Dhru Purohit Show - Three Key Things People Do to Keep Weight Off Consistently

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone, Drew Brode here. Today, we're talking about three commonalities between people who lose weight and keep it off. And this is an important conversation for anyone that's ever felt stuck with stubborn weight that just won't budge. Or maybe, like so many, for the folks that are listening, you've lost weight before only to regain it back again, which is incredibly, incredibly common. It's actually easy to lose weight. It's hard to keep it off for the long term. So that's why in today's episode I'm sharing a powerful segment for my conversation with Dr. Alan Bacon about again the three commonalities of people who lose weight and keep it off long term.

Starting point is 00:00:36 Now, a little bit about Dr. Allen Bacon. He holds a doctorate in dental surgery from the University of Maryland. He's a certified personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and a certified nutritionist and physique bodybuilding coach and a USA powerlifting coach. Dr. Bacon specializes in helping adults master their physique, their performance, their mindset, and habits to achieve sustainable. That's the key to we're here. Sustainable lifelong results.

Starting point is 00:01:03 In our conversation, you'll hear highly actionable tips for achieving long-term results when it comes to weight loss and your overall health. Again, this is a clip from a full-length conversation with Dr. Allen Bacon, but we clip this because there's some gems in here. And even if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you might have missed these gems.

Starting point is 00:01:21 So let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Allen Bacon. What would you say are the best ways? and the worst ways to lose 10 pounds for the person who's listening today? I mean, the biggest thing that we need to focus on is starting to realize that this is a long-term journey, right? And so if we're looking at this as a very short term, I just need to lose 10 pounds in a couple months, it can be a very difficult thing because one of two things happens. Either you reach that goal and then you lose the drive that you had before because that was your main goal, or you don't reach that goal and you feel like a failure.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Now, there are a lot of different tactics that we can use to achieve these types of things. changing mindset around this is probably the first really good choice to make. Now, there are three main similarities between people that lose weight and keep it off long term. They tend to eat mostly whole, minimally processed food diets. They eat out very little. They don't go to fast food restaurants. They tend to eat lower dietary fat rather than lower carbs. Now, this isn't required because you can have different ratios and it's completely fine

Starting point is 00:02:25 since calories drive weight loss or weight gain. But that's just something that we find tends to work for the large majority of people. The last thing is people who tend to keep off weight, the choices that they make in food have less variety. And this can be surprising for a lot of people. Because people think, well, in my daily life, I want to be able to have a large variety of different foods. But it unfortunately causes something called the buffet effect. And when the buffet effect is in play, it tends to increase cravings and food drive dramatically. And it drives a massive intake of energy, essentially.

Starting point is 00:02:54 And so if we start to focus on these three things, it gives us a little bit of a guidance of where we should be going. but whether or not they're going to work for you is very person-specific. And I think that everybody can benefit from a whole minimally processed food diet. I mean, if we look at the data surrounding it, it's not that ultra-processed foods are inherently bad. It kind of depends on how they fit within an overall diet. The problem with them is they definitely contribute to the obesity epidemic that we have. They're hyper-palatable.

Starting point is 00:03:21 They have a lot less nutrients. They have a lot less fiber. They have a lower-thermic effect of food. And I think that people understand. that they tend to have less nutrients and they tend to have higher calorie levels. But I think that one of the things that they don't realize is that the thermic effect of food aspect is a very real thing. The thermic effect of food is simply the energy that's required to metabolize and absorb the

Starting point is 00:03:45 foods that you eat. And on an average person, it can be up to 15% of your total daily energy expenditure. That is a large amount of calories burned. Protein causes the largest increase at 20 to 30%. fats are 0 to 3% and carbs are 5 to 10%. Now having said that, the macros and calories alone aren't what tell the whole story. Because when we look at diets that have whole minimally processed foods at their base, we actually see a 50% greater increase in thermic effective food compared to an ultra-processed food diet.

Starting point is 00:04:19 We also see less glucose-induced fat storage. And it's not surprising that because of a lot of, of these things. We see a 51% greater increase in obesity risk for those that have a mainly ultra-processed food diet. We also see 60% risk for low levels of lean muscle mass for people that have ultra-processed food diets. So these ultra-processed food diets tend to hit us on a bunch of different levels. Understanding that this is one of the keys to be able to take control of your weight, take control of your health, take control of your longevity and overall life is a really important thing. So then getting down to strategies because we want to know practical strategies,

Starting point is 00:04:56 that we can bring into play, and we have to understand what's happening when we're attempting to lose body fat. And people worry that as they lose body fat, they're going to run into some things called metabolic damage, which is a technical myth, but there is something called metabolic adaptation that does exist. A metabolic adaptation is the process that your body goes through to prevent that weight loss effort. So we know that we should likely be moving more.

Starting point is 00:05:20 We know that we should likely be eating less calories overall. And as we lose weight, our body has... a mechanism that it puts into play to prevent that weight loss. Because historically, caveman times, we're thinking, hey, if I'm losing body fat, this is probably a bad thing. Today, it's a little bit different. We have calories that are not in, it's not hard to find, and our body's evolutionary mechanism is simply not caught up.

Starting point is 00:05:47 So what it does to stall out weight gain or weight loss is one of two main mechanisms. It increases hunger drive and it lowers our knee levels. the non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is just a fancy way of saying all of the movement that we do that's not dedicated exercise. And this can account for up to 2,000 extra calories per day. So if you are moving a lot, particularly in people that have very active jobs, nurses, teachers, agricultural jobs, you could be burning as many calories as a whole other person without even realizing it. And this metabolic adaptation, the way that it can stall out our weight loss efforts and the way that we can get into this weight regain that you were alluding to earlier, such a problem is because as we've lost this weight and the severity or the level of weight loss

Starting point is 00:06:32 itself is what really drives these two adaptations, the increased hunger and the lowered meat levels, the total weight loss tends to drive those. Now, when we monitor these and you can do it as a proxy through step count and figure out, hey, you know, when I started this fat loss journey, I was at 8,000 steps per day. And now after I've lost 20 pounds, I'm all of a sudden at 6,000 steps per day. That's a lot of extra calories that you're losing and you're burning as the burn during the day. And so what we find a lot of times with this weight regain is because of those increased hunger levels, we start to snack more, which means we are taking in a lot more calories than what we were originally doing. And then we move less. And that extra calorie burn that we lose from this daily

Starting point is 00:07:14 activity tends to cause us to creep up and up and up. And so these two mechanisms in combination can be a real pain for people that are trying to keep the weight off. Lots to unpack there. I'm going to start off with the first ones and so much great information. Let's tease it out because I think you just blew our audience's mind. So we got to make sure we unpack each and every single one. So everybody understands what exactly you meant by every single thing. Let's start off with a mindset piece. You talked about the importance of having the right mindset approach when it comes to embarking on a weight loss, but really what people are looking for is fat loss most of the time on their journey. Give us a compare and contrast. When you look at your clients who lose things,

Starting point is 00:07:54 that specifically and keep it off versus the ones who maybe fall off track. And if they're your clients, they probably are not falling off track. But let's say the general population, what's the difference between the mindset of somebody who loses weight and keeps it off and the person who yo-yo's year and year and year again and again? Sometimes the best wellness upgrades are the simplest. And switching to branch basics has been exactly that for me. I started with their premium starter kit after hearing great things.

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Starting point is 00:12:09 But what we want to do is we want to make this a lifestyle change. If you go into this, viewing it as restriction, you're going to have a real problem. It's going to mentally cause issues. It's going to fight back. So what we want to do is we want to switch things to an abundance mindset or core value eating. Now, core value eating looks at it as rather than saying, I can't have this or I'm not allowed to have this, it's more of a focus on, well, what can I add to my diet to bring benefit to my life and my goals? And so if we switch it from, I can't have chocolate or I can't have popcorn or whatever the food choice is that you're saying you can't have. and switch it to, okay, well, can I have more fruits? Can I have more, you know, dairy? Can I have more lean

Starting point is 00:12:49 unprocessed meats? Can I have more of these other beneficial constituents to my diet? Well, what's great about that is it's both a positive choice that you're making to have those foods. And secondarily, a lot of foods have a lot of fiber. They're very satiating. They've got a ton of nutrients. And when you're taking in these types of foods, you take an overall less calories throughout the day, secondarily, without even thinking about it. So you're eating less chocolate. You're eating less. You're eating less, you know, popcorn chips or whatever it is, you're just trying to move away from. And I want to emphasize, I'm not saying that these foods are good or bad, but there's certainly a continuum of there are more nutritious foods and then there are less nutritious foods. And making the

Starting point is 00:13:26 majority of our diet based off of these more nutritious foods comes with a lot of benefits. And satiety and sustainability are part of that. And then the other part of the equation is switching our goal setting process. And what I've found historically happens with people, especially when they first start out on a fitness journey is they'll set goals either with time frames or a scale weight or something that they just can't control. When you have goals that are based on outcomes, it becomes very problematic from a longevity perspective and it becomes very problematic from a motivation perspective. If you tell me, hey, I'm 190 pounds and I want to get down to 160 pounds, I'll say, okay, well, what happens on 160 pounds? Like, what's special about that number? The typical

Starting point is 00:14:08 response is, well, that's what I weighed in college or that's what I weighed at this point in time. And I'll say, okay, well, if we're going to be bringing in, you know, weight training as we should be since all the benefits of lean muscle, if we're, you know, looking for the best health, injury reduction risk and everything that we can, if you add some lean muscle, wouldn't you conceivably be heavier at similar body fat levels and look better overall, but the weight wouldn't align with what you originally thought was the right answer to the question? And then they say, oh, yeah, well, you know, I guess the weight itself isn't exactly what I want, but, you know, I want to have this done in like four months. Well, can you control how much weight that you lose over that time period?

Starting point is 00:14:47 And so we run into all of these issues if we set outcome-based goals that we can't control. It doesn't foster the right way of reinforcing habits or routines, and it sets you up for failure because it's something that you definitely can't control and something that can become a distraction for you. So instead of using outcome-based goals, I think using something like a habit-based or routine-based goal becomes a very, very beneficial thing for people that want to do this right and continue to be able to do this long-term. And by a habit or routine-based goal, I mean, pick things that you can't control that will start to move you towards what you're trying to achieve. Can you eat whole minimally processed foods for 80% of the meals that you have. Can you eat or can you walk eight to 10,000

Starting point is 00:15:34 steps per day? Can you get eight hours of sleep per night? I know that's a huge ask in today's society, but is this something that you can set? Because we have largely control over these things. Can you drink 100 ounces of water per day? Use these as your signs of success. If you continue to take the things that you can control, such as nutrition, activity through movements, sleep, the stress management techniques that you use, you know, put those into play multiple times per week and set it in your calendar like you would a job. If you start to do these things, those habits and routines will start to build and it'll start to change your identity. And changing your identity from the person that you were to the person that you want to become is a very, very powerful thing.

Starting point is 00:16:17 And it's essentially fake it until you become it if you don't truly believe it. And one of the simplest things that I recommend to my clients, I recommend to everybody that asks these questions is, if you have anxiety about what you should do, ask yourself, what would a healthy person do in my situation? And I say that because I think that most everybody generally knows what they should be doing. And so if you're out at a restaurant and you don't know what to get, what would a healthy person get in my situation? If you have some anxiety about going to the gym or you just don't feel like going today. And you're really trying to build that habit of going two or three times per week. ask yourself what a gym rat would do. The fact that we're asking ourselves these questions

Starting point is 00:16:58 allows us to cut through the noise because if we don't think about this from what would somebody that has those values do, we will often procrastinate. And the most important thing is taking that first step. So by pretending that you are that person or putting yourself in the mindset of that person, it helps you become that. And it really helps with long-term sustainability. You know, a lot of our audience feels that, hey, I've never really had a challenge maintaining a healthy weight when I was in my 20s or maybe early 30s. And then something shifted. In your experience from especially working with a lot of people that are in the 40 to 60 demographic,

Starting point is 00:17:39 both men and women, but particularly women, what do you think is the driver of that? What's true based on the evidence and what's also not false, but maybe something that people are not aware of that could be responsible for this feeling that they have? This is a great question because it's one of those things that I think becomes a hang up for a lot of people because they don't know what's going on and that makes them feel powerless. So by educating people in this realm, we can actually give them the ability to make the choices that can actually get them through this. And so the first thing that ends up happening, this is, for some reason, it's always your 30s. It's like I turned 30 and then this happened and now all of a sudden I've gained 10 pounds. And I don't know what, you know, where did I go, where did I go wrong during this period? When we look at the research, there was a researcher called Ponzer and his colleagues did a very well-run study, very large sample.

Starting point is 00:18:33 I think it was 6,400 people, men and women, looking at wrestling metabolic rates over time. and they checked ages everywhere from 18 to about 80, I believe. Don't quote me on the exact ages, but it's somewhere within there. They found from 20 to 60, resting metabolic rate does not change. Flat out doesn't change as long as we account for lean muscle mass, activity levels, all those types of things. If those hold steady, resting metabolic rate never changes. Is that the same as this idea that people say, oh, I have a fast metabolism, I used to have

Starting point is 00:19:03 a fast metabolism and have a slow metabolism, or is this a different idea? That's a little bit different. Having a fast metabolism or a slow metabolism is resting metabolic rate in general, although it could be the neat that we talked about earlier because a lot of times when someone says I've got a fast metabolism, it's because they're constantly moving. And if you twitch and move around and you've got really active lifestyle, if you talk with your hands like I tend to do, you know, I'm keeping it under wraps because there's a microphone in front of me. But I, but you know, when you're animated like that, you burn a lot more calories throughout the day

Starting point is 00:19:33 just naturally without thinking about it. And I want to come back on that. We're going to talk a bunch about that. but sorry I distracted you from what you were talking about. You were sharing about this study, and you were saying that it's super fascinating. Your metabolism is the same. Basically from 30 to 60 or 20 to 60,

Starting point is 00:19:48 there's no big changes that are there based on this study. So we know that the resting metabolic rate is not the reason that you're having these issues. So if you didn't have the issues before, and then all of a sudden you're starting to notice a big difference in your 30s or 40s or whatever it is, we know that it's not your resting metabolic rate. So great, well, what is it?

Starting point is 00:20:05 This is where we start to have a lot of, complicating life factors that come into play. You know, you've just started having kids. You're getting a job that's much more stressful. You're sleeping a lot less. You're reaching for more fast food because you're so busy and you're having these problems. And, you know, without even thinking about it, you're going to the gym a lot less. You're going out with your friends a lot less. You're no longer doing that YMCA basketball league that you used to do in your 20s. And so this combination of moving less and eating more, I mean, just like with metabolic adaptation has started to take its toll on your body composition and health. And so the next question that comes into play for women is, well,

Starting point is 00:20:42 what happens, you know, in the perimenopause period? Because this certainly starts to kick in many women starting in their 40s. And there's a lot of misinformation out there about this. And if you make sure to continue to exercise, if you make sure to continue to eat correctly, we don't seem to see a difference regardless of menopause status as long as age is taken into account. Now, we do see a shift to central adiposity. That means that women, once they've gone through menopause, will gain body fat more in their stomach than they ever have before. So that's true. That's true. There will be a redistribution of where that fat shows up. So when you hear some experts saying, hey, there's some truth to perimenopause, menopause, and you getting belly fat,

Starting point is 00:21:28 there is evidence to support that. That's 100% true. It's 100% true, but it is not the cause of fat gain. It is a redistribution of where your fat goes. And this is a controversial topic, but if you look at the research, and if anybody is interested in it, they can always send me a DM on Instagram afterwards. I'm happy to back it up. But when you look at the research and you actually control for weight training, you actually control for diet, it seems to work out just fine, and it just seems to be age that causes some of the differences, regardless of gender itself. Now, this isn't to say that women don't have extra challenges because they certainly do. And what I mean by that is if you're going through paramedopause,

Starting point is 00:22:09 you're going through all of these different changes that you've never had before, you're having hot flashes, you're not sleeping well. Well, I mean, that's probably going to affect your willpower to get into the gym. It's probably going to affect the types of foods that you're choosing. You're going to crave more. You're going to have more cravings, yes. So it's not that the experience isn't valid because the experience is certainly valid that women have. And they say, man, this is very different than what it was before.

Starting point is 00:22:35 But if we know that we're not doomed because of hormonal shifts, if we know that we can take control of the situation, then we can make choices to alleviate it or avoid the problems entirely. And I think that having this conversation is really important because we don't want to inadvertently send the message, hey, you're broken, which I think is what a lot of people are doing when they're saying, hey, when you go through menopause, shit happens. you know and if we can point out hey it does and it's a bigger challenge than what men go through you you know men are very lucky in that respect but if you understand that if you push through

Starting point is 00:23:15 where you can if you keep doing the best that you can you're going to get through and you're going to be just fine i think that that's the right message to send and again this is not to say that you know there aren't benefits to harm on replacement therapy for a lot of different things you know, if it's necessary, particularly with like joint health, sexual health, those types of things. But knowing that it doesn't doom you to a life of, I'm just going to get fat and lose all my muscle and have osteoporosis is a very powerful message. It's a reminder that you are in, that you have autonomy in your life. And yes, everything is tough to make progress towards, especially if somebody's struggling with, a lot of weight that they want to reduce and enter into a healthy body composition.

Starting point is 00:24:02 But if you think you're broken, a lot of people end up with the feeling of, well, why even try? It's a nocebo effect, essentially. You know, and then the, you believe that something bad's going to happen or something negative is going to happen. And then because of that, like you said, your drive to make changes goes down. Your drive to do what you were even doing before goes down. And that's where that habit and that routine work starts to fall off. And then we see the changes that we see. So whether you're looking to lose weight, keep it off, or just dial in some of your daily habits and mindset, I hope you found this episode and Dr. Allen Bacon's wisdom helpful.

Starting point is 00:24:41 And if you want to go deeper, you can check out my full-length episode with Dr. Allen Bacon, where we go into the following topics, the power of resistance training, how to get the ideal protein intake, incorporating more movement into your day and practical ways to do that, the key drivers of motivation, and so much more. You can find the link to that in the show notes below. It's a fascinating conversation. Dr. Bacon truly is masterful at laying out ways to cut through the noise and find out what actually works so that you can achieve success when it comes to achieving your health goals. As always, if you like today's discussion, do me favor.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Send it to somebody that you think that would enjoy this conversation. Until next time, thanks for tuning in to today's moments episode.

Dhru Purohit Show - Three Key Things People Do to Keep Weight Off Consistently

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