401. What Happens When You Eat Too Late

Transcript Of Today's Episode

Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by martinclinic.com. During the episode, the doctor share a lot of information. As awesome as the info maybe, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.

Dr. Martin: Well, good morning, everyone. Okay, so let's talk about your metabolism here this morning a little bit. Here is the headline. It was a study that was done and I checked it off [00:00:30] because I kind of liked, it had some pretty severe implications. Something probably if you think about it, you might've known already, but we're just going to emphasize the time of eating. Okay. And I want to go through that this morning, but this is showing, okay, a study was done on the metabolic effects of eating between 6:00 and 10:00 PM at night. And [00:01:00] three things that they saw and I'll talk more in detail, but three things that they saw, people who ate, snacked or had a late meal, it affects your metabolism. And so the study is confirming what we already knew, but I think you'll find it interesting the three things that they saw.

And I want to emphasize this, one is insulin resistance. The [00:01:30] later you ate the more insulin resistance that your cells exhibited. Okay? So the later you eat, you have a snack at night, this is what happens. You develop even more insulin resistance. The other one is that your tolerance for glucose, the sugar that is made from your food, especially your crappy carbs and all that, your glucose tolerance goes down. So insulin [00:02:00] resistance goes up, glucose tolerance goes down. And thirdly, your liver fills with even more fat if you eat late at night. So isn't that incredible? Think about that.

And you know, we talk about this in our Metabolic Storm and Tony Jr. and I have often emphasized this in terms of eating. When, especially if you have trouble losing weight or whatever. Because [00:02:30] it's often a complaint of women that they have trouble, even, they eat religiously. They're so good at it, but they often have trouble losing weight. And what we do is we try and emphasize, look, if you're doing, for example, the reset, I want to talk about that for a minute. The reason the reset is so effective, okay, is so effective [00:03:00] is because of what you're not eating and what you are eating. Okay.

So it's not calories. Okay? It's not counting. I don't like counting so if you're in a program, Weight Watchers or, most diets have everything to do, even the keto diet, has everything to do with how many carbs you're eating in a day. Most people to stay into ketosis [00:03:30] have to be under 20 grams of total carbohydrates in a day. Am I against that? No, I'm not against it. You want to join Weight Watchers? Good for you. Okay. But just understand that it's not a healing diet.

Now you may lose weight. And a lot of people find it they can be helpful. You're reducing calories. You're living on points. Everything's on a point system or you're [00:04:00] strictly looking at calories. Or even with keto, you're looking at carbs. How many grams of carbs, but the reset is different than that because it's no counting at all. You eliminate foods and you eat within the animal protein and fat groups and you live on it for 30 days. You live on it for 30 days. So it's [00:04:30] not only doable, but the success rate is incredible because it's doing exactly what your body needs and wants. And of course we're emphasizing, we try and emphasize, especially if one of your goals during the reset is to lose weight. It's not always the goal. And I don't want it to be your primary goal.

Look, if you have weight to lose, [00:05:00] I don't know of any program. You can ask me about anything by the way, when you've been in practice, as long as me, 46 years, there isn't a diet that I can't give you the Coles notes version of here's what it means. Here's how you do it. And you know, I can tell you that, just name it. I've seen them all over the last 46 [00:05:30] years. Well, you can understand even before that, just understand when I came into practice, okay. It's almost unbelievable. But when I graduated in 1974, I'm just trying to think if there was really even a diet invented. Now you might think I was born in the days of Noah, but think about that for a minute. Well, everybody in the '60s and the [00:06:00] '50s and the early '70s for sure, people were tiny. People were tiny. Generally, they were skinny. I'm not saying there was no obesity, but there was hardly any at all.

I always told my friends, watch old movies, everybody's smoking and everybody's skinny. The two things you will see in old movies, everybody's smoking and everybody [00:06:30] is skinny. And you guys you have to be, I guess my age to have lived through that. People were tiny. And so there wasn't this craze that is out today with weight loss. It's a huge industry. It's a huge industry for sure. So all I'm saying is, is that in the 46 years of my experience and I've written many books, this is, I think the book I'm writing now has got to be numbered 21, [00:07:00] or I think so, 21 I think over the years. And I've talked about weight loss, not in every book, but almost every book. And so I've had a lot of experience with this.

So coming back to your metabolism, I want to talk about your metabolism. Because my goal in the diet, the eating program, whatever you want to call it, the reset [00:07:30] is what I call it. The diet that changes your metabolism. That's what it does. I didn't aim for weight. Although if you want to go into our Martin Clinic Facebook group, private group, and you want to read testimonies, incredible the weight loss, incredible. And some people though were complaining that they didn't lose weight.

Well, remember the reset was for your metabolism [00:08:00] to get that right first, because if you lose weight, you can stop eating. And generally not everybody because some women, they don't even have to eat to gain weight. They just have to have bad horror-mones. And when your horror-mones are out of whack, especially your thyroid and the thyroid, I love what Tony Jr said. The thyroid is a puppet. The thyroid is a victim. [00:08:30] It's rarely ever the primary cause, it's a victim of your other hormones. And ladies, when your thyroid is a victim of its estrogen dominance, and a lack of progesterone and cortisol that is out of whack and even a fatty liver, which will stop your hormones, your T4 to T3 being converted, leaky gut will stop your T4 [00:09:00] to T3 to be converted.

And 20% of your thyroid hormones are metabolized from T4 to T3 in your gut. The vast majority is in your liver, but you see, this is what I'm aiming for when I talk to you about metabolic syndrome. I'm fixing that, I go to the root of the issue, but this story, or this study, looking at the metabolic effects of eating late at night [00:09:30] is very fascinating. And this is why even in our Metabolic Storm course that we have taught online, we talk about eating windows. So I explained this to you last week, but I'll go over it again. You're eating, let's say you ate this morning at eight o'clock. You eat at eight o'clock. And you're not planning on eating until noon again. [00:10:00] And that's pretty normal for a lot of people. Although in our day and age today, they've really pumped snacking.

Of course, who pumped that? Who told you that snacking was good for you? Well, the food industry did it. Of course, they did it. They have a vested interest in you snacking. So if you eat at eight o'clock and even if you don't eat till noon, you started secreting [00:10:30] insulin at eight o'clock and about 10 o'clock, depending on what you eat, insulin stops secreting. You see because people have in their mind, I ate at eight o'clock and Oh, I just had a little snack at 10 o'clock and I won't eat again until noon. And then I'll have a snack at 3:00, and then I'll have my supper at 6:00. What they don't realize is that all day long, [00:11:00] they've been secreting insulin.

You see insulin, it just doesn't work immediately. It starts immediately as soon as you eat, but it goes on because it has a job to do. It has to take the fuel that you made from your food. Insulin's primary job is to get sugar out of your bloodstream. You get sugar from mostly... Look, [00:11:30] if your body needs sugar, it'll take a piece of steak and turn it into it. You don't have to eat sugar for your body to make sugar. Okay? Your body's making sugar all day long, but especially from crappy carbohydrates, bread, pasta, rice, cereal, sugar, sweets, pastry, juice, milk, White Pepsi, alcohol. Your insulin is being secreted and it's got a job to do. Then it's got to take the energy, take the sugar and store it. [00:12:00] So it's working, working, working, working.

So what they're saying at night is when it's even worse for insulin. So when you're eating during the day and that's because you're moving, right? I mean, you can't out-exercise a bad diet. Because a lot of people have that idea. I got to just go burn some calories. You just can't out-exercise a bad diet. You can't. But what they're saying is if you eat at night, between 6: [00:12:30] 00 and 10:00 PM, you are going to develop even more insulin resistance. This is why we are huge believers in what we call intermittent fasting. Now, listen, I want to tell you something because I actually named a chapter in my book, Fasting Without Fasting. Do you know that if you eat the right things, you can mimic a fast, you can mimic a fast without fasting?

[00:13:00] Now I love fasting, but when you eat eggs, meat, and cheese, you mimic a fasting. You're fasting without fasting. Why is that? Because you get the benefits of lowering your insulin resistance. My whole [French 00:13:17] Do you know what I mean by that? It's a French term. My whole [French 00:13:24]. Look at this face, okay? I know I look [00:13:30] crazy. A lot of people think I am, but listen. There's a reason for my madness. I'm aiming at something, I'm aiming at something. Clinically I proved it to thousands and thousands of patients, thousands of patients. Trust me, I would tell them, trust me. It goes against everything that you're learning. You go on the internet every day, every day, every day, people say, I'm confused, [00:14:00] Dr. Martin, because you're telling me to eat animal protein and fat and the world is telling me not to eat that. That fat, especially animal fat found in red meat and yolks of eggs and cheese is no good for me.

You're going to have to go against the grain, guys, but it's the truth. But Doc, [00:14:30] it's full of cholesterol. And every day, every day, every day never goes by a day, seven days a week, I'm answering questions about cholesterol. Doc, my cholesterol is high. Good. I want your cholesterol to high. You're made up of cholesterol. Your skin is made up of cholesterol. Your cells are made up of cholesterol. Your brain is [00:15:00] made up of cholesterol. Your eyeballs are made up of cholesterol. There's cholesterol everywhere in your body, every cell in your body. It's not the boogeyman. But think of what this study is saying, is when you snack or when you eat a late meal, you're really, I mean, you're really messing up your insulin unless you eat the right thing. See, they didn't take that into consideration.

Now, preferably, when you are eating nutrient- [00:15:30] dense foods, you see when you're eating fat, saturated fat. I had eggs and sausage this morning with coffee, vitamin C. When you're eating that your cells are getting all the fuel that they need. You see, most people eat too much, eat too much. And they're really starving because they eat the wrong thing. They eat too much total food, [00:16:00] total calories, but they get very little nutrition. Do you know what I'm saying by that? So your cells at the cellular level are screaming, hello, feed me again and feed me again. I need to eat again. Why? Because you're burning the wrong fuel. Your cells will only react to what you're feeding them. If you're feeding them [00:16:30] poor nutrient-dense food bread, today's bread.

You know, I was reading the three favorite foods of dietitians. And God bless them. And I've got a major, major issue with how they're being taught and they pass it on to their patients and that is eating whole grains., it's their favorite, whole grains. So whether you get that in whole [00:17:00] grain bread or cereals or, just get a whole grain noodle is good for you. That's according to dieticians. Vegetable oils, make sure you cook in vegetable oils. Ooh. And thirdly, the only part of dairy they like is skim milk. And you know what I think about that. If you got a cow in the backyard, I invite you to milk it and see if skim milk comes out of that cow. Well maybe if the cow has anorexia, [00:17:30] you might get skim milk. If the cow is dying, you'd get skim milk maybe coming out. Skim milk is man's invention. It's not God's invention. Cream is God's invention. Okay?

Because when I was kid, you had to take the milk bottle and shake it. You had to shake it. Why? Well, there's not much fat on top. We used to have the old milk bottles and you'd [00:18:00] shake it before you drank it to get the cream on the top blended in to the rest of the milk. That was whole milk. Today, the dieticians would have you eating skim or drinking skim milk. Ooh, that's not milk. That's White Pepsi. That's full of sugar. It's one of the reasons that so many people suffer with glucose intolerance and insulin problems because of what they're drinking. [00:18:30] Don't ever touch skim milk. Don't use it at any time, anywhere and don't give it to your kids and don't give it to your grandchildren. And 1% and 2% are the size of people's brains who use that.

I'm just joking. I'm just joking. Some people don't get my sense of humor. And I have to calm them down, afterwards, I have to calm them down. But so coming back [00:19:00] to imagine, imagine that you might have had very few calories all day and where people that count calories and then they say, well, I haven't eaten all day. I'm going to have 500 calories here between six o'clock and 10 o'clock, it makes a big difference. The study on the metabolism shows that, no, it's not a good time to have [00:19:30] that. It's not a good time to snack. For some people, they find that when their cells are full of good nutrients, they're not craving the snacks. They don't crave them anymore because your cells are full. They're already supercharged. And the ATP that your little mitochondria, mitochondria are your battery packs within your cells, you need to put the right fuel at the right time to them. [00:20:00] And you want to lower your insulin so that you're not eating frequently.

Now listen, for some who have severe hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, by the way, the reset fixes that, fixes it. But at the start they find they might have to snack a little bit more often. But if you are snacking on eggs and meat and cheese. Fish is meat, okay, in case you didn't know. If you are snacking on that, [00:20:30] you're using nada or very little insulin. And that's the key. The key to the entire thing of metabolic syndrome, it will empty your liver. See, even if you eat at night, you're not emptying the suitcase. You're not emptying... It's like going to, we got a Costco, just down the road from me here. Okay? If I go to the Costco parking lot at [00:21:00] 10 o'clock at night, well there's no cars it. Well, maybe one or two because the cleaning staff is there or whatever, right? They're stocking the shelves or whatever, but there's a few people, but not like it is during the day.

Your liver is like that. Your liver is like that. The worst time to eat according to the study is at night because the liver never gets a real chance to empty itself. And that is one of the most, the biggest [00:21:30] thing in metabolic syndrome is insulin. But what is what insulin does to your liver? It fills it full of fat. It's the suitcase. It's the parking lot. And you want it to empty itself. You don't want it full all the time. Remember your liver does 600 things, including the production of your hormones. Your liver is one of the biggest keys to your thyroid, ladies. [00:22:00] Your liver is your biggest key to your triglycerides, for heart disease, and the development of HDL, your good cholesterol. It all happens in the liver. Your detoxification happens in the liver more than anywhere else. Glutathione produced, the master antioxidant produce in the liver.

So it's so important when you eat [00:22:30] what time you eat and as much as possible, try and stay within the windows of eating because like I said, if you eat at six o'clock at night, your insulin is going, going, going, going till about nine o'clock and you, Oh but I'm hungry. I need a snack. But you better have the right snack, if you must snack. But you're fasting without fasting when you eat the right foods and most people find they can intermittent [00:23:00] fast on the reset. You know why? Because they're not hungry. You're not going to get the fluctuations in your blood sugar. Your cells are not going to be screaming, give me more fuel. You gave me a lot of food, but not a lot of fuel. You know what I mean by that? You gave me a lot of food, lots of calories, but you didn't give me much fuel.

I love the illustration of the wood stove. When you're eating carbohydrates, especially [00:23:30] crappy carbs, noodles, bread, pizza, yogurt, manmade yogurt. You drink milk or you drink juice, your cells are screaming for nutrition. They didn't get much. Oh Geez. I had quite a bit of food there. I had a whole bowl of pasta. Yeah. But your cells are going, you know what you did for me? You filled me full of sugar because that's what I see [00:24:00] when you have a bowl of pasta. I hardly got any protein. I got the wrong fat, not good fat and your cells scream, hello, feed me again. I'm hungry. You didn't give me the right fuel. I'm a wood stove and you just gave me paper and twigs and you expect me to run your metabolism on that. I like that illustration. I don't know if you do. You know what I'm saying? So think about that.

[00:24:30] So the ramifications, according to the study, and now there are others because what they're showing, if you have insulin resistance, they don't even talk about it in this study, but what I show you is if you have insulin resistance, you're going to have a lot more when you eat at night. You are creating an enormous amount of inflammation. Inflammation comes from insulin resistance when your cells are going, Hey, insulin, get out of here. I don't like you. You're always around. [00:25:00] Your cells want to rest and your insulin is saying hello, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock to your cell wall. Open up, open up, open up. I must take the sugar out of the bloodstream and I need to put it inside the cells. And your cells are going, get out of here. I'm sleeping. What are you doing? And then insulin is going, Hey, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. It's like a pesky neighbor and your cells, they have to open up. They have to. [00:25:30] And if they don't open up at first, your pancreas will just secrete more and more and more. It can't leave sugar in your bloodstream.

Oh, Doc, I didn't have any sugar. Did you have a piece of bread? Yes. Well you had sugar. Did you have noodles? Did you have pizza? Yeah, Doc, but it was whole wheat. Who cares? It's still sugar in five seconds. And your insulin says sugar out, out, out. It's the traffic cop. Come here, [00:26:00] you can't park there. You can't stay in the blood, I need to put you inside cells. And when they run out of room inside your cells, what do they do? They make fat cells. They fill the liver with fat because it's one of the storage places, muscles, liver, and fat cells. And that's why insulin resistance is metabolic syndrome. It's at the root of everything that you can think of, everything you can think of. It's negative.

[00:26:30] So folks, what's the moral of the story? Try not to eat late. Try not to eat past six o'clock. You know what I tell my diabetic friends? They can do intermittent fasting by stopping to eat if they can around five o'clock, even better 4:30, five o'clock. Eat early and then stop and try not to eat til the next morning again. You can intermittent fast any way you want. Okay. Just remember what you're doing is you're stopping that insulin from being secreted at night. [00:27:00] And if you must eat, then eat the right snack, eggs, meat, and cheese, because you're fasting without fasting. Okay.

So once again, thank you so much for listening this morning. And if you have any questions and we invite you to join our Martin Clinic Facebook group. We also have a email list that we send out emails a couple of days a week, give you information a lot of times, just some of the background [00:27:30] on these podcasts that I'm doing. And you can sign up for that and join our Martin private Facebook group if you haven't joined already and invite your friends to join it too. You can sponsor them to come in to our private group. Okay. I love you guys. God bless you. Talk to you soon

Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast with your hosts, Dr. Martin Jr and Sr. Be sure to catch our next episode, [00:28:00] and thanks for listening.

Back to blog