Kind: captions
Language: en
how do you love yourself where you are
when you're you're ashamed or you feel
guilty like how do you find that
connection to the love so that's one of
the things we're demystifying and
smarter is like where the hell does fat
go where does fat go when you lose it
where does this quote burn process
happen fat people are not
lean people who eat too much
how on earth is that possible
let's think about one of the arguments
i'm making against the energy balance
idea as soon as you decide that obesity
is an energy balance disorder that means
either intake is too high or expenditure
is too low
you fix it by decreasing intake or
increasing expenditure and what you
study
is appetite and hunger and energy
expenditure so you have these hypotheses
like
you know uh maybe obese people just burn
off more calories or they run hot or
something like that and that could
explain why their fat tissue doesn't
accumulate fat
what you don't study
is what was called intermediate
metabolism it might still be which is
all what happens to the foods after you
eat them
and you could create hypotheses
effortlessly whereby the fat tissue is
trapping fat remember it only has to do
20 calories a day if it somehow figures
out a way to just hold on to 20 calories
of the thousand that goes in you're
destined to become obese and what effect
that's going to have
on appetite and expenditure in the case
of these vmh lesioned animals with their
gasping for food which is how it was
described to me by a researcher who did
these
rodent experiments in the 60s and 70s
um what's so interesting is
when you leash in that part of the brain
the eventual immediately
ventral medial hypothalamus the first um
measurable
physiological effect you see is an
increase in insulin secretion so
basically these animals start hyper
secreting insulin
and what insulin does is it partitions
doesn't just partition calories into fat
it also shuts off the oxidation the use
of fat for fuel
okay so now you imagine these animals
they're a
few uh uh knock them out to do the
surgery they wake up from the surgery an
hour or two later
and while they've been asleep their
insulin has been elevated
and
their ability to oxidize fat is gone so
fat is the fuel you're burning when
you're not eating and you're not getting
the carbs so you've in effect created
two hours of starvation
and you've
cut off the
fuel supply that they would normally be
burning for fuel while there's
like for instance when they're asleep
insulin levels go down fat comes out of
the fat cells you burn the fat for fuel
that's why we don't wake up in the
middle of the night to go eat
because we're burning our facts our
insulin levels are low that allows us
both to mobilize fat from our fat cells
and to burn the fat for fuel once you've
created an infectious what's called
hyperinsulinemia
you've shut off that fuel supply since
the surgery the animal has been
literally starved
and then it wakes up from the surgery
starving and the reason it's been
literally starved it's because it can't
use its fat for fuel
so it doesn't have any glucose in the
system and it can't access the fat so
it's literally dying for energy what is
it about damaging that region of the
brain that causes this is it that
damaging that region of the brain causes
a spike in insulin and the spike in
insulin is the problem or is there
something else going on well that's the
sort of thing i mean you know the way
when the researchers in the 1930s when
brain anatomists were doing these kind
of studies one of the ways you figure
out what the brain does
have different regions of the brain do
is you lesion that region of the brain
you basically break it and you see what
no longer functions
so it just happened to be that that was
the region of the brain that if you
lesion the animal will both get obese
and
what's called hype manifest this
hyperphagia this extraordinary hunger
but the interesting thing was again you
could control its food intake
and the animal's going to get obese
anyway
so you can
starve these are the mice that you
starve and they still end up adding fish
yeah in these cases you uh you pair feed
them so you only feed them as much as a
lean animal eats you only feed them you
calculate what they're eating
pre-surgery
and you only give them that much access
to that much food and they'll get obese
anyway
so
again the argument is that you blame it
on the eating too much so you assume and
the field did assume that the ventral
medial hypothalamus is a is an appetite
control center this is at the heart of
still many theories of obesity
and the way we know this is because when
you break it the animals get ob you get
hyperphagic they eat so much but they'll
and they then get obese but they'll get
obese even when they don't aren't
allowed to eat any more than lean
animals so what does eating too much
have to do with it
and what's interesting is
back in the early 1940s when these
studies were being done the leading
neuroanatomists of the day a man named
steven ransom at the
chicago i think it was northwestern
university
ransom had just come out of doing
similar studies where you could create a
disease called diabetes insipidus by
lesioning a different part of the brain
and in diabetes insipidus the animals
urinate constantly
and they're thirsty all the time so they
drink constantly and what um
ransom figured out is that the the
lesion actually causes them to urinate
and so the thirst that they manifest is
not caused by the lesion it's caused by
the urge to replace the body water that
they're losing to the urination the same
thing happens in in
you know untreated diabetes of any kind
um
so
ransom said to himself look if the
animal is losing water
and he's so thirsty it's so thirsty
because it's replenishing that water
maybe this animal the vmh lesion is
losing calories into the fat
and it's eating so much it's hyperphagia
because it's replacing the calories that
it can't that it's losing into the fat
just like the other animals losing water
by urinating so
his theory was basically just that that
the lesion causes the animal to
accumulate excess fat and the animal
eats a lot to
try and replace those calories and then
uh three months after he wrote that
paper um ransom died of a heart attack
and his graduate student who had created
this lesioning technique albert
hetherington of 1943 joined the air
force and went off to participate in the
second world war
and so they stopped arguing for that
theory and the counter theory that the
lesion caused the hyperphagia was being
touted by another former graduate
student of ransoms a guy named john
brobeck and john brobeck kept writing
about it and brobeck's theory took over
the field
purely because ransom died and
hetherington joined the air force so
crazy so your hypothesis if i can put a
fine point on it is the reason that
people who get fat easily get fat is not
because they're overeating
per se because that is still some part
of the equation
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they're still in taking enough food that
they're not below that breaking point
where no matter what
you're going to have a problem you're
going to lose weight their fats their
fat cells for reasons we have not yet
discussed
uh are taking up more calories than they
ought to
and it is leaving them
perpetually accumulating fat because
they'll be hungry enough
that for them to eat so few calories
that with their supercharged desire to
grab fat it's basically an impossible
way to live unless somebody locks you in
a cage and so now people say
this concentration camp is the case may
be right yeah
so people thusly look at it and say and
this is where i think the complexity
comes in
they know the the judgmental person
looking at that person knows there is a
caloric point that i could drop you to
where you are going to get lean but what
they're not
realizing is that hey some people's fat
cells are sucking up an unusual amount
of fat which is leaving them
extraordinarily hungry and i'm going to
guess that part of this mechanism of
sucking up too much fat is an increase
in insulin and so now you're not only
storing too much fat but you're not
accessing the fat to burn and so now to
get fed you're going to need to eat
and
this part now i'm really guessing
that you may find yourself drawn to
carbohydrate foods because that's going
to turn to glycogen or glucose excuse me
in your system and therefore now finally
i have something that i can burn but
that's going to exacerbate the situation
because now your insulin levels are
going to go back up and so you're in
like this death loop of the only thing
that makes me feel fed are these high
carbohydrate meals i'm able to pull a
ton of fat into my cells as it is but i
can't get it back out because of
elevated insulin levels it's not just
that you can't get about you you can get
it out on occasions but as long as the
insulin is elevated your body is being
told not to burn the fat but to burn the
carbs so if insulin is elevated
carbohydrates are your fuel so part of
this theory is also this concept of
insulin resistance
so your body becomes if you're
overweight
the
you know particularly abdominally if
your waist size is increasing that
pretty much tells you you're insulin
resistant if you're insulin resistant
your body has to secrete more insulin
to take up a set amount of
glucose from this from the circulation
and burn it for fuel
so
you have elevated abnormally elevated
levels of insulin most of the day and
when the insulin is elevated it's
telling the rest of your body to burn
carbs
it's telling your fat cells to store fat
it's telling the rest of your body don't
burn the fat because it's only supposed
to be elevated when there are
carbohydrates available
to be burned and so it's telling them to
burn carbs so carbs are in effect your
body's primary fuel source when insulin
is elevated and you can't switch over to
burning fat because the insulin prevents
that from happening
so now you crave carbs because that's
your fuel as your blood sugar starts to
go down you need to raise it back up so
you could burn it for fuel you crave
carbs and then sugar might be a special
case which gets into
the hepatic metabolism of the fructose
and
we probably don't want to go there at
this moment
not not at this moment because i think
there's um more to say here so
so if
insulin is raised
and that's part of why
the fat isn't being unlocked it's part
of why you crave carbohydrates as part
of how you get in this death loop
then the answer is well if there were a
food that you could eat that didn't
raise your insulin then even though you
put on fat more easily you should be
able to get into a position where you're
just not giving any extra
oomph to the system telling it to store
and store and store and so now we get
into cutting out carbohydrates
yeah well there's another aspect of this
which is um
your fat tissue is the most sensitive
tissue in the body to insulin
so if insulin is elevated even a little
bit your fat tissue will hold on to fat
that's what it does
and this
sensitivity of the fat that exquisite
sensitivity of fat insulin is something
that's been known since pretty much as
soon as they could measure insulin in
the bloodstream
it was the 1960s
actually even before that when
researchers wanted to test whether or
not there's insulin in the like you want
to find out if someone secreting insulin
you take a blood sample you inject some
of the blood into a petri dish which has
fat cells from a rat in it
because the fat cells will respond if
insulin is in the blood at any level
whereas other tissue might be resistant
to it the fat always stays sensitive to
it so the
idea is if you want to get fat out of
your fat tissue the fat has to see in
effect no insulin
and
how do you know if you're
how do you minimize your insulin levels
well you eat and affect the ketogenic
diet in fact if you're in ketosis it
means your liver is seeing basically
very little insulin and your fat is
seeing no insulin because it's
mobilizing fat from the fat cells so
that they can be converted to
ketones in the liver so the case for
keto is literally some people
you know the idea is so there's some
simple ideas that come out of it
carbohydrates are fattening because they
raise insulin and insulin makes us store
fat as fat
in our fat cells so the carbohydrates
regulate the fat storage in effect
through
primarily the hormone insulin other
hormones also play a role but you can
simplify it to insulin
so carbohydrates are fattening
to those of us who fatten easily not all
of us are susceptible
and
if you want some of us the case for keto
if we want to get significant fat out of
our fat cells and keep it out then we
have to minimize insulin and minimizing
insulin means
and affect minimizing carbohydrate
consumption
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improvement all right back to today's
episode
one thing you said in the book really
plainly that
it it sort of put everything together
for me was when you're thinking about
people that put on fat easily it really
might be as simple as
the amount of insulin that needs to be
present in the bloodstream in order for
the fat cells to lock down to pull in
the fat and not release anything just
might be really low and so my wife has a
friend who man this woman all she eats
is carbohydrates and she is just stick
thin now
if if that's true
that would make a lot of sense that she
just has a very high level that where
she can have insulin in her bloodstream
that's pulling out the glucose
but her fat cells tolerate quite a high
level and don't have that same ravenous
desire to partition
um the available um calories into the
fat cells and when you think about it
like that my only remaining question is
okay that makes sense but where given
that energy balance is a real thing the
energy has to be going somewhere so what
is happening for her does does anybody
know have they done any tests like
what's going on is she breathing it out
is she running hotter is she
is it could be
you know when i was growing up i have an
older brother is two years older than i
am and he's always a little taller and
he's always very lean the kind of kid
you could see like the you know the
veins on his arms and
you know when he was 10.
um
i never really thought about it we were
just different we were just different
you know he we both ate as much as
humanly possible
in fact by the time we were in our teens
we ate dinner and it was 18 minutes so
back then you know your
mother was a work you know a working
housewife would cook family style so
like two roast chickens for four people
and you know some starch and some green
vegetable and we would eat fast because
if i didn't eat fast my brother would
get to it before i did
so
massive amounts he was he could not put
on fat
and i could not have been as lean as he
was unless i starve myself he grew up he
became uh didn't want to play football
in college because he saw in a chart in
the coach's office when he was making
the rounds of colleges that they had him
bulking up from 190 to 240 he was six
foot five
and he thought that's out of the
question so he became a rower and he
would grow an hour a day and then run an
hour a day and you know lift weights an
hour a day and i became a football
player and i did get up to 240.
you know but i couldn't run 10 miles he
could do it you know
run 10 miles come home change into a
street clothes and go off to class i
would if i did it i would a my body
would break down and then i would be you
know in a coma for two days
um
it's conceivable that the reason he
exercised so much he ate enormous
amounts of food i mean he once told me
that he didn't get never got stuffed he
just got bored of eating after a couple
of hours
whoa okay but he could not put on fat he
just couldn't do it so his body must
have burned those calories off and one
way you do it and when you again you go
back to the you know pre-1960s medical
literature the research would talk about
the impulse to physical activity like
literally having energy to burn
so somebody like him he's he's going for
10 mile run he's not
thin because he's running 10 miles he's
running 10 miles because his body
doesn't want to
store calories as fat so it's got to
burn them off it's a different way of
thinking about everything so you kind of
flip the causality going going back to
herman ponzer and
his take on the hadza is that they're
not burning any more calories than
anybody else
they intake a ton of carbohydrate in the
form of honey but i'm very curious
what is going on there is do you think
that the data is inaccurate and they
really are being more active and burning
more calories i mean the question is
what so the issue was always not the
amount of carbohydrates but the quality
of the carbohydrates being consumed
so western populations you transition
basically refined grains and sugars were
the problem
um
and those hit harder in terms of insulin
versus honey
well that's what we don't know so then
the question is because in the west
you rarely see people eating more than a
pound or two of honey a year you look at
honey consumption over a century it
barely changes but what did change was
massive amounts of sugar
it's his question what constitutes a
black swan for hypothesis so the part of
the hypothesis another aspect of it
discussed in good calories bad calories
is this western disease
observation
which begins actually in the late 19th
century with a french physician who
documents higher rates of cancer in
urban areas in rural areas and in europe
than in northern african populations and
postulates its cancer it's a disease of
civilization and then to the 20th
century a whole series of physicians
from all around the world observe that
when populations
transition from eating whatever their
traditional diet is
to western diets and lifestyles they
manifest obesity diabetes heart disease
hypertension arthritis a whole
cluster of metabolic diseases that that
also cluster together in patients
so the theory becomes what's causing it
by the 1960s the leading theory is first
sugar and white flour and that's british
physicians who have sort of
you know been
surveying all these
missionary and colonial physicians and
hospitals and clinics around the world
then that transitions into the sugar
only hypothesis
of a fellow named john yudkin and then
it ends as the idea that it's not the
presence of sugar or white flour it's
the absence of fiber
in this foods and the carbohydrate foods
we eat and
it's a story i tell in grade length and
good calories bad calories and how you
end up with a theory that could coexist
with the idea that dietary fat causes
heart disease the point is
it's clear that when populations are
westernized they manifest obesity
diabetes and
all these things and a viable hypothesis
is the refined carbohydrates and the
sugars
maybe particularly the sugars the
caloric sweeteners
and maybe even particularly coke and
pepsi that you drink
um it leads to insulin resistance which
causes or exacerbates the risk of all
these diseases
now the question is you find a
population like the hards hodzo
and they're honey eaters
and they don't have high levels of
obesity and diabetes
is that enough to refute these others
other ideas so once you say this
population can eat significant honey
does that mean that it's not
the coke and the pepsi and the sweets
and the candy and the chocolate bars and
the
white flower
influencing insulin and all these other
populations
and the answer is
i don't think it's enough
because one possibility is that when the
hots have started consuming honey say a
thousand years ago
they had their obesity diabetes
epidemics then
and so what we have left is a population
that's particularly resistant to the
effect of
the fructose in the honey
and the uh it could be that when you eat
honey you eat it differently than you do
you know we drink sugary beverages all
day long um starting with breakfast and
then between snacks even if we're coffee
drinkers if we drink our coffee
sweetened we're basically
um titrating sugar all day maybe i don't
know how they eat honey that could be
different so the question is
you know herman poncer as far as i know
i have to cop i didn't read his book
because it never got cheaper than 25 on
amazon on kindle and i've been waiting
for the price to come down even though i
know he's got a couple chapters in which
he makes fun of my ideas i should read
it
um
i don't believe that's technically a
black swan because the the hypothesis is
when a population transitions to western
diet particularly the refined grains and
sugars of a western diet that triggers
this physiological effect that manifests
as this cluster of metabolic diseases
the hadza have never made that
transition
one interesting thing to find out would
be if there are members of the hats or
who move into urban areas
and do start
drinking their
sugar instead of eating it as
um honey that would be interesting
because many of these observations were
made by
uh actually british and and
physician missionary physicians who
spend time in africa
who said look i see different disease
rates in
rural african tribes that i see in urban
african tribes so a different spectrum
of chronic diseases and in africa i have
a urban
black population that has very low
levels of
obesity and diabetes but if i go to
america i will see a black population
only 200 years separated in time
with very high levels of obesity and
diabetes so there's clearly something
about the american food environment that
has triggered this obese diabetic
phenotype the question is what is it
if it's not the honey if it's not the
sugar that if they you say that honey
refutes it
i don't think it's enough
um i think there are too many other
explanations for why the hodzin might be
able to consume honey and not get obese
and diabetic and heart disease and all
the rest
i went into this journey thinking oh you
know i'm gonna get fat and then i'm
gonna get fit and it's gonna be a
physical thing but the i came out of it
realizing that
transformation is so much more mental
and emotional than people think and if
you've never been overweight
mostly what you can relate to is the
physical side of weight loss right eat
less and work out you know that right
you got that you've lived that but the
mental emotional side you haven't lived
that until you've kind of been down this
path and so for me my eyes were opened i
realized just how wrong i was with
trying to help people right
and did you mean your strategies were
actually bad because you didn't
understand them they weren't bad they
were just incomplete they were just
focused on the physical so someone was
struggling with their transformation i'm
like okay let's change up your macros
change up your calories change up your
workouts that's the missing component
right that's what i i focus on because
that's all i knew
rather than trying to help them on the
mental and emotional side which is what
people struggle with right i think
people it's not so much a lack of
knowledge right
people know they need to eat healthy and
work out it's it's the application on
the mental and emotional side and the
consistency of living that lifestyle
over over time and that's where people
struggles is
maintaining as a lifestyle change which
is more up here than it is in the gym or
in the kitchen so i want to really
define what you mean by mental and
emotional okay
so what is it that people are struggling
with an attachment to food the emotional
reward of eating like what is it yeah
and it's different for each person the
thing that i realized was was how
powerful the emotional connection to
food really is whereas before i'm like
look it's not that hard you just you
know stop eating the junk food put down
the soda you go to the gym every day
what's wrong like it's not that hard
until i lived it even even though it was
only for just six months
when i switched
and tried to lose the weight that
emotional connection to food was way
more powerful even for me as a trainer
someone who lived their whole life
healthy and my body went through those
withdrawal symptoms right almost like a
drug addict i won't say i was addicted
some people are truly addicted but for
me
just being aware of how powerful that
emotional connection to food really is
what do you do when you have cravings or
you know when you when you eat your
emotions when you're sad or you're happy
we celebrate or we had a stressful day
so we're like you know what i deserve
wine and chocolate tonight because i had
a stressful day
so how do you help people through that
so i grew up in a morbidly obese family
so i know exactly how people can
find comfort and or celebration in food
how do you help them
dive into that like do you get like
psychological and and actually almost
like a therapist walk them through that
stuff so there's obviously a physical
component of transformation so that you
help them with the physical side but i
think you know it's like 10 percent that
90 help them with the mental emotional
side and how i do that is putting them
in support groups right so it's not just
me because i'm still a fit guy it's
putting them in a support group where
they it's a safe place for them to share
their struggles their successes their
failures
and receive that encouragement and the
empathy that love and that people
letting them know that they're worth it
to continue to fight for their health so
in researching you and coming across
this whole notion of self-love and
self-worth it's so interesting to me how
caught up in all of this that is how
often do you see where somebody's really
struggling with with that like there's
almost a conflict of i'm not worth
pushing through and getting to my goal i
think that's the majority of people that
struggle with their health some people
really don't feel like they're worthy
and how do you
convince someone that they are worthy i
still don't know it's it's still up to
them it has to be their idea i can't
tell someone they're beautiful they have
to truly believe that they're beautiful
they have to truly believe that they're
worth it it's you know hope that by
telling them and putting them in a group
where other people are telling them as
well that they will find that inner
motivation and inspiration and kind of
like you know inception to come up with
that idea themselves like maybe i am
worthy maybe you know i can do hard
things the health and fitness industry
in my opinion
hasn't used this fully yet and that's
kind of what my hope is with fit to
fight fit is to use empathy as a tool
because i feel like empathy can bridge
that gap between people that feel like
they're stuck and they feel judged by
society and they feel judged and and
looked down upon by people who are
skinny and naturally fit people are
going to be more willing to listen to
you know their trainer or coach if that
person has that empathy and can really
come down to their level walk in their
shoes a little bit and really understand
where they're coming from and then
they'll be more willing to listen to the
advice that you have and the physical
tools or hacks that you have to help
them along their their journey you said
something really interesting you said
maybe i am
worthy maybe i can do the hard things do
you think there's some tie between
a willingness or uh
having the stick-to-itiveness to
actually do the hard things
is that tied to a sense of self-worth
like do you think that those two feed
each other
yeah i think they do feed each other i
don't know which one comes first i think
it's different for each person um
but i think you know if someone for
example like is is on a physical
transformation they're trying to get
healthy
if they
have these small wins in their life
right like i did my first burpee or i
did my first push-up or pull-up or you
know i ate healthy for a whole day um
these senses these small things of
accomplishment help
build that confidence of maybe i can do
hard things i recently had this guy from
nashville come out
to work with me
you know he started out 600 pounds he's
been doing keto intermittent fasting is
down to 450 pounds and the thing that
gravitated him to me and my brand was
the whole empathy thing and
understanding where he's coming from um
because he felt judged by by other
people and so he's like drew i only want
to work with you we took him to this
place called jim jones in salt lake city
and they've trained the cast of 300 and
they trained um superman um and so these
celebrities and i'm like okay we're
going here and he was like scared to
death he's like dude you're trying to
kill me i'm like no i'm not to kill you
like i understand that we're going to
start out slow but um
you know i had him do modifications to
the things that we were doing in the
workout and
it was hard for him but at the end of
the day he drew like he started crying
he's like drew like this was the best
thing for me like being able to do you
know ball slams like you guys and being
able to do like modified push-ups he's
like i haven't moved my body in in years
and
i think after he came out here like he
was super confident and and i had him
say these positive affirmations to
himself like i can't do hard things as
he's doing the workout i can do hard
things as he's doing farmers carries and
wanting to give up but he pushed harder
and if i can get him to believe that he
can do hard things even though it's
small at first then it's going to help
motivate him and push him you know when
he tries to do something that's like oh
that's impossible there's no way i could
do that but now he's like maybe i can do
that
dude let's talk about hard things i love
that so much and yeah like i'm
absolutely obsessed with the notion of
earning credibility with yourself yeah
where you say you're gonna do something
you do it you push yourself to do
something that's difficult and you stick
with it and i think i don't know that
i've ever really put a super fine point
on what what is the birthplace of
self-worth but if you were gonna force
me to do it yeah
doing hard things is almost certainly
like the most foundational it's probably
not the sum total yeah but the
willingness to stick through it and
actually do the hard things is almost
certainly like the core of that so how
do you somebody that isn't coming and
they're not working with you and you
have to do it remotely um
what would you prescribe to them to do
to show them that they can do the hard
things to begin building that self-worth
yeah put out these mini challenges
throughout the month like okay you guys
this month we're going to focus
sometimes as a physical thing but other
times it's like hey guys for 30 days i
want to challenge you to do
maybe three to five positive
affirmations every single day and all
you're saying to yourself is i can do
hard things or
i am worthy or i love myself and i'm
proud of who i am it's not a direct um
you know cause of weight loss but if you
can uh set yourself up for this win
that's gonna help you set set that's
gonna help set you up for these other
ones down the road when it comes to the
workout you're going to do this month or
sticking with whatever diet you're
trying to do for that month because then
you realize man i can do hard things
even if you don't believe it at first
and that's the thing people really don't
believe positive affirmations at first
because they've had 30 40 years of
negative self-talk and now you're trying
to tell them you know just say these
things out loud to yourself words have
power and
they can actually change your beliefs
and they can actually change you at the
cellular level the more you say them
consistently so i think there's
something to saying positive words
about yourself to yourself every single
day and so that's that's one thing that
i do in these private facebook groups to
build that confidence and and uh
convince that person that they can do
hard things
dude so i'm obviously way into self-talk
the narrative that you tell yourself
about yourself
what do you tell people when they're
like but i don't believe it and so is is
it just well repeating it is the key
here and so it's part of the process of
beginning to believe or do you have
something else to help somebody get over
that notion of you're asking me to say
something that i fundamentally think is
false yeah and i i think for some people
it does work where the more consistent
they say it out loud to themselves they
do eventually believe it because
honestly that was my testimonial i've
been through this in a different way not
from a physical transformation but
self-worth negative self-talk for me
saying it out loud
helped me believe it i remember the
first time i said a positive affirmation
i had goosebumps and i almost started
crying like and um
for me like a tough dude it was weird
so for me just kind of telling you my
own testimony of this it's changed my
life 100
saying positive words can help set you
up for positive wins throughout the day
in other areas of your life
so i want to go to your journey with
self-talk so episode 100 of your podcast
beyond amazing by the way absolutely
incredible and obviously speaks to your
tattoo that vulnerability is strength
yeah um
talk to me about that like how did that
become such an important thing for you
um what was episode 100 why did you do
it i mean like a lot of questions around
there 100 first of all thank you for
listening to i really appreciate that
that means a lot to me um i was because
i was scared to death to post that so my
whole life about the culture i grew up
in from religion to sports to my family
was
you know um vulnerability is a weakness
you don't talk about your feelings and
that was just the way i grew up you know
sports football wrestling
you know you don't make excuses you just
do it and if you make a mistake there's
a punishment and same thing with the
religion i grew up in you know if you
weren't perfect and you sinned then
there was some type of punishment to
where i felt shamed i felt guilt and so
my whole life for 30 plus years was
surrounded by guilt and shame because
here i was trying to
be perfect on the outside for everybody
for my parents my church leaders my
coaches my my spouse at the time
um when in reality i knew that i was a
fraud i had weaknesses and i wasn't
perfect and but i couldn't deal with
that from a very young age
i would hide it because i'm like you
know what it's better just to pretend
and fake it rather than
um
you know the disappointment
um and uh having that punishment in my
life and so from a very young age i
developed that habit of you know what
it's not worth confessing or talking
about it because then
you know everybody knows and the guilt
and the shame just consumed me and
eventually broke me to where i
just lived the life of
lies and it was inauthentic
and eventually broke me as a man and
that was the
that was the start of me starting to
transform and change my perspective of
how i viewed myself
once i learned how to love myself and
realizing that shame has so much more
power over you when you don't talk about
it the things that bring you shame and
so for me
having that courage to talk about things
that were embarrassing you know growing
up or that brought me shame i realized
that it's not as scary as i thought in
my head i would create these stories in
my head of how scary it would be if
people found out the real me
um but once i owned my story and
embraced vulnerability as a strength
changed my life i can authentically be
me for the first time in my life i feel
like i'm finally living but it took me
34 years to figure this out and i wish i
would have figured this out at a young
age but i had no one there to teach me i
had to learn from making mistakes so for
me with everything that happened from
you know pornography and affair and all
these things that are looked at as bad
i'm 100 grateful for why because it
changed who i am and i can finally live
an authentic life and i own my story i
have no embarrassment or guilt or shame
like talking about it doesn't make me
feel uncomfortable it doesn't embarrass
me anymore and my hope is that other
people that have that are in that
situation or have been through that
situation have that hope and can find
that courage within to
embrace vulnerability and own your story
because life's short man and i wish i
would have learned this at a younger age
so that i didn't have to go through all
that that heartache how do you love
yourself where you are when you're
you're ashamed or you feel guilty like
how do you find that connection to the
love yeah that's a great question i
think what it stems from is expectations
on life like we have expectations if i
do this then i will be i will be this
and rather than
faking it and pretending like it didn't
happen or not talking about it um
embrace the entire story and realize
that everything happens for your greater
good like this happened like this
pornography addiction or this affair
happened so you can grow from this to
become who you're supposed to be
and i couldn't learn that from religion
i had i can learn that from you know the
culture i grew up and i had to learn
from other people like being open to
other people and their philosophies and
theories like brene brown's books and
byron katie and so many other books like
the four agreements the fifth agreement
totally changed my perspective of how i
view life and how i view me right and i
realized i suffered in life because of
how i viewed myself i saw myself as a
failure because of these you know
weaknesses or sins that i had
and
because of that i did failure-like
things because i saw myself as a failure
and
if i had learned that at an earlier age
to love myself
i feel like all my other relationships
would have been so much better and i
feel like every relationship in your
life stems from how you view yourself
everything is a mirror of how you view
yourself the way you treat your spouse
your kids your loved ones and a complete
stranger starts with how you view
yourself
really powerful man and um what you
ended episode 100 it was really powerful
and it hit me like i actually got
emotional when you said it and you it
was like the wrap up and so you're just
kind of throwing off comments
but there was one thing you said and i
really felt it and it was like basically
i hope you guys are cool with me sharing
all of this how you feel about it it's
really not my business anyway that's
your business and you'd already talked
about that whole thing and you said you
know i'm just trying to love myself and
to be worthy of love
and like that one really stopped me in
my tracks and i just thought
wow like that's so powerful to have as
sort of a guiding force in your life
what does that look like
for you to to be worthy of love yeah
that's a great question and and to be
totally honest with you i think that's
something that kind of like fitness
i always have to work on right um
because i'm not perfect you know even
all the work that i've done has got me
to a better place but i still you know
sometimes struggle with that um that
that you know feeling worthy of love so
it's something you constantly have to
work on like health and fitness and
nutrition like it's not like there's a
finish line you're done boom no matter
what happens in life you'll be good
it's something that i constantly have to
work on to remind myself so things like
meditation every day on a daily basis
saying positive affirmations even still
because i've noticed there's times in my
life where i get busy with work and i
don't do them and i notice a big
difference and i start to believe those
old those old thoughts come back and so
if you don't put in the work every day
just like exercise
you you lose that um that positive
self-talk and then negative self-talk
will always be there i feel like and so
it's a constant battle it's interesting
because there's so many parallels to
fitness and the mindset and when you
were talking about you know when you
gained all the weight that you just
didn't have the energy and you didn't
want to work out for the first time in
your life you didn't want to work out
and to parallel that to the same thing
going on mentally where if you're not
staying on top of it all of a sudden
something that you can sort of take for
granted this desire to feel good feeling
positive about yourself believing
positive things about yourself that also
begins to to atrophy just like a muscle
yeah back then i focused so much on the
physical aspect of weight loss or just
transformation in general but now i've
been doing this for years i realized
like that's what we're missing the
health and fitness industry is
it's not just physical right the mental
emotional and even spiritual side are
all paralleled and like it has to be a
complete transformation otherwise it's
just going to be a diet that people do
for 30 or 60 days but if they can work
on the mental emotional and spiritual
while they're working on the physical
that's where i feel like people will
really truly be fulfilled because they
realize that it's not just about being
skinny or having a six-pack that brings
them fulfillment right like tony robbins
says success without fulfillment is
ultimate failure so you could have the
perfect body but so many people with
perfect bodies are miserable inside and
they hate themselves still why because
they don't take care of the mental
emotional and spiritual and they have to
all be taken care of otherwise they'll
atrophy like you said and you'll be
you'll find out that your life is is um
out of balance in a way
and so what does that look like so we
all know sort of what good diet and
exercise looks like yeah what is so you
mentioned daily affirmations
positive affirmations what are some
other things that you would have people
do as sort of a a part of just like your
regular routine
uh
daily gratitude list and what i mean by
that is is looking around you and being
grateful for what you have now rather
than like oh i'll be happy when i reach
my first million dollars i'll be happy
when um you know this or that happens in
business i think a lot of people do it
wrong though they you know just like
with physical transformation they're
like i'll be happy when i meet this goal
and then i'll celebrate i think that's
where people struggle when people suffer
because they
get unhappy because they're not there
yet right and then they get there and
they're like
well that wasn't it what is it now like
they're looking for something else some
kind of outside source of happiness when
in reality you can create it inside you
know you can choose to do it it's hard
it takes rewiring your brain it doesn't
happen overnight but um i promise you
that you know if you can do things like
a great daily gratitude list every
single day that's going to
help you be fulfilled in the here and
now while you're working on a better
version of yourself one of the things
that i want to really go ham on today
because you cover it so interestingly in
the book is burning fat
changing your life through your diet and
the fact that people struggle with it
not because of calories but because of a
failure to recognize how individual we
are
um
walk me through that dilemma talk about
how you approach in the book and what
the hell people are supposed to do with
the fact that nobody is like them which
is something you mentioned over and over
in the book
help us
yes perfect man yeah so there's this
term that we're really working to
impress upon culture called your
metabolic fingerprint all right each of
us has a unique metabolic fingerprint
and this consists of of course there's
genetic components there's microbial
components
there's so much about us that makes us
so diverse there's nobody like you in
the history of humanity who has the same
metabolism and there never be anybody
like you in the future and the craziest
part tom is that there's even yourself
right now your metabolism next week is
going to be significantly different it's
constantly changing and evolving and
adapting and i'm really working to
impress us upon culture because this
cookie-cutter system
of nutrition has not has not really
given us good results if we just look at
what's happening with our society a big
part of that as you mentioned when i
went to school i went to a nice private
university very expensive they had a
great pre-med track
and i took a nutritional science class
which was an elective i didn't have to
take it i thought nutrition had to do
with fitness right so i was like okay
i'm going to learn about how to be more
fit
there was nuance there because you know
i didn't really understand the
difference with health and fitness
and so the very first day of class the
very first day of class
he said that
if you want to control your body
composition
all you have to do is control calories
if you want to control your health we
just need to manage calories calories
where the tip of the spear it was the
thing that we were taught if we can
regulate this thing this entity then we
can regulate our health
now
the big problem is kind of manifested in
culture is that there's actually these
epic caloric controllers all right sort
of like epigenetics right there's things
that are above genetic control now we
know there are things above caloric
control that actually control what
calories do in our bodies which gets
back to our unique metabolic fingerprint
in a moment but
getting that from my professor by the
way sidebar
my professor was borderline obese
himself
and he was an incredibly brilliant man
and he was doing the things that he
wasn't like secretly going and like
beer-bonging like
three musketeers or whatever like
he was teaching us at the time it was
the food pyramid right seven to 11
servings of whole grains each day should
be the staple the the base of the diet
and in that system of thinking all he
did was he created learned helplessness
because he kept trying to do the thing
he's just like well i just need 14 to 19
servings of whole grains and i'll get it
i just need to cut my calories more and
it wasn't working
and what we know today
is that for example i'll give you one of
the the epic caloric controllers
you've said this before tom you've heard
many people say this it's not just the
calories it's the quality of the
calories
just like with sleep smarter it's not
just the minutes of sleep it's the
quality of those minutes
and so now we've got a really
interesting study this was published in
food and nutrition research and i mapped
this out really well in each smarter
the research want to find out what
happened what happens when you eat a
meal of whole foods versus a meal of
processed foods
and so they had some test subjects to
consume what they deem to be a whole
food sandwich which was multi-grain
bread and cheddar cheese all right now
that's of course is debatable but now
they've got the other group of test
subjects consuming a processed food
sandwich which was white bread and
cheese product
and some folks might be like what the
hell is cheese product that's what craft
is craft singles they can't legally call
it craft cheese because there's not
enough cheese in the cheese but as i
digress so anyways here's the most
important part of this story
the sandwiches are the exact same amount
of calories the whole food version and
the processed foods version
same amount of fats carbohydrates and
proteins on paper same sandwich it
should have the same metabolic effect
according to the calories and calories
out model but here's what happened
after compiling the data the folks who
ate the processed food sandwich had a 50
reduction in calorie burn after eating
that meal versus the people who ate the
whole food version
all right so i'm going to pause it there
why how how did they determine burn
right yeah so this is a great example a
little sidebar for everybody to
understand the pathway of fat leaving
your body or what we call this caloric
expenditure
so that's one of the things we're
demystifying and smart is like where the
hell does fat go where does fat go when
you lose it where does this cold burn
process happen so number one we've got
when we're thinking about like
eliminating fat we're not we can't
indiscriminately kill a fat cell itself
when you're born you have about the same
amount of fat cells that you have today
um what happens is the fat cells
themselves get filled with contents
right in the form of these energy
packets like triglycerides and what
we're doing by the way your fat cells
can
swell up and
they can become 100 times their their
size their original size so it's crazy
what fat cells can do and so what we're
what the goal is when we're talking
about pulp fat loss is getting the fat
cell to number one open
to release its contents then it needs to
get shuttled to its end station which
primarily the mitochondria to actually
be burned at this metabolic power plant
and it gives off this atp gives off
energy but what they discovered was that
about 84 of the fat that we lose is via
carbon dioxide when we breathe out
so as you describe the sandwich so first
of all the
mildly processed sandwich because even
cheese is obviously processed food
does not strike me as the ideal
barometer for whether this is accurate
so it's interesting that there are still
pretty staggering results between
mildly processed and extremely processed
and then
what is your prediction if they were to
do that with like the sean stevenson
prescribed whole food diet would that
reduction in burn from where you're at
with a true real optimized whole food
diet be even more even better
yes exactly that's the point that's the
point but that's getting back to what
are your genes expecting you to eat
because the further we get kind of
mutated and away from the the origin of
a food the more complex it becomes for
our
for ourselves to really recognize how to
use that food which created these what i
call these hormonal clogs so this is why
there was this reduction in energy
expenditure post eating that sandwich
basically their hormones their their
tissues became much more stingy and
hanging on to that caloric energy
and fat cells not opening up
so that's number one they and this is
this is the part of the nuance like we
can't identify
the study doesn't identify right where
is the clog happening but we know it's
happening and i would argue that it's
happening throughout the entire process
right the fat cell being able to have
its intelligence to do its job correctly
because another thing even if the fat
cell releases contents
it can get reabsorbed somewhere else so
it needs to get to its end destination
and then the process of metabolism with
the mitochondria the mitochondria have
to be healthy and doing their job you
know and so so many pieces along this
process can become
uh can become damaged you know and
here's a great thing about us as humans
we're very resilient like your body can
sort itself if you just look at us like
just look at what the body is able to
take how unhealthy we can be
and still be kicking you know but also
just imagine
how good things can get as well you know
when we give our giving our bodies the
right thing so our bodies are always
seeking to get back into homeostasis
it's always looking for that
but it's also very resilient at helping
you to survive and one of the things
that i really want to bring forward as
well in this conversation of fat because
again i didn't know we would talk about
this but
in our culture we're trying to kill fat
we're trying to get rid of fat we're we
have over 200 million people in our
country are overweight or obese right
now
and right now we have 43 percent of our
citizens are clinically obese
moving towards 50 half of our population
within the next couple of years it's
insane and i think you come from a
similar circumstance in my family just
say i got 30 close family members 28 of
them were obese growing up sure and
these are this doesn't mean that they're
bad people it doesn't mean that they're
not trying it doesn't mean that they
want to be obese it's just the nature of
the environment that we're in and not
really knowing how metabolism works
and so this idea of indiscriminately
killing fat
we have to do away with that because our
body fat is actually
it's pretty amazing it's actually doing
what it's designed to do it's what's
enabled us as humans to evolve and get
to this point because it was this
incredibly incredibly intelligent energy
storage system
during times when things were a little
bit leaner
and the problem is we we don't have any
lean times anymore at all so you were a
clinician for 10 years i find your
approach to talking about fat right now
very revealing and i'm interested to
know why you take it so uh you're being
very kind
um
as a clinician
have you learned that you have to have a
level of kindness to get people to start
doing the right things like why lead
with that instead of just saying like
because your book ends with a
prescription you tell people go do this
and look at you cage it a thousand
different ways or you know hedge your
bets saying that i don't like to
prescribe things like everybody's
different um
why are you leading with kindness when
you talk about fat
tom man i love you this is why i love
talking with you you know it it i it is
very intentional you know i don't come
from very kind circumstances you know
like when i
was in college and figuring all this
stuff out i lived in ferguson missouri
you know and i lived in uh apartment
complex sleeping on a mattress on the
floor i never met anybody who
went to college let alone graduated
except maybe professors or something
like that but you know just from the
environment that i was in man i was
inundated with
poor health and violence you know and
even myself i was kicked out of high
school my entire junior year of fighting
i got kicked out of that same private
university that i mentioned that you
know i went to in the first place i got
kicked out of that school for fighting
who does that who goes to college kicks
kicked out for fighting i just grew up
in an environment where we're taught to
solve our conflicts with violence
and
so i i say that to say
part of it is
i believe that humans are inherently
good
and but we are also products of our of
our environment of our environment but
we're creators of our environment as
well when we become aware of it and so
once i change it that started changing
the inputs i was putting into my body i
didn't just become physically healthier
my
my thoughts changed
you know my perception of reality
and
i came across this quote from einstein
very early on and i mentioned it towards
the end of the book that the most
fundamental decision that we make
is whether we live in a friendly or
hostile universe i love that quote so
much
man like i get the chills right now
because i look i lived in what seemed
like a hostile situation
and i just started to see beauty
everywhere man i started to see
potential everywhere i start to see the
goodness in people because we're all
just trying to get our needs met and
seeing in my clinical practice nine
times out of ten the people making it to
me
they had been they weren't treated with
kindness and so i started to lead with
that
and see people open up just when i let
them talk and here's a big tip for the
coaches out there
if you let somebody talk if you just ask
them questions
they will tell you the cause and cure of
what's going on with them they already
know
but we have to have the patience and the
kindness to do those things and also
knowing that
oftentimes even though they were making
the decision to put the food in their
mouth yes
but i'm coming from a place where i
didn't know that there was a difference
i just didn't know as soon as i got
access
i started to make better choices now you
didn't know what that there was a
difference in the foods you were eating
like the quality of calories
exactly yeah i didn't know that there
was a difference between a fish stick
and you know wild caught salmon it's
just food it's just stuff that we eat
and we're just trying to survive
you know let alone thinking about
thriving and cognitive performance and
all this stuff we're just trying to get
by you know but once i became aware of
how much food mattered
that's part one the awareness but part
two is also the accessibility i had to
take myself outside of my environment
tom and actually you know go to you know
mile on the other side of town to a wild
oats you know like i had to make
exceptional decisions to make those
things happen but investing back in
myself paid off dividends but most folks
don't even know that that first part is
an option to begin with so we're leading
with kindness we're i'm assuming
lowering people's defenses we want to
avoid the morality of food i know online
you always avoid sort of bs
you talk a lot about not getting
involved in arguments over minutia and
staying like hey let's look at the sort
of big swaths of what's actually going
to make progress okay cool so we're
being kind we're i'm assuming we're
encouraging people to be kind to
themselves this is not a moral failing
if you find yourself unhealthy
what this is is some fundamental
misunderstanding but you just said the
people if you let them talk they'll
actually tell you what to what the fix
is so if they know what the fix is why
aren't they doing it
this is a great question for me there's
two parts part one is the education and
this is huge and you're a big proponent
of this
because you might know that there's an
issue with something but you might not
be educated on
why that is and also what to do about it
right and so in the instance of food
i mentioned a little bit briefly about
my indoctrination in my first
nutritional science class which again my
professor meant well but he was teaching
me something that was fundamentally
flawed because it ignores the fact that
your body is made of food
all right
my my colleagues i know the top
cardiologists in the world top
gastroenterologist top neurologist the
list goes on and on they might go to
school for 12 years to become a
cardiologist
and learn about food for two weeks
and your heart is made of [ __ ] food
this is the problem like you don't even
know what the thing is made of that
you're treating and then we're treating
the dysfunction with the drug right
you've got lacinopril you've got statins
you're not understanding your heart is
made from food the blood running through
your arteries is made from food the
arteries themselves are made from food
so the system itself is fundamentally
flawed so again people coming in they
might be aware that yeah i need to
change what i'm eating i know that but
they're so far removed from
understanding how powerful it is and
what to do about it because of the
cookie cutter stuff that again my
colleague might get get two weeks of
training in which is like eat a low-fat
diet plenty of fiber all this really
superficial bs
and then they're telling their patients
you need to lose weight how
how like and so often and i talk about
this in the book our system of
healthcare has been
treating the healthcare professionals so
poorly it's a badge of honor to
absolutely destroy yourself in medical
school
and then try to pull yourself out of it
you know and just so you see the high
rates of suicide depression anxiety
obesity dying from the very same things
that they're treating
the system is flawed and it's
fundamentally because it's not
appreciated the fact that we
as i'm seeing tom right now and as he
seeing me we're seeing the food that
we've eaten
it's fruit
that's really well said
okay so i'm gonna start um
putting my finger on some of the things
that i think end up causing people
problems this is obviously a world i'm
extraordinarily familiar with so put
somebody on a low enough calorie diet
no matter what those calories are
comprised of i could give somebody a
twinkie with arsenic on it and if it is
low enough in calories over time if the
arsenic doesn't kill them they're going
to lose weight they're going to lose fat
on top of a whole host of other problems
but like
what do you say to that sean stevenson
oh this is good and there's actually a
professor who did the tweaky diet yes he
did the twinkie experiment you know just
like see i told you guys it's just the
calories
now here's some of the fundamental
issues with that because anybody who's
just even as remotely versed
in nutrition and just fundamentals of
health because again our system of
medicine just focuses on disease
not what creates real health but like
what is this impact that it's having on
your neurotransmitters this twinkie diet
what is it doing to your pancreas what
are you making your heart cells out of
right
what is the long-term ramifications of
of a diet protocol like that and so
here's the the term that i again
impressing upon culture is epi caloric
control we mentioned the quality of food
briefly
but another one of these major
controllers
is the microbiome and i know that of
course you had folks talking about this
on the show but i want to take this to
another level because this has to do
with your body's processing
of calories and research this was
published in the journal cell really
crazy study they discovered that there's
a certain bacteria that they found in
mice that blocked their intestines from
absorbing as many calories from the food
that they ate all right now through the
lens of allopathic medicine
we just need to bottle up whatever
bacteria that is and sell that [ __ ]
just block people's intestines that's it
you know block people's intestines from
absorbing as many calories you can keep
eating what you want not understanding
your body does not operate in a vacuum
there's no such thing as side effects
these are direct effects because
everything's interconnected
one of the things i saw early on in my
clinical practice probably five years
into it i've been in this space for 19
years but 10 years in clinical practice
probably about five years into it i came
across a study because so many people
were coming in statins were like
they were the hottest thing on the
streets all right that everybody's
coming in on statin
and there's a study that came out
revealing that
folks taking the statin had a 30
increased incidence of having diabetes
now all right something was happening
with
creating abnormal blood sugar you know
does this have to do with the beta cells
does it have to do with insulin
sensitivity
you know that was open for debate but we
knew that it was happening
and so
when you when you try to treat that
symptom with okay we just need to get
everybody that's bacteria is this going
to affect my bacteria's ability to
produce b12 is it going to affect my
bacteria's ability to produce
short-chain fatty acids to protect my
gut lining and prevent autoimmune
conditions
we can't think about in those terms so
here's where we do think about it all
right so they discover this bacteria now
we transition this over to humans
now this was from researchers at the
weizmann institute
so tom in my practice i could have
somebody send out for a stool sample
never even see them a day in my life
i can get their report back and know
with a high degree of certainty whether
or not they're obese based on the makeup
of their microbes that is insane
and so the research question is really
fast while you're on that side note what
comes first
do you just have a bad roll of the dice
and you came out of your mother's womb
and the microbiome that you formed
happened to be obesity
um
promoting or
is it your diet the microbes respond to
the fact that you're eating cheetos and
all that kind of stuff all your cheese
like products
uh yeah which which comes first
it's a both end world it's a both end
world time because we are getting that
download specifically from our mother
but one of the studies was done in
identical twins all right you don't get
more similar of a person to study or
people to study to see the effects of
one thing or the other than identical
freaking twins man when they find a twin
whose bacteria cascade is associated
with obesity insulin resistance
and
and weight gain and then they find i
know one of the other twins who has in a
microbiome who's that's associated with
leanness right and they track them over
years
that they're they're in the same
household eating the same diet but the
twin who has the microbiome with the
cascade associated with obesity became
insulin resistant more often became
obese more often than their lean
microbiome twin right and the microbiome
shifts
based on our choices based on our
lifestyle because one of the number one
drivers and i broke this down any
smarter as well what we discovered is
that folks who are eating more of a
traditional diet their hunter gatherer
closer to that type of diet they have
upwards of four times greater diversity
in their microbes than the average
person in the western world we're losing
our diversity like crazy
and a big part of this is we're not
feeding the microbes their preferred
food source for them to stick around in
the first place
all right so these are what we call
quote prebiotics and anybody can go to
google and look in prebiotic foods but
that's limited thinking like we've got
asparagus jerusalem artichoke art
onions and garlic that's small small
potatoes
here's the truth
every single food has prebiotic capacity
every single real food for some strain
of bacteria and there might be a food
that your ancestors have been eating for
centuries that is suddenly stripped away
by a diet choice or just by by proxy
just by the environment that you're in
and suddenly you don't have that
bacteria getting fed anymore it has no
choice but to become extinct in your
system right and so what the researchers
discovered was that the number one way
as your bacteria diversity goes down
your rate of insulin resistance goes up
bacteria diversity goes down your rate
of diabetes goes up your rate of obesity
goes up your rate of insomnia goes up
as your rate
of
microbes goes down all right we know
that they have an inverse relationship
the number one way to reverse and
improve the diversity of our microbes is
just so simple is to just simply
increase the diversity of foods that
we're eating what is up my friend tom
bill you here and i have a big question
to ask you how would you rate your level
of personal discipline on a scale of one
to ten if your answer is anything less
than a ten i've got something cool for
you and let me tell you right now
discipline by its very nature means
compelling yourself to do difficult
things that are stressful boring which
is what kills most people or possibly
scary or even painful now here is the
thing achieving huge goals and
stretching to reach your potential
requires you to do those challenging
stressful things and to stick with them
even when it gets boring and it will get
boring building your levels of personal
discipline is not easy but let me tell
you it pays off in fact i will tell you
you're never going to achieve anything
meaningful unless you develop discipline
all right i've just released a class
from impact theory university called how
to build ironclad discipline that
teaches you the process of building
yourself up in this area so that you can
push yourself to do the hard things that
greatness is going to require of you
right click the link on the screen
register for this class right now and
let's get to work i will see you inside
this workshop from impact theory
university until then my friends be
legendary peace out
now why does that work i get why if i
had depleted a population and i can
bring back what is there but if it's
truly gone extinct
is there dirt on the food like how am i
repopulating if i'm not taking a
supplement of some kind with a probiotic
in it
yeah this is a great question as well so
number one
uh in my practice i put people on
probiotics so frequently and we would
get like these credible
probiotic formulas some of them take
like
two years fermentation process like
wizards do spells over them all kinds of
[ __ ] but we were missing the point
because they they're not able to
colonize and to populate in the gut to
do all the cool things that they can
potentially do if
they're not given their preferred food
substrates they're not giving their
prebiotic sources
and so to answer that question yes we do
want to have sources of probiotics
coming in
preferably through food right and we do
go through that
but also
the most important thing again is not
missing the point and this is the this
is the point
when you eat a food when you would just
say we eat a berry when you're eating
that berry you're eating a prebiotic and
you're eating that berries microbiome as
well you're taking that on yourself
so it is coming along with
probiotic with bacteria it's just the
nature of eating real food same thing
with an avocado you're eating that
avocados microbiome
if you eat some kale you're eating that
kale's microbiome if you eat some
walnuts you're eating that walnuts
microbiome so we have this limited
thinking that i need probiotic
you know some kind of special probiotic
food i need some special probiotic
supplement
no we're really missing the point here
food already has the thing
but for many of us especially where we
are we can like leverage because i know
some people have got some wonderful
benefits adding in some fermented foods
absolutely but we don't want to miss out
on this prebiotic because prebiotics are
needed for the probiotics to make
postbiotics
all right so this is when they're making
vitamins minerals short-chain fatty
acids in you for you it's this beautiful
symbiotic relationship so i hope that
you want to draw it does i want to draw
a straight line from the question about
hey you can eat a twinkie and if your
calories are low enough you are going to
lose fat
and
the punchline of what you just said so
here's what i'm taking away from that
you actually can
for sure i promise you you can lose
weight eating anything if you keep your
calories low enough now some foods
because of the signaling effect of
calories and not all calories is the
same
you may have to restrict tighter and
tighter and tighter on certain foods
than you would on others and so
yes you can lose weight eating a twinkie
diet but as you mentioned not only do we
have those kind of effects but your
blood vessels and all of that other
stuff are made up of the very things
that you eat and in processing they're
like at a cellular structural level and
a signaling level
you're changing
the material that you're taking in and
it's like i get why people are obsessed
with like getting shredded and being in
good shape but when you begin to
understand that that is
ah thing that happens and that there's
actually a whole host of things that
happen then people begin to think about
it the right way now what i found
amazing about your book
is you call out directly
hey
boys and girls don't worry about whether
you're paleo vegan uh carnivore what
none of that matters
listen to your body
yeah
now is
what i want to know is what the hell do
you mean by that
weird right now there's a lot of
infighting over minutiae as you
mentioned that i said earlier
um
and these wonderful diet frameworks
these are my friends you know the top
person in each of those
and they the reason that they
write these books and that they have
these positions is that they see results
for their patients they see results for
the people that they're working with
they're not trying to be negligent
they're not trying to ignore the data
they're helping people
but what's also overlooked is that
there's a large percentage of people
that each of their diet frameworks is
not helping and that's the truth
and a big part of that is
many of these diet frameworks even
though they can be wonderful
they can also imprison you and they can
leave things out make things off limits
that you might need that somebody else
doesn't need
right but also it might be protecting
you for something you know so there's
there's balance there but we have to
have a little bit more
agency over our thoughts agency over our
choices
and this gets into the discomfort of
becoming more educated about who we are
you know unfortunately
there's no easy way around this you know
if you're really going to thrive and to
be the best version of yourself we have
to learn how we work but the thing the
thing that i want people to understand
and just kind of going back i got to
really wrap this point up
because you really like made that hard
line point about this with the twinkie
diet
those researchers at the weizmann
institute who understand about what's
you know the bacteria in mice they took
bacteria samples fecal samples which
fecal transplantation is like one of the
hottest things on the street as well
it's super weird but it is um but they
take they took these fecal samples from
folks who had a bacteria cascade
associated with obesity and implanted it
into lean mice
they took
another set of fecal samples from human
subjects who had a bacteria cascade
associated with leanness and implanted
that into lean mice
those mice stayed lean
the mice who received the implants from
the folks with the bacteria cascade
associated with obesity those mice
became insulin resistant
they gained weight and gained body fat
not because of calories not because they
changed what they were eating because of
the bacteria
these principles supersede any of the
ideas that we carry about just managing
calories if you just get into a caloric
deficit
because the mice are already eating the
same thing yet they're gaining weight
and i've seen again many other people
listening especially if they're in
healthcare people coming in they're
already
at a thousand calorie a day diet you
know and maybe they're six feet tall
and their weight loss has been stuck
and then we
once we can have a certain level of like
stepping away and not thinking we have
all the answers and listen to the person
do some investigation we might find out
there's an underlying autoimmune
condition a thyroid issue we might find
out that inflammation is the causative
factor because as you mentioned we talk
about that as well there's so many
things that control what calories do
not to say that being in a caloric
deficit can't just make weight fly off
of somebody
absolutely but even within that there
are things controlling that person's
metabolism that's going to outpicture
different results from somebody who
might be at the exact same height and
weight starting off as them fat people
are not
lean people who eat too much
how on earth is that possible
okay so let me start with one thing and
using the words fat people in the book
uh i
am speaking as they did uh
50 60 years ago knowingly typically i
would have said people who suffer from
obesity
are not people who don't who eat too
much so i just want to
point out that the uh
social and acceptability of the language
was on purpose to make a point and in
the book it feels completely contextual
okay so
you know we've grown up with this belief
system that people get fat because they
eat too much that's what we've been
taught if you if you gain weight easily
if you're someone who fattens easily
another term i knowingly sort of co-op
from 1950s diet books
on the you are
supposed to get that way not because
your body gains fat easily or your body
gains weight easily just like somebody
who's
you know uh my
12 year old son soon to be 13 is uh
plays aau basketball and there are kids
who
gain height easily
and kids who don't particularly at 12 so
he's 5'5 and he wishes he was 5 10 and
he'll never get there
that's not determined by how much he
eats or exercises that's biological
so the alternative hypothesis those of
us who get fat and easily simply our
bodies want to store calories as fat
so some people's bodies don't some
people's bodies do
and the problem with thinking that those
of us who do get that way merely because
we eat too much is in the advice you
give them is to eat less and exercise
more which doesn't fix the problem the
body's still trying to accumulate fat or
it's still trying to technical term is
partition the calories it takes in into
fat
all right i think we need to dive deeply
into that because that that moment there
is where all the conflict is
so talk to me about the um the energy
balance equation and how it could be
possible and you talk about the mouse
study in the book which was fascinating
i'd never heard that before but talk to
me about how
the
the energy balance equation isn't the
only thing that matters it just seems
impossible for a lot of people that it
isn't a simple equation of if i put in 2
000 calories and i don't burn 2 000
calories i am obviously going to gain
weight and if i'm burning 2000 calories
and i only eat 1800 then i should lose
weight and therefore i should just be
able to tell people eat less than you're
burning
so why doesn't that end up working
okay so that energy balance equation
which is the first law of thermodynamics
and energy is conserved um
and again since
occasionally since the 1930s then it
accelerates in the 1960s in the history
you start you seeing people rely on
thermodynamics as the explanation for
obesity so the idea is you've got delta
e the change in energy in a system is
equal to the energy in
minus the energy out that's what the
law of thermodynamic tells us and it
basically just says energy is conserved
so if a system is getting more energetic
it's got to take in energy more energy
than it expends systems getting less
energetic it means that it's letting
energy out the energy isn't
magically appearing or disappearing so
the amount of energy in the universe is
conserved the amount of energy in a
closed system is conserved it's all
makes perfect sense and it's always true
that's why we call the law of physics
but all it says
is that one thing is equal to something
else
so in this case if you think of the
energy in the system is the energy
stored in fat
the energy stored in fat goes up
if delta e is positive then that's equal
that's the equivalent of saying more
energy is going into the fat and it's
leaving the fat
okay if delta e the energy stored in the
fat goes down
delta e is negative that's equal to the
equivalent of saying more energy is
leaving the fat than is going in it's
like
makes
it so
crazy simple it's one law of
thermodynamics it's easy to understand
it's an example i use in my lectures is
imagine if we were asking the question
why is the energy you've got a room full
of people
and the energy in the room of people is
increasing because people are more and
more people are appearing in the room
you know if they're coming into the room
that means more people are entering the
room than leaving it so the room's
getting more crowded the energy in the
rooms you know it's just obvious if your
bank account is going up if you're
getting richer you're taking in more
money than you're spending
you know if you're getting poorer you're
spending more money than you're taking
in it's all the same thing but it
doesn't tell you anything about
causality so for instance somebody the
fat
storage can go up for many reasons
but the fact that more energy is going
in than is leaving is just
another way of saying that
the energy stored in the fat is
increasing okay but where this gets
interesting is
for
what what people attack on this point is
okay i'm willing to buy that the body
has hormonal responses and like given if
the insulin level is going up then i'm
more likely to store fat but that
doesn't change the fact that if this
person who is getting obese would just
eat less
that they would hit a certain point
where it isn't possible for them to
store fat so while there might be some
complexities at play
like let's just go to the chase they
just need to eat less and it will work
and you don't deny that that's true
right no of course not one of the
arguments always for this energy balance
idea was if you starve humans
or you starve in rodents they will lose
weight
and they'll eventually preferentially
burn their fat stores they won't at
first first they'll go through their
glycogen and they'll go start using
their protein and they'll shift over to
using fat to preserve their protein
but they will lose weight so
oftentimes and and i recently wrote
about this for the the new site stat
news uh
and i got
numerous um
versions of emails that said in effect i
got i hate this um there were no fatties
at auschwitz
okay
and unfortunately
obesity researchers actually thought
that way
because you could starve people
and they lost weight somehow that
translated to meaning they got fat to
begin with because they ate too much
so one of the ways you
challenge that kind of thinking
is you find other examples of biological
systems that you could affect in a
similar way so for instance you could
you have a growing child
and you can starve that child and stunt
its growth
but you would never say that it grows
because it eats too much because you
know that the growth is a hormonal
phenomenon driven by growth hormone and
something like growth factor and other
things and the child eats a lot because
it's fueling the growth which is a you
know biological response to the hormonal
secretions um you could starve a tumor
and inhibit the growth of the tumor
but you would never say that the tumor
grows because it eats too much even
though once a
cell becomes malignant it starts it will
upregulate the receptors it needs to
take in more fuel to feed it that's
gross i think there's a subtle change in
there that i think you make clear in the
book and i just want to see if i'm
understanding this right which is
the
you can starve the child
and it will still grow despite the lack
of calories it won't grow as much
you can starve the tumor but it will
still grow it won't grow as much
and
what's interesting in in like this whole
debate is
yes they're you're not going to find any
obese people in auschwitz because you've
you've gone past some certain point that
is
the realm of reality right so most
people are never going to live like that
there's huge implications when they're
not um you know confined and having
their food restricted that they're going
to go and eat to another balance but
where the story gets really fascinating
is somewhere in there is a breaking
point where you can actually and you
talk about this mouse study you can
actually have them in a semi-starved
state
and they still get a little fat they
don't get as fat as they would
yeah um that's not a mouse study i do
use examples of specific my studies but
it is effectively every mouse study
so you have any animal model of obesity
and the most famous
two were the the where you lesion a part
of the brain called the ventrum medial
hypothalamus
um and then these uh leptin deficient
animals ob animals and in those cases
you can
um
yeah literally semi-starve the animal so
then what what that means is you measure
the amount of food that a lean animal
will eat
and then you feed
this for instance the leptin deficient
animal only half of that
okay okay so the lean animal would eat
so we should be more or less in
starvation mode we should be in
starvation mode and yet as the animal
grows up it accumulates a massive amount
of excess fat anyway so that animal will
grow up to be obese it'll be smaller
than the lean animal it'll weigh less
but most of its calories will be it'll
have stored a significant amount of
calories as excess fat because that's
what its body is trying to do
and the point is in every animal model
of experiment you can literally you can
if not half starved animals you can
calorie restrict them you can only feed
them as much as a lean animal and the
animal will get fatter anyway it might
not may or may not get as fat as it
would if it got to eat at libertum but
it will get excess fat anyway and in
some cases will be definitively obese as
with these obob mice or the the bmh
lesion the animals
um
what that tells you what it should have
told the researchers who began doing
these studies around 1940
is that the animals are have
whatever the defect is it's trying to
make the animal store calories as fat or
the fat tissue is now wired to take up
fat and not to let it go
and instead people just assumed that
somehow these animals were eating less
or they were more efficient so they were
still in the energy imbalance they tried
to hold on to their paradigm rather than
just simply say look these animals are
clearly storing calories as fat even
when they have starved
humans say they do that all the time
okay so that's always been a you know
the idea was people obese people said
yeah sure i can i can lose a little
weight by eating less
but i'm hungry all the time
and eventually the weight comes back and
in fact there are trials done their
famous starvation studies done by ansel
keys at the university of minnesota
where he's starved conscientious
objectors for wanted to get 25 percent
of their weight off
and
they lost significant weight in the
first six weeks i forget the numbers at
the moment then they lost a little less
weight and then eventually their weight
loss stopped they were hungry all the
time they thought about food all the
time they were exhausted all the time
their hair fell out their sex drives
went away
they were miserable and then when they
started re-feeding them at the end of
the trials they put fat back on at
extraordinary speeds
at rates that were different than the
caloric intake would predict would
predict that right so you would predict
a certain amount of weight gain but
instead
it's just
sort of extraordinarily quick weight
gain and they own that up fatter than
they started
so one of the things that study would
say well you took them off you let them
eat whatever they wanted
of course they're overeating the
calories they're in this massive surplus
and they're just putting it on as fat
there's there's no contradiction there
in the energy balance well you know when
you have competing paradigms there's
often no care and contradictions the
paradigms tend
and by paradigms i mean you know the
literal understanding of a paradigm so
you have
a way of thinking about the problem
and you tend to ask different questions
so another way to look at this is just
to ask different questions and sure if
we starve
an obese person they'll lose weight if
we starve a lean person they'll lose
weight also okay
so the question is then when you refeed
them why do they go back to being obese
when you allow them to refeed why do
they go back to being obese
for the obese person the lean person
only goes back to being maybe a little
fatter than they used to be
but the other issue is why is it you
have to starve the obese person to make
them lean
where the lean person can eat as much as
they want
and remain lean for them and it's
people's argument though that lean
person isn't eating as much as they want
they've got more control or they're
doing more exercise or maybe some are
generous and say
their hypothalamus has turned up the
thermostat and they're you know burning
some of these calories by
kicking off body heat or something like
that
yeah and all of that's possible but now
you've got a whole variety of hypotheses
you could test
so one of the things you know one of my
problems with the research community in
general is they never bothered to test
their hypotheses once they embrace them
so that's you know at the end if you
remember at the end of good calories bad
calories in the epilogue i spent it was
first time my editor really let me say
what i thought
and i
went off on the absolute
failure of this nutrition obesity
research community to do reasonable
science because even if when confronted
with a viable hypothesis
though what scientists do is they test
their hypotheses rigorously before they
believed them to be true and this that
didn't happen in this field
so the alternative is yeah it's quite
possible
that
you know the people remain lean just
consciously to moderation or one of the
things they believe they you know they
are smart enough to see when they're
getting heavy so then they eat less but
then you can ask the question how do
animals do it
okay because animals seem to eat as much
as they want um certainly you know you
look at the
deer that you know are so copious in new
england um
you know you get a lot of food available
you get more deer you don't get fat or
deer and you don't get obese there and
they seem to eat all the time
and they're only physically active when
they have to be they're not going out
jogging or running an extra mile um i
had these experiences in reporting good
calories bad calories one of my favorite
was um
i was
interviewing this uh
new zealand epidemiologist who michael
pollan had talked about in his book in
defense of food and she had done these
studies with
aborigines actually in australia
aboriginal populations who were living
in urban areas so they had relatively
high rates of obesity and diabetes and
hypertension and she moved them back to
the bush
and they lived like their ancestors did
and some of their populations still were
and they all got much healthier
and she said in the bush they couldn't
overeat
and then she told me the story of them
killing a kangaroo the day before and
eating six pounds of meat each
and i said you're going to have to
define overeating to me because these
people are eating six pounds of cake
roommate one day
and then she said yeah that's a good
point then she told me the story about
some of her colleagues coming out from
the university in this in the city where
they worked and they came out to visit
the
experiment going on in the bush and they
went for a jog
and these aboriginals were sitting
around on their haunches laughing
hysterically because this was the
funniest thing they'd ever seen people
voluntarily exercising if they didn't
have to
you know people come along
like herman poncer the duke
anthropologist who recently wrote a book
about his studies of aboriginal
populations around the world and how
they do not expend any more energy
than the rest of us do and yet they
remain remarkably lean as long as they
eat their traditional diets you know as
a journalist covering this field i had
the opportunity to move from discipline
to discipline to discipline and to ask
these questions to look for the
experiments to see if they were done to
look for the observations to see if you
could find observations that were
contrary so you can find populations
that had extreme obesity despite
relative starvation
um
before we go any farther i think
especially because i want to deal with
hermann poncer who i've had on the show
um and i i wanna get your hypothesis
about what is going on and in the book
you go into a lot of detail about you
know it's really a tiny fraction
of caloric difference between somebody
that
maintains their weight and somebody that
ends up putting on you know 20 pounds in
10 years or whatever right and it was
pretty startling to hear that and so
you're like nobody ever talks about it's
it's it's like i forget what you said
like 12 calories a day 20 pounds in a
decade is 19 calories a day stored as
fat
okay so that's the equivalent of like uh
i don't know two almonds worth of fat
maybe one and a half i forget the number
so
and it's it's
more interesting than that because
you basically store all the fat you
consume so when you eat a mixed meal
your body
immediately starts partitioning the fuel
so the the glucose
goes to the portal vein to the liver and
then to the rest of the body and you
burn that for fuel and then the fat that
you consume gets uh carried by
lipoproteins called chylomicrons to the
fat tissue and stored and over the
course of a day
uh if you're eating a sort of
relative you know a diet of say typical
fat
composition
um you'll store on the about a thousand
calories in your fat cells
every day and then
if you're remaining lean
on average a thousand calories will come
out of your fat cells and be used for
fuel by then by the next day
but if you're getting fatter
only 980 calories will come out
okay
so that's what you have to explain and
again one of my arguments about the the
science in general is because people
don't even never bother to quantify
these effects
and because they don't actually study
the people who study obesity and hunger
don't actually pay attention to the
science of fat metabolism and fat
storage they're unaware of these numbers
some are some
they're getting more aware as people
like me have been hammering on them
but that's what you're explaining so
even if you say okay people get fat
because they eat too much you still have
to explain
why eating too much only leads to 19 or
20 calories a day being trapped in the
fat tissue out of a thousand that goes
in and 980 come out
you know so it's a real
just to say it in like super layman's
terms it is it is this really tiny
amount that no one is going to be
conscious of doing that would be
extraordinarily easy if getting
obese over a 10-year period were really
the difference between eating or not
eating two almonds like
you know it's pretty hard to believe
that somebody would be incapable of
doing that so that's the other thing so
if you're telling them to eat less
what's the issue especially
you know we all imagine okay well
somebody is obese they're 40 50 100
pounds overweight you could imagine how
hard it is to get that back down to
normal
but as we're getting fatter
we're getting fatter at this rate of 20
or 40 calories a day i have a friend i
use as an example in the book who by the
time he was 18 weighed 400 pounds
it's about six foot three
so he was you know if he had been 220
pounds lighter he would have had a
healthy bmi
and you figure out that 220 pounds over
18 years is about the equivalent of 100
calories a day stored as fat
okay so he was storing 100 calories of
fat a day that his lean friends were not
if you could stop that i mean he was
miserable you know this kid was
tormented because he was trying to get
lean there were two reasons he was
miserable because he was trying to get
lean so he was he was hungry his whole
life
and he was being bullied and ridiculed
for not being lean
so the extraordinary social burden of
this disease
on top of this idea that you're trying
to eat less your whole life so you're
hungry your whole life on top of the
idea that you should be out there
exercising so it's like you know i don't
know if you've ever watched a gym class
of um
like 10 year olds
run around the track
but you could separate they separate out
basically by body fat content so in the
front you have the short very lean ones
who look like kenyans but they're 10
years old and they're flying around the
track and their feet are barely touching
the ground at the back you've got the
poor obese kids who are
you know every step is
painful and the idea is if those obese
kids are being ridiculed right because
they're running slowly they seem
miserable
they're not flying and they're sitting
there thinking why can't i fly around
the track like these other kids what's
wrong with me
you know but the point is that you're
talking 100 calories a day that's
you know
don't eat that egg
how do you think about lifestyle like
what's the right way to go about it
what do like do we have the occasional
twinkie how do how do you approach it
i uh
and maybe this is just the way i'm wired
i just wish we would take the you know
turn the temperature down on this stuff
a little bit
the emotional temperature the emotional
temperature on this stuff down uh i
one of the great gifts of my career
being an anthropologist is
that i am it is my job to keep
eyes open and look across cultures and
look across human experience and see
that diversity and understand all of it
is pretty normal
right that the the uh
the
universe of normal for humans is pretty
darn broad
and so
i get nervous and i just am skeptical
about anybody who's trying to sell you a
very narrow view of what normal should
be or what healthy should be
and it has to be this and it can't have
any of these
and you know i'm not sure about that i
think
try to stay as active as you can more
active the better
uh unless you have over training
syndrome then you've done too much but
none of it probably you're not there
unless you're like an olympic level
athlete um so we should all be
exercising more
i think if we can do it outside all the
better
i think
you know
some people are going to find
diet wise that a really
strict diet works great for them because
that works for the way that they're
wired and they're you define strict
because i know people are going to want
to hear what what they should eat i just
mean a diet that has a diet that has a
lot of brightline rules
i don't eat any of this you know i look
at my list of foods that americans eat
and i cross off
you know half or more of them and i just
never ever eat them ever
um i think and if you had to pick uh
like a thing to judge them by would it
be
whole food is always best and so don't
eat anything processed or do you have
like what are your brightline rules
or what brightline rules could we
extract from the hadza like i'm not sure
the yeah but for somebody who really
wants optimal health
okay yeah i think the best thing to do
would be to avoid ultra processed foods
yeah i think they're palatable or is
there something else that makes them
problematic
there's a few things one is they are
hyperpalatable so they they screw up
that hedonic response you you overeat
because you don't ever feel full
and you always feel your brain is always
excited about it
um they are
typically in the processing they are
any fiber is taken away
uh they're usually low protein so there
are two
you know there's a there's more than two
but those are two good signals to your
brain that you've eaten enough is that
you have enough bulk and that you have
protein
and so you take those two signals away
then you're going to over consume you're
going to go over consume carbs or fats
or both because that's all it's like
that's all that's going to be left in
this thing is carbs and fats
they're they ultra processed foods
commonly have
lots of added sugars which are no good
lots of added oils are no good so you
know if you can avoid those prepackaged
foods that are stuffed full of that
stuff and and all the good stuff the
protein and fiber has been ripped out
if you can avoid that and and try to
look for whole foods and stuff that's
you know minimally processed and not
destroyed in that way
uh
i i think
a lot you know i suspect that would
solve a lot of problems
i know that over half of the food
half of the calories that americans
consume these days um over half of it is
ultra processed
calories uh the number one
single source of calories in the
american diet is added sugar followed
closely by added oils
so you know
uh
we got to stop doing that i think that's
what i would focus on
so
you in the book you obviously
acknowledge like there's nuance here and
i'm not saying that this is good bad or
indifferent is that an area that you
have studied planned to study in terms
of like why is oil bad
why is sugar bad like if it isn't the
sort of insulin sugar
answer to why people get fat why do you
worry about sugar
oh because i think that
hyperpalatable foods ultra processed
foods
they screw up the energy matching
signaling that your hypothalamus does
they are too
delicious so you're pushed to overeat
them they are devoid of the signaling
molecules that would typically tell you
that you're full and so
you know when when hunger into tide you
have to be in perfect balance like this
and you just do that
well now you're in trouble right and i
think that's what i think is so
beautiful about like kevin hall's ultra
process food
over feeding studies i think they show
that really nicely so people who aren't
over consuming and aren't overweight
um then i don't think you're going to
have as much of a problem although i'm i
am point i'm walking i'm tiptoeing into
stuff i don't know as well so i'll be
careful but um i don't see the issue now
you're so there's sort of a
i don't i want to make sure we're not
talking past each other i'm not arguing
that uh that just pure white refined
sugar is a great idea or it doesn't
matter or anything like that no you're
talking about you're trying to figure
out
is what is going on like why is refined
white sugar problematic you've looked at
so much more data than i have if you
have a hypothesis around
why that's so i get the hyperpalatable
part and maybe that's it but i'm just
curious if there's anything other than
the overeating or no it's problem is
entirely it's just going to make you
overeat
and i'm asking is somebody who wants to
be able to eat ice cream
yeah um i eat ice cream um so yeah i
think i think it's okay
look sugar
is a fructose molecule and a glucose
molecules molecules stuck together
and when it gets into your blood that's
what it is and it's the same as there's
the same fructose and glucose molecules
that your body is going to break down
and use that way from other
carbohydrates so
you know
table sugar and a potato and a slice of
bread and
you know a jar of honey
are all going to end up being the same
molecules in your blood
that that's just how that's how
digestion works and that's that's
reality
now
you know if if they're if you have white
refined sugar without any fiber to sort
of help slow down the digestion of it
and to signal like you're full then yeah
okay by itself that's a problem but but
i think it's not because
the glucose in your blood knows it came
from like refined sugar you know what
i'm saying i don't there's any memory
that oh i came from something bad so now
i'm going to be worse
than i would be if i came from a nice a
good source right
so i do think it comes down to
matching your energy needs what you eat
and i don't think i think villainizing
particular kinds of nutrients doesn't
help i don't know if that answers your
question no it does it's you know this
is a
such a fascinating topic to me because i
start thinking about it in terms of okay
what's going on i step back and i look
at the american population and i say
even from the time i was a kid it like
so my family
i grew up in a morbidly obese family and
i remember thinking about it as a kid
like my family's fat yo and like other
families are not
and now it's like my family is
completely normal like it is so common
and that's in like you know i'm only 45
so it's like not in exactly you know
hundreds of years so in that amount of
time it's become like so widespread so
you start asking okay what's going on
here yeah um over consumption like i'm
i'm perfectly happy with the idea that
look ultimately this is a caloric
imbalance for that individual person
and but i think that just as you've been
very even-handed about that there are
also secondary consequences that beg
questions but the reason that i'm
i'm not yet full and look i fully
acknowledge this is largely ignorance
but i'm not fully convinced yet that
there isn't something going on with
carbohydrates because i think about
things like okay
if
insulin is
damaging cells
and there are certain things that like
if
i eat a sugar a white refined sugar this
would be my hypothesis on why white
refined sugar for instance is worse than
honey that there's something in honey
that's slowing its absorption or
something so that even though once it
hits my bloodstream it's the same but
if a white refined sugar doesn't have
any of those things around it to slow
its absorption
it gets into my bloodstream now things
like my muscles uptaking that sugar or
my liver having stores that it can fill
with that
if i'm not exercising not depleting that
and i'm eating foods that are
that get into my bloodstream faster so
they overwhelm the the non
response systems of my body and so my
muscles can't uptake it fast enough and
now there's oh way too much insulin
pumping through my system that's
beginning to damage my cells then i
start going okay well there's a logical
through line again the data may show
that this just isn't true but i can see
a logical through line to how there's
other things at play here than just a
caloric deficit or not right so the way
that you would test that is is you would
assign people to different
diets and you would say you're going to
eat a low glycemic index diet high fat
and you're going to eat a high glycemic
index diet high carb
and we'll and we'll check back with you
in a year
and this has been done a few times
and
the result is
consistent
people who stick to the diet
whether it's not as high glycemic index
or not if you stick to the diet you lose
weight and
everything gets better your uh hba1c
gets better your uh your blood glucose
levels get better
insulin resistance gets better people
can be you know the the diet fit study
that you probably have heard about
people on the high carb low fat and on
the high fat low carb diets had similar
percentages of people who reversed their
type 2 diabetes um reverse is a is a
tricky thing but they didn't they no
longer needed medication they were they
were able to maintain sugar in a safe
way in their blood
um
weight loss was the same
uh and so
when you lose weight
this is why i tend to focus on weight
first and the the secondary stuff second
when you if you're overweight and you
lose the weight
those measures all get better no matter
what so if you eat the twinkie diet but
lose weight you're you're still going to
be better off yeah that's right and you
probably still shouldn't eat the twinkie
diet i'm not recommending that but you
will be better off eating the twinkie
diet and losing the weight than eating
some other diet and they've done have
they done something like that with
diabetics like so their weight is coming
down would they be able to better manage
their blood sugar even though they're
eating these high sugary foods as long
as they're in a caloric deficit okay so
doc if you if your body tips over into
this pathological state where you're no
longer responding to insulin correctly
then i think that's a different
situation and people on high fat and
high carb diets who are sort of
pre-diabetic
have equally good outcomes that's the
diet fit series response and that's the
danziger at all 2005 study that did
atkins ornish weight watcher they did
all five diets i think
so there are these diet uh
there are those if you are already in
that pathological state where your cells
aren't working your insulin response is
is pathological
well then i i think that's a different
game and i'm not going to i you know i'm
not a diabetic i'm not a diabetes doctor
and i'm not going to
tell people what to do to keep i know
that if you keep on a really low carb
diet in that state you can do better
but that's talking to somebody who's
already has a sort of broken response
and i hesitate to say that as
particularly instructive about what
happens to people who have normal
response
so to me that's super intriguing and
when i see in a disease state it
responds well to this thing my natural
inclination is well then that's probably
the thing that led you to the disease
state
but the data may not be there to back up
that lay man's hypothesis so i'm
perfectly open to that
um let me ask you what would be your
fantasy test to run if you could lock
people in a room and they only ate what
you gave them like what what is the the
one question were you like if we could
answer this we'd really know about
health oh i know how well
okay about dietary health
then that's easy you do this study that
um that kevin hall would love to do and
so maybe if somebody's listening they
want to fund kevin hall for this he's
already set up to do it rather than
doing you know month-long or
two-month-long crossover studies you
would do it for a year and you would
have somebody in a you know basically in
a hotel room uh
and you would make them
you'd make sure that they ate exactly
what you said they were going to eat and
you would do biomarkers the whole time
to ensure that they were on track
and it's a very simple test
right
if if the calorie version of this is
right then it won't matter if they're in
the high carb arm or the high fat arm
their weight gain and weight loss will
be entirely due to
caloric benef you know
the number of calories are eating
and if you put them on a negative
calorie balance and they lose weight
everybody benefits regardless of you
know from the weight loss regardless of
how they got there
the data that i'm aware of for dietary
studies that already in my mind say that
that's going to be the outcome but
we haven't done the lock them down yet
so let's lock them down and do it
and so the flip side is
if i'm wrong and calories don't matter
and it's all about carbohydrates then it
should then if i have a high carb diet
and a low and a high
high carb and a high fat diet the high
fat diet that people should be doing
fantastic and losing weight even though
they're matched calorie for calorie
right
and
that's the prediction of of that
carbohydrate-based view of the world and
we've done kevin hall's on the short
version of that it's not short i mean
it's still a long time to do
two-month crossovers or one-month
crossovers um but
you know we've done the long version of
that where like which is diet fish which
is i give you a high carb diet and
you're assigned to that group randomly
and i give you a high fat diet and
you're assigned to that group randomly
and we see what happens in a year
um
and so far the data support the energy
view but but yeah i mean if the the
dream experiment
is
is the lockdown study for a year when
you're thinking about weight gain weight
loss you really have to think about
hormones because it's really a hormonal
imbalance not a caloric imbalance
because the calories on all these foods
can actually be exactly the same