Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 611 - The Problem With Calories In Calories Out ft. Dr. IDZ

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Dr. Iddy Mughal or better known as Dr_IDZ on TikTok has his Masters in Nutritional Research and has a TON of knowledge on everything covering diet and nutrition. Today he explains why CICO or Calories... in Calories out has many pitfalls. Follow Dr. IDZ on TikTok for great informational content: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_idz Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I got a Piedmontese story for you. Oh, you do? All right, well, let's hear it. All right, this should be fun. It's kind of embarrassing. You shat. Okay. No, I'm pretty open with that.
Starting point is 00:00:13 Oh, this is going to be good. Are we on? Yeah. So our boy Joe at Piedmontese, I kind of heard through the grapevine that his dad was really sick. yeah i kind of heard through the grapevine that his dad was really sick and then maybe like two weeks ago i thought i heard that he passed on so i was like man that fucking sucks i was like i like joe love pete montes i'm like i gotta give that guy a call see what's up see how he's doing check in on him send him my condolences so i waited a little bit because like i know like after someone dies's just, you get flooded with phone calls
Starting point is 00:00:47 and all kinds of stuff. And so I was like, I'll give it a beat. I call him up. I say, Hey man, I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. Just wanted to send my condolences. I know probably doesn't do anything, but you know, uh, just thinking about you. And he goes, Oh Mark. He goes, that's great.
Starting point is 00:01:04 But he goes, my dad pulled through. He's still alive. I was like, that's some amazing news. I was like, but I feel like a fucking idiot. So we both were kind of, we were laughing about it. But yeah, I guess his dad got really sick. He had like some sort of thing with his pancreas or something like that. But anyway, he pulled through probably from eating some of that meat.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Probably. And so anyway, I said, all right, Joe, well, the real reason I called is because I need more meat. So I got right to the point and got some flank steak and some flat iron steaks and some fillets. Enough small talk. This is really what I need. Yeah. Yeah. Now that I get some steak. Yeah. Right. and some fillets enough small talk this is really what i need yeah yeah yeah now that's good yeah
Starting point is 00:01:45 now i'm gonna get some steak yeah right let's do if i had the uh the center cut ribeye again last night i was actually looking for a full fat ribeye but i don't think i have any more left i've been eating so funny i just transferred it's on it well so what's how sad is it when you go through all the meat the worst feeling ever eat it all and you're like, wait, what? Well, it's funny. I'll be talking to Nsema about it and he's just like, yeah, I still have whatever it is left. I'm just like, I got to feed three people in my house. So it lasts a couple weeks. So it goes fast, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:02:20 You keep tabs on it. Yeah. So whether it's the high fat or the low fat like it just tastes amazing so it kind of doesn't matter because i will adjust like throughout the day like if i eat like a low fat like uh center cut ribeye then maybe i'll have like eggs or something you know like i'll compensate versus the other way if i have a full fat i'll probably drop the carbs a little bit with that meal you had kids that's That's your responsibility, brother. Don't take that out on me. You can kick them out of the house.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Shit. You can just go to the store and don't come back one day. Oh, say you guys, you guys get some milk, go get a pack of cigarettes. Say, all right, everybody in the house got to eat this steak. This shit's mine. Put your name on it. You know, go
Starting point is 00:03:03 get some store bought stuff. That one's for you guys. That'd be so mean. It would be. Or just tell them it's Piedmontese and be like, it's Piedmontese. My wife made some amazing meatloaf last night. I'm not usually a meatloaf fan, but she took the 96 lean ground beef.
Starting point is 00:03:20 She cooked some bacon as well and put it in the meatloaf. It was just like it was off the charts. This will be interesting. And Seema, do you know what meatloaf. It was just like, it was off the charts. This will be interesting. And Seema, do you know what meatloaf is? I knew someone was going to say that. It's a loaf of meat. You know, hey, this ain't even nothing, but like all my friends in high school, all my
Starting point is 00:03:40 friends of Mark's completion in high school, they're always talking about meatloaf. I'm just like. What the fuck is that? The fuck is meatloaf? Yeah. It's like a meat school, they're always talking about meatloaf. I'm just like, what the fuck is that? The fuck is meatloaf? Yeah. It's like a meatball. It's like a giant meatball. It sounds like it's really good.
Starting point is 00:03:50 I've just never had it. It's delicious. Yeah. My whole life. Smothered in like ketchup. It's like really good. It looks like it's good. No, seriously.
Starting point is 00:03:58 No, it's good. Have you had meatloaf? Yeah. Yeah. When did you, when was the first time you had meatloaf? Yeah, yeah, when did you when was the first time you had meatloaf? I don't know but I will say that my sister-in-law Who is of the same complexion? Is the last time that I had it and she she's from she's from Virginia. So she's from the south
Starting point is 00:04:17 So she knows how to cook. Yeah, that shit was delicious Yeah, so I was like can we redo this with like Piedmontese 96 for ground beef? And then we'll use some G Hughes ketchup all over it, not that full like sugar stuff. And she's like, well, maybe, but it might not taste as good. I'm like, we need to try it. No, that's what we did. We used the barbecue sauce and the ketchup. We mixed them together and threw that shit right on top.
Starting point is 00:04:41 What is in meatloaf? It was fucking amazing. Stuff. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what she put in this one. I know there was bacon in there, but I think sometimes in meatloaf, just like meatballs,
Starting point is 00:04:52 I think there's like, sometimes there's some bread in there, but I don't think she made any with any sort of bread crumbs. I think she used the, we have like bacon crumbs or something like that that she was using instead.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Damn. That sounds good. Pork rind crumbs is what it was she was using instead. Damn. That sounds good. Pork rind crumbs is what it was. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That sounds incredible. See, they're on to something. Yeah, I think so.
Starting point is 00:05:11 So anyway, yeah, Piedmontese beef. It's incredible. Even the ground beef is a little, not a little bit. It's quite a bit better than anything that you're going to get at the store. And if you guys want to take advantage, head over to Piedmontese.com. It's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Excited for today's episode, guys. Yeah, Dr. IDZ coming on. We don't even know his his name we're not sure if he's a real doctor
Starting point is 00:05:46 we don't know anything but he's got great information that's all that matters yeah does that matter though like if he has that stethoscope for for looks does it matter at all what the information's coming out looks good enough hey good enough for dr frauchi good enough for dr idz i. I like it. Yeah. I just, I'm curious because, you know, you get into those arguments. It's like, oh, well, where's your degree or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:06:14 That's what they're called. And it's like, it doesn't matter, though. One thing you can tell, though, when you look at his content is that he's really good at parsing through research. Because there's a lot of individuals on that platform that they all use research to back up their statements. But then he pulls that and he's like, this is what it actually says because a lot of people misinterpret the research that they actually read and interpreting research is a skill. Oh yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:36 There's a lot to it. And he's very good at it. I honestly would not know how to even read and or interpret a study, like any study, unless, I mean, I can read the conclusion and I can maybe like get a little bit close to it. But I don't know about you guys. If you ever really looked into and read a study, it's pretty complicated. You know, the end conclusion will say something about the hemoglobin and the red blood cells. And you're like, well, I don't even know that much about those things. So I can't really, I can't really conclude much since I don't know a ton about this topic.
Starting point is 00:07:12 And so it's great to have people like him. It's great to have, uh, guys like Lane Norton and other people out there that are pulling out research and giving their interpretation of it. Um, but you know, I, I do think that studies are studies and they're not very long term and there's tons of conjecture that can be thrown at them. They might give you some idea of what's going on, but I don't know how useful that is all the time. I just heard the other day that there was a study about, you know, people talking about an apple a day. And for a while there was even some people talking about having an apple before meals, you know, do that a couple times a day.
Starting point is 00:07:53 And it can reduce the overall amount of food that you eat, but it can also have a positive impact on your glucose post that second meal. We've heard of the second meal effect before on the show, but it was more in regards to having like protein and then eating, you know, later on in the day, like you have protein in the morning. And then when you eat lunch, it's supposed to help you to potentially better handle the glucose and things like that. But again, I think it all comes down to like long-term habits
Starting point is 00:08:23 and it's the long game. You know, if you, I heard an analogy the other day that if a plane was leaving from New York to go to Los Angeles, if it was just off by three degrees, it would end up in Tijuana. You know what I mean? You think about, and that's how I think about the progress that you're trying to make. It's these small little incremental changes over time that'll make the big difference. The hard thing sometimes is to interpret some of this research and figure out what is that, what are these like good little habits that I can bring to the table each and every day. But if we're just sensible and we're reasonable, the rules and the laws always come back to a lot of the same things.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Most of the time when people are overweight, they are usually overeating. They're not getting into a good habit of movement. And potentially they have bad habits with their sleep and maybe some other habits that are just not introducing enough movement, exercise and healthy eating into their life. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it doesn't really take much. Like before, before we started the episode, we were talking about how, um, you know, he had a video where he's talking about, uh, or someone was saying that if you want to build muscle, you need to be in a surplus. If you want to, uh, lose muscle or if you want to lose fat, you have to be in a deficit, but there's a lot of
Starting point is 00:09:45 like little things or little nuances there. Like you can build muscle while you're in a caloric deficit. Um, but it's, are you willing to allow, like, are you willing to, for it to take a little bit longer, not see as much progress on the scale as quickly, um, and do that over time? What about, what about a teenager? Like that's not even eating that much food. Yeah. That's not even training. Yeah. They're going to gain muscle while they're in a caloric deficit.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Puberty is a crazy thing. Right. You know what I mean? Because of the hormones that are going on in the body. And so there's context to everything. Your age matters. Your sex matters. Where you are in your life matters.
Starting point is 00:10:26 I would just, I mean, we're learning more and more about sunlight, what sunlight can do. Um, I would even say like, it would have a massive impact on your fat loss, whether you're depressed or not. I would just imagine that it would be harder to lose body fat when you're depressed, not necessarily saying that you can't lose body fat, not necessarily saying that you get to skip past the laws of thermodynamics. But I would just imagine even in a caloric deficit, if you're really stressed, maybe your body doesn't want to let go of that fat. And there's just the fact that you're going to be moving less if you're not feeling as good, right? You're not going to want to take the walks that you need to take or do the things that you
Starting point is 00:11:03 need to do. So it will make an absolute difference. But the great thing about him is that he goes into a lot of the small nuance things that are pretty damn important because as much as we want things to be super black and super white, as far as all of this is concerned, it's not, there's a lot of middle ground. Oh yeah. There's a lot of great everything. Um. I think when we think about people that are in shape, we just see such a wide array of folks that get into good shape. Sometimes there's PEDs in the history. Sometimes there's great genetic potential in the history. Sometimes there's a combination of those two things. And sometimes there's a combination of all of those things along with
Starting point is 00:11:46 working, you know, somebody working their ass off. We also see some people that maybe don't have as much focus. Maybe they, maybe their whole goal isn't to be shredded, but they're super lean just because that they've always been that way. And they've had these habits from the time they were a kid. Maybe they played soccer. Maybe they were doing track and field. Maybe they've always been on the thinner side. And so therefore, maybe it's a little easier for them to be lean. And then we see people post on social media and we kind of get confused on like,
Starting point is 00:12:19 which person should I follow their method? But there are some people like, in my opinion, person should I follow their method? But there are some people like, in my opinion, the best way to be the most jacked and to be the leanest is to never get fat in the first place. So people that have grown up to be somewhat of hard gainers, that might not be the most ideal thing to like look super jacked. But if you look on social media and look at most of these guys that are really shredded, I would say that a massive majority of them are probably people that have never really acquired much body fat in their life before. And so it's just interesting to try to figure out who's got it right, who should I pay attention to. But there's a lot to be learned from really everybody in my opinion there's lots to be learned from everybody and there's like it's important to
Starting point is 00:13:10 not try like if you pay if you find somebody and they let's say they've always been in shape um i think something that's valuable is looking at what are the habits that they have because some people look at that and say oh they've never been fat so they don't understand my experience but if you're in a place you don't want to be maybe you could try to pick up some of their habits to get to where they're at because even though they've never been through the hardship that you're going through that you've been through you could pick up the idea of daily walks the idea of not having snacks now these these things that they do and implement those into your lifestyle to get you from there to ideally somewhere close to where they're at, because they're obviously doing something that allows them to maintain that.
Starting point is 00:13:53 So what are those things? Because those are universal, despite them not having been super big before. Those things are universal. So how can you implement those into your life right now? That's the big deal. I think it's a huge myth that people think that you have to have gone through something really horrible in order to have great advice. You know, it's interesting. It's a fallacy. It really is. For someone to give advice on being lean, it helps if they are lean. I mean, I think that it's impressionable, you know.
Starting point is 00:14:46 I mean, I think that it's impressionable, you know, but it also doesn't necessarily make them more knowledgeable, more knowledgeable because they lost 100 pounds and it doesn't make them any less knowledgeable because they've never been over 10 percent body fat. to be able to stand up to criticism and not necessarily the person or the way that the person is or even some of the things that the person is doing. But it's the information that is being shared that you need to try to poke holes in. And sometimes you'll find out that some people, you can go a couple layers deep on the information that they have, and it's hard to really move them. And it's hard to, like, Lane Norton would be somebody like that, or even Dave Asprey. The guys are on opposite ends, and if you go a couple questions deep with Dave Asprey, he's still going to be able to talk in a way that mightorton could kind of do the same thing because they know like the molecular structure of protein and they can kind of break all these things down into these uh smaller kind of minute amounts and so there's a lot of great information out there and i'm excited to talk to dr idz today because uh his information seems to be very like general and the way that he
Starting point is 00:15:49 explains it is super simple. And so it'll be nice to kind of see, to also test him a little bit because he hasn't been in a long format type thing like this. He normally is hearing what somebody else said and then he's researching that and then he's coming back with uh his points of view on this show today we're just running shit kind of live and throwing stuff at him so i'm interested to see uh how much he really knows versus versus his ability to kind of like research stuff it'll be interesting kind of find out yeah no it's it's it's gonna be dope and if you guys have tiktok you should follow him he's a versus his ability to kind of like research stuff. It'll be interesting to kind of find out.
Starting point is 00:16:26 Yeah, no, it's going to be dope. And if you guys have TikTok, you should follow him. He's Dr. Underscore IDZ. He has a lot of really, really good videos on his page. Just going over simple, well, not even simple. Some of them are pretty complex things, but you could learn a lot from his stuff. But going back to what we were talking about as far as like individuals who haven't been fat i think that you there's a lot there's so much to learn from individuals who've
Starting point is 00:16:50 had a massive transformation like mike couples you know um and gormy the great things there is understanding how one can really transform and change horrible habits what you need to do or the type of grit you need and the type of consistency you need to actually change those habits into good habits. That's a very, very important thing to learn how to do because one large space that an individual who's never been very large, a gap in knowledge is they don't know what it's like and the things that individuals who are much bigger have to go through to make those types of habit change because it's very easy to say go hey go go take a few 10-minute walks each day but if their ankles hurt and their lower back is
Starting point is 00:17:36 in pain and even getting up and putting clothes on is a is a is a problem like they don't realize all those little things that are going on there that might be a limiting factor and maybe we got to start somewhere else so that's that's why that side is super important too i saw joe rogan and michaela peterson kind of getting into it and uh michaela was mentioning i think she was talking about her dad she was saying he couldn't exercise he didn't't have the, the energy for it. And then it went back and forth and Rogan's like, no,
Starting point is 00:18:07 he had the energy for it. You know? And they, I think ultimately what we're talking about sometimes is that everyone has the energy to do a little bit of something. Yes. Now I have to admit that I have never suffered from depression. I have. So I don't know. I have never suffered from depression.
Starting point is 00:18:25 I have. So I don't know. I don't know what any of that feels like. I don't know what it's like to be, you know, several hundred pounds overweight and to have my feet just totally killing me just for me trying to stand. However, regardless of circumstances and how awful they might be, we see time and time again individuals picking themselves up at some point and saying, I am going to work on doing a little bit more than I was capable of doing yesterday, even if it's a tiny amount. And then having the, having that, uh, turn into a discipline that they adopt over time, eventually it becomes part of their day-to-day routine. And the next thing, you know, it's part of their character. And now that person's, you know, now known for running marathons or something. You're like, how in the fuck did that happen? But those are the kinds of things that we see
Starting point is 00:19:23 happen time and time again. So I would say I am compassionate and I do understand that people may not want to move and they may be kind of crippled by a lot of their own thoughts. But I think that if you address, if you can address where the main source of the problem is coming from, which most people don't want to do because it's too painful, then you can probably work on moving forward. But you might have to see a psychiatrist. You might need medication. You might need all kinds of stuff that maybe a lot of the rest of us don't need because we just heard a message from somebody saying, oh, all you got to do is put one foot in front of the other. Oh, you want to drop some weight? It's as simple as going on some walks, cutting out some sugar. There's a lot of people that can listen to that information,
Starting point is 00:20:08 put it into practice right away and drop 30 pounds. There's a lot of other people that at the particular moment when they hear that in their life, they literally don't have the ability to push it forward. However, they would have the ability to push something forward in just trying to get to the root cause of whatever their issue is that is stifling them, crippling them, making them scared to kind of move forward and to try to be better. Yeah. The video that we put out with Jesse Burdick about how walking can change your life. Huge response. it's been awesome but there there was a good amount of comments that were mentioning like oh some people can't walk it's like like man but but like you said mark there's got to be something that you
Starting point is 00:20:57 can do right now unless they're bedridden like i would have no idea but i guess that person could still do something yeah i mean you uh yeah you could potentially be like unfortunately in a wheelchair or something or have some sort of thing that's keeping you from taking any sort of steps um but maybe you can figure out a way to use your arms um there's there's always there's always there's always something you know i i just think that if you're a human being, then you need to move. Anything that's like an animal or a mammal that's on this planet has to move. And most other animals don't have a hang-up about moving because they have to move.
Starting point is 00:21:44 It's like literally life or death for them. And they also don't ever get into a point where they get to be obese. They get to be heavy. So people that dig themselves into this hole where they have a really hard time moving, that's what my mother died from. And I saw that firsthand. I got to unfortunately witness that and watch that happen over the years it you know it was like a a few decades worth of uh not moving enough not taking care of herself enough not sleeping enough um
Starting point is 00:22:18 just not loving herself enough and it was sad you know it brutal to watch. But I know for a fact that my mom could do certain things because she did many times. She lost weight a bunch of times in her life and she was successful with it and she did a good job with it. But ultimately, it was her mindset that ended up kind of taking her down. She died from a mindset that wouldn't allow her to understand that if she worked on stuff every day, she could chip away at it over a long period of time. Now, this is a woman that was abused as a child. This is a woman that grew up with alcoholic parents. This is a woman that was told she was fat by her dad. So she had a lot of cards stacked against her. But I saw firsthand that she was able to manage it sometimes. And there was other times where she wasn't able to manage it. So I think, I personally believe that everyone can figure it out. desire because nobody wants to be in pain. Nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to be considered undesirable, fat. Nobody wants any of those things really. So it's not just a matter of like wanting
Starting point is 00:23:34 to do it. A lot of people do want to do it. But when they go to do something, they get punched in the face so hard, it hurts too much for them to have a good enough positive experience with just walking to the mailbox to the point where they don't want to try it again the next day and if you were to think about yourself if you went to um if you went to uh went to try anything you know you went to try something somebody you know, you went to try something. Somebody just said, Hey, you know, jump off this, this, you said you jumped off kind of like a cliff not, not too long ago, jump off this 20 foot cliff. It's, it's amazing feeling, you know?
Starting point is 00:24:18 And you're like, all right, screw it. You do it and you end up like just with a crazy panic attack, you know, you have to go to the hospital. They're checking out your heart. They're like, man, like, I don't know what you were doing, but like you could have died. Are you going to go back and do that? You could you could do it again. You could say, well, it's just mind over matter. I got to figure that out.
Starting point is 00:24:38 You could go back and try it again. But would you really want to? You know, you you you might in your head, you might think that was kind of a cool experience, but, you know, that the risk to reward was not good enough. And so I think people tend to they stick with what they're comfortable with. You're not going to really hear anyone ever say, oh, man, I've been so stressed the last couple of weeks. All I've been eating is chicken and broccoli, you know, Hey, during this whole thing, you know, uh, this situation that we've been for the last two years, um, with the gyms closed and these other things that were going on, uh, I was just so stressed out that, that all I did was run and eat chicken and rice and broccoli. And I got shredded
Starting point is 00:25:25 because of all, because of all the stress, you know, people don't want to be fat. People don't want to have negative interpretations of their stress, but it's what we do. And it's, it's like a little blanket. It's the little thing that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable than if you didn't have that and honestly that's um i mean i i get it that some people can't walk but that's an interesting response to that video because i mean yes some people can't but when we look at the general population is that a is that a bad suggestion especially if the video is titled walking every day will be beneficial for you it's interesting that there's going to be a person in the comments who's like yeah well some people can't walk like right all right we supposed to have all the answers right i mean i'm sorry it's hard to point to people like tyler break just
Starting point is 00:26:22 because he's such an animal but i mean you know that guy doesn't have, you know, full use of his legs. And I mean, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, black belt, jacked as a motherfucker, doing bodybuilding shows in here. I mean, just Olympia top five Olympia, Olympia top five. I mean, the guy is just it's ridiculous. be a top five i mean the guy is just it's ridiculous um but one thing i found interesting with him and some other folks that have been in here uh that have had crazy uh injuries and and things uh that have happened to them where they sometimes don't have legs or they only have one leg is the setup that they have to go through just to get themselves to a particular point. And that's my main point is like, I've seen people with circumstances where they're way behind,
Starting point is 00:27:12 they're miles behind other people in terms of their convenience to be able to do a certain thing, but they still figure it out. Watching Tyler trying to figure out how to put chains on his body so he can, because he can do pull-ups all day like there's no tomorrow. Him trying to figure out how to, you know, do weighted movements like that. It takes him a while to get it set up, but he's still over there doing it. He's still getting it done. We got IDZ in the house. Oh, my God. I wonder if he's going to gonna have the that's his name
Starting point is 00:27:48 hello can you hear me absolutely we can hear you thank you so much for being on the show today no thank you very much for having me um i think the sound is coming from my laptop and not my microphone. So I hope it's clear from your end. Yeah. Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear. It sounds great. Excellent.
Starting point is 00:28:12 How are you? How are you guys doing? We're doing fantastic. You ready to dive into this? I am indeed. Yeah, just come back from work. So no better time than now. Let's just start off by you kind of introducing yourself and just telling us how you kind of fell into um i guess uh having rebuttals towards uh maybe some misinformation
Starting point is 00:28:34 that people might be passing along in terms of uh the information that people are sharing via like TikTok in the fitness community? Yeah, so that's a very interesting one. So basically I, you know, completed medical school. Alongside medical school, I decided to do an extra master's degree in research specifically focusing on nutritional research. And with that comes a lot of education into the limitations, how nutritional research is conducted, you know, what are some of the pitfalls and things to look out for. And what I found was that nutrition research as a general topic topic is perhaps one of the most heavily debated kind of science fields due to the intricacies and the difficulty of actually conducting nutrition research in and of itself. So even if your
Starting point is 00:29:35 question, the hypothesis that you are proposing is completely sound, when you go to conduct a study, many, many different issues arise. And that's just the nature of nutrition research. And this has become more apparent when you look in the online space, where people, you know, will take a research study, and they will perhaps misinterpret what's going on, or they may draw conclusions that aren't quite justified based on the science we have available. So that's what I found. And, you know, I'll get tagged in probably 15, 20, 25, sometimes 40 videos a day. 15, 20, 25, sometimes 40 videos a day. And, you know, I can't respond to everyone. And I can't reply to everyone. So I then started to become tactical as to which videos to respond to, and which ones I thought would benefit the audience and the general public most. So that's
Starting point is 00:30:42 kind of how I came to, you know to start to try and correct some common misconceptions, as I'm sure you've seen on my videos. We cover lots of things like the anabolic window, is it all just about calories, meal timing, as we've talked about, Mark. So there's just a lot of misinformation that I believe we need to take an objective approach. And we need to look at the evidence we have available. And I do my best to stick to what the evidence says to the best of my knowledge. So that's kind of what I've tried to do with my audience. To the best of your knowledge, is a calorie a calorie, especially once it's entered the human body.
Starting point is 00:31:27 Yeah, this is a this takes me back to one of the first kind of back and forth that I've had with some people, especially I think Greg Doucette basically responded to my video very early on. This was many months ago. You know, he has a series where, yeah, he like reviews TikTok videos. And essentially, okay, let's break this down nice and simple. A calorie is a measurement of energy. It's a unit of energy, okay? is a measurement of energy. It's a unit of energy. And when we digest and metabolize food and nutrients, we can access this energy and we can utilize it. So it's just a transfer of heat, a transfer of energy. So that's number one. So of course, when you have one calorie and you
Starting point is 00:32:20 ingest one calorie, no matter where the food is coming from, it is still one calorie. Yes, of course. And when it comes to weight loss or weight gain, the overall calories will always be the most important factor. Now, however, when it comes to optimal health, well-being, annual metabolism, and all other aspects of life, the source of those calories and how your body utilizes it is, of course, of utmost importance. So a lot of examples I give are, you know, when we look at calorie matched studies, you know, different sources of calories can have drastic changes on our metabolic health, you know, our appetite, dysregulation, hormone function, even stress management, sleep quality,
Starting point is 00:33:15 loads and loads of avenues come off. And when you actually dive down into the effects that different calories have on our health, you then start to notice the nuance and the vast field of information that's out there. So in the basic sense of the word, yes, a calorie is a calorie. However, health is just so much more than that. And I think people need to distinguish between why are you trying to define a calorie in its simplistic term? If you're trying to define it in that way, is it because all you care about is weight? If all you care about is weight, then fair enough. Okay, a calorie is a calorie. But calories, as we've already discussed, will have different effects on your satiety,
Starting point is 00:34:04 will have different effects on the hormones that regulate metabolism, will have different effects on your sleep quality, how easy it is to stick to that proposed calories in the day. For example, if I ate, you know, a jar of peanut butter, which is very easy, you know, a jar of peanut butter contains 2500 calories. Yeah. Would I be able to go the entire day without eating again? Most likely not. But oh no, but a calorie is a calorie. So surely that should be your daily calories. No, that's not how it works. You need to look at the overall picture and what it's doing for our health. So that's why I get quite frustrated with people that try and make the concepts of calorie management or weight management very simplistic where they just refer to calories. So that's the issue I have. And that's why, you know, people have come at me and they've made videos.
Starting point is 00:34:58 That's completely fine. Make all the videos you want. But I'm going to stick to a holistic approach to health and not just keep things, you know, down to the basic simple route. So that's what I've tried. Since we're kind of on this topic of calories and probably when it gets calories and calories out, we should probably talk a bit and maybe you can explain to us the calorie or the, yeah, the calorie equation with neat thermoelectric food, all that type of stuff. Cause that's what was that. So some of the things that people don't think about when it comes to all of this. People think about being at a deficit and thinking about being in a surplus. They miss out on all those little things that make a big difference on if you're actually in a deficit and if you're actually in a surplus.
Starting point is 00:35:40 Yeah, that's a very, very interesting one. And I think on paper, it makes complete sense. I think on paper, calories in versus calories out is a very nice, simple equation. You've got to scale one side and you've got to scale the other side. Oh, if only the body was that simple. Believe me, physiology for seven years at the highest level, I don't know anything. I'm telling you, I don't know anything. The more I look into a specific field of nutritional health, the more I get confused. It's utterly fascinating. Now, let me give you some examples. Okay. Right. So calories in that side of the scale is, of course, it's relatively simple. How much calories you intake will be, of course, dependent on food quality, whether they are whole foods, whether they are hyper palatable foods, does the body activate the food reward pathway? Does it make you crave more? Or does it stay to
Starting point is 00:36:37 get you? That's what the calories inside of the equation pretty much boils down to. So that's going to be about food quality, all your basic advice, very, very useful advice, but everyone knows these things. So you want to stick to your whole foods. You want to minimize your processed foods. You want to increase the proportion of protein and good quality protein that you're having to then keep you more satiated throughout the day. So those are the fundamentals of the calorie in side of the equation. Now the calorie outside is super complex. So when people say, oh, you've not lost weight because you're not in a calorie deficit, I hand on my heart, I can tell you now there's not a single person on earth that knows all of the things that affects the calories outside of the equation.
Starting point is 00:37:26 There is not a single person in the world. And I'll explain. So even just take something that maybe, you know, someone might not think is being important. For example, your micronutrient of, you know, selenium intake or your iodine intake or zinc, these things we know now, they are fundamental for the synthesis and the use of our free T3 and T4 hormones. So there are thyroid hormones, right? And if you're not getting an essential or an adequate amount of those nutrients,
Starting point is 00:38:02 which are very, very small micronutrients, they're very, very small measurements, then you could perhaps not be fueling your metabolism as efficiently as we could. Then you've got things such as one night of a reduced sleep quality, for whatever reason, you could be stressed. The next day, there's evidence in plenty of studies that your resting metabolic rate will slow by about 5%. And your metabolic rate after meals of that day can decrease anywhere from 20 to 25%. So that's just one night of poor sleep. Then you've got the interlink and the relationship between your daily stresses. So there's a really interesting pilot study done in 2015, which actually starts to put figures on the effect that stress and our cortisol has on our metabolism and how does it affect the calories outside of the
Starting point is 00:39:01 equation. But the funny thing is cortisol affects the calories in and the calories outside of the equation. But the funny thing is, cortisol affects the calories in and the calories outside of the equation. So they did a study where they took a bunch of healthy women, no problems. They ran a lab experiment or a very tightly controlled experiment where they monitored their daily stresses of the women before they came in. So the day before, they monitored what you know, what were they stressed about what's happening in your life? You know, they use validated questionnaires. They found out, you know, which of these women were more stressed than the other women. Okay, fine. They found that in the women that were more stressed the day before they monitored what they were eating and run experiments, they found that those women
Starting point is 00:39:45 after their meals, they all had set meals, they found that their resting metabolic rate after the meals in about a six hour window post meal was lowered by about 100 calories over the course of the day. So that's just a transient change in your stress and your cortisol levels. And we know that this puts us in a state of, you know, it's a biological stress response. So any form of metabolic state, which is not optimal, our body responds by releasing cortisol. And this acts many different ways. So it increases glucose output from the liver. It increases our appetite because it's a survival mechanism. It can redistribute fat stores from fat underneath the skin, and it can shove the fat towards our abdomen, towards our visceral fat stores. And this is a very, very crucial topic because visceral fat in and of
Starting point is 00:40:45 itself is insulin resistant. It responds very differently to the normal fat that we have on our limbs, on our bodies, on our torso. And then you've opened up a whole different kind of worms just because you've become chronically stressed or you have a stressful work. For example, my job, my job is very stressful. I'm sure a lot of things that you guys do or keeping up to date with everything and organization, I'm sure at times you become very stressed. So because these things fluctuate so often,
Starting point is 00:41:16 you know, in our day-to-day life, for someone to say, oh, I know how many calories I need per day to lose weight, this is a very dynamic equation. It changes all of the time. And there are countless things that influence the calories out parts and the things that would influence our appetite and affect our calories in parts. So on paper, it's a very simplistic equation. That is completely true. And lots of coaches and trainers and people online that make educational videos, they will always boil it down to the four main components,
Starting point is 00:41:55 which is your basal metabolic rates, your exercise or your exercise activity thermogenesis, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. I know, Mark, you like going for your walks now, right? It now right it's very very good habit to have and that accounts for a good proportion then you've got your thermic effects now but beyond that in between all of those individual components many many things influence each of them individually which makes the equation much more complicated imagine you've got four sides so this to this calories out equation off each of those sides you've got many many branches coming off each one and then lots of things affect those and then these things indirectly affect the calories
Starting point is 00:42:36 inside as well so you know this we could talk about what things that affect the equation pretty much all day and all night um and i'm still developing my understanding and I'm still, I try and, you know, read into maybe 50 to 100 papers a week, you know, on top of my work. And I honestly can't keep up. I honestly can't keep up. It's quite, it's quite fascinating. that you propose would have a large influence on maybe optimizing our output and maybe optimizing even what we take in. You mentioned certain types of food maybe helping with hunger. And in terms of exercise, I would imagine like a lot of things probably matter. Like if you ran a mile, let's say like you ran a mile in seven minutes on one day and you ran a mile in seven minutes on another day, I would just totally guess that it would matter. Even though it's the same exercise, the same amount of work, I would conjecture that it probably matters like what time of day you did it. It probably matters like when you ate, you know, versus like, it's hard to know like what are some of the most optimal things.
Starting point is 00:43:52 But aside from like tiny nuance stuff, what are some of the big picture things that you believe in that you think could make a difference? You know, I saw you do something more recently on like fasted cardio. Like, is that a thing? Is that extra beneficial? What are some of your thoughts right okay so there's many aspects many aspects of these questions here so let's tackle the simple one so fasted cardio right in essence people this is also a misinterpretation of the evidence and i get really frustrated where you know people read a conclusion of the evidence and i get really frustrated where
Starting point is 00:44:25 you know people read a conclusion of a study and they find a study that says oh fasted cardio leads to higher levels of fatty acid oxidation and they go oh this must mean that you will lose more weight if you do fasted cardio they've gone from an observation from a study to then jumping to the conclusion that that leads to better outcomes, physical body composition outcomes. And that's a massive leap. And that's a massive misunderstanding. So let's quickly clarify that one. So there was a meta-analysis, and it makes complete sense, because when you do exercise when you're on an empty stomach and you haven't fueled yourself in the morning, for example, say you wake up and you've had nothing to eat for 15, 16 hours or whatever, and then you go and decide to do fasted cardio, you will of course tap in to your energy stores from your fat tissue
Starting point is 00:45:28 because you haven't got anything readily available going through your digestive tracts. So you are going to have increased levels of fatty acid oxidation if you train or if you train fasted. However, it's only because you've not yet had that meal that you should have had. So when you then have that meal, then the actual overall picture comes to how many calories and how many calories have you burned throughout the day. So the actual body composition outcomes don't change, which I think was proven by recall now, I think Brad Schoenfeld in 2014, where he did a fasted cardio versus non-fasted cardio three times a week over many weeks. And they found, surprise, surprise, or no surprise at all, that actually your body composition
Starting point is 00:46:21 stays the same if you've adjusted for total calories throughout the day. So that transient increase in fatty acid oxidation post-fasted cardio doesn't mean anything because all you've done is you've shifted the meal from being before the workout to after the workout. So instead of utilizing the food in your gut going through your tract, you're utilizing energy from your fat stores. Then after when you fuel yourself, you'll then be storing that food as fat stores. So you see how it's all about the 24 hour period and what happens across the entire day. So that's the first simple thing. Now, the next thing, which you mentioned about, you kind of asked me about what are the kind of some key aspects which can help us optimize the calories outside of the equation, but also the calories inside of the equation, right? And I think this nicely comes on to one key thing, which I believe you've talked about before.
Starting point is 00:47:27 which I believe you've talked about before. And I think a very, very understated aspect would be sleep hygiene and sleep quality. I'm not talking about duration. Duration is a completely separate issue. I'm talking about the quality of your sleep. Are you accessing the deep sleep phase where you're releasing delta waves, you're rejuvenating your brain, you're actually allowing for repair and growth to occur? Or are you just lying on your phone, you're a bit drowsy, and you're lying in bed at two in the morning, and you're activating blue light from your phone, and you're waking up every two, three hours. So let's talk a little bit about why sleep quality is super important for the calories outside and the calories inside. So there was a good, oh, there was an amazing meta-analysis, I think in 2008 by Capuccio et al. And I think what it showed, I think it entailed over 600,000 participants across many, many studies.
Starting point is 00:48:26 And what they found was that if you slept on average less than six hours of good sleep, that increases your risk of obesity by 55%. So just that single variable, the single variable is, of course, it's not going to be, you know, six minutes, one minute past six hours, you're not going to be obese. And then five hours, 59, you know, you've got a high risk. There's obviously a sliding scale. And the analysis shows that the more sleep going towards that optimum range, which is around seven to nine hours, the average people have, which lies in between that range, the lower their risk of being obese throughout their life. And this is for many reasons, because as I've already mentioned with the previous study that
Starting point is 00:49:17 I cited, one night of poor sleep can obviously impact your total calories in the next day. So there was a study that showed where you put healthy men in a lab and you force them to only have four hours of sleep. They ended up eating 550 calories extra the next day. And that's for several reasons. One, this completely upsets your appetite regulation. So your ghrelin spike and your hunger hormones, they become far more pronounced. And that's because once again, sleep deprivation is a state of metabolic stress. Our body needs sleep. So when you deprive your body of the thing that rejuvenates the body, then of course, the body is going to become stressed. So that's a form of stress in itself is having a chronically
Starting point is 00:50:13 deprived sleep state. So when it upsets your appetite regulation, you're going to spike your hunger hormones. It actually decreases the fullness as well by about 25%. So when you actually have the same meal, but just because you've been sleep deprived, you're not going to become as satiated or as satisfied with that meal. And you're not going to metabolize the nutrients as efficiently as is demonstrated by the figure that your basal metabolic rate will also slow down by 5%. And post meals, the oxidation and the metabolization of those meals is reduced by about 25%. So as you can see, not only does it disrupt your appetite and your levels of fullness,
Starting point is 00:50:57 which will affect the calories inside of the equation, but it will also have deleterious effects on the calories outside of the equation, but it will also have deleterious effects on the calories outside of the equation by linking to a poorer glucose tolerance, by increasing our cortisol levels, increasing circulating insulin levels, and decreasing our basal metabolic rates. So I think sleep as a whole needs to be talked about more. And we need to discuss ways in which we can improve our sleep quality. And that comes from, you know, sleep hygiene practices. So for anyone that's listening, or for anyone that will listen, you know, looking at sleep hygiene practices as an overall lifestyle measure is going to be absolutely
Starting point is 00:51:47 crucial. You know, I'd even argue that having a good sleeping pattern that's regulated, that is good quality and is a similar time every day, if possible, I would argue that that would trump for your overall life quality later in life. That would trump, you know, quality later in life, that would trump, you know, no matter how much exercise you do. I think sleep quality is absolutely fundamental to our overall health and well-being. And there's lots of evidence that shows that, you know, poor sleep and people that do shift work. So like me, I'm going to be on night shifts in a few weeks, and my body's just going to become completely messed up again. And I'm going to have to try and do my best to mitigate the issues, you know, with changing my
Starting point is 00:52:29 circadian rhythm and my sleep cycle. So that's a very, very understated one. And people need to focus more on it. Guys here on the power project, you know that we talk so much about sleep because how much of a difference it makes for your muscle gain, your fat loss, your nutrition, your cravings, all of that. That's why we're so pumped to partner with this great sponsor, Eight Sleep. Now, Eight Sleep is honestly the most advanced mattress on the market. Not only does it have thermal regulation, meaning that number one, you can set your mattress as low as 55 degrees to as high as 110 degrees because over here, we're hot sleepers, right? But number two, it tracks your heart rate. It tracks your movement through the night. It's shown that the eight-sleep mattress allows you to get to sleep 32% faster,
Starting point is 00:53:08 along with having 40% less movement throughout your night, so you can actually get more restful sleep. And since your temperature changes throughout the night, that affects your circadian rhythm while you're sleeping. The mattress can cool down, and it will slowly heat up as you're getting closer and closer to waking, so you'll have a smoother wake-up period it's insane andrew can you tell the people how to get it the amount of technology in my bed now surpasses everything else in my entire household so it's kind of a weird flex to talk about like how advanced my bed is when most people want to talk about their tv or their you know their xbox or whatever it is. But for us, it's definitely our bed because it's that freaking advanced. And if you guys want to take advantage of this awesome
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Starting point is 00:54:20 Later on, I do want us to, because we talk about sleep a lot on the podcast, and some of the things we try to concentrate on are the big habits that are going to have effects on everything else you do. Sleep is one of the big ones. You know, we don't get like if we don't get good sleep, I notice my cravings are way worse. And if I do that over time, I'm a gain some fat. So it's a big, huge thing that we need to focus on. for the shift workers out there that are now listening to this what like what do you do when you have to get yourself in a situation where like you're you're just like your schedule is off and you can't necessarily have the best sleep do you supplement certain things to help with sleep onset how do you work on that so that you can mitigate the issues that happen with bad sleep quality
Starting point is 00:55:00 excellent question excellent question um so let's start with, let's try and understand actually how disrupting our circadian rhythm, how does that impact our overall health? Okay. So not many people might actually know about this. So, you know, people always mention that it's all about what you do across the 24 hours, you know, timing of nutrients, timing of exercise, timing of sleep. People put these things to, you know, to a lesser importance. However, the field of chrononutrition or the field of nutritional science, where we look at not just the total amount of nutrients you're having not just the quality but also the timing is showing to actually have a fundamental role
Starting point is 00:55:52 in our overall health and well-being and that's demonstrated many times so there was a very interesting um meta-analysis in 2020 that showed that shift workers or people that would regularly consume large amount of calories towards the later part of their circadian rhythm, so that means whenever you usually go to sleep in those few hours before that time, people that consume a large amount of calories near that time, they are unable to regulate their blood sugar levels as efficiently. And we know that blood sugar levels are crucial for overall metabolic health and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, diabetes, insulin resistance, and so on. Then you've got other physiological effects, such as there's
Starting point is 00:56:40 some evidence, it's a little bit mixed, but there is some evidence showing that the thermic effect of food closer towards your circadian night can be reduced by around 50%. So 50%, the amount of calories your body uses to digest and process the food is lowered. And this was also replicated in an interesting study recently, a brand new study in 2021 that's just come out that showed that people that had regular meal patterns over two weeks, this was a controlled study. If you have regular meal frequency and your body has gotten used to that meal frequency, you're going to have a much higher thermic effect of food compared to people that dysregulate and constantly change their meal timings. So that's brand new evidence further emphasizing the point that optimizing our circadian rhythm and our 24-hour cycle is going to be very, very important. Now let's go back to the AM versus PM thing,
Starting point is 00:57:44 and then we'll touch on the shift work and how to mitigate some issues with shift work. So when we look at all of the evidence, whether it's weight management, whether it's, you know, cardio metabolic risk factors, an amazing review in 2020 by Hassan Dashti, I think, by Hassan Dashti, I think, points out that night eating or close to your circadian night, having a large amount of calories actually increases your risk of cardiometabolic disorders. And when people want to lose weight or when people start a weight loss diet or they start a new, you know, they want to make a change and they want to stick to it. They found that people that consume more calories in the evening, they are much more likely to fail trying to lose weight or fail an intervention than those that shift their calories earlier in the day. That's a very, very interesting point because most people would say, oh, as long as I'm eating my 1600 calories, or as long as I'm
Starting point is 00:58:47 having my 1800, I'll be in a calorie deficit and I'll be completely fine. Yes, you will be fine if you actually stuck to that. But the point is that you're less likely to succeed if the majority of your calories are later in the day for the many reasons that we've discussed such as the physiological effects we're not as um efficient as metabolizing nutrients in the night we have poorer glucose tolerance there's evidence that the thermic effect is reduced in the night and you've got the issue it of you mark mentioned earlier that oh if i go for a for a mile jog or a mile run on one day then i change the time I go for that same exercise later in the day, another day, how does that affect us? Well, if you're consuming most of your energy later in the day, then how are you going to have a sufficient exercise routine or
Starting point is 00:59:36 sufficient regime if you're exercising mostly in the morning or the afternoon? You need to sufficiently fuel your body if you want to reap the benefits of your exercise protocol, right? So if you're having the majority of your energy later in the day, you're not actually making the most use of it because you're going to feel more lethargic, your general steps and your general movement will be reduced earlier in the day. And there's lots of evidence showing that later in the day, you desire and you crave more hyper palatable foods. So foods that are calorie rich, I don't know, you know, I'm sure you guys have your big guys, you know, gym is part of your life. And
Starting point is 01:00:17 you may have a hard, stressful day at work, or you may have had a very, very tiring session. And you go back and you've got access to candy, to sweets, to biscuits, to peanut butter. And you just think, you know what, I just need something calorie dense and I want to just eat it all in one go. That craving is often associated with later in the day. And that never really happens earlier because most of us should be focusing on the whole satiating foods, right? So there are some of the effects when you look at meal timing, which is often not mentioned as being important, but it actually is important. And if we look at weight management, there's a good few controlled studies, 2013, there's
Starting point is 01:01:02 one in 2020 as well, And there are a couple others that show that when calories are matched, shifting your calories earlier in the day can lead to greater outcomes in weight loss. So one study found, I think over 12 weeks, an additional 2.5 kilograms, which is about, you know, six pounds, six and a half pounds, additional weight loss. Another study, which of course was based on, you know, dietitian kind of review and, you know, making sure they're sticking to their diet. It's that there are limitations to that, but that's a whole nother, you know, that's a whole nother discussion. They found that they lost five kilograms more. So about 12 pounds or 11, 12 pounds more weight loss over a few months. So
Starting point is 01:01:46 meal timing has a more significant effect on our health than people realize. And for those that argue that it doesn't have an effect, I say to them, well, where is the evidence? Because I've looked very, very hard, and there's actually not much to show that when you have your nutrients, it doesn't have any effect. The overall totality of evidence we have available right now shows that actually meal timing does affect our health. To what degree, we are still yet to find out as the field of chrononutrition furthers and it expands. out, you know, as the field of chrononutrition furthers and it expands. But I don't know where this whole notion of, it doesn't matter when you eat, it's how much you eat. I genuinely don't understand where that came from, because there's no evidence to actually support it. There's only
Starting point is 01:02:35 a very, very small amount. And when you actually look at the overall literature, and you conduct your own literature reviews, and you look at reviews by Yuna Hashandashi, and you look at weight loss interventions, you look at dietary adherence, you look at cardiometabolic risk factors, it all points to the fact that meal timing is actually very important. So now we've established that meal timing is important. Let's look at shift work. So people that are obligated to be up late at night, to eat late at night, like myself, other healthcare workers, construction workers, even people into business, how they run their own companies. I'm sure you guys have found yourself working late at night a few days as well. You might be
Starting point is 01:03:16 on your laptop, you might be researching things, you might be organizing the next week's worth of people that you're going to talk to and clients and et cetera. So what can we do to help mitigate some of the deleterious effects of circadian biology and going against our circadian rhythm? And this is very interesting because as we've mentioned, some of the major issues with going against our circadian biology is that you're not able to metabolize nutrients effectively, you're not able to regulate our blood sugar levels effectively, and the thermic effect is probably going to be lower, and that's going to have negative implications on our sleep. So what can we eat and what can we do in the night to help address or to
Starting point is 01:04:04 help minimize the damage done by all of these different factors? There's only one real answer really, and that is sticking to whole foods that are high in protein specifically, that you don't cause a massive surge in your blood sugar levels. You stick to low glycemic index foods and foods that have a low glycemic load and you combine it with healthy fiber, with some healthy fats, and you have small and frequent meals throughout the time in which you're forced to stay up. So that's probably a very useful piece of advice that we could do to mitigate the issues. Because if there's an issue with thermic effects, then we should really stock up on the things that increase the thermic effect
Starting point is 01:04:50 the most. And we know that's protein. If we have issues with glucose regulation, and how well and efficiently we can keep our blood sugar levels in the optimum range, well, then don't eat foods that are going to spike your sugars massively. Don't take a full sugar Coke with you on a night shift. That's just not a sensible thing to do. And if you're looking at reduced fatty acid oxidation, which has been shown in a study in 2020, and also many other studies where they looked at snacking in the night compared to snacking in the day, they showed that post-consumption of that snack, you had lower levels of fatty acid oxidation and metabolization of fats. trans fatty that have been fried and you've got it from a takeaway you know that have high levels of saturated fat maybe minimize the you know meats that are very fatty and high calorific meats you know make sure they're lean and make sure you're having you know skinless chicken breast and you
Starting point is 01:05:57 know turkey and get your lean cuts of red meat in there so now we've because now once you understand the issues with going against our circadian biology you can then actually think about okay what do i need to eat in what quantities and how often do i need to eat them to help mitigate the effects that i now understand with eating at night or you know staying up late up late at night. So that's why I think it's important people realize what is actually happening in our body, and why our utilization of nutrients has become less efficient in the night. And then we can then address, you know, some of the useful things that we've mentioned so far. So sticking to high protein, the useful things that we've mentioned so far. So sticking to high protein, satiating whole foods,
Starting point is 01:06:51 you know, in small amounts, you know, perhaps two, three times across a night shift, don't just have all of your calories in one go, because your body's going to perhaps struggle with, you know, regulating everything in its in its normal place. That's probably the number one thing I'd say. The number two thing I'd say is that when you come to the end of that shift and daylight starts to come up and you're seeing the sunrise and you're still up and your body's thinking, what's going on? Is it day? Is it night? I feel tired, but it's daylight. Like your body just gets quite confused sometimes. And that's completely fine. And that's a stressful environment in itself. So we need to do things that, you know, perhaps might reduce the levels of cortisol in our body
Starting point is 01:07:36 that might naturally increase the amount of melatonin or a sleep hormone that would perhaps prepare us for going to bed and trying to sleep and have a good sleep in the daytime. So I don't know if you're aware of these, you know, these blue light glasses where they block the blue rays, right? People have said to me, they've said, oh, you know, doc, you should really get these. I see you on night shifts all the time. Like you should, you know, get these when you're driving home night shifts all the time. You should get these when you're driving home so your body doesn't respond and doesn't become super awake again. And then
Starting point is 01:08:10 you're lying in bed at 10 in the morning trying to go to sleep, realizing why you can't go to sleep. Well, that's because our master clock, daylight, sunlight, nighttime is one of the major players. If you're going to expose yourself to bright daylight and allow the sun to hit your face, your body's just going to naturally feel like you should be waking up now. You shouldn't be feeling tired. You shouldn't be going to sleep. So there are these other things that you can do alongside trying to manage your stress levels, perhaps getting some low intensity walking around on your shift, perhaps try to release some dopamine, some serotonin, make you feel good, make you feel
Starting point is 01:08:52 relaxed. Therefore, you increase the chance of you having a good sleep in the daytime, which can then help mitigate some of these metabolic issues that we've already discussed, you know, with the whole AM versus PM thing as well. So it's a very, very nuanced topic. And, you know, we could spend ages talking about it. And for those that haven't listened, you should also check out, I think, Sigma Nutrition podcast. They're a very, very good nutrition podcast. And they've done an episode on this, I think, with Alan well alan flanagan is it i believe i think you guys you guys have had him right yes on the podcast yeah yeah so they so they cover some of these some of these tactics that you can use with kind of going against our normal circadian rhythm as well so i think that's all very very interesting um topics and for shift workers it's not good for
Starting point is 01:09:45 my health it's not good for our health and you know met we are at a much higher risk of you know metabolic issues later in life we're at a much higher risk of you know becoming insulin resistant you know having cardiovascular disease in the future however we can only do our best to you know mitigate these issues and mitigate the damage that we, that we experience. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not even that great at following my own advice, you know, more often than not, I've ordered food into the hospital, you know, I've gotten some nice Turkish food, some Lebanese food, I've got a nice chicken shawarma, you know, some, just some wholesome, just fatty, you know, I just want to feel satisfied sometimes, you know, if the shift is difficult, sometimes you don't care about what you know, some, just some wholesome, just fatty, you know, I just want to feel satisfied sometimes,
Starting point is 01:10:25 you know, if the shift is difficult, sometimes you don't care about what you know, you just care about feeling satisfied. So, you know, sometimes it's easier said than done and it really is, but hopefully this will help inform those people that find themselves up late at night to what things to really look out for. And we can hopefully we can mitigate some of these issues by the way you mentioned the you mentioned the blue blockers do you think they're useful or useless and then number two um for falling asleep those shift workers that let's say they're getting home and they're now having problems falling asleep is there any type of supplementation that you recommend that you have used that might help with that or might be beneficial? Or do you just want to deal with lifestyle factors to probably try to just get yourself to sleep
Starting point is 01:11:09 naturally when you get home? Yeah, interesting. So blue light blockers, I've not used them myself. I don't regularly advise people to use them themselves. However, I have heard good things about them. Testimonials, anecdotal evidence. I'm not sure on the evidence behind it. I'm not sure if there is actually strong experimental clinical evidence for it. However, I do hear some good reviews. So if you want to try it, try it. It's not something that I recommend or I have implemented into my life. Now that you've reminded me, I might actually order a pair and see what happens. I'm on nights in a few weeks, so I might see if I notice a change in my sleep quality.
Starting point is 01:11:57 So that's completely up to the individual. I'm not sure on any clinical data. So you can go either way, really. you know, clinical data. So you can go either way, really. And now about supplementation. Am I correct in saying that in the US, are you able to get melatonin off the shelf? You're able to just pick up and buy it? Yes, you can. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So you're not able to do that here. In the UK, you need to come to me to get a prescription or, you know, one of my colleagues. And the funny thing is, is that it's kind of the practice to, we should always advise to focus on sleep hygiene practices before you become dependent on supplementation. Because, you know, no matter what it is, you know, supplement, prescription drug, over-the-counter medication, whatever it is, there is always a tendency and there's always a risk to becoming
Starting point is 01:12:59 reliant on that supplement you're taking. And then the moment you don't have access to it, you realize why you've stayed in bed and you've not been able to fall asleep at all. And your body's, in essence, you're actually suppressing the body's natural circadian cycle to a level where it's going to downregulate the natural release of melatonin. And that's something you don't want. Because the day you don't have that supplement, or the day you get side effects from that supplement, or whatever it is you're taking, you're going to realize that you become dependent, and your tolerance may increase, and you're just left in a vicious cycle. Because perhaps you haven't, you know, optimized all of the lifestyle things and all of the advice online, or from your, you know, medical professional
Starting point is 01:13:46 and all of the advice online or from your medical professional first before getting advice from someone that would recommend or someone that would prescribe you that supplement. So I know things are different in the US compared to the UK, and I know some people do take it if they know, if they struggle with, you know, going to sleep, and along with other supplements, but that is not something that has ever really come up in conversation, it has come up in conversation, but only in a clinical setting, only in the doctor's surgery or in hospital, where, you know, if we feel as professionals, you know, this patient or this person has tried everything and they're really struggling and, you know, the risk of putting them on supplementation is less than the risk of them carrying on having poor sleep. You have to weigh up the pros and cons, really explore all natural lifestyle factors before we even think about that conversation.
Starting point is 01:14:54 So that's kind of my general view on this. hygiene you know there's mind.org.uk you've got um you know sleep uh sleep hygiene websites uh helplines you know mental health services um they're easily accessible i'm sure they are in the in the usa as well you know helplines you got informational pdfs for you know tactics you could use to help reduce your anxiety reduce your stress levels optimize your sleep quality you know, tactics you could use to help reduce your anxiety, reduce your stress levels, optimize your sleep quality, you know, things that you should do before bed. So having like a regular kind of bathroom ritual per se, you know, like people have a ritual where they do, you know, a certain number of things in the same order in the hour before they fall asleep and they reduce the time on their mobile phone. And, you know, perhaps they may practice some mindfulness for 10 minutes. Perhaps they might just, you know, sit in their bed and
Starting point is 01:15:50 just ponder what's happened in the day. They might write a little note in their diary. You know, you might perhaps read your favorite, you know, whatever book you're reading for the next 15, 20 minutes and just allow things to naturally unwind, allow yourself to feel more relaxed and try to, you know, naturally feel like your body's ready for sleep and having that regular ritual and keeping a regular routine, which falls under the part of our 24 hour circadian cycle. Those things are very, very understated and we should really, you know, focus on these things before we, you know, before we jump to supplementation or I feel like a lot of people online, especially TikTok, I've noticed this is very, very bad. People that talk about supplements and I've
Starting point is 01:16:38 talked about supplements before myself, 100% I have, but when it becomes the focus of a creator's page, or a person's page, they know that people are just going to watch it, they're going to engage, because it's not difficult to buy a supplement. It is the easiest thing in the world to buy a supplement to take it every day. Oh, this is going to help me lose weight. This is going to help me sleep better. This is going to going to you know reduce inflammation in my body you know they they they're looking for a quick fix and they're looking for a one pill fixes all kind of title right and i've noticed that you know tiktok is very is is very funny in that in that regard that the the videos so so perhaps my most informational and educational videos
Starting point is 01:17:27 that have an abundance of information in the space of three minutes, they won't do very well. But the videos that do well are the things where people are looking for quick fixes, where they go, oh, this video might be the one that helps me with this issue or that will finally help me lose weight. You know, I find this whole relationship with people jumping to supplementation or things that you can buy, rather than focusing on lifestyle modification, sustainable habits. I find that whole thing just very, very interesting. interesting and it is part of the human psyche that you know we want the best rewards with the minimal with the most with the least effort essentially so you know that's why i would always recommend lifestyle rather than jumping to other things first and perhaps seeking counsel
Starting point is 01:18:18 from you know someone that's qualified or a medical professional even you know just even your family doctor anyone you've got access to just to say, Hey doc, or Hey professional, whatever, Hey coach, whatever, you know, I've been trying this and this and this. Do you think, you know, there's anything else I can do before I go down the avenue of looking at things that I can buy to help, you know, any kind of issue. Right. So that's, so that's my view on it, really. When it comes to something like intermittent fasting, it sounds like from the evidence that you're presenting and some of the stuff that you have talked about today, that it sounds like it might be a better idea to eat during times of sunlight rather than to eat later on in the day. Is that kind of what you think some of the evidence is pointing to?
Starting point is 01:19:07 Yeah, interesting. So another avenue that I didn't touch on when we talked about circadian biology and optimizing nutrition for our circadian rhythm is that actually intermittent fasting, the reason why perhaps there might be some additional benefits beyond the calories you're having is because you are optimizing your circadian rhythm. So when you look at the normal regimes, right, you look at the 16-8 method, you look at alternate day fasting, there's also alternate day restricted eating, where one day you'd only have about 25% of your calories the next day you'd eat normally. Then another day you'd have 25% of your overall calories. And usually these eating windows are just naturally earlier in the day when you're awake,
Starting point is 01:19:56 right? So, and usually there's a good few hours before you fall asleep. So you're fasting for a good period before you actually put yourself to bed anyway. So the interesting thing is, is that although weight loss looks to be the same, I think C. Reinders in 2019, M, is it M, not M. Blackman, someone, there's someone, another review in 2018 that looks at studies done over a long period of time, over six months, and studies done comparing intermittent fasting to normal calorie restriction, where you don't have restrictions on your feeding time, weight loss outcomes appear to be the same. So that's number one. However, metabolic and optimal health, there is emerging evidence that shows that intermittent
Starting point is 01:20:47 fasting is not just a method of reducing your calories. However, it could be perhaps superior in certain regards when you look at things like inflammatory markers, inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-6. And there was an interesting study where they took, you know, obese asthma patients who frequently come in with asthma exacerbations. And, you know, asthma is obviously an inflammatory, you know, you can have inflammatory flare-ups and that can cause problems with your breathing and a whole host of other issues. And they found that actually the group that was on a time-restricted window for eating, independent of calories, they found that that reduced the inflammatory markers more than what you would expect from an equivalent calorie deficit. there's interesting studies like that where you find that actually for inflammatory purposes for um you know perhaps uh regulation of our blood sugars perhaps reducing overall insulin exposure some of these metabolic and health markers there may be over the next five ten years i think we
Starting point is 01:21:59 will see plenty more studies on intermittent fasting versus calorie restriction. And I've got the inclination that we will see some quite significant improvements in health markers. And it's not all just about the total number of calories and the food quality. So I believe that you need to balance the potential positive aspects of intermittent fasting with what are some of the negative aspects. So not many people talk about the negative implications, right? is your eating window, do not eat after that or before that. If you do, you're a bad person and you failed. Just that negative messaging and connotation, you would have to then think as a professional, would advising this client or this patient to do intermittent fasting, are they at higher risk of worsening their mental health? Are they at higher risk of, you know, worsening their mental health? Are they at higher risk of actually feeling like a failure? Are they going to be less likely to stick to whatever it is you're prescribing them as a professional compared to the, you know, compared to the hypothesized
Starting point is 01:23:20 benefits over a calorie restriction? So once again, it's a balancing act. And I think the overall message comes that as long as you have the ability to be flexible, and you're not going to be completely strict in that regime that you're implementing, I think anyone can do intermittent fasting pretty well. And you can see some pretty positive results. And that's a whole other conversation with flexible dieting and what that actually means. And can you maintain good mental health and good adherence to the thing that you're doing at the same time, reaping the potential extra benefits that you may get from something. So that's a conversation that needs to be had on an individual basis with whoever it is you are talking to or advising. So that's why when I make
Starting point is 01:24:12 my videos on these topics, because it's completely down to the individual and the impact it would have on that individual, I'm not comfortable saying, yes, intermittent fasting is a great way to help you lose weight, to improve your diabetic blood markers, to improve your cardiovascular disease risk. Because at the end of the day, it takes one person for you to do more harm than good. And then you've caused a lot of issues for yourself, for them. And that's just not a good way to phrase things. for yourself, for them, you know, and that's just not a good way to phrase things. So these conversations, and no matter what dietary intervention you put people on, they need to be completely individualized. And you need to assess, do they have the mindset that is required to do this healthily, sustainably, and where the benefits outweigh the negatives?
Starting point is 01:25:04 Dr. You've done such a great job of having some great viral videos on TikTok. But I think if you want to take it to the next level, you'll have to start talking about sexual performance. Before we drop off here today, is this an area that you've researched at all? Have you got any good quote unquote tips for us? Because I know a bunch of horny bastards are listening to this. That's really funny funny thing is i've been asked many i've had i can't even imagine 500 to a thousand comments maybe over the past few months being like doc you need to talk about sexual function you got to help us guys out, help the girls out too.
Starting point is 01:25:46 And I just ignore it. I honestly just ignore it. Why? I don't know. I don't know. I think if I started going down that route, I know people would love to watch and, you know, it may get me a lot more followers and that's completely fine.
Starting point is 01:26:09 But I just feel like I need to stick to an overall well-being nutrition lifestyle exercise management optimizing our metabolic health sexual health as well being that's holistic of course of course of course of course it is you know important sexual health function is very important and people that have have issues with sexual health is actually a very, you know, it's a very validated issue that needs to be addressed. Of course it is. I got one more question for you. How have you been able to stay, like, stick to the subject matter? Because sometimes some of the people that are conjecturing some of your videos, sometimes they're being mean to you, too. They're talking trash or saying that you're not a doctor and these things.
Starting point is 01:26:48 So how have you been able to kind of stick to the script and just get the information out there? It's been a very, very tough journey. Very tough journey. I've kind of tried to build my audience on objectivity rather than responding with emotion. I know perhaps responding with emotion would gain more traction. People like drama. People love drama. People absolutely love drama. But, and at times I have really wanted to respond and really wanted to just, you know, throw the words that i'm thinking out there and just give some haymakers some verbal haymakers and just you know but you but you have to understand that
Starting point is 01:27:32 as someone that is representing the uk medical field that has has that is fortunate to you know have a growing audience and a large audience and to have opportunities like this, where I can share my views. I think objectivity is absolutely crucial. I do not want to be, you know, going down the route of, you know, talking about someone personally, about addressing someone's personal issues or personal views. I want to solely stick to what the evidence says. And I can, hopefully, I can try and phrase the evidence and the information in a way where it takes aside who the individual is, and it just focuses on the words that they are saying. So that's what I've tried to do when I make these responses, even though people have, you know, insulted me,
Starting point is 01:28:23 they've tried to report me, they've tried to say, no, you shouldn't be a doctor, absolutely terrible. You're sending people to their graves. I get plenty and it's not going to stop. However, you can't help these things. However, I think in the profession that I am and for yourselves,
Starting point is 01:28:38 you guys are also professional in your fields, dieticians, personal trainers, coaches, pharmacists, doctors, whatever specialty that you are in, when you look at someone's health, I think it's very important to remain objective, to ignore the insults. And just if you present facts, and you present the evidence, and you cite your research, more often than not, people will realize, okay, that was a well, you know, articulated response. And we can't really argue here, so we're just going to ignore it. Some people have tried to continue arguing.
Starting point is 01:29:11 They've tried to continue responding. That's completely fine. We can agree to disagree. I don't know everything. when I look at some videos, I've perhaps maybe changed my stance on some things that I may have said based on new developing research or new meta-analyses or just information that I just wasn't aware of. I'm very open to learning about new information. And that's why when I've networked with professionals like yourselves and other nutritionists, dieticians, doctors, we try to share new and exciting scientific information so we can make sure that when we put out a video, it's the most up-to-date, accurate information to the best of our ability.
Starting point is 01:29:52 So that's what I try. I try to ignore the insults. where I don't resort to, you know, insulting the people that insult me in a way, which is just, it's not quite pleasant, really, because I find myself getting stressed, like, you know, I'll just be thinking about it at work, say, if someone's called me out, and they know that I've seen it, or whatever, and I'll be getting tagged 1500 times in that same video, people are gaining traction, right, the views are coming in, people are insulting me. And you can't help but just have it in the back of your mind. And it makes it difficult to do my job. I'm trying to manage sick patients. I'm trying to rest. I'm trying to recover. And these things all just play on your mind. So I think the more we can just remain objective as professionals,
Starting point is 01:30:44 I think the better for everyone, really. So that's my view. Yeah, if you fight back with being negative, it'll actually just only make you feel worse. And you'll think about that even more so than the hurtful things that somebody may have said to you. And only a healthy person can have a healthy mindset like that. So congratulations on that.
Starting point is 01:31:02 And we'll be looking for more of your videos. Where can people find you and find out more information about you? Yeah. So actually I'm in the process. It's a very long process because of work and I honestly, time is so hard to come by, but I'm in the process of designing and developing my own kind of healthy eating nutrition virtual course with comprehensive videos, you know, where we edit the evidence in, we have stock footage coming in. So I'm currently in the process of designing that. Alongside that, I'll have my own website. And, you know, I'm trying to kind of open up the
Starting point is 01:31:37 brand awareness. But at the moment, all I have is my TikTok. People have said, you know, start your podcast, start your YouTube, start posting on Instagram, even though it's still private. And I just honestly, I need to tackle one thing at a time. I need to try and outside of work, I'm on a 70-hour week this week. And when I come back home, all I can think about is eating, showering, and sleeping. That's all I can think about. I'm struggling to post one video a week these days. So I need to try and focus on one thing, try and get my course out there, get my website out there. And then hopefully, you know, people can find me on various other platforms as well. When I manage my time better, which I'm still yet to try and figure out.
Starting point is 01:32:21 Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, guys. It's been a pleasure. Have a great rest of your day. See you. That's awesome. It was. Andrew, it's funny. Whenever you press end meeting, I'm like, he's going to do it too soon.
Starting point is 01:32:35 I know. He's still talking. He's like, when's this going to come out? No, I'm just kidding. No, I'm joking. No, I know. I've jumped the gun a couple times. It's because I don't want, because I've seen, because I've been back here while Mark is on someone else's podcast.
Starting point is 01:32:55 Yeah. And we never know when they're done. They're just like, sometimes they'll be like, and we're done. Or they'll just kind of sit there staring at Mark as he takes his headphones off and i'm like we gotta just that'll snap him real quick that's yeah so i'd rather be actually i just gotta get the timing right i was gonna say i'd rather be awkwardly too soon or over awkwardly too late but i think they both suck anyway this is a great podcast fucking awesome i love how deep he went into i like um circadian rhythms yeah yeah satchin panda yeah that's his book circadian code he goes through a lot of that stuff yeah and he's a intermittent fasting guru yes he is i don't there's certain people who don't like him
Starting point is 01:33:37 much though our friend lane doesn't like satchin panda yeah well you know i think uh there's um i mean you know after having uh after having jim on the podcast yesterday uh talking about eyeball gain like there's there's a lot of stuff that we just don't know yeah there's just so much stuff that we don't know and um you know i think magic is like science that we just haven't really found yet. You know, we just we don't really know. We don't know what the fuck's out there, man. We don't know all the different. What we do know is that there's people that do certain things that say, hey, this just works this way.
Starting point is 01:34:17 And they really, truly believe it. And when somebody truly believes it and they give you that information, you're like, OK, I'm going to go do that. And a lot of times you're super empowered by that. You know, for example, someone like Louie Simmons talking about glute ham raises, reverse hyper box squats. He's like, these increase your squat. They increase your deadlift. And then he has how many people, you know, squatting over a thousand pounds, how many people deadlifting over 800 pounds. Once you get into that environment, who knows if it's really right or not. It's actually kind of almost irrelevant on whether you could have scientific research that, that would show that you would get better results from doing jump squats as opposed
Starting point is 01:34:55 to box squats or whatever the information is. It really doesn't matter. It's that someone believed in something and they believe in it so much that they inspire other people to go and do it. And it has good positive benefit. I think another one, another example like that is fasted cardio. And we could sit here and kind of pick it apart and say the science doesn't show this, doesn't show that. I wonder if the research has ever been on anyone who's lean. I wonder if the research has ever been on like bodybuilders. been on anyone who's lean. I wonder if the research has ever been on like bodybuilders.
Starting point is 01:35:30 That would be great. You know, a great thing to study is a contest prep, uh, females and male, uh, people that are going to get on stage to, I mean, that's, that's where you see it most commonly used. And if you think about let's, let's forget about fasted cardio and how it can maybe optimize fat burning. Cause maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. And I think that's what the doctor today was referencing. He's like, who really cares about that part of it? What matters the most is the habit. Like how long did you go without eating? You probably didn't eat in the middle of the night and you probably didn't eat right before you went to bed. So you may have had a 12 hour time lapse or so before you had your oatmeal and your egg whites or whatever it is that a bodybuilder, you know, eats first thing in the morning. Right.
Starting point is 01:36:07 So I think that the actual habit of doing that day in and day out and saying, hey, I did that for 30 days or I did that for maybe even longer. I did that for 12 weeks and look at how shredded I got. It's not necessarily like the actual thing that really did it but it's the overall habit and the fact that you did it day in and day out yeah it's and and that's one of the big things that i'm kind of glad that we got into here and i'm kind of happy you really talked about sleep that much because seeing how it cascades into all the other habits that you do in terms of like how hungry you get during the day how much food fills you up i think that little tidbit not the little tidbit but the fact that you will get i guess 25 as full as you typically would if you don't get enough sleep that was really interesting
Starting point is 01:36:56 you know what i mean and it plays a big role in all the other actions that you're going to take that's why we talk about habits so much 55 more likely to be obese if you don't sleep six hours fucking wild i'd get fat if i didn't sleep for more than six hours i really like i gain weight because i wouldn't be able to do what i need to do it's a crazy thing but like so i i think you know sometimes what we're sharing is like um and just in fitness in general is we're sharing like hey hey, like it'd be amazing for people to get like below 10% body fat or something, right? Which is wild. It's a very difficult thing for some people to do. And maybe it's unlikely that certain people ever reach that.
Starting point is 01:37:40 It's like a preposterous proposal in some way. But what I think is that if you have bad habits right now, I think maybe the best thing that you can do and the easiest thing that you can do is just ask yourself, is this interfering with a lot of aspects of my life that are having even more negative consequences than me just enjoying some food here and there. So what happens, like what happened to me was I, you know, in my powerlifting career and getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I got to a point where my food negatively impacted my blood pressure, my glucose, not to anything like, you know, crazy, but those things being impacted also negatively. And who knows when, what came about when, but my sleep was impacted negatively. So now you got your sleep negatively impacted. You have your glucose, your blood pressure.
Starting point is 01:38:43 Now we have three things working against us. Maybe even having like, you know, well, definitely at some point having a pretty severe sleep apnea. I mean, now we're just, we're, we're dealing with, we're dealing with a real uphill battle that would makes it harder and harder to get yourself out of. So it's totally understandable to enjoy food, but maybe you don't enjoy food. Maybe you don't enjoy food so much that it negatively impacts your sexual performance. Maybe you don't enjoy food so much that it negatively impacts your sleep. Maybe you don't enjoy food so much that it makes it so that you can never go on like a run or you can't walk and keep up with your kids.
Starting point is 01:39:25 Things like that. Those are things that I think are healthy things to investigate, to look at, and to say, you know what, I'm not going to allow that to be that way anymore. I'm going to make sure I'm going to take the steps to ensure that that's not going on anymore. And it's not about being ripped. It's not about like getting ready for the summer. It's not about looking jacked in a stringer tank top. It's more about like, let me just get my life back because one of the hugest things that you have in this lifetime is your health. it's just, uh, it's a, it's a limitation that,
Starting point is 01:40:04 uh, is super restrictive and can make just day to day stuff just make you not feel very good about yourself. You lose self esteem, lose little chunks and pieces of who you are and who you were. And, uh, I think that's a great reason,
Starting point is 01:40:17 you know, why we are talking about this stuff on the show all the time. I really like what he was talking about with, um, the, the calories at night might be more impactful than the calories during the time. I really like what he was talking about with the calories at night might be more impactful than the calories during the day. That's how I interpreted it. So like I have actually been eating more breakfast than I ever have. Well, not than I ever have, but then I have in a long time. And what's weird, it's like, I don't want to call it a reverse fast, but like I'll eat once right, pretty much right when I get here. And then I don't eat until I get home for dinner. So, you know, I don't know how many hours that ends up being every day,
Starting point is 01:40:49 but it's kind of awesome because I'm not hungry. And when I fast, I don't really get hungry either, but I'm not even close to thinking about it. It's completely out of my thoughts. You know, like when I'm fasting, I'm just like, well, probably around one o'clock I'll thoughts you know like when i'm fasting i'm just like well probably around one o'clock i'll you know i'll make something to eat and now it's not even there at all but it's exciting to hear that like maybe i might be optimizing those calories a lot more because i'm taking them in earlier in the day and it's it's like it's really good what you're doing because you're controlling your appetite yeah yeah like just that aspect of like being in control of your appetite and not feeling like ravenously hungry during your day.
Starting point is 01:41:30 That's a good thing. And that's like if that's what you've landed on right now, that's sustainable for you. I can ride that out and see where it goes. Yeah, I think that's absolutely like what I'm going to do because I know eventually I'm going to start probably getting hungry in the middle of the day. And then I'll be like, well, it's time to switch. I won't eat that first meal. I'll just keep eating the middle of my day now. Yeah. My last meal, um, is usually like five or
Starting point is 01:41:55 six, but I usually will still have some calories after the meal. Like I'll usually have a protein shake or, or something, uh, afterwards. So I just think, you know, if something's not really a problem for you, like somebody that's listening, you know, if something doesn't seem to be problematic, don't sweat it. Like don't make such a big thing of it. But you still might want to try some of these things.
Starting point is 01:42:16 Since we had Alan Flanagan on a while back, I started to work on trying to have my dinner just a little earlier. And I've actually noticed that that has helped my sleep. On nights where I eat more, if I eat something small before bed, like an hour or two before bed, it doesn't seem to have any impact really at all that I can notice. But if I have a big meal, man, it's really helpful to have like two or three hours for me, to have two or three hours between the time I finish that meal and the time I go to bed.
Starting point is 01:42:48 Yeah. Same thing here. Same thing here. Like there are some nights that like if it's after jujitsu or something, I'm really hungry. Okay, I'm going to have some food. But typically I've been want to optimize my sleep. If you feel like you need more food, just fucking eat. I guess that's the thing is like you should be able to audible on these things.
Starting point is 01:43:17 And yeah, we are working towards optimizing stuff, but you just brought up a great point. If you're hungry around lunchtime, then you might just start switching stuff up. I hope that, uh, everyone can kind of get to that point where they can recognize that. And I think that's something that kind of, I mean, we're, we're all kind of getting better at here too. It's like initially when we started doing fasting, we were very rigid with the time that we would eat. But now like, if I feel hungry in the middle of the day, I'm like, I really should eat something. There's no problem with eating something in the middle of the day which is kind of what he was talking about too uh he was mentioning how like you know some people talk about fast you can only eat between 12 and 8 eat outside of this window you're gonna fuck it up no not really even
Starting point is 01:43:59 uh dave asprey even even when you mentioned that you have uh protein in your coffee he's like something in your body is calling for it i thought that was an interesting uh answer from him because um you know he's the bulletproof coffee guy no it's got to be done this way and no in sema you're actually breaking your fast he was just like you look great seems to be working for you. Like why these things that call to you, these things that you, um, that you try, if they have positive, uh, impacts where there's no negative impact and you just enjoy doing it that way, just keep on, keep on going. Cause you go, you got to be able to do this stuff for a long time. Andrew,
Starting point is 01:44:41 you want to take us on out of here, buddy? Sure thing. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode and we haven't even celebrated it not that we need to celebrate much but 100 000 subscribers on youtube yeah thank you everybody for subscribing um it was funny mark and i were talking about it it's like oh air pump there we go bam and it's like guess what happens now we get to go back to work. Oh, we didn't even talk about it. We should, we should, uh, we have to say, talk about this before we drop off. I thought for sure Dr. IDZ was going to pull out like a penis pump or something, you know?
Starting point is 01:45:16 Oh yeah. Yeah. He wasn't about it though. I know. I was like, hell yeah. He got embarrassed. It happens to some people sometimes that was funny I was like damn Mark
Starting point is 01:45:28 he found another guy that's gonna tell us how to extend the length of our junk we gotta talk because a certain company hit us up about wanting to collab with us we'll talk about it after
Starting point is 01:45:42 we might get y'all some pumps. We'll see. Yeah, we can't keep those to ourselves, right? No. Anyway, like and subscribe on YouTube if you are not already. Thank you for those that have. And he was literally spitting out.
Starting point is 01:45:59 Oh, God. Oh, no. He's losing it. He lost it. Please follow the podcast at mark wells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z at the andrew z on tiktok and sema mr giggles over there go follow dr idz on tiktok y'all he has a lot of amazing information on his page it's like it's's really good. And even you could tell him this podcast the way he was able to cite research. Yeah. This man, like he was fucking going. Yeah, looking stuff up in his head.
Starting point is 01:46:31 Yeah. It's like fucking Dr. Strange over here. It was amazing. Go check out his TikTok. At Nseema Henney on Instagram and YouTube. At Nseema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. Guys, go to markbellspowerproject.com. All we
Starting point is 01:46:45 need is your email address and we're going to send you a free penis pump. So thank you guys for watching and subscribing. We'll get to that point. I know everyone's like, wait, what? Is this real? It's not loading, bro. We're crashing the site. Seminar, seminar. Yep, yep. Yeah, we do have a
Starting point is 01:47:01 penis pump seminar. Yeah. Andrew Yeah, we do have our penis pump seminar. Yeah. Andrew just got certified for that recently, too. Andrew's getting certified for all kinds of stuff. Andrew will be pumping everybody up. I spit on myself. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness.
Starting point is 01:47:23 Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

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