Dr. Layne Norton: The Science of Eating for Health, Fat Loss & Lean Muscle
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and am a professor of neurobiology and opened ology at stanford school of medicine. today. My guest is doctor lane norton. Doctor norton is one of the foremost experts in protein, metabolic fat loss and nutrition.

He did his degrees in biochemistry and nutritional sciences and is considered one of the world experts in understanding how we extract energy from our food and how exercise and what we eat combine to impact things like body composition and overall health. Today, we discuss an enormous number of topics under the umbrella of nutrition and fitness, including, for instance, what is energy baLance? That is, how do we actually extract energy from our food.

We also discuss the somewhat controversial topic of artificial sweeteners, whether not they are safe or not, and whether or not they are an effective tool for weight loss, and particularly for people suffering from obesity and different types of diabetes. We also talk about gut health, that is, the gut microbiome, and how it's impacted by food, and how IT can actually impact the metabolite of the foods that we eat. We also discuss fasting, or so called instrumented fasting, or time restricted feeding, what he does and what IT does not do in terms of how effectively for weight loss and perhaps even for health and longevity.

We also talk about protein and define very clearly how much protein each and all of us need, depending on our daily activities and life demands. We discuss the various types of diets that you've probably heard about, including key og ic guide des, vegan diets, vegetarian diet and pure cornered diet, as well as more typical omoo diets. And how to make sure that you get all of the essential and meal acids that are critical for healthy weight maintenance, weight loss or directed muscle gain.

We also talk about supplements, in particular, the supplements for which there is an immense amount of science pointing to their safety and efficacy for fitness and for overall body companies. Sir, what i'm sure we'll become clear to you, as you hear laying talk about each and every one of these topics, is that he has an incredible ability to both understand the mechanistic science, but also the real world applications of the various discoveries that are made, in particular papers, and in particular in the round ized controlled trials. That is, when a given scientific hypothesis has been raised.

He's extremely good at understanding why IT was raised, but also at evaluating whether or not IT works in the real world, which is what I believe most everybody out there is concerned with. I think this is one of the things that really distinguishes him from the other voices in the nutritional landscape assure you that by the end of today's discussion, you will have a much clear understanding about what the science says about nutrition, about fitness and about how different diets and fitness programs combine to achieve the results that you want. Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research.

Urals at stanford IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element.

Element is an electorate drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium in patache um this so called electronic and no sugar. Now salt magnetism in patasse are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons.

In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrical lights need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in extra light concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits. And cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back to electronic ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of plastic um and sixty milligrams of magnesium.

I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my, make sure I have enough electoral lights and while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if i've been sweating lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element that's element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that drink element L M N T dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja, recessions and nsd r non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens, and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations. And they had a lot of different types of meditations to place, to bring your body into different states. And that he liked IT very much.

So I gave the waking up up a try. And I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have few minutes to meditate, other times have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do.

I also love that the waking up up has lots of different type of yoga eja sessions. Those you don't know, yogananda is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations. And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yoga ea and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even, which is to a short ten minute session.

If you'd like to try the waking up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial again, that's waking up dot com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with doctor lane norton lane, doctor nordin. Thank you so much for being here.

This is a long time coming and say, i'm really excited because i've seen you in the social media sphere. I've also listen to a number of your other podcast. And as a fellow PH d scientist, I feel a great kinship with you.

I know you have tremendous experience and in fitness and nutrition and number of areas. We also got a lot of questions from our audience, and i'm really looking forward talking with you today. Yeah.

i'm excited too. I mean, this, like you says, been something we've talking about for a long time. So glad all to make that happen.

Yeah in need. And I think some of the audience has requested a debate or a battle, and I can tell you right now it's not going to happen. Actually one of the things that brought lane and I together ah in conversation online and then via tacks that set was the fact that I love to be corrected and that's what happened.

I did a post about artificial sweeteners, which we will talk about a little bit later in the episode and lane pointed out some areas of the study that I had um or maybe misunderstood and I revised my opinions and I think it's wonderful and other studies have come out since then. So hopefully our conversation will serve as a as a message of how uh science and action science can um can be perceived and that IT doesn't always have to be a battle. But hey, if we get into IT, we get into IT.

Um I won't get physical because we know you would win. So in any case, i'd like to start um with something that's rather basic and yet can be pretty complex and that this issue of energy baLance and energy utilization, I think most people have heard of a calorie. Um I assuming that most people don't actually know what that is in terms of how IT works, what IT represents. And so maybe you could just explain for people what happens when we eat food of any kind and how is that actually converted into energy as a way of framing up the discussion around weight loss, weight maintenance, weight gain and body conversation.

So a great question. And like you said, this is one of those things where, you know, people use the term calories in, calories out. They say, well, that's way too simplistic.

And i'm like if you look at what actually makes up calories and calories out, it's actually very complicated, right? So let's deal with the what you mentioned first, what is a calorie because think a lot of people don't quite understand this. So a calorie just refers to a unit of energy of heats practically.

So what does that have to do with food? What does that that have to do with, like what we digest and eat? Really, what you're talking about is the potential chemical energy that is in the bonds of the micro neutrons of food, right? And by digesting, assimilating and meta lizer those nutrients, we are able to create energy.

And the in product of that mostly is ATP a dinner and try first state, which is your body's energy currency. So to understand ATP, just try to think about if you're trying to power these various reactions in your body. 你 we're talking about tens of thousands of insides that require A T P IT， doesn't make sense that you would have to create a bunch of micro explosions, right? You want something that can transfer high energy force face to power these reactions to give up essentially its energy to power, or something that might otherwise be unfavorable.

So a lot of metabolism is simply creating ATP, which the end of the line of that, am that kind of work backwards, is what's called oxathres spraying. So that happens to the monetary everybody body, heard the contrary, powerhouse of the cell. And that is done through essentially creating a hydrogen eye gradient across the medical ria, which powers the production of ATP by converting free fast fate plus atp to atp.

Now the way that hydron iron grading is created is through you creating hydro yo rod ions like we donated to the crab cycle. Now the crib cycle is linked to click losses. So if we talk about carbon hydrate, metabolism, carbohydrate, basically, other than photos, get converted into glue cose, which can go into black holster, and you can produce some ATP through black holster, and then IT boils down to parodi in the city code, which goes to the crop cycle, produces a lot more ATP from that.

If you know about protein, proteins, a little bit different, because protein gets converted to me, to assets which can be used for muscle, protein synthesis or protein. Criticize other tissues, but IT also can be converted through click nea genuine to glue coast. And there also are some key gene of metal assets as well. Um and so you can. Have a few different ways to get the crib cycle, be either being through a city cov or through lucas going to collapse to pieri.

Then you have fat acids which um are able to create energy through what's called beta ox dating or essentially you're taking these fatty assagy, you're lopping them off two carbon at a time to produce the ego coa, which again can go into the creb cycle, produce as hydrogen that can then power the production of ATP. So that's kind of like at the CEO level of how this stuff works. But stepping back and taking IT back out, like what does that have to do with weight loss or way gain, right? Well, when you think about the baLance of energy and versus energy out, sounds very simple, but let's look at what actually makes up energy and versus energy out.

First of all, you've got realized that the energy inside of the equation is more difficult to track than people think, right? So one food labels, which we like to think is being, you know, like from upon high, can have up to a twenty percent air in them, really. Oh yeah, yeah. Hundred calories .

is something. This is one hundred calories preserving IT. Could what's actually in there could .

be a year hundred and twenty? exactly. So that's one aspect of IT. The second aspect is those what's called your energy. But there's also a tablet zable energy, right? So if you have food stuff with a lot of insoluble fiber, typically insurable fiber is not really digestible. And so you could have you know quite a bit carbon hydrate, you know.

But if you can extract the energy from IT, and typically this is because insoluble fiber from like plant material, the carbon hydrate or and even some of the protein is bound up in the a plant structure, which makes IT inaccessible two digestive insides. And so this is what like ads bulk to your school store and what not, but again, reduces the metals zable energy in there. And there is some evidence that based on people's individual gut microbiome, that some people may actually be Better at extracting energy out of fiber compared to other people.

So just starting off right there. Okay, there's there's quite a bit of play in the energy inside of things. Now one of things people will say as well, see, that's why you couldn't wear about tracking calories because you know the food levels can be twenty percent off. And what i'll say is, okay, that's that I understand where you're coming from, but typically, if it's off, it's going be consistently off. And if you're consistent with how you track IT, eventually you'll be able to know kind of what you're taking in. And it's that kind of like saying, well, don't worry about tracking you know if you I like to use financial um examples, you know we know that to save money or you have to earn more money than you spend, well, you can't exactly know how much money you're earning at a time, you know because there's inflation and then there's if you have investments, those can be you know different interest rates and what not say, okay, but you if you have a budget, you have an a reasonable idea what it's going to be know if you make certain assumptions, but you can relatively guess .

to get example right?

So now lets look at the energy outside of the equation, which is actually way more complicated, right? So your energy out is a few different a buckets. The first one, and the biggest one is your resting metabolites.

So you're ARM r. And that, for most people, is anywhere from fifty to seventy percent of your total daily energy expenditure. Now, people use the term meteoritic great and energy expendable kind of interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. So your total daily energy expendable is the summation of all the energy you expand in a day walking up stairs.

Exercise, if you do IT figuring.

Plus here.

resting mentality, right? So resting .

mental Operate is a big part of that but is not the only thing. So that used about fifty to seventy percent, and secondary people will be on the higher end of that. So i'll be a bigger proportion.

Where is people who are more active and will be a little bit lower, not because the metal grade is lower, but because they are expanding a greater percent of the calories from physical activity. Then you have something called the thermic effect of food, which is a relatively small percentage of your total daily energy. expendable.

It's about five percent um and very difficult to measure. And usually what researchers do and they're kind of looking at this stuff as they just kind of making assumption about IT, they use a constant, but that's about five to ten percent of your daily energy expendable. And that refers to the amount of energy IT takes to extract the energy out of food.

So think about your body, kind of like a car, right? You don't just have gas in your tank and it's bunting. Ely starts up, right? Like you have to have a batteries you put in energy.

You can get the energy out of the the petrol that you have in your car, similar with with food. You can't just eat food, and then IT just appears in yourselves and you start doing stuff. IT has to be systematically broken down and put into forms that can actually produce energy.

And so you have to put some energy in to achieve that. And a lot of times people will say something like, well, not all calories are created equal. That's not true because calories just a unit of measured, right?

That would be like saying not all seconds on a clock or created equal. Yes, they are. All sources of calories may have differential effects on energy expenditure appetite. So if we look at something like um fat, for example, the T F of fat is about zero to three percent. Meaning if you one hundred color from fat, your net will be about ninety seven, two hundred.

So the process of breaking down that fat, so he said, tracks some of the the calories away, because you use in creating energy by breaking these chemical bonds to create A T P.

Cork OK, ret. So you have like for example, some enzymes require ATP to run these processes. Now fat is actually the easiest thing to convert into energy.

Then you have carbo hydrate, which has a tf of like five to ten percent. So you eat hundred posh and carbo hydrates. And obviously, like the fiber content makes a big difference on this.

But huat hundred calories, you ninety and ninety five protein is about a twenty to thirty percent to E F. So if you hundred collision from protein, you're only netting seventy to eighty. Now you're still net know.

People say, well, you can't eat too much protein. Well, you know, people will ask, what can protein be stored as fat? The carbons from protein? It's unlikely it's going to one up an antipodes tissue.

But if you're eating a lot of protein overall as part of a lot of calories, IT does IT has to be oxy, zed and I can provide a calories cushion for other things to be stored in fat. But protein itself does provide a net positive for calories, but less so than carbon, hundred or fat, and tends be more satiating. So again, when people talk about, you know, all all the calories created equal, yes, but all sources of calories may have differently effects on energy expansion, ation appetite.

So that's the tf bucket and the b mr. bucket. Then we go to physical activity. And physical activity is essentially two parts.

There's exercise, which is kind of your purposeful movements like you are for a walk, you do a training session, whatever, any purpose activity. And then you have what's called meat, which is non exercise activity. Thermo genesis, which I think is actually.

you're really cool. It's .

fascine. So I was actually hanging out with somebody last night, and I was noticing them. They were fighting their feet and their their fingers.

And I said, have you always like, been pretty leaned and never like, yeah, I never really had a problem maintaining lindz. And when you look at the obese, resistant 4 type， people think they have high bm, r, or, you know, they exercise lot. And really, what IT seems to be as neat they tend to.

If they overreach, they just spontaneous. Ly increased their physical activity. Now people get neat, confused.

I've heard people say i'm going to go out for a walk to get my need up. That's not neat. Need is not something you can consciously modify what you're doing there. If it's purposeful, it's exercise.

So for example, of what what i'm talking, if i'm waving around my hands and if i'm tapping my feet, if i'm whatever that's neat, but you know, trying to like get yourself, i'm just going to to tap my foot more. Well, now if i'm consciously having to do this, then my focus that, I mean, you know how the brain works very hard to do. You don't really do two things that watch you kind of switch quickly between tests.

So can I quickly ask up was the person that you're referring to, our friend and bruno?

No.

amazing online fitness channel. He's a frequently strong individual. no. yeah.

And I can't remember whether not been near a figure or or not. But anyway, off to go, go check. And i'll measure your fighting about non exercise.

Do ma just need my understanding of the old papers on this old being? I guess back to the the midd ninety is that the calorie burn from neat is actually pretty significant. We're not talking about one hundred calories or two hundred calories per day. We're trying about, in some cases, hundreds of thousand, excuse hundreds, two, maybe even close to a thousand calories per day.

Could you elaborate on that? Yeah, so there was actually a really classic study. I think I want to say from levine in one thousand nine hundred and ninety five was mental coward study. And hopefully don't butcher this study because i'm trying to, you know, pull out of my way.

I don't excite you to have I must say you have a quite extensive pub mid ID a grab bag in there.

So I have to put we will .

put a link to the study in the shown of captions so um people can prove that if they like.

So I believe they had people over at I think I was by like a thousand colors day, and I think for six weeks. And I mean, this is the medal c words. So they are, this is very tightly controlled, as as tight as you get.

And what was interesting is, of course, on average, people gained weight and gain fat mass. But some people gained more than expected. And there was one person in particular who only gained like just over half a kilo, right? They should have gained like, I think IT was something like three to four kilos.

IT was was predicted. And what they found is this individual just spontaneous ly increased their physical activity. He didn't purposely do IT IT just happened.

And I mean, you know, anecdotally, i've seen people who are again, you know very lean. Even eat a meal, sit down and start sweating, you know, and be very figure. There is a natural body border back in the day named jim cord over.

And this guy was just very clean all the time, and he was exactly that final type. No, he would walk up a flight stairs and all of his sweating sit down the meal. He's sweating.

You know he just he's a fairness. Just .

expanding energy. And what's very interesting about neat is that seems to be the most modifiable. I mean, exercise are very modifiable because you can be intentional with that. But of B M R, T, E, F and neat, neat seems to be far more modifiable.

So even a body weight reduction of ten percent, they've observed a decrease and meat of almost five hundred calories a day for a ten percent, uh reduction body weight. Now you also do get a decline in b mr when you lose weight one because you're just in a small or body now. And so IT takes less energy to look commode uh but also there's what's called meditation, which is a further reduction in your bm r than expected from the loss of body masses.

And that's on average using around like fifteen percent. But IT does seem to be there's new evidence coming out on the medical adaptation from b mr. And IT seems to be a little but kind of in the transition phases.

So if you if you start to die IT within the first few weeks, you will have a reduction in BMI that then kind of just thereafter, any further reduction is mostly from the amount of body mass you lose. And then if you like, for example, finish a diet, move your calories to maintenance. Within a few weeks, bm r kind of starts to come back up.

There is still a small reduction. But I used to be somebody who thought the b mr. The mental of canada was a big reason why people stop losing weiter platov. And now I think it's much more to do with neat.

interesting and you said that I can be conscious um because that we will distract us from other activities. I don't have you had used to look at this study and i'll send IT to and maybe be fun to do a kind of an online journal club about this at some point soon. But there is a study that came out of university accused and recently having people do.

Now this is a long, creative time, four hours a day of basic, a solid push up, which is basic, a hill road cover, seated careys with one foot, not waited. And then they looked at a bunch of things about glue hose, metabolic and google s clearances and insurance levels. And they didn't conclude that people burned a ton of calories.

But what they conclude IT was that blood sugar regulation improved greatly. And I think you know there was a lot of excitement about this um at some level but based on everything you're telling me, this is fits perfectly with what's known about neat. So this will fell somewhere in between with in between, excuse me, sort of deliberate exercise and spontaneous movement. I guess I have tried to make that spontaneous movement a little .

bit more conscious. Well, what i'll told people is if, if you're worried about eat, one thing you can do like these watches, for example, like people like what told me to burn this many calories, they are not accurate for energy, expendable. I mean, IT is like there was a man analysis in two thousand and eighteen, I want to say, between eight, twenty eight and ninety three percent over estimation of energy expenditure by these watches. acx.

Over those we've listening. We are not going to named the brand, but fitness trackers. So risk warn fitness .

tracks and is a ross the board. Um so like depending on the brand, that could be no more or less, but they all over restituted the amount of the calories you burn from exercise. So this is actually a great example where people go well, calories in calories that doesn't work for me because I in the calories after and I didn't lose weight.

And when I talk to them, usually it's they went to an online calculator. It's one a few things they went to an online calculator, put in their information it's it's spat out some calories to eat and they ate that and didn't lose weight. And it's like, what do you thinks more likely that you're defying the laws of, you know, conservation of energy or that your you might have not gotten the right number for you?

The the measurement to was off.

The next thing is a lot of people weighs very is sporadic. And i'll tell people like if you're going to make an intentional weight loss ago um and again, that this can be different for different people. But typically I tell people weigh in first thing in the morning I have to go the bathroom, do IT every day and take the average of that for the week and then compare that to the next .

week's average can ask one quick started into but one a quick question about the we say go to the bathroom not to get uh too detailed uh here for unnecessarily but are you talking about you in nation and empty your balls and because you get big me the night before. Yes yeah got IT so wake up, use the bathroom um in all all forms that you're ready and then and then get on the scale, take that measurement average that across the week and then maybe every monday you .

take that value and see in the reason I recommend doing that if you're just kinds spatially weighing in as somebody who weighed themselves prety pretty regularly, I mean, my way I will flush, ate five, six pounds and not seemingly changing much. And that's just those short term changes are fluid.

So i've had IT before where week to week my averages and change, but between the lowest way and from the previous week and the highest way in might have been like eight pounds, right? So if you're somebody who just randomly is wearing in and you're eating in a calorie deficit and you just weigh in one day where you just, whatever the reason, holding some more fluid and you all see this isn't working when a reality your average might be dropping. So that's one of the reasons and actually um believe they are not a weight fluctuations are actually identified as a major reason why people get discouraged from weight loss um that you kind of stops the buying, you know, when they have a fluctuation up. So that's one of the reasons only one of the reasons early that low carb diets tend to work really well as because people lose a lot of water weight really quickly and they get that buying right. And oh.

this is working yeah we can return to that a little bit because I have theory as to how that um you when people like like carbon hiera, the more water and they'll see if for the first time, they'll see some definition in their absolutely no h my god, this diet amazing. And the fluid loss does hold that promise. I think fluid loss can do some other things that my people make.

People literally feel lighter, although we have some negative effects. I do have one quick question, and I do return to eat in a moment, but when you say the color red burned as a consequence of exercise, I want to ask about the clerk burned during that exercise. So offered if somebody he's on the tread mill and they'll see, okay, they burn four hundred colors.

Actually, I think this is a month where a number of prominent podcasts ers, precious time, saga, rogan, others, and they called solar october. In addition to avoiding alcohol, they they're burning five hundred colors per day during the exercise that they're measuring IT. A lot of people do this.

They think they take tracked of whether or, excuse me, take stock of how many calories they burned. My understanding is that if that particular form of exercise is a muscle building form of exercise, that at some point later, there might be an increased in muscle. If you did IT everything right, do everything right, and then you will burn more energy as a consequence of adding that tissue.

That's a long process as as you know, and we will discuss, but I have heard about this post exercise duced increase in oxide of metabolic. I'm probably not using the right languages here. So if I were to go out, for instance, in sprint, do some sprint, run hard for a minute, job for a minute, run hard and do that ten times over.

So let's assume I burn four hundred calories during that exercise belt. But my understanding is that in the hours that follow, my basel meta rate will have increased. Is that true and is IT significant enough to care about?

So answer both those questions. Yes, there does seem to be a small increase in metallic rate. And no, IT does not appear to be enough to actually make a difference.

So when they look at and again, this is where I tell people, I think I have a good perspective on this because I my undergraduate degree is about chemistry degree. So I was very mechanisms. I mean, IT was I call, if we just do this and this will get this right. And then I did nutrition as a graduate degree, and then my adviser was so great, because you could do something over here and he could tell you how would .

affect vitam .

dee metabolomics. So, you know, he would always come say, you have, what's the outcome gonna be right. So this is actually one of the things I changed my mind on was, I used to be very much, well, I think, you know, high intensity of al training is probably Better because you get this post exercise energy burn, which they do see in some of these studies, but in the kind of many analysis and like more tightly controlled studies where they equate work between high tensity intervals and moderate or low intensity, uh cardio, so equating work ah, they don't see differences in the loss of body fat.

And so to me, if i'm looking at that's the example of a mechanism which is okay, we're seeing this small increase in basement demolish rate that should lead to increase loss of body fat. But again, remember, you're capturing at a snapshot time, right? But we don't see a difference in the loss of body facts. So what may be happening? And again, i'm just speculating, but a way to explain that could be you might have an increase and then you might actually have a decrease that tends to just kind of wash IT out.

I see I have to imagine some forms of exercise. This will be highly individual, but we'll Spike appetite more than others. So for intense, if I go out for a forty five minute jog, or which I do of forty five to sixty minute hiker jog once a week, I just make IT a point to do that, or rock, or something like that thrown a way in ke.

After that I find a very thirsty. I want to hydrate, but i'm not that hungry. That's true of most, all cardiovascular exercise for me. But after I wait, train about sixty to ninety minutes later, I want to eat the refrigerator. And so, obviously, calories in, calories out, dict ates, that that will play important role as to whether not I gain or lose weight.

That said, so is IT safe to say that the specific form of exercise that people choose needs to be taken in consideration, calories in, calories out. So how much is burn during the exercise also? How much that exercise tends to stimulate the tight? I don't know whether not people explore this.

And in the rigorous studies and whether not that form of exercise actually increases lean muscle mass or not. Um so ah now we taking exercise and split IT into a number of different dimensions, but this is what you are. So master ful, that is really passing how the different components work individually together. So if you would just expand on that, would love to know what you're thinking.

Yeah so this is actually really fascinating thing. Um so first I want I want to just go back to talk about like for example, burton, tom and and joe, we're going to five calories a day on whatever. So those appliances don't measure those things effectively either, right just like these watches. But what the one thing I will say is if you are like for example, if I do to ours resistance training, typically this will say burn about one thousand calories, right? That's a lot .

of my weight. Work out are like a warm up for ten minutes, and then one hour of work done.

I just, I love to train, okay?

And and you can recover from my recovery equation is pretty low. So i've been training for thirty plus years, and I found that if I do more than an hour of hard work in the gym, meaning resistant training, if seventy five minutes, maybe i'm OK, but past that, I have to take two, maybe even three days off before I train. My nervous system just doesn't tolerate IT well, so I limit to an hour but in part of that to remember is .

like i've kind of built up to that over a long period time, right? So I couldn't just know somebody and and start haven't do two hours day is not going to go well for them.

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But I will say about the salary track kers is so if i'm used to, okay, usually learn about a thousand calories according to this, it's not accurate. But if I go in tomorrow and I do thirteen hundred IT may not be accurate. I don't know what the exact number is, but I can be relatively confident that it's more than the previous session, right? And so in terms of comparison, that might be OK like of within subject.

Um and in the other thing I kind of circle around, I was if you were about neat tracking, your steps can be helpful because people step counts. Can spd hennesy decreased when on a fat last day they even realize so and and that? Again, not a complete measure of need.

But what we've had some clients do with our team violin coaches is they'll say, okay, you're at eight thousand steps right now. We're not going to add in the purposeful cardio. But whatever you need to do to maintain that, eight thousand steps do that. And sometimes they have to add you know fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes of cardio because there are spontaneous activity that they are not even aware of goes down.

That's a really excEllent point. I I i've heard you know the ten thousand and steps per day number was we all heard that. And then I learned that ten thousand just kind throwing out as an number, so that our intervention, fasting thing, there is a story behind that exactly spoke to our chin. And IT turns out that the graduate student in his love that did that initial study, which was on mice, by the way, was limited to being in lab for about eight hours by their significant other. So the eight hour feeding window is actually the consequence of this person's relationship.

That that is a really great point that people don't realize when they, a lot of people will try to copy like scientific studies. And I i'll tell people, like, listen, scientific studies are so confined, you you need to be very careful with how broadly you apply. What's in there, right? Like there.

There are very big hammers kind of the way I look at IT, okay? They're not a scope. They're a big hammers.

And I think a lot of times in terms of coaching, scientific studies will tell you what not to do rather than what to do. right? Beginning about to you a question about like exercise appetite. So first off, i'm not really aware if there's evidence showing like differential effects of different forms of exercise on appetite is possible.

Um but again, IT also could be like a placable al effect right because we like for example, you and I grew up in an era with the muscle magazine IT was like, well, soon you finish your workout, you'd have your biggest meal the day right? And you know, when I say placebo effect, I think people have the wrong idea what the placebo effect is. They think that's just a feeling.

Placido effect can actually change your physiology. People don't realize this. There's research showing that a placido where the powerful suggestion is basically as powerful as some pharmaceuticals. And one of the the grade examples I like to use is actually there was a study we just covered in our research review on quitting where they did four groups, not self, self with creative, told they weren't often with creative, not supplemented, told they were supplemented, suffer mental, told they we're supplemented, told they were basically IT just matters what they told them really yeah.

this is incredible. I have to get this study so we can link to a colleague, minor temple. She's been on the podcast.

I love to introduce you, you, because I think you is really with, first of all, he was a former d one athlete, and then as a runs a abbot. Stanford psychology is lea crime. And she's in group in this very athletic, obviously, and very, very smart.

And her laboratory focuses on this belief slash ble cibo effects, where if you tell people all the horrible things that stressed studio and terms your memory and cognitive unctions ing, and they give them a memory test, they they perform well below baseline. If you tell them that stressed sharpens them in the short term, and that a generalin is this powerful molecule that can um really tune up a number of memory systems, memory improves and it's remarkable and it's consistent. And they've done this for any number of different things, including food allergies, for instance.

Incredible results in any case. I so glad you're bring in the shop. Um I take creating mono hydrate and a half for years by grammes a day. I don't it's and it's great and I believe it's great. So so is there a compound effect of believing it's great and it's actually .

so not in this study, but so I think the thing to point out, people will misinterpret that as create and doesn't work.

And that's not that says what that says is your beliefs about what IT does are probably just as powerful as what IT does, right? So they actually did a study and I don't have the citation, but I was what I think within last ten years where they told people they were putting them on animal x steroid and wonder, you know, if they had Better gains even though they weren't actually on animal ox steroid, they had Better gains than people that they didn't tell our animal steroid. And that's like hard outcome of strength.

Lean body mass know those sorts of things. So when people say, well, I wouldn't fall for the placebo effect, it's like you don't have to fall for IT if if you believe that to be true. The power of belief is very, very powerful.

And as a scientist, I wish sometimes I was ignorant so that I could subject myself to the plus ebal effect more often. Yeah so kind of getting back to that's just a possible explanation of maybe why you know and i'm the same way like I get them with a work out like resistance training session like humber to eat right now. If you look at the literature overall on exercise and appetite, it's not always what you'd expect consistently.

IT seems to show that exercise actually has an appetite of present effect, so people don't tend to compensate, at least fully for the amount of movement they do. And there is some evidence that you've probably heard people say what exercise are really poor weight loss tool, right? Like like if you figure out how many calories you should be burning from IT and you do that, you end up getting less weight loss than than you would predict.

I have a family member who is perfectly happy to eat less, but doesn't load exercise, but dislike exercise and and there of healthy weight, but i'm always encouraging them to exercise more. And this is an ongoing battle. And in our sibling relationship.

well, one thing I say is that exercise, independent of anything that happens with your body weight, you will be healthier. So exercises is one of only things that will actually improve your biomarkers of health without even losing weight. So there's a like improve your instant sensitivity, inflation tion, all that stuff. So everybody there are looking for a hack to be healthier exercises. The hack .

special point and our of neutral friend doctor Peter A, I think it's gone on record several times now saying that of all the things that one could take and a men that said A A met former, what gardenless of whether not one takes those or doesn't take those, that the positive effects on the langevin by way of bio markers from regular exercise is. You know, far out ways all of those things combine not that those things don't necessarily work. We're not going to them in detail now, but that exercises by far the best thing we can do for health span and lifespan.

Yeah absolutely. I hundred percent agree. And when you're talking about weight loss, people miss the point of exercise. I think you there's some worth to came up from herman point as well that basically showed like, well, if you do one hundred calories from exercise, you have a like twenty eight called reduction in your basic metal olic rate in a response to that.

So it's kind of like this constrained energy exploitation model, right? But what I would say is, okay, well, they're still a net of seventy two, right? So it's still it's still OK. And the other thing is I think the effects of exercise on wait loss are actually more due to one of us to appetite.

Um so if you look at people who lose weight and keep IT off for a number of years, kind of outliers because most people don't keep IT off for years, over seventy percent of them engaged in regular exercise of people who do not keep weight loss, like maintain weight loss, less than thirty percent exercise regularly. So now that just a correlation that doesn't cesspool prove causation, but there are some pretty compelling studies showing that exercise increases your sensitivity to society signals. So basically, you can have the same society signals, but you are more sensitive to them when you exercise.

And there's actually a really classic study from the thousand nine hundred and fifties in benghazi workers, where they looked at basically four different quadrants of activity. So you had sedentary, lightly active, moderate active, heavily active, basically based on their job choice. And they didn't have an intervention.

They just wanted to track them and see how much, you know, how many colonies that they actually eat. So IT was like A J shape curve. So the sedentary actually ate more food than the lightly active or moderate active. But from lightly active to heavily active, they almost perfectly compensated how many calories they should be eating. So to me, that suggests when you become active, you can actually regulate your appetite appropriately or much more appropriately than if you're sedentary.

And do you think this has to do with changes in the brain, brain centers that respond to society signals from the proof? And or do you think that has to do with changes in blood sugar regulation? What I was taught, I don't if this is still consider true, is that Spike in blood sugar will trigger desire to eat more, even though it's of exactly the opposite of what you need when you have a Spike in blood sugar. And there's this kind of and we'll get into this when we talk about our official sweaters. This is the ID and mine I think I adopted perhaps falsely, that you eat something that sweeter that tastes really good and and you are suddenly on the train of wanting to eat more um and I could imagine how exercise um if IT is increasing the satire signals uh could be working in number of different ways.

Yeah I think it's A I think the effect is probably mostly at the brain level um you know the effects on blood sugar. The research out there is not very compelling for blood sugar driving a appetite. Now if you become hypoglycemia, you'll get hungry, but it's a different kind hunger than like you're Normal like I feel kind of empty and my stomach scrawling like those are. They can go together, but usually like the typography is like I have hot, I feel like I want to pass out like you wanted eat something, not because you're stomach is crawling.

but because you know .

that you just need some.

I've been there when I done longer, fast, something I don't do anymore, and drink a lot of black coffee. There was probably in the electronic effect there, because coffee, as you excrete sody another electorate. And then just feeling like I needed something, there's whole thing, like I need something.

This kind of desperation. I never want to be back here again. Hypocrisy is very Young.

not fun. So you know, again, when they and then when they look at actual antiques control trials of implementing some exercise where the pretty controlled environment, they typically see people, if, if anything, they eat less as opposed to eating more. Now some people, again, that, you know, studies report averages, right? And there's individual data pots.

So there are some people who, at least in the dolly, report that exercise makes them more hungry. That's completely valid. It's now IT could be their belief surrounded IT could be a number of different things, but it's important.

Understand that there is individual variability. And I think one of the things that i've learned to appreciate more is not trying to separate psychology and physiology. We do this a lot.

And so what I want to know, the physiology, I don't care about the psychology of IT. And now i'm kind of appreciating more psychology is physiology. You know, like with most things now we have kind of the bioscience social model.

And i'll give me example this, a lot of people, we get really caught up with appetite. And if we could just suppress people's appetite, that's part of IT. But people don't just eat because they are hungry for a lot of different reasons, social reasons especially. So can you remember the last social event ever went to that didn't have food.

right?

If you look at dinner plates from the eighteen hundred ds about this big now how big the dinner plates, the whole perfect well yeah um if you situation cube right, you're looking down to watch T, V. I grab s some popcorn and grabs some nack whatever. I even see this.

know how one person pick up their phone and then I will pick up their phone. I A similar effect with .

food yeah and same thing right? Like how many times have we either done in ourselves or been experiencing saying, ah you should have some you should have like alcohol, especially right, like people um I was singing up with somebody last night and I had a beer and they just had, you know a water and i'm like, I feel no need to try and convince them to do that with me you know what I mean but as humans, we're kind of her hurt animals like we don't want to be doing something out an isolation room. This is a very tenuous ous, I guess, belief of mine.

But you know doing things alone in isolation, you know, during kind of ancestral times, that's going to turn off your alarm system because you don't have other people, you can't protect yourself, right? So typically things we're done together in groups. And I think that's a lot of reason why we tend to be just tribal and nature about a lot of things, right? So the whole point to that is, you know on the list of reasons why people eat, I mean, i've got the point where I think that hunger is actually not even the main reasons people eat.

You lack of sleep for dom boredom? Yeah absolutely. So unless you know we can do something that address as all those things, there's a line from a review paper. This review paper came up two thousand and eleven s by research in the clean, and it's the best reviews paper i've ever read.

I was called biologies response to dating, the empathy for weight regain, and basically went through all the mechanisms of these ditties that happened during fat loss diets and how biologies responses to try to drive you back to your your previous and i'm going to butcher the quote. But at the end of the study, he said basically the bodies systems are comprehensive, redundant and well focused on restoring depleted energy reserves. And any attempt or any kind of strategy for weight loss that doesn't attempt to address a broad spectrum of these things is going to fail.

And so that's why when people say we will just do low car, we won't be hungry. But yeah, people don't just eat because they're hungry. So I think really like trying to get outside the boxing and think about these things.

And especially when you read some of the little tried I recently read A A systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers, which I thought was really interesting um so they took people who had lost a significant about the body way and kept off I think IT was three years and IT actually asked me questions and try to identify commonalities. And there were some things that I expected like cognitive restraint, soft monitoring, you know, exercise. And then one of the things they said that I felt really fascinating was pretty ubiquitous between people. They said I had to develop a new identity.

So are you from me with Ethan superi? No, so eaten is an actor. He's been like, remember the titans and american history? X.

I, certainly on american history. Ax.

yeah. So he was he was very large. Like he was like five hundred and fifty pounds. And now he is like to thirty. And jack.

he was five hundred .

and fifty pounds and he has IT when ever he puts up post on his instagram of him training, it'll say, I killed my clone today.

And I asked him, like, is this what you're talking about, like creating a new identity? And he said, this is exactly what i'm talking about, because I had to kill who I was, because there was no way I was going to be able to make long term changes if I just didn't become a new person because this I mean an add s talk about this right? Like um people who are alcoholic, they had to get new friends.

They had to hang out of different places because their entire life had been set up around this lifestyle le for alcohol. And I would actually argue that eating disorders or disorder, eating patterns is much harder to break than other forms of addiction. And see about food addiction, well, in some ways, Billy mia and and racks, I are still addictions.

You can't stop eating like you're alcohol. You can abstain from alcohol. If you become addicted to, say, cocaine, you can abstain from that.

You can never abstain from food. And so now imagine turning a gambling. Well, you're gone to play this slot you know couple times today but no more like that's that's really chAllenging. So um yeah I just like all this stuff is so important to be comprehensive with how we treat these things. These are .

incredibly important points. And to my ology, I don't think anyone has really described IT in coast of way, the way that you're doing here. So important for people understand this because obviously is a neuroscientist.

I think, you know, the nervous system is creating our thoughts. Our thoughts are, and feelings are related psychology. And therefore, of course, our physiology, our psychology are one in the same by directional.

Now there's nowaday. There's a lot of interest in brain. Body in particular got bring access, and we can talk about that.

But I I really appreciate that you're spelling out how there are these different variables. Each one can account for a number of different things. Exercise clearly has a remarkably post defect, both during the exercise in terms of color burn, overall health and biomarkers. And this is wonderful to learn that you can increase the sensitivity to society signals.

I think that makes at least my mind places very high on the list of things that people should absolutely do that there are other factors too um and the identity peace is fascinating um IT reminds to me also you a stroke reminds me also David gargan who is no he talks about his former very overweight self almost as if he was a different person and he uses language that i'm not going to use here but know I met David no David a bit and he's every bit as intense and driven is and remarkable human being as he appears to be online he is that guy but he does seem like he had to more less kill off a former version of himself and and continues to do that every day. And I think what you're point about the others fellow who did um does does IT through a similar process. I the word today seems to really matter.

It's not like you defeat this former version of yourself and then that person is buried and gone. You said, you know, I killed my clone today and that's the way that David talks about IT also. So this is a daily process and I think um this is not just a small detail in time together, all these things. I think that what you are describing is is fundamental because we can pull on each one of these variables and talk about each one of them. But the end the day we go, he of whole as as an individual, sorry, you are about to say good.

actually know my my favorite topics, which is know why do we have such a hard time with losing weight, but also keeping IT off because of obese people. Six out of every seven obese people will lose a significant amount body weight their life. So why do we solve the obesity problem? They don't keep IT off.

Why don't they keep IT off? When you look at the research, basically what I suggest is because people think about, I am going to do a diet and going to lose this weight and they do not give any thought to what happens afterwards, right? It's like think about if you have some kind of coronary disease like a die bec, right? You can't just take instant once and that's IT, right? You're got to take IT continuously, otherwise you're going to have problems if you do a diet and you lose thirty pounds, fantastic.

But if you then just go back to all your old habits, you're going to go back to where you are, if not more. You you can create a new version of yourself while dragon your old habits and behaviors behind you. So what i'll tell people is because people say, what i'm doing a cardio diet or i'm doing this diet or that diet, and you'll say, that's fine.

Do you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life? And if the answers, yes, you if you really believe that, that's going to be simple for you. And plenty people low carbon fasting, what whatever they say felt easy. You know, I could do this river. great.

What if you're going to lose weight? You have to invoke some form of restriction, whether IT is a nutrient restriction like low cb, low fat, a time restriction, intermet fasting, any form of time, restrictive ating, or calling restriction tracking macros, whatever. So you can, you get to pick the form of restriction.

So pick the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive to you as an individual, and also do not assume that you will feel the same for everybody else. Because I made this mistake. Where is like, I, I track things.

So I allow myself to eat a variety of foods. I love myself to eat some fun foods, but I track everything, and i'm able to modify my body composition and be in good health. Doing that now doesn't feel hard for me. Part of this I just been doing IT for so long, but other people that's very stressed, they don't want to, they said wide, rather just not eat for you know, sixteen hours.

If that feels easy for them do that because the one thing that there is a couple of men analysis on popular diets and basically what they showed was they're all equally terrible for for long term weight loss, but when they stratified them by adherents, and none of them were Better for adherents overall, but when they stratified people just according from lowest to hearing to best adherents, who is a linux effect on weight loss? So really, what IT says is, what is the diet that's gonna easiest for you to adhere to in the long term? And you should probably do that.

And people, again, this is where I step back and take the ten thousand foot view. Some will say, why want to do key to gently? Because I wanted increase my fat oxinate, and I want to do this.

And they're talking about all of these mechanisms and everything. And that's great. Can you do IT for the rust to your life, right? Is this going to be something sustainable for you? And if the answer is no, you probably need to rethink what your approach .

is going to be. Incredibly important message, basically that but high light. If there was A A version of highlighter, bold face and underline in in the podcast space, I I would highlight ball face and underline what you just said.

And for those of you that heard IT, listen to IT twice and then go forward because it's absolutely key. I think IT also explains a lot of the so called controversy that exists out there. I think IT also crosses over with the placebo effect. I almost want to say um pick the the nutrition plan that you think you can stick to for for a long period time, ideally forever and pick your placebo too because there there is a lot of placebo woven in teach and every one of these things intervention, fasting a kito, probably even vegan versus on nov s kind.

They even talk about the diet honeymoon period. We're like you go into a you're all fired up about IT and like you're varied hear IT and then what happens with every single diet without exception and research studies is once you get past a few months and here and just starts waiting.

didn't go on here. We are really talking about a form of relationship. You know, i'm not saying that to be tony and cheek.

actually. We had a guest early on in the podcast doctor called dirt. He's a psychiatrist and about engineer at stanford, tremendously successful last year, award winner at sea.

And he talked about love as a sort of a an interesting aspect of our psychology, where it's a story that you cocreate with somebody, but that you live into the future of that story when you pair up with somebody that we use, refer to romantic love, that there's the sort of mutual agreement to create this, this idea that you're going to live into. So it's not just about how you feel in the moment, it's also that you project into the future quite a lot. I'm seeing a lot of parallels with a highly functional and effective diet and and I love IT. I'm not setting this parallel artificially. I'm setting up because I think that ultimately IT was down to what you said earlier, which is that the brain in our decisions about what we are going to stick to our tremendously .

powerful I think one thing I will say is I keep in mind um when you look at the research state of the made analysis on a time structure, eating verses none when calories are equated doesn't seem to be a difference in weight loss, fat loss and most biomarkers s health. Same thing for low car versus low fat, few quake calories and protein.

There was a milanese system by Kevin hall back in two thousand and seventeen where they looked at the, and again, actual loss of body fat. And another important point was, I think there was twenty two studies in this, but all of them provided food to the participants, right? That's important because that makes ensures that the current screen much higher in those studies. Where is like various free living studies?

Sometimes you can see funky results. People are sneaking food or or they're just not really it's very eating the way that the study would ideally have .

them unless unless the person is getting like continuous support, like studies where they have a dietitian k to people like every week ten to actually have pretty good appearance. But I mean, that's expensive to have done a study again, like what limit studies, money, money and money, right? But the low car of a slow fat and protein colors are created basically no difference in fat loss.

Now some people get upset about this, but it's like, what to me, that's like this is great because you get to pick the tool you want. The one tool IT doesn't seem to be that much Better than another. So pick the one that works for you, right? Whatever ever you've ttl pull, you've got ta bunch of different options.

You mentioned picking something you can stick to for a period of time. Is there ever a case for someone saying, look, I like to eat low carb or even kito for six month and switch to a more standard on of war chloric maintenance typed diet and then switch back? Is there any downside to doing that for sake of health or or weight loss over time, or weight over time?

Because I realized not everyone is trying to lose weight, I definitely want to talk about, at some point how to eat to maintain weight because I think there are a significant fraction people out there who are trying to do that. There anything um is there any downside to being a doubler know kito for a few months and then i'm award for a few months. I said A I think .

that's actually a great thing, especially to like maybe fine, what you feel is easiest for you, right? Um but in terms of like as a strategy, I mean, I guess you know some people this might get into dopy, but like oh, change and get something new and like you know you feel .

a bit more positive model and exactly.

So I don't think it's how I would usually set things up initially for somebody. But if somebody said, hey, I just like to have some variety and changed IT up as long as they're still like, you know, their behaviors in the doing portion control or whatever IT is and they were able to sustain a calorie deficit or you know depending one of their goal is I don't think there's really any downside to IT.

I do think the one thing to keep in mind is when you look at like going between extremes, so like low fat to low carb or or by savers a, there can be in that transition period a little bit of weird for a lack of Better term. Like for example, if you been on a key ogen ic diet and all the time you move to like a higher cb diet, you will be like basically instant resistant for just a short period of time. Now is that going to cause in the health problems?

Probably not in the long term, especially if you are still controlling calories. But just because your body has kind of like up regulated, these systems dealing moto mostly with fat and glucose production rather than glue cose metabolism. So now if you start taking glucose or carbon hard back in life, is that we give someone in or glue hose tolerance test after they're on kito. The do pretty terribly at IT, but that doesn't last at all about how long few weeks.

I think that's so important for people. No, because I have a feeling during those first few weeks are the period of time when a lot of people go running back to what they were doing previously, which is not to say that they shouldn't. But i've certainly done that.

I i've tried very low carbo hydra diet, and I would have assumed, and now I know i'm completely wrong, but I assumed that I was so carbo hydrates starved for so long, that my instant sensitivity, which is a good thing, by the way, folks would have gone through the roof, and I would be able to just punch up every bit of blue coast that I would have injured ted through cover hydrate. So I didn't eat, switch over, and I felt like a pretty terrible brain fog. I even got some jitters.

And I thought, what is this? My blood sugar was low before. now. My blood sugar should be in more moderate territory. But based on what you just said, i'd up regulated the enzymes and systems in the body for fat metabolite on the kedo diet and then switching over there is a basically ramping up of of the the Marcus involved in presuming like all transition period.

You think about like if you haven't weight train before and you start wait train and you to feel pretty terrible, right, like you're going to be sore and stuff and all that kind of stuff. But I will say you aren't necessarily wrong in what you said about being more insulin sensitive because IT depends on how you measure insulin sensitivity. So if you measure with something like um you fasting bug blue cose or fasting insulin or even homer I R those tend to be pretty good on low carb. But if you do at all glue cos tolerance test IT tends to be pretty bad.

And so IT depends on your specific measure, right? So I think that you the idea that key to makes you you know glue cose and tolerant or insula resistance, I think again, it's just a transition period and i'm not too worried about IT, but there is something important to keep in mind and want the reasons like is a little to transition out of kito. Typically if like i'm working with them or one of our coaches are working with them, what kind of instructing to do IT like slowly and kind of systematically over like a forty eight period that way, hopefully you know they're not having that period of two weeks with the like, man, why do I feel feels so terrible?

Very important point. I want to go to the other end, literally and figuratively, and talk about good health. Because up until now, and certainly .

would you do with that.

And certainly in the last few minutes, we've been talking a lot about sort of top down processes, the brain, the psychology, placable effects. But the very real aspects of those, not that I can imagine two thousand calories as two thousand calories, and somehow changed the law of dynamic, can do that. But we've been sort of top down and integrating a lot of different ideas into weight loss maintenance and weight gain.

But god health, least, the more popular studies on gut health have blown a lot of things out of the water. For instance, this idea that you could take obese mice and literally give them fecal transplants from lean mice. And yes, that sounds like what that sounds like, uh, fecal transplants definitely um inserted through the same end in which IT comes out and I point that out because a lot of people who asked me, you know, I was kind of scary to me.

I thought, yes, this is not about interesting fees. This is they they literally do a transplant of his from lean mice into obese mice and the obesity skep lean. And yes, this has been done in humans, limited number studies and observed some pretty impressive effects on weight loss that I have to assume could be related to policy both.

Effet, they might have told these obese people. He, look, you're gonna leaned through this equal transplant from lean people, but more likely IT had some effect on their core physiology. I don't know which aspects, although I can speculate which ones.

And they became leaner, they lost weight. And that is in some sense, macula when, especially given the important role of psychology and exercise and society signals because i'm going to assume that they controlled for a number of those other variables. Although no study is perfect, what are your thoughts about that? Health as IT relates to metabolism, energy utilization and baLance?

So the first, I will say, is not a good health expert, but I will, I feel relatively comfortable talking about IT based on conversations that i've had with people who are experts, one being Susan dev koa, who know her well, SHE sort of a phenomenon.

This area, from what I am SHE, was actually .

doing her masters when I was to P. H. D. In lamon's lab. So he was my lab, tes.

And you know, I see all the thing to say is even got health experts. And suzann, i'll tell you this, I know talk to me in twenty years. We just know so little.

I think that's an overall thing that people don't understand is the scientific consensus moves very, very slow and probably for good reason because if we just flipped our scientific consensus based on one study, I mean, you IT would be a mess, right? So it's going to take time before you really understand the implications of the gut and what that means. So when IT comes to weight loss, there probably is a role in there. I mean, we ve seen that there's something going on now, whether that is IT, something where a got back microbial makeup that's more ops resistant, uh, perhaps IT extracts less calories out of the food due, right? Uh, or perhaps it's elevating B M R, although I think that's probably somewhat unlikely.

Do you think I could impact the way to tidy signals? So mean, back to the brain again.

So we know that those are link in the the gut brain access. And so my suspicion is that IT probably is working via appetite regulation. So that I mean if we look at if we look at the most effective um obesity treatments out there, which is like sim glue tide um I mean you consistently see know fifteen percent on average loss of body way which is massive and people keep IT off that is A G L P one memetic which is a good horn and IT basically just as a very, very powerful appetite of present. Well.

I guess i'm interrupting, but holly with a purpose. But there's this really interesting study, and it's in mice, admittedly, but publishing IT neuroscience journal recently and the basically to take away is that, like so many things in neuroscience, in the G, L, P, one works in two parallel pathways in the brain that seems to impact neurons in the pathway is the control society. So exactly what you're saying.

And in the gut IT seems to create a um the inactivation of the meccano sensors in the gut. So the perception is that the god is full even or full. Lr, I should say not full, because I think people take some good, I don't feel bloated, and that I don't know what they might.

But that one feels as if they are got is actually fuller, because these mechanical sensors that sent stretch are sending signals to the brain. Oh, like I actually have some food. I'm not empty down there right? Um anyway, I tickled by this result mostly because every time I hear about A A drugger or a molecule having effect, we think IT has an infected one location.

But it's kind of interesting that especially for something like appetite regulation, that I would be impacting body in brain in parallel. Anyway, forgive me to tell I am. It's really excited about this. And here you are telling an neuroscientists me that a lot perhaps circles back to these brain mechanisms of society.

I mean, I think that in especially looking at the research on left in, you know we used to think, okay, metabolism is mostly like liver based and then know there's there's no metabolize, the atop site and skull muscle, but none of the stuff exist in isolation. There's so much cross talk between these pathways and that you know when we get in into mechanisms, the one of things I love mechanisms, but one of things I tell people is keep in mind that when you're dealing with an outcome, right? So like when I say outcome based, we're talking about physical outcomes like a weight loss, fought loss, changes in blood markers, whatever, though that is the summation of thousands of different mechanisms.

So sure, sometimes you can affect A A mechanistic pathway and you get kind of straight on the line outcome, but not always whatever you make a treatment or you know kind of anything into the system is like throwing a pebble in the lake, right? IT creates ripples and we don't always know what those are onna be right. Um and that's why I mean we've seen you know certain drugs well IT works on this pathway and then they lost off all the side effects and you go well, how would you create that many side effects is because nothing for the most part, they don't just work in one place.

There's multitude of places that works. Um and to your point about um to be glue tide and the effects on mechanical sensors, it's probably why a lot of people report actually I like no low grade nosie when they're using some a glue tide because of that. Because if you're know that feeling is usually not like a real comfortable feeling, but I mean, will get you not eat.

So I think there's absolutely likely a connection, but we haven't fully elucidate how that works. And we think about how complicated the gun is. I think I heard something like there's more there's more cells in our microbiome by far than there are in our body.

So we're actually more in terms of a cell per cl level. We're actually more bacteria than we are. You Carry out.

right there's a justice anomie who is one of the world experts on micro. He's in the lab upstairs for my and ford and um he is this idea is just an idea that because we are indeed more bacteria than we are selling, the question is who's the host and who's the passenger you like maybe we are just maybe they're exploiting us to take them around and interact because they interact and grow on one another. And so this idea, this frees people.

Lex freeman will love this, that maybe human beings are just actually the vehicles for the microbial, not the other way around. Anyway, kind of a scary thought. Do you do anything specifically to support your gut microbial? Are you probiotic guy, a fermented foods guy, a fiber guy?

So again, i'm go straight down the line from one of her, from Susann other experts. So if you want to improve good health, one of the biggest levers, the three biggest levers you can pull is not eating too many calories, exercising there is, there is a connection between exercises in the gut and fired. So we IT is of the things we know, dye ti fiber.

S seems to positive impact the gut, because IT is, say, what's called a primitive tic. So you're got microbiota can take especially soluble fiber, although there is actually some evidence, at least in mice, that they IT might be able to use some insight able fiber as well. I think Susan was doing a study looking at hemi clios and actually seeing that some like specific forms of microbial a flourish with hemi us suggesting that they may actually be getting some kind of fuel out of IT, which is really interesting.

Begin in my soul, you just huge cavy out so your gut microbiome can produce these short chain fatty acids from by fermenting, uh this this the soluble fiber. And there is quite a bit of evidence that these volatile fatty assets, which can be then actually reabsorb into the liver, that they have some positive effects. Like for example, builder ate when we've done builder ate supplementation, they they ve also seen positive effects on insulin sensitivity.

So what we seem to understand is that more diversity seems to be Better. Fiber seems to be positive. Prime tics seem to work much Better than probiotic supplemented prebiotics.

yes. So the problem with most of the probiotics is they're typically not concentrated enough to actually colonies. And even if you do colonize, what happens is I god to say you colonize um some microbiota that you didn't really have much of. If you're not fueling IT with the appropriate fiber, it's not gonna stay anyway because it's essentially gona starve. So the research seems to really clearly suggest that eating in a fiber, at which is, again, a prebiotic, that is a Better way to get healthier gut per say, than probiotic.

what fiber sources do you use? And I think I there is a huge array of choices out there, but people will want to have some ideas as to how they could perhaps mimic what you're doing.

Yeah and I was to say diversity, right? So you so there's there's various evidence from very different fiber sources, fruits, vegetable les, obviously um we know grains, some whole grains um some serials um and in various other sources. So this is one of the things we don't really have a good idea.

If you know this, one source of fiber is Better than another source of fiber. We just know that fiber overall pretty good. And one thing i'll tell people is like if you want a longevity hack, I mean, fiber is kind of a longevity hack.

If you look at some of these cohort studies, there was actually a recent really large meet analysis of overall a million subjects um and basically what IT showed was that for every ten gram increase in fiber. There is a ten percent reduction in the risk of mortality, and that extended also two cardio as disease and cancer. So one of things i'll tell people when they get like really into you know what are you fasting or know all things say that's great, that's great. Are you eating like over fifty sixty grams of fibre a day?

And because it's specialized fifty sixty grams, so if I already like a like, let's just say quarter plate of brockley and the broccoli is in stack to the ceiling, the broccoli is just reasonable stacked on their appropriately. How many grams of fiber is that? If it's like two cups of brockley is a yes.

So if you like two grams of broccoli per, say, would probably like five, six grams of fiber.

And I need to get how much per day?

Well, so I would typically what the recommended doses is fifteen grams per thousand calories and take because if you're eating low calories, it's it's difficult to get in a fibre. But based on and again, these are cohorts studies. So but you can't do twenty or long random zed human control trials.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really appear to be a top end, at least for the benefits of fire. That IT probably boils down to like how much you can tolerate without feeling uncomfortable, right? right? Because if you're eating like a ton of fiber, I mean, at at some point, it's not going .

to be very comfortable. Exercise becomes uncomfortable .

or hazards yeah and I see kind of touching on that because I think IT is important. A lot of people have kind of in the corner. Our communities said, well, you don't need fiber.

You poop just fine without IT. And I always say, well, pooping is the last reason to have fiber like, yes, IT does help. IT does seem to make elimination easier.

And you can you do do IT more frequently as bulk to stool, but that's not why you should need fiber. Why should fiber is because of the effects of mortality? And you know some of the push back will be, well, this is healthy user bias. And what i'll say is meaning .

healthy people do this and .

therefore more fired. And therefore, and I mean, there's something to that. But if I was just healthy user by us, typically you would see some disagreement between the studies and a great example that is like red meat. So not every study shows red meat has an associated with cancer mortality ality there.

There's differences depending on the population use, depending on like what they defind as high red meat, low red meat, whether it's process and process but I have not found a study on fiber and kind of ask disease and cancer and mortality or IT did not show improvements from higher fier. So to me that suggests that that that effect is real. Um and so again, you know as much fiber as you can get in comfortable ly, I would try to do IT because that seems to have some really powerful facts and is good for the got microbial.

The other thing that may be a consideration for the microbiome is there is some evidence that saturated fat may not be great for the microbiome, that IT um reduces the um the prevalence of some some of the more positive of bacteria. And that appears to be not so much from the saturated fat itself, but from the bile in products that combine with saturated fat seems to have a negative effect on some of these more healthy reforms of got microbiome. But again, this is really difficult because we don't even know necessarily yet which species of gut microbial a or positive or negative.

And that's this kids into some of these studies where they may call out this BIOS is sounds scary, but this BIOS is just means that the gut changed. IT doesn't I mean, IT doesn't tell you anything quality taking about whether the change was bad or good. And so these are just things I think we need to keep in mind.

We talk about this stuff. This stuff is still very much in its infancy. But in terms of the big little leavers, I mean, it's pretty much fits with what we know about healthy lifestyle. Exercise, don't need too much, consume a good amount of fiber from diverse ces.

Fantastic, fantastic. Because fits with what I like to think of this kind of the center of mass of evidence, right? And i'm trying to get some window into what your processes around selection of studies and no one study being holy. But when you look at, as you mentioned, all the studies on fire having A A positive effect to some degree, another, it's pretty hard to refuse that there isn't something really interesting there.

I want think i'll tell people like you know one study, I mean, sometimes i'll change my opinion based on a single study when is really well done and very powerful. But usually like one, studies just can move me just a little bit right. Then maybe if everyone comes move me a little bit more right and they like very slowly, i'm going to get some I mean, my experience with A L D L clustering.

This somewhat changed my mind on a while back when I was Younger, like circle two thousand and five getting into grad school. Kind of the prevAiling thought was, well, it's thought so much the ldl it's the ratio of ldl to hdl. That's what matters. And probably about five years ago, and I was I was pretty strong about that opinion. And in five years ago, looking at these medlin renavigate studies, kind of when I can hold this position anymore.

what's your what is your revised position on L, D, L?

So if you look at the research, hdl is important because it's a marker of metal baltic health. If you have high hdl, IT suggest that you are medium tics, quite healthy. You very rarely will you have high hdl.

And like high carp, which is inflammatory marker, or this regulated blow blue coast, almost exclusively people who have high hdl who have good bio markers of medal. But if you take drugs that raise hdl, IT doesn't reduce your a call of asking disease in in medalia animation studies, which medalia ananias ation basically uses natural round ization. So some people are, in the case of H D L, naturally higher secretory or naturally lower secretary of H D L.

And we talked about how you can't really do at twenty year human analyzed control trial. And when you're trying to examine something like heart disease, I mean, that is a lifetime exposure issue. It's very unlikely that you're going to pick out differences between treatments and two years or even five years.

I mean, you people don't develop typically don't develop heart disease until there and there you know fifty sixties and seventies women dealing reanimation allows is to say, OK, we have these people who naturally secrete more or less, so we can stratify those and look at what is the risk. So if you look at people who are low, create deal versus high secrets of H D L, with holding some of the other key variables consistent, like l dio, you don't seem effect of heart disease really. Of L D L, of H D L got IT.

no. But when you look at L D L and you look at the lifetime exposure to L D L, IT is like a linux effect on heart disease. And we know that it's exceed not so much ldl but it's more apple April protein b, but that tends to track with L D L just in general. And if you look at the mechanism, when we know that ldl can penetrate the anthidium um so there's the mechanism is present.

If we look at the epidemiology IT supports that is an independent this factor and again, these midale retired zone studies where we can kind of look at people's exposure over a lifetime and then we see that Linda kind of dose dependent effect, to me, that was convincing enough to change my mind on that particular topic. And then if you look at like some of the framingham data, look at high, if you like, stratify, like high hdl versus low hdl, both groups looking at high L D L and low L D L. So if you have high H D L LOL deal, you will still be lower risk factor than somebody is high hdl and high ald al, right?

So the racial does matter.

The racial does matter. Same thing with information. If you look at people who are low inflation tion, low l dial, they'll have a lower rist than people who are low information, high aldea.

So again, that was kind of sufficient for me to change my mind. But he took IT was like, not just one study came out. I was okay. Then there was another study and then another study and another study. And at the certain point I go, okay, well, now I either have to change my mind or i'm basically just gonna be cognitive ly distant and say, nope, I don't believe all that. And so I think that's one of the things to keep in mind. People will say are you're saying this is a bad study, very rarely why I call something a bad study because data is just data, but the issue becomes how IT is presented and how broadly is applied in the mainstream media or by you know, people on fit, the influencers and what i'll do is try to step in and say, okay, let's consider X, Y and z as well and then it's not a bad study, but let just be careful about how broadly we imply the interpretation yeah well.

and I think you are in a very unique and important position to be able to place things into the proper context because of this reality Better, where holistic view of how the psychology placeor effects also core for core physiology relate to one another and so on. In fact, I think that you're training as about chemist and then training as a um in nutrition with somebody who don lemon, who was pushing you to focus on outcomes.

I think that's a beautiful um capture of the the continual at which one can look at something because for those who you don't know out there, you know a lot of laboratory studies on mice and human instance in the room mobile chemistry or in metro study you'll see a change in some molecule can be quite dramatic and then the assumption that is, oh, you just take you take the drug that will change that molecule in a particular direction and then you'll get the effect you wanted at the whole organism level. The person will lose weight, the person will gain muscle. The animal will um not uh have time is IT that but IT just doesn't work that way because of the redundancy and this interplay.

Well, a great example of that is so my research was actually in rows. All my all my studies on protein metabolic and loosen in particularly is what we in well, we know if you give Lucy the increases most of person synthesis, but we also know if you supplement with Lucy, people don't get more muscular.

I was going to do a supplement.

see. And so how is that possible? What muscle building is not just protein synthesis, also the baLance between syntheses and degradation.

so. Um degradation just happens to be very, very difficult measure. But a great example. And again, one of the cool things about my P H D was actually changed the way I ate um which I think is interesting. So before I had been like eight, eight, eight miles day every two hours, tried to kill a day. Yeah, when I do that .

thirty grams of protein for me.

a mino drip going in. Was the idea right? Like, just have an iv hooked up of mino essence.

Not really hope, not really.

But that that was kind of the concept. But the first study I did, we basically looked at, okay, a lot of people had measured the amplico of protein sentences in response to a meal. We wanted to see, how long does this last and where does IT peak, right? And so my thought was okay.

Well, would probably track with plasma cy you give for those are not Lucy is the middle acid that is almost exclusively responsible for increasing muscle protein 3 thesis when you eat protein。 So it's one of the branch chemo assets. So we wanted to see, okay, how long this effect last.

So we fed these animals away protein. And again, I thought, okay, we will have a long place. Blueing stays up. That would be how long proteins of the city stays up. And so we got the proteins to this data back.

And IT was peaked at ninety minutes, are sorry, peach, from forty five to ninety minutes, and then was back down the basin one hundred ninety minutes. And so when I want to do the plans ballots in analysis, my shock was at three hours, pls ballots in was still play toed out. And okay, well, when I look at the initiation factors, that will show me something.

So for those not familiar, this is part of the in tour signal pathway. So one of the two of the targets of in tour, when IT stimulating cyn stimulates in tour, two of the targets, m tour, are A H protein compound called four E B P one. And then another one is called a revisable protein, S X K.

So I don't want to get into the specifics about IT because it's kind of be on the scope. But basically, when these things are fossor related by in tour ah IT increases a the rate of translation initiation which translation initiation is basically the process of the river zone hopping on to the mra and then starting protein services. So I was looking at the false relation for a bp one in rp as six.

And I, okay, well, i'll probably see these things come down at at three hours, still platos. And so then I was like, what is what's gone on here? I can actually kept rerunning the data and rerunning the data and rerunning the data.

And i'll never forget I wanted to lamon's office and this is like you six months after we've done this study because this analyst takes time. And like, so where are we with the duration study as so why I just got to run the plasma ata again because it's not right. And he's like, well, why isn't IT not right? And I saw what just doesn't make any sense, you know and I kind of went through, he's like, well, like described to me your technique.

Like, how are you doing this? I described IT. So what? How's your standard air? I told him what the numbers where he said, that sounds like a good data. He said, that sounds like you are trying to get the data to fit your conclusion, and you need to change your conclusion to fit the data. And that statement.

this is why we do phds. This is why you need an visor.

This is why i'm so skeptical of everything, because I have had so many of my ideas crushed by my own data, right? So we actually ended up this this um this kind of effect of this phenomenon is called muscle protein synthetic refractory period. So basically like once you triggered the system kind of runs for the fine period of time and then that takes time to essentially like reset for a lack of a Better term.

It's also been referred to as the muscle full effect. But so I looked at that and said, why am I eating every two hours then? And there was even a study out of wolf lab, like back in ninety nine, I think, where they refused to essential mental assets for six hours, protein synthesis, went up peat at sixty minutes, came back down one hundred and twenty and never went back up again.

Maybe i'm being naive, but I would have thought that if protein 3 thesis goes up and then comes back down， that eating more often would be exactly the thing you would want to do if your goal was to get increased protein in thesis because you've be pinning the .

system periodical. The problem is the plastic new asset is still elevate.

So it's essentially like eating the whole way through from .

the perspective of Lucy, from the cells. So that was one of those things where I said, you know what I mean, going to eat less often because like if i'm eating in three hours later, i've still got no kept out plastic to assets, know. And we looked all kinds of stuff like we looked at interest, Lucy, just to make sure that that wasn't falling off IT.

Wasn't we look at all the plant essential to assets because you we were thinking, well, maybe protein synthesis is, you know sucking some of these asses out of the plasma and they're dropping and that's causing IT to kind of short circuit the system. That wasn't the case, just essentially what the evidence suggests. I think where the only wants to show this so far.

So i'm not ready to say that this is a real effect because I hold out the idea that data effects do exist and you can't be totally sure. But we saw a an increase in amp kinds kind of around this mark where put inside this started falling off. And we also saw a decrease in intro or ATP.

And protein in thesis is an ATP dependent process. And so what we think might be happening is your your consuming protein and you're up for upe increasing muscle protein. And in a certain point, it's has enough effect on your energy metabolic in yourself ells, that kind of short out short circuit IT, but that kind of cuts IT off, right?

So again, we're the only ones to show that, that i'm aware of. So and that was again in rats. So I I always talk about data like those day i'm willing to bet my my toe on, my foot on, my leg on, in my life on i'd probably barely bet the end of my little toe on that one.

I'm not quite sure, but it's interesting. So that's a great example of okay, we're looking at this mechanism of intor signaling. And if we just looked at that, we'd say, oh, what protein cities is gone to stay elevated for you know past three hours, but that's not what we saw.

So yeah, I think it's again, that's why I really try to you know get people to say, well, it's mechanisms are important, especially if you're seeing an outcome. It's important to identify mechanisms that may explain that. But let's step back from the mechanisms from trying to chase mechanisms, and let's look at like chasing outcomes in terms of what we recommend, the people.

ExcEllent point in terms of chasing outcomes. A number of people and are interested in weight loss or weight maintenance. And several times throughout today's conversation, we've come back to this issue of society signals where the other brain based, body based, or both, not wanting to eat more is a great way to maintain or lose weight because you simply don't want to.

I heard you mentioned earlier that protein and maybe specific types of protein or sources of protein may provide Better safety signals than other micro nutrient. Ens, could you briefly talk about how macro tines, including protein, but also carbo, hydrates, tes and fat impact society? And from the standpoint of somebody who, for instance, would like to could lose a few pounds, right, probably would be happy to gain a little bit of the body mass provided IT was in a particularly location on their body.

That seems to be a thing now directed hypocrisy, if you will, and how much they should focus on protein as a core component of creating this diet. You know, assuming everything else has been done correctly, ly there's going to hit the right number of calories relative to their um their output neat at seta. How should we think about protein? Is this tighty signals and our animal sources of protein indeed more bioavailable that's a tRicky word um for sake of muscle building but also for sake of somebody would just would like to lose body fat, they don't want to lose muscle and they like to bring their weight down a few pounds.

So a lot of things are more yeah a lot things to impact there. Uh of the macro trans protein is definitely the biggest lever that you can pull because even if IT doesn't take a tuna protein to get a lot of the most building benefits, I mean, I think the benefits really started to play to out around one point six grams per kilogram of body weight.

There are some evidence that may be even up to like two point four or two point eight grasper kilo may give like a little bit more benefit. I think IT probably looks something like an asm top in terms of the curve where as you put more into the system, you always get a little bit more. But IT just gets to the point where it's so infanta stanly small benefit. That is, for all intents of purposes, no benefit.

But you mention one point six grams of protein per kilogram of body way. Is that would you consider that a thresh that most people should try .

and achieve daily? I I see very few downsides to hitting that. I mean, I know some people and this is going to get into a separate conversation, but I know people say, oh, I don't want to stimulate in tour because that can make me die early. And I think one of the things to keep in mind is if you look at there's kind of the thought process out there that if you're stimulating him toward the protein is going to make you directly. And first off, we have a very little human outcome date to support that claim.

And the second thing is, if you look at any macur in isolation, I can make a mechanistic argument that is, gna kill you so fat, if you take in fat, and decreases flow dilation, so mean that dilatation is important for heart health in the short term. Cob hyrax stimulate insulin. Insulin know prone flaminian in all these other things.

And so I can make an argument for any single macronutrient be negative for longevity. What I really want, people, this is something that even scientists get wrong. They look at an acute response of something and assume that, that is going to relate to long term comes in singing.

So let's just take exercise, for example. If I. If you didn't know anything about exercise, and I said to you and you, I going to do something that's gonna you, your heart rate go up, your blood pressure go up, your inflammatories markers go up, your reactive oxygen es increase.

You're gonna say it's going to damage your muscles. You're going to say i'm not doing that. That sounds horrible, you know.

But IT does all those things in the short term. But what is the long term effective exercise? You actually get healthier. All those things improve. Now i'm not saying that, you know protein is A A longevity hacker, anything like that.

But what i'm saying is I think some of the arguments out there based on mechanistic this increases in tour, therefore, we don't want to do IT. I think IT is a much more complicated argument than than just that. So there's that.

So protein is the biggest lever. I would shoot for one point six, no grams per kilogram if you can do more. great. There doesn't seem to be really downsides to IT, even like up to very high levels of protein.

House antony, to the study, there was a year long antibiotic control trial, and again, in just one year, but they were looking at all sorts of different biomarkers. And basically even up to like four grams were kilograms of protein. They couldn't really find any negative health outcomes from IT other than people were just associated.

They ended up eating less calories. So protein is a big lever because one IT has a higher thoma effective food. So you getting a little bit more calories burn per day even though it's not a ton because T F is a pretty small percentage view overall energy expenditure, but still a benefit you're getting the effects on the body mass.

It's going to if you're in a diet, it's can help preserve the the body mass. If you're in maintenance, it's going to help build a preserve the body mass. And if you're in the surplus, can help build a preservative body mass, then you get effects on appetite.

So now I won't be careful because appetite effects tend to be very specific to individual foods, right? So you can take a high protein food and make IT not very, not very satiating. So take, for example, like a really tasty protein bar, which back when we were getting into this, there no such thing existed.

Now you have protein bars. I should take pretty on good, but if you want to him, I mean, are you really social? I don't really feel associated.

That's my team, my premium snack.

right right? So why? Because I mean its process refined and are made to be very palatable OK but takes something like a two hundred gram second breast very satiating right? Um and that's why when people say well cover hide rates aren't associating depends on the corp hydrate. I mean, when you look at them like the satire index a plane bake potato is about associating.

As IT gets by a ball of vote meal, I feel pretty good afterward yeah for a while. I mean, I usually you'll eat that along with some other things, but I completely agree you're saying that the form that IT comes in, maybe how much chewing is required, how good IT smells that your psychological and because to me, stake is an incredible meal like I mean, if I had to pick one food that I even though i'm not your carnival for the rest of my life, IT would be that because I think he would get me where I need to go and then i'd probably ly have to speak some fiber you but it's an excEllent point.

I have a question that I don't, anna, take us off track, but i'm hoping IT relate enough that you could answer IT. Now in the context of this, if i'm going to eat, let's say, two grams precured gram body weight protein and i'm not eating multiple meals, maybe i'm meeting two or three meals per day. I'm certainly going to be eating more than the thirty gram threshold that was thrown around for a long time that we can only assimilate ate thirty grams of protein per meal.

So I just not worry about that. Some of IT is going to go to towards the thermal fect of food. Some of that might be converted into glucose of all things with google, ea genesis. So should I worry about the study gram cut off, because they think balancing that the one point six gram per kilogram body weight thread hold with number of meals, with the need to exercise and work and live my life and sleep and set up pretty soon you you, you run into bottle next year where you just can't do IT all or you're spending so much time .

trying to focus on can optimize .

all the things at the same time you'd lose your mind and your body. So what is necessary in terms of frequency in if one is getting enough protein? And then I tied into that question, is there any reality to this idea that if you eat one meal per day, or your fasting, and then you eat you to, say, two hundred grands of protein, a single feeding, that you can assist late more, because you were protein starved. Is that? Is that a real thing?

So most the studies with protein are after a fast, like, because to assess IT, we're stable. I stop. You have to be a steady state.

So um we haven't observed that IT doesn't appear that fasting really kind of allows you to a simulate more protein after a fast. So this gets into a core of one of the things I looked at, my PHD, which is does protein distribution matter? Because most americans get about sixty five to seventy percent of the protein at dinner, right? Breakfast tend to be pretty minimal protein foods.

Do any cultures are actually a big breakfast and not a big lunch and dinner. I know we submit that, that was ideal, will get into sarita timing and will be does anyone actually do that, taking next for breakfast and then taper off the rest of the day? I know german .

culture returns to have a big breakfast, but also tend to be like sugary foods and what not. As far as like theologically, i'm not i'm actually not sure about that. So if you look at that and then you consider that protein doesn't really have a storage mechanism, right? Like people will say, well, lean tissue is a storage mechanism that's like saying a house is a storage facility for wood, you know yeah if you the house is being out of wood, you could get word out of IT, but that's not why you build the house right?

Like you're building the house out of a demand and the same thing for a muscle tissue, um there is a free pool of a meal assets but is very, very small. So when you consider things like fat, which basically has unlimited storage capacity carbo hydrates a real timely large storage capacity, you can store you know four, five programs of carbo hydrates between your liver and muscles and in protein which almost has no storage capacity. Um the idea that okay, you could make up for a low protein at one meal by overconsuming another meal didn't make sense to me.

So one of the studies we did and again in rats we took, uh both groups were getting away protein, so high quality protein, getting the exact amount of calories, exact amount of you, nitrogen, exact same macros, everything was the same. Only difference was one group basically got kind of three meals of similar amounts of protein, like dinner was a little bit bigger because we wanted to keep that someone similar to help people eat. Each meal was going to over the threshold stimulus.

Scl, pretty and synsi, whether the other group I constructed IT. So the first two meals of the day should not stimulate muscle protein. Citizen should be under that threshold.

And then the last meal was about seventy percent of the total daily protein, and so we had to eat those for eleven weeks. I never forget this. This is how I obsessive.

I became about IT is there was one hundred and ten animals in this study, and I made all the diets, and I weighed out exactly every single meal for every single animal for eleven weeks. So I was in there six. I M. I was in there at, you know, noon.

and I was in there six P. M. I love IT, that kind of P, H, D. Student that professors dream a dream student.

The seven, eleven weeks we looked at like an body mass. We looked at body fat, we looked at hind light weights. We didn't really see differences in lindy mass, but what we did see was a difference in hindlip weight.

IT wasn't massive, but there was a significant difference in the size of the muscles of the hindlip of these animals. And so is interesting that there wasn't A A difference in lean body mass. And what we found, at least with the liver, the animals that are eating the like one meal with really high protein actually had big delivers um not like a huge amount and not something that would consider unsafe.

But IT was a statistically significant difference. And so to me at least like i'm trying to explain like no difference in the body mass but at a difference in these hindlee weights, maybe there's some like the westering of you like that feeling a little bit more protein synthesis of the splints nic tissues rather than because you're capped out skeleton also protein synthesis. And we do know that the splints nt tissues are more sensitive or have a greater rate of protein sentences per day, like the rate of skilled most of protein synsi in humans is about like one percent day.

So IT takes like a hundred days to turn over, you know, skull muscle, where's like your entire gut, your entire G I will turn itself over. And like two to three days, right? So very really. And the liver also has a very high amount of proteins that this is, which is one the reasons is actually one of the most mentally active organs. So all that to say, IT has not it's been there's been one human study that showed something similar, and then there's been a couple others that didn't.

And then in the interment fasting studies, which is maybe a good tool to look at compared to continuous feeding IT, one thing I will say is that looks like the sixteen eight element faster style. There's been a couple studies with grant tsl y, and this is something i've changed my mind on as well. Grinds is on a couple studies where they did use the sixteen eight protocol. They had them trained during their feeding window and they had them eat. I think that was at least three protein containing .

meals during this eight out.

These are humans. These are humans. And they saw no difference in lean body mass at the end of the study, compared to people who were eating you like, you know, as many times as they wanted throughout the day.

Now if you look at some of the more extreme forms of fasting, like alternate day fasting, or like twenty two, two or twenty four, there are also some studies where you do, you start to see differences in lean body mass. So my suspicion is. And I am just guessing.

So this is tenuous. My suspicion is probably if you're getting like two to three like high quality protein meals in a day, you're getting the vast majority of the benefits of protein. The most important thing is getting enough total.

And then second, darling trying to get you know at least two or three meals with high quality protein. in. But if you're going like pretty extreme with like alternate day fasting or you know maybe only one meal a day, then I think there may be some effects on the body mass. But again, this can be mitigated as well if you're doing you know hard resistance training. Typically that is the biggest level in terms of the body mass.

Yes, you know protein distribution may make a difference, but i'm trying to put in contacts so people don't feel I thin to go at four meals a day um but again, so what I would say is like some of the more moder forms of time, strict eating appeared to be fined for the body mass. Now the caveat is the following. What are the nice things about animal studies is when you consider if you want to have a high subject number, high level of control in a long duration, it's pretty much your only option, right? So I have in our research review wraps I created a ven diagram which basically is like three you know circles crossing over. One is study duration, one is um level of control and the other one is subject number. And to get all three of those circles to cross over IT almost has to be in animals, right.

So in this in rap is is a news letter or a book.

So it's our monthly research review. So every month we review like five um studies that come out and fitness and nutrition like we'll use the do at least one nutrition, one training in .

one supplement per per month, we will put a link to where you can sign up. This is a sign .

up substance service. So basically when people might look at, like my study, well, why did you see difference in muscle weight, where some of these other studies don't see a difference? I wait out every single meal for eleven weeks.

And keep in mind that eleven weeks in a roden's lifespan is a really long time. That's about an eighth of the tonal life span. So is IT that there's no effect? Or is IT that the effect is relatively small and would take a really long time and very high level of control to see in humans? I don't know.

But I think what I would say relatively confidently is if you're gonna a do like a sixteen, eight internet fasting, you're probably fine especially. And again, what is the goal, right? Like if you are a body builder looking to be the most massive person you possibly can, or europe, a football player, you in some feed that having as much lean body masses as possible is really important for you. Then I would say where you're not really gaining a whole lot by doing some form of time restricted eating.

I think most of the people listening to this do not fall into that category, think most people want to maintain or lose weight. They'd like to perhaps to add a little of coin coach shapes or muscle to specific areas of their body and lose. And I think .

you're Normal forms of time restricted. You you're probably perfectly fine for that, right? And again, if I don't want somebody to think well, I do you know um also the day fasting there's no point to me resistant in training because i'm gonna SE muslim mass no, no, no, no, no no.

You can still build muscle doing that. You just might not build as much muscle as you would if you were eating in a more traditional format. But if that's something that works for you in your goals and especially it's fat loss or control your calories, then again, it's it's about the high archy of what's important, right? So to answer you a question, I do think that timing and frequency matters.

A look not much frequency but distribution more so um so I think the distribution matters, but it's it's a much smaller leaver than just getting enough total protein in. And then as far as like animal versus plant, I used to be in the camp of there's no way somebody can build as much muscle on a plant based diet. And now I think i've come back to you can IT just requires a little bit more planning, and I don't want to say always, but it's very difficult to do without an isolated source of protein so that you're going to help me with an isolated plant source of protein.

It's very difficult to get enough without going over on total calories because you can figure that especially like takes somebody who may be calorically restricted, trying to enough protein from whole intact plant sources. So you've got a few different things working against you. One, the sources of protein your consuming also have cobo hydrant or fat. Um two, it's a less by available form of protein and three is a lower quality of protein in terms of IT has typically less lucene, less branching new assets and less essential new assets.

You answer the question that I almost interrupted you to ask, which was as a boil down to the loosening content. And um that sounds like that is one of the components and that A A lot of the vegan vegetarian sources of excEllent protein, that excEllent protein, vegetarian or vegan source is co packages with calories from cover hydroid into a fat that make IT hard to stay stay under the the color threshold.

Whether stake is i'm not an obviously people might want to avoid that for ethical reasons, but that's a different matter entirely. A stay or a piece of chicken or an eggs, well, you know has a yoke, which is there's fat there but is almost a pure protein fat source. There's no carbon hydroid along for the ride.

So I think what I would say is you can do IT takes little more planning um and you're almost always if you're a vegan especially, you can be Better off like supply with some isolated former protein, a vegan for a protein. Now this work gets in. Two people say, well, what about the limiting of me to acids and those sorts of things? It's a consideration um some of the Better forms of vegan protein in terms of a new acid content or like soy.

Now I can never hear everybody is screaming online about their testoon levels in terms of actual outcomes. And looking at test, there is a recent analysis looking at soy. And I think if it's your only source of protein, then maybe the dosage is high enough to cause some weird effects.

Um but if you just using IT like once or twice a day doesn't seem to have an effect on test astronauts. Gen, so that can be a decent source of protein because IT is a complete protein source. Um IT does have a pity cause of one which pd cause is basically a measure of protein quality based on does not provide enough of all the menu acid so that none are limiting.

And so soy is one of the only vegan source that does that. Interestingly, potato protein isolates actually has a similar essential mental acid content to wait. So isolated potato protein is just really hard to find.

Been to my vegans take note, vegetarians take note because our vegans, rather as way as vegetarian and way is A A very high quality proteins.

high ality product and actually there actually creating way now out of A I think it's I may mischaracterizes, but I believe you're able to produce out like east or something like that amaze that um you know so for vegans now this is a great option because you can have way that's not animal based. That is going to be every bit as good as an animal waste way. So I think that's great.

Getting to the Lucy go back, sorry. So another reason that the using an isolated protein can be helpful is because its mobile available as well. When it's been sleep about when is the protein bound up in the actual plant material.

IT tends to be less by available now cooking can help increase the bioavailable availability because he breaks some of those bonds and what not. But IT still seems to be lower and you don't it's really interesting. There is a recent study where they did a corn White and p blend of protein versus way.

And basically the outcome was thirty grams of which is stimulated protein, said this is to a similar degree but the plastic metal assets and the um plant makes protein still did not get in as highest with way. Now IT may be that that just IT doesn't matter because what you get to a certain level, you get all the benefits. So but I still found IT interesting nonetheless.

They didn't quite get is high. The other thing to consider with the vegan sources of protein is losing content. So one of the studies we did was we looked at weet soy egg and way I trade this, meaning, we equated protein between the groups I to work.

We acted, we equated calories, and we looked at muscle protein synthesis. And I think this was, the meals were fifteen percent of total energy from protein. So like a, like your food guide pyramid level of protein.

Uh, and we saw that in the weed and soy group, they did not increase muscle protein 3 thesis， but the aging way group increased muscle protein synthesis. Now what's really interesting as we went back and we took wheat and added free Lucy to IT to match the Lucy content way, and the protein synthetic response was identical. So again, I don't like to simplify things too much, but Lucy appears to really be driving this ship.

And I ll never forget lamon called into office one day, and he would always do this like thought experiments of, like, he like to think about why something occurs away. IT does dangerous, dangerous territory. yeah. So would say, one day i'll never forgets that lane.

Why do you think the body of all to just since loosing for muscle protein? And of course, I like, I don't know, man, I just work here like I just trying to get my p hd um and he said, think about IT. You would want something that really wasn't extensively metabolite ed by the gotten liver because you would want to shop in the blood in values that reflect what you just ate, make sense. And you would wanted to have passive division across the muscle cell because you want to be concentration dependent, which IT is.

So get into the tissues and selves that need IT most, right?

So you know, not having active transport, but rather pass of transport. So yeah, I thought that that was really interesting the way he broke that down. So few different options for the vegan folks out there.

You can use an isolated sources of protein. And again, like there's going to be good options coming because this plant based way is going to be great option for folks. Um you can add free Lucy to IT to whatever your source approaching is .

just by supplemented losing powder.

Now IT tastes s horrible. Yeah.

I think i've heard that maybe i've even tried IT.

It's completely on polar.

does not dissolve in .

anything ital. IT can be put into capital, yes. So you could take a capture like, for example, if you're eating your Normal meal, you could just take a capture like one gram of Lucy is public going to bump you up, bump you up enough that you're going to be good to go um and then there there's options like um blends, especially with corn.

Corn is actually very high and Lucy as a percentage of its protein, you gotta remember like you go eat corn on the cob and you're getting like two grams of total protein. So I thought that much loosing. But if you isolate out the protein couldn't into a powder.

Well now, you know, when you're getting like eighty ninety percent of the weight is now protein. Korn is actually about twelve percent. Lucy, in terms of the protein.

So a great source of Lucy IT is, like almost Frank, efficient, some other menu assets, but you can blend IT with a few other source approach that you can blend IT with a soy A P and you can create these complimentary blends. They would actually have quite a bit lucene, but also some of the other essential minal access. So there are options out there for plant based folks. And I mean, we have seen people who are plant based, you build impression about some muscle. There's quite a few body dollars.

their plant based. And a lot of the endurance athletes like IT, and even though um when we tell about muscle, we think about muscle building, often performance in in dance sports and also just performance for the typical person who is doing some cardiovascular training, hopefully some resistance training also and just living life. I mean many more people now seems are vegan, or at least avoiding meat, in particular red meat.

I'm not one of those people. I limit the amount and I certainly focus on the quality of what I eat. But I do read me, which brings me to a question about, you know, just generally in terms of food choice.

Know, can we come up with a relatively short summary of the following? Tell me if this is corner or not that most of us should be focused on for sake of health. Health span and life span should be focused on ingesting minimally non process minimum processed foods. You maybe even cooking our own food now I realized that herrick now, but I we would do some of that and really trying to avoid foods that um are highly processed and have lots of sugar. And i'm using this as a segway to get into a question that I really want your answer to. I've been dying to ask you this, which is if a sugar intake is not actually going up um as much as people think that is, why are people getting so much fatter? So what do you think about just a general statement that we should try and eat foods that are low to no minimally to not proceed for about eighty percent of our foods?

Is that a reason it's hard to actually completely on process food because almost everything .

is through some from then we would survive long on without ah on the shelf like like an apple ban anas and old me like ground notes to me as answers and a bunch of others, something there will be minimal. ally. A stake is not really process, although it's cut off the animal, it's so there's a few steps in there. But yeah, that's what that's what I am.

I think everybody kind of gets the gist. I am probably little bit pedantic when I comes to this.

Still, this is good. Actually one of things I appreciate, appreciate about you as something I get teazed a lot by people close to me, which the caveat and the insistence on precision is really important, because, especially with online communications these days, is like a run away train, people will is too easy to misinterpret what you say.

very easy misinterpret.

And the misinterpret tions are often used to leverage whole new ideas about what isn't isn't true most about what is true. So I really appreciate the nuance. And this is what a long form podcast really allows us to do, is is catch every every curve.

So I would one hundred percent agree with what you said, that if you were going to make a broad stroke, that trying to focus on military proceed foods is very important. The one caviar, I would say, is I think it's important. Understand why? Because, oh, wise people can make this weird association that, like, if I eat any meeting, any process food, it's gna kill me.

Or like every time I eat IT, it's like i'm smoking a cigarette. And my health in my long java is declining based on the studies we have. It's mostly about the energy that processed food just gets people to spontaneous ly eat more.

And and Kevin hall showed this and his study that was very, he designs on the most elegant studies in nutrition. He's great. And they basically took people from a mental processed food diet and then gave them access to ultra cess foods.

Very few instructions, just eat to you, feel satisfied and they spontaneity increased their calories and take by five hundred calories a day. I mean, that's that's massive. So there's and we haven't quite figured that out.

You know people say, well, it's sugar IT doesn't appear to be sugar, uh, in terms of just an isolation. What is fats that appear be fat and isolation was the combination of sugar and fat hardly? Was the combination of sugar, fat and sop? hardly.

But there's some kind of like overall magic to the texture and the mouth field and just the overall palatability of stuff, which is always why I say there's like right and wrong ways to these different diets. Like for example, there's a right way to plant based and then there's like what's in some boy's documentaries where they are eating like plant base mac and cheese. And again, I love a good mac and cheese, but like that should not form like that should not be pitched as a healthy diet just because it's plant based, right?

Because I mean, you're eating a highly processed is very powerful and easy to overreach. Same thing for kito. You've now got like key to ice creams and you've got you know kito cookies and all these sorts of things.

I'm like, yeah and if you look at him to actually have more calories than the Normal stuff and i'm like, yeah, this is completely missing the point here. Like your actually just taking yourself, like the whole point of those diets is the reason you tend to lose weight is originally like good luck, you know, ten years ago doing a kito diet, eating processed food, right? Like you just couldn't do IT really.

Now you can. But the problem is it's not gonna work because you're going to be still consuming too many calories because even though it's kito, what are they doing? They're trying to make a more powny able.

They're try to make a Better mouth fuel, which I guess if you're being keetz o for the sake of being keeter, great. But if there's if you have hopes of body composition modification, it's going to a really negatively impact. So yes, I think minimizing the amount of processed food you consume can be important.

Now that being said, IT depends on the individual and their goals. If your goal is to, for example, build muscle or maintained a high body weight for a sport, for example, like an nfl offence of line man or or something of that nature, or if you were you, I worked with an N. B.

A team. They were kind of, I can't disclose anything, but they were looking at drafting a certain player. And you know, like for them, processed food may actually .

be a tool or teenagers, and we all want Young people more. Health fly, I think, developed great habits. But some of them, their chloric nees are so high so that if they were eating what I they're going to dissolve into, they are just waste away.

So I describe this again with a financial example. It's like a budget, right? So if I make a million dollars year, for example, is IT okay for me to buy like a hundred thousand or sports, let's to assume that loans don't exist, right?

Is this okay for me to buy a hundred thousand dollars orts car? If I still able to pay my mortgage and pay my utilities, and like, take care of my responsibility, ie. S the things I should do is IT okay if I do that, if IT like makes me feel good and it's fine.

Yeah, that's fine. right? Like you fits in your budget. If if I, if I make, you know, fifty grand a year, should I be going out and, you know, buying a sports car?

Probably not because i'm not going be able to pay my more games. You know, all these other responsibility ties. So you're your protein, your fiber, your maceo trance easier responsiblities ie. S but those become much easier to hit when you have hire calories.

So if if you're know eating four thousand calories day for whatever goal you have um you're probably to have some left over and like good luck eating four thousand calories from mildly processed foods. You quite Frankly you'll be miserable because you're you're going to have such a gut fill that you're going to feel like you can even move. And so again, now IT becomes okay well, is there's something inherent to that food processing, is there's something you know that we can pick out that we know okay.

Well, this is going to be a negative effect on health, even like body composition stuff aside. And I would say there's not really great evidence of that so far. And a great example of that, a sugar. I mean, I actually just wrote a really long article on my website about why I think sugar was not the root cause of the obesity epidemic. And you kind of mentioned, like sugar intake in the last one years actually .

gone down a bit alcohol and take well, if you look on the whole IT might have gone up a little bit. But know certain certainly in the male sector, gone weight down. Drinking used to be father was a five o'clock people drinking all day, people smoking a lot less. I think it's a real puzzle le. I'd love to know what you household could actually .

be an opposition because nicotine action appetites.

surprises press and also increases focus. The promise that often arrives in a delivery device that can kill you, yes, but nickel itself is a powerful agent. IT also can offset actually cognitive decline, not entirely, but IT makes the brain work Better.

I've got a boy who um doesn't like caffy and he just takes those nickey ine pouches and like basically has one in almost all day because he's here's a very stressful job and is a high performer you know have to be .

careful how you deliver IT but there's a noble prize winning neuroses scientists that will chew vibor six pieces of nick at an hour, which I do not recommend and but when he quit smoking, he just simply function as well. And he was the one who pointed me to literature on offsetting age related cognitive decline, even neuron maintenance. And it's pretty interesting. Well.

it's a pretty, pretty impressive new troops, to be honest. So now the first thing I realized is when the time about consumption data, this is based on actual production, basically, they are assuming that, okay, we're producing this amount of these food so we can assume the consumption to follow that. So it's not a direct measured, but IT has been Darwin in a few different studies.

We know the oil consumption has gone up like that. Yeah, that's one of the the big ones is in this kind of forms. The cracks like the sea dolls are like the root.

But I they are .

going to your house and kick your dog and punch your mom and all kinds of stuff. A and i'm happy to address those. But um so calories have still gone up.

There's some people who claim that they have gone. They've kind of platoon. I think the data seems to suggest the calorie and take is still increasing. And the other thing to keeps in mind is even if it's platov, it's still a high enough level that obesity is probably ly going to continue to increase up to a point world Polly platow .

if colombia platov what about energy output um leaving a side need because that sounds highly individual. I mean people are the people we know are on exercise. There are a lot of folks out .

the done exercise and and energy output has gone down over the years. And and it's very obvious when you look at how people work now compared to even thirty, forty years ago, it's it's much different like me.

And also I learned recently that kids in high school don't take P E class. In many schools, we had to suit up and run and suit up. And if you didn't bring your change of clothes or you didn't wash them, in which case you'd Better off just not wearing them.

Nothing like the smell of a boy's locker room after a weekend. Can still remember IT. And it's not it's not pleasant, but you had to run and do your push PS with everybody else are play bollywood in your in your regular schoolday clothes so that my understanding is that physical education is not part of the basic education any .

longer bit depends on the state. But I I know many states have done away with that just because of budget cuts.

So activities going down, color kit is going up .

may and maybe play towing.

Is that sufficient to explain the obesity epidemic? But what i've seen.

I think it's pretty sufficient. So that might not be that .

big of a mystery after all. No.

I don't think it's a big mystery. I think that um people don't like the concept of energy baLance. And I I think because they insert judgment into IT, which is okay if you're gaining weight over time at a fundamental level, IT means you are eating you're consuming more energy than your expanding people.

Insert the judged, which is you're lazy, you're a sloth, you're whatever IT is. And I think there's a lot of you want that we actually think that I I, I remember talking to somebody was like, why would never hire obese person for a job? Because it's just obviously lazy.

And I just remember going are you is like there are plenty of very, very smart, high achieving people who are obese. Like it's not this is what happens when you just put people in buckets. You know like people are much more complicated than this. Yes, there is. There is some in personal responsibility.

But then when you look through the data and you like take, there was a study done in obeyed women where they found that women who are obese were fifty percent more likely to have had some form of sexual assault, trauma and their past right? Um we know that people from lower income areas are more proud to be obese. Um there's several like people who have a higher a score, I believe, which is kind of measures like traumatic childhood vents.

I believe there there was a study showing the more likely to be obese. So there's yes, IT is an energy imbaLances ced problem. But you know just saying eat less, move more, that's like telling broke people will just earn more money than you spend.

It's technically right, but it's very unhelpful, right? What is more helpful is to describe and implement the habits and behaviors that will allow them to achieve that, right? So kind of, I realized we kind of a track look, but IT circling back to, like sugar, sort of two thousand and five, I believe that sugar was flattening and bad for your health, independent of any other variable.

So independent rise factor. And again, I will be very clear about what independent means. Independent means independent of all of the variables. This thing is bad for your health and border composition.

So on its own, independent of whether or not, for instance, IT in creases.

hunger and appetite right, or color intake right? I was in a graduate school mixer, and one of the professors there was somebody who had done researcher on high foot corn serve and fruit us specifically as well. And he was talking to another professor, and he had done the study in routes where he had fed, like, I think he was, like, six years, seventy percent of calories from fruit tos.

And they saw some really weird things happened and deliver with the novel epa genius and all this kind of stuff in the other professor is saying to him, yeah, it's pretty obvious that hybrid to corn service is, you know, fattening and this professor who had done this research said, yeah, because it's people read and he's like, don't you think there's something inherent to IT and he said, no, I think it's just calories. Be ready to many calories is like we did a proof of concept looking, you know, could we like, try eating seventy percent of daily colors from first to? You actually can't do IT like high for those corn service is only fifty five percent for those.

So if you ate nothing but hyper, those corns rupp, you would still not get to this level that they fed in the study. So that got me kind of like questioning my beliefs about IT. So then I went through and I said, okay, like what's take out the epidemiology? Not that everything biology is useless, but people who eat more sugar are also likely beat more calories. So then I looked for the randomized control trials where they match calories, and very among of sugar. And IT doesn't seem to make a difference, at least from fat loss or fat gain.

But what about health? So ferenc if somebody um and I know somebody like this who love sweets is thin, get some exercise, not a ton. But my concern is that a significant fraction of their calories are coming from these sugar y foods and therefore they're not getting engh fiber, right, maybe protein at sea.

So let's look at emporio logy for a second, and i'll address this more directly. When we look at every biology, people who eat hie amounts of sugar tend to be more obese. They tend to have a worse biological of health.

But people eat fruit. A lot of fruit sugar don't have the same association. So why is that? Well, because fruit has fiber with IT, right.

So I started to kind of believe, based on the data I was looking at, that high sugar intake was not the problem per say. The problem was that high sugar y foods typically are very low and fiber but if you're getting enough fiber, is sugar a problem? So there was a classic study um by sweet in one thousand nine hundred ninety seven.

I think it's still the best studies of this day looking at this. And I know those people say, always done one hundred and ninety seven has the Robins. You I know if it's a good study.

it's a good study. Some times are timeless. In fact, they have greater going .

to go back and undo the discovery of DNA, because that was no sixty years ago, whatever IT is. So they they looked at and eleven hundred calorie diet. So low calorie diet, one group was eating over one hundred ten grams of sugar a day like to curse.

The other group was eating about ten grams of sugar per day, calories, protein cms, fats, all matched, right. And they provided all the meals to these participants, so very tightly controlled. And there was over six weeks, both groups lost the exactly of body fat.

So IT doesn't seem to matter for body composition in terms like sugar pursue. Then they also looked at some biomarkers of health, like blood lips and blood sugar and Better things. Again, there was no real differences.

The only difference was, so older biomarkers improved in both groups. The only real difference was a small difference in L, D, L. So the group eating low sugar had a Better improvement slightly in ldl, but that's probably because they were reading more fiber.

And we know fiber can be obtained. The clutter nowhere. L dio clustering.

So is that I want, I want to Carry on this. Sugar probably doesn't have any like positive health effects. So there is that right? And nutrition is an exchange. If you're eating one thing, you're not eating another thing, right? So I but what I would tell people is focus probably less on sugar, focus more on fiber. So if you're eating thirty, forty, fifty, sixty grams of fiber a day, but your sugars you know eighty, eighty grams, I would not be that worried about IT, especially if you're controlling calories as well.

Um you know what I would be worried about is if you're eating you know just a decent amount of calories and not getting enough fiber in general, right? And even in studies, there are a few more analysis out now looking at ison energetic exchange of different carbon hydrate with sugar about hyrax so fruits and lucas and suse. Now why is this important? Well, again, you know if you're not equate when I say I so energetic, that means equal energy, equal calories.

So basically, when they exchange either so cose or glue cose or fruit dose for other forms of carbo hydrate, do they see differences in these markers of health, like hb a one c fasting, the blue coast blood lipids, and with rare exceptions. And I can't remember all the data input exactly, but the the takeoff is doesn't really seem to make a difference. Now before anybody out there straw mans for argument, I am not advocating for sugar consumption, but I think it's important for people to not create their associations and their minds because one of the things i've observed, especially the fitness industry, is when people feel like they can eat something like it's one thing.

If you say I am choosing not to eat this just because i'm choosing to, but it's a very different thing when you're purposely restricting because you feel like something is bad and this this I mean, you know the human brain is in many ways amazing, in many ways really dumb um so when you purpose sly try to restrict something, what tends to happen is your Moore prone to binge on IT? So people who will try to, well, i'm never gonna at sugar again, or i'm going to try to limit sugar. This isn't the case for everybody, but they have actually shown now in studies.

People who are purposely restricting a specific nutrient, they tend to crave more than neutral. And if they do get exposed to IT, they're more likely to have what's called the distribution reflects, which is basically a binge response because the thinking goes well, this is bad and there's no context on, you know, dosage making the poison. This is just bad in general.

So if I have IT, i've already screwed up. I miss, well, just have as much as I want and I like pinch in adults is comparison. This is that's like, know, getting a flat and going on flashing your other three tires because, you know, you might as well. So I really, I try to come from that perspective of, i've seen so many people struggle with you, maybe not an eating disorder, but disorder to eating patterns because of these kind of associations they have made in their mind and so that's why i'm so pedantic and a sticker about saying, okay, yes, it's a good idea to eat the mainly process food and try to avoid process foods, but not because process foods are bad per say, but what the outcomes to be from a lot of process food consumption, which is over consuming calories and then therefore energy toxicity neglected, contributing to your health .

that seems like IT again returns this the a potential for a positive, negative, neutral behavioral al change and perceptual change of like craving a food all the time that you can have as is terrible, it's a terrible state to be in. And this, I think, is a perfect way, way for something that first brought us together, which was, which was the thing about artificial, sweet tender. And let me, just for the record, be very clear.

I have long in gestion foods with artificial sweeteners. So I throughout graduate school, I didn't have the best habits. They're healthier now than they were back in. But I would drink, you know, a diet coca two per day. I still have the occasional diet coke.

I'm not completely averse to um to drink something that has artificial sweetener um although I do avoid super lose for reasons that maybe I um get into a little bit later. But a lot of the things I consume contain stevia which is not artificial plant but IT is a plant based non Clark tor local latter um and I don't have a problem with that. I became very interesting artificial sweet nes because the animal data i'm pointing to the idea that they may disrupt the got microbiome, then disrupt the got rock robo.

As you pointed, I was a very broad statement. We don't really know the percentage of lacked billis at bilas or whatever whatever sillas illis and there they're all seemed to end in illis um is ideal. And in fact, a lot of these companies that are having people sending their school samples for analysis of the microbiome, I take note we don't really know what a healthy microbiome looks like, but we know what an unhealthy microban ome might look like in its one that doesn't have a lot of diversity.

And there, so I was interested in that. Then there's the recent human study, which I we should definite get into, but I was mostly interested artificial sweeteners for the reason that there is this food conditioning effect. And you see in animals and you see IT in humans, that if you in just um what coffee is a really good example, coffee doesn't actually taste good folks even though I like IT.

But when you taste coffee for the first time, most people think it's bitter and disgusting. Most everybody, like ninety five percent of people say this doesn't takes good one the same thing yeah but people learn to associate the state of being caffeinated, which most people like, in order to just feel Normal. Right, captain, to one of the few drugs we can just just to feel ourselves enough that soon, myself included, really look forward to and enjoy a cup of coffee.

So it's powerful example, in my opinion, of the food conditioning effect. So it's like a pavlovian thing I ve salvation you crave, right? And IT did seem that the study from dana small s lab, which middle was a small no on intended study itself, not very many subjects, shows that if you injured ted artificial sweeteners, along with food that contained glue coast, that you could or maybe even get a heighten glue coast response just from the artificial sweeteners.

After a while, you and I connected over this study on social media. You pointed out that design, the study wasn't superb there. The coconut tion of blue coast, which made a complicated we can go. But the reason I am spouting off all this context is artificial sweeteners are many things.

So i'd like to talk about their effects on blood sugar in the acute sense and according to what we might induce them with, what and how they might be changing blood sugar regulation at the level of brain and our body. And then that would got microbiota, I think, are interesting enough to discuss. And I have changed my view on artificial sweet pers based on what you've taught me. So this is a case where i've completely changed my view, which is that um now I don't I don't have any problem with them whatsoever based on the current data, which is not to say that gulping down a cup force of super s but I feel okay ingesting some stevia and some aspartame and I am not too worried about IT. Well.

so I think kind of stepping back from a broad view. We have to think about again the hierarchy of importance, right? And what are you replace with, right? So there is no situation where IT is not a net positive to take somebody who drink sugar sweeten beverages and have them drink an artificially sweeten verage.

Like in the analyst there was actually recent network men analysis looking at like at markers about a possible um you know hb a one see a bunch of different health markers and when you substitute you know we're non neutral tive sweden since stevia is not artificial. But so when you substitute in N S. For the sugar, sweet and beverages, you see improvements and a lot of different things. Okay, what was really interesting about this network men analysis was they also looked at water substitution in place of sugar, sweet beverages. And the effect wasn't as powerful as these are .

randomized control trials. So artificial sweeten tainting beverages .

are more beneficial. We're Better for atop ity are for improving autopsy. And then in health markers, that was kind of a wash, water and water and not much of sweet beverages performed similar, but they are Better than suger sweeten beverages, obviously. So they then based on a network man analysis is kind of where you can um compare two things that didn't get compared directly.

So there's not many studies comparing in N S versus water directly, but if you have a common comparator, so if you compare a to b and b gets compared to c, you compare a to c based on how the interactive would be buttering IT a little bit. But that's kind of the crux of a network man analysis. So they looked at in N, S, versus water and found that actually in N S was slightly Better for improving at posted nnc, of course.

being non nutritive tive swetenham.

So now again, i'm if you like drinking water and you don't want, i'm not trying to convince anybody to do do that. What that seems to suggest is there is a little bit of an appetite suppressing effect from these artifical sweeteners or done just to sweet ders.

Now this gets a little bit more complicated because if these were people drinking sugar, sweet beverages, maybe they already developed a sweet taste and try to go to water is too much of a jump for them. And so going to having something like an immediate is a little bit Better, like there's a lot ripped up in this. But these are the randomised control trials, which are a little bit more tightly controlled.

But I I tend to default to a little bit more than I do the epidemiology, which ety mio logy is, is so messy because sure, you know, non negative of weed or consumption maybe associated with different things. But there's also a whole another set of lifestyle and habits that are tied up in that. So I tend to hang my hand, look more in the revise control trials.

So understanding that, okay, now, all things being equal, understanding that this is a tool that may help some people. And whenever I post about knowledge of sweaters in the comments, there is always one or two or three people who say, all I did was cut out soda and I drink diet soda instead. I lost fifty pounds, or I lost seventy five pounds. I even had one person, I lost one hundred pounds. That the only thing I did, I mean, that's a pretty massive level to pull if you consider somebody who might be having like I mean five or six cokes a day, I mean that you know we're talking to serious amount calories.

And that also means that by replacing with artificial sweet or containing beverages, they did not replace the soda with food.

correct? So like let's now let's talk about, right, this is where we can get into the micro analysis. But is that obese person who lost one hundred pounds by doing that? Do I really care about maybe a small alteration to they put out microbiome? No, because they're got microbiome is actually much more healthy now by them having lost all that excess at oppose tissue.

So again, the ranking of what i'm worried about, you know can change depending on the specific situation. Now let's take somebody like me who's lean and doesn't really have any health problems don't ware of what about artificial sweaters for me? Well, for me I kind of got using them because of body about in contest prep because IT was about the only appetites of present that worked for me.

Um but do I think that they are healthful? Probably not. Um do I think they're unhealthy? I would say based on the current data, I don't think that they're unhealthy.

Now the information on blood luco, so there's some of the problems with some of these men analyses of these these reviews is that kind of lump all the non nurture of sweet nes together. And then they may say, well, there's no effect on this or doesn't effect on this. Well, the problem is that these probably are these are different molecules and they can interact differently.

Aspartame very clearly seems to have no effect on blood sugar or insulin that has been repeatedly shown. Stevia doesn't appear to have much effect. Sacred and super us that the jury is kind of mixed.

Now there was the study that we first connected on, which um I think their primary outcome measure was actually they were looking at like kind of the sweet taste, like how IT affected sweet taste. So what they did was the group that was getting the sucrose was also pay with multi action. The control group was getting sucrose, which the is an appropriate way to compare the sweet taste because mult desha is not as sweet as suse. So when you're trying to combine, you know, super us, which is already sweet, with another form of cobo, how you you want something less sweet compared to your control, but for the outcome measure of instant and blood glue cos, probably not as appropriate because we know multidirectional has a much higher gasified index than success.

So they they appropriately controlled for for taste, but not for the effect of the sweeteners. And I think that, that was a key component. And I think that the part of that study that would intrigue actually was in a talk version of that, because that studying drawing to watch a talk, that and we will get doing a small on on the park cast at some point, hopefully, was that they they had kids do this study.

And then actually the seized the study because a couple of the kids became prediabetic. I mean, me like there was something hazards about. This was a yellow school. Medicines could place, you know, there's range everywhere. But IT just seems like there's something about sweet taste that have taken to the extreme, might be able to impact blood sugar to this is impacted. My sort of behavior in the I to, I try to avoid really sweet things unless they're exceptional, delicious, or the occasion calls for them, because I do think that IT increases my .

craving for sweet things. Well, IT might not be necessary, a craving, but IT just programs you so so lets your taste. Ds are extremely adaptable. So take for example um like indian food, if you bring like indian people over to amErica and have them eats more food, they think IT taste extremely because they're used to such spicy food.

Then unless they have a certain level of spicy, hardly even tasted, if you've ever done a high sodium diet and then gone to a low sodium diet, IT feels very blind. That's a start. But your over time, your taste as you just so sweet is the same thing if you're used to eating a lot of sweet um you get kind of desensitized to IT.

And then if you go to something less sweet um you can kind of taste blend at first. Over time it'll get Better. But so I think it's one of those things that again, that depends on the situation, right? Like somebody y's obese and they say, well, this is going to help me eliminate sugar, sweet and beverage.

Why would you want to take that tool away from like that a great lever to poll. I mean, somebody can lose literally a hundred pounds from just one change in lifestyle that start even really that inconvenient, a change that that is powerful. But again, is that the most healthy thing they could do? And I think that's kind of like what tends to get asked.

We don't know, is that healthy than water? Probably not maybe as healthy as IT who does the but I I really make all those cavy ots because you don't want to have people who could use this as a tool thing. Well, I can't do this because it's actually bad for me, right? If IT helps you lose fifty pounds or seventy five pounds or whatever IT is IT, trust me, it's not bad for you, right?

What doesn't m to increase the time signals? What do you think about the microbiome effects in this recent study? Because the recent study, I think, had some nice features to IT and you've done a detailed description, the study. So for those that .

was that is this two week .

study or the way study yeah and we will provide a link. You did an excEllent video on this on your youtube channel that really passes each p. But they compared the various artificial sweaters ers, and look at the glucose response, looked at microbiome, a number of different measures.

What was your general take? And this was in humans for the, I think at the first time, looking at microblog. M, in humans.

due to our facial sweaters, there are a few studies on the microbiome. Humans with artifical sweers the first two that came out show pretty much no effect um but they're little about shorter induration. They like two to four weeks and again, that depends on like what what bacteria are getting measured right like those, you know many different kinds of bacteria.

So they could just be measuring one that didn't change. And then there was a ten weeks study that came out. They got a lot of press, and they showed, I think that was the lose.

I think they showed an effect of change on the microbial. Now, IT was interesting, as when I went into the species that change, the species that changed the most compared the control was a species called i'm a butcher the name. But let's like bloody a cold.

I think it's good, I must say, for those that work on the microbes that it's so difficult to finances and you need a nominal creature committee and you need acronis. I'm sorry, you just do IT enough, enough already. You're killing us.

We got bc, c. Thank you.

We're gna start the nomenclature community without you. If you don't do IT soon.

So they noticed that this went up by like three to forehold. So I kind of went on the rabbit hole on that. So interestingly, that particular species of bacteria is actually associated with lower editions si Better influence sensitivity.

And people who are obese and children who are obese tend to have less of IT. So I said, well, based on this study, you could actually argue that maybe superos actually improved to you got microbiome. I am not making that claim because we have a hard time understanding what a healthy microbiome looks like already.

What this last day that came out, my, my biggest take home was I think it's safe to say that some of these non nutrient tive sweaters are not metal, cally, inert. There are some effects. Now, are those effects good, bad or neutral, I think has yet to be fully elucidated.

Now the the I focused more on the blood glue cose responses in my analysis. So in that ten weeks study they looked at, they did all glue tolerance test. And their conclusion, I didn't really feel like fit their data.

So the conclusion was that and I I think I think that was super us that IT elevated um blood lucus. And this is where statistics can get kind of tRicky. So my take home was the area under the curve of the incremental area under the curve, which is looking at the basically the entire glue code response was not different between the control and the superior group.

To me that the bigger take home, there was one time point at the end of the study in the super group, the thirty minute time point that was statistically significantly higher global e cose. Then the control group. It's kind of one of those things, right? okay.

It's at one time point, it's statistically significant. But even then, we've seen things be statistic significant that end up being dat artifacts are not reproduced. So i'm not saying that's what's happening here. But again, the overall area under the curve was not different. So to me.

that was the biggest take home. And papers that we should prevention are published because of affects, generally lack of effect, harder to public. No.

doesn't IT actually really unfortunate, because an all hypothesis is just as useful data as the non no hypotheses bitch, right? There is a very strong publication. Bias towards showing an effect first is not unless .

you can flip a field on its head entirely by showing something did not happen. Typically the positive result out. Does the negative result in positive mean you see a result? And then, of course, it's one study.

And you know yes, and I think that as you talked about earlier, the center of mass of data in a given field are probably the best basis for what we should do in terms of and so i'm not changing my behavior around the intake of artificial suiters. I personally am still going to consume stevia and aspartame ment relatively small amounts. But but um now i'm thinking, well, okay, if something contains circulars, I don't have to perhaps actively avoid IT where before I was I .

was actively avoiding IT. So the the new study I thought was very allegedly just very involved. I mean, be quite Frank, some of the animal stuff they did was extremely impressive.

So there was actually two arms to the study, one of a human ARM, one of the animal. And I focus much more on the human side of IT. Um so basically, this was a two week study and a really unique aspect of this, which I think is both a stringent and a weakness.

They had almost fourteen hundred people, uh, apply for this study and they only had one hundred. And quality, I think that actually went into IT because they did a very detailed food analysis of these folks. All these people said that they avoided the artificial al sweaters or didn't consume them. And I think people realize how you big when this sweeteners are.

Prior to the study, these people like I was like jury selection, they had never like not ever hearing of the the planet of the defendant, these these muted people who have never had an artificial sweetener.

right? So the strength is now you don't have a lot of like preexisting you know effects that maybe clouding what would actually happen when you add in. Like for example, if you have people who are already consuming artificial sweet nes and then you have a consumer artificial sweeteners, the likelihood things are going to change is pretty low, right? So I think that that's a strength is also a weakness.

And I want to be really careful because I think people took my words a little IT too far, which means I probably do a good job of being new off enough. There is the possibility for a political effect here. So to me, if somebody has gone through that much painstaking care to avoid artificial sweeteners, it's likely they have a preconceived notion that those are bad for you like to because they're difficult to avoid. Yes, it's possible thirteen very mental process died that they're just not exposed to them, and that's very true as well. But the other thing that the researchers acknowledged was they weren't able to blind the study because if you have never had not official sweeter before, you only use this like regular sugar, and you have an official sweeter, you know.

you taste.

you know it's so sweet, but is not the same sweep. Yeah.

there's an interesting effect. There were a lot of people don't like the taste of aspartame the first time, actually quit drinking diet soda for a while, thinking I should, and then had one IT tasted, really, I can only discover this kind of artificial chemical, and then pretty soon tasted great again. And so there is some attenuation there. And whether not that's central mining within the brain or peripheral, I don't know, but very interesting. Well, I I see you as a playing a critical role in defining what is and what isn't what still needs to be determined in terms of this landscape and in the entire landscape, really, of nutrition.

That study did change my opinion in terms of OK. I think we can clearly say now that like these aren't these aren't neutral outside, they're not in earth, right like that, that was the thought process before was well, they're not digested or or what not so they must be in ert. That doesn't appear to be the case.

Um but again, like when we look at the the blood luco data. There's and i'm not saying this is what happened. I want to be very clear not saying this is what happened. I'm saying it's possible this happened. And so this is why we need more studies to verify if these people had a precent ceive notion that artifical winners were bad for them, it's possible, knowing they are ingesting artifical sweaters, that they could have had blue cose response. Now the my push back on my own point, there would be then we should have expected to see IT in all the and all the non each of sweets which they didn't IT was just in .

su kuo and sacred IT was kind of a graded effect where single and sacra showed the most dramatic change and stevia and a few of the others did not.

And the the other issue I took with that maybe to take take thing was their primary outcome measure was a blood lucas of the organise taller test. But they had people administer their own or glue hose tolerance tests, which basically they give them. They said, okay, drink to drink and they were working continuous glucose matters, which should have been fine um but again to me and i'm being tiki tacky and again, I know all studies are limited by funding so I think overall this was a great study but I would have like to seen them uh you monitor the the .

um or glow tolerate after didn't or those those two things but the .

other one of the caviar is IT was a two week study, right? So we got to be really careful how much we interpret in this because it's also possible that this is a transition effect, right? And maybe IT goes away over time, we don't know.

But again, I think it's we can clearly say it's not in earth right now. How much emphasis we put on that on a two week study? I I still will say, okay, maybe if your word don't consume circles, right, but if you are you know one hundred pounds overweight and you want to use some customers as a replacement to help you lose weight, I would say don't let this study to tell you from doing that because the net effect is still getting more positive then you not losing the weight, right? So if it's tool l that helps you fine but I do hold open the idea that well, there could be negative effect but as well but again, were looking at like what's the what is the overall outcome, right? And then when I looked at um they examined like some of the different things that were increased with these different sweeteners.

And again, this work is messy because one of things I saw was a big increase in butter ate production from the change. And they ve got microbiome opportunity. We discuss the beauty atx associated like positive outcomes in terms of vince in sensitivity information and some other things.

So I just I want to be real cautious before people say, well, there's a change. The microbiome must be a bad change. We don't know. It's possible. And again, if we have you know ten more studies come out and start to show this, then I will start to shift my personal opinion of artificial winners.

So in anticipation of sitting down today, I did solicit for questions on social media. And one of the questions that they ve got a lot of up vote likes, if you will, was the one that I think raises interesting questions about short term and long term health. And it's the following. I think it's a comment scenario. A number of people want to know what is the healthiest way to approach a kind of rapid weight loss and hear what I think is happening is somebody has an event coming up or they're just tired of being the way they are Carrying, the amount of about of post issue they are. And they wanted to know whether or not IT is safe to, for instance, lose three pounds a week for a few weeks in anticipation of a wedding or some other event, and whether not strict clerk restriction and increasing activity is the best way to approach that, with the understanding that they may gain back a little afterwards, they might make think, ideally, the'd like to maintain IT afterwards. But what do you think of that sort of approach, you know, cutting Clark and taking half for incense and then doubling and also doubling your physical output.

So it's interesting because the you might be surprised by what want to say, which is the research actually tends to suggest the people who are like obese, who lose a lot more weight early, are more likely to keep IT off IT seems a little bit kind of contradictory, right? Like well, that doesn't seem very sustainable. But again, you're you're wearing competing things.

So the sustainability asked by then, there's also like buying is huge for sustainability, right? So for a lot of await obese people, if they started die and they don't see something quickly, they kind of bail on IT because it's it's not working or is that they see some rapid results prety quickly they buy and even harder, right? And so I think the conversation, especially for if there's any coaches or trainers out there, is just presenting that as the there you know what my favorite lines is there are no solutions.

There's only tradeoffs. I think Thomas, source of that. So you you're having a trade off here. Um IT is yes, you're going to lose fat faster. You might lose lean master little bit faster too, which can be a problem.

But I will say the more at opposed tissue you have, the more aggressively you can die IT without negative consequences. Somebody like me doing a really aggressive diet is not going to be good for my land mass. One, i've a highly mass, the Normal.

Two, I A lower body fat, the Normal. As your body fat goes down, the percentage of weight loss from lean mass goes up. So um people who are very obese because they have so much at opposed issue to pull from, there is very little reason for the body to catalyzed the tissue.

Now that being said, if you go on a people misinterpret like, well, I in body done and or a decks are done and i've lost you know two pounds of the mass and they've lost twenty pounds overall. Will keep mind at oppose tissue itself is thirteen percent lean mass. So there's actually like no protein component to like the structural component of the animal s 的 tissue。 And IT does have some water, so it's about eighty seven percent lipid.

But the other part is in so at minimum, you should expect a thirteen percent reduction in lene mass when you die. And then when you consider like you lose body water overall, which is registered as a mass um and you lose your splinting nic tissues can shrink kle a little bit so it's Normal to lose you for the average person to lose like twenty five or thirty percent of the weight that they lose from lean mass. But that doesn't mean skeletal muscle tissue and again, that the more at oppose you have, the more aggressively you can approach the diet without really negative long term consequences to lean master overall health. But baLance that with okay, if i'm going to do this, I need to understand that i'm not going to be dating this way forever. I'm doing this to give myself a boost to the beginning and I have to be OK at some point with transition into something that's a little .

more sustainable based on what user said. IT reminds me of the satie signal effect of exercises you mentioned earlier that exercising can improve um our sense of when we had enough to eat. I just wanted briefly mention that when I crom was on the podcast SHE mentioned that you'd been doing a study that I I have to Perry you to and hear the conversation as a fly on the wall.

Because what SHE was telling me was that if people believe that a food is nutritious for them than eating less of IT h register as more social, where are as if people view diary as a deprivation system? You like, oh, you know, dating is hard and the food socks and it's terrible. Well, then they create all sorts of other things where as they they actually observe in their studies where people report reduced craving if they are told, for instance, a chicken rest and broccoli and some oil, oil and rice is actually quite nourishing, it's actually really good for you. Then people eat that, and they feel like they actually even more this, the tidy signaling goes up. So just just a point that allied .

aren't IT is so impressive because even the rate at which you eat and write down to the size of the plate and the color of the plate, like the contrast and color really they see, I can't remember exactly. I think it's if the plate is a similar color to the food, I think people eat more, whether if it's a bigger contrast to eat less. So even like plate color can make a difference on how to treat. So again, human brain, very amazing, but also very dumb in some ways, right? Like.

not an optimized algorithm.

I always, I always joke of people, like, just look at how stupid humans are. You put some water in front of them like, you know, the ocean you like, oh, I pay ten times more for this, you know, like, but IT just more kind of are .

that way the the reward signaling pathways in the brain run one chemical, mainly doping. There are others, of course, but and very few algorithms. It's sort of like a interventional reinforcement is one random reinforcement, but in the end that there aren't many algorithms and we are probably not optimize, certainly not optimize for own health because people will eat themselves to death, drug themselves to death.

It's are simply because something felt a good at one point. IT proves your point. One.

one of things I tell people I said this on andy facilities podcast was, interestingly, the dichotomy of life is if you do what's easy in the short term, your life will be hard. If you do, it's hard. In the short term, your life will get easier. It's very strange.

And actually, eat simply had a great example of this when he was over five hundred pounds, he said the amount of work I had to do to construct my life that I could just live was so much more work than just going to the gym for a couple hours a day. He's like, the gym work is hard. He like, but when I look back, how much work I had to do to sustain that I saw first is just going to the gym.

And like you, restricting calories is like to maintain the lifestyle of being pounds was infinitely more difficult than what I do now. And so again, in a great example, short term, hard going to the gym. Calorie restriction. Long term, life easier. Just really interesting dichotomy.

I think about a lion, and I can be restored often enough. Seed oils, people want to ask, not seed oils. And and for those of you that are listening, who are wondering, why are truckling already as you mention that. Both in the twitter sphere and in ceremony online, these very polar ized views that probably aren't worth focusing on for too long.

But there are a number of I focus out there who are arguing that sea doo s are the source of all the obesity epidemic, the inflation, everything and then there are those that would argue just the opposite um that you know meat is the source of all problems at that. And I think we've thanks to your nuance and and expertise, we've hopefully appropriately frame things that is never that black and White is simply not um rarely. I love olive oil and I realized that doesn't fit exactly into the sea oil category.

I love olio il. I use IT in moderation. I do also consume some butter in moderation. IT set up. But are there any data on seed oils? And here a good example, I think would be like canoa oil, which comes from the rape seed that literally was renny ed can oil because rape seed oil is not good marketing.

No, no, exactly. So the first thing i'll say is seats have have negatively contributed to our overall health, because people in the last twenty thirty years, what they have tend to added to add into their diet that is increased. The overall calorie load is oil like these various mostly from sea oil.

But when we look at like one to one replacement with other fats. And so I if you look at the epidemiology, yeah, you can find an epidemiology showing people who consume more seat all have more negative health of outcomes. Problem is, again, tied up with a multitude of other behaviors.

And then you can find the mechanisms and the idea as well. These have they're Polly unsaturated, which means in the fat asi chain there's multiple double bonds, which those oub bonds can be oxidized when they're exposed to heat some other things. And so the idea as well, when you cook with these things and you know they get, they get a, they make IT oxidized, and that's onna cause information in your body.

So that's a applausive mechanism. So as always, I differ to the human Randy zed control trials. And so what you tend to find is when you substitute polyunsaturated fats are when you sub to saturated fats for Polly, unsaturated fats, it's either neutral or positive in terms of the effects on like inflamed tion is basically neutral.

There's some studies that show a positive effect of doing Polly on tatted that but IT probably depends on the individual polyunsaturated fat. And that thing I don't really is difficult because you're category ing like everything in this one bucket. And there are some differences between individual fatty assets um even with saturated that like um for example, derec acid doesn't tend to raise L D oculist al where's SATA effect as a whole tends to raise l deo clustering.

But there are some saturate facts that don't so again, it's it's like we're putting things in buckets and it's little more new ost than that. Um then if you look at um like the effects of um plan situated fats on markers of money, you asked your disease again tends to either be a neutral or positive effect when you substitute te saturated fat for poland saturated fat. Now if you want to get into like moon saturator for Polly unsaturated, there's some this quite a bit disagreement between the studies.

What I would say based on human analyzed control trials is that you're probably Better off consuming monos saturated Polly on satan in place of saturated fat. But again, if the idea is well, that means police is unsaturated good for me. So i'm just going to dump a bunch of oil on everything and you're using your colonies.

Well, that's that's that's a negative now, right? Because you have to do with the bigger problem of overall energy toxic. So i'm not somebody who likes to demonize individual nutrients. I just haven't seen really compelling evidence that seed oils are the root cause of the problems that are being suggested.

And I think this is a good example of kind of like whenever there's something that pops up in the fitness industry, there's always like the opposite thing that up and is like the reactionary, you know extreme reaction to whatever this thing was over here. And that's what we're seeing with some of the the see all stuff is it's it's mostly people who are trying to kind of expose the virtues of saturated fat. And listen, I think it's fine to consume synsi urate fat.

But again, you know, I think limiting IT to you seven and ten percent of your daily calorie intake is probably wise. Again, the all the consensus of the evidence i've seen. And so once again, like we're struggling with this, okay, we ve got this epidemiology and these mechanisms that sound good. But then what actually happens when we we do some human randomized control trials? And so far, I just haven't seen the evidence to suggest that seed oils are independently bad for you, independent the calories they contain.

You said the words overall energy toxicity. And I just want to highlight that I think that's a fabulous term. I don't I don't think enough people think about that because they they are prime or we are all prime to think OK sea oils might be bad or artificial sweeteners might be bad or this particular component of blood work might represent something good or bad without taking into account overall energy tox of the toxic of overconsuming calories energy and um thank you for um pointing out that most of the data point to the fact that saturated fat should make up about no more than seven and ten percent of total daily cLorindy.

Is there a lower and threshold that can be problematic? For instance, i've noticed that my blood profiles, especially in terms of mormons, improve when i'm getting sufficient saturated fat. Maybe i'm a mute, but years ago, because i'm a product of growing up in the nineties, I try to died, certainly crushed my androgen levels.

I started adding some butter back in, and I was right back in in the, in the sweet zone where I wanted to be. So you know, seven and ten percent of total daily chloric intake is, i'm guessing, is probably about what I do now i'll have to check. But is there danger of going too low in saturated fat?

So again, no solutions, only trade off, right? What maximized is out. Testosterone might not be the best thing for longevity, in advice versa. I'm not making that claims specifically, but I think it's important understand this that I think we all have this idea that this is one iconic diet out there that is going to be the best diet for building muscle in burning fat and preventing cancer and heart diseases. And the reality is like there's overall healthy dietary y patterns that we see that are good for those things.

But when we get down into the weeds is probably some push and pull here as well, right? So when IT comes to saturated fat, there is some evidence that if you're too low on IT that yes, you can have a reduction in testosterone. Now is that reduction and testosterone, let's say fifteen, twenty percent whatever IT maybe is that sufficient to actually cause loss of the mass that we don't know that never been shown?

Interestingly um I just remember red this there was one study that was comparing um polyunsaturated fat versus saturated fat and they equated total fat. And one of the really interesting things was the group getting the polo and attract effet had more lean mass at the end of the study compared to the group getting actually eat now. So only one study, i've never seen this replicated.

So I am very this is a situation. I say I would like to find out what the mechanism of that is because this could just be random. But if that gets shown over and over, what am I? okay?

Well, what's the what of me if polyunsaturated are somehow increasingly mass compared to saturated that who cares what I was to the testosterone unless that reduction in testa is causing some kind of intents for your life, right? Um so all that to say, I don't really know. And by the way, that's something for those watching and listening real experts. Every once of all, you should hear them say the following words.

I don't know. My graduate deviser was exceptional dead, and he is, and he was brilliant.

right? And in terms of like cluster's synthesis, you really need a very, very small amount of saturated fat for l dio cluster's synthesis. Your liver can synthesize like the mount of l dio cluster's or cluster. All that your body requires is so small in terms of like just living and being healthy. So I don't think you need to worry about that.

And from a cold astern disease standpoint, there is some evidence that even taking who have like quite a low l dio of like no eighty and ninety and taking them down to like thirty or forty that there is still a benefit for the risk of credibility cured disease. So again, if you're weighing these these two buckets, right? So what I say, you know, if you do in seven hundred and percent from from saturate, in fact, you're probably fine.

Received a lot of questions about whether or not there are female specific diet and exercise protocols. And I realized this is a vast landscape, but some of those questions related to menopause and premonitions use and some related to the menstrual cycle, most related to variations across the mentor o cycle.

In terms of this to say, diet, mainland or subclinical diet, there any things that you've observed? I will talk a little bit later about this wonderful APP that you've produce, this carbon APP, which helps people manage their energy and take in a number of other things. And so there you have a sort of a data base, or at least an experience base. And then i'm guessing there are probably also studies expLoring male versus female differences in terms of ad hearings and what sorts of diets were as are there any general themes that want to can extract from that?

This can be really unpopular segment for the women, doesn't seem to make a big difference.

Well, actually they may be relieved to hear that ah because that would make sorting through the information space and certainly the information we've covered in this party, as you know, now simpler IT means that .

everything isn't different for them ah so if you look at the male versus female studies relation a diet, they seem to respond a similar way, like some more coco deficit teams to produce similar results. Um if you do low carb, high carb regardless IT seems to boil down to the same principles.

Now training wise, we do know that female, like the muscle fibers, adapt a little bit differently the training, but IT, without getting too far in the weeds IT doesn't really change the way you should train because for the most part, building muscle, there's a lot of different ways to build muscle. So we know that like light loads up to maybe like thirty reps as long as it's taken close to failure, have basically the same effect on building muscle, least in the short term. As heavy loads for low reps, it's mostly about taking the muscle close to fatigue or failure, right?

You don't have to go you have to go to failure, but getting close within a few reps um if you're between one rap and thirty reps, if you're getting close to fail, you seem to produce similar results. So again, great. You can pick with whichever form of discomfort you you prefer, right?

When IT comes to female specific training, again, females, actually this is one thing, the life you don't know. They actually put on a similar amount of lean mass as a percentage of their start lean mass as men. In fact, there's no statistically significant difference in the amount of lean mass they put on.

The absolute amount of lean mass that added will be greater for me because they started with a greater amount of land mass, but the relative increase in the mass is pretty much the same from similar training. Now, females, that there are some differences in, like fiber types, that females tend to be a little bit less fatigue than men, that they can go a little bit, a little bit longer. And there's also some evidence that they recover a little bit Better.

But that also could be simply due to the fact that they're not able to use as heavy of loads to to induce hyper trip y. So I can have this theory that, well, you know as a percentage one red max, you can program things. I think absolute load matters when you look at like the most elite ite power lifters, the super heavy weights aren't squatting three or four times a week because you know there's squadding eight, nine hundred pounds.

I think that there's an overall recovery effect there. I think I have no day to back this up. This is just my observation. But when you get into the library classes and this goes for men two, you do see quite a few people who do you know many training sessions at high rps and seem to be able to recover from that. So I do think the absolute load makes a difference.

Now, when IT comes to, like, mental cycle, this is one of those things where I kindly tell people, you know, do what you prefer. So there are some people have said you should program you should like kind of schedule your training around your mental cycle, which is um whenever you are going to your mental cycle, you know reduce the intensity, reduce the volume because you're you're not to feel as good. You're not going to train as well.

What I would say is just auto regulate that if you go in and you're on your period, but you you feel good and you're doing well that day and I don't think you necessary need to back IT off. And there was one study that kind of did that notion. But if you go and you feel terrible and you know you feel like you could use, you know a reduction and intensity and volume, that it's totally fine to order regulate that.

And when I say auto regulation and other regulation means you are regulating the individual training session based on your performance. So um I ought to regulate in so far as um like i'm a super nerd. So I have A A velocity device so I can actually attach to the bar and see how fast the load moves.

And I know IT various different, like warm up weights, what famos dies I should be hitting. So if I hit my last warm up and my family these about ten percent higher than usual, I can be pretty confident that that can be a good day for me. If it's lower than I can, back IT off a little bit.

In fact, that worlds, I went in my last dead lift IT was thirty percent, my last, my last delf warm up IT was thirty percent faster than I used a hit in the gym. And I turned to look at my coach. I said, ah, we're going to get this today. So there is the various forms of ways to want to regulate. But again, women, if you're on your period, but you feel good, I don't think if there's any reason you need to back off, but if you're not feeling good, then it's told the appropriate to back off.

Rovers cook food. People wanted to know whether not, for instance, you know, eating a raw apples. I don't know, does anyone cook apple? People used to make with baked apples was. So I was a kid. I was of the let down deserve those like not awesome unless I had a super ice scream minute and even then maybe not awesome but anyway, rovers cooked.

Obviously you burn a piece of meat to the point where it's pure charcol that's too much and if you eat there is a small movement uh, surrounding eating raw meets that not something I particularly enjoy. Frankly, sushi is the only raw food I I personally ingest and and I am very careful about the sourcing very good repetitive places. Um is there anything you know real about this in terms of being able to extract the mino acid vitamin minerals from the food rovers as coat IT .

just looks cool for instagram. So when you cook foods, they actually tend to become in terms of protein containing foods, they tend to become more digestible, not less. H egle this way me to this way um people say, well, you know you when you heat protein, you do nature IT.

And I think they hear that we're in nature and they think destroy and that is not what the nature means. So proteins fold up into three d dimensional structures. You know this of course, based on their imminent acid sequence and their specific energies of those immense sets, when you heat protein or add acid, IT starts to unfold that that protein structure that happens during digestion anyway.

So I always struck le and like like i've seen some companies come out with way that you can cook with, right that's not know destroy the new assets. I'm like so you mean like regular way, right? So um yeah cooking typically cooking actually makes the minal assets more bioavailable, not less. Now um I would stay away from sharing your meat um because there is some evidence that sharing creates polymax hydro carbons which at least in animals when they give those they appear to be cast energy ic so if you do try meet by accident, I would just cut off the charred portions and then you should be fine.

The charter is delicious, not not if is charged too much but there is something about a charred cross on me, my dad arts. I would like to what about um people referred to them in their questions as carb blockers. But I think what they are referring to, our things like burberry and some of the glucose scavenge and one glucose scavenger i'd love you to comment on, is this assertion that taking a brisk walk after a meal, and maybe even a slow walk after a meal, some movement can help doing shift the amount of circulating glue in some way.

I've heard that not a lot of people, but some are starting to pay attention to this idea of taking things like burberry or even that form, and can gave ge glue cos I personally can't take burberry, and if I take IT, I get massive headaches unless i've adjusted tons of sugar and carbon drays. So I just don't mess around with IT. But I know there a number of people out there that want to know whether or not these glucose cavender can be useful.

I think that is really majoring in the miners of, i'm being honest, as far as like the car blockers, there's like some White kiddy being extract and no source of things they can they do block the digestion of carbon hydrate sum. So when I say block, that's those watching or listening. Metabolic is typically not on and off switches.

Okay, when we say things like block or a ten or inhibit, typically we're not talking about just a switch on the wall that you present, everything turns off. We're talking about a dimer switch OK like. So you IT just changes the emphasis.

But these car blockers can reduce the absorption of carver. Highlight, now they don't seem to cause weight loss. You just do IT a Normal diet. Now why is that? Well, all IT does is, once those carbo hyrax get to the large and testing and your bacteria get a hold of him, they start formatting them to volatile fatty acids, which could reabsorb into Oliver.

So you don't get the increase in blood, look, costs, but you still get almost all the calories from IT because it's just in a different form. So you know, if car blockers, if they actually worked really well, I mean, if you block something from being absorbed, your g typically does not just let the digest material set there you get diary. I mean, that would be the outcome. It's also how I like debunk the whole like thirty grams of protein at a meal you can absorb any more than that. I'm like if that was the case, that when you aid up stake, like you would just start having diary every time you went over that thirty gram pressured.

I remember during college. So this would be early nineties. There was the alestra craze, this idea of putting in non digestible thing into things like potato chips, so that I would clear through the the G I track faster, not absorb as many calories IT does raise this went nowhere obviously um you don't hear about this anymore but this does raise interesting question relate to energy bounced which is gastro empty time um and obviously in in the landscape of eating disorders in particular and iraqi a abusive lack use and abuse lack atis is away in which people were in an unhealthy way a try and control their weight there's a lot of problems with that approach but what about gastro am doing time? Is this one way that people could um control their energy baLance in a healthy way? And where does fibre come in to play?

Fibre tends to improve gi transit time because that's a bulk. So your your G I system is basically a tube, and IT has para stasis, which is wave like contractions that moves the food down to the tube. Well, if you have more bulk to the food, like with fiber, you can move IT through a lot of Better.

Now in the gastric, the stomach specifically, fiber tends to delay gastric emptying and slow IT a bit um probably because IT congeals a little bit. Um now this kind of gets into like the glass amic index argument, right? Like if you do if you do like low G I foods, you'll have a slower release of glucose um it's a slower gastric emptying time.

Does that affect energy baLance? And so there are quite a few studies looking at like low gi versus high gi foods um in the studies where they don't control calories, low G I tends to outperform high gi. But when they control calories, there's no difference.

And so what that tends to what I think that suggests is low G I food, just by their nature, tend to be higher in fiber. And so I think it's just kind of comes back to the fiber issue. Got IT.

Like to ask you about supplements for a moment. It's an enormous landscape, but I believe there are a few things that you believe in, meaning they exist and and there are decdtm to support their use. Maybe even some anecdotal data based on your own experience.

As long as we highlighted as such, that could be interesting. I've heard you talk about two in particular, a one that i'm very familiar with, which is a mono hydrate. Share your thoughts on that, not just for muscle building but maybe any other purposes for um and then the other one is one that Frankly i'm learning more about all the time. Now thanks to your prompt, which is radoi a rosea, I think I pronounce that correctly and and why that might be interesting or reviews .

to people yeah so touching creating IT is the most tested, safe and effective support supplement we have. I mean, it's just there are thousands of studies on create a one hydrate now. And I I would say very clearly too um if you're using any other form of create and I think you're wasting your money um create and hydro chord has some um hype around IT, apparently a little more soluble um the claim is that you need less um but there's only a couple studies on IT and it's more expensive.

Creating mono hydrate is not particularly expensive. I realized people like the in budgets but it's not IT doesn't land and it's not a budget. Yeah.

it's gotten more expensive because of covered and supply in issues even though these forms are creative that appear to be as good like hydro chord, but it's more expensive. And then things I create an apple ester, has been shown to be worse than created in on a hydrate buffer. Creator is as good or worse, and it's much more expensive.

So I tell people, just take creative on hydrate. IT is tried and true. It's been shown to status the muscle cells one hundred percent with fast for creating and that's what you want.

So create and uh watch the few different methodologies. One to reason Foster creative content which helps improve exercise performance. Um IT also appears to improve in ver IT appears to improve recovery and IT increases lean mass, a lot of which is through bringing water into the muscle cells.

But that is I mean muscle cells are mostly water, so when people are all just water, that's what muscle cells mostly are. Um and IT also increases strength and mother metrics. Now IT also has been shown in studies that people tend to get a due increase in body five percentage.

Now that's probably because they are getting an increase in lean mass. And so the relative is a decrease in body fat percentage. But there are a few studies to show a decrease and fat mass as well.

I don't think that creates a fat burner. I think that people are able to train harder, build more tissue. And so that's probably having an effect on fat mass.

Then we've actually shown more recently some cogent benefits to create in which I find really interesting as well. But the only knock on creating that anyways been not able to come up because they've debunk the kidney stuff ff, they've debunk liver stuff. There's no evidence that the harms healthy and kidney liver um is hair loss.

So what about hair loss? Because there was one study in two thousand and nine that showed to create an increased dht um but they didn't really show an effect on any other sex hormone. So it's kind of strange like you would think if there is an increase in dht, there would mean like something else that changes as well.

Um and it's only one study and again didn't directly measure her loss measure dht, which we know is involved in the loss of the follow. So what I would say is that I am not convinced it's only one study never been replicated to my knowledge and I was looking at a mechanism rather than an outcome. So if you if you're somebody who's prone hair loss and you want to void create team because of that, I understand. But for those people, I I don't think it's I don't think it's something to worry about.

Do you emphasize the classic loading of creatine, taking IT a bunch of times per day and then backing off or just taking IT consistently at the, I think five grams per is kind of a typical those that people take.

So again, no solutions, only tradeoffs. You can load IT and you will saturate your false and false created and stores faster. Like usually within a week, if you just take five grounds per day, it'll take two, three, four weeks, but you will get to the same place.

And you're probably going to have a much lower risk of G I. issues. Some people create and can be a gut irritant.

And if IT is for some folks, I would recommend splitting IT into multiple doses. So maybe like multiple two one or two gram doses per day and definitely don't load IT. If you're someone who as G I issues from IT, as far your rosa, the research is still in effect.

A is just reading A, A new systematic review that kind of concluded that we need more high quality research. But the research that is out there seems to suggest that not only does IT reduce physical fatigue, but also reduces the perception of fatigue and may also enhance, uh, memorial cognition as well. And it's referred to as an adapter gin.

So I really like IT. My anecdotal experience is when I combine that with caffeine, IT tends to kind of smooth out. The effects of caffeine is a more pleasant experience and there is also some evidence that if you're like coming off cafe, that IT can reduce the a the negative side effects to caffeine with rowl, which by the way, I I didn't really believe in that until I actually did a cold turkey.

So before meet, I will cut out caffeine for seven days because you can basically reset your caffeine tolerance. And seven days and like two days in, I mean, i'm groggy. I've got the headings usually audit like body aches that come up because caffeine is actually a mild analgesic. And yeah so that is very .

interesting to see by sleep like a .

baby i'll maximum .

punch from yeah that's why you do that yeah and .

I can said radio a tends to IT doesn't eliminate those those negative effects, but they IT tends a damped in them a little bit. So I really like IT again, would like to see more research on IT, but there's a lot more stuff coming out like asho. Ganda is another thing that looks pretty promising seems to increase testosterone one modestly interesting.

I don't think it's like theyve shown increases in mass. I don't think the increase in test aston one um explains the increase in new message. Just not a big enough .

increase could have be the decrease in court .

as all people have talked about possible IT does decrease stress. Stress hormones also been shown to help us sleep. But I would like to see more research looking at mechanistically, how it's increasingly before I kind of say conclusively that this is that you know the next creator, there's more research that need to come out and then there's some other things that that have an effect. Um you situated malate, there was a new man analysis that show that literally millet can reduce fatigue and increase I think time to fatigue and may actually have some small recovery benefits as well. Um different forms of counting can actually have recovery benefits and actually interesting um I think it's carnet tar trade actually has been shown void publish study actually show that the increased engine recept identity and .

muscle cells that's interesting no Carina and its other forms that are pretty I think there is good evidence that they can improve sperm eg. Health for people are looking can see anything yeah there are surprising number of studies on this in and humans but the energy receptive density and that that's from oil l carnet am people team castles not injecting directly into a and then you've got things .

like obviously like the other most effective supplement out, theirs probably cafe. I mean, like if you look at the research studies, caffeine produces very consistently improvements in performance. Um so that's another one. Some people like the effect of caffeine. That's okay.

But I would know because i'd never .

come off IT exactly exactly what interestingly, they do show that the effect appears to be consistent that that even if you're a habitual caffeine user, you do still get a benefit every time you take IT. But like you said, you just used to IT, you know. So you know there's those things, then you ve got like things like a beta alanine, which for its its in our pre workout, probably not super helpful for most people for resistance training.

IT does seem to have some benefits for like high intensity, like we get out no more than like forty five seconds or sixty seconds of like really hard training. IT does appear to help with the link fatigue for that. And then you've got things like b tee or also called trim method I seen, which there is some evidence and improvement mass um there's some evidence that I can um improve power output.

So there's a few things out there. But you know most of the stuff is not very good. So you know, I think that that those kinds of supplements very useful, but I think I would never tell people they need supplements. Like again, even like something like ritten is going to be a very small effect compared to like proper nutrition recovery and hard training.

One of the things I I I was talking with pin bruno the other day and I said, you know like some people will ask me, like how does this person make progress? Because you know they're programing as you know, not evidence based or or this guy, how does he like his exercise done and say, yeah, but they train really hard for twenty years. Like one commonality you see between like really successful athletes of body builders is they train really hard.

And one of the things I have observed is the more into the weeds, people tend to git. And again, this is just my own anecdo observation. The more in the weeds they tend to git, the less hard I see them train. And so one of the things I really liked that mike zui tl said, who's got a PHD and is a body body of himself, he said, you can't out science hard training that if you're looking to build muscle and you're looking improving body composition, that the main thing is just doing the work over time.

the end, the hard work. And I would add to that and this is true academic endeavors um too of course I I think I hope you will agree absolutely, which is that yeah you know the other thing is given the mental sight at earlier where we're talking about how society signals in the brain and what you think about foods can be relevant.

Learning to really enjoy training hard, in addition to learning to really enjoy eating well, not just for the effects that IT has on body competition, the composition, excuse me, those two, of course, but just learning to really enjoy the process of training hard. And and a really hard workout or a really hard paper that you have to sort IT through or really digging through a book that's chAllenging learning to really enjoy. That I think is if there is a power to out there, it's it's the psychological end.

And I think a lot of that is getting the confidence of doing something hard, that there is a pay off at the end. You know, in a lot of people, I get asked a lot my q as how do I get more confident? How do I become more confident? And i'll tell people you have to do.

There's no hack you can't read about. You're going to get in the arena. And I don't mean like compete in sports necessarily, but like doing a PHD or doing something just something hard where you're putting yourself out there and you're saying this is my goal.

I, anna, go for IT. You just learn so much by doing that about yourself. And so just what you said, I will reframe things in my mind when bad things happen from it's not the same ever get stressed out because I do and it's not to say that I never get down because I do because i'm a human.

But when something bad happens, I should post about this in my store today. When something bad happens, I very rarely any more to I go well with me. Why did this happen to me? Because you're in the universe, random bad things are onna happen.

So instead I say, 哎呦， found dead. Instead I say, well, what an exciting opportunity to overcome an obstacle. And I bet, because in the experience of my life, the biggest lessons and the best things in my life have actually come out of the most chAllenging, worse things that have happened.

And so again, this is, I would never have been able to do these sorts of things if I hadn't taken up weight lifting, because weight lifting told me so much about perseverance, delay, gratification, overcoming off ticals. And that's why I love IT into, even to this day. Now, i'll still get butterflies when I go in for a squad session, even though i've been doing in for twenty three years.

It's wonderful. What's clear that you embraced hard things, and I people listening to this IT doesn't have to be weight lifting, you know picking hard things, learning an instrument, learning a language chAllenge is is is an absolute builder and that .

actually showed like um those sorts of things like when you chAllenge yourself and also mentally that um I think there was a new study that came out basically showing a reduction in the risk of alzheimer's and other age relative coding .

decline I mean basically like use IT or lose IT right yeah the the the will the desire and the will um to persevere at no doubt translates to the thing we call the will to live. It's related to the will to live. Well, I think that what you just said, you know beautiful lan bodies, what most people are inspiring to, which is to I think most people actually want to do hard things.

They don't just want to have the results. I think that most people deep down have some understanding that their reward system works that way. I must say, this conversation for me has been tremendously rewarding. First of all, that allowed me to meet you in person for the first time, which I ve really enjoyed certain. This won't be our last interaction on this podcast and elsewhere.

Also, the amount of knowledge that you contain inside you is is astonishing and there's last stuff right around well and and we all benefit because your ability to pull from the mechanistic side, again, I think in not limited to, but relate to your background and biochemistry all the way through to the the impact on humans, animal studies, being able to understand where those sit relative to one another. Then you obviously a practice, you practice what you preach and what you talk about pertains to men, to women, Younger people, older people, people who are vean kito carnival. You really are able to net a tremendous number of ideas while staying really nuance and data driven.

And so someone say, for myself and on behalf the listeners, really appreciate you coming in here today and sharing with us your knowledge, we will absolutely point people in the direction of um where they can learn more about you and one of the places that I want I definite want to mention before we we part however, is um this carbon APP and I should just mention i'm not this isn't a paid promotion or anything that sort actually one of our podcast team members has been using carbon for a long time. This is an APP that you d devise which allows people to navigate the exercise, nutrition, energy baLance space for weight loss, muscle gain, fat loss, weight maintenance. I would just like to briefly ask you about that before we conclude.

Without necessarily telling us everything that's in the carbon out. I'd love to know what are the major things that IT does and is good for? And then what were some of the key things that you wanted to make sure we're in there when you built IT? Like what's the sort logical backbone behind? Because I think there are a lot of food counting, calorie counting, exercise apps out there. Um everyone i've talked to that uses carbon um including a our mutual and cigar and getting this member of my podcast is set raves about IT so what is carbon and and what does he do and what was your mindset in building IT? What did you really want to see there that you didn't see elsewhere?

So those living may not know, but I really I started online coaching people for nutrition back in two thousand and five. And that was the the vast majority of my business all the way up until like two thousand and seventeen. And I had a lot of success with that, where where the whether be just average folks look to lose weight or build muscle and write up to elite te level competitions and physic port.

So I can have this idea, like I don't want say I had the idea. A few people have the idea. What if we could take what I do in coaching and try to automate as much of that as possible? Because by the time I was becoming a really popular coach, I think I was expensive.

You know, you were looking at like, know me charging, they are charging about thousand dollars a months for coaching, right? And not all. Most people cannot afford that.

And I would like to not just coach people, you know, I mean, I would like to be able to help other people. So the idea was to create an APP that could do some of the stuff. Now there's always a place for human interaction, but for people who can afford that, our apps basically ten box a month.

And basically what we wanted to do was set up an APP where think about, if you went to an nutrition coach, what would they do? They would probably ask you some questions about goals, take some answer of metrics, and they would use like that may be dietary preference. And they d use that information to kind of formulate a baseline plan. That's what carbon does.

So we ask you, I think there's eight questions in the sign up flow about like your activity on your exercise a your lifestyle and your body weight um your body fat percentage and if you don't know that we help you calculate IT, it's not perfect but it's Better than nothing um and then your diet or your preferences and we use that to come up with kind of your baseline and your baseline will be your calories, your protein, your copy rates and fats. And what's different about our because apps like you know my fit this power, we'll do that as well. What's different about ours is you we encourage people to log their weight daily for the reasons that we talked about earlier.

Um and then you can also track your food in the APP. And honestly, I think our food tracker is actually like ways easy to use than most of not. There are what we typically get great rave reviews about is how user friendly are interfaces that IT makes intuitive sense.

And so you track your food, try to hit these these macros that you're prescribed, and each week, you will be prompted to check in with a coach on your check in day. And then you you put in some information. And then based on how you're progressing, sing the APP will adjust or not adjust based on higher progressive.

So for example, if you're hitting a weight loss plateau, will since that and IT will, you know, reduce your calories or or if you're trying to gain weight and you're had a platoon, increase your calories and there's a lot of back in algorithm stuff that, that takes care of this. But the fundamental crux of the APP is we we try to determine your total daily energy, expand itur because that's gonna us. The first big thing we need to know, which is how many calories do you need to be eating for your goal, right? So on the front end, we we basically do our best guess based on your ethra metrics that can be perfect.

Little gillis in the ballpark and if you do know like some people already, you know well, I know what I maintained my body weight on. There is actually a power you can manually into that during the sign up flow. So that's helpful for people who are supernature like me.

Um but then if you're just who will ask what you do? You take apple watch data, you take this, do you take that? And no, for the reasons we talked about that did over estimate energy expenditure, what R F does is it's an already equation. If you because your body weight, your maintenance calories is your total daily energy expended ure, your average calories that you eat to maintain your body way will be the same as your total daily energy expended ure.

So if we know how body way is changing and we know how many calories the personnel consuming, we can actually solve for what energy expendable is, right? And you can see in the APP that will there's a kind of A A maintenance calories tracker or energy expansion ual tracker. And typically after about three to four weeks, even if the APP was off at first, I will have you pretty close because like let's say somebody um comes on and their goal is to lose you know how and half a week or something like that.

And the first week they lose three pounds. Now the APP actually accounts for the fact that you can lose more waterway ight. The first week, they probably wouldn't get adjustment, but let's say the next week, they lose three pounds.

The APP will since that and adjust their calories up because IT will be estimating that their energy expendable are actually higher than one of previously estimated based on the amount of weight they are losing. And the same thing goes in reverse if they are not losing the amount of weight that they are supposed to. IT will lower them based on the fact that IT may have over restituted their energy spinny ure but um that's the first cruxes IT is tracking that erg expenditure.

And then the next thing is protein. So when the the back end algorithms ff is happening, calories are set first based on your spinny ure and your goal. So for example, if you have if you're an aggressive diet, um your color is are going to be lower even if your energy expenditure be a little bit high um just because if you're just trying to lose two pounds a week, I mean you're going to be going to pretty aggressive calorie deficit.

So it's consider the calories first. Then IT will set protein based on your lean body mass. Then the calories that are left over will be allowed to carbon hydrate.

In fact, depending on your dietary and we have a few different dietary preferences, those baLanced which is um about fifty fifty to sixty forty cobo harder to fat of the remaining calories, then you have low fat which is obviously a higher ratio of carbon hydrate. You have low carb, you have a key degen ic diet, which is very, very low carb. And then there's also a plant based option.

And within each of those options, still, you can go in and actually shimmy the macro S A little bit within a certain range so that you can kind of dial in what your specific dietary preferences. Because again, if we go back to what is going to produce the best long term results, it's whatever the person can not hear to. So we really try to start with the concept of a hearing by allowing people to have the dieter preference that they want.

And there's some other apps there. There are good apps like, for example, we get asked a lot what that they're APP in the renaissance periodic ation APP, and they have a great APP. But there is this kind of more rigid and it'll say, you know, you going to eat this many meals and you're going to have these foods at these times.

So we're kind of the opposite. We want to give you maximum flexibility. Now for some people, they would prefer the rigid structure at first, but we find that for most people, giving them more flexibility typically improves IT hearings over the long run.

So that's kind of how the APP works. And again, like there's multiple different goals is not just a weight loss APP. There's a maintenance, there is a muscle building. So you ve got all kinds of different goals that can be accommodate different rates of each of those goals. And I mean, i've used the APP for over three years now to do my body weight.

And I mean, like when I say that, it's that me and because I am very regimented with you know, logging and logging my weight, so what I targeted to way in at worlds, I got down to the point one kilogram. So is pretty cool to be able to like use a tool that I help develop to actually coach me. So it's a great tool.

We did some statistics. We pull twenty five hundred members. And one of the questions we ask is, would you recommend this to a friend? And ninety one percent said, yes.

So we are our average. I think our average attention is like seven months, which for and up the cost ten dollars a month. This is really great. So yeah.

I mentioned a number of people I know use IT. This is not a paid promotion. I I think people need guidance and tools. And what we know about the human brain is that winging IT can work, but that um the brain will cheat itself often. Um what there's a final quote about this and i'll get IT wrong and always bad to try and quote fine in anyway because he said is so much Better but that we are the easiest easy to fool ourselves basically is what he was saying easy yes to follow ourselves um sounds great we will put a link to IT so that people can check get out again sounds like a wonderful tool and and a tool that nets a lot of the the principles that sit as um major themes for weight loss. Weight gain I would assume directed lean muscle lean tisch gain is what most people are after and wait minutes because the number of people would like to just maintain lust.

I really appreciate your time and all that you're doing, certainly your time and energy and knowledge today, but also what you're doing on the very social media channels and and just the fact that somebody from the depth of academia is out there sharing so much knowledge across so many domains. Um you're gm in this landscape of of nutrition and one that people really um need to hear from. So thank you so much .

for your time. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity I really enjoyed.

Do IT again. Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with doctor lane norton. I hope you found IT to be as interesting and informative and actionable as I did.

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