Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [NUTRITION 101] The Exact Calories, Macros, and Micronutrients to Fuel Performance and Optimize Health w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged you will learn: How to determine total calories for your goals Why maintenance calories are important for body composition and health Why calories determine the size of your body Understanding energy balance and finding your activity multiplier How to properly increase and decrease your caloric intake to reach your goals Macronutrient breakdown for aesthetics and performance goals Why macros determine body composition How to find the right amount of protein for your goals Why micronutrients are so easily overlooked and what you are missing How to get all your vitamins and minerals even if you hate vegetables To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Physiology Friday is back and we're taking a deep dive into the fundamentals of nutrition. This is really your step-by-step guide to understand exactly what to eat, why you want to eat those things, the amount you want to be eating them in, and Dan Garner is going to walk you through the maze that is nutrition into simplifying all of the core concepts that you want to master as you start to unlock your own potential when it comes to nutrition and how to design, why to design your nutrition a specific way.

And as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin is doing a free video on the three steps we use here at Rapid Health Optimization to unlock your true physiological potential. You can access that free video on how we make the best in the world better over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders

Varner. Doug Larson's not hanging out today. I don't know where that guy is. Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner. Today on Bar on barbell shrugged we're talking about macros oh let me start at the top calories macros and micros and how you can determine the exact number you need to reach your goals um is there any question uh that you get more of like just tell me what to eat like what can you just give me my macros? And you probably roll your eyes when that happens? Because you go, why? Why? Can we ask better questions? Is there like a way to have a better understanding of how food works than just spitting body weight times one and protein and just giving broad answers that are widely accepted as right? Yeah, I mean, like to some extent, we are input-output machines,

but we're all different machines. So the input determines the output in a lot of ways. So when we have these just broad stroke recommendations for everybody, it's the reason why these broad stroke recommendations typically get generalized results and not specialized results. But with that said, I mean, if you were to only allocate a certain amount of effort to say one thing, if you're in some weird situation where like, okay, we can only focus on two things here, what should they be? Probably calories and macronutrients. Like that's a there is an unbelievable amount of evidence behind why IIFYM or if it fits your macros if people aren't familiar why that works for a lot of freaking people because energy balance and macronutrient distribution

play an enormous role in body transformation there's no doubt i mean energy anybody who says calories in versus calories out doesn't determine body weight either has no understanding of science or is currently trying to sell you something. It's one of those two things. They say it a lot though, man. They say it a lot. Yeah. And it's complete and utter nonsense.

And you don't even have to believe me. There's four plus decades of extremely well-controlled literature to demonstrate that energy balance is one of the few principles we actually have in nutrition, like other sciences, such as chemistry and alchemy and physics, they've been around for so much longer than nutrition science. And even still, there's like, you know, that a very short amount of principles because to say that you truly know something requires a lot of evidence to say you know something. Some people are very quick to jump to assume that they truly know something. But I think of myself a little bit as a student of scientific history, just because it's been so fascinating. And when the more you

look back on science, the more you realize we're more often wrong than we are right. This is there's so many things that in science, we've been completely wrong about, and then we've needed to completely reshift the wave. And these are the most brilliant minds in the world too. The most brilliant minds in the world used to think that the earth was flat. They used to think that it was the sun that orbited around the earth. They used to think so many things that we now know are just kind of completely silly, but these were the most brilliant people in the world at that point in time. And then now you get like a real arrogance regarding nutrition and energy balance is one of

the few things I think that we absolutely know regulates body weight. Calories in versus calories out, regulate body weight. And it is the big reason why some people come to me confused because they're like, hey, Dan, I feel like I'm eating all the right things, but my body weight's not changing. What am I doing wrong? I'm like, I believe you. You probably are eating all the right things. You're just eating too much of them. Somebody can gain body fat. There's three energy states somebody can be in. A hypercaloric state where calories in are greater than calories out. There is a state of maintenance where calories in are equal to calories out. And then there is a state of hypocalorism where calories in are less than

calories out. Those are the only three states of energy that you're going to be in hypercalorism, you're going to gain weight because you're consuming more energy than you're expending in a state of maintenance. Or this is what I would use for recomposition as well for building muscle and losing fat at the same time, you would be in a in a state of energy in equals energy out. And then finally, for fat loss, you would be in a hypocaloric state, and you're going to lose weight because you are expending fat loss, you would be in a hypocaloric state, and you're going to lose weight because you are expending more energy than you're taking in. This is this is undeniable. This is something that has absolutely been demonstrated in four plus years of well

designed research, pretty much regardless of the macronutrient distribution. So that's something that's important to point out as well. If you put someone on like 2000 calories of a poor macronutrient distribution versus 2000 calories on a equal and healthy macronutrient distribution, let's say like a 33, 33, 33 with protein, carbs, fats, their body weight is going to be quite similar. That calories regulate body weight period, but macronutrients, they're going to determine what you look like at that body weight and how you perform at that body weight, period. But macronutrients, they're going to determine what you look like at that body weight and how you perform at that body weight. So I think kind of like as a first just quick, because there's a lot of complicated ways you can set calories. So I'll just tell you how to set calories before moving on to macronutrients. There's a lot of complicated

ways in which you can do this. But one of the easiest ways to to transmit on a podcast is simply body weight. Body weight times 15 is quite solid for maintenance. And then body weight times 16 or higher is great for hypercalorism. So putting on muscle mass and then also body weight times 14 or lower is great for fat loss. There's a couple of recommendations though,

in this category. I mean, this is an enormous topic that could be discussed at length. And I talk about this in my course for many, many hours to completely elucidate the concepts of what goes into energy in versus energy out. But I think a good role, or a good rule rather, is if you're dropping weight, you don't want to run into a state of adaptive thermogenesis where the body can actually reduce its own metabolism via certain hormonal and metabolic pathways. And the way in which to offset this is to lose only a half a percent to 1% of your body weight per week. So that should actually be the goal. If you're in a fat loss phase, a half a percent to 1% of your total body weight lost per week should really be the goal to minimize adaptive thermogenesis and minimize any type of muscle loss that could occur in this hypocaloric state as well. And then I think a good rule to have too,

is if you end up at a point where you're at body weight times 10 in calories, and you're still not completely shredded, something's wrong, you need you need to go back to the drawing board. I've had people on stage bodybuilding, bodybuilding ripped at body weight times 10. So if you are having trouble with weight loss or fat loss, and you have gotten all the way down to body weight times 10. So if you are having trouble with weight loss or fat loss, um, and you have gotten all the way down to body weight times 10, you need a diet break to reset your metabolism and hormones, or you need to do your labs and figure out what's actually going wrong there. So we, is that in, in, we talk body weight times 15, are you talking kilograms or pounds? I'm talking pounds.

Yeah. So everything, yeah, I'm always talking pounds. In Canada, it's weird because like we learn pounds and kilos because so much of our sit is so connected with the States, but then we're also supposed to be metric. So we're supposed to be learning kilos. So we are, we talk in both for some reason. Yeah. It blows me away being in Canada.

When I'm up there, it's like half of it is like an American way of doing it, and the other half is metric. Like if you drive down the road, you're going to get kilometers per hour. You go into a gym there, it's pounds. I'm like, you guys don't know if you're coming or going. At least in America, we're consistent with being rednecks. And absolutely nobody quantifies their height in centimeters here. yeah yeah at least in america we're consistent with being rednecks you know but and absolutely nobody uh quantifies their height in centimeters here we all say five eight five nine six foot

but our license plate our license driver's license rather is all quantified in centimeters so it's just like we don't know if we're coming or going we don't really know what we're doing yet so just give us some time also on the lighter side of this, if you guys ever watched Lane Norton on, if you want to not watch TV, maybe learn a little bit, but get entertained, go to his Twitter

and watch him execute folks when they say that there's no such thing as calories in, calories out. He will absolutely wreck you over calls. It's like, I will never ever go against what he says.

Even if I know I'm right, this is not worth it. I won't do it. Yeah. Well, in the energy balance conversation, you're setting yourself up for failure. If you say that, that's one of the few things we truly know. And that's why it's so important. Like kind of what I talked about previously, like if you were in some weird scenario where we could only focus on two things, calories has got to be one of those things because it's an actual deal breaker. Like I don't care if you're on the best supplements

in the world and you have all organic food. If your goal is fat loss and you're not in a state of hypocalorism, you ain't getting any results, period. You are trapped. You will not lose weight. I don't give a shit how much you spend on your food and supplements, how often you meditate, how great your sleep is. I don't care. If you are eating at maintenance, you won't lose weight, period. That's your problem. That's the first thing you need to address. And I like to do that weight loss measured on a percent of body weight

because some people will just say hey lose two pounds a week but it's like man like for a bikini competitor versus a heavyweight strength athlete like two pounds is very different because one of them is 105 pounds and the other is 305 pounds like this is that that, that, uh, heavyweight lift weightlifter, like his diet compared to hers. It's just a two pounds is a trip to the bathroom for him. That's absolutely not. It's probably less than a trip to the bathroom for him to be honest. So the two pounds, I just don't like, cause it's not relative to body weight. And when something's not relative to body weight, it doesn't really make sense to me anymore. It's like, wait,

what? How can we have an absolute statement? You can't have bikini competitors and heavyweight power lifters. It's impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Power lifters lose weight. Just the walking.

Like they could walk a hundred meters and they're going to lose two pounds, you know, just sweat it out. But yeah, big, big difference. Yeah. Just peeing out inflammation all day long there's nothing

more unhealthy water back up every aspect of their body man like hey i remember being yeah that's good stuff i don't know what you guys are talking about absolute strength is fucking fun to watch i love it it's fun to watch and fun to do. There's nothing healthy about that mess. Well, when I just benched 405 about a month ago at this point, I felt like kind of like crap everywhere except while I was benching. Sure. Yeah. But my mobility was down. I was snoring.

I'm not a snorer. I just began to snore because I was putting on weight to move weight. But my conditioning was down down going for family walks. Like I'm, I'm mouth breathing on a family. Like it absolutely strikes. It's amazing. But yeah, if you're going to achieve something that's actually respectable, it's a, it's a tough road. It's hard to eat that much. It's hard to put on that kind of weight. It's miserable. And after you just did a marathon, you were down to like what?

180, 185, something like that. And to go to 210, that's a big 15 pounds in 13 weeks. How much have you lost so far? I'm back down right now. I'm waking up around one 90. So I'm back down another 20. Was that like living weight? Yeah. Like you would like to live your life at 190 pounds?

I mean, I'd probably be better around 180-ish. My genetics are small. And that's a component of this too. My genetics, my dad was in the 140s until he was like 50 years old. Like we're small, small small skeletons smaller guys and he was in his 130s when he was a a younger man so uh that's what i was in getting in high school i was i remember i still remember i was 133 and i was like man i gotta put some mass strength yeah this once 133 is unacceptable so for me to go up to 210 it's a it's just a completely different

thing because your organs have to be a lot more stressed like uh when you have the pancreas of 140 pound man but you're eating the carbs to sustain a 210 pound physique like you're asking a lot of your insulin you're asking a lot of of and this is why something like metformin works so well for type two diabetics, because type two diabetics are overweight, and eating way too many carbs, and they just absolutely exhaust the pancreas over time. So metformin helps increase insulin sensitivity. So what insulin they are secreting, it's actually a lot more doable and workable for the body. But whatever your genetic prototype for organ size is, will determine the amount of stress that you're putting on your body

in these pursuits of hypercalorism. So I think that's probably a good segue into gaining weight. I've never even heard that statement right there. Your genetic propensity for your organs. I never even considered that before to yeah you're you're creating an a state that your organs were never prepared for it goes back to evolutionary biology i always talk about it but like um power lifting and bodybuilding are the least efficient and least natural things possible. It's if you were bodybuilders never existed,

uh, in, in say paleolithic times, because it's extremely energy efficient to walk around with that much muscle. Um, it may, you know, and to be that strong, it's not efficient to be like all of those things go against, um, what's actual survival. So your body and your organs and your DNA, they're actually programmed for you to be at a certain weight. And the greater and greater disposition you are away from that programmed weight, you're asking small organs to do a large organ job. And you'll see that that plays itself out. Like just think about Thor and Eddie Hall.

Like Thor, the way they wore their 400 pounds yeah one guy is kind of designed to wear that 400 a lot better than the other guy yeah yeah exactly eddie hall was not meant to be that size no man like when it went and one of the one of the movies he's training and his wife is talking about the transformation of how unhealthy he had gotten, it was like you could tell that there was real medical issues that were pending at any point in time, the way that she described how he went from when she met him to who he is today at 400 pounds or whatever he is. He was a swimmer. Yeah.

He was a swimmer. That makes me laugh i mean that muscle mass would sink down to the bottom of the bottom of the pool so fast now what is it you can't move your arms fast enough to get that 400 pounds through the water what is the guy that the brian shaw brian shaw was a basketball player yeah brian shaw's a monster we saw that guy at olympia it was terrifying how large he was huge yeah coach Kent tells me all about the dude just to you know the stuff they do I don't know what do you think is the most unhealthy sport like it's got to be powerlifting or I'm strong man's got to take the

cake though like I feel like those dudes are taking years off their life yeah there's something to be said though about the extreme leanness of bodybuilding though too um and then also how we're defining unhealthy because you could say football like the career span and even lifespan of football players is actually pretty scary statistics to start to learn um the bodybuilding there seems to be the high and low of weight fluctuations tends to cause a lot of problems in that sport. And obviously, the drugs. The drugs is a crazy one because you can't get to that. I wonder how naturally

lean you could get without all the drugs they're on. You can get shredded. You can definitely get shredded, but can you get down to 3-4% body fat where you're starving yourself like starving themselves that's the weird part is

they're not really starving themselves they're eating still a lot of calories just very specifically timed and like bringing the water out like that's the big one you know the lasix like you know that's what the andrew munzer died he just like his heart just like you know you do need some water in the system the hgo is fairly important but you know yeah and when you lean down naturally you kind of start dropping weight classes too because the longer you stay in a state of hypocalorism it's not just fat that's coming off it's your muscle mass will come off as well, especially depending on how you set up your training, your deloads, your refeed weeks. And prep typically should be longer for a natural athlete.

Like I'm talking 16, even 20 weeks out from a show. You're going to slowly burn away at the fat because anytime you do something too quick in a natural athlete, the there's, you know, something I've said to my athletes a lot is, um, if you force the body, it'll react. If you, uh, sorry, if you force the body, it'll react. If you coax the body, it will respond. And that coaxing over time is what will force it to not react. So there's an analogy of a credit card I've used in the past, where if I stole Anders, if I stole your credit card. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to

rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle.

Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the

video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. Anders, if I stole your credit card, and then once a week, I took 50 cents out of it, you'd probably never notice, you would never notice nothing would even happen. I just take 50 cents out of your credit card once a week. But if I took your credit card, and on day one, I took 500 bucks, so you would say, holy crap, I'm going to call security, and I am going to have them shut down my credit card. Your metabolism does the same thing. If you do a slight caloric deficit, then your metabolism is looking over here while you're dropping fat

over here. So there's no alarm system like, hey, we need to offset this with some extreme adaptive thermogenesis. We need to re-regulate leptin, testosterone, estrogen. We need to down-regulate thyroid. We need to alter receptor sensitivity. That's all what the credit card security system is for the metabolism in your physiology. So that slow burn makes sure that that the security guards never called. But if I do a caloric deficit, boom, overnight, 500 calories or 1000 calories, we're going to do a crash diet in it's very quick, the metabolism say, Whoa, this is a state of famine, based on evolutionary biology, I'm going to slow systems down, because I don't know when the next meal is

going to be in so that we can maintain this current energy state for as long as possible. So natural athletes actually have to be a little bit more concerned with that because that longer prep and slower burn is important for them to maintain hormonal homeostasis, but also just purely to maintain a better cosmetic look as well because they will lose less muscle tissue. But a drug using athlete, they're able to utilize a little bit more aggressive strategies, because the drugs can maintain the muscle for you. So they in a huge way, I gave you if you're on plenty of test trend,

master on, you've designed your course, you're progressively stepping up as the as the prep gets closer and closer and closer. It's anti-catabolic to the strongest extent. Like you might even actually gain some muscle across this prep and you probably will, especially if you're not a pro. So if they can just be a little bit more aggressive with it and not suffer those same consequences, but their list of consequences is elsewhere. It's not the absence of consequences. It just happens somewhere else yeah um i'd love to dig into the macro side of things and specifically started with the protein um mainly because i personally want to know what are like the upper limits of protein intake

um and kind of like the law of diminishing returns on this because i would love to just be a carnivore person like i feel like that that diet aligns with my taste buds in a way that is um so perfect of go warm some meat up and go eat it and make sure you take a multivitamin to get the rest of the micronutrients you need some greens some, some greens. However, Dan Garner told me I need some carbohydrates and some fats in my life in order to perform at an optimal level. So I'd love to know, one, the overall breakdown, obviously, and what goes through your mind when you're designing macro counts, but specifically starting with the protein side of things like, is there is there a downside to having really high amounts of protein in your diet? Okay, I answer that question. I go back to calories for one second, though, people don't get mad at me. Yeah, I like to actually so for weight gain or weight loss, let's say weight loss,

stair step your way down. So if you do body weight times 15, and your body weight stays the same after about two weeks or so, then do body weight times 14. And then if you're achieving that half a percent to 1% body weight loss per week, stay there until you're not and then do body weight times 13. And then once you're achieving that stay there until you're not. And then do body weight times 13. And then once you're achieving that, stay there until you're not. And then do body weight times 12. You want to actually go through that whole progressive process. And those are your plateau busters, by the way. And then every eight weeks, take one week of diet break back at maintenance. That'll help reset the metabolism. You can think about it like you're dieting which means you're swimming underwater hard hard hard and then that one diet break that one week is like coming back up for

that breath of fresh air that's going to give you the psychological and physical uh robustness that you need to get back underwater and finish the diet again so every week would that change so if you lose like a pound you know or a half pound you like so you adjust if it's you every week do you met you re keep it running average so like i like it i honestly i would like you to weigh in every day and then we'll just take the weekly average because too many things create a fluctuation if i'm only weighing in on sundays um electrolyte status hydration feces um inflammation uh is water retentive so if i'm holding inflammation from training i would be holding on to more water if hormonal response for female hormonal response

if i have intolerances or sensitivities from food creating water retention my menstrual cycle like all of this stuff takes place and can really create a high low and wait. But don't allow it to create a high low in your emotions because high lows are totally normal. And that's why we create averages over time. So to eliminate the noise and actually have clear cut data, I like to do the averages. And then everything I just said works in equal opposite when in hypercalorism. So the goal, yeah, the goal in hypercalorism is to gain muscle, not fat. Okay. So this is what you want to do is I would say eat at body weight times 15. I'm enormous. I'm like famous for let's start eat at maintenance and then see what happens. And then we'll adjust up and down from there

because we're going to be in contact every single week. I do that every single time. I do that every time. There is, your life will never be worse eating at maintenance for two weeks. It's an amazing prep phase to build the habits, to feel out the new diet. There's so many positives to it

that we did a whole episode actually on maintenance eating and we could do many more. It's maintenance is like my home base as a coach. But if someone comes to me with muscle gain, that maintenance eating, body weight times 15, for example, see what happens for a couple of weeks. If you're not seeing the scale move the way you want, body weight times 16, hang out there until it starts moving. When it stops, body weight times 17, hang out there.

And then you just keep doing that stair climbing thing. And, uh, and, and, and there's really no limit there to like, I don't like people below body weight times 10 for fat loss, but in terms of bulking, like I've had to put some 16 year old hockey players on like body weight times 20, 21, 22, just because they are walking to school and they have gym class and they work out and then they have hockey practice and games. It's like, and they might be involved in an afterschool recreation thing or just playing foot hockey with their friends. Like it's, it's so much expenditure.

And they're 17. Yeah. They've got, you know, four digit testosterone going everywhere. Yeah. So you just kind of, sometimes you just have to find a way and that's, you know four digit testosterone everywhere yeah so you just kind of sometimes you just have to find a way and that's you know manipulations and this is where food type matters too so like calories and macros um it's a great conversation but it's not a coach it's a calculator and there's people who call themselves a macro coach and like frankly i think

that's embarrassing like i could google macros right now. And then I stole your job. Like, well, hold on. What? I think that's kind of embarrassing. I know that'll rub people the wrong way, but a coach is not a calculator. It's just not how you get good results. So like food selection matters at that point more than macros. Because if it was only macros I was caring about, then that would be numbers. But there's such a thing known as

the satiety index with food and how full you're going to feel after taking in certain foods. That's what I was going to ask you, like protein, for example, it supposedly increases that, correct? Yes. Yeah. Protein and fiber are very heavy hitters in the world of creating satiety same with uh volume as well like uh for example you take 100 calories of broccoli versus 100 calories of cheese one is like the size of your thumb the other is a big bag the satiety difference between those two is huge but that's a weapon you can use because in a fat loss phase i'm going to use the highest satiety index foods the whole time so that I am in a hypocaloric state, but not hungry. Not starving to death.

Your energy balance is different than your satiety. You can be losing weight while full. And that's a function of satiety and not current energy state. So you can use high satiety index foods while dieting to increase life quality while you're getting lean. And then for that hockey player, for example, if you're all the way up at body weight times 20, your problem is actually being way too stuffed to continue eating more and more food. So we actually use really low satiety index foods like white rice, extra virgin olive oil, like things that digest like water, but have a real punch when it comes to caloric intake. So that climbing up and down.

That's a great idea, by the way. I don't know if you thought about that with weight gain. Totally. I mean, a real easy one that a lot of people do when they're trying to build muscles, they'll eat things like tuna and chicken breast. I'm like, dude, change that to steak and chicken thighs because you're getting the exact same amount of protein per meal, but three times as many calories. So if you're stuffed right now, don't think that you need, like a lot of people get their muscle building ideas from pre-contest bodybuilding diets. This pre-contest, that's chicken and tuna because of the satiety.

Right. Like that's, you know what, like that's actually purposeful. It's the smallest amount of calories to act as that vehicle for the meal. Whereas it's the equal and opposite for the off season. You got to get it in you. What about protein potentially increasing, like, you know, the body's heat? You know, like, I know, Andy talked about that two years ago, we talked about it on a show. What are your thoughts? Is that a real thing? I don't think it's proven yet. Is it? It's real? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thermic effective food, you'll see it as TEF in the literature. So your body and TEF varies dramatically. So that's

actually why I'm really glad you asked this. So protein has a TEF of about 25 to 30%. TEF means thermic effective food, which means the amount of heat and energy utilized to process that nutrient. So if you had 100 calories of protein, and it has a TEF of 30%, that means you ate 100 calories of protein, but only absorbed 70% of the calories because you burned 30% of the calories through the digestion and assimilation process. So that is how protein is not only high for satiety, but you actually, you're utilizing a very high percentage of energy just to break it down and process it, which burns calories all by itself.

Whereas fat, fat has a TEF of around 3%. So if you take in 100 calories of fat, only three of them are going towards heat production and assimilation because it's very easy and efficient for your body to break down and uptake fats. So that's actually why I really like the example I just said regarding, say, steak and chicken thighs, because I really like the example I just said regarding say steak and chicken thighs, because I can get the same amount of protein. So the satiety is the same, but the

thermic effect of eating in terms of adding more fat in, I'm getting way more calories with less TEF because those calories are coming from fat at a smaller percentage, which is going to put more weight on my athlete, which is the entire goal. That's awesome. Yeah. I know. Uh, I was listening to, to Andy just this morning talking about, you know, the weight gain and he's like, he tries, he tries to stay with 10 to 15%, you know, uh, extra in calories. And then, which is a book I did. The math is about what you're saying with 15 to 16 times your, your body weight. But then,

you know, he talked about his main concern is, is protein. And then he doesn't care how you balance between carbohydrates and fats so much. It's like more of what you can start to. So he's two to four grams per kilogram of body weight in the protein. And then the rest divide,

however you want isn't that mainly like a sport specific thing like if you're a strength power athlete don't you want to be a little bit more on the carb side of things no i'm a little bit more in andy's ballpark in that scenario because when you're in a state of hypercalorism you're fueled like that you know like finding it when it's more there's more specificity involved when there's low fuel availability. So if I'm in a glycolytic sport like MMA, where my primary fuel source is carbohydrates, then if I have low fuel availability for my diet, then I'm going to want that fuel to be sport specific to the things I'm trying to accomplish. However, if I'm in a state of hypercalorism, my glycogen is full.

I've got fatty acids in the fat cells. Everything's going just fine. You've got plenty of meals on your body at that point that can go towards energy expenditure. And you have more flexibility available to you in terms of distribution and ratios of carbon fat intake. With that said, I like it doesn't grant you the right to do things that are silly, like eat only fats or eat only carbs and go super low fat. I'm still very balanced when I do that, because I do believe that they offer palatability and meals when balanced as opposed to dominance. But I think

that as well, you just get a better overall health profile when you have two things going at once, rather than just getting everything from one source, because you're completely missing everything that that other source has to offer you. Yeah. Let's dig into some micros. We got like 10-15 minutes left. How do people actually find out micronutrient levels in their life uh micronutrients so yeah we'll have to cover macros another time yeah mash had to run to practice doug had to bounce out uh oh geez okay all right so we'll do macros another time well yeah we'll teach them how to set their carbs fat and protein another time based on their specific context um in terms of micros, you can get micronutrient testing done. SpectraCell

does this micronutrient test. The NutriVal from Genova Diagnostics does micronutrient testing. There's also a lot you can pull from just a simple blood chemistry, the way you look at main cell volume, the way you look at red blood cell distribution width, the way you look at your iron and thyroid markers, um, with the right eye, you can actually get a really good insight of micronutrients purely from a blood chemistry perspective. So there's these, these ways in which to test are available and that's why we use them rapid to make sure people's micronutrients are dialed in. But that's how basically you would assess it. In terms of applying it in real life, it's a very safe strategy to have one source of vegetables and one source of

fruit per 1000 calories. So if you're getting one source of each per 1000, that would mean if you had 3000 calories per day, you at minimum should be having three servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit in that, in that, uh, in that 3000 calorie distribution. And ideally from different sources, different colors, different, uh, sources, because each one has their own dominance in what they provide, like broccoli for vitamin C spinach for vitamin K, um, sweet potato for vitamin a there's so many differences. So variety of colors, one of each per 1000 calories in the diet. And then making sure that that's a big part of it, like something I've said in these podcasts in the past is calories will regulate your body weight, macronutrients will regulate what you look like at that body weight. But micronutrients will

determine how you feel at that body weight. And until you collect all three of those and put them together holistically, you're never going to be the best version of yourself. Yeah. The, um, how, how much, uh, do we trust in multivitamins like the daily multi so it's either a lot or not so much and this is a scenario where that old adage of uh you get what you pay for yeah comes into play a lot because you can get good multivitamins that are that are absorbable that are in an excellent dose that are well formulated and then you can also get crappy vitamins that are poorly formulated and poorly absorbed. So like, so for example, magnesium citrate is far better absorbed than magnesium oxide. So if you're looking at something that just says magnesium, and you don't know absorbability, well, you aren't what you eat,

you only are what you eat and actually absorb. So one's actually going to increase your magnesium status, magnesium citrate is excellent for that. So it's magnesium gluconate, bisglycinate, there's a handful that are that are quite solid. Magnesium oxide is terrible at increasing magnesium status and is actually a laxative. So it's can kind of work against you in a lot of cases as well. So that's an example of vitamin being poorly absorbed, and us not trusting it for that reason. Yeah, but there's also ones that are poorly formulated, like a B complex is a good example of this. If you get a B complex, and just every single B vitamin is like 100 milligrams, 100 milligrams, 100 milligrams, 100 micrograms, it's like just

100, 100, 100, 100. That's not how the body operates yeah i was gonna say there's gotta be like a the the ratios in nature are specific to the vitamin or mineral that you are consuming a hundred percent so like it's such a lazy dumb formula whenever it's called like b100 and then everything in it's at 100 i'm like oh you guys put no thought into this. There's no biochemistry here. Marketing's great, B100. That makes sense to everybody. Yeah. So people will just take it and think it's all right. But like in that scenario, even if they're absorbable B vitamins, it doesn't mean it's well formulated. It's still a stupid product. So those things, they can be treacherous because sometimes you

think you're doing something good for your health, but it could possibly be doing nothing at all. So you do get what you pay for. When it comes to specific micronutrients like that, vitamin B is like a great one because it has so many different variations in it. Or magnesium being another one where there's so many different variations um, like variations, I guess you could call it of, of magnesium. Um, do those ratios, um, I guess do they, if you were to get that from a fruit and vegetable, um, versus just taking like the, the bad multi and just getting it in your system, um, is there a massive difference in overall health? Where are you going to see that you're taking bad ratios of these things and it's throwing

your physiology out of whack? Yeah. So for example, vitamin C in an apple, it was something only like a, I am going to be getting the numbers wrong here, but I did a presentation on this. The reason I'm forgetting the exact numbers is because I did it in 2019 at Western University. Me and John Berardi were presenting there. And it was something like there's 10 milligrams of vitamin C in an apple, but then you could have 100 milligrams of vitamin C in a supplement form, but then the apple still provided a larger impact from the vitamin C benefits than did the vitamin C supplement alone. And that's because nature has already answered questions that we don't know are questions yet.

There are certain polyphenols and antioxidants and enzymes and things that actually are designed to work synergistically so that you co-consume them. And then that executes even just the apple itself. Like, let's just think about if you have apple juice, pure sugar, not really a good thing. If you have the apple, it's the carbs wrapped in this beautiful fiber. So that actually balances the blood sugar. That's not a mistake. Like nature's figured out a lot of awesome things that, and every time we think we're smarter than nature, we're always reminded that we're not, um, getting your micronutrients from food sources is infinitely better than getting it from supplemental sources. For some reasons,

we understand and some, we still don't. Yeah, I mean, that's the interesting thing about the entire supplement. Really the industry. I'm not much of a supplement person. I've never been a supplement person. Really the most supplements I've ever taken is when we were going through my protocol. But nature and humans have evolved at the same rate to coexist together and help each other. So to think that we can just pick out specific pieces of that apple and then make it better and put it in a bottle makes no sense to me. I've never understood that anytime someone's like, protein powder is good. And you go, well, is it better than a steak i don't like i don't think so it can't be there's no way yeah i'll relieve you of that curiosity right now

it's not even close um and um is it are there mechanisms of it because of the way a an apple is digested versus a pill um Where are really like the big differences in and why nature's answer to vitamin C or whatever micronutrient it is, is better than the pill version. I think digestion and assimilation enhancement when your body is taking in an enormous amount of micronutrients with no real transporters and delivery process, that it's going to just have a higher susceptibility to some things falling through the cracks in that scenario. But I think that would be a small part of it because I think the body does a pretty

good job at extracting nutrients when they're bioavailable. Like, for example, magnesium oxide, like that's just not going to happen. Some other things are just like just dumb. They're just a waste of money. But nature's vitamins and minerals are already bioavailable. You're already getting the absolute best bioavailable source, but you're also getting all of the nutrients that are synergistic with it in the exact same vehicle that it was designed to be in the body to begin with.

Some of this stuff, it's like, it's important to kind of think about to like, think about like having vitamin D right before bed. A lot of people do this, but where would we get vitamin D in nature? Sunshine? Is it really smart to have 1000 IU, which is an absolute solar bomb of sunlight to your body right before bed? Like we actually got, we have to actually start thinking of what message are you sending your body if you're given a solar bomb to yourself immediately before you're supposed to shut it down. Like it's, that won't surprise me if that comes out to create negative effects. Yeah. When, when you are looking at individual, is it possible if you were to only eat food to overdose on specific micronutrients? To a level that would be harmful.

Like I know you can take so much vitamin D that it causes a lot of problems. And like vitamin C can become toxic at certain levels. Would I really have to chug like four gallons of orange juice to become like sick off of vitamin C? Yeah, that's an absurd thing to think about. But in nature, what is it possible where you actually need to like, be aware of what you're consuming? Yeah, well, orange juice doesn't exist in nature so like that that is a supplement for sugar basically yeah it's a sugar supplement in nature you can get the job done anything in excess can become toxic um uh fun fact steve jobs he had some uh bad relationships with food um and he would actually go through periods of very, very weird dieting.

And he actually got vitamin A toxicity from eating only carrots. And his skin went orange from eating only carrots. So like these things are absolutely possible. Anytime you have a dominance of anything anything you can't expect biology to respond properly because yeah the biology responds to consistency not intensity when you do these big things um biology does not like it there's always a there's always a bell curve too little of something is not good right in the middle is in that real sweet spot and then too much of something is not good either so although it's possible it's way harder because I can have a whole bottle of vitamin A

with a single glass of water, but I would have to eat like, who knows how many kilos of sweet potatoes and carrots in order to get that same vitamin A. Yeah. Fantastic, man. I think we need to do a full show on macros and micros um there's so much more to discuss and even an energy balance we just like the hormones that interact with energy balance uh how the mitochondria interacts with energy balance like there's so many cool things left to unpack but i think an episode like this to scratch the surface is is very important to give people actionable items without overloading them. Absolutely. I think anytime simple directions to people to get them on the right track is a great place to start and then fill it in with all the biochemistry. Where can people find you?

At Dan Garner Nutrition on Instagram. My courses are at coachgarner.com and you can get blood work at insidetracker.com slash Garner. There it is. And Travis Mash had to run off to Lenore Rhine weightlifting practice. You can find him at mashleek.com, Doug Larson at douglaselarson.com. And I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. And you can find us at barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and get over to

rapidealthreport.com where you can sign up for a call with me. So Dan Garner can read your labs, dial in your nutrition and supplementation. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to write some programs for you and Doug and myself are going to build the execution plan. So you know exactly what you need to do when you need to do it. So you can optimize your health and performance friends. I'll see you guys next week.