I hear from lots of people every day who are concerned about how their diet is affecting their health.

They need answers based on facts, in other words, from the peer-reviewed medical literature and that is what I'm here for.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Michael Greger.

Today we do the math on how many fewer calories we have to eat every

day to lose one pound of body fat. The first surgical attempt at body sculpting

was in 1921 with a dancer wanting to improve the shape of her

ankles. The surgeon apparently scraped away too much tissue and tied the

stitches too tight resulting in necrosis, amputation, and the first recorded malpractice

suit in the history of plastic surgery. Today's liposuction is much safer, only killing about one in 5,000 patients, mostly from unknown causes,

throwing a clot off into your lung or perforations of your internal organs.

Liposuction currently reigns as the most popular cosmetic surgery in the world and its effects are indeed only cosmetic.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed

obese women before and after having about 20 pounds of fat sucked out of their bodies, resulting in nearly a 20% drop in their total body fat.

Normally, lose even just 5 to 10% of your body weight in fat and you get significant improvements in blood

sugars, inflammation, cholesterol, and traggliserides, but liposuction sucks.

None of those benefits materialized even after the massive liposuction.

This suggests subcutaneous fat. The fat under our skin is not the problem.

The metabolic insults of obesity arise from the visceral fat, the fat

surrounding or even infiltrating our internal organs like the fat marbling our muscles

and liver.

The way you lose that fat, the dangerous fat, is to take in fewer calories than you burn.

Anyone who's seen the biggest loser shows knows with enough calorie restriction and exercise

...