Eat THIS to Lose Fat, Prevent Disease, & Feel Better Now With Dr. William Li
- Guest
- Dr. William Li
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 2 Jan 2025
- Duration
- 1:32:43
- Views
- 2.0M
KEYPOINTS
- 01
The fat that matters for health is the visceral fat you can't see
Dr. Li, a physician-scientist who founded the Angiogenesis Foundation and wrote Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet, says the scale and the mirror are crude measures. The harmful fat is visceral fat, which wraps around your organs 'like a baseball glove' inside the tube of your body and pushes your waistline out. A growing belt size is the more telling sign.
- 02
Body fat is an organ, and healthy fat helps insulin work
Fat produces hormones, including adiponectin, which he says partners with insulin to pull glucose into muscles. By his account it circulates at about 1,000 times the level of any other hormone. When fat cells get overstuffed and inflamed, that hormone system breaks down and metabolic problems follow, which is why overeating low-quality food is so damaging.
- 03
Humans have no 'click' that stops the fuel tank overfilling
His analogy: a gas pump clicks off when the tank is full, but people keep eating. Fat cells can swell to about 300% of their size, and when they run out, stem cells make new ones. Eventually fat leaks out and gets trapped in the liver. He calls non-alcoholic fatty liver disease a silent epidemic now driving liver failure, while stressing that all of it is reversible with better choices, even after decades.
- 04
A 12-hour overnight fast is enough, and it's built around sleep
He 'debunks' strict 16:8 fasting as hard for busy people. Finish dinner at 8, with nothing but calorie-free drinks after the dishes are put away, sleep 11 to 7, and wait an hour after waking (he walks or reads email first). That gives 12 hours in fat-burning mode, which he says clinical studies show is plenty to lose weight over time.
- 05
Eating fast and distracted makes you miss fullness signals
In a gap year before medical school, living with an Italian host family, he noticed Mediterranean meals were never eaten alone or rushed. People talked about the food with gratitude and weren't over-served. Americans, he says, shovel food down while scrolling, eating alone or complaining.
- 06
Stop when you're satisfied, not full
He invokes the Japanese principle hara hachi bu, stopping at about 80% full. If you need to unbutton your pants, you've gone too far, like hearing the scrape when you hit the parking block. Eat slowly until you'd say 'that was pretty good, I'm good,' not 'I'm full.'
- 07
Brown fat burns white fat, and cold or certain foods switch it on
Brown fat sits deep around the neck, breastbone and shoulder blades. When activated it works like lighting a gas burner, burning white fat for heat. Cold triggers it, so try a cool shower for about 10 minutes, stopping when it gets uncomfortable. He insists you talk to a doctor before cold plunges if you have high blood pressure or heart rhythm problems.
- 08
He names four things to avoid: soda, 'nuclear' packaged health foods, processed meat and plastic bottles
A regular soda has 7 to 9 teaspoons of sugar. He says diet soda drinkers also gain weight, citing recent research that artificial sweeteners harm gut bacteria. Read labels on airport bars and 'barbecue' nuts for emulsifiers, dyes and artificial flavours. He notes the WHO classifies processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen, especially for colon cancer, while calling himself a 'reasonableist' about the occasional bologna sandwich.
- 09
Microplastics are the newest concern, and he flags what is unknown
He says we swallow about a credit card's worth of plastic each week. An Italian study found plastic in plaque removed from neck arteries, and people with it had about four times the risk of fatal heart attack or stroke. Plastic has also been found in brains, blood and testicles. He says he doesn't yet have enough data to confirm hormone disruption.
EXAMPLES
- 01
One tomato before lunch
He cites a Portuguese study in which healthy, normal-weight female graduate students ate one ripe tomato an hour before lunch for a month, with no other changes, and lost about a pound. He credits lycopene, and says simmering tomatoes at about 190°F for 20 minutes boosts it by 250%. He also cites Tufts research showing lycopene collects in body fat.
- 02
A can of beans five times a week
University of Toronto research on people with metabolic syndrome, in his telling, found that roughly a can of beans five days a week shrank waistlines by about an inch in a month, thanks to fibre feeding the gut. His favourite is white navy beans stewed with rosemary, olive oil and shallots.
- 03
Pomegranate, Akkermansia and GLP-1
He describes pomegranate's ellagitannins as encouraging gut mucus that feeds Akkermansia muciniphila, a bacterium with a newly discovered fragment, P9, that he says prompts the body to make its own GLP-1, the target of drugs like Ozempic. Drink about a cup of pure juice and check that it isn't apple juice with colouring, or better, eat the seeds.
- 04
The USDA inspector's dissolving boots
A retired meat inspector told Dr. Li he had to replace his rubber boots every four months because fluid on processed-meat plant floors dissolved them. He also cites the podcast Science Vs on meat glue binding scraps into deli cylinders.
- 05
No coffee or tea on planes
He skips onboard hot drinks because he says the water tanks are cleaned only once or twice a year, and brings his own metal or glass thermos filled after security.
- 06
His pantry pasta
When he misses dinner: boil pasta, warm olive oil in a stainless pan, add chopped tinned mackerel, sardines, mussels or squid, and a squirt of double-concentrated tomato paste. For lunch he has sourdough with a tin of conservas and pickles.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
His four-week approach: diary, swap in, fast, two-thirds plate
Keep a food diary for two weeks with no guilt, then swap in healthy foods you already love (his book lists 200). Add the 12-hour fast, then serve two-thirds of what your eyes want and skip seconds.
- 02
Foods he says activate brown fat
Apples and coffee (chlorogenic acid), greens like bok choy (sulforaphane), extra-virgin olive oil, tomatoes, kiwi (vitamin C and fibre that he says shifts gut bacteria within 24 hours, with the skin blended into smoothies), matcha (whole-leaf, with Japanese research showing waist loss), dark chocolate of 80% cacao or more with coffee as a 'mocha', and edamame.
- 03
His top three starting rules
Drink only water, coffee or tea, without dairy, which he says binds the beneficial compounds; nut milk is fine. Cut back on ultra-processed food with 20-plus unpronounceable ingredients. Eat slowly and stop at 'I'm good.' Add walking or any movement.
- 04
Shop the produce entrance and the middle aisles
Local, seasonal produce is fresher. Don't skip the middle aisles: olive oil, lentils, canned beans, dried fruit and tinned seafood are there. Replace plastic bottles, leftover containers and cups with glass, ceramic or metal, and never microwave food under plastic.