The One Carb That Shrinks Liver Fat (Here's How I Eat It)

Did you know that there are two kinds of fat that do far more damage than the fat that you can pinch just around your belly? The first one is called visceral fat, which is the deep fat packed around your organs inside your abdominal cavity. The second one is the fat that builds up inside your liver. Now, both of these raise your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease and lots of other things that we see in the emergency room all the time. And a run of recent research has shown that one particular type of fiber can help to shift both of these. And the headline studies used around 40 g of this fiber a day. Now, that fiber is called resistant starch. And the name is the source of a lot of confusion because although it lives inside starchy foods like beans and oats and, you know, potatoes that have cooled down, it actually behaves as a special kind of fiber rather than as an ordinary starch. The studies that got everybody excited used, like I said, around 40 g of resistant starch a day in the form of a powder. And in this video, I'll show you what that does to your liver and your visceral fat and then how I take that exact same lesson and apply it with real food rather than a tub of powder, which I'm never going to sell you. And if you find this video useful, then again, as always, please just give it a like, subscribe to the channel, give the video a hype as well. It supports me so, so, so much and I cannot thank you enough. You know, everybody that is already supported me so far, I can't believe how quickly this channel has grown. And I will keep making these videos for you to to as many people as possible. So, the first thing that we need to clear up is what resistant starch actually is and why it sits inside the family of fiber rather than the family of regular starch. So, most of the starch that we eat in bread and rice and pasta and potatoes, this starch is broken down really quickly in the small intestine into glucose, which then floods into your bloodstream and, you know, causes a big spike in blood sugar. Resistant starch is different, though, because it resists that digestion and it passes through the small intestine almost untouched. When it reaches the large intestine, which is the next organ along, your gut bacteria treat it as a food and then they ferment it. And in the process, they produce really powerful compounds called short-chain fatty acids, which, you know, the most important of which is called butyrate, which, if you watch many of these videos, you will know that I mention quite a lot. That is exactly the same process that happens with proper fiber, which is why resistant starch counts as a type of fiber, even though it started life looking like an ordinary starch. So, instead of spiking your blood sugar and feeding fat storage, it feeds the bacteria that keep your gut, your metabolism, and your liver pretty healthy. And the evidence behind this is stronger than a lot of you might be thinking. So, in a 4-month randomized controlled trial published in the journal Cell Metabolism in 2003, and again, research link in the description below, almost 200 people with fatty liver disease were given either resistant starch or an ordinary starch that looked identical at around 40 g a day, the group taking the resistant starch saw a real noticeable drop in the fat stored inside their liver along with improvements in their liver enzymes. And most strikingly actually, much of that benefit happened without weight loss. The researchers traced this back to the changes in the good bacteria, the gut and the liver talking to each other through what we call the gut liver axis. And something else really interesting is that your visceral fat responds as well. In a separate controlled trial, several weeks of resistant starch significantly reduced the deep visceral fat wrapped around the organs, the exact fat that drives so much metabolic disease that I talk about all the time. So, let's talk about what normal ordinary starch does in our normal diet. So, when you eat white bread or rice or pasta or cereal, the starch is stripped of its fiber and its structure, so it breaks down almost instantly into glucose. This sends your blood sugar up really sharply. Your body then releases a big surge of insulin to deal with it. And insulin is the signal that tells your body to store fat because remember, insulin is a storage hormone. And it tells your body to store fat in your liver and around your organs. Resistant starch does close to the opposite of that. It barely raises your blood sugar at all. It asks for far less insulin and it sends fuel to your gut bacteria rather than to your fat stores. Now, the cleanest way to avoid the blood sugar spikes from carbohydrates altogether would be to give carbohydrates up entirely, which is what we call the keto diet, the ketogenic diet. But the problem is that most people cannot sustain that for life. And frankly, it is not much fun. It is a really extreme diet and the best dietary approach is one that you can sustain really easily and enjoy for 50 years. So, my approach is much simpler. I eat carbs less often than most people and when I do eat them, I try and make them resistant starches. So, if you take those resistant starches, those resistant carbohydrates and you build a meal around them with plenty of veg and something with real crunch and a good source of protein and some healthy fats, you've turned a potential blood sugar bomb into a properly balanced, gut-friendly plate. And better still, if you go for a short walk afterwards, then your muscles mop up much of the glucose before it can do any harm. This is why, if you're going to eat carbohydrates at all, then swapping refined starch for resistant starch is always the better choice. And here's where it gets really useful because you can actually create resistant starch in your own kitchen. So, when you cook starchy foods like potatoes and rice and pasta as well and you cool them down in the fridge, some of the digestible starch recrystallizes into resistant starch through a process called retrogradation. So, a cold potato salad or leftover rice or pasta that's gone cold in the fridge, therefore, contains more resistant starch than the same food eaten when it's hot. Now, obviously, making rice the night before and then keeping it cold in the fridge and then reheating it, this will be better for you than eating it straight away when you've heated it, but it's never going to be as good as whole grains like quinoa or bulgur wheat or, you know, these are the whole grains that I talk about all the time. But, the same trick works with bread. So, freezing your bread and then toasting it from frozen has been shown in quite a few studies to lower the blood sugar response compared with fresh bread because the freezing and the toasting changes the starch in the same way. And this is what we do. So, whenever we buy a big seeded fermented sourdough, we chop it up as soon as we get it and then we pop it in the freezer. So, whenever we have toast or we have anything with, you know, a side of bread or whatever, we always either toast it or defrost it. And we know, and I could check this when I had a blood sugar monitor for a month, my blood sugar response was much lower for freezing it. So, a simple habit like batch cooking your rice and potatoes and keeping them in the fridge and freezing your loaf and toasting slices as you need them turns everyday staples into something that feeds your gut and also protects your liver. Now, obviously, you're never going to do this every single day, every single meal, but the point is that if you've managed to reduce the amount of carbohydrates you're eating, if on the occasions you do have carbs, if you try and get them from this sort of resistant way, then that's going to be much better for you. Thing is, though, there are some foods that also come loaded with resistant starch without any preparation at all. So, things like beans and lentils

your organs inside your abdominal cavity. The second one is the fat that builds up inside your liver. Now, both of these raise your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease and lots of other things that we see in the

emergency room all the time. And a run of recent research has shown that one particular type of fiber can help to shift both of these. And the headline studies used around 40 g of this fiber a day. Now, that fiber is called resistant

starch. And the name is the source of a lot of confusion because although it lives inside starchy foods like beans and oats and, you know, potatoes that have cooled down, it actually behaves as a special kind of fiber rather than as

an ordinary starch. The studies that got everybody excited used, like I said, around 40 g of resistant starch a day in the form of a powder. And in this video, I'll show you what that does to your liver and your visceral fat and then how

I take that exact same lesson and apply it with real food rather than a tub of powder, which I'm never going to sell you. And if you find this video useful, then again, as always, please just give it a like, subscribe to the channel,

give the video a hype as well. It supports me so, so, so much and I cannot thank you enough. You know, everybody that is already supported me so far, I can't believe how quickly this channel has grown. And I will keep making these

videos for you to to as many people as possible. So, the first thing that we need to clear up is what resistant starch actually is and why it sits inside the family of fiber rather than the family of regular starch. So, most

of the starch that we eat in bread and rice and pasta and potatoes, this starch is broken down really quickly in the small intestine into glucose, which then floods into your bloodstream and, you know, causes a big spike in blood sugar.

Resistant starch is different, though, because it resists that digestion and it passes through the small intestine almost untouched. When it reaches the large intestine, which is the next organ along, your gut bacteria treat it as a food and then they ferment it. And in

the process, they produce really powerful compounds called short-chain fatty acids, which, you know, the most important of which is called butyrate, which, if you watch many of these videos, you will know that I mention quite a lot.

That is exactly the same process that happens with proper fiber, which is why resistant starch counts as a type of fiber, even though it started life looking like an ordinary starch. So, instead of spiking your blood sugar and

feeding fat storage, it feeds the bacteria that keep your gut, your metabolism, and your liver pretty healthy. And the evidence behind this is stronger than a lot of you might be thinking. So, in a 4-month randomized controlled trial published in the

journal Cell Metabolism in 2003, and again, research link in the description below, almost 200 people with fatty liver disease were given either resistant starch or an ordinary starch that looked identical at around 40 g a day, the group taking the resistant

starch saw a real noticeable drop in the fat stored inside their liver along with improvements in their liver enzymes. And most strikingly actually, much of that benefit happened without weight loss.

The researchers traced this back to the changes in the good bacteria, the gut and the liver talking to each other through what we call the gut liver axis.

And something else really interesting is that your visceral fat responds as well. In a separate controlled trial, several weeks of resistant starch significantly reduced the deep visceral fat wrapped around the organs, the exact fat that drives so much metabolic disease that I

talk about all the time. So, let's talk about what normal ordinary starch does in our normal diet. So, when you eat white bread or rice or pasta or cereal, the starch is stripped of its fiber and its structure, so it breaks down almost

instantly into glucose. This sends your blood sugar up really sharply. Your body then releases a big surge of insulin to deal with it. And insulin is the signal that tells your body to store fat because remember, insulin is a storage

hormone. And it tells your body to store fat in your liver and around your organs.

Resistant starch does close to the opposite of that. It barely raises your blood sugar at all. It asks for far less insulin and it sends fuel to your gut bacteria rather than to your fat stores.

Now, the cleanest way to avoid the blood sugar spikes from carbohydrates altogether would be to give carbohydrates up entirely, which is what we call the keto diet, the ketogenic diet.

But the problem is that most people cannot sustain that for life. And frankly, it is not much fun. It is a really extreme diet and the best dietary approach is one that you can sustain really easily and enjoy for 50 years.

So, my approach is much simpler. I eat carbs less often than most people and when I do eat them, I try and make them resistant starches.

So, if you take those resistant starches, those resistant carbohydrates and you build a meal around them with plenty of veg and something with real crunch and a good source of protein and some healthy fats, you've turned a potential blood sugar bomb into a

properly balanced, gut-friendly plate. And better still, if you go for a short walk afterwards, then your muscles mop up much of the glucose before it can do any harm. This is why, if you're going to eat carbohydrates at all, then

swapping refined starch for resistant starch is always the better choice. And here's where it gets really useful because you can actually create resistant starch in your own kitchen.

So, when you cook starchy foods like potatoes and rice and pasta as well and you cool them down in the fridge, some of the digestible starch recrystallizes into resistant starch through a process called retrogradation. So, a cold potato

salad or leftover rice or pasta that's gone cold in the fridge, therefore, contains more resistant starch than the same food eaten when it's hot. Now, obviously, making rice the night before and then keeping it cold in the fridge

and then reheating it, this will be better for you than eating it straight away when you've heated it, but it's never going to be as good as whole grains like quinoa or bulgur wheat or, you know, these are the whole grains

that I talk about all the time. But, the same trick works with bread. So, freezing your bread and then toasting it from frozen has been shown in quite a few studies to lower the blood sugar response compared with fresh bread

because the freezing and the toasting changes the starch in the same way. And this is what we do. So, whenever we buy a big seeded fermented sourdough, we chop it up as soon as we get it and then

we pop it in the freezer. So, whenever we have toast or we have anything with, you know, a side of bread or whatever, we always either toast it or defrost it.

And we know, and I could check this when I had a blood sugar monitor for a month, my blood sugar response was much lower for freezing it. So, a simple habit like batch cooking your rice and potatoes and

keeping them in the fridge and freezing your loaf and toasting slices as you need them turns everyday staples into something that feeds your gut and also protects your liver. Now, obviously, you're never going to do this every single day, every single meal, but the

point is that if you've managed to reduce the amount of carbohydrates you're eating, if on the occasions you do have carbs, if you try and get them from this sort of resistant way, then that's going to be much better for you.

Thing is, though, there are some foods that also come loaded with resistant starch without any preparation at all.

So, things like beans and lentils and chickpeas are among the very best sources here, which is one more reason the longest-living populations in the world eat so many of these sorts of foods. Slightly under-ripe green bananas are also rich in this resistant starch

as well and they tend to lose it as they become a bit more ripe and become sweeter as well. Properly intact whole grains like oats and barley contain it and oats eaten cold like in overnight oats, if you prepare the night before,

can give you more resistant starch as well. Nuts like cashews, specifically, add in more resistant starch as well.

So, there There loads and loads of different foods that contain these resistant starches. And if you can try and get these from the most natural sources like the beans and the lentils and the chickpeas, and that's always the

best way to get it. But occasionally, if you eat rice or potatoes or pasta, then going for the cold version is obviously going to be better for you as well. And that brings me back to this 40 g figure

that I mentioned at the start because there is a fair point to make here. So, in this study, they used a powder to get this resistant starch into them. And they did that because it's much easier to measure in a research study.

The whole point here isn't to be chasing a particular number. It is to be taking a lesson from this research paper. And the lesson is that resistant starch is much better for you than starch or carbohydrates that isn't resistant, and

much better for you than carbohydrates that are refined. So, if you're going to be eating carbohydrate, then well, first of all, try and reduce the amount you eat over time because we know that those spike your blood sugar. But when you do

eat them, get them from whole foods or resistant sources that you've made yourself like freezing your bread or making your rice or potatoes the night before.

None of this is meant to be dogmatic. These are just little tips that you can do every single day that over time will have a really big effect on your insulin and your blood sugar responses, all of which underpin how we respond and react

to different things that we eat. And then also your risk of lots of different diseases that I talk about all the time.

As with most things that I talk about on this channel, it comes down to trying to reduce the frequency and the intensity of your glucose spikes because those are the things that underpin so much of the modern diseases that we see these days,

the heart attacks, the strokes, the dementia, and certain cancers as well. So, it means trying to reduce the intake of refined carbohydrates and increase your intake of resistant starches where you can. So, this was a much shorter video today focusing on a very

particular point in a very specific research study. So, I hope you found it useful and interesting and it got you thinking. Let me know if you found it useful by leaving a comment below and I will see you in the next one.