the comments if that's you, I promise. I had a friend one time

[06:55] who was watching me for months and she said, I've been watching how you eat and you don't look deprived. I don't feel deprived. I love food. And I love good quality food. So this idea that we

[07:11] are going to be in a deprivation state, because we're eating healthy food, it I promise you that your taste buds will change over time. And they change quickly, they change in a matter of days.

[07:26] So if you can make a commitment to eat whole foods and get off the processed foods, yeah, it might be hard the first couple of days, your Cokes, your chips, your things that you just really love.

[07:38] Yeah, it might be hard for three days. For three days it would be hard. But if you hang in there past the three-day mark, you're going to get the quality of life and weight loss and focus and enjoyment

[07:50] to live in this human body that you deserve to have. Trap number two is there are a lot of mixed messaging when it comes to packaging out there. So I saw this with gluten-free.

[08:04] I've been gluten-free for over 30 years. And when the gluten-free concept started going mainstream, gluten-free was on everything. And many of those foods were ultra-processed.

[08:16] We're now seeing that with keto. Don't be fooled by the packaging that says keto because it doesn't mean healthy. And now we're starting to see it with protein where the packaging is showing high in protein

[08:32] or like protein waters that doesn't mean that is healthy for you. The third trap that people get in is they start to reach for anti-inflammatory supplements

[08:45] or they reach for medications. and they are eating this diet that is causing the inflammation and then they think they need a supplement to fix it or an NSAID to fix it.

[08:59] The reason your body inflames is because it has been under attack. And when it is under attack by chemical-ridden foods,

[09:11] what ends up happening is there is a non-stop dribble into your body of inflammation. So it would be like you are eating things that cause inflammation

[09:25] and then you go to hope that a pill will solve that. You will have to keep taking the pill over and over and over again as long as you're eating the food.

[09:37] Get off the foods. then you will find you do not have to have the pill, whether it's natural or it's a medication. Okay, step number one to start to be able to get your body into an anti-inflammatory state.

[09:55] The first, whenever you sit down to eat a meal, I want you to have protein and fiber at that meal. Protein and fiber slows down your blood sugar spike.

[10:10] If you slow down your blood sugar spike, there won't be a blood sugar crash. If you have just a tiny little blood sugar spike because you ate fiber and protein together,

[10:22] there won't be a crash. If you had just carbohydrates and refined sugars and flours, There's this huge blood sugar spike, and as high as your blood sugar goes, it will now drop.

[10:35] And this roller coaster of up and down and up and down is a trigger for inflammation. So step one, I want you to consider protein and fiber at every meal.

[10:50] This might look like Greek yogurt and berries for breakfast, scrambled eggs and some microgreens for breakfast. instead of a pastry or a croissant or a bowl of cereal.

[11:04] At lunch, you might chop up a bunch of vegetables and have some chicken with it. We used to do in my family all the time, we had something called a hammock, where we would take a deli slice of ham, a naturally good one without antibiotics,

[11:20] and we would put cheese in it, and I'd roll it up and give it to the kids as a treat for lunch. There was no bread in that We didn have any refined flowers in that experience And maybe in the afternoon when you feel like you going to crash maybe you go to a hard egg instead of a candy bar or some chips

[11:41] And at night, build your whole meal around the main protein. Maybe you're going to have some chicken, and then you're going to build a salad around that, and you're going to have some potatoes with it.

[11:53] If you cool those potatoes, you start to improve GLP-1 hormone. I've done a lot of videos on that. But blood sugar spikes up and down start to fuel inflammation.

[12:06] So if we're always thinking protein and fiber at the same meal, problem solved. Step number two. When you go to eat, I want you to think about feeding your bacteria.

[12:19] A lot of times I see in the comments here, I saw this in my clinic, that people will say, but my friend is eating all the same foods I'm eating, and they're getting a better result than me.

[12:31] Remember that you are more microbes than you are human cells. And those microbes are what brings inflammation down. Those microbes speed up your metabolism.

[12:45] Those microbes make you neurotransmitters and hormones. They break hormones down. And what you do to improve those microbes is feeding them a large diversity of plants.

[12:58] So we're back at fiber, but what I'm going to ask is that you do many different types of plants. So if you always have iceberg lettuce with every single salad, try romaine.

[13:10] Try a spring mix. Try something different so that you can feed those microbes. If you always have a red pepper and carrots for a snack, try watermelon radishes.

[13:23] Try a yellow pepper. Try a tomato. Mix up your plants so you feed your bacteria in diverse ways.

[13:35] Fermented foods are incredible. We are huge fans in my family of fermented foods. Wise Goat is our favorite company. We'll leave a link down there for you. polyphenol-rich foods like olive oil, sprinkling olive oil over every meal. This is one from Fresh

[13:54] Press Olive Oil Club. We have discounts for this. It's their small batch olive oil, which increases the polyphenol count. So again, this is strategic. When we're looking at bringing inflammation down,

[14:10] we can take an NSAID, but there's no strategy to that. There's no lasting effect to that. Or we can take a step back and look at the foods that we're eating and say,

[14:22] how can I eat to create an anti-inflammatory effect in my body? Step number three, I want you to start to think about avoiding ultra-processed foods.

[14:37] Now, this can be a little sad because I get it that like your chips and your cereal and all your sodas, they're very addictive and you love them. So take one of them out every week, just one of them.

[14:53] I'm going to not do my chips this week, but maybe I'll keep my soda. And next week, maybe I'm going to go from five sodas to three sodas and slowly move those ultra-processed foods out.

[15:05] When you walk into your grocery store, it is those processed foods that are in the center aisles. They're the foods that can live there forever and never spoil.

[15:17] So go around the outside of the grocery store. That's where all the minimally processed whole foods live. When you're looking at your breakfast, swap out your cereal and your toaster pastry for eggs and oatmeal.

[15:34] When you're looking at lunch, don't do a TV dinner or a frozen food. Make a salad. And it may take a little extra time, but the long-term health benefit of it is tremendous. When you go to eat dinner, instead of a box of pasta, could you start to look at doing, like, a sweet potato?

[15:54] This is something we do all the time in my family. Sweet potato with some meat and a side of microgreens. That is a classic meal in my family. In this study that I mentioned in the beginning of this video, they showed that removing ultra-processed foods without counting calories produced double the weight loss versus a diet built on ultra-processed foods.

[16:20] This is no joke. It's quality of food that matters over quantity. Step number four. I want you to add in colorful plants, omega-3s, and minerals.

[16:36] When you look at what you're eating in a day, look at the different colors of those vegetables and fruits that you're eating. Ask yourself, are you getting mineral-rich foods like seaweed is a great one, leafy greens, seeds, nuts and seeds are packed with minerals.

[16:53] Are you getting plenty of those? Omega-3 rich foods like the smash foods fish that I've taught you here Salmon mackerel anchovies sardines herring these are high in omega-3s

[17:08] Are you drizzling olive oil on every single food? This is the process to start to permanently bring down that inflammation When you eat highly refined sugars and flours that come in these ultra processed foods

[17:27] you are literally telling your body, up the inflammation. When you change that and you start to look at the whole foods that nature provided, the foods I've discussed here, you are bringing down inflammation.

[17:43] Again, we call them both foods, but they have drastically different effects on our body. Now, step number five is I want you to think about upgrading your everyday cooking fat.

[17:56] So I used to say to my patients all the time, if I walked into your house and I changed your vegetable oil, your soybean oil, your canola oil, if I just got all of that and I put good olive oil, avocado oil,

[18:11] If I just put that into your jars, you wouldn't even notice a taste difference. When I go to a restaurant, the first thing I ask is what oils are they cooking with?

[18:24] The fat changing your quality of oil is really important. And there's been a lot of discussion in the health world on things like seed oils. So I want to share with you that there was a nine-week trial that was done on women on a calorie-controlled diet who received 25 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil at breakfast.

[18:51] And those women lost 80% more body fat than the women who received the same amount of food, but it was drizzled with soybean oil.

[19:03] 80% more body fat just by swapping one oil out. Again, Fresh Press is our favorite. We will put links below so you can access that if that feels right.

[19:17] When we are looking at total health, here on my YouTube, I'm always teaching you a lot about metabolic health and hormonal health. but when we are having a discussion about inflammation what we are looking at is total

[19:33] health and how you just feel good in this body it is these food changes that are going to make the biggest difference for you one of my community members in my reset academy left this really cool

[19:47] testimonial that I just have to share it's from Christine Roussel and she said I'm so grateful to Dr. Minnie and my team for sharing her findings because it's added years to my life as well as improved my quality of life. It is quality of life that matters. When you

[20:06] love living in your body, all your relationships will improve, your career improves, your thoughts improve, everything improves in your life, which is why a video like this is so important for me

[20:22] to do so you understand the impact that the food industry has had on not just our physical health, but our mental health and our careers and our relationships. All of this chemically

[20:36] laden foods are destroying all of that. And you have the power to switch that out. Now, with inflammation comes pain. So a lot of you may be watching this because you feel like

[20:51] you're just stiff and achy and you don't feel good. If you are a woman over 40, I want you to remember that you had estrogen receptors or you have estrogen receptors in all the different

[21:06] joints in your body and that that stiffness starts to become more prevalent as you go into menopause. If you are a woman in menopause and you're not feeling so hot, you're feeling the pain,

[21:19] you're feeling the lethargy, you're feeling the joint restriction, I want to encourage you to make the food choices I have given you here and see what happens. It's not necessarily you got on the wrong HRT or you have the wrong doctor.

[21:35] It's that your diet isn't matching your hormonal needs at this particular moment. Three action steps you can take right now. At your very next meal, you're going to eat protein and vegetables before your carbohydrates.

[21:51] Action step number two, go right now. Let me know. Put it in the comments. I want you to go to your pantry. I want you to go to your refrigerator, and I want you to pull one ultra-processed food out of your pantry and just throw it away.

[22:06] Pull one of them out. And then next week, I'm going to pull another one out. But after this video, go pull it out. Let me know. Take a picture of it. Put it in the comments if you can and let me know what you pulled out.

[22:19] I'm here cheering you on. And number three, my favorite and easiest one you can do is tonight when you eat your dinner, take some really high-quality olive oil, drizzle it over the top so we start to get your omega-3s up

[22:35] and bring that inflammation down. as always I want you to know you are the miracle the NSAID is not the miracle the ultra processed foods are muting that miracle and when you start to eat foods like I taught you in this video

[22:51] you will see how brilliantly you were designed as always I hope that helps if you like this video you're definitely gonna want to check out the next one