Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - Metabolism Masterclass: "Metabolic Damage", "Neat + More" with Eric Trexler Ph.D

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

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Hey everybody, welcome in to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast as always I'm your host Danny Matranga and today's episode features an encore interview with dr. Eric Trexler We talk about all things metabolism body fat reduction and metabolic adaptation of all of the people that I have sat down with Dr. Eric Trexler is my go-to for all things nutrition and metabolism. He's also a wonderfully accomplished bodybuilder in the natural bodybuilding space. He's a researcher. He is the co-founder of Mass Monthly Applications in Sports Science and the host of the Stronger by Science podcast, which is my personal favorite fitness podcast. So sit back, guys. Enjoy today's episode. We're talking all things metabolism with Dr. Eric Trexler. Hey, guys. Welcome back to Dynamic Dialogue. I'm your host,

Danny Matranga. And today we are sitting down with Dr. Eric Trexler talking all things metabolism. Okay. Eric is a PhD nutrition researcher, pro bodybuilder, and online coach. He's the director of education at Stronger by Science, and he's also one of the co-authors of Mass, monthly applications in strength sport, which we'll talk about later. But Eric is as much a metabolism expert as anybody I've come across in my time in this space, and I think he really breaks down some incredibly in-depth, fantastic topics, everything from metabolic damage to metabolic adaptation to the different tissues in our body and how they contribute to metabolism in a really understandable and

digestible way. I know you guys are going to love this episode. So do me a favor, give it a listen, tag Eric, be sure to share it because this is something that people need to hear and it's going to dispel a lot of myths in the fitness space. I hope you guys enjoy this episode with Dr. Eric Drexler. Eric, how's it going, man? Doing well. How are you doing? Not bad.

Everything considered kind of sheltered in place as we speak, but doing the best I can at this moment in time. I'm able to train out of my garage right now, which feels quite luxurious. So that's nice. Are you doing any training right now? Well, because I work in the online space, you know, at a time when a lot of people unfortunately have a ton of free time because they're not able to do the things they typically do. I've actually paradoxically gotten a lot busier in the last few weeks. So I am doing some training in a friend's garage gym. But yeah, it's been kind of challenging to make time for workouts because I'm an online coach. All of my clients, their challenges have grown immensely in the last few weeks. So,

my coaching takes a lot more time and effort than it otherwise would. I'm also a sports nutrition researcher. And, you know, the main thing I do is data analysis. I'm basically like an amateur statistician for a lot of labs, or for a few labs, I should say. But everyone's labs are closed, so they can't collect new data. So everybody wants all of their data analyzed right now. They're like, well, we better start writing if we can't collect data. So when everyone else kind of got all this unwanted free time, all of my free time disappeared. So a little bit of training, but a lot a lot of work going on, which I mean, is totally fortunate to be able to stay busy.

Absolutely, man. And the sports nutrition research piece that you do is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today. I think that of all the people in the space, you're one of the best at communicating really, perhaps I'd say advanced concepts and distilling them into things that are digestible. I'd say advanced concepts and distilling them into things that are digestible. And I really wanted to highlight metabolic adaptation as it relates to the adaptations that come along with weight loss, because it's a space that's become very convoluted with a lot of different opinions. And just because somebody has a good physique or they've been coaching for a while doesn't necessarily mean that their opinion carries a ton of weight from a scientific standpoint. And I think metabolism is a term that gets thrown

around a lot. So I would love to dive more into that today, kind of starting with the question of just what is metabolism? What is that term that gets thrown around from a biological definition, but also kind of in the context of when people are communicating about their metabolism. Yeah, well, it's a big distinction because metabolism is a pretty broad term, right? You can talk with any drug that you might ingest, like in pharmacology, you can talk about the metabolism of that drug itself, which is basically how do we break it down into its various metabolites and sub compartments and where do they go and what what is their eventual metabolic fate so metabolism is a pretty broad

term but in the fitness space in the weight loss space we're almost always talking about metabolic rate or more specifically total energy expenditure okay so um when people say i have a fast metabolism a slow metabolism that those are kind of code words. What they really mean is in a given day, I burn many calories or I have high total energy expenditure. That would be a fast metabolism. Slow metabolism basically means over the course of a given day, I don't really burn that many calories relative to my peers. So lower total energy expenditure, we often categorize that as slow metabolism in a colloquial sense. So the fast and slow metabolism labels in many cases are not

necessarily accurate. But what they really reflect is just the relative total energy expenditure that that person perceives relative to their peers. So within that umbrella of, or underneath that umbrella, I should say an energy expenditure, what are the components that really drive energy expenditure and especially the variability? Because you did make the point that people often compare themselves to their peers. They say, oh, well, if I eat X number of calories and Sally eats X number of calories, she can just eat whatever she wants. Or if I even look at the food, I gain weight. And I think that that's kind of that individual variance in energy expenditure. But what are the actual nut and bolt components of energy expenditure and where's the

variability? It's a good question. So we can break your total energy expenditure down into smaller compartments. So the one that everyone cares about, which I actually find to be the least interesting is resting metabolic rate or basal metabolic rate. This is the energy that we spend basically just existing. So if you think if I woke up, stayed in bed, and just kind of laid there, staring at the ceiling all day, how much energy would I burn in a day just to kind of keep the machine running at the lowest possible level. So that's that's your resting energy expenditure. It's what everyone tends to fixate on, I'll have people

who say, Hey, I got my resting metabolic rate tested. And it's really not that fascinating a compartment of total energy expenditure. The reason being, it's pretty much just determined by how big you are, you know, larger people burn more energy at rest. Certainly, there are some medical conditions that are related to the endocrine system that can alter that a little bit. So it's not like it cannot be influenced, but it's really not a particularly interesting component or compartment of total energy expenditure. There's also the thermic effect of feeding, which is basically just reflects the fact that after we eat, there is an increase in energy expenditure because we have to do metabolic processes to actually break down and store the

things that we just ingested. So there's an energy cost associated with that, not particularly large, but it's there. Obviously, there's the energy we spend during exercise. So exercise, activity, thermogenesis. And obviously, we have a great ability to manipulate that, right? So it really is as simple as if I exercise more, my exercise activity thermogenesis will go up. So it's very much something that's in our volitional control. Probably the most interesting and the final one that I'm going to talk about is non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So it makes the acronym NEAT, which is a nice shorthand because that's a lot of syllables to say several times in a podcast. So NEAT, non- a nice shorthand because that's a lot of syllables to say several

times in a podcast. So NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is basically the energy that we're spending doing things that are not structured exercise. And these are simple things. So going to get your mail out of the mailbox. That's not a workout. You're not logging that, but it's still activity that you're doing that increases your energy expenditure above a resting level. And sometimes things that are even more subconscious, so fidgeting in your chair throughout work, your likelihood of just kind of pacing around your office when you're thinking deeply about something, even just maintaining your posture. And so non-exercise activity thermogenesis, some of it is under volitional control. Some of it is a little bit more subconscious. You know,

we rarely think I probably ought to get my fidgeting level up today. So, so it's kind of a mixture of both. And there's a huge amount of variability in non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And so there are some papers that kind of review the concept very well and you know in those papers they'll mention this variability and basically the most extreme example I've seen in the published literature is that two individuals same biological sex same body composition same size their non-exercise activity thermogenesis could vary by up to 2,000 calories per day, just based on how they're spending that day, their relative activity level. And this is some pretty, if you've ever been in phases of your life where you've had to be extremely active, it's a pretty intuitive thing.

So when I was doing my dissertation research, I was collecting data all day long on my feet, lab to lab running around. And it wasn't atypical that my step count would be over 25,000 steps a day. That was a pretty typical day for me. Now I work online. If I'd be shocked if I have like 700 steps a day, sometimes like it's like I wake up, I go to my computer, I barely move. And so a lot of that nostalgic thinking you see from people when they're like, man, when I was 19, I could eat anything. But now that I'm 41, I can't. It's like, yeah, when you were 19, you played like three recreational sports in your free time and you walked around a college campus all day.

But now that you're 41, you're behind a desk all day like I am now. And so the non-exercise activity thermogenesis has a huge amount of variability from person to person. And in many cases, it's not even really genetically linked. It's just kind of how we spend our day. Certainly, I mean, there's a genetic component to just about anything biological. But I mean, just from taking a different job that involves more activity level, choosing hobbies that are higher activity level, choosing hobbies that are higher activity level, those things can really make a big difference. And I would suspect that people who say I have a fast metabolism, I'd say a large percentage of the time, they are people who

unknowingly have a great, a very large amount of NEAT in their day-to-day life. And people who say I have a really slow metabolism, you know, a lot of times I'll get people who schedule a consultation with me and they just want to talk about their energy expenditure. And the first thing I do is what I kind of call an activity audit, where I basically say, let's start from the moment you wake up. Let's try to get an idea of your relative activity level and the non-exercise activity thermogenesis in many cases describes whether someone has fast metabolism or slow metabolism of course there are all sorts of other things that that factor in of course if you have any kind of

endocrine condition particularly those related to the thyroid hormones those can have a huge impact so i don't want to discount uh genetic So I don't want to discount genetic variants. I don't want to discount a variety of clinical pathologies or clinical conditions that can influence these things. But in many cases, the answer is fortunately a lot more simple and something that we can actually impact. Now, I think that's fascinating. First off, thank you for bringing that to the table because there's a lot of things that get exchanged person to person, particularly just in discussion where we label my metabolism is fast, yours is slow, vice versa, or when I was your age, that's really the big one you get all the time back in my day. But those are,

as you're saying, primarily attributable to a decrease in meat associated with either a lifestyle change or just lifestyle variation. And when it comes to TDEE, if that were a pie, what piece of the pie would be represented by meat? And like, what is the variability there? I guess you could just make it a percentage. Yeah, man, it's been a while since I've answered that question. I know, generally speaking, I think they tend to energy expenditure is typically like 60 or 70%. Thermic effective feeding is only like five or 10%. So the rest is kind of mixed between exercise and non exercise activity, the two of them together, typically, I'd say probably make 20 or 30%, just kind of going off memory. The thing is, though, it's not particularly helpful, in my opinion, to view it, I mean, you could get a general idea of that pie chart. But like, if you would ask somebody what percentage of your daily energy expenditure is from exercise activity? I don't know how much exercise do you do. So when

we view it as a percentage of the total, you know, someone who's training for a marathon, that number looks a lot different than it looks for me, who's like, you know, once or twice a week, I'll get in a garage and do some squats, you know, so, um, it is not by any means the largest component, but there are some of those, uh, you know, atypical circumstances where someone does a work, uh, a job that keeps them on the feet on their feet all day. Uh, and you will see that it starts to make up a much larger percentage of that pie. So hopefully that kind of contextualizes the typical size of that piece of the pie. So hopefully that kind of contextualizes the typical size of that piece of the pie, but it's really critical to realize that when we're viewing

percentages, you know, our day-to-day activity obviously really alters the shape of that piece of the pie. No, I think that's a great answer. And I wanted to touch on something really quick that you brought up about resting metabolic rate, because this is something I've also heard you speak to quite well. And that is the contribution that different tissue types lend to energy expenditure. I think you'll hear a lot of people say things like, for better, for worse, you know, muscle burns a ton of calories. So if you just build a lot of muscle, and you reverse diet forever, you'll have infinity metabolism that will essentially let you be lean eating 5,000 calories a day. And you know, that's one of the kind of more gimmicky salesy points that you'll see around there that kind of

disrupts the real conversation about what contributes to metabolism. So of the different tissue types, you know, where is muscle on there? Where is something like adipose tissue or even your brain, kidneys, liver? Do different tissues contribute more or less to overall resting metabolic rate? Absolutely, yeah. So fat, specifically white adipose tissue, are typical fat cells that we think about as our subcutaneous fat. tissue are typical fat cells that we think about as our subcutaneous fat. Fat per kilogram has a very low resting metabolic rate. You know, each of these tissues has its own metabolic rate because they have different metabolic processes that they carry out throughout the day. So at rest, fat is very low. Muscle is certainly higher than fat on a per kilogram basis. But when we look at the organ tissues, they are way more metabolically active than muscle at rest.

So, you know, things like the kidneys, the heart, the brain tissue, very considerable contributions to resting energy expenditure. I think the reason that everyone fixates on muscle, you know, because you've never heard anyone say, oh, don't worry, your metabolic rate's high because your liver is really working today, or, you know, your brain is pumping away. We don't really think of it that way. I think the reason people fixate on muscle is because it's intuitive. When we make it do active stuff, we're like, oh, cool. Now we're really burning some energy. I feel my muscles working. And of course, your muscle mass is something we can modify. You know, we think of building more muscle, building a more metabolically active tissue. And theoretically, that might be helpful.

Now, in terms of the actual contribution muscle makes to resting energy expenditure, like I said, on a per kilogram basis, of course, it is higher than fat. That is a true thing. But when you look at the amount of muscle tissue you would have to add to really significantly change your resting metabolic rate, it is not a particularly useful thing to try to do. Of course, there are a million great reasons to add muscle as a bodybuilder, I'd say it's probably one of the best things you could do. You know, I think building muscle is cool and the health ramifications are positive. But I do think, you know, like you were saying, a lot of people think if I just add five or six pounds of muscle, the amount of food I can eat on a day-to-day basis is going to change dramatically.

And the evidence would not indicate that that really works. I mean, it goes up, but it's a pretty negligible amount. It's like after the end of an entire lifting career, you might be able to have like a couple extra Oreos per day. It's nothing to be super excited about. It's funny because I remember very early in my fitness career, perhaps when I was super impressionable, but I had just gotten started working as a trainer in a big box gym. And of course, one of the things you have to do is sell people the service of personal training, and you need to be able to give them some type of tangible thing. And I remember the manager I had at the time said, dude, it's really easy. Every pound of muscle you gain,

you burn an extra 50 calories. So if you tell people, if I can put 10 pounds of muscle on you, you'll burn an extra 500 calories a day, which is an extra pound of fat a week. And for years, I was like, oh my God, it's just that easy. Everybody just needs to gain 10 pounds of muscle. Obviously, that's not the case. But those types of conversations still happen pretty regularly. And I actually find it quite comical when when you talk to somebody who knows about this stuff that yeah muscle does have an impact on metabolism but it's actually a lot less tangible than perhaps we would think yeah now i will say this you know i have seen some people who go a little bit um

sometimes people like uh bring up facts that aren't particularly helpful and they go a little further with it and they, they kind of like say, ah, there's no point at all to adding this muscle. It's not going to have any impact on energy expenditure. Again, that would not be, that would not be an accurate thing to suggest. Um, and you know, every little bit can help to some extent. One thing that people, I think, overlook is if you add a significant amount of muscle mass, a lot of times we're focusing again on resting energy

expenditure, right? And we're saying, well, the effect on resting energy expenditure isn't huge, but theoretically you have more muscle tissue to activate during training. So that is a contribution to non-resting energy expenditure. And when it comes to things like walking around, going for a jog, if you've gained a significant amount of muscle mass and body weight has gone up, now you're altering running economy and you're altering how much energy it takes to move a heavier, more muscular body to some extent. So you could go into avenues where you can start to say, well, maybe there's more than just the, you know, small number of calories at rest. But generally speaking, it's absolutely

true that this whole idea that you've heard many times before, you've heard it, I've heard it. The idea that if you just gain a couple pounds of muscle, all of a sudden, you're eating 600 more calories a day. It just doesn't work out that way, unfortunately. But again, 600 more calories a day. It just doesn't work out that way, unfortunately. But again, gaining muscle is a great thing. So it's not all bad. No, I think overall that we've done a nice job of painting a pretty good picture of one, what are the components of metabolism? How do they vary from person to person and kind of explained away and dispelled a lot of the myths about how metabolism changes with age. Perhaps there's not as many components that are changing person to person beyond meat and some things that we could

control with the tissue that we have. But one of the biggest places where metabolism, I think, has gotten really, really mishandled, if you will, is with people who have dieted and the adaptations that come along with dieting being coined as metabolic damage. And I'll kind of let you run with that because I'm sure you have a lot to say. There are certainly things that change after people diet at the metabolic level, but is that truly damage? And if there is damage, is it something that can be repaired? Yeah, well, that's a loaded question. So let's, I love the way you've structured this interview, by the way, because we started with a lot of really helpful foundational content that we can build on. So the idea of metabolic adaptation,

let's start there. The idea is, you know, a lot of people start losing weight, and eventually it gets tough. It's always tough, but it gets tougher as we go. And a lot of people have noticed, man, I'm just not able to eat as much as I thought I would be, or I think I should be able to eat. And the idea is, you know, has my metabolic rate dropped really significantly in a way that's inhibiting my fat loss? And so basically what happens, we start losing weight, loss. And so basically what happens, we start losing weight, right? And as we discussed previously, all of our tissues in our body are metabolically active to some extent. So if we start as a bigger person and become a smaller person,

we've lost metabolically active tissue. We expect that our total daily energy expenditure is naturally going to fall as a result of that. But what we see is in studies where people lose a significant amount of weight, their total daily energy expenditure may drop by 25%. And approximately about half of that is kind of unexplained. So half of it, we say, oh yeah, well, that makes sense. If you calculate, if you crunch the numbers based on the tissue that they lost, it should have gone down by about half as much as it did. But what's happening with the other half, that's the thing that kind of leads into the idea of metabolic adaptation. And basically, you know, human beings, we are biological organisms,

and our main drive is to stay alive, not starve to death. Those are important goals that we have kind of built into our code. And so what happens is we start losing a lot of weight and something called leptin starts to drop. Leptin is produced by our fat cells primarily. And leptin goes back to a little part of the brain called the hypothalamus. Leptin goes into the bloodstream up to the brain and tells the hypothalamus, hey, fat cells are full and happy and everything's good. But when leptin drops, that signal, it gets diminished. And our brain is a little bit less certain that we are full and happy and fed. And when we have that leptin drop, the hypothalamus senses it

and it starts to get into, it's kind of like when you put your cell phone on the low battery mode and it basically says, okay, let's start cutting down some of the non-essential functions that are just kind of wasting battery life. But in our case, it's not battery life, it's the amount of calories that we have to burn through. And so we start to see that total energy expenditure does drop, which is kind of a natural adaptive response to weight loss because of that leptin drop. So total energy expenditure drops, and it's primarily dropping because of non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So some of that, like we said, some of that NEAT we can impact

by just our day-to-day activity level. Some of it is subconscious, you know, fidgeting in a chair, the way we maintain our posture, our likelihood of kind of subconsciously pacing around the room. And when someone is really deep into a diet and has lost a significant amount of weight, you see that the non-exercise activity component has dropped off quite a bit. That is the main adaptive response that we see in terms of energy expenditure. Now, there are other consequences of that drop in leptin.

Some of those consequences include a reduction in sex hormone levels. We'll see a reduction in thyroid hormone levels. We will see an increase in hunger, which is dictated by the hypothalamus. So the hypothalamus is kind of this master, you know, center of the brain that integrates all this information about how much energy we have coming in and how much energy we are likely to spend. And it also obviously relates to appetite, how much energy it wants us to think we need. And so the hypothalamus and leptin are really calling the shots here. And we do see this series of adaptive processes that are important to the survival of the organism, but very unfavorable

for our beach body goals, to put it in a kind of a trivial light. But we want to induce this weight loss further, but we are working against some biological cues that are suggesting maybe it's not in the best interest of our survival. You know, the hypothalamus was formed over millions of years. And for almost all of those years, we didn't have, you know, consistent access to food via a grocery store or something like that. So, these are kind of evolutionary processes that we've been unable to ditch, unfortunately. So, that is kind of the concept of metabolic adaptation. What's really fascinating is there are studies that have used leptin administration. So, like I said, the fat

cells create leptin, but we could also create it synthetically in a lab and just inject it. If we inject leptin, most of these problems go away like pretty much immediately. So we know what's going on. We know what's dictating it. But unfortunately, a drop in leptin is kind of a natural consequence of a prolonged significant amount of weight loss. a prolonged significant amount of weight loss. Um, so to, to the question, uh, these adaptive processes, they occur, um, is that adaptation or damage? Um, it, it's kind of a theoretical

question, but I would argue that it simply is adaptation. Uh, our body adapts to various, uh, stimuli and constraints. Uh, it has a pretty clear set of rules in terms of what matters most to our body and maintaining energy balance is pretty important so we don't starve to death. So it's hard to call it damage when it is a process that allows us to adapt to theoretically a shortage of food, you know, something that's going to help facilitate our survival. And the way it does that, it increases our hunger, it reduces our energy expenditure, it gives us a reason to go find more food, and it helps us burn a little bit less energy in the process. So that's kind of the whole idea in a nutshell. And yeah, I think it's unfair to characterize it as necessarily a bad thing.

It is just a thing that we deal with. And one final thing I want to mention, and I'm going on a bit of a monologue here, but one final thing I want to mention is sometimes people are stunned by, they just look if, you know, maybe they track their calories every day. They look down at how much they're eating and they're like, how is it possible that I'm barely losing weight and I'm eating this little?

This calorie number is so low. One thing that's important to keep in mind, these adaptive processes in the downward direction, we also have a similar situation in the upward direction. This varies a lot from person to person, for sure. We know that based on the evidence, not just based on anecdote. But some people, if you overfeed them intentionally in a laboratory setting, very highly controlled, they will just increase their energy expenditure and offset that overfeeding. And so in many cases, I'll see people who say my, my food intake has just plummeted.

And what they're mistaking is they think that they're the, the amount of calories they were eating at the peak of their weight gain phase is their normal resting caloric intake for, for energy balance. In reality, they're probably eating 10, 15% more calories than it would take to maintain their weight, but they're just adapting up to it. And so that exacerbates the magnitude of the drop that we're seeing. And so we're seeing that work in both directions. And that in many cases is what people, it gives people just, it really surprises them when they say, when I was bulking, I ate 4,000 calories. Now I'm eating 1,800. What in the world happened?

And usually the answer to what happened is they adapted in one direction earlier, and now they've adapted in the other direction. So the actual change isn't quite as severe as they think. But what's fascinating is if you look back in the process, when I first started writing about this topic several years ago, you know, most of the time you do a literature review, you're dealing with papers that are five years old, 10 years old. It led me to papers that were just decades and decades and decades old, looking at these incredible rodent models that were ethically kind of hard to justify. But, you know, if you're an animal lover, they were hard to read.

But in any case, just very basic manipulations of the hypothalamus can cause an animal to become so hungry. I've seen studies where they, you know, they did ablation of certain cells in the hypothalamus. And the effect on hunger was so pronounced that these rodents would eat so much that they would actually choke because they were eating so rapidly and die. They would have to report in the paper, you know, three of our rodents died because they were eating too quickly and choked. So the effects on hunger are very dramatic if we really look at what the hypothalamus is

capable of. Of course, normal weight loss is nothing like an ablation of a cluster of cells in the hypothalamus. But make no mistake, the hypothalamus is a remarkably powerful control center in the brain. And it is really calling the shots when it comes to metabolic adaptation. I think you did an excellent job of kind of diving into the various pieces that impact it. You go down that reptilian piece, how the brain's evolved, particularly the hardwiring and the governance that the hypothalamus plays on metabolism. And there's one thing I wanted to touch on because I hate to not pick your brain about this, particularly because you have a history of bodybuilding. So you obviously have a history of getting very lean. And you said the metabolism is adaptive both upward and downward,

meaning we can kind of rise somewhat to meet the needs of increased energy by perhaps subconsciously moving more. But in your time dieting for competition, what were some of the most tangible behavioral changes you noticed in yourself from perhaps reductions in meat? Like, what did that look like as you got deeper and deeper into a diet? Because you've experienced something that very few people ever have, getting stage lean. So no doubt you've experienced some degree of adaptive metabolism.

What does that look like? Yeah, well, that's a good question. And the two groups of people who have really experienced this stuff big time, people who have lost huge amounts of weight, and people who have gotten very, very, very lean. And so, yeah, I've definitely been there. And it is a tangible state that you can feel it. There's no ambiguity. You can say, yeah, this is happening. So of course, your caloric intake gets pretty low. That's kind of part of it. But you can definitely feel typically quite cold all day. And I think that's largely related to the drop in thyroid hormone. That's quite observable. Low, uh, low libido, um, is very common because

like I said, leptin drops, sex hormones drop. So, uh, for, for, uh, for me, testosterone dropped quite a bit, which I had measured on one occasion, but once you felt low testosterone, you don't even need it measured the next time. Like the first time I prepped, I was like, I feel weird. I'm going to get blood work. And they're like, yeah, you don't have any thyroid hormone. You don't have any testosterone. Uh, and so the second time I got really lean, I was like, I feel weird. I'm going to get blood work. And they're like, yeah, you don't have any thyroid hormone. You don't have any testosterone. Uh, and so the second time I got really lean, I was like, yeah, I know what this is. Um, but you see a similar thing in female competitors is the loss of a menstrual cycle because of that effect on sex hormones in terms of the non-exercise activity. Um, you know, uh, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of just,

you could disguise it as laziness just like if I walked past my mailbox and realized I forgot to check my mail I'd be like if anyone needs me they'll call me you know like I'm there's no way I'm gonna take 10 steps back and actually go to the mailbox I would eat my colleagues I was running a big study at the time which was it was good because it kept me busy but yeah very lethargic and fatigued for much of the day, only for a short period of time, very late in the process. But I would just, my posture was different at my desk. I wouldn't hold myself up as much, you know, not as animated in terms of facial expressions and gestures. I mean, your hypothalamus really does subconsciously shut it all down. So any movement that is not necessary for survival is likely to be

inhibited in some capacity. And so one of the questions a lot of people ask is, well, what do I do about that? And I think there are healthy ways to approach it and extremely unhealthy ways. Healthy ways to approach it would be simple behavioral modifications. So for me, I lived close to my laboratory and so I just told myself, I'm going to walk to and from work every day. That's going to be a decent amount of activity and then I knew that throughout the day, it was a weight training study, I would be pulling weights on and off of machines all day long. So little stuff like that is good. Just making sure you're promoting your own physical activity levels. A step up from that would be keeping a step tracker, you know, actually counting your steps throughout the day using a Fitbit, using a phone app, but actually

having a goal in mind for step counts. It's a little bit more objective, but it is a little bit more prone to getting obsessive about it. So I didn't go that route because I didn't want to feel like all day I was chasing a step count number. I don't think psychologically that's a great move for some people. And then a very, what I would consider to be a really not advisable, very inadvisable idea. I know some people that back in the day when they were prepping, they would just try to be mindful of always fidgeting. It was just like, hey, try to always fidget and that'll help get your activity level up. I think that's a remarkably problematic way to view it in almost all cases. I don't like the idea of letting it

follow you around. And I mean, that's just like having a dark cloud over you all day long saying, hey, remember to always be moving. I don't think that's constructive. I don't think it's helpful. So there are ways to get activity into your day to offset some of this subconscious reduction in NEAT without being super obsessive about it. And I think that should be the goal. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media, simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook, but be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about

what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Here's something that I wanted to ask you about because I heard about it recently and I might butcher my explanation of it, but I believe James Krieger, who's another researcher in this space, uses some degree of weight vest manipulation to offset body mass loss. So if, for example, a client loses 10 pounds, they add a 10 pound vest. For each five pounds they lose, they add another five pounds to the vest. I don't want to attach that to James if I'm misspeaking how this was done, but I think it's something in that space. Is that creative or to you, is that a bit extreme? Well, it's certainly extreme.

Yeah. And anything in the bodybuilding space is probably going to be on the extreme side, but do you think there's utility to that? Or do you think that that might be only for those who are truly, truly looking to get very, very? Yeah, let me start by saying I love James. Very, very good friend. Very smart guy. There actually is an interview out there on YouTube of me, James and his client that did this. Oh, wow. We were at an event in Washington a year or two ago, and we were talking about this exact topic. And to the best of my knowledge, I believe the way this unfolded was the client, his name is Eric Lee Salazar. He basically, James was his coach, and I think Eric said, I would like to try this. They basically arrived at it knowing this is not a practical everyday fitness solution.

But Eric is a gym owner. And so he was like, I don't care. I can wear a weight vest all day. Like I'm not going into the boardroom, you know, like it's fine. And so I forget exactly who had the idea. But I don't want people to think that James is like a lunatic who's saying everyone should be just loading themselves with weight all day. They both acknowledge it's highly impractical for most people. But it is a it's certainly a creative idea. And it's certainly an idea with, you know, with with evidence backing

it, to some extent, there was a very cool study in rodents where they actually did implants, they implanted loads, as the rodents lost weight, they would replace it, just adding weight to the rodents. I think they added like abdominal weights, like surgically, if memory serves correctly. But the idea is when we lose weight, of course, there are these adaptive processes. But another thing to keep in mind is we move less, you know, that's an adaptive thing that happens, but also we are moving a lighter body. And it's just like in the weight room. I mean, moving a smaller load while walking requires less energy than moving a heavier

load. So the idea was if you maintain your step count, that should help with that adaptive reduction in just energy or I guess activity level. that adaptive reduction in just energy or I guess activity level. And if you replace the weight that was lost, that offsets the issue of even at the same step count, you're probably burning less energy, right? Because you're moving a lighter body at that point. And what's really fascinating aside from those kind of superficial level

findings is that rodent study I mentioned, they actually, they propose that there is some kind of, they call it a gravido stat, but basically they propose that the bones themselves have some kind of sensing mechanism that can tell the body is now lighter than it used to be. And the idea was that the bones, because bones are a very active tissue. Sometimes we think of them as just these completely inactive rocks that make up our structure, but bones are highly active. They're very active with the endocrine system.

So the idea was that the bones are sensing this and that they are somehow promoting some of the adaptive changes we see with weight loss. That's a preliminary hypothesis. I don't want to present that as being settled science by any means, but the evidence is there. There's some degree of evidence supporting that theory. So it's, it's a,

for someone like me, who's really into physiology and really into bodybuilding, I thought it was a wonderful, practical experiment of just saying, hey, let's try this and see how it goes. Speaking to James and speaking to Eric, the client who did it, they were very happy with the results. So I'd be curious to see if more people do it and if that anecdote is replicated and if more people have success with it. But I think it's a very fun idea. I think it's a very creative idea. I don't think it's super practical. Someone like me could do it. I'm just sitting on my computer all day for work. So some people can do it. And I know from talking

to Eric, he's done all sorts of bodybuilding preps. He's done it several times in the past. And he said this one, when he utilized this strategy was his favorite yet. So yeah, it's a fascinating approach, for sure. Yeah, I think it's interesting. And I think the bone point you brought up is also quite fascinating, because we've now kind of taken this conversation from a space that, you know, metabolism is just dictated by a few things to all of the incredibly small, nuanced pieces that are starting to, even like you said, preliminarily just come to the table. It's pretty incredible when you change your lens from what the average person looks at as simply being a matter of genetic misfortune,

you know, oh, I just have a slow metabolism, to this now wide open view of metabolism is impacted by everything from components of your brain to potentially even components of your bone, which is pretty fascinating. And I think actually moves the conversation forward into potentially a better space in the future. Another question I have to kind of follow up on this whole topic of adaptive metabolism and competition, particularly bodybuilding competition or anybody who's just looking to get lean. After you have experienced those dips, how long on average does it take to get back to a place where you're at what many people might call baseline? Or from a hormonal standpoint, how long does it take until you have

your libido back or your menstrual cycle back or your thyroid hormone back? Is that going to vary depending on the diet, depending on the gender? What are some things there that people should be aware of? Yeah, so that's another loaded question. So I was working on a paper that got published recently with Peter Fitchin, Brandon Roberts, me, and Eric Helms. And so we are all academics in the field, but we're also, all of us are competitive bodybuilders. And the purpose of the paper, it's open access, by the way, so anyone can read it for free. But the purpose was to establish some nutrition guidelines for bodybuilding and physique athletes. And at one point in the revision process, we were going to try to put some kind of time frame on it

and it was a very, you know, back and forth discussion because it's very hard to do. What really matters, well, there are several factors that come into play, but a few things that come to mind. How lean did you get? For how long have you been doing these very restrictive practices when it comes to dieting and exercise volume? Those are two big things. But then after the competition or after the fat loss phase is over, how much weight do

we regain and how rapidly? These are the most important factors to consider. If I were to give a number, I would say for most people, if you do a bodybuilding prep or some kind of physique-related prep and you see some of these changes happening, and again, that means by default that you either got pretty lean or you lost a pretty substantial amount of weight. If you allow yourself to gradually revert back to your baseline body weight over the next three to six months, you should really be able to cautiously anticipate a pretty near complete recovery within that six-month time frame, would be my take on the literature.

And the way we establish that is there are a few studies with big groups of people. I mean, relatively big. By big, I mean more than three, basically, which in some fields of study is still very small samples. But there are a few studies where we've got 15 people, 20 people, 40 people that we follow after competition. But a lot of it is just from case studies. A single competitor that gets down into bodybuilding shape, and then we watch them for a few months after and start to see, does their energy expenditure come back to normal?

Does their testosterone, thyroid hormone, estrogen, how did these things recover? Some things recover more rapidly than others, obviously. But in terms of the physiological stuff, performance decrements that might be observed, testosterone, estrogen, cortisol levels, within the first three to six months, if you're allowing that weight regain, those things should start reverting back either to baseline or pretty close to baseline. There are some notable caveats. If you stay super lean, you might not recover or you could very meaningfully delay that timeline. So part of the recovery process to some extent is increasing caloric intake and gaining at least some of that weight back for the majority of

cases. There are also some aspects that are a lot more resistant to recovery. And the one that really comes to mind for me, well, the two, I guess, the first is the menstrual cycle. Menstrual cycle, if you've been doing very restrictive dieting and exercise habits for a long time and you're very lean, it can take a lot to get the menstrual cycle to come back. And I've seen published trials of dietary interventions where they increase food intake, they reduce exercise volume. Very targeted approach is to try to restore menstrual cycle after finding athletes in this type of state. Sometimes it takes nine months, sometimes it takes a year for a large number, for a large percentage of the sample. Restoration doesn't occur in many cases over the timeline of the study. So they'll basically get to the end of a one-year study and say, some people just

aren't there yet. So there's a lot of variability there. And it tends to be, in many cases, a very prolonged timeline for menstrual cycle recovery, getting back to a regular menstrual cycle. Hey guys, taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing sports nutrition partner, Legion. Legion makes the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, sports nutrition, recovery, and fat loss. I don't recommend many supplements. In fact, I think you can get the majority of the nutrition you need from a whole foods diet. But let's be honest, many of us are either on the go and need assistance, or quite frankly, we're not going to settle for average and we want to get the absolute most we can out of our training. So Legion is the company

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and it will actually help you get two times points towards future orders, which you can use the same as cash. Pretty cool guys. So head over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny to save on all your sports supplement needs. Back to the show. One thing that's remarkably fascinating is that leptin treatments actually help quite a lot with that. Um, that, which the first time I saw that study, I was like, of course it does, but I never thought about it. But if you do a combined nutrition intervention with leptin therapy, which obviously most people cannot do, you know, without, I mean, I'm not even sure if doctors even prescribe that outside of experimental

applications. But so that does help, but it's just not a practical thing that's useful for the general population. So menstrual cycle recovery can take a while. Another thing that can take a very long time is getting back to normal when it comes to your appetite and your psychological approach to eating. Some people that undergo really restrictive practices during prep, eating. Some people that undergo really restrictive practices during prep, psychologically, they're just not ready to eat normally, even after six months, nine months, some cases 12 months. Sometimes it can be a pretty long lasting effect where your relationship with food can get pretty messed up if you are doing some really, really restrictive stuff on the dietary side and that now we're venturing outside of my area of expertise. And this is something I can observe from experts reporting in their research.

But the psychological aspects of eating are something that I can be aware of, but certainly not an area of expertise for me. So the timeline, like I said, most of the physiological stuff, if you are actually allowing yourself to increase caloric intake and regain some of the weight, usually within three to six months, we'll start coming back. I think that's really interesting. So just to make sure that I'm following along and everybody else is, that weight regain and the leptin communication with the hypothalamus is essentially signaling the body, hey, we're somewhat safe again. We're no longer in this, I don't want to say starvation mode because that has its own context, but we're no longer deprived nutritionally and we haven't been deprived enough nutritionally long enough that it's safe for us as an organism or we're now viable to

reproduce essentially is what's happening. I think you could say that. Yeah, I think if you look at it from an evolutionary context, you can imagine at the population level, you've got a particular organism that is in an environment where food is scarce. They start losing weight. Much of it is fat. Leptin goes down. The hypothalamus senses that. Along with all the other changes we've talked about, one of the things that we see is a reduction in testosterone in males, libido, menstrual cycle regularity in females. You could make, in my opinion, a very logically sound argument that one of the things happening there is at a population level, a very clear message. There are not enough resources to the whole list of them. It's basically shutting down

anything that is resource intensive and not essential to survival. And so the reproductive side effects are certainly part of that. I think that's really fascinating. And again, it just continues to paint the picture that this is much, much bigger than simply a response to food or individual variants. There's a lot of underwiring and long-term 200,000 years worth of evolution happening here when we attempt to lose tremendous amounts of body weight because for most of our time as a species, that was never a good idea. Something about leptin kind of piqued my interest in that the way it kind of has a restorative effect, if you will, on metabolism,

how does that tie into things like reverse diets, refeeds, and diet breaks? Of those three, is there, I know that refeeding has particularly been in the research a lot lately. I think there was a couple studies or at least one study that really painted it in a positive light. There's people who are really pro-refeed because they've been using it in their coaching, so they were hyping it up for a long time. But of those three, refeeds, diet breaks, and I forget the other one, refeeds, diet breaks, and well, I guess it's irrelevant. Refeeds and diet breaks, of those two, is one more impactful than the other? Are there utility to these things?

How would you deploy them as a coach? And then what's going on mechanistically with those things? Let's start with the mechanism. The idea with a refeed or a diet break is that, of course, some of these effects of metabolic adaptation, they are due to the loss of tissue. And that is built into the definition of weight loss. So there's nothing we can do about that. But part of these adaptations are certainly related to the acute energy deficit. So the day-to-day fact that we are not meeting our energy budget, and that's what's inducing our weight loss in the first place. So the acute energy deficit, day to day, but also the acute hormonal milieu, you know, the like, most notably, the fact that leptin is lower than it normally would be, okay. So

instead of talking in general terms, what we'll say low leptin acutely. And so the idea with these things is, okay, we can't really do leptin injection therapy because it'd be expensive and unethical to do it without proper medical supervision. So can we affect leptin? Leptin is sensitive to obviously being in an energy deficit, specifically from carbohydrate restriction. So what people have found is if we can get back up to energy balance or even positive energy balance, so even maybe a very small surplus, and if we get this increase in calories mostly from carbohydrate, we will see a transient increase in leptin.

Now, of course, if we do that long term, if we just overeat carbohydrate every day, we're not losing weight anymore. So, you know, we have to have some kind of balance in the strategy. But the idea is, can we transiently elevate leptin enough to convince the hypothalamus everything's cool, nothing to worry about, everybody chill, and then we'll go back and

do some more weight loss and then increase leptin again. Transiently, again, just let the hypothalamus know we're there. Everything's cool. It's this kind of repetitive cyclical process. And really the main difference as far as I'm concerned between a refeed and a diet break is how long is that period? A refeed is typically going to be one, two, maybe three days in a row of increased caloric intake, primarily from carbohydrate. A diet break is more of like taking a week or two of just eating at energy balance. So you're not in a surplus, but you're not in a deficit. And again, I would argue you want those calories coming from carbohydrate. I would say in terms of magnitude, the most impressive results have been observed with

the diet break strategy rather than the refeed strategy. Most notably, there is a big clinical trial called the Matador study where instead of doing just 16, I think it was 16, instead of doing a certain number of weeks of just typical weight loss in a row, they would do two weeks of weight loss, two weeks of weight maintenance, and just go back and forth, back and forth, had better results when it came to fat loss and resting metabolic rate at the end of the study. One of the caveats with that study is you could make a logically sound argument that, um, there is potentially some evidence that the, uh, the diet break group had maybe better adherence to the diet than the other group,

which is an inherent benefit of the approach anyway. Uh, but the question is, is this a thing or is this a better adherence thing? Um, based on the fact that they didn't truly directly measure adherence and they didn't actually measure non-exercise activity, it's impossible to say which of those two might have been contributing to these effects. So the case is far from settled, but I know a lot of lab groups are working on it because it's a very promising thing. Same thing, there have been a couple small studies with diet, I'm sorry, with refeedss where the refeeds have had some modest benefits when it comes to energy expenditure or the body composition changes we see over the context of a weight loss diet. And I think one of the real key questions is,

how long does a refeed need to be? Is it really enough to just have a single day refeed, one big spike in leptin? Is that really enough of a signal to actually get anything moving physiologically? I would argue my intuition would tell me probably not, because what we need to do is have leptin elevated long enough to actually start influencing some of these downstream effects, right? So I mentioned, it's not just like leptin hits its receptor and everything's fixed. It's that leptin has an effect on thyroid hormones, sex hormones, you know, a variety of different processes throughout the body. And these processes are not all immediate processes. So I would argue it makes more sense to me that if you were going to do a

diet or a refeed approach, you'd probably want it to be at least two days in a row. And I would argue to be on the safe side, probably three days in a row. But you know, the short version of the answer is there is evidence, limited evidence that both of these strategies might help a little bit. They're not going to completely mitigate metabolic adaptation, not going to totally attenuate it, but there is some preliminary evidence that these approaches might be somewhat helpful. No, I like that a lot.

And I think you bring up a good point in that, at least from a physiological standpoint, that one to two days of increased carbohydrate intake, even if it is just to maintenance, might not send enough of a signal to this organism as a whole that, hey, we're really in the clear here. And that perhaps dragging that out over the course of one, maybe even two weeks in a diet break would certainly be more beneficial overall for a somewhat restorative effect. And then additionally, with carbohydrate, beyond just repleting glycogen and how that could help with performance,

is there a reason that refeeding with fat doesn't have the same impact? Is that a chemistry thing or what is that? You know, that's a good question. I've actually never really looked too far into the mechanistic underpinning for that finding, but I do know that the finding is pretty solid. we're either going to do we're going to get these extra calories from carbohydrate or fat and the fat um you know the the fat dominated refeeds do not cause uh anywhere near as notable and increases leptin so uh certainly someone with a much stronger biochemistry background than me could probably uh jot down some notes and say eric you you idiot. But, but, you know, in terms of the actual practical application, I feel very confident that it's definitely the type of thing you want it to be carbohydrate dominant. But in terms of the mechanistic underpinning, I'm sure it's out there, you know, hit Google, I'm sure you can find it. I just, I found that to be interesting.

No, no, it's a great question for sure. Yeah. Anybody who's ever dieted and lifted at the same time would, would probably rather have their carbs so they could get some semblance of a pump back. You're not getting a pump. You're not getting a pump from adding any olive oil back into your diet. I can tell you that. Yeah. You get a better pump from it. You get, like you said, the glycogen replenishment, nice performance boost and the food volume, you know, you, you could probably get 30 grams of fat out of my diet and me not even notice, you know, just a little oil here and there. But when you add like 70 grams of carbs to your diet, you feel like you are on a different diet. So there's all sorts of reasons why, why a nice carb heavy refeed is a really nice break. So into this now kind of final tail end of the interview,

I have a few questions about non-lifestyle factors that impact metabolism. Are there supplements that markedly impact metabolism? And then I guess the second question is diving into that pharmacological space. What drugs have the greatest impact on metabolism if you're comfortable talking about that yeah um there's not a supplement that i would recommend for this context um i actually so i wrote an article about this, um, stronger by science.com slash metabolic hyphen adaptation. It's long. It's basically a book.

It's totally free. And I do have a supplement section and I talk about every supplement that is marketed to increase your metabolic rate. And I talk about the main shortcoming for each of them. So if you want a really deeper dive into an expanded list of them, it's there, totally free, totally accessible. But the general idea is that of the supplements that might meaningfully increase, well, that might increase energy expenditure at all. Some of them just don't work that well, like don't work nearly enough to get excited about. Some of them have side effects that would

preclude our ability to view them as a nice, safe, useful strategy to use. So there is really no supplement I would recommend. Maybe you could say caffeine and capsaicin, but you don't even need to supplement with that. We're talking about having a cup of coffee and a spicy meal. So I would say those are the only things I ever really do, mostly because there's the energy expenditure component with caffeine and with capsaicin. But there's also some evidence indicating that they help with regulating appetite as well, a little bit. Last thing I'd want to do is convince people, give people really high hopes that if you just have some coffee and a spicy meal, then all of a sudden your weight loss problems are solved. That's not the case. But I know for me, those are things that might have the smallest impact. But again, you don't want to go overboard with it. You have too much caffeine, that's going to be bad for you. You're going to have side effects, jittery, headaches, not sleeping well. That's a net negative if you go too far with it. Same thing with capsaicin.

You have too much of it, you're going to have some GI discomfort. It's going to be unpleasant. So, again, I just don't really recommend any supplement for that particular thing. Now, there are drugs that do just about anything you'd want them to. And so, certainly, there are some drugs that will increase energy expenditure. All of them have side effects that would preclude your ability to use them safely and effectively, or it would be unethical to recommend them in any context. I mean, theoretically, we talked through all these problems with metabolic adaptation.

Theoretically, you could drug your way out of every one of these problems, but the problem is you couldn't do it safely. And that's not just... When I was a kid, they had the DARE program where they'd come and tell you, hey, drugs are bad. I mean, honestly, there's too many people that have died that have been documented in the literature from some of these drugs. It's not just like,

oh, that's cheating. No shortcuts. I mean, we're talking about safety. The only thing that would really safely mitigate a lot of this stuff would be, you know, leptin administration under the supervision of a doctor. I've just never heard of anyone having access to that in my entire life. So I don't see that being a realistic route. So unfortunately, this is something that my recommendation to people is, let's not worry about drugs, let's not worry about supplements. Let's, first of all, make peace with the fact that one of the downsides of being a human being, our species survived. That's great. That's a good thing for all of us. But this is one of the things we have to accept with that is that we do have some systems in place to try to help us not starve to death.

So the question is, what are some, you know, what are ways that we can deal with it? Maybe attenuate some aspects here and there. But the idea that we're going to totally stop it and override these signals in the absence of either unattainable or extremely dangerous and risky drug interventions. It's just not going to happen. I think that's fantastic. And I think that's kind of a nice way to wrap things up. So in essence, guys, for everybody listening who's made it this far, the kind of variation in metabolism from person to person can be tied to a plethora of different biological things. It's very nuanced.

It ranges from things from specific tissues to non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, to potentially even some new exciting spaces that we can explore looking at things like bone. If you have been dieting for a long time and you are experiencing metabolic adaptation, it's not indicative of permanent damage. It can be hopefully undone with a return to maintenance calories over a long enough period of time. And again, it's all part of this overall biologically adaptive mechanism that is our body. And it's very, very cool.

I appreciate you coming on, Eric. I have one question for you before you go. Typically, I ask a very kind of deep philosophical question. So in that same vein, there's a very high likelihood that Ohio State is going to produce an edge rusher who goes second overall in the draft two years in a row. Between Chase Young and Nick nick bosa who will have a better nfl career oh man so that's tricky chase young this year was phenomenal um he's awesome i do expect he's going to be very successful the problem is both of the Bosa's have already had, I mean, you, you, both of the Bosa's could retire and say, I made an impact at the NFL level. And that's something

that, uh, I mean, the bar is already set really high for, for chase young to catch up, even with what the Bosa's are doing already. So the fact that I've already seen the Bosa's doing that at the NFL level, that have to be your safe bet, right? But man, Chase Young, I was really upset. I actually got to go see a game this year. I saw them play Maryland. And it was like days after Chase Young got his suspension, all the news was breaking.

I felt sick the entire drive up there. I was so upset. But I think Chase Young is going to have a fantastic career, but I think the Bosa's will as well. And I'd say the Bosa's have already shown that they can translate. The Bosa's seem to be doing just as well at the NFL level as they were at the college level, which is really alarming, really shocking stuff.

So I have to go with the Bosa's, but I hope I'm wrong. NFL level as they were at the college level, which is really alarming, really shocking stuff. So I have to go with the Boses, but I hope I'm wrong. I hope that Chase Young is even better than them, honestly. As an NFC West non-49er fan, I totally echo the sentiment that I hope that we're wrong and that we get something special from Chase Young. And Jeff, is it Jeff Okuda? A strange combination of first name, last name. He's going to be quite special playing corner for somebody picking in the top five. I don't see him making it past pretty much every team in the top five needs help at DB. And he's probably the best defensive back prospect we've seen since Jalen Ramsey. So he should go quite high out of a university that

lately has been producing nothing but elite defensive talent at pretty much every position. Yeah. I mean, if you want to know the Ohio State formula, it's pretty clear. Edge rushers, corners, and safeties all over the NFL. All over. It's crazy. And so as long as we keep our D-line coach, which we have, we lost our defensive back coach, but we got Kerry Combs, who actually was our previous defensive back coach. He came back from the NFL, and so he's going to be keeping everything looking good. But, yeah, so I hope we get to see some college football this year,

and I hope Ohio State has a good year. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. Me and my friends were actually joking about how the NFL draft will be virtual this year, and for anybody who's ever played fantasy football, there's always that one guy who somewhere in the fifth round is asking, hey, you know, is Julio Jones still on the board? And we're kind of joking that somebody in the NFL is going to be asking for talent who's long been drafted because of this new virtual drafting strategy.

So it'll be quite funny. We can hope for hopefully football returns quickly because life's just not the same without it. But anyways, guys, if you are looking for more from Eric, I'd like to highlight all of the different things he's working on right now um one of them is the podcast which is stronger by science which you host with your co-host temporary co-host temporary co-host greg that's right he's all right um no in all honesty guys it's probably my favorite podcast,

all things fitness related. It's actually quite funny if you're into semi-dry, very, very off-the-cuff, sarcastic humor. Another project that Eric is working on right now, and this is something that I've enjoyed for quite some time, is Mass, which is monthly applications in sports science, or is it Strengths Sports? Strengths Sports. Strengths Sports, and it is a research review. So could you tell them a little bit about MASS, what they can expect from it, and how they can access it? Yeah, so the idea with MASS is science is very helpful to anyone who is training or who trains others.

We want to get the best information, the best evidence we can when it comes to programming for training and nutrition. And so, Mass, what we do is we take all the work out of the picture. We find the 10 most important studies for the past month. We review them. We let you know what they did well, things to be kind of cautious of when it comes to interpreting the study, and most importantly, what you can actually do with that evidence. So, it really helps people. Instead of trying to stay on top

of all these different studies that are coming out every single day, we basically scan the literature, we review it for you, and we give you actionable things that you can either apply to your own training or for the training of the clients that you train. Yeah. And for those of you who are probably thinking right now, like, man, I don't see myself reading any studies, let alone the distillation of those studies. I would encourage you to look into it regardless because everything is put together in a really easy to kind of absorb format. You can go through an entire review of the research, and there's key points at the very beginning. The take-home points are right there for you.

The full study is always, if not regularly, always accessible for you if you want to dive deeper. And there's even audio components for those of you who just want to listen on your way to work. So it's probably one of the best investments you could make in your coaching, particularly if you work with people who are doing some type of strength sport or body composition change-based goal. So Eric, I really appreciate that.

I should mention I'm only one of the authors. It's me, Dr. Eric Helms, Dr. Mike Zordos, and Greg Knuckles. So all of us have done science ourselves and still do science. But most importantly, we lift like crazy and we train athletes. So we make sure it's very, very practical and useful. Very good, man. Hey, I appreciate your time so much. Thank you for coming on. And for anybody, again, all of this stuff is going to be in the show notes below. So be sure to check it out after the episode's over. See ya. Thank you. All right, guys. So that about does it for this episode with Dr. Eric Trexler.

I hope you enjoyed us talking all things metabolism. If you want to keep up with Eric, follow him on Instagram at Trexler Fitness. But even more so if you want to see some of the stuff he's contributed to the space, be sure to look into the research he's done for nutrition. A lot of his works are open access, which means they're free to review at your own time. You don't have to pay to get to this research. And do check out his blogs at strongerbyscience.com. He's written some absolute bibles on there that are just incredibly informative and really easy to break down.

And last but not least, two things I really want you to look into. The first is Mass, monthly applications in strength sport. Again, it's a kind of nutrition, supplementation, training-focused look at the research as to how you can help your clients. There's a lot in there that you can do and implement and really be on the cutting edge of the research without scouring through studies all day, which a lot of coaches who are actually training clients in person or online don't have a ton of time to do. And then another thing is the Nutrition Coaching Global Mastermind. Eric is a part of this along with Dr. Eric Helms and a few other really big all-stars in the space. And again, it's an opportunity to develop yourself as a nutrition coach. So do look into that and

you can find that on Instagram. I actually found it on Eric Helms Instagram. So if you want to look at that, go ahead and check out Eric Helms Instagram, but Eric Trexler is involved in that pretty heavily. And then again, speaking of Eric Helms, he will be Trexler is involved in that pretty heavily. And then again, speaking of Eric Helms, he will be on the episode I'm recording on February or my gosh, April 20th, 420. Blaze it, baby. It'll be a good one. Hope you guys enjoy it. As always, if you want to support the show, please tag me, share it on Instagram, share it on whatever, but give me a tag so we can chat about what you liked what you didn't like a lot of you guys have done it and i've asked for feedback and you've given me some and it's so appreciated please leave us a five star written and uh yeah

it's got to be a five star review plus a written review on itunes it makes a huge huge difference guys keep listening and remember it's always a good day to be a good person.