Habits and Hustle - Episode 245: Layne Norton: The Secret Hack to Following Through on Your Diet

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Do you have trouble following through with your diet? In this episode of Habits and Hustle, I chat with Layne Norton about the different reasons why some people can stay on a diet and lose weight, while others aren’t. We discuss whether or not obesity is a choice and the psychological implications behind it that we don’t necessarily realize. Layne also shares how important it is to get your mindset right before you take on the project of changing your life. If you haven’t decided to go all in, you may derail faster than you would expect. Layne Norton is the founder of BioLayne. He created the company to provide ethical, science-based coaching that synthesized real-world experience with evidence-based protocols. In his coaching career, he has turned over 70 people pro and reshaped the way that countless people think about nutrition. To that end, Layne completed a BS in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences, honing his intellectual skills under Dr. Donald Layman, one of the foremost researchers on protein metabolism and fat loss in the world. What we discuss: 01:13: Where did Layne get his education? 04:26: Why do people eat? 05:24: Why are low-carb diets easy to sell? 13:27: How do you rewire yourself after binging? 17:10: Can you still lose weight if you respect your caloric budget intake? 26:49: Why do people gain more weight when getting off weight-loss medication? 38:12: Can workouts satisfy your hunger? 41:10: How much does your Apple Watch overestimate in calorie burning? 43:54: Why do we eat so much after a workout? 47:10: Is obesity a choice? 50:35: What characteristics do people who keep weight off have? 56:13: How many years did Layne’s brother struggle with addiction? 58:35: Are obese people born obese? 1:02:57: Is there a certain diet that is most satiating for people? 1:11:04: Is Diet Coke that bad for you? 1:16:37: How powerful is the placebo effect? 1:23:51: Can most hacks boost your metabolism? 1:26:06: Do women need creatine or testosterone? 1:31:50: How long are Layne’s workouts? Key takeaways: Food addiction is one of the most difficult addictions out there, but it’s not perceived as so by society in comparison to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. The reason why it is harder than any other addiction to get out of is that food is something you must always get your dose of and which you can’t quit - it’s the habit of binging and overeating that you need to quit instead. If you want to change your life, you need to decide to change it. It will be difficult to do to get that new life you want for yourself, you need to leave your old life behind. That’s what most people find difficult. The reason why most diets fail is not the fault of the diet - but of the person following it. That being said, if you want to be able to stick to a diet in the long run, you cannot take an all-or-nothing approach and you need to allow yourself to continue to live your life. This will allow you to stay on track, recover from blunders quicker, and enjoy your life - because diets shouldn’t make your life miserable. Thank you to our sponsors: Get started today with Disney’s Hulu Ad Manager at www.huluadmanager.com/stream. Get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com/habits To learn more about Layne: Website: https://biolayne.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biolayne/ My links: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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San Antonio, Texas. I got his Tony Robbins, you're listening to Habitson Hussle, Crash It. Today we have Lay Norton, who is otherwise known as Biolane, right? On Instagram, who I came across, I'm like late to the party I was living under a rock, like maybe six, seven months ago, who I absolutely loved his content because he debunks all the different fitness and wellness and nutrition myths out there in a way that is, kind of, it's really funny, number one. And all these people, there's no hold bar.

Like, you're not protecting anybody. There's like, he debunks Andrew Huberman, Jason Fung. I mean, all these big doctors. And then they all come cow-towing back to you, which is funny, we'll get into that in a moment. But he is literally, you are the man of the hour. I feel like I was just saying to Lane before we now are recording that,

I literally see him everywhere now. Like literally everywhere, he's everywhere. And I should say, you also have a PhD in nutrition science. You're not just some Yahoo talking out of your butt. Like at the University of Illinois, which is like a top four or five school, right? You also have a PhD in nutrition science. You're not just some Yahoo talking out of your butt. At the University of Illinois, which is a top four or five school, right? Yeah, for nutrition science, it's pretty early top five. When I was there, I think it was ranked second or third.

Oh, excuse me. Yeah. Yeah. But more than that, I just had a really great PhD advisor who just kind of taught me how to not just do research but talk about it in a way that was like palatable for everybody to understand. Totally.

And I'll never forget what I was doing, my exit seminar, which is your public defense. My mom was coming and I said to him, I'm like, who should I tailor this for? Because there's gonna be scientists in the audience, but there's also gonna be lay people in the audience. Right. And he said, I should learn something from this and your mom should learn something from this.

And so I think that taught me how to like kind of balance being scientifically accurate with also being able to generalize enough that people could take something away from it. Yeah. It was just a tough type rope to walk sometimes. But you do a good job at it. And when also I think why people, you're very, people like you are gravitate toward you is that you are very realistic about like real life. So it's not like you're not so hardcore. You must have this, you must do keto, you must do this, intermittent fast.

And like it's like, well, whatever you can, like I hear you say this a lot, like whatever you can actually sustain, like long enough is what you should be doing. It's like very common sense. And why I find this so interesting is that most of the time in the fitness business, people don't like common sense. They actually like the magic bullet.

It's hard to sell. It's very hard to sell, but you've sold it really well. Which is amazing. That's why it took me 20 years to get traction in this industry. Right, exactly. Like six months ago, I was like 19 and a half years late to you, but still, you know, it was better late than never, right?

I'm grateful to get the opportunities to reach large numbers of people and kind of spread that message, but your point's well taken that I think when I got into it, I was definitely much more of the X's and O's person of life. Right. Let's figure out what increases fat oxidation the X's and O's person of like, let's figure out what increases fat oxidation the most. And then what was really a game changer for me was I started working with people. So I started coaching people one-on-one, starting in 2005, started my one-on-one online coaching business.

And what I found was this stuff, and I used to think, well, I can solve the obesity crisis. I'll just tell people what to eat, you know, just give them the calories and their protein and carbs and fats. And you realize, oh, people aren't actually robots. And it doesn't work that way. It's, you know, people always say, well, can't just be calories in calories out. That's way too simplistic. And I'll say, well, just having that knowledge doesn't really change much because what do you need to do to save money? You need to earn more than you spend. Okay, so why is everyone broke? Because it's not just a knowledge problem.

It is a problem of behavior. And so I think that's what I've started to gravitate more towards is all right, the metabolic stuff is important. But the real cause is trying to get people to change behavior and that's much more difficult than just hey eat this. I totally agree. and that's much more difficult than just, hey, eat this. I totally agree, and that's why there's a whole thing between psychological versus like physiological, right?

And that is the hardest part, right? Like the reality is like it's not, people are not just eating because they're hungry, they're usually eating out of emotional reasons, boredom. A lot of different reasons. A lot of things I tell people, there's a lot of, you know, we used to probably 10, 20 years ago, the scientific community for nutrition was very focused on energy expenditure. Right. Like saying, how does metabolism work?

How can we boost metabolism? That's right. And all those studies ended up being very disappointing. You know, like there just wasn't wasn't big when it comes to different diets, low-car versus low fat. If you're equating calories and protein, we now have like 20 over 20 controlled feeding studies where we just know that it doesn't make a difference in fat loss, really, in a practical moment. It doesn't at all. I mean, if anything, there's a slight favoritism towards low fat diets in terms of causing more fat loss, but it's really, really small and not consequential.

It's like a 16 gram difference per day. It's very small. Really? So, why is it, though, over time? Everything has a trend in a fat that it's all about high fat, high fat, low carbs. I think it's easier to sell, and there's two reasons it's easier to sell. People really love the idea that someone else is responsible for their problems. And so we were, the kind of the common narrative is the government sold us this idea that we

should eat starches and high carbs and this made us fatter. They did say we should increase our starchic carbohydrate intake, but also they said we should decrease our calories. Yes. And we should decrease our start-to-carbohydrate intake, but also they said we should decrease our calories. Yes. And we should decrease our added fats and added sugars. And what do we do? We increased our calories, added fats, added sugars, and became less active. So if you want to pull out that one part of the food guide pyramid

that we actually did follow, okay, but we didn't follow like 80% of it. Right. So, but people wanted to have that narrative that that well, I was the government gave us bad advice and that's why we got sicker. And then the second part of us, I think that low carb diets are a little bit easier to sell for a few reasons.

One, you can see rapid weight loss really quickly because low carb diets will induce about a one to five pound decrease in total body water. That's not body fat, right? Right. Water weight. Now, they do cause fat loss if you're in a calorie deficit, but you just see weight loss much more rapidly because you're losing body water.

So that makes it easier to get a buy-in from people. And then the second part of that is you can kind of pick out these different mechanisms of, well, it increases fat oxidation and, you know, it lowers insulin and insulin inhibits fat burning. And so people will think fat burning, that's the same thing as fat loss. Right. It's actually not. So when we talk about fat burning, that's what we call like a mechanism, all right. So it's a, like a kind of a singular pathway.

But these things don't exist in isolation. And the reality is The amount of fat you gain or lose depends on what we call fat balance Which is you're always storing fat and burning fat at the same time It is the balance of the relative rates of each that's going to determine how much fat you lose over a period of time Right, so if you want to lose fat your rate of fat burning needs to exceed your rate of fat storage. Right. Now, if you're on a low-fat, high-carb diet,

the right insulin reduces fat burning, so you burn less fat. But there's research to show that you don't really store, and at least in a normal diet, you don't really store carbohydrates as fats. The body preferentially either stores them as glycogen or oxidizes them for energy. Now because you have two competing fuel sources, fat and carbohydrate, if you're burning carbohydrate for energy, you're sparing the dietary fat you're eating. But the body doesn't really store carbohydrate as fat. So I'm going to come back to that here in a second. When it comes to what your store is fat,

it's mostly dietary fat. So if you're eating a high fat low carb diet, yes, your rates of fat oxidation will be much higher, but you're also storing more fat. If you're eating a low fat high carb diet, you're burning much less fat, but you're also storing much less fat. Right.

So what's going to determine how much you store overall is your energy balance, whether or not you're in a calorie deficit or not. So when we look at these studies, and the 20 studies I'm picking out, they were put into a meta-analysis in 2018 by Kevin Hall. And the reason it's important for these particular 20 studies is either they controlled the individual's food intake

so they monitored it, like provided the food to participants in a controlled setting, like a metabolic ward, or they provided the food to participants even though they were free living. So these have much higher adherence rates. When you do free living studies where people,

you just give them instruction, guess what happens? People don't follow the instructions. No, they don't, right. So when we look at these highly controlled studies, we just don't really see a difference in fat loss. And so what that says to me is do whatever you can sustain. If that's low carb, high fat, then that's fine.

If it's low fat, high carb, that's fine, or anything in Piduin. But the most important thing is finding something that you can consistently adhere to. Because when people talk about why they failed diets, and there's a lot of data on this, people don't fail because they didn't have the right carb to fat ratio, or the meal timing wasn't right, they fail because they stop doing it. They fail because they stop doing it, or they have events come up. In fact, a great example of this

is people tend to think, well, we must be, like, if we look at obesity, people, the amount of weight they gained during adulthood boils down to like an energy excess of about 30 calories per day. If you cut 30 calories per day out of your diet, I promise you nothing will happen, right? Right. Right. So how is this happening? Well, people don't gain it linearly throughout the year. The majority of people gain almost all the weight they

gain in the year between the end of November and January 1st. And they don't tend to take it off during the year. They don't. No, they don't tend to take it off during the year. So what happens is you have that, and of course, there are people who gain in different times. I'm talking about just on average. Even in the summertime, it doesn't come off. People tend to be more active in the summer, but overall, some weight may come off here or there, but it's mostly stable throughout the year, at least on average.

Now there are individuals who will be different. Of course, of course, there's a non-momentally for everything, but yeah, okay. And so what's happening is you're having these periods where people are kind of overfeeding pretty intensely. Yeah. And that's so true though, right? And then you can't, that's your new threshold, right?

Now your net of three pounds high, or every year, your three pounds heavier, heavier, heavier. And so, one of the things I tell people is, we have to really have a different way of we, I did the way we approached this problem, right? Yeah. Because I think a lot of people, they feel like a diet's only worthwhile if they can just 100% be in, you know, and go really hard on it.

And it's like, well, I've got this vacation coming up, I've got this thing coming up. But that's called life. Yeah. If you can't sustain whatever, and I'm not saying like you have to be really restrictive and like be on a hardcore diet while you're on vacation. I think that's actually a really bad idea, but you need to learn how to moderate because what most people do is extreme restriction.

And then when they can't sustain that anymore, they say they go into like, scruit mode and just eat whatever. And you know, in six weeks, you can put on a decent amount of weight doing that. And so what I really try to get people to do, like, for example, some of the clients that I work with or our team works with is, like, for example, in the holidays, I'll say, Hey, diets and holidays tend to ruin holidays and diets. So instead of trying to lose fat during this time period, where it's just going to be really tough, let's move up to maintenance.

Let's just focus on maintaining your body weight. If we can get you through the holidays or your wedding or kids' graduation, you know, pick out any like series of events, if we can get you through that maintaining, we're actually ahead of the game. But even for maintenance during those holiday seasons, it's hard for me and most people, right? Because of that exact thing, which is I'm like that.

I'm like so extreme, either I'm all in and like, or I'm like, try to eat clean, whatever that is. I hate that word too, I know you do too. Just spray windex on it. Exactly, exactly. Because then what happens is I do binge on all the, once I start something, it's like a known thing.

If I'm around a buffet, it's terrible for me. Like I'm so like regimented that once I see food that I like, I have no behavior-modific. I don't know how to control myself. And I'm not the only one. Oh, no, that's very, very common. In fact, there's a scientific term for this, which is a disinhibition reflex.

So it's kind of like, um... That's what it's called. I'm gonna write that down. Yeah, and I think, you know, when you look at the research literature, what tends to, I always tell people, like, they'll be like, binging, like, I have clients who like, binge on something.

Yeah. Like, I'm never doing this again. I'm like, of course you're gonna do it again. That's me. You're like, plowing down, you know, your fifth donut, and you're like, I'm never gonna do this again. It's like, of course you are, unless you rewire this stuff, you know?

And that's the problem though. Like, how do you rewire? That's to me, the root of the problem. How do you rewire this stuff, you know? And that's the problem though. Like, how do you rewire? That's to me the root of the problem. How do you rewire it? Like, for me, I don't even have to be binging on like 10 donuts. It could be like, oh my god, grapes. I'm gonna have seven pounds of grapes

because it's sugar, and I haven't allowed myself proper sugar or moderation. So I'll eat, and I'm not even, I know you think I'm exaggerating. I kid you up, kid you not, I'm not exaggerating. Like, it's a lot of grapes. It's a lot of grapes. Or like, I can eat and I'm not even I know you think I'm exaggerating. I kid you up kid you not I'm not exaggerating like a lot of great a lot of great Or like I can eat an entire watermelon in one sitting and fast because I'm so like Once you see it is like it's done. So how do you help people with that? So I think you know people overeat for many reasons

Hunger being only one of them and so I'm not a not a psychologist, so I want to be careful about how far I venture into this realm. But a lot of it is just, I'll give an example I did with a client. And this was somebody who was, you know, deathly afraid of sugar. I cannot have sugar, you know, this and that. I said, well, let's examine that. I'm like, can you do this for me? I want you to have a small bowl of ice cream each night for the next week. But will you promise me that you'll hit your calories?

Just have this bowl. If you don't lose weight over the course of this week on this amount of calories, then I will accept your submission that you cannot have sugar. Okay? And so she did it every night. And again, I'm not saying people need a way food from now to the end of time, but I do think it's a useful exercise if you've never done it because by the way, if you want to be depressed, go away out of serving of ice cream or a serving of peanut butter or a serving of cereal or something like that.

It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. If it's not, there's like three nuts in the serving. Right, and I think a lot of people don't realize. I get so many people say, why ain't a calorie deficit didn't lose weight? And I'll say, you ate when, why ate in a calorie deficit didn't lose weight? And I'll say, you ate when what you thought was a calorie deficit.

Your serving size is a probably, unless you were weighing it, your serving size were probably much bigger than you thought they were. So this gal did this and then at the end was like, oh my God, I lost two pounds this week. I can't believe that I can eat ice cream and lose weight. I'm like, you can, but keep in mind, you don't have to,

it may not always be the best choice for your goals, but yes, you can, you can do it, and I'll use the example of like budgeting, right? So cars, terrible investments, depreciate and value, really like just not, no one would consider them a good investment of money, right? But if you make a lot of money and you really like cars, should you never buy a car because it's a bad investment? Right.

No, if you like it and you can afford it and you're going to still pay your mortgage, you're going to still put money away from retirement, kids college, whatever you take care of your responsibilities, if you have money left over, is it okay to do that? Yeah, of course. Now, if somebody makes $40,000 a year and then buying a new car means they can't pay their mortgage or they can't pay their utilities or what, then they shouldn't buy it, right? And so the kind of putting that example together is if you're a 210-pound large mail who trains hard for two, three hours a day, I have a very large calorie

budget that I can work with. I can meet all my obligations for protein, fiber, fruits and vegetables, and I've still got quite a bit left over. If I want to have something to play with, I can have a bowl of ice cream or whatever it is, and it's not going to negatively affect me. But if you're 120 pound woman and you're not that active, I mean, sure, you could have a bowl of ice cream a night, but it's gonna be a big part of your budget and you might not meet your other requirements.

So I think that's part of the issue is just helping people understand that, you know? Can I ask you a question though? Not to interrupt, I wanna interject for a second. So, because now you're talking about calorie in calorie out, like calorie differentiation, right? Because are you then saying that a calorie doesn't matter what you're eating if you stay within the allotment of your calorie intake?

It won't change your body composition and you can still lose weight because I was under the impression because I would always say, oh yeah, calorie in calorie out. And then everyone yelled and screamed at me. And they're like, what are you talking about? You can't do that because body composition because a calorie of a Mars bar and a calorie of a, you know, a carrot stick, your body reacts differently and therefore blah, blah, blah. So what I would say is, you know, there are advantages to a carrot that a Mars bar doesn't have. But really what it boils down to is if you look at the research literature. Yes, but you do all the time. Yep. And I used to be somebody was like can't have sugar sugar will make it hard to lose fat. And then I started looking into

the research and I was like wow I can't really say this. So if we look at the research data, a calorie is a calorie. Now when I say, a calorie is just a unit of measurement. So saying a calorie, like all calories aren't created equal, is like saying all miles per hour aren't created equal, or all seconds on a clock aren't created equal. They are. It's already like saying all dollars aren't created equal. They are, but all sources of calories are not created equal in terms of how they affect satiety, how they affect energy expenditure.

So for example, protein. Protein as a whole macronutrient class is more satiating than carbohydrate or fat, and it also has a greater thermic-effective food. So now thermic-effective food, if you think about your body kind of like an internal combustion engine, so when we climb in our car, it doesn't just magically go because we have gas in the tank. We're assuming gas powered cars. Yeah, of course. What do you have to do? You have to put the key in or you have to press the starter, and that uses energy from the battery in order to start the car, and now

you can extract fuel out of your gas, right? When you eat food, your body has to put energy in to get the energy out of the food that you're eating, okay, because the chemical energy is in the stored bonds of food, so you have to break these bonds down or deliberate that energy and be able to use it. Right. So protein, the TEF is about 20 to 30%,

meaning if you eat 100 calories of protein, you're netting about 70 to 80. If you eat 100 calories of carbohydrate, you're netting about 90 to 95. You eat 100 calories from fat, you're netting about 97 to 100. So fat has the lowest TEF, carbohydrates, have like a 5 to 10% TEF, and then protein is the highest. So there are advantages for energy expenditure by eating a higher protein diet, and there are advantages in terms of satiety. Same thing for your source of carbohydrate. If you're eating a lot of dietary fiber, you're having a better effect on satiety, and there's some evidence that fiber may be thermogenic as well. So all that the point is the source of calories can impact your energy expenditure and your satiety level.

So it is important to make good choices. But at the end of the day, if you're getting enough protein and fiber, if we look at studies and there's one study in particular, I thought was really, really well done. And they looked at very extreme level of sugar differential. So that both groups were on a fat lost diet for six weeks, they both ate the exact same amount of calories, exact same protein, exact same carbs, exact same fats,

and the only difference was in one group they were getting over 100 grams of sugar a day, and in the other group they were getting about 10, okay? And they provided all the food to participants. So again, very highly controlled. Yeah, very controlled, yeah. Both groups lost the exact same amount of weight, exact same amount of body fat.

The only difference was both groups improved their blood markers. The low sugar group improved their LDL just a little bit more. But that was probably because they were eating a little bit more fiber and fiber can lower LDL cholesterol. If they'd equated fiber, I bet they would have found

the same thing. And you even see this anecdotally, Dr. Mark Hobb, I don't know if you're familiar with him. Mark Hobb, or not Hyman, no Mark Hobb. So he's got the label of the Twinkie Diet Professor. Oh, I've heard about Kate. Yeah, talk about that. So Mark, this is like 2011, asked his class, his nutrition class, what do you think is more important for fat loss and health? How much you eat or the foods you eat?

And 80% of people said, I think most of the class said that the food choices you make. He said, do you think that I could lose weight and improve my health markers if I was eating unhealthy foods but in a calorie deficit? And most people said no. And so he said, okay, I'm gonna do what he called at the 7-Eleven diet. So I'm gonna do all ultra-process foods. He would drink a protein shake to get enough protein,

and he took a multivitamin, right? Yeah. He lost 20, he was, but he ate 1800 calories. He lost 27 pounds in 12 weeks, and all of his health markers improved. So the point is, almost, and there was a study in 2014, a meta-analysis by Naud, where they were basically comparing like high carb versus low carb and their effects on biomarkers of health, and basically found that the vast majority of the health benefits from individual

diets essentially boiled down to the weight loss. If people lost enough body fat, they saw improvements in their health markers, kind of regardless of diet type. Now, there are some distinct advantages to certain diets, and I'll get into that. But the point is, just by being in that calorie deficit, he was able to improve his health markers, even though he was eating unhealthy foods. Now- What about his body composition? to improve his health markers, even though he was eating unhealthy foods. Now, what is body composition?

So body composition, that's why getting enough protein is important. Right. Because protein is important for body composition. Right. But again, if we look at like, if you're getting the same amount of protein, if you have high sugar versus low sugar,

It doesn't matter. It doesn't seem to matter. What about genetics? Sorry, I'm gonna keep on asking. What about genetics? Okay, so there was, there was a couple, there've been a couple studies where people have kind of randomized,

I'm thinking of the diet fit study. Yeah. Or sorry, they assigned people to groups based on their kind of levels of insulin secretion. So people, some people who had higher levels of insulin secretion were getting low carb diets and some were getting high carb diets and then people who had low levels of insulin secretion were getting high in low carb diets and they compared them and they didn't find any differences. Really?

We love the idea that there's this like individual diet for our metabolism. And a lot of people also said, well, this stuff just applies to lean people. It doesn't apply to obese or type 2 diabetics. Again, there was a study done, a men analysis looking at people with type 2 diabetes versus people without type 2 diabetes, but matching them for body weight, and looking at, okay, under conditions of a caloric deficit, is it any different? They lose the same amount of weight when they're actually in a caloric deficit. So, the problem is the people who, and this is going to be very unpopular to say, but it's the truth. People who are tend to

become obese or type 2 diabetic are more likely to under report how much food they eat. I'm not saying they're lying. I think people are really poor estimators of the food they take in. Like I said, we spend a lot of time on the metabolism side of things. And what we're actually finding is what's having the greatest effect on weight loss is satiety. So the people who are overweight or obese tend to have less of a satiety response to foods, they get a greater food reward.

So they do have certain things that make it more difficult. And if we look at these new really effective weight loss drugs that are out there, um, somatic, yeah. Would you call it? Well, somiglutide is kind of the generic name. Oh, okay, yeah. That's what a semplich is, though, right? I believe so, yeah.

And then these are all what are called GLP1 memetics. What does that mean? So GLP1 is a gut hormone that you secrete that acts on your gut, as well as your brain, to tell you that you're full. And these things cause people to drastically eat less calories. Why? What does it do? It just has a very, very strong satiety impact. Okay.

Now, what's interesting is I've had some people say, my metabolism is broken, so I want to go on these weight loss drugs. And I've said, well, if your metabolism is broken, these aren't going to help you because these actually work by just making you eat less. Exactly. They don't have an effect on energy expenditure. It doesn't appear. But they're very, very effective because they're so good at getting people to eat less food. Now, I'm not, a lot of people will think

because I'm in the fitness industry, I'm gonna dog these drugs and say that they're a bad idea. I don't know, I'd love to see more long-term research on them. Right. Have you ever done it just to see, because it's crazy that, I mean, the people I've seen doing it, you're right, they lose a shit ton of weight. But doesn't it rebound? Don't you, when start all of it? If you stop done it just to see because it's crazy that I mean the people I've seen doing it you're right They lose a shit ton of weight, but doesn't it rebound don't you when store off of it? If you stop using it

It's it's it's more likely that you'll put it back on No, I like more when you put on more weight so I I can't speak to this in terms of data But I would guess okay that whatever it has taking you to lose the weight It will also take you sustaining that to keep it off. So if you want to come off these drugs, then you need to be really, really careful about how you come off of them and very mindful about your food intake.

And I will say, I think it's kind of ridiculous the people who are doing this to like lose five pounds or something like that. I just think that that's kind of absurd. These drugs really should be reserved for people who have tried a lot of different things, who really really have a hard time with dieting, who have quite a bit of weight to lose. But why is it though, five pounds, they can be the hardest to lose, right? Because it's like really easy to lose weight when you have a lot of weight to lose, but then as you have less and less, it's harder to lose the five to ten pounds. I agree with

what you're saying. Well, I'm curious about, like, why is it that, like, if you've been suppressing your appetite, let's say on a drug, whatever else, that when you do get off of it, not only do you gain the weight back, but you gain more, why is it that you gain usually more weight than what you even started off with? Yeah, so I can't really speak to the weight loss choice who you just don't have enough data on that. In general, in any diet. But in terms of, if you look at the weight recidivism statistics, it's actually pretty depressing. So, six of every seven overweight or obese people will achieve significant weight loss in their

lifetime, but most of them put it back on. And so if you look at the weight, uh, regained statistics, depending on what what metric you use, um, you'll get different numbers. But in general, after a year, over half of people will put back on the weight they lost. After two years, it's something like 70 or 80 percent. And then if you start looking out three years or more, it's basically like, you know like 90 to 95%. Right, wow. And then of those people who put it back on, one third to two thirds will actually put on more

than they had originally. And so there's probably a few reasons for it. I outlined them quite a bit in fat loss forever in the book. So this book, that's four years old that I'm reading out. But there's, it's a great book. It is actually a lot of detail. It's super, it's, there's so much information, and it's easy to understand, which is again,

your strike zone, so I like it. Yeah, so I kind of like, made like this three-prong defense mechanism. So if we consider weight loss, there's, this theory called body fat set point theory, which I just kind of happen to agree with, which is basically that your body fat is regulated within a certain level, and that if you want to gain more fat, you kind of have to push, like, eat yourself past it.

And if you want to lose fat, your body kind of starts to fight you the other way. So, I want to make sure I'm under, because I agree with this 100%, so I want to make sure I understand you're saying that we all have a set body weight, like we all have a set point that we're like our bodies are naturally comfortable That's that's kind of what the theory says and we can like we can like only like kind of like coerced it a little bit here and there But our bodies will always struggle to get back to that set point, right? so Let me unpack it a little bit more the set point appears to be kind of, at least the theory is,

your fat cell number is mostly set. We don't really, fat cell number. But what happens is as you gain or lose fat, fat cell shrink or expand. As they expand, they secrete more of a hormone called leptin. Leptin is a satiety hormone. And as they shrink, as you lose fat,

they secrete less leptin. It's mostly related to the size of the individual fat cell. So, leptin is kind of like your body's body fat thermostat. So, as you begin to gain more fat, you secrete more leptin, tells your brain, you don't need as much food, you can stop eating. But, the problem is, is that as you gain more body fat, you actually become less leptin sensitive. So after a certain point, you just, because they've actually found that obese people don't have less leptin, they actually have more.

Wow. They thought that when they discovered leptin back in 1996, they thought that this was the answer to obesity crisis. We'll just inject people with leptin and they'll get lean. And they found that when they injected rats with leptin, who were obese, naturally, they didn't lose weight because they were leptin insensitive. They've become desensitized to leptin based. Correct.

Correct. Okay. So why is there such a tight regulation to lose fat, but apparently it's not quite as tightly regulated on the top end, right? It's easier to gain fat than this to lose it. And if you think about it from a theological perspective, so like evolutionarily, what is the risk of body weight getting too low? It's starvation. What is the risk of body fat getting too high? Predation, like being chased down by a predator or not being able to go out and you know, hunt your own food or find your own food because you have too much

body mass. But that becomes a self-regulating problem in terms of hunting down your own food because if you're not getting the food, you'll become leaner and eventually be able to get it, right? But the risk is basically predation versus starvation. Well, the risk of predation once man learned how to use tools basically went to zero. I mean, every year there's a few people who get attacked by sharks and grizzly bears and all that kind of stuff. But for the most part in our day-to-day lives,

we aren't worried about getting attacked and eaten by animals. No, because post-made are food, which is, we're getting lazier and lazier as a society. Right. So the risk of predation over the last 10,000 years has been very, very low. So, again, this is just a theory,

but the idea is the regulation on those genes probably wasn't passed down as much, whereas starvation was still a very real possibility for a large number, a large amount of mankind, even a generation ago. Right. And in some parts of the world, it's still a very real possibility. So those genes have been propagated down through the generations. So basically, when you start to lose weight as your fat cells shrink, you become more left-in-sensitive, but you secrete less leptin.

Think about fat cells like a sponge. So if you take a sponge and it's really wet because it has a lot of liquid on it, can you go stop up more liquid? No. No. So fat cells are kind of like that, in fact, one of the reasons you become insulin resistant is because there's so much triglyceride packed into adipose,

that it's actually hard to put more in, okay? Whereas as you start to lose fat, you're ringing that sponge out. But guess what happens if there's, like if you go to wipe up fluid now, now it stops it right up, up right so when you've lost weight When you are weight reduced It's actually easier for you to gain back body fat if you begin to overeat because your fat cells are so insulin sensitive

And so leptin sensitive and they become smaller It's much easier for them to like for lack of better terms soak up. Yeah excess nutrients So that's one way that our body kind of fights us. Also, we have something called metabolic adaptation, which is basically, when you ever you lose weight, your energy expenditure will decrease. Part of that is because you just have less mass, there's less mass to carry around.

But beyond the reduction in energy expenditure from the amount of body mass you lose, there's also a further reduction in your metabolic rate and energy expenditure beyond what you're expected just based on the amount of mass you lose. And that's called metabolic adaptation. And there's a few different mechanisms for it. So you have a reduction in your BMR.

On average in studies, it's like 10 to 15% of a reduction in BMR beyond what you'd expect. Then you also have a reduction in what's called meat. So meat is your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which actually ends up being a pretty decent portion of your energy expenditure throughout the day. So like you're wiggling your foot, yeah. Yeah, that's why I know exactly.

Without seeing it, some people like bounce their leg or like talk with their hands. These are not, this is considered in the bucket of physical activity, out seeing some people like bounce their leg or like like talk with their hands. Yeah. These are not, this is considered in the bucket of physical activity, but it's not conscious physical activity. Yeah. You're not doing this consciously. So they've actually shown that a diet that will reduce body weight by about 10% can reduce

meat by around four to 500 calories per day. So when you consider that you could have a 15% reduction in your BMR, so let's say your BMR is, you know, minds like 2000 calories per day. So when you consider that you could have a 15% reduction in your BMR, so let's say your BMR is, you know, mine's like 2000 calories a day. That's 300 calories right there. Then there could be up to four or 500 calories due to some need. I mean, that's like seven or 800 calories, you know, from from me losing 10% of my body weight. Yeah. So my maintenance, what maintained my body weight, might have been like, you know, 3300 calories when I started, but after losing 10% of body weight,

it might be more like 25 or 2600 calories. Oh, right. So I think people don't realize this, so that makes it, you can't just go back to the way you were eating before, because your energy expenditure is lower now, even though you might still be doing the same amount of exercise, because people,

when they hear physical activity, they just think exercise. They're not thinking about this neat bucket or this metabolic adaptation. And then the real killer is you have a big increase in your hunger signals from weight loss. So I believe they've actually done studies where they looked at comparing apples to apples

energy expenditure and people who were weight reduced versus people who did not have to lose weight to be at that lean mass because lean mass is the biggest predictor of energy expenditure Right, right, so they take people who were never weight reduced and a certain lean mass weight reduced is a funny name right versus people who lost weight to get to certain lean mass. Wait, reduce, it's a funny name. Right. Versus people who lost weight to get to that lean mass, they find that the people who are weight reduced tend to have lower levels of satiety and lower levels of energy expenditure relative to people who never had to lose weight. So there does seem to be this like kind of drive to regain the weight we lose. Now, there is some evidence that if you stay weight reduced

for an extended period of time, that that can become your new set point. How long do you have to be at that weight reduced? We don't really know, but it's probably a year, like over a year. That would be my guess. And I think if I had to hazard a guess as to how this happens,

I think because your weight reduced, you have less leptin, but I think your body, again, we've shown that as you lose weight, your body becomes more sensitive to leptin. So I think that these people are just settling into a new set point by becoming more sensitized to the leptin levels that they have. But again, this is, I'm speculating because there's no, it's hard to really directly test this stuff. But so what I would say is there's nothing magical about these new weight loss drugs. They call you to eat less.

You can do that on your own. But for some people, that may be really, really difficult just because of how strong those hunger signals get, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose. So I'm not against these new weight loss drugs. I'm kind of in a weight and sea sort of. Oh really? Yeah, okay. But I will say, you know, if you're somebody who's obese

and you can take a drug that's gonna help you lose 100 pounds, be hard to convince me that you're not healthier after that than you were before it. But the question is, how long do they have to stay on them? Do they have to stay on them for life? Or can they slowly win themselves off? We don't, at least based on my observations to literature, we don't really know that yet.

Because I was under the impression that like something tweaks in the brain or something where you're, like the people I know have done it, because like so many people I know are on it, not even in the fitness world everywhere. I mean, I see people who are, who are literally like half their size that they've ever been in their life of my life.

What are you doing, right? It's become like a whole, that's an epidemic in itself. But I thought, because then the second they're off, they're like so hungry. But it's like, and I know you're not gonna agree with this, but I know that you're gonna say it with exercise.

Whenever I'm working out like a theme, which is a lot, I'm starving after. I know you think it like satiates, like exercise has a satiety thing. It does, in my opinion, for the first hour, but then you're starving. And let's say this, and then you, then you can, because I have a whole thing. So I have to watch how intensely I would work out, because if I work out too hard, I'm so hungry that I'm going to eat so many calories, I'll end up gaining weight. Versus if I like worked out at a moderate pace,

versus low intensity, and not going to be as hungry, and maybe that's when the society can come into play. So there's a few things with that. First off, everybody's experience is different. So when we talk about, when I'm talking about data and scientific studies, I'm always talking about averages. Yeah. There's always an anomaly-in-one reason.

Somebody's experience may be different. If you take any treatment in science, you usually what's called a Gaussian distribution, which is a bell curve of a treatment. So you have 60 to 70% falls in this about what you expect, and then you have outliers on each side. So totally possible that that actually does make you more hungry I didn't make you hungry more hungry into harder you work out the more hungry you get past a certain point Yes, and I definitely think that there's something to that where you know

There's it's probably like a J-shaped curve Okay, you get a little bit of exercise or a certain amount it does help with satiety and then obviously once you're burning so many calories You're going to increase your energy intake. Now, what I'll say is, when we look at the scientific literature, typically you would think that if you're expanding more calories, your body's going to compensate by having you eat more. In most studies, there is some of that, but the compensation is not complete. What I mean by that is, if you, let's say you burn 300 calories from exercise,

you might compensate by eating 200 more than you normally did, but you're still getting like that 100 calorie benefit. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, of course. So now I'm not saying that's the same for everybody. How is that possible though? Because you always overestimate,

like let's say I'm a runner and I run, I am a runner, but let's say I run and I burn 400 calories. That's bullshit. Probably I'm only runner and I run, I am a runner, but the say I run and I burn 400 calories. That's bullshit. Probably I'm only burning 200 calories, but the machine, my watch says 400, always overestimates, then I go eat a thousand calories because I think, oh, I deserve it, right? But really, and then I'm really eating a thousand calories.

I'm not an, I'm actually in, not a deficit, right? Correct. So I think like when we look at these studies, they're using very sophisticated things to actually be able to measure energy, it's initially like metabolic wards. So they actually are able to find this stuff in on average, like I said, people don't compensate. But the problem is, is like, this is where the psychology comes in. You talked about with the watch.

These watches are not accurate. This is another popular. I, the calorie deficit, didn't lose weight. I burned a thousand calories on my Apple watch, and I'm like, what do you think is more likely? Yeah. That that risk device is not measuring energy expenditure correctly, or that you're violating the first law of thermodynamics.

Yes. So do you tell me what you think is more likely? Yeah, there was a meta-analysis done of risk-worn devices in 2019, I want to say. And everybody asked me, has it improved? No. It hasn't, right? No, it's just operating off an algorithm based on heart rate. Yes, there's a tie-in to how many calories you burn, but it's hard to get particular.

But yeah, we're both wearing it still. Right, so I'll tell you why. So when we look at how much does it overestimate? The study I looked at showed that I believe it was like anywhere from like 25% to 95% overestimation of calories burned from exercise. So if it says you burned 1,000, you probably burned more like 500 to 800.

Wow. So again, people will misinterpret that. Now the reason I wear one, one because I like to get text messages on my watch and be able to respond to that kind of stuff, it's just can be bad man thing. Yeah. Right. But the while it's not accurate, it probably has a relatively decent precision. Here's what I mean by that. I know that if I go in and train resistant training for two hours, all bird is, I was according to this, I'll burn around a thousand calories. Now, if I go in one day and I burn 1,500 as assessed by this, it's not 1,500, it's not 1,000, but I probably can be relatively confident

that I did burn more than I did my previous session, right? So I think it can be useful in terms of that. And the step tracker is actually quite accurate as well. That's what I like. So, so steps can be useful in terms of that. And the step tracker is actually quite accurate as well. That's what I like. So steps can be a nice way to account for neat. It's not perfect. But I'll tell people, like a lot of times we become spontaneously less active on a diet. And so what I'll say is, well, track your steps

before you start your diet and then just try to maintain that during your diet, right? And we did have a case, one of our team biolin clients, that she went into a deficit after four weeks, she was having trouble losing weight. And we will look back at her step data, because she was wearing her watch, but everyone looked at it.

She had her steps had gone in half. Really? So we had her take her steps back up to what they were and she started losing weight again. Really? By the way, I heard like 10,000 steps that's completely arbitrary, is that true? Kind kind of arbitrary if you look at the longevity data I mean it's like from 2000 to 8,000 steps it's like a linear reduction in mortality rate like it's

very very powerful and then when you go from 8,000 to like 16,000 there's a pretty big drop off it still does reduce mortality but the improvement is in a much lower rate. And then once you get past 16,000, it kind of flatlines. It's a little bit of improvement. It's kind of a, for my math nerds out there, you could look at it as like an asm tope. There's what it would be referred to as. But I would say like for most people, you know, 8,000 steps a day is probably a good target.

If you can do 10, great. I think 10's a nice round number that people like to get. Yeah. I think 10 is a relatively active person, you know. But you don't necessarily need to get 10,000. I mean, if you're getting 2,000 steps a day but you're biking for two hours, am I worried about it? No, there's nothing magical about steps. It's just a marker of activity. Right. Exactly. Okay. So the exercise piece to this whole thing. So you're saying then, because I've seen you exercise piece to this whole thing. So you're saying then, because I've seen you talk about the satiety thing. So do you think that we're just eating our biggest meal after we work out, or do you think it's more psychological? We think we're hungry

because we should be hungry. Yes, that's what you think. So when people are kind of left to their own devices and exercise and they don't think about how many calories they're burning and they know like I said, we don't see that compensation. One of the most compelling, I wouldn't say that exercise has this satiety effect. I think one, when you're exercising, you're not eating during that time because you're not bored. Right. So it's taking up some boredom space. Disracted.

Right. Yeah. Two, there's evidence that exercise sensitizes you to satiety signals. That your satiety signals work better when you're exercising So let me give you an example. There was a study done in the 1950s very classic study looking at Bengali workers And they looked at they didn't have any intervention. They just wanted to see Okay, what is their calorie intake versus their activity? And so they had sedentary, lightly active,

moderately active, and basically heavy labor jobs, right? What they found was from the lightly active, excuse me. That's right. What they found was from the lightly active group to the heavily active group, they basically linearly increased their caloric intake to coincide with their activity. So they basically perfectly compensated for it. Oh, wow. But the sedentary group ate more than the lightly active group. And I believe they might have eaten as much or a little bit more than the moderately active group. So that suggests there's some kind of diss... Oh, I see what you mean. There's some one, it could be a boredom thing. But there's some kind of

dysregulation that appears to occur when you're sedentary. Human bodies are made to move. They're not made to be stationary. Right. I see what you're mean. Okay, hold on. I understand this now better because it's true because when I'm not doing anything, I end up eating more than I would otherwise if I was exercising.

You might eat less total, but you're eating more relative to your activity level. Totally. So that's what you mean more than. So you mean more than like over time when you're exercising, you're not eating as much as you were sedentary and not eating. So let me give an example. Your daily energy expenditure, if your sedentary might be say 1700 calories, right? When you're sedentary, maybe you're eating 1900.

Right. I see. When you're sedentary, maybe you're eating 1900. When you start exercising, maybe now it's 2200, and you're eating 2000, so you're eating more total than you were when you were sedentary. But you're actually in a deficit now. So as an absolute number, it probably does go up, but as a relative number, it actually goes down. Placing deals, boundless options. Its hot grill summer at Whole Foods Market from June 14 through July 4. Fire up the grill with quality cuts at the best prices. We're talking

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Okay, so then I was going to ask you something else, but that makes sense to me. So then more or less then, because it's not, because we're eating for lots of other reasons than just being hungry. More like, how do we, like, because food is like the hardest thing to kick, right? How do we kick it if we are someone who's actually addicted to food because we've been trained to be socialized that way, right?

We go, well, when you socialize, like, hey, let's have dinner, let's have lunch, right? Like, let's do all this stuff, right? Like, let's watch Netflix go get the popcorn. Like, these are all, we're all so preconditioned to break those. It's so hard. So, is it addiction or is it just behaviors

that are ingrained, right? Probably behaviors that bow. I mean, behaviors that are ingrained, that's become like our addiction. Right. So, I think a lot of people have this idea of obesity that, you know, every single meal that person is choosing, I know that this is a bad choice for me, but I'm doing it anyway because I know that's not how it happens.

Right. There's a reason they call spending habits, spending habits, and there's a reason that they should call this food habits. Yeah. Right. So when we look at, like, how do we actually make change? You brought up an excellent point. Even though I don't necessarily think there's a food addiction,

there is evidence for what's called a food dependence. There's a, I'm kind of being pedantic, but there is a slight difference. But the point is well taken, which is if you're a cocaine addict, right? Or an alcoholic, you can just abstain. Right.

Right. Like you can, you can say, I'm not gonna be around it, I'm not gonna touch it again. So imagine being a cocaine addict or an alcoholic or a gambling addict and saying, well, you have to do a line every couple of times a day, but don't do too much, or like you have to have a drink or you have to play the slots a couple of times. That's why eating disorders are one of the most difficult things

to treat that we know of. And in fact, nobody really talks about this, but eating disorders of all mental health disorders have the highest mortality rate, more than depression. Really? Absolutely. Absolutely. More people, as a percentage of the people who have it, die every year from eating disorders than they do from depression. Really? Absolutely. Absolutely. More people as a percentage of the people who have it

die every year from eating disorders than they do from depression. Wow. I have chills. I had no idea. Right. Now, I think the absolute number is higher for depression because more people are suffering from depression. Right. But as a percentage of the people who have the disease or disorder, yeah. The eating disorders have a higher mortality rate. That's crazy. So because I see it as a lot of, I mean, you don't have to be anorexic or bulimic. There's also like all these other disordered eating habits, right?

Like I would fall into more like I'm so particular and regimented and extreme. Yeah, that would kind of fall more in like an orthorexia, which actually isn't like, what's ortho, I've heard that so many times. So that's kind of like fear of certain foods and whatnot or like fear of being out of a regiment, kind of like, you need sort of thing.

Kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not really, I don't believe it's recognized as an official eating disorder right now, but when we look at like binge eating disorder, we look at a binge and purge when we look at anorexia, like there are some real people think about binge in purging and they go, oh that's bad. Well that kind of rode your esophagus and like there, I knew somebody who their doctor basically said, if you don't

stop, this is going to kill you because it's going to rupture your esophagus, you're going to be septic, like, so there's all kinds of problems that can happen with this stuff. That's awful. And then obviously, like with anorexia, there are people who die every year from malnutrition because of that, and it's actually a pretty high number,

relative to how many people have it. So this is all really difficult stuff, and that's one of the reasons that I really say, like, hey, let's stop demonizing individual foods. Because I've seen what the downstream effects of that are, and it can be anorexia, you know, bulimia, like there's a lot of negative downstream effects to demonizing individual foods as well. Let's look at this some more of a holistic level. So when we look at people who lose weight and

keep it off, what are some characteristics that they actually have? So if we look at people who lose weight and keep it off, water some characteristics that they actually have. So if we look at like the 5% right, like the people who actually like, win at this stuff, what characteristics do they have? Because I think that's a much more important demographic to have. And there's a lot of stuff you would expect, like they practice self-monitoring, they weigh themselves like relatively regularly, they practice some form of cognitive restraint being either calorie tracking or Restricting carbohydrate to restricting fats or you know some form of restriction, right?

They exercise of people who lose weight and keep it off over 70% engage in regular exercise of people who put it back on Less than 30% engage in regular exercise and then there was one thing that really stood out to me in a systematic review that came out a couple years ago by a researcher named Maurice Breckley. And they interviewed people that not only did they take the metrics, but they interviewed them. And something that I never thought of before stuck out to me. They said that they felt like they had to develop a new identity. And that was very striking to me. But if you think about, again, if we go back to addiction, if you're an alcoholic or a drug addict,

you have to change your entire life. Because you can't go to the same places you went before. You can't hang out with the same people that you hung out with before. You might even need to get a new job. Whatever. You have to change your entire life. And are you familiar with Ethan Soupli?

Yeah, he's the guy, he was a 500 pound guy, right? Yeah, Hollywood actor? Yeah, and he lost like so much weight. Lost over 300 pounds, great guy. I see a friend of yours? Yeah, so Ethan and I keep up quite a bit. I've been on his podcast a few times, great guy. He's got a podcast?

Yes, called American Glutton. Oh. Really, really good show. So when I saw this, it made me think of him. Because when he posts pictures in the gym, he'll always say on his Instagram, he says, I killed my clone today. So I texted him and I said, is this what you mean?

Like, developing a new identity, he said, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Because that person, that 500 plus pound person, still lives inside of me, and I have to choose to be somebody different every single day. Wow, and how does he do it? Is it re-frame in your brain? Yeah, so I think, first off, this may be unpopular.

I heard a quote from Robert Downey Jr. Like about his drug addiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he was talking to Oprah. And I'm gonna paraphrase, so I apologize in advance if I butcher this quote. Okay. But he said,

it's really not that difficult to fix these gastly, seemingly ghastly problems in our life. What's difficult is to decide because you're gonna have to decide to be someone different than you were before, and that's what's hard to leave behind because you've developed an entire identity

around who you are based on this. And even though this might be an improvement, it's still people have a hard time with change. It's so true, and then you gotta decide every day. Right, right. So what I tell people is, think about the person you want to become. And this goes for anything, not just like weight loss,

but anything. Think about the person you want to become. What do you think though that person's habits and lifestyle look like? Because you are not going to be able to become a new person while dragging your old habits and behaviors behind you like an anchor. You have to cut them free. And so that's not X's and O's stuff, that's mindset stuff. Which I find myself talking about mindset a lot more over the years.

And I mean, my brother was a drug addict. And he said something to me that was really striking. Because I asked him, like, what was your rock bottom? Like, when did you, like, you went to rehab, you did all this, like, it just started getting better one day. Like, what happened was, you went to jail, like, was it that? And he said, one day I just woke up and realized I lose everything. I get a relationship and I lose it.

I get some money and I lose it. I get a job and I lose it. I just got sick and tired of losing. And I think until somebody has that point in their life, where it's like, Eric Thomas says, when the pain of staying the same becomes the greater than the pain of change, that's when we change. That's why when people ask me,

how do I get my dad to follow a diet? How do I get my spouse? And I said, I mean, you can, like the best thing you can do is provide an example by like, you know, walking the walk yourself and hope they'll get interested. But the whole saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

That's true. I mean, somebody really has to make a decision, and I'm not trying to be ableist or anything like that, but if you talk to people who struggled with addiction and went through rehab multiple times, they all have very similar stories, at least in my experience, which is, one day, they just got absolutely fed up

with the state of their life, and they just said, no more. Exactly. I'm not doing this anymore. What was your brother addicted to? Math. Holy. That's like hard core. Yeah. Hopefully it doesn't mind me talking about it.

I've talked about it before and he's never said anything. How, how will, see okay now? Is he, he's doing well now? Yep. Um, um, how did he kick that? That's a hard one. He, like you said, he just decided that that was it. How many years ago?

I can't remember exactly, it was well over like five or six years ago. I think longer than that too. But now he owns a subcontracting company for construction and he does roofing and he's doing pretty well, keeping his nose clean, all that kind of stuff. Are you close? Not as close as I would like to be.

We talk, we get along. I think what happened was there was a period of my life where it was just like kind of too painful would like to be. We talk, we get along. You know, I think what happened was there was a period of my life where it was just like kind of too painful to talk to him. Yeah. I just got out of the habit of talking to him. So, you know, like, but we do keep in touch now. We talk every few weeks.

And, you know, like I told him like one day, I was like, I've probably never told you this, but I'm really proud of you, you know, because that is a hard thing to get through. How, do you see his younger brother. He's younger brother. So how many years was he addicted to meth for? I don't know the exact specifics.

I mean, I know he had struggled with like, I think like pain pills and, and whatnot, but I'm not exactly sure how long he was on that. Like I said, there was a period of time where we really didn't talk that much. The irony though, like of you two, because we're up together, brothers. We're up together. And you became this guy, like the champion powerlifter, exercise, you know. Everybody responds to adversity and childhood differently.

And you went the opposite direction. And I think it also points to like, you know, I think he had some bad experiences growing up and then like kind of started hanging around the wrong group of people. And I think he got really bad experiences growing up and then kind of started hanging around the wrong group of people And I think he got really influenced by those folks and you know No, that's not just their fault like he obviously made decisions and he'll tell you that but yeah But he also like one day he just made a decision that this is it like he wasn't gonna do it anymore and

Yeah, I think that that's so powerful But you know the hard part is like how do you get people to that point? Because when it comes to obesity or type 2 diabetes, it's not like, and Ethan has a great talk about this, and I'll mention. It's not like you just wake up one day and you're like, oh, God. Because it doesn't happen like that. It's very insidious, very slow. You can manage the complications very easily with medication for a long time. You know, Ethan, one of the things he said that I thought was really interesting is like, I did a rock yesterday with a 50-pound rock. And he's like, I think about how physically hard

that was, strapping 50 pounds on my body. And then I realized I had six of those, that I was carrying around. And then he said, he had an epiphany that no matter how hard exercise is for the time he does it He says it is infinitely easier for me to do this for a couple hours a day than my entire Life having to carry that around and even like you know He mentioned like when I would go to sit down I would have to like check a chair that I was sitting down in because so many times I would break chairs That I would want to make sure a chair was stable for me to actually sit in and then like talking about kind of how we'd have to organize His trailer and like different things he would have to do and he's like I realized looking back

I spent way more time in energy to stay that way Then I do to stay the way I am now. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that. How long does it even take? So people I think are under the assumption that you're either born somewhat obese, not obese, but overweight and it just kind of gradually keeps on happening.

I don't know where he was initially. Was he an overweight guy and it just got worse and worse and worse? Yeah, I think he was overweight as a kid. Okay. I don't want to discount genetic factors that predispose us to becoming obese. But in the future. If you said earlier, they respond, we respond or people respond differently to sits,

like being satiated, food, mechanisms, like I know people, like forget about that, like a friend's a mind who are like, who I eat, like, way less than they do, and they're like super, they don't care about food, they'll eat, they're not, and they're so skinny, I'm like, my size, they're their size, like, I feel there is something to be said about, like, how we respond and how we think about it. So a lot of times appearances can be deceiving, and here's why. So one thing we definitely know about people who tend to be lean or what we call obese resistant phenotype, they don't snack really.

So they appear to eat large meals, but then there's nothing in between. And then also they tend to spontaneously get more active without realizing it when they overeat. So there was a study done, I think it was Levine in 1995, it was a Metal Walk Ward study. I believe they overfed people by a thousand calories a day based on their energy expenditure when they measured it when they came in and they looked at how much weight people gained.

And on average, I think people gained, I forget what the duration was, I think it was eight weeks. On average, they gained about 10 pounds, I want to say. But like people, the range, I think, was two to 17, even though they were eating the same surplus. And so what they found, for example, was the person who only gained two pounds, just without realizing it got spontaneously way more active. So that would be like an obese resistant phenotype. Yeah. People who tend to be obese prone, they don't compensate for increased energy that way, or at least not to the same extent, and they tend to be more prone to snacking. They tend to have less regulation of their satiety signals.

So when we look at energy expenditure, your metabolism, how many calories you burn, we really don't see differences between people who obese versus people who are lean. If anything, people who are obese tend to expend a few more calories per day than people who are lean. But what we do see is on the appetite side. So if we look at people who have one obese parent,

there's a 40% greater chance that they will become obese versus somebody who has two parents who are normal weight. And we look at people who have two obese parents, it's 80% more likely. Now people have taken that data and said, we'll see, this is the genetic factor we're talking about. But is it genetics or is it what they've been exposed to in childhood as a lifestyle?

Right. And it's choices. I was gonna say for sure, and not to interrupt you again, but like even like culturally, right? I'm Jewish, what are you? What's your background? I'm a mutton.

You're a mix? Okay, so Jewish people, Italian people, everything is like food focused to the extreme. But no matter what you're eating, why aren't you eating enough? You're not eating enough. Like you are preconditioned to think. Finish your plate.

Finish your plate. Like if we're having breakfast, what are we having for lunch? What are we having for dinner? That you have to, to deprogram all that, that's like hard. It is hard. And again, like when was the last time you went to any kind of event and there wasn't food available, right? Never. It's ingrained in our culture. And that's why I say, you know, people want to make this an X's and O's thing. Yeah, it's not happening. X's an O's thing because food is part of our culture. So when people say things like, we want the government to ban processed foods, listen, I think you're talking about pulling the bullet back in the gun after it's already been fired.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is, we need to learn how to manage this as opposed to just saying, we're going to tax, you know, sodas over 20 ounces, and this and that, I think giving people the information is important. And I'm not saying that I'm against all regulations, but I don't think it's gonna make a huge difference. And again, people will use the example of like tobacco

and the regulations that came on that. But again, you can abstain from tobacco. You can't abstain from food. That's right. So I wanna ask you some questions, right? I know this doesn't work this way, 100%, but is there a particular diet that you think I know you're going to say whatever you can sustain the longest, but that has been shown to be the most satiating for people. Is it the keto?

Is it the vegan? I mean, the vegan doesn't, I forget about vegan. I think vegan, you don't get enough protein. I mean, would keto? Is it the vegan? I mean the vegan doesn't forget about vegan. I think vegan you have you don't get enough protein. I mean would you not agree with that one? Uh, you can get enough protein, but it definitely takes um it takes a lot more concerted effort to do so. What would you say of the diets out there? Paleo, the so many, would be the one that you think a for body composition for satiety is the one that people should try first. So it doesn't appear to matter in terms of diet composition, but I know we talked about

that right. The one thing that is continuous amongst different cultures and different diet types is the diets that are most satiating are low in processed food. So mostly like sticking to a minimally processed diet. So there's a right way to do keto and a wrong way. There's a right way to do plant-based and a wrong way. So for example, if you're doing plant-based from mostly whole food sources, you're eating a lot of fiber, a lot of very satiating material. If you're doing keto, mostly from whole food sources, you're eating a very satiating material. If you're doing keto mostly from whole food sources, you're

eating a very satiating diet for the most part. But if you start getting keto ice creams, and vegan mac and cheese, that's the wrong way to do those types. I'm not, again, I'm not demonizing individual foods, but you're doing those things for the wrong reasons. You're thinking there's something magical to keto. Like, if you've looked at the keto ice creams, they have more calories than the regular thing. Great, it's crazy, but that's all like marketing, right? Like, and what I think a lot of times people do, and you can correct me if I'm wrong,

is that they cherry pick a couple of things from this diet to do, a couple of things from this diet to do, so they're not really following any real diet properly. Correct. So I would say no matter what diet you do, try and again, it's fine to have treats, but the majority of your diet should be minimally processed foods that are very satiating, high in fiber, high protein if you can, and those are going to help you be more satiated.

Now if we look at does one diet stand out as better than the others. So there's two studies I'm thinking of. There was one looking at four different diets and one looking at 14 different diets, both were systematic reviews, and they looked at long-term weight loss. And what they found was basically no diet performed better than another diet.

But in one of them, they stratified people regardless of diet type from least adherent to most adherent and wouldn't you know it, from least adherent to most adherent, there was a linear reduction in body weight. So again, I know this sounds very like much like a cop out, but whatever you can stick to, whatever you can sustain is going to be the best diet for you. Now, that appears to be extremely individual. I've had people say to me, I did intermittent fasting and I didn't even feel like I was dieting. I've had people say, I tried everything

and I did low carb and it felt easy. I've had people say, I did a plant-based diet and I was so full all the time, it felt easy. If you're gonna lose weight and keep it off, you have to follow some form of restriction. But you should choose the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive to you and also don't assume that it'll be the same for everybody.

So for me, I tried the whole eat clean 20 years ago and I was getting into bodybuilding. What I felt when I found out was I was bingeing on the weekends. And I remember one day I just hit like no down a whole pizza and I was like, you know, I feel like it's not the pizza itself that's, you know, screwing me up. It's the fact I'm eating the whole thing.

Yeah. So I'm gonna try and hit these calories and protein and carbs and fats and let myself, if I feel like I want something, let myself have it. And wouldn't you know it? I had no problems after that. You were able to stop it just a little, I'm out. Yep.

Now that's my personality, my psychology, right? So I'm somebody like, if I know I can have it, it makes me actually want it less, right? So I track my calories, I track my protein, I track my cars, my fats. Now for some people, that feels very overwhelming, it feels extremely restrictive. They just say, well, I'd rather just reduce my carbohydrate

and take a not worry about it. Okay, do that. It depends on who you are. But again, it's funny enough, when I got into coaching people, I thought, well, I've got the solution. I'll just have everybody do this flexible dieting thing, and this will solve all the problems. And of course, learned, hey, dumb dumb,

not everyone's like you, you know. What did you find for the people that you've trained? Of all the people you've trained, what has did you find for the people that you've trained? Of all the people you've trained? What has worked the most in terms of what you've seen? Well, flexible dining has worked the most, but that's a selection bias because people come to me because they know I'm a flexible dining guy. And so then they end up wanting to gravitate towards that. And I'll always tell people in low carb or fasting, like to like, look at all these people

who have gotten all these results. I'm like, yeah, because they're these people who've gotten all these results. I'm like, yeah, because they're coming to you. Because they're already sold on that, right? Exactly. So what I would say is, like, listen, you know, I think that this is great news personally, because it means the world is your oyster.

Whatever dietary strategy helps you like, be able to be consistent, just do that. I mean, we have a nutritional coaching app that we designed to say, Algray Them Based Coaching app. What's it called? It's called Carbon Diet Coaching. So it's basically like,

one-on-one nutrition coaching, but for a fraction of the price, so $10 a month. That's great. And it's all algorithm-based, algorithm-I helped right. But when it comes to dietary preference, we get people options. Do you want to be plant-based? Do you want to be low-carb, ketogenic?

Do you want to be balanced? Do you want to be low-fat? And you can pick, and then even within those, we let you shimmy the numbers a little bit. So you can really get to something, and we don't say, hey, you've got to eat five meals a day, or three meals a day, or eight meals a day, you get to something and we don't say, hey, you've got to eat five meals a day or three meals a day or eight meals a day. You get to pick based on what you feel is most sustainable for you in terms of dietary strategy. Oh, that's great.

So, you know, I really think that reframing this stuff is like, we get into these diet wars. Everybody wants to be the winner and have their diet be best. And like shouldn't the goal be to like just figure out what works for people like, and people say you can't lose fat eating carbohydrates. I'm like how many millions of examples of people eating low fat, higher carb diets and losing fat and getting very lean do we need before we say well that's obviously not true. I think people get so and I'm guilty of this it's like they find whatever worked for them and then try to justify why it I'm guilty of this, it's like they find whatever worked for them

and then try to justify why it's the best thing to do. It's almost like we're just like, it's like teams, right? Totally. It goes to politics, all the whole thing. It goes with everything, but it's also like, because we don't, to change our mind is very difficult. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so if we have that in our brain, it takes a, is it cognitive dissident? Yes, cognitive dissident. Yes. Great example of that. And this is an example of politics. But I think there was a study done like 10 years ago.

And they showed both Democrats and Republicans facts that would either support or refute, like directly refute a position they held, right? Yeah. What they found is that whether it refuted or supported their position, both things were equally as effective as causing the person to become more entrenched in their beliefs. So when they presented facts to these people,

and it didn't matter if it was Democrats or Republicans, both this is a people problem, this is not a party problem. When they presented facts to Democrats and Republicans that refuted a position they held, people did not take the other side, they did not admit they were wrong, it actually caused them to double down. And that's what's called cognitive dissonance. That's so true, I totally agree with that. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear.

The hit series returns with Jeremy Allen White and the Golden Globe winning role of Karmie. He and the team will transform their family sandwich shop into a next-level spot, all while being forced to come together in new ways as they confront their past and reckon with who they want to be in the future. FX is the Bear, all episodes now streaming, only on Hulu. Okay, I didn't ask you about artificial sweeteners, like Stevie have versus Asperg, because I think you did something on Diet Coke.

Like everyone, because if you were at, if you hold a Diet Coke around these days, you might as well just hold like a machete and like, you know what I mean? Like it's unbelievable, like God forbid you have a Diet Coke. I'm like, that's my biggest weakness, you know,

but ever, you don't think it's as bad as people think it is. Like, it's like, right? That's ... I mean, I'll tell people, do you want to discuss feelings or do you want to discuss what the data actually says? I want the data. So if we look at the effects on, like, type 2 diabetes, on weight loss. So if you look at correlation data, which is basically what characteristics do people who drink more diet sodas have,

well, you can find a correlation between obesity and diet soda. And so they've gone, ah ha, see, it's causing people to be fat. Well, that's like saying basketball's causing people to be tall. Right, yeah. Right, like, but if we actually look

at the randomized control trials, where they substitute diet sodas instead of regular soda, they see significant loss of body weight. And actually people say, well, it's not better than water. There was a recent network meta analysis done where they compared diet soda versus regular soda, water versus regular soda, and water versus diet soda. The people compared diet soda versus regular soda, water versus regular soda, and water versus diet soda. The people drinking diet soda lost a little bit more weight than the people drinking water. Stop it. Now that's diet soda is not a fat burner, okay? They're just eating less. So what that suggests is people are, if they're substituting with water, they're still seeking out that sweet taste

somewhere else. So now people will say, well, that's just weight loss. Like, it can't be healthy for your gut microbiome and whatnot. So, there's only a couple studies in humans on the gut microbiome. Most of it's been in petri dishes and high dose rodent studies. It does appear that some of these artificial sweeteners do change the gut microflora. However, what we don't know is, is it a bad change, good change, or neutral? We don't know those things. We don't know those things. No. And I've talked to several, one of my colleagues who did

her masters at Illinois when I was doing my PhD in my lab, Suzanne Defcona, is one of the world's leading researchers on the gut microbiome. And I asked her about diet soda and she said, when it comes to gut health, it's one of the last things I'm worried about. Really? Yeah. So, for example, so there was a study done where they showed that, you know, artificial sweeteners, I don't know if it was aspartame, I think it was sucralose. Which is Splenda? Yeah. Splenda. They showed that, and it does appear to be artificial sweetener dependent, I don't know if Aspertaine changes the gut microbiome. There was a study looking at it. I can't remember exactly which one it was. I know sucralose did, but if you look at the microflora that it changed in terms of reducing and increasing, they did note an increase in the production

of things like butyrate and proprenate. So if you go and look at the literature on butarate and propaneate, guess what? They actually appear to have health benefits. So now I'm not saying that artificial sweeteners are necessarily good for your gut. What I'm saying is we don't know. But what I'll tell you is this. If I can get somebody to stop drinking regular soda and drink diet soda, and they lose 50 pounds, and every time I post about this, there'll be multiple people say all I did was cut out regular soda and drink diet soda and they lose 50 pounds and every time I post about this, there'll be multiple people say,

all I did was cut out regular soda and drink diet soda and I lost 50 pounds, 70 pounds, 100 pounds. You're gonna have a hard time convincing me, regardless of whatever is happening with the gut microbiome, which we don't know, that that person is not healthier now for having lost 50 pounds. That is amazing.

So where did this all come from? It's the naturalistic fallacy, which is if something is artificial, it must be bad for us. But if you look at what Aspertain breaks down into, it's a spartic acid, fiddle alanine, and then it breaks down into the methanol. Oh gosh, methanol. Let me get to that. A spartic acid and fiddle alanine are amino acids.

You get 20 times the spartic acid and fiddlealanine in a state that you do in a diet soda. So let's just take those out of it. The methanol, it's such a small amount, your body can easily metabolize it. And I believe you get more methanol and a glass of tomato juice than you do in diet soda. Really? Because you have to understand, while a coke is like 40 grams of sugar, artificial sweeteners are hundreds of times sweeter than regular sugar. So as per tame, I think is 200 times sweeter than sugar.

And sucalose is like 600 times sweeter. So you're talking about milligrams of this stuff. It's a very, very small amount, which is why, again, when they cite these rodent studies, where they're giving a thousand times the dose of what they would normally give humans, I kind of go, who cares? Does it matter?

Now, I'm not saying people should drink diet soda. I'm not encouraging in his weight loss tool. What I'm saying is right now, if somebody wants me to say that it's bad for you, I don't think you can objectively say that. Do I think it warrants further investigation? Of course. But again, if it's a tool that helps people lose significant body weight and keep it off, then I think it's a net win.

No kidding. I mean, I think it also can just take the edge off that sweet tooth, right? Yeah. But people don't agree with that either. They think it's... I mean, if you look at the data, what I'll tell people, because some people say,

well, diet soda makes you hungrier. I'm like, okay, here's these randomized control trials showing people lose more weight on diet soda than water. So if you're saying it makes you hungrier, and they're actually eating more, then what you're actually saying is diet sodas are fat burners. Exactly.

Because you have to have an increase in energy expenditure then if there's also an increase in energy intake. But I don't think anybody's gonna say that does our fat burners. Exactly. Because you have to have an increase in energy expenditure then if there's also an increase in energy and take. But I don't think anybody's gonna say that they're fat burners. They're absolutely not. How about the whole placebo effect idea? Like if you think it works or you know what I mean? That. Powerful. As powerful as pharmaceutical drugs. Really? Yeah. So I'm thinking of a few different studies here. I'm gonna butcher this a little bit because it's been a while since I read the actual paper. How do you remember all of these papers

and dates that they came out? There was a lot of stuff rattling around out there. I see my Ph.D. advisor. I saw him last month in Denver, and he actually gave me nice companies. Like Lane, more than anyone I've ever met, has a knack for categorizing and recalling papers like no one ever met.

So thanks Don, I appreciate that. It's really rattled off like 77 different papers. I also can't change a car tire, you know? So there's, you know. That's maybe okay, but I mean your memory is though is unbelievable. Okay, like in circa 1927, so there was a study where they looked at,

are you familiar with Grelan? Yes. It's a hunger hormone. Yeah so they Measure people's growing levels and their genetics because there are naturally lower and higher secretors of growing and they looked at low secretors of growing high secretors of growing and they they stratified them but then they randomly told them what they were so you had had low secretors of growl and told they were low,

but also low secretors told they were high. Oh. High secretors told they were low and high secretors told they were high. Did you know, it didn't matter what their genetics were, it matters what the researchers told them. Wow. And that's not something where you can like,

be like, make more growling and your body just does it. So your mind is very powerful. And another study that came out, they looked at, like we know caffeine improves performance because we have tons of double-blinded, randomized control trials to show that caffeine improves performance, decreases fatigue, all these sorts of things. But they did a study where they did the same thing.

They had one group, I think it was cycling. They had one group, didn't get caffeine, told they didn't get caffeine, didn't get caffeine, told they got caffeine, got caffeine, told they didn't, and then got caffeine, told they got it. Did you know it didn't matter that they, which group got caffeine, what matters, what they told them. So the people who were told they got caffeine performed about the same, whether they got it or not, and the people that were told they didn't get caffeine performed about the same. Now this will lead people to say we'll see caffeine doesn't actually do anything.

That's not what it says. What it actually says is caffeine does work but your beliefs about what caffeine does are actually more powerful than what it does itself. And there's numerous instances like with them, they've shown like a pain medication. Like they've told people something was an analgesic and it wasn't, it was just placebo and they noted decreases in pain. And not, again, not just like, oh, I feel something,

like actual physiological hard outcomes, right? So that's why I always tell people, when they believe something to be true and they notice these miracle effects on a diet I'm like, you know what? I'm not saying that your experience is wrong But what I'm saying is you are subject to the placebo effect like anybody else. It's so that's that's crazy That's so interesting that how powerful your mind can be so it really is like mind over matter sometimes I wish I had more ignorance because then I could placebo myself. Exactly. No 100 percent. No, I agree. Then why, by the

way, if I went to drink caffeine, if I'm drinking coffee in the morning and then I'm not working out until noon, let's say, and I drink the coffee at eight, did it already wear off and I have now drink another coffee or is it now too late because once you have caffeine in your system, is it too late to then like jack it up again to get the energy you need to work out? So the half-life on caffeine is about six hours which half-life means after six hours half of it will be cleared out of your bloodstream. Okay. So it just depends, right?

So if you have a cup of coffee in the morning or a cup of cup of coffee in the morning, and that's say, seven a.m. By, let's see, doing math, by 1 p.m., half of it is now out of your bloodstream. So what I'll tell people is, if you wanna have a pick me up, like midday, probably find to have some caffeine, but you probably don't wanna do it within like six hours of bedtime,

because it can negatively impact your sleep. But also, I feel like it's not as effective if I do what, if I drink coffee in the morning, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna work out noon, then I drink the coffee. I feel like I'm still like, like I'm not as peppy as I would be in the first. Do you know what I'm about the morning?

Yeah. So what they do show is whatever you're acclimated to, Oh, that's right. That you'll feel better doing that. In general, exercise performance tends to be better in the afternoon, but again, it's not with time. Just early afternoon. Really? More than morning? Yes, but if you acclimate for six weeks, then there's no difference. So basically, to me, it's what you're acclimated to.

What do you do? I like to work out like early afternoon. So actually, like after we finish here, I'm going to go train. Really? Okay. So what do you think of fast cardio? Or do you even do hate cardio, I should ask you? No, I think cardio is fine. But you don't think cardio, like you don't love cardio. Like what's your like overall? I think cardio is good to get your body moving. I think as a fat loss tool, it's decent.

But if you look at how much you have to do compared to just eating less, you kind of have to decide for yourself whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. How much do you have to do, you think, to lose fat? I mean, you can also break down your... You know, if you're doing an hour or two hours a day, I mean, you'll definitely lose some fat, but like, you know, if you're doing 20 minutes, is it burning calories? Yeah, is it a ton? Not really.

And you could easily, like, if you burn 300 calories, think about how much you have to do to burn 300 calories. Now think about how little you have to do to eat 300 calories. Exactly. So it is usually easy to lose weight through. Again, I recommend people do both, you know, be active, exercise, but mostly for the effects on satiety and because it's just good for you in general.

Could you over train and then do the reverse, like if you can work out too much? You can over train to the point where you can increase your injury risk and feel horrible when you're training, but to decrease your energy expenditure probably not. But I think it's just, what do you value? Do you have the time and would you prefer to eat a little bit more than you can do more cardio? As far as fasting cardio goes, the idea was, well, you're not eating, so you're going to burn more fat while you're doing it.

And the research does show that you burn more fat during the exercise. Really. But remember fat burning is just one part of it. And so if you look at fat loss, like the actual loss of body fat, when they equate work between groups doing fed versus fasted cardio, you don't see a difference in fat loss. And that's because since you're burning more fat during your workout and you're abstaining from food, you're eating more food in the feeding window, right? Whereas if you're eating beforehand, you're burning less fat during the workout,

but eating less the rest of the day, so you're burning more the rest of the day. Exactly. So your body is smarter than, you know, body smarter than we are. It really is though. Okay, this is probably been like super, like super long, I apologize. But I feel like when I think, can you actually boost your metabolism? And that's all of far. It's like all these little things that I think you posted something yesterday, even, I think, which

was funny that I was going to ask you this, but like lemon, lemon and water and all these little hacks that you hear that help boost your metabolism. They're all just myths, right? Debums some stuff. You can find caffeine is a metabolism booster, but we're talking about like, you know, the initial hour after you have a big dose of caffeine, you might burn like 50 more calories. Right, so it's like-

It's not gonna change your life. And when they do long-term randomized control trials of caffeine intake, they don't really see much fat loss. I mean, you might see a little bit. There are ways to boost your metabolism in terms of burning more calories. Wait, training. So, wait, training, if you have more lean mass, you expend more calories.

Right. Because lean tissue is energetically expensive. Exercise, you burn more calories. High protein diet, you burn more calories. But the hacks and the tips and the tricks and all that kind of stuff out there doesn't really do much. In fact, I tell people one of my favorite quotes is,

the magic you're looking for is in the work you are attempting to avoid. Yes. And I heard that from your Sans periodization. I mean, you know this from entrepreneurship. Everybody wants to find the quick way to make, you know, six figures from home, working four hours a week.

And it's like, you know, there are definitely people who get lucky and that happens. But honestly, I actually don't think they're lucky because if you don't struggle a little bit you probably never become really successful. Every very very successful person I've ever met went through periods where stuff did not work, it failed, they had to work really hard, had to have a lot of perseverance and there's just no hacking your way around that and there's no hacking your way around hard work. That is the hack. You've got to work hard.

It is the hack. And just kind of embracing, I tell people, do I like it when things take longer than they should or I feel like things are dragging on? No, of course not. But I've also learned to embrace it over the years. And I know that honestly, here's the rub. It's the great dichotomy of life. If it was easy, you wouldn't even think it was worth a damn. Yeah. And it's the fact that it's hard that makes it worthwhile.

That's 100%. One other question, because I wanted to ask you, because testosterone, all these other hor, like, stuff that people are doing when they're reaching 40, 45, 50, which are take for women, create team for women, 45, 50. What's your take for women? Creatine for women, testosterone for women. What's your... I think creatin is, I mean, it's a great supplement. It is the most effective, safest... For women too. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Do you know women who take creatine? Absolutely. Yeah. And what's the... What is it? It increases lean body mass, increases strength. The worry women have is it's going to make me retain water. So if you look at the research data, the water retention from creatin is almost exclusively inside the muscle cell, which actually makes you look better or not worse.

Now people will say it made me bloated. Well, that's different. That is a GI gastrointestinal irritation. So that's where it's like pulling water into the GI. So what I'll tell for people there is one, don't load. Just do a maintenance dose of three to five grams per day, and split it up into two doses. Like, so that will help alleviate the gastrointestinal distress with it,

and you won't feel as bloated. But as far as like water retention, it's not subcutaneous water. It's water inside the muscle, which actually makes you look better, not worse. And creating this, now they're finding it has actual cognitive benefits as well. Yeah, I heard that. Our French style tool, our French style was telling me that. Yeah, so I'm a big fan of creatin. Is there a kind?

Do you care? Creatin monohydrate. It saturates the muscle cell 100%. If you want something a little bit higher end, get micronized creatin because it's more dissolvable in water. But all the other forms of creatin either work less effectively or they're just more expensive. So creatin monohydrate is the best type tried in two forms.

I also saw you posted something about creatin as a recovery, not as a prese, because people usually take it before they work out. Yeah, so our recovery supplement for my stomach... Oh, for your recovery supplement, okay. Creatin's in there, but that we did that on purpose because creatin can be a gut irritant. And caffeine is also a gut irritant.

Right. So like you'll people will take their pre-workout and then they'll sit in the toilet for 30 minutes, you know. And so what we did was we said, well, creatin timing is not important. What's important is to take it every day. So we put it in our recovery product so people could take it whenever, whereas the pre-workout was stuff that was timing important. So we wanted to reduce the gut irritation from having creatin plus caffeine together.

Gotcha. Okay, so for people like who are people who, I don't know, like 35 and over, 40 and over, who lose more and more lean muscle mass as you get older. What are ways we could kind of balance that out? Is creatine one of them? How about alkalinity? Give us some, no? Alchonitine, I help with muscular recovery from exercise. The top five thing.

Give me your top five. I mean, the biggest thing is just resistance training. I mean, I'm 41 and about as strong as I've ever been. No, I know. You look great. That's what I'm asking. What do you do? And what do you take? It's consistency, you know? Yeah, and you're natural, right?

Like you know. Yeah, so I have competed exclusively drug tested. I've always been drug free. I'm not making a judgment about people out there. They're a power lifter. I could champion power lifter. People ask, well, aren't you on TRT? I don't know, people have this idea that you hit like 30

and all of a sudden you become decrepit. Yes. Exactly 40, they say. So what I will say is if people have this idea that you hit like 30 and all of a sudden you become to credit them. Yes. Exactly 40. So what I will say is if you have clinically low levels of testosterone, TRT, and you're having side effects from that low libido, low energy, supplementing with TRT under a doctor's supervision, can be helpful. And a lot of people report a lot of benefits from that. For girls too.

For girls too. Okay, because girls get bulky. I mean, I've seen some people I know, they're like, look, I don't know. They blow and they, I'm nervous about all these things. Well, if you're, that's usually when they're jacking it up, you know, beyond physiological levels. Maybe, I think.

If you're low and you're just bringing it back into a normal range, usually you just feel better and have more energy. You can't gain weight from it. Uh, you might gain a little bit of weight, but it would be mostly- Obviously, you're not a girl. You're like, ah, you can gain a little bit of weight. Trust girls, you want to gain weight, okay? You're like, oh, yeah, you can gain a little bit of weight, but it would be mostly like- Obviously, you're not a girl. You're like, ah, you can gain a little bit of weight.

Trust girls, you're one in gain weight, okay? You're like, oh, yeah, you can gain a little bit of weight. Well, I always think of it as like, is it fat mass or lean mass? Cause lean mass typically looks good. Yeah, that's true. That's true, true. So, I think women and no disrespect to women,

they just get really hung up on that number on the scale. Totally, yes. And then a girl gets it. But I've, you know, I've always tested from, I mean, I think I had my first test, my first testosterone assessment done when I was like 27. I'm 41 now. Every time I've tested, it's been at least 800. Jesus. And the highest I've been is almost 1100. So I don't need TRT. I have a naturally high testosterone level. It's also lifestyle. Like I, I never partied a bunch in my 20s. I never beat myself up with drugs and alcohol. I usually got enough sleep,

manage my stress, okay. You know that sort of stuff. So, you know, part of it is probably genetics, but part of it is also like I just lived a healthy lifestyle. But if you were somebody who you're eating healthy, you're taking care of yourself, and your testosterone is still low, then I do think, you know, for those individuals, go talk to an endocrinologist, get your numbers done. So those are one of the things that ticks me off, there's a lot of people say, well I'm 40, I need TRT, because I don't have as much energy.

No, you don't have energy because you're eating like crap and you're sleeping five hours a night. Right. You don't need TRT, you need to fix your lifestyle. That's right. So if you're concerned about your testosterone levels, go actually get them measured, and if they're low,

then go see an endocrinologist who can help you deal with it. Okay, what other natural ways can we boost our testosterone or increase our muscle mass besides weightlifting as you're getting older? I mean, weightlifting is really the big end. I know weightlifting is a big one. Eating a high protein diet. All the things you just said.

Creates a monohydrate can help. There are a few other supplements, there are less study that may have some benefits, like Ashwaganda seems to have some promising benefits for stress management and lean mass as well and strength. But there really aren't that many. Sitchling mallet can improve performance, but there's not really data on whether or not

it increases lean mass or not. How about you? So what do you do? You work out in the, I wanna know your habits up today and then I'll let you let you out of here because I know it's been like a hundred hours. Okay. You work out in the afternoon. You said that for how long?

So my training is probably is four to five days a week or two, three hours a time. So I train a lot. Three hours at a time. Well, I'm trying to win a gold medal in the world. I know that's true. I still but not still. No. Yeah. So I'm gonna do nationals here in June. Oh. I mean I saw I'd not to get too much into my power thing career but I got a silver medal and when I was age 35 I won a 34 at IPF worlds and set a world squat record at the time. I heard about that.

What was that? What was the squat record? 668 pounds. You're strong. I trained a lot to be. And then I went through a bunch of injuries, took me seven years to get back. And then last year I got back to worlds

and was able to get the gold medal overall, which was really cool. Wait, wait, wait. You won the gold last year? Yeah. Shit. I didn't realize it was last year you, wait, wait, you won the gold last year? Yeah. Shit. I didn't realize it was last year, you got that. Yeah, so in October of last year.

So when you were 40? 40. Now I was, I saw, I should note, it was the M1 Sumastros category. So I wasn't open, which is what I had been running for previously. What's the difference? You said the older people?

It's just any age range, and this was, you know, over 40, essentially. Oh, well, then, okay, so you you know over 40 essentially. Oh well then okay So you're like over 40 and you and you were like probably like did you win by a landslide? Oh, no It was close the the former champion had won three years in a row Oh, it was actually favored going in you he was so there's what's called nominations Which is what you qualified with you're totally with, and he was 90 pounds above me, but I also knew that I didn't show all my cards at Nationals.

So yeah, I want to go back and defend that and try to win again. And just I love competing, like I love how sharp it keeps me. I love the, like, it's, I tell people, like I get a lot of, like, like, I love doing this stuff. I love doing speaking seminars, but there's something about grabbing a barbell on a platform and just going mono, mono with it, that's a lot of fun.

So then how do you train, sorry, I'm like something fascinating now. So wait, so how do you train for something like that? Three out, are you doing body part, are you doing splits? What do you do? How was your workout? So it's mostly quite a bit of volume. So power thing is a squat, the bench press, the deadlift.

So obviously quite a bit of volume on those three main lifts and then doing some accessory movements to supplement those. So I do some form of squat movement two to three times a week, some form of a deadlift movement two times a week, and then I do some sort of pressing and rowing three to four times a week. And it's kind sort of pressing and rowing like three to four times a week. And it's kind of my, I don't like do body parts splits. It's more like just, I mean, I have a coach because I don't want to do my own programming for it. Where's your coach now?

So he's, he's actually a PhD student at Florida Atlantic University. Okay. And I found him because he's a PhD student of one of my former coaches, Mike Zordos, and Mike has done a lot of research on periodization training, and he was a panel after an exam. Oh, yeah. And so Zach, Zach Robinson, his company, is called Data Driven Strength, I'll give him a shout out. He, I brought him on because I liked the idea,

I know when I was the sharpest as a coach, was when I was competing myself, when I was coaching people, or when I was the idea, I know when I was as sharp as a coach, was when I was competing myself, when I was coaching people, or when I was coaching people, and I was doing my PhD, and I was up to date all the latest research. So I let Zach take care of all that stuff. So, but my training usually works out to like, you know, two to three hours at a time, four to five days a week. Oh my, so today, where do you go to goals since you're in L.A. today?

I'll probably go to goals today, yeah. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. You're inhaling and long exhale out. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today.

Peloton app available through free tier, or pay subscription starting at 12.99 per month. Wow, three hours of just lifting? Yeah. So would you do like a million different types of squats or the same squat? It depends, I mean, I'll obviously do a lot of like my actual competition squatting, but sometimes we'll do like variations of that because just things that are less fatiguing to still get some stimulus because you're always trying

to manage your stimulus versus fatigue ratio. Like ideally, we get a lot of stimulus with less fatigue, but as a competition approaches, we kind of have to just focus on those main lifts that are very fatiguing. So yeah, it just depends on what phase I'm in. But I'm 11, no, 10 weeks out. 10 weeks out from nationals right now, so it's going to start to ramp up pretty good. So what have you eaten so far today?

Right now it's what, one o'clock or so? Yeah, so I had a breakfast sandwich this morning, you know, whole wheat bread and some fruit and then egg whites and ham. And then honestly, I just had some beef jerky on the way over because I needed some protein and I didn't really have time to cook a meal. Right, right, right. After this, I'll probably go and like just go like a chipotle or something like that, get a rice and beans and chicken

and whatnot and then I'll go train and just make sure I have enough carbohydrate. And I will, like, if I have a long session, I'll have some sugary carbohydrate, like gummy bears, for example, or pure glucose for the most part. You'll have that. I'll have, yeah, I'll have a serving of that just to make sure I've got some glucose available

as I go into a workout. And you do pre-workout then or coffee before? Yeah, so we've got our own pre-workout supplement with my something line outward nutrition and I'll take that Go in train for a few hours and then I'll get a good meal afterwards with enough protein and carbohydrate to recover and then Have another meal before bed. Do you do intermittent fasting then? Not really I probably four to five times a day a joke that I intermittent fast every night when I sleep Yeah, that's what I say too. But, you know, I think intermittent fasting is fine for fat loss, but if you're gonna try and maximize your lean mass,

you probably don't wanna go a long period of time without at least getting some protein in. Yeah, wow, so then you're eating a lot for these power lifts. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably eating 34 to 3500 calories a day right now and that will maintain my body weight. That's three so right right doesn't the dawn like are you like oh my god? I gotta go now workout for three hours. Yeah, I love the train. I love the train I'll tell people like wow you're so dedicated. I'm like listen don't be that impressed because I love doing this stuff

So if it would take dedication to keep me out quite frankly really now? Now there are days where I don't, I'm like, oh, God, I don't want to be in there. I'd have to do this session. But for the most part, I still love it. Do you do any cardio at all? Do you personally? I'll do walking and biking, but I mostly just focus on getting enough steps during the day.

Do people recognize you now when you are at gold or anywhere else? Yeah, I get recognized pretty frequently at gyms. And then even out and about now, it's pretty recognized, yeah. So it's been a, I mean, people are like, oh, this must get old. I'm like, no, if it gets old,

if I start to get active, no, I just take me out back and shoot me. Yeah, no kidding, right? Because I just look at this as such a gift to be able to reach so many people and have people actually give a damn what I have to say. So yeah, it's definitely like I've noticed in the last year, but a pretty, pretty big change.

So like even before this last year, were you like just normal, like social media, or did it just like really spike in a year? No, I think this year, this last year was a big year for me. But I mean, I was already at, I wanna say like 500,000 followers on Instagram before last year. Oh, you were already, okay.

So yeah, I mean, I, Oh, you Joe Rogan, you told me, did that change your life in 2018? It was definitely a boost, but honestly, I think I got like, I mean, I could like kind of track initially like 30, 40,000 followers off that, and I'm just thinking about the Instagram numbers.

Yeah, I know. But, you know, then it was kind of like, you know, if you just get that boost and you're not consistently putting out quality content, I mean, people aren't gonna stay. 100%. Do you do your own content? So I do all my own posts. I have a video editor who films me and then edits it up

so all my rules and stuff are edited. But everything else, I pretty much do my own. Yeah, well you do a great job, so. Thank you. You're welcome. I really loved having you on this podcast. Thank you. I'm sorry. I don't even know how I don't want to even look and see how long it's been. That's all right. Oh my, well how long has it been? I was been two hours. Okay. That's not that bad.

I can talk. You can tell. You did a good job talking. I don't think that's that bad. It was, but it was amazing. You gave me such great information. So for those people living under a rock like I did about until about six months ago, where can people find you? So I'd say my digital business card is Instagram. So at Biolane, and then I'm Biolane on almost all social media platforms. Are you on TikTok?

I am on TikTok. Are you on YouTube? I'm on YouTube. Yeah. At Biolane on all those platforms. OK. And then my website is biolane.com. And you also have your supplement company

and you have what's called the supplement company. I got Outwork Nutrition or something company. Carbon Diet Coaches are nutritional coaching app. On my website, I do a research review as well as what's called a workout builder, which is customizable training templates. So those are subscription services as well. You can get those on Biolain.com.

I have courses, so I do, I have a new coaching course that's coming up called Physique Coaching Academy, which is gonna be myself and professor Bill Campbell from USF, and basically what we're gonna try and do is for people who wanna do online coaching. Right now, there's not really anything that synergizes like personal training and nutrition, so that's what we're doing, and it's basically going to be like college level without having to go back

to college. So if you wanted to become, you know, like a very like high level understanding of this stuff, but you don't want to go back to university is a great option. So we're here. We're having our pre sale on it right now and it should launch in May. Wow. You can find all that stuff on my website. And then, you're a busy boy. Yeah, we have team Biolane coaching, which is our nutritional or coaching team. So we do offer one-on-one coaching through team Biolane, and then- But do you do it yourself?

Are you a one-on-one? I have about five clients, and I don't really take on anymore. I didn't think so. I would not be able to do all this other stuff if I did. And you probably cost a fortune to do like one-on-one Just for your time. It's expensive and then obviously like the books so we've done all that So I I when people ask why I do all like I do everything in the fitness industry

Literally everything. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure. So thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan, host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP Media Network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about my show. We are all about elevating your confidence to its highest level ever and taking your business right there with you. Don't believe me?

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