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What would happen if you only ate sardines for five days? Sardines are one of the most nutrient-dense foods on planet Earth. It costs less than $2 per can, and it's not really even on the radar of many doctors and definitely not talked about by big pharma because a clinical trial came out out of Barcelona that I want to share with you.
Roughly, they had 150 people. They divided them in two groups. One of the groups just added two cans of sardines per week and the other group did not. And the group that just added two cans of these per week cut their diabetic risk from 37% down to 8%. And the lead researcher called this a huge scientific discovery. My question was, what would happen if you added three of these cans every single day for five straight days?
In one can of sardines, you have basically 23 g of protein. Okay? It's high quality protein. You have 900 mg of a combination of EPA and DHA. Both of these combined are omega-3 fatty acids. You also have 382 milligrams of calcium. We have 348% of your B12. You have vitamin D. You have selenium, phosphorus, and then we have torine, which is interesting. I'm going to actually get into that. But of course, all of these right here, times three because you're eating three cans of them per day. And I want to touch just on this right here. 900 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. Do you know what an average American consumes? Roughly about 100 milligrams of EPA and DHA every single day. But if we times this times three, we're talking about 2700 milligrams of EPA and DHA, which will take your levels to a whole new range, a therapeutic level, and the things that it can fix are mind-blowing. I'm going to get into that. I highly recommend you get the sardines with the skin, with the bones in it, and in extra virgin olive oil.
So, on day one of eating just sardines, of course, you're going to have water, electrolytes, if you want to drink tea or coffee, you can do that. If you're going to add some cream, just the tiniest bit of cream. So, what's happening in the body? Zero carbohydrates, zero sugars. The body is going to be starting to burn fat. It's going to be switching over from sugar burning to fat burning starting in day one. Now, during the process, your body has to burn off the stored sugar. That's called glycogen. That's in your liver. So, within the first 24 hours, that's going to be lost. A lot of water is attached to this glycogen. So, you're going to lose a lot of water weight initially. And this is why I recommend the electrolytes. Make sure it has potassium and magnesium as well as sodium.
Now, this is a very different type of fast than a prolong fast where you're just drinking water and taking electrolytes. You're adding a very high density protein food, okay, sardines, with a lot of nutrients. So, for most people, this is going to be a lot easier because they're not going to feel weak. They're actually going to feel stronger and they're getting a lot of nutrients at the same time. And so, you could call this a sardine fast. And also, it would mimic something called a fasting mimicking diet because that diet has shown to produce a lot of benefits. But we're doing the fasting mimicking diet with something that's a lot more nutrient-dense than what most people do when they're adding smaller amounts of calories that are not even close to being as nutrient-dense is what we're going to do. So, in other words, we're able to mimic the benefits of fasting by consuming a low calorie diet for 5 days.
The first two days might be a little bit rough for some people that have never done this before because they have to transition into what's called ketosis, which by the way is a fuel that your brain will love. But it does take a couple days to get into this. We're making this transition by cutting down the carbs and bringing insulin way, way, way down. So then your body switches over to burning your own fat. Many people never tap into their own fat, okay? Because they'd never reduce the carbohydrates and the insulin down far enough to be able to tap in to the fat. So, basically, this is going to be 5 days of pure fat burning, and your body is going to be flooding with very therapeutic ketones. Ketones are byproducts of fat.
Now, I'm going to be honest with you. On day two, for some people that have never done this before, it's going to be a little bit tough. But you'll have a type of hunger called dopamine hunger, which is different, where you would want some variety, like you would want some chips or something spicier or something with different flavor, but you're not going to actually have hunger pains because your body has just started to tap into your fat. And you're actually eating your fat through this whole process. Even when you're sleeping, that's what you're living off of. Because when you don't lower your carbohydrates or your sugars and your insulin, you're basically running off the stored glycogen in your liver. But we already tap that out. So, we're basically tapping into pure fat. So, if given the choice, your brain is going to want ketones. So, you're going to start to feed your brain these ketones and you're going to have mental clarity on day two. You're going to just start feeling like very, very focused. You'll have more attention. Also, if you have any inflammation in the body, that's going to start to go down because what is in these omega-3 fatty acids is something called resolins that help turn off inflammation. But to be able to get enough to do that, you have to have high doses. Well, you're consuming literally 2700 milligrams of EPA and DHA. So, you're going to be able to turn that inflammation off. Most supplements, if you look at the amount of DHA and EPA, you're only talking like 200 milligrams, okay, per dosage. So, we're doing 2700. So, your inflammation is going to start coming down. So, you'll feel looser, you'll feel better, and your sleep is going to be better as well.
Now, just as a side note, the mercury question, because a lot of people avoid fish because of mercury, I want to give you some data on mercury in sardines. It's very, very small. It's like 0.013 parts per billion. Okay, if we compare that to tuna, like that's 27 times less. But also realize that you're consuming selenium, which binds with mercury. So you don't have to worry about the mercury problem with sardines.
Day three, this is where it gets interesting. Okay, if you had brain fog, that is going to be completely gone. You're going to wake up feeling a lot different in your head. You're going to feel more focused because the ketones are fully online and they're going to be feeding your neurons. I mean, if you think about it, 3 days of getting 288% of your daily selenium means your thyroid is converting T4 into T3. So, you're going to feel like your metabolism is just working a lot better. And especially for heat, you're not going to feel cold. Even if it's cold outside, you'll go out there and you just don't feel as cold, okay? Because your thyroid is working much, much better. High amounts of omega-3 fatty acids stimulate brown fat. Let me explain what brown fat is. Brown fat is brown because it's super concentrated in mitochondria. That's the energy factories. And so when you're stimulating that type of fat, you are wasting a lot of energy through heat. Okay? You're generating heat. So, this is not a very efficient thing, but it's a good thing if you're trying to lose weight because most people with a slow metabolism, it's slow because it's efficient, okay? It can go longer on a small amount of fuel. There's nothing wasted, but with what we're doing here, we're wasting a lot of fuel as heat. It's just a different way that the mitochondria can deal with this energy. The other big thing is your appetite. You're not going to be hungry. Your appetite's going to be gone because your body is flooded with ketones because you're finally burning fat. Okay? So, you are getting fuel 24/7 and ketones do suppress something else called ghrelin, which basically is the hunger hormone. So, it's going to suppress that. You don't have to worry about cravings. Now, also your gut, you're not going to have any bloating. If you're used to bloating, that's gone. Your stomach's going to start feeling flatter. I mean, if we compare this diet to doing Ozempic, I mean, it's a lot cheaper. It's more therapeutic and without the side effects. I did a whole video on that topic. So, a lot of people ask me, "What supplements do I recommend?" Now, of course, I'm not biased of my own high-quality supplement line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you'll find more information.
Okay, day four is the day when this stopped being more of an internal experience and started becoming an external one. Because when you look in the mirror, your face is going to look different. It's going to look better. Your skin is going to look younger. You're going to have a healthy glow because all the omega-3 fatty acids, which basically go into the membranes of all of your cells, including your skin cells. And not just the way you look, the way you feel. Your joints are going to just feel like they're looser because the inflammation just went way, way, way down. You finally turned off the inflammation that's been stuck there chronically. So, we're going to actually have more belly fat loss, less inflammation because you're in such a therapeutic range and your skin is going to be much better.
Now, remember when I talked about this taurine, right? Taurine spikes something called GABA. GABA is the calming neurotransmitter. So, this relates to stress. You're going to feel calm. You're going to feel stable. You're going to be able to tolerate stress. You're going to sleep better. You're not going to get that 3:00 in the middle of the night cortisol spike. You're going to be sleeping through the entire night. Also, realize that your microbiome is also getting the benefits. It's very therapeutic to put these microbes on a fast versus feeding them so many meals a day, they get lazy and they don't do their job. When you go into fast, your microbes actually do much better and you will start to develop more diversity of your microbiome. So, your gut is going to be better and of course the brain is going to get better because they're connected.
Now, the big difference between a sardine fast and just a water fast is that with some people that do prolong fasting, if they're thinner, sometimes they might lose a little muscle, but with this fast, you're not going to lose muscle because you're basically putting now 69 grams of protein in your body every single day.
All right, day five. On day five, you're probably not going to want to stop because of all of the compounded effects. You have more weight loss. You got a happy brain. Your mood is good. You're not hungry. You're not craving anything. Your skin's looking good. You literally consumed 5,000% of your B12. You have this massive shift of omega-3 over the omega-6 fatty acid ratio by consuming literally 13,000 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids. So, we have our thyroid working better, flexible joints, hardcore deep sleep, where you wake up feeling awake and bright. But out of all of this, the real big benefit is you're in control of your own body. You're in control of your health. You're able to stick with it. That's a huge win. It's like you're exercising your willpower, which is like a muscle. And each day you do it, it becomes stronger and stronger. So, you're basically putting yourself back in the driver's seat of your own health by doing this. The ability to say no to junk food is huge. Okay? And a lot of people are controlled by the body causing these cravings and impulses to eat these bad foods. But that's going to quickly go away after you do this. So now you have your body in alignment with your mind so you can actually be successful at this.
Like I said before, make sure you do the electrolytes each day. I would probably recommend a B complex. B1 especially is only stored for 4 days. If you have a subclinical deficiency, you know, we don't want you to run out. Same thing goes with potassium and magnesium. Make sure you take your vitamins while you're doing this.
Now, anytime you do a prolonged fast, it's always important to come off the eating plan slowly, but you're not necessarily doing a water fast. You're doing a sardine fast. So, you probably don't have to put a lot of attention on transitioning off of this too slowly, but I would still recommend that you do it and that you gradually start adding food back into the diet. And for that information, you should watch this video right here where I talk about prolong fasting. Check it out.