Why Calories Don't Count with Dr Giles Yeo
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Welcome back to the Health Longevity Secrets Show with your host, Dr. Robert Lufkin. His book titled Lies I Taught in Medical School is a New York Times bestseller. See the show notes for a link to download a free chapter. And now please enjoy this week's episode as we look at why calories don't matter with Dr. Giles Yeo.

We have a great conversation this week. Dr. Giles Yao, Cambridge University professor, author of Why Calories Don't Count, and chief science advisor at Rio, demolishes weight management myths with scientific precision and personal warmth. This mind-shifting conversation reveals why blaming people for obesity fundamentally misunderstands human biology.

Full disclosure, I'm also an advisor for Rio, but I only work with companies that I believe in and would use for myself and my family.

Bold scientific insights abound as Dr. Yao reveals why simple calorie counting fails. Rather than fixing on calories, he advocates understanding how different foods affect our bodies uniquely, making a compelling case for cooking at home with quality ingredients as his own personal health strategy.

The discussion then ventures into today's most transformative weight management tools, with Dr. Yao describing GLP-1 agonists as the most effective treatment options he's encountered in over 30 years of obesity research. These medications signal fullness of the brain, but surprisingly, they affect other reward-seeking behaviors too, from alcohol consumption to other addictive tendencies.

The conversation explores fascinating frontiers in brain science, including Dr. Yeo's groundbreaking work mapping the human hypothalamus feeding circuits and examines how AI-assisted health applications might revolutionize personalized nutrition.

Throughout, his compassionate message resonates. Obesity isn't a character flaw. It's the result of biological and environmental factors that require understanding, not judgment. Discover why this disco dancing geneticist believes personalized approaches, not quick fixes, are the future of health optimization.

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This scan is available anywhere in the U.S. without a doctor's prescription. See the attached link and use the code LufkinCT for $100 off. Join the health longevity medical imaging revolution today. And now, please enjoy this week's episode. All right. Giles, welcome, man. Great to see you. It's lovely to see you. Thanks for having me on your platform. Hi.

This is going to be so much fun. I'm so excited about talking about obesity and genetics and all the amazing work you're doing and your book and other stuff. But before we do that, since this is the first time you've been here, could you just take a few minutes or a few moments and tell us a little bit about your journey, how you came to be interested in this area?

It was by chance, you know, I did genetics as an undergrad at Cal Berkeley, which is where I did my undergrad. Then I moved to Cambridge to do my, to do my PhD. But my PhD was in the genetics of Japanese puffer fish, which is fine, which is, which, which is fine. This was in the, in the nineties, but that was never going to pay my mortgage. And so when I finished, I,

my PhD, and I stayed in Cambridge. I went knocking on doors for jobs. And the second door I knocked on happened to be the lab of Professor Sir Stephen Ratley. And he had just, from a few months, just discovered the first two genes that when mutated resulted in severe early onset obesity. And he had just begun

kids with severe obesity and he needed a geneticist. And so I was a geneticist that was free. He needed a geneticist. He hired me. And that was it. I got in. I found a couple of really severe mutations causing obesity. And this was in 1998. And I have worked in obesity ever since. That's great. Well, talking about genetics,

The question about genetics is how big a role does genetics play in obesity? Getting right into it here. I mean, no, that's an excellent question. I think how big a role does genetics play in body weight? I mean, I think it is. So we have a number, actually. So if you actually use twin studies, you know, you have identical twins and non-identical twins. And so either 100% of genes or 50% of genes. And if you study a large enough set

cohort of twins, tens of thousands of twins, then you can ask, you know, what role genes play versus the environment, all right, using twins.

And if you do that, then actually the heritability of body weight, of which on one end of the spectrum happens to say obesity, is between 40 to 70%. So if we take an average of that, it's probably 50-50. So put simply, clearly the environment has got to be right or wrong, depending on how you want to look at it, to end up with obesity. But there are powerful genetic drivers for how you respond to that environment as well. So call it 50-50.

So I guess one way to think of it is that there are powerful genetic drivers, as you say, but

we're dealt the cards of our genes and we can't necessarily change those, but we can change the environment. We can change the lifestyle. We can affect those things. And I love the title of your book. I just finished it. Why Calories Don't Count, your latest book, that is. And I recommend it to everyone, but it begs the question then, if we're going to use our lifestyle to affect obesity and affect our weight,

Why don't calories count? Calories. Whenever I say calories don't count, right? People think I'm anti-physics. This is what they think. All the gym bros, the people with the tight t-shirts and lift in gyms, they think I'm anti-physics. I'm not anti-physics. I know that 200 calories of potato chips is twice the amount of potato chips is 100 calories of potato chips. I do understand that.

But so is 200 grams of carrots, twice the amount of carrots as 100 grams of carrots. And no one is trying to compare 100 grams of potato chips to 100 grams of carrots. So I think calories are one dimensional in what they tell you. They tell you how much food is there and really only how much food when you're comparing the same type of food.

but they're completely nutritionally blind. They don't know the amount of sugar, fat, fiber, protein, nothing, absolutely nothing else other than the calorie count. That's why they don't count. I see. So what makes a difference then? If it's not the calories in the food, what should we be watching, I guess? I mean, so just to be clear, all calories are equal once they're in you in a little poof of energy, right? Like once your mitochondria have dealt with it, they're equal then.

But we eat food. Well, we should eat food. We don't eat calories. And then we eat the food and our body then has to sort of work through the food to extract the calories. And different foods make your body work harder or less hard. That's the first thing. And different foods have different nutritional content. And therefore, the calorie counts really, really... The type of food and what you're eating really, really matters when the calories actually emerge from them.

Yeah, I mean, this whole discussion is so important. In the United States, where you're from and where I am,

most adults are either overweight or obese. I don't know, is it that way in the UK now? Or what are the numbers there? It is a number. I think the numbers are 70, 75% in the States. They're about 65% here. So we are only a little bit behind you. 65% of people in this country are either overweight or obese.

Yeah. Now, you're one of the world leading authorities on obesity and this whole problem. I mean, I just saw you with Sanjay Gupta on CNN and you're on the BBC and everywhere I turn. So what...

Following up on this about what we eat, what's your take on some of the popular diets we hear so much about? You know, we hear keto or plant-based or animal-based, intermittent fasting. How do all those...

Is there one diet that's good for obesity? Or what are we doing with all these different diets? So I think, sort of first of all, I think the biggest myth is probably that there is a one size fits all. A lot of people seem to think, what is the right solution? There isn't. And I think all of those diets actually

do work for some people and at least when they're still on the diet, right? So in other words, it gets them to lose weight. It certainly gets some people healthier while on any of those diets.

Not everyone is going to like all the diets. And so I think a diet that works, okay, there's some diets that are completely bat crazy, okay? And so we probably want to stay away from those. But all of those you mentioned, look, anyone is going to want to say, well, I want to be plant-based, I want to be keto, I want to do Mediterranean. A diet that works as a diet you can stick to

And so you need to find the diet that actually you can stick to, you enjoy, you can feed your family, you can feed yourself. And you don't find it a chore because if you don't find it a chore, you will stick to it. If you stick to it, then you'll be able to keep the weight off that you've lost and maintain your health as well.

I mean, one of the things I loved about your book was all your descriptions of the different types of food and just the kinds of foods that you enjoyed and everything. So what are your personal choices about your diet or if not a diet, your choices of eating? What do you kind of avoid and what do you tend to favor?

So I can probably eat better in terms of health-wise, but what I definitely do, and this is what I do, is I only buy takeout

Or eat out, broadly speaking. Obviously, sometimes I do. About once a week. And this tends to be Friday night. So Friday night is the night I might go get a pizza or I might do whatever. Or Chinese takeout. But otherwise, I cook. And I like to cook. And I cook and I cook. The vast majority of my cooking is from scratch. And so to my mind...

The moment you are doing that, whatever it is, yes, some of my food is probably a little bit too high in fat or maybe it's a little bit too much rice or this or that. But because I pretty much cook everything, I know everything that goes in. I know how much sugar, how much salt, how much fat I actually put in. So that is probably the way that I do. My wife would say, well, I need to eat less meat. Probably true.

And I need to eat more fiber. Probably true. But I think I do think it's a good start if you are cooking the vast majority of your food, because that means you have control. You see what's going into your food and that's got to be better than the alternative.

Yeah, that's such a great advice. If we all cooked more, I think we would all be healthier. In the U.S. today, there's so much discussion on a national political level about food choices and lifestyle. I never thought I would hear people talking about seed oils on the national political scale. I know.

What are, are there any, when you're cooking for yourself or when you're going to restaurants, are there any, any food groups or types of things that you, that you avoid specifically for health reasons that are otherwise consumed by a lot of people? That's an interesting question. Um,

I mean, I don't tend to eat like, I guess I don't tend to eat super processed food, but that's not because look, I'm, I know I'm, I know I'm like yourself. I'm a privileged person. So in other words, I can afford to eat what I want to eat. I can afford to type the time to time to cook. And so I tend to try and I value my food. I do value my, I love my food and I value my food. And so I like,

food that are that is that good quality ingredients is what i generally will try and eat i won't avoid anything i try not to avoid anything as long as it's not within as long as it's not like some super processed terrible something but but but i don't i there's nothing i tend to avoid i'll eat a little bit of something

Like seed oils are okay then? You know, within a specific, you know, obviously if I have a gallon of it or if I have it all the time, then, well, I don't know about that. But no, so I think I'm a big believer in there are no real good foods and bad foods per se. I think there are foods we can eat a ton of. And I think there are foods that we need to not eat so much of. And so I try to eat as much of the foods that we can eat a ton of.

Sort of the dose makes the poison. It does. I think it is the dose that makes the poison. Well, now a lot of times we hear people talking about

calories and calorie caloric restriction and longevity kind of jumping around there. What, what do you, what do you think's going on there with that? Um, are, are some people more genetically predisposed to benefit from caloric restriction than others, or is it across the board or is there benefit at all? What do you think's going on? That's a very interesting question. I think that we are probably, so I think there's two, there's two issues here. Um,

The data is the strongest in animal studies, obviously. They've done it in flies. They've done it in worms. They've done it in a number of models because they're very easy to do. And undoubtedly, if you calorie restrict animals...

probably down to two-thirds of what they would normally eat, you know? So not... They definitely live longer. And there's no reason to imagine why this would not be true in humans, as long as the calorie restriction is balanced, okay? Rather than just restricting one specific food group. The major issue with that... And so, okay, okay, why? Why do I think this happens? And I think this is an opinion at the moment.

I think probably because it reflects what we probably evolved in. And we tended to evolve in a feast-famine type of environment. I think we did. Sometimes we had the antelope. Sometimes we didn't have the antelope.

And that was true over hundreds of thousands of years as homo whatever to now homo sapiens. And so I get the feeling the reason we do the best from it and the reason that gives us the longevity is because that is what we evolved through. Now, this is an opinion. I have obviously no evidence for that. Now, the main problem in trying to paste that into the world we live in today, it is very difficult to do that in the food environment we're actually in.

And so if you try and do it in the food environment that you're in, then you are going to end up miserable. And I guess...

How much are you willing to pay to live with a long health span? How much are you willing to pay? I know it's an interesting point about how much you want to try and enjoy your life versus to live an extra year at the end of it. It's a terrible, I'm just very morbid discussion. But that is where I think. So undoubtedly, the calorie restriction, I think will extend your life. But how miserable will it make you feel in this current food environment? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm reminded of a physician named Roy Walford who studied caloric restriction and he went to Biosphere 2, which was this experiment in the Arizona desert where they were in these geodesic domes and they restricted food. But anyway, to your point, yeah, caloric.

Caloric restriction, it's nothing that most of us will accept in our lives. It just doesn't work. So let's dial it back then, take it one step back. One thing a lot of people are starting to do, which isn't really...

caloric restriction per se, but it's intermittent fasting where we open, we have periods where we don't eat and maybe the calories are the same over the week, but rather than consuming them continuously, we have blocks of time where we don't consume calories. What do you think's going on there? And is there a benefit from that?

I think that's an excellent question. I think undoubtedly it is a useful strategy to just simply restrict energy, restrict calories, even though they don't count. Just restrict the amount of energy going in. So for many people, it is an effective weight loss tool because people don't tend to, although you might say, well, if you do 5-2 or if you do...

time-restricted feeding, surely you overcompensate. Over a long period of time, you don't tend to, you tend to lose a little bit of weight. The magical, the question is, does it have any additional metabolic benefits? Now, high quality human studies are low on the ground, okay, because they're very difficult to do. It's very difficult to do a blinded, an RCT, right, on a diet, because you're either fasting or you're not, you know, it's not like a drug. But

I think animal studies definitely show relatively subtle but measurable metabolic benefits to fasting.

And I get the feeling when once we get to the point of high-quality human studies, we'll probably see the same in humans as well. Why? Because, A, I do think it's an ancestral... I'm not a paleo person, but I think it's an ancestral way that we ate this feasting and famine. Now, the mechanisms...

The mechanisms are probably akin to why people stick to keto. Okay, so during the period of fasting, you tend to burn through your glycogen stores first, or at least primarily, that's the easiest store to actually go through, particularly when you're not eating. And so you kind of force your body. You fast for a while, but you tend to force your body into burning fat. And that fat produces ketones.

and ketones make you feel fuller. And so there's a whole metabolic flexibility issue there. And I think it is that, A, making sure you go through your glycogen every so often, so you're burning more fat, producing some ketones, plus the fact that it's something ancestral. I think it's going to be a mix of those two that gives the potential benefits of fasting. This is my view.

And yeah, and even the ketosis will lower the appetite in many people. Right. So exactly. It helps them that way.

Today, what gives you... Well, there was a recent article that came out in JAMA about... We've had an obesity epidemic in the United States since about 1980. It's gone up and up and up. And at least now, for the first time, there's suggestive evidence that it may be flattening off. It's too hard to tell, but there's some numbers that say this may be changing about obesity rates in the U.S.,

What gives you hope? What do you think that's due to? And what gives you hope in the battle against obesity today that wasn't present previously? What are you excited about? I don't think the interpretation of the plateau is hope necessarily. And I think that the reason there is a plateau...

It's because of the powerful genetic drivers, not everyone is going to respond to this environment by ending up having obesity. And so I think what we're seeing is we're almost seeing...

Can the food environment get any worse than it is now? That's the question to ask. Let's assume that it really can't. And anyway, we're beginning to think a little bit more about it, so hopefully it won't. Perhaps we're sort of reaching a natural biological maximum of the people that will respond to this environment by ending up with obesity. Okay.

Now, we have to wait and see. But yes, you're right. There is a slight plateauing going on. And so that will be my interpretation. Perhaps we're seeing sort of the biological maximum in this particular environment of the number of human beings that are going to end up being either overweight or have obesity.

I think we need to drive that number down. But that is my interpretation of what I think is happening. So it's leaving. Some people have suggested that some of the new GLP-1 agonists are playing a role in that. What's your take on this? These have become almost politicized just like diets. Some people are very pro it. Some people are very against it. What's your take on these drugs?

I think these drugs, I've been in this business for 30 years. And I, you know, I don't want to, you know, sort of have hyperbole, do I have hyperbole here? But I do think that I've never seen such effective, broadly safe tools. Now, I think they should be widely used by the people who need them, crucially, but they are drugs and they are powerful.

And so therefore we have to treat them as drugs. So we want to try and get them to the right people. Do I think that they should be used to treat obesity? Undoubtedly. Do I think everyone should be on them? No. I think that these drugs, I mean, for those of you who don't know what these drugs are, they're a modified version of gut hormones. They act at the pancreas to enhance insulin secretion, so they're type 2 diabetes drugs, but they signal to the brain to make you feel fuller so you eat less.

So in essence, what these drugs do is change. If you're taking semaglutide or ozempic, you're changing one hormone level. If you're taking terzapatide or monjaro, then you're changing two hormone levels. And so I guess the lesson to take here is if you change one or two hormone levels, you're able to change your entire feeding behavior and eat less and suddenly lose weight. So I think for those people who need it, they need to be on the drug.

Do you think there's effects of these drugs beyond feeding behavior? They've talked about the effects on the brain with dopamine and behavioral things like half the people cut back their alcohol or their addictive behavior, whether it's shopping, gambling, porn, take your pick, whatever it is.

Is that going on independent of eating, I assume, right? So I don't think any of us know the mechanism yet of why it happens, but I think that it's gone beyond anecdote now. So these things that you just mentioned about, you know, the addictive elements, the fact that it's making some people quit smoking easier, drinking easier, is like the gastrointestinal effects that are a side effect. This is also a side effect.

But it just, the moment millions of people are on the drugs, suddenly you see it. Now, why might it be occurring? So once again, this is opinion here rather than any kind of mechanism. But I think that what happens is, look, to many of us, eating feels nice. It's rewarding. Okay. That's unsurprising. And so if you actually take a drug, which makes you feel fuller, to some people, it may actually take a cap off that pleasure.

Okay, now, this is why a lot of people comfort eat, because it makes them feel more comfortable, okay? But if you suddenly take a cap off that, because now, because of this drug, does it take, and the rewards portion of the brain is the same for all behaviors, sex, drinking, drugs, bungee jumping, it hits the same area. Mechanisms, I mean, the roots to it are different, but it hits the same area. So perhaps,

by taking a cap of one element of joy for some people, but just the feeling, it takes away that for smoking as well or drinking, but only for some people. I don't think this is going to be true for everybody.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many questions. I guess we're getting we're getting far a little afield. But I mean, even the people who like have obesity and it, you know, partially driven by genetics, partially driven by lifestyle choices, but maybe it's some root cause. It's driven by childhood trauma or something there. And then I take a drug that makes me lose weight and I stop eating. Then will that manifest as some other behavior that

Because I haven't addressed the root cause. In other words, maybe the root cause isn't the eating. That's just the behavior above something else. No, but I think that not the problem. These are drugs. And so they'll treat the obesity or whatever it is that is there. But they don't tackle the root cause of anything. And I think ultimately, that is going to be something we have to keep in mind. It won't tackle the root cause of any childhood trauma. It certainly won't improve our diet. And it certainly is not going to improve the food environment.

So I think we need to use the drugs to treat the obesity, but not lose sight of the fact that we still have to improve the food environment. We still do have to go after the root cause. It's just not the job of the drug. We need to have policy changes, better education. We need to be having conversations like this, you know, so that other people can hear it. So this is trying to tackle the root cause, discussing the issues and what have you. The drugs are only going to treat the symptom, which is the obesity.

And even if people, if I eat a certain amount of calories of junk food, I go on GLP-1 agonist and I eat half the number of calories, I will lose weight. But if I still eat the same junk food, I'll just be a skinny, unhealthy, metabolically unhealthy person rather than an obese, metabolically unhealthy person. So the person has to change their lifestyle and the food and strength training also.

Exactly. Both of those. Both of those. I do think that these drugs need to be prescribed with a wraparound care. It needs to come with some kind of

robust dietary intervention to make sure that you, because if you suddenly stop thinking about food, because that's what a lot of the people say, oh, the food noise is gone, right? People talk about that. Then you may not be thinking as hard, right? Do I have enough meat in my fridge or vegetables or anything like that? Oh, look, I'll just eat this candy bar. It'll make you feel full, but you're right, it's terrible for you. So I think better food, definitely better diet. And you do need to keep up your exercise because these are not specific to GLP-1s.

Any rapid weight loss will make you lose muscle and fat, and no one signed up to lose muscle. And so the only way to mitigate against that is to exercise, strength training preferably, in order to mitigate against the muscle mass loss as you lose weight. And what about the long-term course of this? Do you think...

Because people always ask, am I going to be on these for the rest of my life? Or if I can change my lifestyle, and this will help me change my lifestyle because the same behavioral things affect some of our food choices, even on GLP-1s. Is it reasonable to assume that people will be able to change their lifestyle and eventually taper off these things? Or is it just a case-by-case basis? I think it's case-by-case basis. I think there are going to be individuals who actually...

who are used to or are like or are able to change their habits and behaviors. And because they're able to do that and they take the two years they're on the drug, for example, to sort of learn a new amount of food to cook. Like I'm going to do two chicken thighs rather than four chicken thighs or what have you, whatever it is you're cooking. But this is only going to work for some people. For other people, no.

I think the likelihood is they'll be on the drug for a pretty long time. Now, all of the companies that are making these drugs, I don't think any of them think that in the long term, the weight loss dosing is going to be what happens in maintenance. So all of the drug companies at the moment are testing one of two things. They are testing lower dosing.

and a longer time between the doses to see what a maintenance type of time, a maintenance schedule will look like. I mean, the new drugs from Amgen, just as an example, already they're in phase three. They're not available yet. But they are once monthly, and they're being trialed once every two months as well.

And so you can imagine that it takes you six to 12 injections to lose your 20% body weight, whatever. Okay. But then as you reach, I'm making it up, but imagine this, then you lose your weight and then you need to maintain it. Then you end up taking maybe one or two doses a year, sort of a maintenance dose. The same time you get your flu jab or your COVID vaccine top up, whatever it is, you know, you suddenly get that.

Or you take an oral version of it, like Novo has Rebelsis. It's not as effective for weight loss, but maybe it's fine for sort of a weight maintenance. So this is what all these drug companies are doing. They're trying to understand what does the maintenance phase of this whole thing look like, and it's not going to be the same for everyone.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to be respectful of time. I want to hit one. One other topic was your hypothalamus work, mapping the human hypothalamus. It was in, I think, Nature magazine, one of the Nature magazines. Tell us about that work. Yeah.

So I am interested in how the brain responds to circulating hormones, including these drugs. That's what I study. And one of the places that hormones and the drugs hit is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. It also hits the hindbrain. And we're doing the same thing in the hindbrain as well. And we now know that the genetics of body weight is by its very definition, the genetics of how our brain influences our feeding behavior.

But because of it's difficult, impossible to get into the brain of a living human being legally and ethically, all of the circuits that we know about have come from mice. And that's fine. But mice are small, furry, have a tail, whiskers, and are herbivores.

So I think we needed to understand what the human circuits look like. And so there have been now leaps in technological approaches, and we also have access to brain donor samples, once again being morbid. We have to work with brain donor samples. We're now trying to map on

on a single cell and a 3D spatial method, all of the feeding circuits within the human brain to map out where these hormones signal to and where these drugs signal to. So that's what that work was. Yeah, it's fascinating. It reminds me of, I have a colleague here in Los Angeles, Dr. Shelley Jordan. He's a neurologist and he's

He showed me his project he's working on. He's taking humans and he's basically doing an MR of their hypothalamus. And then he looks at the longevity center in the hypothalamus and he stereotactically irradiates it with focused ultrasound that doesn't open the blood-brain barrier, but it basically...

opens the the brain up a little bit so that when he gives exosomes uh you know stem cell vesicles they specifically go to the longevity center in the hypothalamus so he can target various areas in the hypothalamus and deliver targeted drugs to it so uh we can talk more about this offline but i'll uh wow when you come to la we'll we'll go to that and um i i know we're we're

Yeah. But anyway, well, maybe we'll do a follow-up episode with you both or something. Yeah.

In the last few minutes, I wanted to talk about Rio. You're the chief scientific advisor there, and I'm advising Rio too. I love this company. So tell me about Rio and why you got involved with it. So Rio is a company that's trying to do personalized health, personalized diets in particular. And you might think, well, surely everyone is. And that's true, right? There are a lot of companies, however, that make very, very...

That are doing glucose monitoring. I think there are a lot of people wandering around with continuous blood glucose monitors. But in of itself, a blood glucose monitor doesn't tell you much about the health of the food you're eating. It gives you one piece of information. Like calories, your blood glucose gives you one piece of information. So what Rio is doing is trying to collect a whole...

Many pieces of information. Glucose is one of them. Then you wear this ring for heart rate and sleep, and then you do blood biochemistry, and all of it is fed into an app, and then it uses AI to sort of personalize the...

the type of food you may be eating on any given day. That's the aim. That's the hope. And it's a startup company. It's small. We're trying to, I mean, Rob, you are also an advisor. And so we're trying to get them to do it right. We're trying to get them to measure the right thing and take the right pieces of information to try and help, to empower us to actually improve our diets, improve our behavior, improve our lifestyle. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love the idea with having a large language model that has access to my genetic information, my lab tests, my CGM data, and my aura ring so I can ask it, they go, hey, I'm not feeling well today. And you'll go, well, your glucose shot up and you only had 10 minutes of REM sleep last night and you only took five

50 steps today, you normally take 10,000 steps. So it's it I think it's, it's it foretells what may be the future for all of us, you know, with AI assisted health, and it's super inviting. Now, is this available everywhere? Or what's the footprint now for Rio? Where who can who can access this?

So at the moment, I think it's going to be launched first in the UK because it's a UK based company. I don't think it's going to then we hope that it will be launched, you know, in the United States, hopefully, and then and then we're going to start to move around each of the individual territories, shall we say.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, I was jumping around YouTube the other day, apropos of nothing, and TikTok and Twitch and social media. And I heard this amazing band called Casa de Funk. And I heard they're based out of Cambridge University, where you are. They're in that area. And do you know anything about that band? I do know anything. It's the band...

So I'm the front man for a disco funk band, which seems an odd thing for a bold Asian guy in Cambridge to sing, but there we go. That's the way it is. Yeah, no, no. I've been there with them since 1998, and we do old school disco funk, Cassadale funk. Nice. So look for you guys on YouTube. No record contract yet, right? No record contract, I don't think ever. I think we're a bunch of...

But I love that. Look for us and see if you can find us on YouTube. We're going to try and get a sample and put in the podcast today so you can listen to it on the way out. But...

Fantastic. I'll do that. I'll send you something. That was great. Any final comments you want to leave people with? Anything we didn't cover today or anything else we need to touch on? No, not really. I mean, I think I will end with my mantra, my motto that, you know, that obesity is, that people with obesity are not bad. They're not slothful. They're not morally bereft. You know, they're fighting their biology and they're fighting the environment. And so I think we got to,

My takeaway message is this. I think what happens is obesity, carrying too much fat that it begins to influence your health is a bad thing. But that doesn't mean that the people suffering from obesity are to be blamed. And so that's the message I want people to take away. That's beautiful. I love it. The book is Why Calories Don't Count. Giles, this has been wonderful. And I look forward to doing this again soon. So thank you so much for the work you do. And thanks for being on the program. Thanks for having me, Robert.

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