My Biggest Health Mistake (I Hid This for Years)

I survived the world’s unhealthiest diet! Find out how I went from eating the unhealthiest foods in the world to finally getting my health on track. In this video, I’ll show you which foods contribute to insulin resistance and how you can shift from an ultra-processed diet to a healthy one.

I have survived the [music] world’s unhealthiest diet and it almost killed me. This is actually a confession. I consumed, and I’m not kidding, 12 donuts without even the thought that it was going to affect my blood sugar. I didn’t even know about blood sugar at the time. Now, of course, if I did that now, I would just be a basket case.

But my entire childhood was filled with sugar, starch, seed oils, sweetened cereals every single morning. Every Halloween, I would consume the entire amount of candy that I had that night at social events. Oh my gosh. I would consume a case of soda. I would do chicken papies, like four of them.

And in addition to that, I would have TV dinners. And every single night after dinner, I would literally graze from the time I would stop dinner until the time I was ready to go to bed. It was a constant grazing every single night. And then when I was 16, I worked at the movie theater, okay? I was the popcorn maker and I would come home with garbage bags filled with popcorn.

And so my dad and I would sit there and watch TV and just graze and down so much popcorn. It was crazy. I was in the military, went through basic training, ate more junk food, refined foods, a lot of stress, no sleep. Then I went into college, more stress, lots of coffee, lots of junk food. Of course, they were all deep fried carbs and seed oil, but that’s what I was living on.

And of course, then came the ulcers. I had liver problems. I had gallbladder problems. I didn’t know at the time that’s what it was, but I had this very full, tight, painful feeling underneath my right rib cage that referred to my right shoulder. I had no idea that was my liver.

But after the years of eating the huge bags of Doritos, I said, you know, I’m going to eat healthy when I graduate. That was my justification. I remember after I graduated, in practice, I would have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream every single night before I went to bed. And I always wondered why did I get restless leg syndrome? That was a severe B1 deficiency.

I didn’t know at the time. There I was nervous and jittery and I had to get the energy out. And of course then came the insomnia. My eyelids were on fire. It was like sandpaper in my eyelids and very very sticky and dry.

That was a severe blood sugar issue. I had severe arthritis down my spine and my fingers. I got kidney stones. And you would think with all those problems I would change my ways. I would try but I would fail.

I finally weighed 211 pounds. The food that I was eating was not really satisfying me. That problem was something completely different. It was dopamine hunger. Dopamine is stimulated with a lot of refined carbs and sugar keeping these dopamine spikes going on and on and on.

Dopamine is not a pleasure neurotransmitter. It’s a neurotransmitter that causes drive and anticipation for something. It’s something that your body learns from to want more and more of it. But it’s not the thing that gives you the pleasure. The problem is it’s a trap.

Because as this drive for more junk food occurs, you get less pleasure from it to the point where the feedback loop sends a signal back telling the body to make more and more and more dopamine. What happens over time if you eat a lot of junk food or you have too much dopamine, you start getting resistance and that little receptor for dopamine gets sucked into the cell to the point where you have fewer receptors. So now we have dopamine dysregulation. We have a problem with dopamine and this is what’s behind addictions. Okay?

And I had a severe addiction to junk food and refined carbs. And this is why ultrarocessed foods initially taste good and they satisfy you for a little bit, but probably an hour, an hour and a half later, you now are hungry, but you’re not really hungry. You have this neurotransmitter that’s kicked in there causing you to want that same thing over and over and over again. It’s really a trap. And if you have this dopamine problem and you go back to real food, it doesn’t give you the same sensation because your receptors are all messed up and there’s confusion in the brain.

So you just want more junk food to get more of this. So that mechanism was literally training me to go off track and want the wrong foods. So now let’s talk about how to solve this problem because the first thing you need to do is identify the real enemy. The real enemy is this. It’s your environment.

Because our food system has been completely engineered for addiction. As soon as you’re stressed, tired, or somewhat hungry because your blood sugar is off, you will not be able to have willpower. I don’t care how hard you try, you’re going to cave eventually. It’s kind of like giving an alcoholic a job at a liquor store. They’re going to end up drinking that alcohol.

I mean, look what happens when you go into a grocery store. You have aisles of pure refined carbohydrate junk snacks. When you’re hungry or tired, you will walk out with junk food. I guarantee. Recently, I went into people’s houses doing the videos on trying to teach them about what to eat.

And I go in the refrigerators and I go in their pantry and I see the same thing over and over and over again. Just so much junk food. And they’re in an environment where they are exposed to it constantly. And there’s certain health experts that keep giving this advice. You just got to try harder.

everything in moderation. You just have to have willpower. It’s all about calories. Just eat less. It’s portion control, right?

Take a look at Weight Watchers. What is their success rate? It’s like 95% failure because they’re trying to motivate people. The enemy is not a lack of willpower. It’s your environment.

We’re living in this modern world which is a trap with so many things engineered to keep us hooked and addicted. Removing you from all the triggers is really the only solution. That way all these options are not available. There’s only one option and it’s a healthy food. Let’s go through step by step what you need to do to get out of the trap and focus on the environment first.

Number one, clean out all of the ultrarocessed foods out of your entire house. I’m talking about your refrigerator and your pantry. It’s been making you sick. It’s the stuff that causes disease and diabetes. It’s not helping you.

And to have this food in the house is not a good strategy. It’s going to keep you going off track all the time. Now, I’m going to put a little link down below and at the end of this video, you can go to it and you can download a free app. It’s Dr. Berg Junk Food Meter to be able to scan these different foods one by one.

So, you can really quickly determine what is ultrarocessed foods. Alterprocessed foods are really mostly made of three ingredients: seed oils, industrial starches, and sugars. If you think about it, what’s missing from those ingredients? Protein. And then also foods that are not as calorie dense that take work to break down and digest and that would be vegetables or like a salad, right?

Veggies because protein will help your blood sugar and really truly satisfy you and it’s loaded with nutrition as well. Okay, so this is number one. Number two, absolutely positively no snacking. Why? because we’re trying to correct insulin and every time you eat, no matter if it’s healthy or not, you spike insulin.

And so both of these will help reverse the insulin damage. Grazing at night is the worst time to snack. So you should literally after dinner, turn the lights off, put a sign there, the kitchen is closed, so that way you can overemphasize. You don’t want to be grazing after dinner. You