Modern Wisdom - #309 - The Fitness Chef - The Biggest Myths About Fat Loss

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

Graeme Tomlinson is an evidence based diet coach and an author. Let's face it, pretty much everyone is fat right now. If lockdown has left us with anything, it's pasty skin which is a bit softer than usual. As the world gets back into a fitness regime, it's important to learn the fundamentals around how dieting and weight loss actually work. Expect to learn the principles of dieting and losing weight, whether juicing or detoxes work, what low carb & keto actually do, how intermittent fasting works, why slimming clubs don't work, how to keep your fat loss sustainable and much more... Sponsors: Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at http://bit.ly/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on all pillows at https://thehybridpillow.com (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Follow Graeme on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thefitnesschef_  Check out Graeme's Website - https://www.fitnesschef.uk  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening to you beautiful people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Graham Tomlinson, aka The Fitness Chef. And we're talking about all of the biggest diet and fat loss myths. Given the fact that if lockdown has left us with anything, it's just a little bit of extra weight. Most people are going to be getting back into some form of fitness regime right now. And given that, I thought it would be a good time to come and dispel some of the most common misinformation and myths around dieting, weight loss, fat loss and everything

else. So today, I expect to learn the principles of dieting and losing weight, whether juicing or detox's work, what low carb and keto actually do, how intermittent fasting works, why slimming clubs don't work, how to keep your fat loss sustainable over time, and much more. I'm a big fan of Graham's work, and he's got nearly a million followers on Instagram because he's a no BS kind of guy.

He doesn't really care about which team he's supporting as long as it's a team which works. And yeah, if we save just one person from doing another juice detox, I'm gonna call this episode a win. But now it's time to learn about the biggest myths of dieting with Graham Thomson. I'm well, man. I went to Leeds and back today, and this is how down-regulated the stimulus of my life has become. I've spent so much time in the same four walls that a journey to leads and back actually felt like an adventure. I spent three and a half hours in the car and literally felt like a gun on holiday.

Well, talking of holidays, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. Yeah, it's been a funny, funny year hasn't said it was locked down. To be honest, I don't know about you, but it hasn't actually affected me that much because like yourself, I'm kind of working from home anyway. And the only thing that's changed from me is not being able to go abroad or get on a plane to go to London or something like that. Yeah. Obviously, obviously not seeing family and friends is not great. But yeah, in terms of work every day in life, it's not that much different. And then the star, it was actually quite nice. Dude, it's a bit much, no.

I said that every introvert, it's now their dream. You don't have to go and do all of the social events that you never enjoyed. But I'm perfectly fine working on my own, doing my solitary stuff. But after 12 months of being in exactly the same location, even I, like, and if I'm starting to push it, then for the people that are listening who are really social

and used to going out and spending tons of time with their friends, and it really is challenging. So yeah, man, I'm looking forward, even if we can't go abroad, I'm just looking forward to lead West Yorkshire, not somehow feeling like I should be grateful for it. That shouldn't be grateful for the fucking A1. You know what I mean? Like this isn't, this isn't be taking a trip to somewhere exotic.

Anyway, anyway, we are going to talk about fat loss today. You are the fitness chef on Instagram. You are red-pilling people on how to really understand calories from foods. what they think is happening, what's actually happening in the truth behind weight loss, what are the most common errors that you see people making when they're trying to lose weight? understanding what you were just saying there, understanding that A, you need a calorie deficit, so consume less calories than you use each day, to lose fat. That is the principle, that is not a method, that is literally the only physiological way you can lose fat. So, unfortunately, it's not sexy enough to be marketed, so it kind of misses a lot of people. So a lot of people start trying to lose fat without even understanding that basic element that's required.

And so once you start from there and you start going on an Extreme intervention like low carb or keto or whatever it is and you don't understand about calorie balance, you're almost setting yourself up for failure. Another one would be even if you do understand that you need the calorie deficit, is making it unsustainable. In other words, having an ultra restrictive and aggressive. So for myself, I know my maintenance calories would be around about 2,200, 2,400 for my activity level. And you know, for the average female, it could be, I don't know, 1700 to 1900.

But when they go on these calorie counting apps like my fitness pal, it asks them how much weight do you want to lose? It gives them an option and I'd be like, 1 pound a week, 2 pounds, 3 pounds. Of course, they're going to select the biggest amount of weight loss. Why wouldn't you? I would do that. But unfortunately, what that does is that formulates the calories of something like 1,000 to 1,200 calories, which, yes,

it's a calorie deficit, but it's quite extreme and unsustainable. You'll be very hungry. And it'll be difficult to adhere to it. And the most important thing about fat loss isn't the calorie deficit. It's actually adhering to the calorie deficit over a period of time. So those are probably the two main things that I would say that are very basic for people to understand. What's the maximum weight loss per week that you think people

should comfortably aim for? They're not a pro bodybuilder, they haven't got some MMA fight coming up. Yeah, that's a very interesting question because you could easily answer that and say it doesn't matter because it's just a number on the scale. Now people do like to measure their weight loss progress by weighing themselves every week and over a period of weeks and months if you lose body weight you will definitely be losing body fat right but if I was to weigh myself today and then next Tuesday, I could have lost weight, but it might not be body fat. I could have gained weight, it might not be body fat. So from that perspective, I would just say,

if you do want to measure a number, I would say one pound a week, the minimum. The minimum and that's the most achievable thing that you can do. If you do that every week for a year, that minimum. The minimum and that's the most achievable thing that you can do. If you do that every week for a year, that's a lot of weight. Unfortunately, people don't tend to think that mindset. They're thinking holiday in two weeks, have to lose it all by then, or get married in two months. I've done nothing about it, and now I'm going to juice cleanse or something like that. Something crazy. Even £1 a week is £3,500, right, which is a £500 calorie per day deficit, which is

still quite a significant deficit to be. And if you think that for a girl on an absolute top end, they would maybe get £2,000 calories, that's a quarter. You're talking about a quarter every single day, not including a refeed, not including a cheat day. And that's just to refeed, not including a cheat day, and that's just to break one pound half a kilo a week. And even if you had weeks where you didn't lose fat, it can happen, things come up,

well, in a few months time, few nights out, hopefully. And so even if it was half a pound a week, that's still a lot of weight over a period of time. But we just don't think like that when we're starting out a lot of people because the solutions that are in front of us are shiny and promise the outcome, you know, you will look like this in a month or two weeks. That's what people are focusing on, unfortunately, and that's whether kind of diving into these ultra restrictive calorie deficits. Which to be honest are fantastic for boxers, if they want to cut weights dramatically, but not for the average person who hopefully enjoys things like bread and donuts and

lasagna, things like that. To the uninitiated that are listening, how is it that you can still get to eat bread and sugary foods in lasagna and still lose weight? Is there such a thing as a good food or a bad food? So there can't be such a thing as a good food or a bad food. Food is simply different. Again, that could just be my opinion, but objectively looking at, say, a chocolate bar or an avocado. If the quantities of both were 200 calories, we can see that the avocado was micronutrients, a little bit of fiber in their beneficial fats, but still 200 calories. That's the energy value, and that's the thing that's related to the body fat at the end of the day.

The chocolate bar will have 200 calories and probably minimal nutrients, certainly no fiber. So yeah, I mean, you can you can wait up and I think I always try and get people to understand the two different facets. So energy, the calories in food and also the nutritional value and the fiber value, things that are going to benefit your overall health and influence your next decision, if something satiates you and fills you up, it's more likely that you're, or sorry, less likely that you're going to eat more calories than you should. So I think, you know, this good and bad thing, I think it's a little bit pedantic of me to say nothing can ever be good or bad.

I think it's more a case of there can be a good or a bad overall diet, aka one that supports you or doesn't support you. But as an individual choice, like one meal out of a week is one meal out of 21 meals. If that was something that was double the calories that you normally have, it's not going to make much difference, as long as all the other meals are kind of still supporting you. So, yeah, it's one of my kind of pet hates is when I say, if you were saying, I've been good or I've been bad. Because what it does is when people eat something like a pizza or a chocolate bar, they feel

guilty. Of course, if they were doing that every day, potentially it's not very, it's not going to be optimal for them. But if they're doing it in moderation and they understand more about the food they're eating, it's a lot easier for them to make informed decisions about what they're eating. So getting on to some of the biggest myths of fat loss that's been, if this is the case, because I remember when, if it fit your macros came out, it came out publicly.

The launch of it. Yeah, and that was maybe like 2011, 2012, let's say kind of the back end of the ZZ-Rur, that sort of timing, if it fit your macros came out, everyone had been in the car back loading for a long time, then carbonite came out, and then it was just, it's any calories, bro. So if it's been, it's any calories, bro, for the best part of a decade now, nearly 10 years of the, if it fits your macros world, why have we seen stuff like keto and intermittent fasting

and slimming clubs and all this sort of stuff, before we get into trashing them, which is going to be great. Why, how have they come up? Is it just repackaging things in a sexy way that's easier to market? Yeah, I mean, I think the keto diet came around initially to treat epileptic kids, nothing to do with body composition. And low carb diets could be seen to be advantageous for treating people type two diabetes. But these things always tend to morph into fat loss because everybody wants to lose fat

because we're a nation, and to be honest, the whole planet is quite obese now. It's naturally going to move into that because that's what people are seeking I guess. You know that's my kind of that's how I kind of think it's happening. Yeah I think like the it's all calories bro. It's an interesting one because obviously you've got the three different macronutrients you've've got the protein, which is just great for any fitness goal that you have. It's going to help you build muscle. It's probably going to help you lose fat as well,

because you burn more calories when you digest that compared to carbs and fats. So over time, that's going to help you lose weight, because your energy expenditure is higher. But I guess the low carb, for me, it probably kicked off when, well, in my opinion, everything started when I started going on social media, but it could have been before that in blogs. But yeah, you have low carb and keto zealots that use the kind of insulin hypothesis to get past their argument or to support their argument instead

of... What is that? What's the insulin hypothesis? Well, it's the idea that hormones will dictate fat loss instead of energy balance. The more the insulin rises, the more fat... Because it's the fat loss storage hormone. Sorry, the fat storage hormone, it's basically going to result in more fat loss. And they just ignore the fact that despite the fact that that's true, insulin is there,

it does occur, it's definitely a massive part of the process. The end result is defined by total energy in versus total energy out. That's what it takes it. So, yeah, it's kind of like cherry picking a segment of the process between somebody eating calories and it being metabolized and turned into fat tissue. They're checking that one part of the process and just using that. And that's where you get the low carb thing from that's where you get anti-sugar from, you know, the sugar ones a little bit more vicious anti-sugar from, you know, the sugar ones a little bit more vicious in the sense that people claim that it is, you know, poisonous or turn straight to fat. All these kind of ludicrous claims that are just not supported anywhere in evidence.

And then you get the other side of it whereby if somebody enjoys low-carb diets, they can do without things like pasta, bread, any type of high-sugar food, and it helps them achieve their goals. Fantastic. But the problem comes when people are trying to lose weight and they enjoy those foods and they feel they have to cut them out, and it's just unnecessary. There's no kind of evidence there. In fact, all the evidence goes against what some of these hypothesis are saying You can look at things like the rice reduction diet experiment where participants ate 95% of their calorie intake from rice fruit and fruit juice pretty much all carbohydrates

in there and they were in an aggressive calorie deficit You know, You certainly wouldn't administer the calorie deficit they were on. But guess what? They lost an average of like 63.9 kilos across participants. Because they were in a calorie deficit. And that was just eating purely carbs. And then we have another meta-analysis from two or three years ago where they tested two different groups, a low carb group and a low fat group. They equated calories and protein in each group. So they're eating the same

amount of calories, same amount of protein, and then they just wanted to see which group resulted in more fat loss. And they couldn't find any difference. In fact, I think they found an insignificant difference between low fat resulting in more fat loss than the low carb diet group. And that was a meta-analysis of lots of different studies out there. So there's two examples of white reliable research to just, I mean, if you say that to somebody who is like an anti-carb zealot. They can't say anything to that. It's like, well, how can you argue? How did that happen then if what you're arguing is true?

So, yeah. But what do they say to that? What's the answer to that? Well, to be honest, the conversations that I have with low-carb zealots are normally my Instagram comments section. And they will come out with all these claims and I will come back with, well, can you cite some evidence and they will come back with some sort of study that's been done because people talk about showing evidence but actually there's a lot of bad evidence out there as well, like anybody could do a study and publish it. That's why you kind of want to look for systematic reviews or reviews or method analysis because it's like all the studies done on any given question

such as do carbs make you fat? You're more likely to get a more reliable answer if you look at that kind of data as opposed to just one individual study that was done in 1993, which supports your bias. And there you go, that supports it, but I'm saying, well, hang on, yeah, but what about this? I see what you're saying there with that evidence,

but can you not appreciate what I'm shown here? Nope. Nope. Why do you think it is that people are so patriotic about the dietary team that they're on. It's crazy, it's definitely getting worse. I think it's a right. Because I don't, I only see these discussions when I observe you or James Smith or Diren any other of the vanguard of like British argumentative

blocs on the internet killing killing the dreams of some marketer out there. I only ever observe it happen, right? So I only get to see a tiny little sliver, but you reckon it's getting worse. Yeah, I just think people's ability to even debate, you know, I'd quite happily, if somebody wrote a comment saying, yeah, but I don't agree with that respectfully because, look at this and this and this.

I would be more than happy to admit that I was wrong if I had jumped the gun on something or not appreciated the other side of someone's argument. In fact, I've maybe done that in the past. But it's more of the to kind of nature of people's comments. It's more like they're just angry. And they want to project that instead of them actually

wanting a discussion that's going to help either one of us. So yeah, it's very difficult to communicate with people like that. But it is tribal. I think it possibly started with veganism, you know, because my sister's vegan and she's a nice person. But you will get people out there who are just wanting to project almost an authoritarian manner. How everybody should be doing things. And they just can't take it when someone else wants to do something different

because they're entitled to. Is that not the same way as it is with everything at the moment, though? So think about the patriotism that you see between people's political parties at the moment or towards a social cause or towards a particular type of injustice or whatever it is. I think this is a rabbit hole we don't need to go down, but the collapse of grand narratives, the lack of a religion to hang on to, the fact that you don't have any greater sense of purpose, it's a meritocracy, you are your job, you are your possessions, you are your follow account, people are looking for their new gods and they'll be finding them inside of a diet book at the moment. Or a social media account or a plethora of a small kind of niche of social media accounts.

That's a great point. As our kind of age group, I certainly, a lot of my mates aren't religious, and probably my parents aren't religious either. So it probably stretches to people who are kind of in their 50s or 60s as well. So yeah, it could be that as human beings were always craving something to follow, something to believe in, that's why I support Liverpool at football, stupidly, sometimes. This season, anyway, it's like, why did I pick them

and why do I get so worked up when I watch them on TV? It's, you know, looking at it objectively, it's just a football match, you know, if they win or lose, it has no impact on my life at all. And yet it does emotionally. Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I had a sociologist on the show a couple of months ago, a guy called Rob Henderson, who's

a good buddy, and he told me that up until 2012, supporters of the Democratic Party in America loved their party more than they disliked the other one. And that was the same for Republicans as well. But after 2012, people that voted Democrat, voted Democrat because they hated the other party more than they liked their own. Well, literally the compulsion that we have now is an in-group out group relationship, where all that were bothered about is not being the outgroup as opposed to actually being the ingroup. And I think what you see here is we just want to feel like we're a part of a team, a part of a crowd. Like if you're some 39 year old triathlete club level triathlete who is adamant that low carb is the way to go. And all of your waking

hours are spent researching the different type of bike clip mechanism that you're going to use. And the new type of shoes and you wait in for race weekend to come around, that's your world. And if you are just as patriotic about that, it feels when someone says, yeah, mate, but it's any calories, bro, like Like, low carb is for people with epilepsy and type 2 diabetes. It doesn't matter. That doesn't just feel like a critique of the food that you put in your mouth. It feels like an existential threat against your ego. Feels like someone's trying to destroy your identity.

It's an attack, isn't it? And before actually sitting back and thinking about, you know, assessing what information that they're seeing, it's an immediate impulse reaction isn't it to go and comment and say, you're wrong, you know, and it's, I think we all do it to some degree, but it's certainly notice it on social media when it comes to nutrition. I've had posts, you know, things like avocado toast versus Nutella toast, just displaying the simple facts. There you go. You do what you like. You can have either, you know, displaying the facts about

diet soft drinks, you know, that they don't cause cancer despite all these conspiracies and they don't make you fact because they've got zero calories. They don't raise insulin because they've got zero calories. But people are just like, yeah, but it's poison bro. It's just like, well, what can you say to that? You know, if it was poison, people would be dying. Has there been, have there been any studies that have shown links without official sweeteners in rats, a while ago, but in human beings, there's, there's none. I mean, that's to my knowledge. You know, I think the most recent method analysis was done in 2015, and it had over half a million participants there, and it showed no cars inogenic properties within diet soft drinks. I mean, specifically, it was a Spartan, so there are other sweeteners, but a Spartan's the one

that gets laid out. One of the most. Food supplements in the world, right? It is. And it's one of those things that people will say, I can't believe you're promoting this. I'm like, I'm not. I can't believe you're saying it's healthy. And not there's nothing optimal about spartum. But what I'm saying is the research shows it's actually not harmful. If consumed in this dose, if you consumed a 100 cans a day, that's a different story. But if you're doing that, there's problems there that you probably need to get help with. There are other issues bigger than the aspartum, yes.

I would imagine you would have other issues overriding the problem with aspartum if you're doing that per day, just having all that bloating for example. Purely the recycling issue I think would be a big one. Okay, so that's a little cub. What about intermittent fasting?

So intermittent fasting can be a short one. It's one that's gained momentum probably in the last sort of five or six years and basically all it is is skipping a meal. Unless you are crazy and want to start doing your intermittent fasting at a different time, most people would start eating at 12 o'clock and then finish eating at 8 p.m. or something like that so that they can combine sleep with some of the fasting period. But we're all intermittent fasting as long as we sleep. You know, if we're not eating when we're sleeping, we're all doing it anyway. So what's going on is they are skipping probably four

hours, aka breakfast, and putting off until lunchtime. There is no, again, no research benefits that that is better for fat loss than just having a calorie deficit. And regardless of doing intermittent fasting or not, you must be in a calorie deficit. And regardless of doing an intermittent fasting or not, you must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. So you can have a situation where someone skips breakfast, doesn't track the calories or isn't aware of it, and consumes an assert plus from 12 o'clock to 8 o'clock.

But they're still doing intermittent fasting. They think it's going to result in fat loss. No, you still need a calorie deficit. So if you like doing that, I definitely recommend it. If you're somebody who doesn't like breakfast or never eats breakfast, it could be a really useful way to reduce calorie intake. But if you're someone who likes breakfast, then it's unnecessary. You know, some people might feel dizzy by 10 o'clock if they haven't eaten, it just depends. So yeah, that's it. There's also other purported health benefits like autophagy, so like cleaning out of organs, basically, this kind of stuff. And again, is there going to be that much more of that going on? So that's something that occurs when you don't eat for a while. How long? Well, it will happen, I don't know, a few hours.

I haven't actually looked in detail at the research. But if there was three or four hours that you extended that by, is that going to make that much of a difference to your overall health? If there was that benefit, because you're going to be fasting between, say, 10 PM, 11 PM and 7 AM when you're sleeping. Is there gonna be that much more of a benefit

if there are benefits in the first place that get purported by laying that by three hours or four hours, I'm not sure. I guess there needs to be more research in that, but a lot of people claim that's one of the benefits of it. I would say from my experience with intermittent fasting that a restricted time eating window is a good rough tool to assist with generally not eating as much food.

If you do a 18-6 fast, which is a little bit more uncomfortable, maybe eating between 2pm and 8pm, It's pretty hard actually to overeat in a six hour window. You need to be able to put away, especially if you're still eating relatively whole foods that aren't hypercalorie dense, to fit what, like two to three big meals in within the space of six hours is a fairly difficult task. So slowly, yeah. As long as you can get through that period, another thing as well to kind of fly the flag

for intermittent fasting, I have found sometimes, when I've done intermittent fasting, that my energy levels are more stable throughout the morning, that a lot of the time my morning meal can cause me to feel a bit of a slump, sort of mid morning to afternoon, and then without that, without that spike in insulin and glucose,

I don't have that sort of, oh my God, I need a coffee to stay awake, sensation. Yeah, if that works for you, carry on doing it. And you made a great point about inadvertently, if you have to cram in three meals to six or seven hours, there is a good chance that you will probably select foods that are going to fill you up because you know that afterwards you are not going to eat for a while. And you could be then inadvertently focusing on, or becoming educated on knowing, okay, let's have a high

protein diet then because that fills you up. Let's make sure that I'm focusing on Whole Foods, which has always got to be the basis for any kind of optimal diet. Let's increase fiber intake so that I'm kind of satiated. And I'm not having midnight snacks, which I've been doing during lockdown, to be honest. Is there any evidence about timing of food intake? If I eat at carbs at 10pm at night, am I going to be more likely to store them as fat because I'm being sedentary while it's in my stomach?

No, there's no evidence out there that suggests that the time that you eat makes any difference to the amount of fat that you're gonna store. So I think it's just over a 24-hour period, the total calories in versus the energy expenditure. And so yes, you, you know, in that basic term, that is it. But obviously other things are going to influence that. So if you starve yourself for seven, eight hours, and there's a good chance that you could overeat or binge, you know,

I've done it before, I've gone on Deliberoo and I've been absolutely starving in order like two mains, just a starter dessert. And before you know, it's like 5,000 calories. So yeah, there could be behavioral aspects that you could look at there, but in terms of just looking at the energy in versus energy out, it doesn't matter. Right. I do what you like. And it's the same with the amount of meals.

A lot of people were saying, six small meals is better. You're metabolism than two massive meals of the same calorie value. Again, it doesn't matter. Just do what suits you. What about protein intake? Yeah, protein intake. I'd always recommend at least one gram per kilo of body weight.

And I guess if you are training quite a lot, you could go up to two and beyond. I think that's something that a lot of people miss and a lot of people because you require for muscle building and for fat loss it's going to be beneficial because it's got a higher thermic effect and because, behaviorally, it's going to be beneficial because it's got a higher thermic effect and because behaviourally it's going to help fill you up. People often miss that out and maybe just concentrate on the calories and maybe aren't aware of the amount of protein that they are eating and it's actually quite low and over time it could possibly contribute to them over eating more calories because they're not fuel cool, for example. So yeah, there's also some other crazy myths that, you know, we've seen that people were kind

of saying proteins is bad for you is smoking and it wrecks your kidneys. It's just, again, it's just complete nonsense. Something with a daily meal, it's just real out every now and again. The internet, the internet track, some interesting people. What about the fact that I think I've seen you, I've definitely seen James post this and you may have done as well, that during one sitting, there's an upper bound ceiling on how much protein your body can absorb.

Yeah, there's some, there's various research out there, but 30 grams seems to be the optimal kind of dose for most people. And I guess the average male should be consuming, I don't know, 1,500, maybe just 3,000 calories a day, female from like 1,700 to 2,200. So it's going to be roughly ballparked for most people. Yeah, to be honest, it's something that's still being researched quite a lot, but from the evidence that I've seen, it's definitely a better idea to aim for 20 to 40 grams servings of protein rather than, for example, at the end of the day, realizing that you haven't eaten much protein and you try and whack in like

100 grams or something in one meal. That's what I'm thinking about the related to having an intermittent fasting window that inevitably if you've got an upper bound of about 30 grams that you can absorb optimally within one sitting, how long is the reset window between that? Do you know? No, I think it would be... No, that's something I'd probably have to have look at actually. Whether it's relevant for somebody who's trying to lose weight, I'm not sure. But for somebody who's trying to build muscle, that's definitely something that they should kind of think about.

But I guess some of the research that I've seen, I don't know if you've seen some of Alan, arrogance, stuff, he's sort of talking about every possibly three to four hours, having more protein. I think that's certainly in research showing to be beneficial for muscle gain, for fat lots. I'm not sure that it really matters. That's how regularly you have it. Just because for muscle gain you are, I mean, intermittent fasting for muscle gain might not be the best idea because you are depleting yourself for a

longer period of time. And of course, yes, you can be losing fat during that time for as energy, but also muscle. You know, muscle is probably the first thing that's going to be burned before that there. So yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it is. I was definitely thinking that I remember seeing Dan Bilzerian talk about his approach to diet. And his approach to diet is to just have 25 grams of protein every two hours that he's awake. That's all that he does. So he'll have a protein bar, then he'll have a shake, then he'll have a little food. I mean, when you're constantly surrounded

by, when you live in the moldeaves or wherever it is, he can just get tapas, presumably, on like, you just click, click, click his fingers just click his fingers and some handsome Spanish waiter comes over with a pinion and delivers him some nice seafood pielle or something like that. But yeah, and that really stuck with me because it made me think, okay, if there's an upper bound on how much protein you can absorb if we're focusing on muscle gain, upper bound and how much protein you can absorb within a particular window, let's say that it's a couple of hours. And you need to be hitting maybe 160 to 180 to maybe even 200 grams of protein per day. If you're all right-sized guys,

you've been training for a little while with a bit of mass on and you're going for that two to sort of two and a half grams per kilo of body weight. You have to eat more consistently or else you're getting to the point where, right, here's 300 grams of chicken breasts that I'm just going to have in one meal. And that's going to be what, 75 grams is of protein between 16, 75 grams of protein, you're going to get out of 300 grams of chicken breasts. Maybe more. Yeah, maybe more. Maybe more. Yeah, maybe more.

Based on what we said. That's not even going to be absorbed. So it does need to be little and often for those people perhaps. Absolutely. And also, I guess for somebody who's training quite regularly, maybe training twice a day, having the fuel to fuel that workout makes sense. You can have protein before that in a balanced meal, you know, within an hour to two hours afterwards to start recovery, and then later in the day,

maybe having an evening meal. So that's things that are kind of meals that are required for the training to optimize the training anyway. So I guess it, for a lot of people, it would already be in place, but certainly for muscle gain, it's something that people probably, yeah, it can probably get a bit much. It's like, oh my god, another meal. You know, you're probably full. And it's eight o'clock at night. And you're trying to get that surplus up there.

You're trying to get the protein up there. You realize that you still have another 30 grams of protein to hit. You know, I guess you could have something like a protein shake, but yeah, it's tough. It's a lot more intricate and gaining muscle than it is losing fat. You think so, and I mean that physiologically, but psychologically, it's probably harder to lose fat for people who have ingrained beliefs and gained habits, and it's just about trying to shift that to change their behaviors over time whereas for muscle gain it's more yes you do need to appreciate how

much protein you eat thing, how many calories you eat in here, what's the progressive overload on your training stimulus, all this kind of stuff, so that can be psychological as well but I think it's more kind of psychological for fat loss when it comes to that. I agree, I think nobody stumbles onto consuming 200 grams of protein a day. Nobody in history has ever accidentally consumed 200 grams of protein. The only person that's ever done that is someone who's going out of their way to hit a protein target. In the same way as no one ever in history has accidentally been in a consistent calorie deficit for a long time.

It's not you have to do it to achieve the thing that gets you the output that you want for fat loss or for muscle growth. It has to be conscious. Because it's just 200 grams of protein is a lot of food. And being in a calorie deficit is uncomfortable. It doesn't just happen by chance, so it needs to be planned. Absolutely, I agree. What about slimming clubs? Yeah, so they've been around for a long time. Certainly, you know, am I allowed to see them one here? Oh, yeah, fire away, man. Fire away. I've

got a lawyer now. I've got a lawyer, everybody. So if this happens, it's man, fire away. I've got a lawyer now. I've got a lawyer everybody. So if this happens It's James Smith's lawyer. I've got referred to James Smith's lawyer. So he had a he had a legal Occasion why I don't know what it was if she can handle it if it's got a mouth of it Dude if this lady can handle the ship that James Smith throws at her Good point. She can deal with you naming whoever it is. Yeah, so wait and watch as a sliver world or the big two. Probably, I think they're quite big in America as well, but obviously huge here in the UK, they've been going for a while. When I was doing one-to-one personal training, a lot of the clients I was getting were kind of ex-sliving world people who had kind of had enough of just turning up and getting weighed every week and going home and trying to eat

sins and free foods and all this stuff, turning up the week after, finding out that they've lost weight, don't know why the next week gained weight and it's all based on that. So it's like a winner lose arena and every time they were kind of turning up, you know, there were stories of people, you know, not eating all day because they wanted to lose weight or turning up and swim where so that the weight of the clothes weren't going to show on the scale. All this kind of crap. And I think, yeah, the main problem is just that a lot of people will say this in the industry, they are just withholding the principle from their members. So that is the calorie deficit.

Know where on their websites or to my knowledge at their meetings or weigh-ins, do they communicate this? It's all about telling people to eat a certain amount of sins or you can eat unlimited salmon pasta eggs, which are fairly calorie-dentched food, but you can eat unlimited quantities of them. And the argument that I always get from slimming world zealots on my posts is,

yeah, but nobody does that. I'm like, I'm sure, I'm sure nobody does that. However, this is what they're saying on their website. You can eat unlimited quantities of this stuff, which can easily result in you being in a calorie surplus. Dude, if you gave me unlimited access to pasta, I could put myself in a calorie surplus easily. Yeah. Oh yeah, me too. I mean, I am very much of the mind. I'm very much half a pasta packet per meal,

which is probably like 150 grams on cook, maybe more. So yeah, you can imagine someone who's who's calorie deficit target may be something like 2000 calories, all of a sudden one meal, they're having 950 calories or something without knowing it, but it's fine because it's free. It's just this kind of thing, it's just lack of information there. And it's kind of the same with Weight Watch as they use the point system. It's maybe slightly more aligned to calories. I think the points are added up depending on the calories in food. That's like, why not just do the fucking calories?

Yeah. And I don't know why they have to take what is an already very well established existing system of measuring and then repurpose it into a thing that isn't. It's because their marketing team must be fantastic. People there who are saying, right, we know that it's a calorie deficit, but we can call it something else because we know that people think, God, counting calories, how tedious and boring, which probably is, you know, but let's dress it up as this and call this a sin and a speed food and a free food,

all of a sudden it sounds more sexy. And all of a sudden, the measurement mechanism is just so basic people can understand that they turn up if they've lost weight success, if they've gained weight, no, you're failing. But as we know, you know, your body weight is not reflecting of your body fat, you know, you could turn up one week and have eaten loads of salty foods the night before, so retain more water. And that's the extra weight. You might have actually lost body fat, but gained weight from one week to the other. So that's why the scales over those short periods of times aren't overly useful. And that's basically it. I think it's just, yeah, it's taking people further away from the very basic principle that they need to know, for no reason other than profits, you know. And I guess, yeah, we're all businesses

we want to make money at the end of the day, but I can't help but feeling that both of those organizations, their success as a business, depends on their members' failure because that means that they're going to keep coming back. It's a video that never wants his athletes to get well. We see that with chiropractors a lot and at the time there's probably some great chiropractors in there, but it's like, yeah, come here every two, three weeks. It's like, well, hang on a minute. It's not actually the bones at the problem here, it's the muscles that keep pulling bones at a place. So as soon as I leave here, I'm going to be

out of joint, I would join again in like, I don't know, a day. So it's probably that I need to kind of take care of flexibility. A little bit of strength training here or there is going to solve my problems long term rather than paying 80 quid every three weeks coming for you to do the same thing. That's not to say it's not necessary, it absolutely is in a lot of cases. But that's the kind of yeah, similar to slimming world in that regard. similar to slimming worlds in that regard. Is there a way that I can prioritize fat loss through foods when in a calorie deficit? Yeah, there is.

So there is no particular foods that will help fat loss and there's no particular foods that will make you gain weight more than others. It's all about the overall energy and out. However that said, we touched upon it before food time protein. So because protein has a higher thermic effect, you're talking about every time you have protein,

about 30% of those calories that derive from protein from that food are burned during digestion. So that's an increase in your energy expenditure, but the net calories is 30% less than the total calories that are actually consuming for carbs. It's around about 10% and for fat, it's 0% to 3% is what the data says, which is all the more interesting that keto zealots tell you to eat loads of fat. And what they're basically saying is what they think is happening is the more fat that you eat, the more fat you'll burn. So they're making that seem more body fat you'll burn, but it's actually just a dietary fat that you're consuming wheel barrels that you're burning.

Because you've got zero carbs in your system, the carbs are being used as fuel. It's so annoying because people believe that stuff. Anyway, off topic. Other foods like we were saying there, whole foods, you know, foods high in fiber again is going to help make you feel full, just like protein. And the more that you feel full, the more or the less like you are to to overeat. So from that point of view, you want to look at it from the overall diet still. And if you know that, for example, you're eating three meals, each of them have 30 to 40 grams of protein, then you can look at it. And if you know you're eating a bunch of micronutrients,

it's going to improve your overall health, a bunchrients, it's going to improve your overall health, a bunch of fiber, it's going to improve your digestion, you're taking care of the overall picture. You know that one doughnut, which is 200 calories, as long as it fits your overall calorie target over a week, you know, you can be flexible. That's going to do nothing bad for your goal or your overall health. That's going to do nothing bad for your goal or your overall health So yeah, the two things to focus on would be protein and fiber so upping them just so that you feel cooler Awesome. What about low calorie diet? It depends how low so I guess to lose fat you always need to be lower calories than you're currently consuming unless you're

You know expedientially increasing your energy expenditure to create a deficit. Um, I don't know how low you need. Do you mean like 400 calories a day? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, we see these right? We see these diets on the internet of girls who are prepping for bodybuilding shows and have been told by their coach to drive themselves into the ground. 900 calories or a thousand calories that do in morning cardio, they're doing afternoon weights. So, yeah, I mean, for that level of competition, I personally would never want to be involved

in that, but perhaps it's required, but for the average person, that is going to be so miserable. And what happens when you're miserable, you don't want to keep doing whatever it is you're doing. And the chances are your behaviors will go back to what you were doing before that was creating the problem. So what I always say to people is instead of having a calorie target per day, have it per week. So say it was 2,000 calories over seven days, that would be 14,000. And that allows someone the flexibility to know that they can go out and go over by 700 calories. And the next day, it's fine. You know, just reduce the next few days by 100 calories each or something like that. Just to be more flexible. But yeah, in terms of low calorie diets, if somebody really enjoys eating 500 calories

a day and they do that for a significant period of time, they will lose a lot of body fat. And it will be quicker than if they just had a gradual, say, 20%-15% calorie deficit, which is going to be slower, but in the long run, more likely to be successful. So, there's two options there. What does the evidence say about juicing and detox? Well, to be honest, there's none. So, there's not much out there. So the claim is that if you go on a juice cleanse or a detox, you are presumably detoxing your organs.

I mean, a lot of the businesses that promote these things don't actually know what they're what they're saying. It's just like a bunch of words saying, gonna cleanse your organs, lose weight, it's just all the buzzwords really. But logic would tell you that unless you don't have organs like kidneys and lungs and liver and skin, unless you don't have those, you know, you will be detoxing naturally anyway, that's what they do. So there's no need, you cannot detox and then things like we've seen the crazy things like coffee enemas, I haven't seen them, thank God, but I've heard them. Jesus yeah, that would be, I'll just quit. I just moved to a remote island, just spend the rest of my days looking at the waves, I think, and this and that.

But yeah, you've got all kind of these things. Some of them promoted by medical practitioners as well, which is hard because they're supposed to trust the sources of information and advice. Yeah, and you're saying they're like a juice diet. Some people do that for fat loss because it's ultra low calorie. So if they did it, I mean, what's the most popular one? We lose seven pounds in seven days. So a lot of people do it for seven days, lose the weight, and then just go back to the old habit. So in a couple of weeks time, they're back to square one, you know,

completely pointless, they've just shelled out. So we're gonna be quick for a juicer, 200 quid on ingredients, felt like crap, shit themselves, work, you know, all this kind of stuff is completely ridiculous. Yeah, but that's kind of where we are. And that's the power of marketing. Boom bod is the desiccated power,

power diversion of a juice cleanse, right? Yeah, so the, the boom bod bases its claim on glue common, then however you pronounce that word. Which is basically something that suppresses appetite. And there is some evidence to support that. But is that something that we really want to be promoting to essentially young women, maybe teenage women? Because a lot of the influencers that were, I mean, it's not

happening so much now because fortunately so many of us have called out. Dude, that was like, yeah. You remember, you know, the final scene, you know the final scene in Avengers, where the entire, you got the Wakanda people, you got those big slugs floating through the air, Spider-Man's back, like Thor's just come, Iron Man's leading the way, that was what it was like. It was all hands on deck, Lord of the Rings, that the Battle of the Two Towers, it was precisely, precisely it was like. It was all hands on deck. The load of the rings, that the battle of the two towers.

It was precisely, precisely it was. But God was, you know what a sight to behold. I think it was because the marketers are obviously just thinking about who's the target market, who's gonna fall for this. And it would be impressionable young people. Remember when you were a teenager, I'm the same, I would have done anything.

And unfortunately they're retargeting these kind of reality TV celebrities, really strong followings, really popular, and there we go. And that's what was happening. But I don't think they appreciated the evidence-based community within the industry and how it was just going to immediately go for that. And not just evidence, just... Eviscerate them. Yeah, just people who just know when something's wrong. Playing common fucking stuff. Regardless.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to be honest, the influencers who were promoting it, part of me feel sorry for them because they probably just didn't appreciate that, either. Probably not educated in basic nutrition. And they're just seeing it as... They were caught in the crossroad. Means to get money. Yeah. So I kind of do sympathize with them a little bit, but at the same time, you need to kind of research what you're promoting at the same time. It's not really any excuses.

I've said it on the show, man. We have a lot of sponsors on here, and I don't promote anything if I haven't used it. Athletic greens reached out to me. I use the product for all of 2021 up until March before I agreed to do anything with them. So it's like, I want to see what this product is like. It's not enough that Tim Ferris thinks it's good. I want to actually see if I rate it. This is the one part that I think is one of the best externalities of there being almost

like a call out culture for bullshit now with regards to fitness and diet on Instagram, is that the amount of reputational damage that you can give to someone who continually compromises on truth to get an influencer check. If there is that person, so a good example of the reversal of this is someone like Holly Hagen. So she appears to have almost been a convert now and she's part of the evidence-based community having been on the reality TV side probably did something similar to a boom-bodd ad and pretty certain I saw it do. But then you have other people who are prepared to compromise their integrity for a paycheck. And as you roll the clock forward, the race to the bottom is not going to continue to win because all

of the people are just not going to buy the product. If they know that this week you're doing charcoal toothpaste, which doesn't work, and next week you're doing boom bod, which doesn't work. And the week after're doing boom bod which doesn't work. And the week after that you're doing some one of those waste trainer things which doesn't work. Do you know what I mean? Every time that they do that,

you get there's no social capital left. And from my side, I'm more than happy to see that happen because it means that for those of us that have decided to go integrity first, you with your cookbooks. Like you're not trying to vlog a Special super secret source with Pomegranate or whatever way you squirted in your eye like it's just here's some low calorie foods Here's how we eat them and the same thing with James like James is providing what is in the nicest way possible a really simple solution Like his academy is just here some calories, his some training,

his some accountability, go to the fucking gym. Like that's all it is, that's all it is. Yeah, and the thing about it is most of the time that's all people need us. It just doesn't sound, you can't like, it's hard to do some sort of like digital ad with that or like a billboard. It's just like common sense or these these kind of things people just kind of the way things are and I would advertising you know things have to be extreme to get noticed and the thing with my second the second book still tasty is all I did was think well what we're gonna do for another book and it was lockdown and my followers what I did was

put out a posting what's your favorite You know, and a lot of people come back with burgers, pizzas and toasties and cheesecakes where I'm like, well, there's easy ways that I can make these lower encalories. And it's the same volume of food, but it's the same tastes as well. So it's like, but possibly two, three hundred calories less. And it's like, well, that's intervention someone could easily make to lose fat. You know, still eating all their favorite stuff. They're not buying this super food cookbook where they have to eat eedamame beans wrapped in avocado and press or something every morning.

They get sick, say it. You know what I was like? I was looking at all the cookbooks. And it's just like all these cookbooks, even the ones that are like just meal prep, are all using the lose weight. It's just like, get health, healthy recipes, lose weight. So they're just using all the buzzwords. I'm like, hang on a minute. You're not giving any advice for someone to lose weight there. You're just giving a bunch of recipes that are nutritious.

So that's inadvertently good for someone. But if they want to lose weight, you need to actually tell them how and give them some sort of like information about it. So in each recipe I'm saying, this is how you save these calories. What I did was change 10 millivol of oil to 10 sprays of olive oil spray or you know, changed full fat cheese, full fat cheese. And sometimes it's not, it's not cheese, it's not Coca-Cola, cheese, to low fat cheese. Just things like this, they taste the same,

but you're eating the same volume. So yeah, anyway, good plug there for the book. I have a link to LinkedIn show notes below. What about supplements? Obviously, we've talked about some of the ones that aren't worth their salt. What supplements are worth it in your opinion? Yeah, depends what you mean by supplements. So, if way protein was a supplement, which

I would say it probably is, despite the fact it's derived from eggs. It's a supplement. Let's just call it. I would definitely say way protein. For the things we've discussed earlier, it can be difficult to hit that protein target each day and the way protein provides a really convenient and there's lots of flavours, tasty solution for that. You can do that within 30 seconds. Mix up a protein shake or add it to yoghurt, add it to porridge, pancakes, whatever. It's just really convenient. You don't need it.

You can get your protein from chicken, eggs, fish, whatever. But it's just really convenient. So that would be the number one. For supplements, I guess it depends on someone's situation. If somebody was perfectly healthy and consuming an abundant variety of different foods and whole foods, you'd probably say there isn't any need. But what I would say is in the UK, we are probably a lot of us are deficient in vitamin D just because of the

climate. So that is certainly one during winter months that I take up here in Aberdeen. I mean, Jesus Christ January, when we were in lockdown here, I don't think I saw sunlight for about five days at one point. So, yeah, let's take two vitamin days, three day, thanks. There's one, and things like multivitamins, again, are potentially just going to boost, you know, boost that functional health aspect, but you don't actually know what the benefits are, you can't see them. It's like if somebody keeps getting colds or viruses all the time, vitamin C is known to kind of counteract that, so they go on high doses of vitamin C and they don't get colds anymore. They will never know whether it was their overall lifestyle, improvement of sleep, of diet, whatever, or

that supplement as well. So you'll never kind of know. Those kind of be the ones that I would recommend. If you're at a leap level sort of training, power lifting and things like that, and obviously a leap level sport, that's kind of out of my level of expertise. So I would recommend consulting a sports nutritionist for that. But there definitely will be supplements that will definitely give someone that extra 1% legal supplements that is. I mean there's some legal ones that I'll give you far more than 1%. I would throw into the mix there. I'd say creatine for anybody that's going to the gym with you regai or a girl Five grams per day. You don't need to phase it. You don't need to cycle it on and off. I think I Yeah, there's a misconception about cycling on and off with creatine

But I think most of the research now suggests that that's something you don't need to do It can just be something you take continuously Once again, and as you say there's a lot of evidence out there just to show the benefits of taking creating. Absolutely. Particularly if you're looking to build muscle, absolutely. Yeah.

So, creating, I would also personally, for me, I had in a green strength. So I find, I mentioned it earlier on, athletic greens is just awesome. It just means no one's eating enough vegetables. Not even the vegans. No, even the fish. No one. Not even the fitness chef himself is eating enough vegetables. So yeah, man, like that, but that would be my whatever it is, like a six car garage. And you can add in funky stuff. There's some good fat burners out there. Green tea tablets I've used for years, omega three, six is in stuff

a good, but I wouldn't have some time. I think a lot of the problem is things like fish oils, depending where you get them from, you need to make sure that the dosage is actually going to be effective. So a lot of the things that you get in the supermarkets, the dosage is so low. Is that right? That tends to be the more expensive supplements you get, and you maybe have to go to a specialist source and pay over the odds, but you're going to get a higher dose of those fish oils. So it's kind of like, yeah, if you had two groups and someone took fish oils A, and then there was another more potent fish oil for group B over time. We're

interesting to see what kind of reactions they would have to that because there's definitely discrepancies in the dosage between these things and people don't understand that it's not commonly known. Even myself I'm kind of looking at it in the supermarket going, yeah, fish oil supplements good. I don't eat a lot of oily fish maybe once every couple of weeks which you should probably do a little bit more fish, maybe once every couple of weeks, which you should probably do a little bit more regularly than that. So I'm like, yeah, fish all of a sudden, I'm looking at it going, maybe need to have about eight of these instead of two.

What about foods? What about foods, what foods, what are the best foods that you've found to make dieting less painful? Everyone's got a couple in their back pocket that they like to rely on. To be honest, in my personal experience, to be honest, I would just say make what you're eating tastes good because there's that kind of mindset of chicken broccoli and rice for so many years. It's almost like a bodybuilding staple, isn't it? Yeah, make what you're tasting good,

because you can eat anything. I would definitely say, unless you're vegan or vegetarian, focusing on lean sources of protein, is gonna kill two birds of one stone, it's gonna get your protein level up there, and it's not gonna result in excessive calories. So something like a chicken breast, 100 grams of that, you're talking about 100 to 130

calories, if it's not got the skin on compared to like a steak, which would be a lot more than that. But obviously that's providing a high level of protein and protein as well. So lean sources of meat, plenty of fruits and vegetables, filling your plate with vegetables is a great way to reduce the calorie content and increase the volume, same with fruit as well. If you're somebody who's trying to lose fat and loves snacking all the time, but you're snacking on things like millionaire shortbread which is like 150 calories per centimeter. But something like that, you know, yes, have that now and again, but having some high volume foods

like fruit or low fat Greek yogurt, maybe a scoop of white protein in there, those types of things are going to make you full, hopefully, and provide you with macronutrients for your overall health, but also get the volume up so that you're feeling full and you're less likely to eat for longer, which is going to support a calorie deficit. Have you tried this Lindahl's Kvag stuff? It's a, it looks like a yogurt, but it's technically a cottage cheese, a sweet-flavored cottage cheese. So you can get it in quark? Yeah, it's very similar to quark. So some of them are cottage cheese and some of them are quarks. Dude, they have completely revolutionized the yogurt game with this. I love to try them. Asden.

Wouldn't you get them in all the supermarkets? Yeah, they're everywhere, but as this certainly has a big group of them. So Skier have now brought out an increased protein, small version of a pot, and it's the macros on the back of it. It's like Harry Potter's cupboard or something absolutely insane. So it just tastes, it tastes like a thick, nice yogurt, but is zero grams of fat, like 0.5 or one grams of carbs, and 18 grams of protein. I'm like, this is just a protein supplement. It's matte. So the ones that I've tasted, it's good. So it's like, you're going to eat that presumably,

you get it flavored as well. Oh yeah, dude, they've gone, they've really gone quite sophisticated with it. There's like lemon cheesecake flavor, there's strawberry, shortbread flavor, all with these macronutrient profiles. I'm telling you, so if you are considering, you're getting back into the gym you're thinking, right, I need to, I need to get back on my diet. That's such a good hack.

Charity popcorn, low calorie popcorn, I think is such an easy one. It does help to fill you up quite easily. I'm not a massive fan of the zero calorie or low calorie jelly. It's just something to do with the texture of that when I'm hungry. It's so slimy and it doesn't feel too good, but I know that a ton of buddies do that. Nando's source, as sources go, is about as low calories you can get, whilst still not being a low calorie source, that makes sense. Yeah, I do what you mean. I'm a big advocate of Nando sauce, I'm putting it on chicken a lot.

Very regularly. Weaklym, though, I'm a bit, I'm a bit, I haven't quite elevated myself to hot. The, when you compare that with like a reggae, reggae sauce, there's so much more sugar in one of those. It's mad. You think, hang on, I could probably have another 50% of this meal if I got rid of that sauce. Nando sauce, looking at some different types of quark, flavored quark, it'll be in one side of the yogurt aisle in your local supermarket and charity popcorn.

I think those are my, those are my hats. Yeah, I'm on those as well. I think, yeah, popcorn is one that I love because it's just, you can just have such a, it seems like such a big amount of food that you're eating. Obviously, most of it's air. Yeah, it's like fruit in a way that once you chew, obviously fruit will just turn into disintegrate. Disintegrateate much. And popcorn just disintegrates. Yeah, if you took one bit of popcorn chewed it, you're like, what? Where's that? Even swole. Yeah, I know what you mean.

But yeah, there's some good fiber in there as well. So yeah, I agree with those you've got your stamp of approval. I'll take that. What are some of the ways that people can improve their energy expenditure if they're sedentary for most of the day? A lot of us are still working from home. Perhaps we don't even have a commute to work. Maybe we've still got limited access to a gym. What are some of the easy ways that people can improve their meat?

Yes, the meat. So that accounts for around 15% of your total daily energy expenditure for most people. So it's something we don't even think about. Like what we're doing here, fidgeting, using a hands, moving a lips, that's classed as neat. So yeah, I mean walking technically isn't neat, but it kind of is, you know, it's not planned exercise. Like, okay, it is planned exercise, but let's not get pedantic. Let's include walking and meet. So things like increasing number of steps each day,

if you're able to walk, that is easy. That's an easy thing. It doesn't require you to do burpees, doesn't require you to lift weights, if you're not comfortable doing that. And even like tasks like gardening and doing laundry, all these kind of things. And a lot of people, obviously, have been more sentry over lockdown because they've been working from home or on furlough. But at work, depending on your occupation, if you are a nurse, I mean,

being in hospitals, the amount of walking you have to do because their large building just between area to area is massive. Before you know it, they could be doing like 15, 20,000 steps on a shift. You just don't know. But another person, their mate could be kind of on the same calorie spectrum for maintenance, they think, but they're actually sitting around all day. So their mate who's a nurse walking around or whoever it is who's just a general The guy that works reception versus the girl that's got to go and do the thing They've been on the same shift for the same amount of time, but ones moved 15,000 steps and the others moved 3000

Yeah, and it all adds up. It seems so insignificant because the effort to Walk that slow pace or move or gonna get up off the couch is a lot lower than doing a birth pay for example. But over time, yeah, it will just pick it up. So your BMR is around 70% of your daily energy expenditure for most people, which is just by breathing. And a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people with these apps that are around now are kind of, it's measuring the calories burned burned which is always going to be inaccurate. And they're kind of asking, do I need to deduct that from my calories target? It's like no, you just need to get a calorie calculator that asks you about your activity level

and it will tell you your calorie target based on your activities. So you just have to focus on that one number. You don't need to do any calculations after that. Yeah, we discussed the thermic effect, which is about 10% of your daily intake, just from food, higher if you consume more protein or lower if you consume virtually no protein. And then that leaves 5% for planned exercise. Unless you're doing intense 10 set exercise for like four hours a day like triathlon. So if you're like, Ross actually swimming the North Sea or something. And that's going to be a lot higher. And I think someone like him would need like 10,000 calories or something a day just to maintain that. So yeah, increasing needs going on walks with mates,

taking up hobbies, walking dogs, all these kind of things, all add up because we're too sedentary really. You've got Netflix, you've got TV with thousands of channels, you've got everything there, you've got social media, all of which requires you to be still when you're looking at it. So it's kind of getting out of that a little bit and just moving a little bit more. My spine coach, Dr. Stumigil, he gives all of his patients. This is a spinal input because locomotion lubricates

the spine in a way which actually reduces back pain as long as you're swinging your arms. So you need that contra movement so that you're doing this, your hips are going one way, your shoulders are going another. But he prescribes after every meal, do a 15 minute walk. And when you actually put that together,

if you're moving at an all right pace, that's your 10,000 steps and a bit. That's more than 10,000 steps within 45 minutes, if you're moving at all right pace. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And there's things you can do. It's not just like, you know, if you live in an area which is boring scenery, it's just have to walk. You can listen to podcasts, music.

This one. Yeah, this one. Right here. Yes. Thank you. And then, you know, you can even, you know, if you're someone who talks to your mates on the phone, I don't think I've ever talked to a mate on phones. It's like 2008 from the most anti-social person.

It's just like text me or go away. But yeah, if you're chatting away for an hour or about something, walk around when you're doing it. Like I think I have like a nervous thing when I'm speaking to someone on the phone and when I'm indoors, I just walk around. Dude, so I let me tell you. Let me tell you about that.

So I got this insight from who wrote, becoming a supple leopard he's been on this podcast. Oh, God. Yes, I have. He's got a girl's name. I can't remember people's dream Kelly Storet. Thank God. That would have annihilated me for the rest of the month. Yeah, no, Hey, Kelly, I'm sorry, mate. He said humans are locomotive beings beings and he asks us to think about the last time we had a phone call that required a high level of cognitive load. So you're having a conversation with your business partner about the marketing copy for a new website, right?

What's the tagline going to be? And naturally, you can't do it sat down. You have to get up and you have to move. And his argument is that it's something to do with how our movement facilitates our brain. It's not just a nervous switch. It's not trying to get rid of energy. It's facilitating the thinking process itself. And when you think about the fact that every great thinker that I admire from history, Albert Einstein, Newton, Darwin, all of these people decided to go for walks. Super regularly, there were avid walkers. And one of the reasons for that is that it's not just the neat effect, it's not just improving your fitness, it's about what you can do mentally when you're doing the walks. So dude, I'm all for it. That's probably for a different discussion, but that's absolutely as important.

Despite all of this kind of fat loss talk, mental health is has to be the number one, doesn't it? So when we're talking about all these benefits of compositional change, the end goal is to make somebody happier. If they don't think any of this will make them happier, they don't have to do it. It's as simple as that. I love it. Yeah. Dude, where should people go, though, when I check out your stuff? So, probably the best place to be Instagram, and it's just the fitness chef on there. I've also got a website called fitnesschef.uk and on there, what I've designed is basically like a tool for people who want to track their fitness journey. We're currently going through a bit of an update to the app at the moment

but on there they can track their food, there's lots of calorie counted recipes on there, soon they'll be able to do a few other things which I'll disclose soon and they can have a free trial. So yeah that's probably the two best places. Facebook, TikTok, those kind of things I'm on, but I'm not greater. Is anyone great to talk unless you're a dancer? I don't think anyone's great at TikTok. Yeah, I had a few videos late last year that went well, you know, getting a lot of used and then decided to put myself in a lot more of them than they went terribly. So I don't know that soon. But then a few last week I decided to do my infamous avocado and a telepost and just do a 30-second

voiceover describing in basic terms once. And it's gone mental. And then I did an Easter egg recipe like chocolate mousse and died a horrible death. So you just don't know what's going on in there, which makes it exciting. But because it's the Chinese, man, when they're observing, they've heard that last night you criticized the communist regime and then they press the button that nukes your account for the next week. Man, today's been awesome. Anybody that wants to check out your stuff, it'll be linked below. You need to give this guy a follow on Instagram. And yeah, man, well, to think about something else, get yourself in some more hot water with someone and we'll we'll bring you back on.

Oh we've related to come back so thanks one Biden, thank you. Thank you.