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I asked my audience for their 15 most popular unanswered questions about how to lose fat or to gain muscle mass. The
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first one, how do I lose weight fast? But you just answered that. Yeah. The second one is creatine this miracle
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thing that everybody should be taking. There's almost nothing creatine can't do. Wow, some statement.
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Next, is there any harm in eating too much protein? It's rare and in fact, almost everybody
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who has some degree of an issue with their body fat levels under consume protein. My next question is about PCOS. What
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would you say to a woman struggling with PCOS in terms of dietary prescription? That's a damn good question, man. Can I
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go into detail with this because a lot of people are very misinformed about this stuff. The floor is yours.
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Okay, so Alan Araggon has been using science to help elite athletes unlock peak performance for over 30 years.
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And now he's breaking down the nutrition and training strategies that actually deliver results. It's important to take
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an evidence-based approach to diet, nutrition, training, supplementation, because if you don't, then you end up
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wasting a lot of time. So, let's start with protein. So, how much protein should I be eating to gain
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muscle? What is your goal body weight? It's around 90. Take 90 and multiply that by there's
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your protein target. What about calorie restriction? I've heard you say that 10 or 20% of your calories can come from pretty much
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anything you want. Literally anything. So, I could eat McDonald's or something and I could still lose weight theoretically.
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That's true. And this is reflected in research along with diet breaks. That's one of the tactics that you can use for
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long-term adherence to a plan. And I'll explain how. I also want to talk about the ketogenic diet, menopause, fasting, sugars, and
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this that that always gets me, man. That that picture always gets me. Why? I used to drink heavily. I was
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overworked and trying to be the best father and the best husband. And it got real bad.
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I just needed to stop and I did. How? I just Wow. Really?
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Yes. I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't
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realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated.
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It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to
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keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So please do double check if you've subscribed and uh
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thank you so much because a strange way you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I
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appreciate you for that. So yeah, thank you
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Alan. Why should I listen to you? What have you done in your career over the last 30
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years that has given you the knowledge, the information, the wisdom that you have on nutrition, dieting, fitness,
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etc. Who is Allan? I have over 30 years of experience in
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the field. The first 10 years consisted of personal training. The second decade
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of my career was nutritional counseling. Just counseling people on on how to eat,
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what to eat. And then the third decade of my career, which actually running on
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13 years now, is the research and education side. My colleagues and I, we
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in quotes do the science. We published the science. I've been a part of 30 30
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publications, 30 studies. Yeah. Yeah. A combination of narrative
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reviews, systematic reviews, and metaanalyses and randomized control
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trials. And how many people have you worked with directly over the last 30 years in terms of in your your nutritional counseling
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role, but also as a as a trainer? Individually, it's
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it's triple digits. Groups potentially quadruple. Yeah.
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And some of those people that you've worked with over the years are fairly high-profile. Yeah. Individuals.
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Yeah. Probably my most interesting story is getting an email from Steve Austin and and the
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wrestling fans know him as Stone Cold Steve Austin. In so many words, he said, "Hey, Allan, I've been
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I've been doing my research and you're you're the guy, so I want to work
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with you. Um, I know that you mentioned that you're not working with clients,
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but could you please make an exception for me? Here's my number." What did you do with him with Stone? I
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helped him get his nutrition right for his uh in quotes uh come back to television.
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It was mainly focused on primarily fat loss. And you worked with Derek Fischer as
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well, who's the five-time NBA champion. Yes. The longtime LA Lakers player. Yeah.
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And Pete Sampas, the former world number one tennis player and grand slam champion. Yeah. Pete Sandra. That's right.
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When people come to you and when they message you and DM you, there's probably similar themes. Similar themes as to
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like what they're trying to accomplish and what their goal is. If you just from the top of your head had to state the
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most popular themes that people are trying to accomplish. What are they?
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How to improve body composition. What does that mean? How to lose fat and or gain muscle.
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One of the things that I'm I'm particularly intrigued by which kind of dubtales into both of those subjects of fat and muscle gain is the subject of
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protein and um because there's been so much said about protein. You know, when I was growing up, they said you have to
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have protein right after you eat your meal. You have to have this much protein. You have to have it before you eat your meal. It doesn't matter when
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you have it. So, I want to do a bit of myth busting on the subject of protein. What are what are the biggest myths that
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people currently believe about protein consumption? The biggest myth is that they have the
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hierarchy of importance all screwed up. Like everybody's worried about how much
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protein per meal you need to have for this or that goal. When do you need to time protein relative to the training
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bout or waking or sleeping or all that stuff. The main thing they need to be focused on is how much protein do they
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need to eat by the end of the day? Because when you hit that goal, you've
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basically won the whole game. The the relative placement, the distribution, and the doses of the protein, the timing
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of it, oh man, it rarely matters. It
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rarely matters beyond getting that protein in in a way that's
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comfortable and convenient for you. and in such a way that you can stick to in
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the long term. Some people are more like grazers, some people are more like gorgers.
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They're both fine as long as you hit the total by the end of the day. So the hierarchy is of utmost importance. Get
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your total daily protein. And then of secondary importance would be what is the distribution of the
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constituent doses of that protein total through the day. And then a third importance down here is like when
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specifically are you supposed to time that protein around the the the training bout. So So yeah, the what the way that
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I put it is like this. The daily total for protein that is the cake. The
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distribution of the doses through the day that's the icing on the cake. And it's a very thin
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layer of icing. And how do we know that? How do we know that it doesn't really matter what time you have the protein and that the most
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important thing is just making sure you get the protein? That's a great question. The reason that
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we know that distribution doesn't matter as much as the total is through a couple
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lines of evidence that I can think of. So there's Yasuda who who compared a three meal model with a two meal model.
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And the three meal model had superior effects for uh for muscle gain.
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But there is a study that was just published gosh within the last month. It
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was better from a methodology standpoint because they fed the subjects an
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abundance of protein. So Yasuda and college who and colleagues who tested the two versus three, he totaled
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everybody out at 1.3 g per kilogram of body weight per day. That's the total
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daily protein dose. And so we know now that that's a suboptimal total if you
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want to push muscle growth. So for pushing muscle growth, we know you you should be at 1.6 g per kilogram of body
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weight, which translates to 7 g per pound of body weight. That's where you
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really want to be if you want to maximize muscular adaptations to resistance
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training like muscle size and strength gains. So this latest study, they
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compared three uh three protein feedings versus five
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protein feedings. And the totals of protein intake in the day in both groups
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were around a gram per pound. So right around 2.2ish grams per kilogram of body
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weight. So we have the optimized daily total and we're testing three versus
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five protein feedings. were doing progressive resistance training and this is the key. This happened in resistance
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trained subjects. There were no significant differences as m in muscle size and strength gain between the three
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protein feedings a day versus five protein feedings a day. And this is the
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best designed study to date on the on the topic. And and so because when I grew up and read stuff
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about gaining muscle, it said you have to have like five or six meals a day. Mhm. Um I said that's what bodybuilders
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do. Whenever we we talk about any kind of physical goal, any any sort of fitness goal, we have to address
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two main things. So who's the who's the population and what goal are we talking about? And
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maybe a third thing we need to address is what is at stake? So what level are we talking about? So population goal,
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what level? What's at stake? So with bodybuilders
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at elite levels it is
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most of them consume five six meals a day. Some of them do
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like even seven or eight in the offseason. And these are individuals who are
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enhanced and so their ceiling for muscle growth and their rates of muscle muscle
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growth are significantly higher than people who are in quotes natural.
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And the amount of food that these individuals can process and use productively is significantly more. And
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so with that population, I can see it being pretty standard for them to be
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consuming at least five, six meals a day since they tend to have since they tend
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to be eating double the amount of of the average person. And so, but the interesting thing that
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happens is that the guidelines from this very sort of fringe elite population,
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that's what trickles down into the general public. and then they're stuck thinking, okay, maybe I need to eat every 2.5 hours or or some such.
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But yeah, with the with the general population and even um recreational athletes and people who are hobbyists
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and and stuff, you really the impact of actual protein
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distribution is inconsequential compared to the total.
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So, how much protein should I be eating a day? because I think you disagree with the recommended daily sort of allowance
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that they suggest we eat as um I think I'm 90 kg. Mhm.
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How much protein should I be eating to gain muscle, lean muscle mass? Okay. So, we're going to apply you to
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the population and the goal and the stakes questions. So, what would you say your training status is? You're
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obviously not a beginner. Um, so you're somewhere between intermediate and advanced.
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Mhm. Right. Yeah. So, what is your goal?
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Just to lose fat and gain muscle. Okay. Familiar story, I'm sure. Okay. The way that I do it is I go 1.6
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to 2.2 g per kilogram of target body weight or goal body weight.
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Mhm. So, that's the range that you would be looking at. Now, with you in particular,
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I would go more towards the upper end because you mentioned that you part of
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your goal is to decrease body fat to a to a minor degree,
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but you're still you're pushing the envelope because you're already lean. Mhm. So, there's an interesting thing about
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high balling protein that facilitates that uh reduction in body fat.
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If I have a lot of protein, it helps to reduce body fat. Yeah. Yeah, it does. And the way that we
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know this is because there have been several studies now, four trials, one
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case study um by Joey Antonio and colleagues, and they
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examine the effect of very high protein intakes anywhere from about 3.3 all the
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way to 4.4 four gram per kilogram of body weight roughly. Gosh, you know, a
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gram and a half to two grams per pound. Is that because you're eating less carbohydrates? You're sort of substituting it for something else
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essentially in terms of you feeling hungry. So, if I'm having 3.3 g of protein, I'm probably not going to be
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having something else which is more fatty. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So this particular line of research was
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done on people who were resistance training and it was done in free living
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conditions and they just gave them the assignment to essentially
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increase their their protein intake by 50%. and
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literally add 80 to 100 grams of protein on top of
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their existing habitual dietary intakes. So, what would you say to me then? You'd
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say push even higher in terms of grams per kilogram of body weight.
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What is your goal body weight? I don't actually have a goal body weight to be honest. I just have more of a a
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goal in terms of like strength. How about this? Were you ever in the shape that you are wanting to be in? And
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what what was your body weight at that time? I was around 90. I think I was just a little bit below 90 kg. So I think I was
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about 88. Okay. So you know what? Let's let's take 90. Yeah. And multiply that by 2.2.
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90 time 2.2. There's your protein target. 198
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grams of protein a day. So, if my if a protein shake gives me 20 grams of protein, I I need to have basically 10 g
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10 protein shakes a day. That's seems like a lot of protein. That is a lot of protein. Uh I I would
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give a little caveat here. You can probably achieve your your goal
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with 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. So,
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that would be the lower end. So, multiply 90 by 1.6. six.
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Mhm. And that's where you can start. So if if that 198 number seems kind of
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far-fetched or even a little bit like, hm, how how would I even achieve that? Then start off at the lower end.
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Do women have a different prescription in this regard? Is there a different approach if you're a woman? Yeah. If you're a woman, you would
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almost always start at the low end because women have a higher proportion of body fat and and by default, they
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have a lower proportion of lean mass. So with women it would almost always be all
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right let's start at 1.6 grams per kilogram of target body weight and see how you do with that and we can always
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ratchet it up if needed. Is there any such harm in eating too much protein?
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It's rare. Uh you would have to have a pre-existing chronic kidney disease and
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then it's generally not a good thing to be highballing the protein. Um, but even
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people with chronic kidney disease have to realize the trade-off that they're
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incurring with a low protein diet and older age sarcopenia and stuff. How are they going to mitigate that? But for the
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general healthy population, there have been many studies that have rolled out looking at effects on kidney
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function, liver function, bone health, and there is virtually zero threat to
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those organ systems that that you would think might be threatened by a high protein intake. So the human organism
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perfectly well equipped to metabolize and handle high protein amounts. And not
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all protein is equal, I guess, because you've got you've got these animal proteins and then plant proteins um that
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come from things like eggs and so on. What is the best type of protein, do you think? Is there such a thing?
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I think that the best thing you can do is get a mix of different types of protein. It is true that gram for gram
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generally speaking animal proteins are more in quotes anabolic than plant
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proteins meaning that they stimulate a greater
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growth response of muscle at the muscle level. So they stimulate muscle protein synthesis more potently
00:18:02
than plant proteins. And there are there's maybe one exception to
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that that we know of which is mop protein which is a fungusbased protein that actually outperformed milk protein
00:18:15
for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. So there's interesting exceptions like that but generally
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speaking animal proteins are better for muscle protein synthesis than plant proteins. Now, with that said, Stephen,
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once you consume a certain amount of total daily protein, then it doesn't
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appear to matter how much of your protein is animal-based versus how much your pro your protein is plant-based. If
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we're looking at things like muscle size and strength gain because this has been actually compared in controlled
00:18:52
interventions where um vegan group has been compared with an omnivore group and
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total daily protein was optimized at 1.6 g per kilogram of body weight per day or.7 g per pound in both groups.
00:19:07
Progressive resistance training for 12 weeks. no significant differences between groups in muscle size and
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strength gain whether it was a omnivorous protein intake or whether it was a plant-based protein intake and we
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have two studies showing that now you must have so many moments where you're working with someone through your
00:19:25
career who's got a goal and he feels like they just can't accomplish it where you find yourself saying the same thing
00:19:31
over and over again to people about how to lose fat or to gain muscle mass is
00:19:37
that same thing just to have more protein. It's a common thing with the general
00:19:44
population, with the lay public. Like my my protein target is at least 160 grams
00:19:50
a day. So, I just make sure that I have four meals
00:19:55
with at least 40 g of protein per day. And it's so easy to do. It's incredibly
00:20:02
easy to do because two of my meals per day are just real whole foods. And then
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two of my meals per day, two to three, are protein smoothies. And so, uh, it is
00:20:14
just so incredibly easy for me to to get my protein intake through. Like two scoops of protein, bam, that's almost 50
00:20:20
grams of protein right there. Right there. So, you have two of those a day, I've got more than half my protein
00:20:26
covered. But if I if I have all of my protein in one meal, Mhm.
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is that going to impact my ability to gain muscle or lose fat if I have it all in one meal? If I just have like one
00:20:36
massive protein shake, if I put like five scoops. Now, if you were telling me, "Hey, Allan, I want to place really
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good in the Nationals this year, the NPC Nationals, classic classic physique or,
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you know, classic bodybuilding or just any one of the physique divisions,
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I would say, you know, you you are not going to want to try to get all your protein in a single meal because what we
00:21:02
want to do is we want to maximize the number of microanabolic
00:21:09
events in the course of the day. We want to maximize the amount of times you maximally stimulate muscle protein
00:21:16
synthesis in the course of the day. And just from a a pragmatic standpoint, you
00:21:23
could probably do that at least three or four times. And if you're able to do that three or four times in a day versus
00:21:29
once with that one big banger of a meal, then you might actually over time gain
00:21:36
more muscle than you would have. And this could make the difference between placings at the end of the uh end of the
00:21:42
prep period. So, but as somebody in the general population,
00:21:48
theoretically you could I am going to challenge you to do something here. I asked my audience
00:21:55
about weight loss and asked them for their 15 most popular questions that are currently unanswered for them.
00:22:02
All right. About weight loss. The first one was, "How do I lose weight
00:22:07
fast?" So essentially, you can engage
00:22:13
what would could be classified as a as a as a protein sparing modified fast.
00:22:19
You're basically crash dieting. Um, I don't love doing that though, honestly.
00:22:25
Listen, I've got a wedding. I need to I need to lose weight fast. How do I lose weight fast? Losing weight fast. So, you would
00:22:31
basically do an aggressive caloric deficit. So, anywhere I I would say
00:22:38
20% below your maintenance needs. 20 to possibly 40 depending on the individual
00:22:44
percent below your maintenance needs. And then keep the protein high. And this
00:22:52
is going to default you to relatively low carbohydrate, relatively low fat,
00:22:58
and just train regularly. Don't hurt yourself. Um, protein high, you said.
00:23:04
Yeah, protein high. And calories wise, so for example, if you maintained at we we'll just take
00:23:11
a round number, 2,000 calories. So you would just lop off about a third of that
00:23:19
and then just go and see if you can
00:23:24
maintain your fat loss while maintaining strength levels relatively. You're it's
00:23:30
almost inevitable to crash diet and uh lose some strength in the process. But I
00:23:37
mean we're we're talking about something that's not an optimal process. But yeah,
00:23:42
that that's that's the game basically. Aggressive caloric deficit, keep protein very high and then you just go and the
00:23:50
deficit could be anywhere from 500 to a,000ish calories below what you normally take in.
00:23:55
The second one is why do I regain weight after stopping a Zmpeek, WGO, etc.
00:24:04
All right. So those GLP-1 RAS, the recep GLP-1 receptor agonist
00:24:10
drugs like WGOI, they have um at least three different
00:24:17
mechanisms that all converge towards
00:24:22
almost nullifying your your hunger and your appetite response. And so when you cut out the drug, then your normal
00:24:30
appetite comes back. And
00:24:35
an unfortunate reality for a lot of uh GLP1 users when they get off the drug is
00:24:41
they just don't have the habits and they don't have the skills necessarily to maintain their weight loss. And of
00:24:48
course, once again, they're fighting their appetite. So I would say perhaps try um a weaning off process
00:24:56
instead of just a jumping off process. A weaning off process where you are reinforcing
00:25:02
countermeasures to overeating, where you are reinforcing good training habits and good dietary
00:25:10
habits. And we're al where you're also progressively learning how to live with
00:25:16
and deal with sensations of hunger between meals. and just train those
00:25:22
habits in. And uh it can be done. I I I
00:25:27
I'm not one of the people in the camp who says it's impossible to get off of a weight loss drug successfully.
00:25:33
So number three again is is my metabolism damaged after dieting? And they're asking a question here about
00:25:38
something called adaptive thermogenesis. Yeah. Okay. So this is not really a short shot here. So the the process of
00:25:46
metabolic adaptation is kind of complex and it happens in both directions
00:25:52
whether you try to gain weight or whether you try to lose weight. So earlier we talked about uh an increase
00:25:57
in non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAt an increase in NEAt in response
00:26:02
to an increase in calories. So that occurs and across studies. I I gave an
00:26:10
example that showed a 336 calorie increase in NEAt when a thousand
00:26:16
calories were stacked on top of people's maintenance. But there are other studies where the caloric increase was not quite
00:26:23
that aggressive. And so so on average increases in
00:26:28
NEAT or non-ex exercise activity thermogenesis are about 2 to 300 calories. So you increase your energy
00:26:36
expenditure about two to 300 calories if you're overeating. Yeah. So your body will start to twitch
00:26:43
more and move more burning more non-active calories. That's correct. When you're overeating. Yeah. So that's an that's an adaptation.
00:26:49
That that's the adaptation in the caloric surplus side. So in the caloric
00:26:55
deficit side, it's just the opposite thing, just the mirror of it. So people decrease their
00:27:04
non-ex exercise activity thermogenesis or their need. They decrease it on average like two to threeish hundred
00:27:10
calories. Okay. As a result of dieting. So this is part of a metabolic adaptation that occurs
00:27:18
with dieting. Is this why people don't think the calories in calories out system is working for them sometimes? because they
00:27:24
don't realize that if they're in a calorie deficit, sometimes they are subconsciously moving around less, which
00:27:32
means that they're burning less calories. Um, so actually they're not in a calorie deficit.
00:27:37
Yes, that's correct. So with the dieting side of things, which is much more of a
00:27:43
public health issue, weight loss is is much more of a a necessity than the weight gain.
00:27:50
It's it's tougher for most people because in addition to the decrease in non-ex exercise activity that'll cost
00:27:56
people two to 300ish calories that they're no longer uh no longer burning
00:28:01
at the end of the dieting cycle. Then you've got what's called adaptive thermo reduction.
00:28:09
Okay. So you mentioned adaptive thermogenesis. Technically that is the there's
00:28:15
non-shivering adaptive thermogenesis and there's shivering adaptive thermogenesis. But that all has to do
00:28:21
with increases in energy expenditure in response to cold environments. So that's
00:28:26
technically that's what adaptive thermogenesis is. It's an increase in energy expenditure. When people diet,
00:28:32
there's something called adaptive thermo reduction. And that is that part of it is a
00:28:39
decrease in non-ex exercise activity thermogenesis. You're you're basically saying that the body changes when we're in a calorie
00:28:45
deficit. It stops doing as much. Yes. That's the activity part.
00:28:50
Yeah. But then there's also the metabolic part. So we've got a decrease in non-ex
00:28:56
exercise activity. Yeah. Then we have adaptive thermo reduction
00:29:01
which has to do with a a metabolic component that has to do with the sympathetic nervous system and also
00:29:08
potentially thyroid output as well. So there's this metabolic change that goes
00:29:14
on and there's behavioral or activity change that goes on. So when people say I've got a slow metabolism,
00:29:21
they might be telling the truth. When people say I have a slow metabolism, what's usually happening is
00:29:26
they have a pretty massive drop in NEAT or non-ex exercise activity to the order
00:29:31
of 2 to 300 calories. Now adaptive thermo reduction is another 50 to 100
00:29:39
calories. Okay? So, we're looking at in the neighborhood of like possibly three 400
00:29:46
calories that they're no longer burning as a result of the dieting process. Now,
00:29:53
if you take somebody with um clinically diagnosed hypothyroidism,
00:30:00
then their resting metabolic rate could be 7 to 10% lower than somebody without a thyroid issue. So you add another one
00:30:08
to 200 calories less burned over here. Then you have the potential for five to
00:30:13
600 calories of energy expenditure that this person is challenged with uh at the
00:30:20
end of their dieting cycle. So they're so I guess it is kind of true in a in a way that people understand it that if
00:30:26
you overeat your metabolism as far as they understand what their metabolism is is increasing and if you undereat then
00:30:33
your metabolism is slowing down. Yes. But I have to emphasize the major
00:30:40
component that slows down is your non exercise activity. You're not moving around as much.
00:30:46
Yes. the other components like adaptive thermal reduction and potential thyroid
00:30:51
issues. That is the minor component. The major component is a drop in fidgeting,
00:30:56
a slowing of the rate that you walk around, an increase in the amount you sit around, and you can control that.
00:31:01
Yes, it's it's hard to put a put a finger on it, but as long as you know that stuff goes down, I give you an
00:31:08
example of uh physique competitors. They are
00:31:13
as their cutting cutting phase progresses, they're literally lying around in between their cardio sessions
00:31:21
and their resistance training sessions and their Tupperware meal sessions. Okay? They're no longer tapping their
00:31:28
heads bo, you know, tapping their fingers and bobbing their heads and they're no longer have a pep in their step. They're no longer doing non
00:31:35
exercise activities, basically. Question four, what diet actually works best for
00:31:42
long-term weight loss? Keto, low-fat, Mediterranean, intermittent fasting. And you got to give me a answer.
00:31:52
I'll say it in one sentence. The diet with enough protein, enough
00:32:00
total calories that is comprised predominantly of
00:32:05
healthy food choices that fits the individual's personal
00:32:11
preferences and tolerances. How do I lose belly fat specifically?
00:32:17
Can you target the belly? Targeting belly fat specifically is a
00:32:23
matter of targeting total body fat. You can't
00:32:28
necessarily spot reduce the the belly fat. Now, if
00:32:33
we're go a layer deeper, it is possible for certain diets to be more conducive
00:32:39
to preventing visceral fat gain or maybe even accelerating visceral fat loss.
00:32:45
Visceral fat is the fat uh in the within the abdominal cavity around the the
00:32:51
organs. And so it is possible for certain diets to be more conducive to
00:32:57
reductions in visceral fat. And that would be diets that have a lower
00:33:02
proportion of saturated fat, which is what's what's an example of a saturated fat food?
00:33:08
Land fatty land animal meats. So land animal fats are going to be your
00:33:14
saturated fats that are more conducive to visceral fat gain. So if you were to
00:33:20
switch out, let's say fatty cuts of meat, just trim that fat out and if you replaced it with something like avocado
00:33:26
nuts, olive oil, seeds on menopause, why is fat loss harder and
00:33:31
what actually works? Okay. During the menopausal transition, which begins at a woman's mid-40s on
00:33:39
average and then ends in in the mid-50s, there are changes physiologically and
00:33:45
hormonally that can challenge a fitness program. So, it can challenge their ability to
00:33:52
execute the fitness program and adhere to it. And so things like hot flashes
00:33:59
and joint pain, changes in sexual function and poor sleep.
00:34:07
All of those things can converge to lead to a a decreased ability to stick
00:34:15
to a program and do the necessary physical activity and dietary adherence
00:34:20
to reach the sort of the standard rate of progress for body composition change.
00:34:26
And so the solution to that would be simply you don't have to rearrange a whole program because somebody's going
00:34:33
through menopause. You don't have to cut out nutrients and do any special things. What has been effective is just lowering
00:34:41
the expectation of progress. So whereas I would typically have somebody gun for
00:34:47
a pound a week of fat loss, somebody in the menopausal transition, they have
00:34:52
more challenges to that going on simultaneously. So we would go for about half of that
00:34:58
protein. What do what do they do in terms of protein? Just keep the protein high.
00:35:04
Same range. Yeah. So, with protein, I got to say there's sort of a two-tiered
00:35:10
recommendation. So, the general public with average goals Mhm. will do just fine on 1.2 to 1.6 g per
00:35:18
kilogram of body weight. That's kind of like the general population average goal, folks. somebody like yourself, uh,
00:35:26
somebody like me and folks who are oriented towards maybe pushing the
00:35:32
envelope a little bit more than the average 1.6 to 2.2 g per kilogram of body
00:35:39
weight. And you know, there's a little margin over here for people on the fringe physique competitors who I would
00:35:47
have no problem seeing them go higher than that 2.2 g per kilogram cut off. Is
00:35:52
there anything else that Perry or menopause or women need to
00:35:57
understand about gaining muscle and keeping fat off when they're going through menopause? Is there anything
00:36:03
else that we've missed? You know, I I would just emphasize the
00:36:09
understanding that midlife presents maybe the highest point of uh
00:36:15
psychological stress in in people's lives. So starting from the late 40s
00:36:21
going all the way into people's 50s and 60s it's it's like that you know the concentrated period in the menopausal
00:36:28
transition mid-40s to mid-50s is when people are dealing with ailing parents
00:36:33
the stress of ailing parents the stress of kids going through high school or college. The stress of hitting a high
00:36:42
point in their careers. The pressures thereof. the time and the energy that is necessary to allocate for all of those
00:36:49
things. Mhm. All of those things distract from, oh, I've got a fitness program here. Oh, my
00:36:55
coach is making me do this and this and this and now he's making me diet like this.
00:37:01
That's the thing that I I would emphasize. There's nothing special or different that needs to be done. And in
00:37:07
fact, there's a lot of mythology that's circulating the space right now where
00:37:13
coaches and gurus and even some physicians are telling women that they are just doomed to gain a bunch of belly
00:37:20
fat and lose a bunch of muscle during menopause. It just happens. You're doomed. Well, that's just not true. Uh
00:37:26
there is a study called the Swan study. That's the longest and largest study of its kind. And the average amount of fat
00:37:34
gain during the entire menopausal transition was 1.6 kilograms which is 3
00:37:40
and a half pounds. And the average amount of muscle loss total during the
00:37:46
menopausal transition was 0.2 kg. That's about half half a pound of muscle loss.
00:37:54
Statistically significant? Yes. Insurmountable? No. So, and are there
00:38:00
going to be outliers who experience double the muscle loss and double the fat gain of that? Yes.
00:38:07
But none of this is insurmountable. What do you think about taking is it HRT? Does that help?
00:38:16
Yeah. Well, well, it it helps those who need it. So, HRT should be looked at on
00:38:21
an individual basis. One of the things that really annoys the absolute crap out of me is when I'm seeing the comment
00:38:26
sections on social media with people telling everybody that, "Hey, you just
00:38:32
turned 40. time to go on HRT. That is between you and your doctor.
00:38:39
People are trying to universalize major changes like HRT.
00:38:44
Some people definitely benefit from it. And just the same, there are a lot of
00:38:50
people who don't need it. The people that benefit from it, do they find it easier to gain muscle mass and
00:38:56
to not gain fat? Is that kind of like what that is a common Okay. That is a common result. Yes. But
00:39:04
my thing with HRT is is this. So there has to be a symptomologic reason
00:39:12
to get on it. So you have to be incurring or experiencing
00:39:18
symptoms that are disrupting to your quality of life. Mhm. Regardless of what your blood labs
00:39:24
are, like for testosterone for example, if you are out of range for testosterone
00:39:30
on the lower end, let's say, but you have no symptoms and you feel fine, you perform great in all aspects, then it's
00:39:38
really up to you whether it bugs you enough that you're below range or lower
00:39:43
on the lower end of the range um to correct that. It it's up to you. And so
00:39:50
symptomologically driven. Now the other thing to look at with HRT is and a lot of people they get a single testing
00:39:57
point and they judge their need to get on hormonal replacement therapy based on a single single test.
00:40:05
What people need to do is see whether there is some sort of trend going on in
00:40:10
one direction or another or not. And if that trend is going in a bad direction
00:40:16
over time, and you you can do this by just multiple time points over over an extended period, it's debatable, like 6
00:40:23
months, 12 months to see what's going on. Try to correct things through lifestyle and diet. And often they are
00:40:29
correctable. Um, I've just I've come across many cases
00:40:34
where a guy will be underslept, overworked, eating like crap, gets his
00:40:41
testosterone levels tested. Oh, you're right at the bottom or you're even below range. Oh, time for HRT. Well, hold on a
00:40:49
second. Let's get this guy some sleep. Let's improve his lifestyle, improve body composition, and then bang,
00:40:56
testosterone levels double. This is not an uncommon thing. And so I'm very much
00:41:03
a proponent of first, are there symptoms driving the
00:41:09
justification for HRT? And then secondly, are we basing things on a single time point or did we actually see
00:41:16
a trend over time? My next question is about PCOS. Mhm. A lot of women are struggling with PCOS
00:41:23
and that's causing them to have irregular menstrual cycles and um fertility issues.
00:41:32
What would you say to a woman who is struggling with PCOS in terms of dietary
00:41:38
prescription? Okay. So PCOS shares a lot of metabolic
00:41:45
characteristics with type 2 diabetes. So um there is insulin resistance going
00:41:52
on there. There is impaired glycemic control going on. And so we can pretty
00:41:58
much justify being cautious with total amount of carbohydrate intake with um
00:42:05
PCOS. With type 2 diabetes there's two tiers
00:42:11
of importance dietarily. So of first importance with type two diabetes, you have to structure the diet so that it
00:42:17
allows body fat loss. The success of GLP-1 drugs has actually proven that at
00:42:25
the heart of type 2 diabetes is overeating uh an abundance of body fat. So the way
00:42:31
that type 2 diabetes happens is in genetically predisposed individuals they
00:42:37
gain total body fat and then they gain visceral fat an undue amount of visceral
00:42:43
fat and then this leads to insulin resistance and impairment of glycemic control.
00:42:50
So PCOS is is very similar in this regard. uh there is no standard or
00:42:58
consensusbased PCOS diet protocol, but because it shares so many similar
00:43:04
characteristics with type 2 diabetes, then we can pretty much employ the same
00:43:09
principles of how we would intervene with type two diabetes, which would number one put a priority on total body
00:43:16
fat reduction. And then tier number two would be all right, do we need to restrict carbohydrates even further? And
00:43:23
so that would be very similar with with PCOS. And at kind of a population level with type two diabetes,
00:43:30
roughly 130ish grams of carbohydrates a day seems to be sort of the sweet spot
00:43:35
uh below which people have an easier time controlling their blood sugar than above that total amount. But that's just
00:43:42
a statistical average. We still have to look at things case by case. My girlfriend, she um has PCOS and she
00:43:49
did the ketogenic diet with me. She's on it at the moment. We've been doing it for about eight weeks now. Mhm. We we do it intermittently throughout
00:43:55
the years. Um and she said her menstrual cycle has perfectly corrected itself. I
00:44:00
think at its maximum it was like 60 days her menstrual cycle and then because she's restricted her
00:44:06
carbohydrates as you were saying in in in this way using keto it's it's like she said it's perfect. It's like
00:44:12
perfectly predictable now. That's awesome. I I I say that in part because people I think people don't with PCOS who have irregular menstrual cycles
00:44:19
don't often consider that carbohydrates, sugar, glucose, whatever
00:44:24
could be the perpetrator. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because it's framed as a disease like
00:44:30
you you were born with it. Maybe it's heritable. Maybe there's an element of truth to that. But um it's crazy that
00:44:36
that dietary intervention had such a profound impact on her in particular. It's glad to hear that you found
00:44:42
something that works. That's yeah that's an you know that's anytime you present
00:44:47
with some sort of clinical condition I would first tell you hey see see an
00:44:52
endocrinologist or see a doctor who specializes in that particular issue
00:44:58
and in terms of menstrual cycles generally if you do have an irregular menstrual cycle is there anything you
00:45:04
should be thinking about number one see a doctor number two consider whether or not you are
00:45:10
overtraining and undereating so what happens happens with female physique competitors.
00:45:16
Menstrual disruption, menstrual cessation a few months into prep,
00:45:22
sometimes even a few weeks in a prep, depending on how aggressive the diet is. And so the menstrual disruption is very
00:45:29
common in competitive athletes and in recreational athletes who have to
00:45:35
maintain a certain level of leanness while maintaining a high volume of
00:45:40
exercise output. Is that the body from an evolutionary perspective saying, "Listen, we we don't have the energy to have a baby here, so we're just going to
00:45:46
shut this down." That is right on. Yeah. So, you kind of do you don't want to be
00:45:52
restricting your calorie consumption too much if you have an irregular menstrual cycle and you're trying to correct that.
00:45:58
Yeah. No. No. Um, the so-called female athlete triad begins with overtraining,
00:46:04
undereating, potential eating disorder, nurturing going on there. And then down the line, the menstrual cycle gets
00:46:12
disrupted and stops. And then hormonal changes happen that are negative. And then that ultimately results in
00:46:18
osteopenia, osteoporosis. And so that chain of events is
00:46:24
unfortunately really common with women who um don't pay attention to a healthy
00:46:30
menstrual cycle. People use this term all the time, muscle memory. Mhm. Uh I thought it was
00:46:36
nonsense, but I spoke to someone the other day and they said to me, "Actually, no, your your body does have a muscle memory, which means that if I
00:46:43
fall off now uh and I stop going to the gym, my body is going to be able to get
00:46:48
back to my current physique faster because I was here once upon a time.
00:46:53
Is this is this true?" That is true. There's some debate going on amongst the community what what goes
00:46:59
on physiologically with like when you train you create you create new myoule
00:47:05
so you increase your so-called myionuclear domains and those stay relatively permanent even during times
00:47:11
of dtraining but there's still the so-called
00:47:17
proprioceptive or motor component to training that sticks with people sort of
00:47:23
the skill aspect of it that sticks with people to be able to execute the movements and do the things to cause the
00:47:29
adaptations. So, not only do you have that muscle memory from the myionuclear
00:47:34
domain standpoint, but you have the motor learning, the neurological
00:47:40
component, and to a degree you you also have the skeletal component to be able
00:47:45
to capacitate those that rebound in loading and muscle gain, muscle regain
00:47:50
rather. Is the gut microbiome playing a role in my ability to lose weight?
00:47:57
Not a big one. Um, of course, if I Why did you make that sound? Well, there's some people in the space
00:48:04
who put the microbiome a as the master regulator everything, but it's
00:48:11
definitely a part of the the axis of organ systems that that manifest
00:48:17
whatever, you know, result we're looking at. It's part of it. Yes. But it's not the the it's not the main
00:48:23
puppeteer of everything. everything works in concert to and and I'll just give you an example there. So,
00:48:30
there are certain supplements that are um
00:48:35
that are claimed to be able to in quotes fix the gut microbiome and cause greater weight loss. So, there have been many
00:48:42
studies looking at this sort of phenomenon. And while there is a statistically
00:48:50
significant effect in some cases, the absolute amount that they can help for
00:48:55
things like body fat loss or body weight loss is usually not practically significant. It's it's too small to be
00:49:02
considered meaningful. And so I wouldn't necessarily rely on changes in the gut
00:49:07
microbiome for impacting like global changes in body fat.
00:49:14
Here I have 20 eggs. I heard that you eat 20 eggs per week, which is about,
00:49:21
you know, four eggs a day potentially. Why do you eat so many eggs?
00:49:26
Well, number one, I'm one of those weirdos who actually loves eggs. I love I love the taste of them. Um, they're a
00:49:33
great source of protein. Uh, decent source of fat, most of the fat, and there is oleic acid, by the way, which
00:49:39
is a monounsaturate that predominates olive oil. It's a low saturated fat thing. Of course, the knock on eggs is
00:49:46
their cholesterol content. Um, but interestingly, uh, it's dietary
00:49:52
saturated fat that has the greater magnitude of impact on blood lipids than
00:49:57
than dietary cholesterol. Interestingly enough, I recognize that the major
00:50:03
health agencies would want you to stop your egg consumption to like one a day, possibly two a day if you're an elderly
00:50:09
person. But I take the uh health agencies um or even
00:50:17
the consensus guidelines as a okay, that's cool. That's good starting point. Um I happen to like eggs. I'll eat more
00:50:24
than that. Check my blood. Check my health. I'm doing just fine. So, I'm one of those people who can do four eggs a
00:50:30
day just fine. Is this part of your broader testosterone protocol?
00:50:36
I I like the fact that uh eggs are conducive to testosterone production.
00:50:42
So, you're 53 years old, right? Yes. Do you test your testosterone levels? I have not tested my testosterone levels
00:50:49
in forever, but I'm not concerned with it because once again, it would be a
00:50:56
symptom-driven thing for me to even care. So, if I was experiencing the symptoms of low testosterone, then that
00:51:03
would give me a reason to check it out and see what's going on. And then I would have to take a step back and look
00:51:10
and see what can I modify with lifestyle. What what do I have available to change
00:51:16
non-drug-wise? And you know what? If I ever need to take exogenous
00:51:22
testosterone, if that day ever comes, well, then so be it. I'm just not there. What supplements do you take every day?
00:51:29
I take a multivitamin. I take two multivitamins, actually. Uh the reason why I take two multivitamins is because
00:51:38
really certain key uh nutrients in there, they they have to be in such small
00:51:43
amounts per single pill that it's really just meaningless. And so I take two
00:51:48
multivitamins, one of them with iron, one of them without iron. And I also take fish oil, uh I take magnesium, and
00:51:58
I take vitamin D3. I take vitamin C. And and by the way, I really should preface
00:52:03
this with this is the bro science side of my personal habits because I'm taking my vitamins more on uh placing your bets
00:52:12
basis rather than hey man this is just the bottom line evidence-based. I think
00:52:17
everybody should do this. Okay. So I want I want to make sure that's clear. I also take magnesium and I also take
00:52:24
collagen and I also take creatine. If I told you you could only take three of
00:52:30
those supplements, which three would you pick? That's a damn good question, man. Can I
00:52:36
have uh can can I'm going to count my two multis as one. So, your multivitamin would be would that be the first one?
00:52:42
Yes. Okay. So, multivitamin and omega-3s, the fish oil, vitamin D3.
00:52:48
So, you've you've sacked off the creatine. [Laughter] You're a genius.
00:52:58
That's those are those would be those would be the top three. I would c Can I add creatine in there? Could I squeeze it in there?
00:53:03
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Oh, bro. I had to pick three. So, you picked the multivitamin, omega-3, the vitamin D3.
00:53:08
Well, it might humble me to kick the creatine out. So, okay, fine. I'll leave those three. You call creatine king creatine.
00:53:15
Yeah. Why' you call it that? It's the only non-farmacological
00:53:22
supplement that that really really has a very strong and deep
00:53:27
and broad evidence base for um enhancing the effects of of resistance training.
00:53:33
So strength gains and size gains more strength than size. The size gains they
00:53:40
they come with the initial uh loading phase where a lot more intramuscular
00:53:46
water happens or you know intracellular intramiocellular
00:53:53
hydration. That is the the big immediate part of creatine that that folks feel
00:54:00
when they go on it and when they go off of it. So you you'll lose a few pounds
00:54:05
of lean mass if you get off of creatine. I call it kreat creatine because it has
00:54:11
possibly close to a I want to say it's reached over a thousand studies and the majority
00:54:19
of those studies show um positive effects. Usually with with creatine if
00:54:24
you were to compare a group taking creatine versus a group not taking
00:54:29
creatine. So the creatine group will have like a 20% increase in their
00:54:35
lifting capacity whereas the non-creatine group will have like 12ish% increase in their lifting capacity over
00:54:41
a typical study length 8 to 12 weeksish. And so that is a significant strength
00:54:47
gain advantage and over the long term that would definitely augment muscle
00:54:54
hypertrophy as well. And once you're loaded with creatine, so being loaded
00:55:00
with creatine means that you saturate your muscle creatine stores. And that requires either a loading phase of 20 to
00:55:07
25 grams per day for 5 to 7 days or um a maintenance phase that you engage like 3
00:55:13
to five grams a day. You'll be loaded at um about 30 days. And so during that
00:55:19
loading phase, it's pretty common for people to gain roughly 2% of their body
00:55:26
weight um as lean mass. People seem to talk about creatine like it's this miracle thing that everybody
00:55:32
should be taking. That's one of the one of the few supplements that it seems all the uh experts I speak to about this
00:55:39
stuff seem to agree upon. Obviously, vitamin D, omega-3 comes up all the time and ultivitamins,
00:55:44
but creatine seems to, you know, nobody seems to have much of an issue with it or be able to point to many side effects
00:55:50
of taking with it, both for men and women. Yeah, it's got the muscul muscularkeeletal
00:55:56
um benefit there. Believe it or not, there's even um benefits for creatine on on joint health. So um not only that,
00:56:04
not only the the athletic performance and muscle hypertrophy side, but there are things like uh improved glucose
00:56:12
control, improved memory. So different domains of cognition can be enhanced by
00:56:19
creatine. The level of creatine in the brain can increase with with supplementation. And
00:56:24
then you create a pro-energy environment in the brain. And that's how uh these positive effects on memory happen with
00:56:31
creatine supplementation, especially in people with uh cognitive decline. So So
00:56:38
it there's almost nothing creatine can't do. Wow.
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00:58:35
Diet breaks. What's a diet break and why does that why is that a useful tool?
00:58:41
Yes. So, one of the big things that dieters encounter are progress plateaus. And so,
00:58:49
we can define a progress plateau as four to possibly 8 weeks of no change in body
00:58:56
composition despite good compliance to the program. With that definition out of
00:59:02
the way, then intervening and overcoming or managing a plateau is really sort of
00:59:09
this individualized process that needs to be looked at case by case where
00:59:15
for example, if somebody feels like they're in the midst of a plateau and they have been on
00:59:22
program, then there's really only two reasons the plateau happened. So reason number one is that their compliance was
00:59:29
inconsistent. So poor compliance is number one or number two they have
00:59:35
reached energy equilibrium. So they've reached a genuine and bonafide new maintenance
00:59:41
point. But there's something that is overarching with the plateau concept
00:59:46
that people need to understand. So we automatically look at progress
00:59:52
plateaus as something negative. when people need to reorganize or reframe
00:59:59
their perception of what a plateau is and the plateau is just the body doing
01:00:05
its job. When we look at the body as an adaptive survival unit then homeostasis
01:00:12
is a big part of that. So if the body achieves homeostasis then hallelujah
01:00:18
we're we're going to live. We're going to survive. So if for example somebody
01:00:23
has a lot of weight to lose let's say somewhere to the order of over 20 pounds
01:00:29
20 40 60 lbs to lose they have to understand that multiple plateaus will
01:00:35
be encountered on route to their ultimate goal. And the way that the body changes is
01:00:43
always going to be this surge, slow, stop pattern. And it just continues this
01:00:51
way. And with every progressive plateau, the surge part gets shorter and the
01:01:00
slowing part and then the plateau part gets longer. So you can think of it as
01:01:06
staircases and landings. So with each successive plateau, the staircase gets shorter, the landing gets longer, but
01:01:13
it's supposed to go like that and the plateaus should be getting longer because the ultimate goal after all is a
01:01:21
plateau of sorts. And when people come to realize that, then they can look at
01:01:26
plateaus as what I call maintenance practice. So if they have that mental
01:01:32
shift from seeing plateaus as this negative thing where I need to go sniff out the next great diet or the next
01:01:38
great product, they can look at it as all right, so the plateau is a good thing. The body is doing its job. Now we
01:01:46
have an opportunity to practice maintenance. And think about it this way too, Stephen. Anybody can get weight
01:01:54
off, but weight loss maintenance really is the issue. So the better you get at
01:02:01
weight loss maintenance, then the more you can win the game. How do I get good at weight loss
01:02:06
maintenance? All right. So in order to properly maintain, you have to properly get there. So
01:02:14
properly getting there means that you have to do your best to maintain your lean body
01:02:20
mass while you're losing body fat. So what happens to a lot of people when they diet is they lose a lot of lean
01:02:28
body mass along with lean body mass. You mean muscle? Yes. Muscle mass. Muscle mass along with their fat mass. And so muscle
01:02:38
tissue is something very important to keep on the body while you're losing fat because muscle is we can look at it as
01:02:45
our metabolically active. Every tissue is metabolically active even even body fat. But muscle
01:02:51
tissue specifically is the center of our
01:02:57
dietary fuel usage. It is the metabolic engine of the body, if you will. And so
01:03:03
if you're losing muscle tissue, you're really losing metabolic leverage while
01:03:10
you're losing body fat. So the way that I infer that is that muscle is very greedy
01:03:15
and it it it takes a lot takes up a lot of calories. So if I lose my muscle when I get when I drop my weight, it's almost
01:03:22
like the greedy guy who who sucks up all my calories is no longer there. And so
01:03:28
I'm quite likely just to to rebound quite quickly. That's a great analogy. And and it's accurate, too. And in fact, there is a
01:03:35
phenomenon that in the literature it's called collateral fattening. And that happens when the body senses an
01:03:45
energy crisis at the end of a diet where you've lost a bunch of muscle mass. The body senses that, oh my gosh, we just
01:03:53
lost a bunch of precious tissue. We have to do whatever we can to get it back. And so your hunger signals ramp up and
01:04:02
your body kind of behaviorally and even metabolically does what is necessary for
01:04:07
you to feed that back as soon as possible. And this does not necessarily
01:04:13
happen certainly not to that kind of magnitude if you keep your muscle mass
01:04:19
while you're losing body fat. you don't experience this collateral fattening type of phenomenon where people just
01:04:25
rebound like crazy because their appetite is out of control at the end of the diet. So the way that you preserve
01:04:32
muscle mass during the fat loss process is a couple things. So you have to make
01:04:38
sure that your rate of weight loss isn't indicative of something that's too
01:04:43
quick. So about a half a percent to a full percent of your body weight lost
01:04:50
per week is as fast as you really want to go. So roughly a pound a week. uh
01:04:57
some people who start off heavier, okay, two pounds a week is fine at the very beginning, but you generally don't want
01:05:04
to lose more than 1% of your total body weight per week because then that
01:05:10
increases the chances that you're losing an undue amount of muscle mass along
01:05:15
with your fat mass. And so if you can in essence control the weight loss rate,
01:05:23
then you will keep your lean mass. The other two things that need to be going on at the same time are you need
01:05:29
to be resistance training and you need to be consuming enough protein. So strength training and protein
01:05:36
enough protein, you got resistance training and then you have sort of a top speed limiter on how much weight that
01:05:43
you lose per week. And 1% loss awake 1%
01:05:49
loss a week is spectacular actually for most people. Even a pound a week, even
01:05:54
half a pound a week, you're looking at like in two years you lost 50 pounds. Most people took like two decades to put
01:06:01
on that 50 pounds. So you actually don't want to lose weight too quickly or else you are susceptible to rebound.
01:06:08
It is going to come off quickly if you have a lot of weight to lose. It'll come off quickly at the beginning. So, for
01:06:14
example, uh somebody who is in a state of obesity, let's say they weigh 250 pounds and let's say they're losing two
01:06:21
two and a half pounds a week at the beginning of the program, that's fine. But
01:06:26
on average, on average, you you would want to look at roughly a pound a week
01:06:31
is a good benchmark. And I still would not frown upon or scoff at a half a
01:06:37
pound a week for certain cases. And we can talk about some of those stubborn
01:06:42
cases. Like on the topic of plateaus, for example, I had a client uh I'm sure
01:06:50
she doesn't mind being named. She's a great person, Pam Pam Gresock. She's a veteran coach in the space. Uh she's
01:06:57
permenopausal, so she's in her her 40s. And she wanted to lose what we
01:07:04
calculated out to be 8 pounds of fat. and she stored the majority of
01:07:11
it where she didn't want it was around the midsection. And I had it in mind that okay, this is
01:07:19
somebody who's permenopausal, so there's going to be a lower rate of progress going on. This is somebody who is highly
01:07:27
trained. So, she doesn't have a lot more muscle to put on that would give her
01:07:36
some, you know, some extra in quotes metabolic leverage for the whole process of improving body composition. So, she's
01:07:42
highly trained, permenopausal, wants to lose 8 pounds of fat, which
01:07:48
would represent the final eight pounds. sort of that that pushing the envelope.
01:07:54
Knowing those three things, I knew that this is going to be a difficult and
01:07:59
slowgoing process. So whereas I would normally have somebody
01:08:06
expect roughly or at least gun for a pound a week loss,
01:08:12
for Pam, it was more like, are you going to be okay with
01:08:17
one to two pounds per month? like if we can get rid of one to two pounds of body
01:08:22
fat per month, I would be happy with it and I think you should be happy with it. And so I convinced her of that. And with
01:08:30
her wanting to lose 8 pounds, I think it helps to give people a visual of what a
01:08:38
certain amount of weight loss looks like. So coincidentally, a gallon a
01:08:44
gallon jug if you fill it with butter, that's 8 pounds. And so I had her
01:08:49
visualize this 8 pound jug. And um I also had her do a butter
01:08:56
visualization too. So um a standard stick of butter is 4 ounces. So four
01:09:02
sticks of butter is one pound. And uh in her case, she wanted to lose well she
01:09:09
wanted to lose 8 pounds. So that's 32 sticks of butter that would be removed from her body at the end of the dieting
01:09:16
cycle. Is that what this is here? What is this?
01:09:24
That is 10 pounds of butter. This is an amazing freaking visual. And this this is because you asked about diet breaks
01:09:32
as a tool for people achieving long-term weight loss or just breaking through
01:09:37
plateaus or managing plateaus. So every 5 to 10 pounds that somebody loses
01:09:45
in a dieting cycle is high time for a diet break. The way you can define a diet break, put some
01:09:51
parameters on it. So it's what I call non yolo maintenance. So you take off
01:09:57
the rules, take off the restrictions, but you're not eating with sheer abandon. You're just relaxing the diet.
01:10:03
You take a week off the diet either every four to eight weeks while you're
01:10:08
dieting or you take a week off of the diet every 5 to 10 lbs that you lose. And the
01:10:16
sound of 5 to 10 lbs seems like oh that's nothing. But no, it's a milestone.
01:10:22
This is 10 pounds. Yes, that's crazy. 10 pounds of of butter off the body. So
01:10:30
yeah, every time you you lose 10 pounds, it's 5 to 10 pounds in in my experience is high time to take a diet break to
01:10:37
just alleviate the mental and the physical fatigue of dieting.
01:10:42
And that's one of the tactics that you can use for a long-term adherence to a
01:10:48
plan. On the topic of plateaus,
01:10:54
you can when you're dieting, you will hit a point where the plateau periods or
01:11:00
the maintenance phases are going to be longer than the dieting phases. I think that that's ideal to be
01:11:06
able to hit that point for a long-term weight loss goal. And so it's a lot
01:11:12
easier or at least a lot less intimidating for somebody to know that they're going to be dieting for 4 to 8
01:11:20
weeks at a time in between a let's say a 2 to 3 month maintenance phase.
01:11:26
What about fasting? Do you think that fasting is because a
01:11:31
lot of people talk about this thing called autophagy where if you fast for I don't know 48 hours your body switches into the state of autophagy where it
01:11:37
starts to heal and repair itself. Are you a fan of fasting
01:11:43
for weight loss or for autophagy or other things for the control of calories in fasting
01:11:51
is legit and it's also legit for it. It actually works a as a as one of the
01:11:58
options for dieting. There just has been a massive accumulation of studies showing that it
01:12:06
works great. So the intermittent fasting variants, we have one one we talked
01:12:11
about earlier timerestricted eating and we've got every other day fasting and
01:12:17
then the other third major variant would be twice weekly fasting or the 52 type of model. And then you have like
01:12:24
consecutive day fasting type of models as well which are less studied because there's just more risk involved in them
01:12:31
and it's tough to you know incur that risk in research. When you bring up autophagy,
01:12:37
that's where I kind of have to push back on um not on your your mentioning of it
01:12:44
specifically, but just in general. People will say or we'll make claims that yeah, autophagy
01:12:51
and we can say that we can explain autophagy as a way that the body gets
01:12:58
rid of uh parts of damaged cells. It's an important process within the
01:13:04
body and it is a catabolic process or a breakdown process.
01:13:11
But the thing is it happens in a caloric deficit regardless of whether fasting is
01:13:17
involved or not. Really? Yes. You maintain hypocchloric
01:13:23
conditions. Autophagy ramps up. um you can have a linear hypocoric model
01:13:30
or a nonlinear or intermittent hypocaloric model and you'll get similar
01:13:37
degrees of autophagy if you match the caloric deficit by the end of the week. Now the other interesting thing about
01:13:44
autophagy is that you can ramp up autophagy through exercise
01:13:50
and not only that but both major types of exercise will increase autophagy. So
01:13:57
resistance training increases autophagy. Endurance aerobic type training
01:14:03
increases autophagy. So, if you want to in quotes chase autophagy,
01:14:09
then doing it through intermittent fasting or just going through prolonged periods of not eating can be a
01:14:16
double-edged sword. Whereas the autophagy increases through exercise,
01:14:21
they almost don't have a downside. And so, um, a lot of times with intermittent
01:14:26
fasting, it can be a great tool for people who need to lose excess body weight. But what I'm seeing in the
01:14:33
community is people thinking that intermittent fasting is something that is necessary to do regardless of your
01:14:41
body fat level. That is either necessary or beneficial. And that's not actually
01:14:46
true per per the research. There's there's a this one study in particular that looked at men who are already lean
01:14:54
and I believe this was by Templeton and colleagues where they compared a linear
01:14:59
dieting model with an every other day fasting model. What does that mean every other day
01:15:05
fasting? So they took 24 hours off. Yes. Yeah. So it was Yep. every other
01:15:12
day and then the same deficit by the end of the by the end of the week between
01:15:17
the two groups. And the intermittent group actually lost more lean body mass
01:15:25
than the linear caloric deficit group. They lost more lean body.
01:15:31
They lost more lean body mass. So they lost more weight. They muscle. Lost more muscle.
01:15:38
Yeah. And so that gives us a hint that fasting is great until it isn't because
01:15:45
you've achieved what you needed to achieve. And so then it just kind of becomes a tool. It it it's always just a
01:15:52
tool to help people control calories. And one of the beautiful things about fasting and whether it's timerestricted
01:15:59
eating or whether it's some sort of variant of alternate day fasting or twice a week fasting
01:16:06
is that it works in research regardless of whether people are meticulously
01:16:11
tracking things or not. And so that that can be a boon for individuals who don't
01:16:17
necessarily like to micromanage their stuff. But for people who are trying to maximize retention of lean mass while
01:16:23
they're pushing the envelope of uh fitness,
01:16:28
uh it can definitely be a double-edged sword once you're already lean. But if I do want to maximize the
01:16:34
benefits of autophagy, the best way to do that is fasting versus just calorie restriction. I'm assuming
01:16:40
we don't know what the optimal level of autophagy is that would actually confer
01:16:46
health benefits. We don't know what that threshold is. And there's different ways
01:16:51
that people try to measure autophagy. It's very hard to correlate certain
01:16:58
levels of autophagy with certain certain degrees of disease prevention.
01:17:03
We we're not there yet. Um, I don't think I I I think big picture-wise I
01:17:10
think that autophagy is an algorithm
01:17:15
running in the background that is more of a bystander type of thing than a driver. Simple sim similar to insulin
01:17:22
and glucagon. So the insulin and glucagon axis works when you feed versus
01:17:30
when you're fasting. So glucagon levels go up. What's glucagon?
01:17:35
Glucagon is a hormone that mobilizes fuel stores in the absence of food, in
01:17:42
the absence of calories. And autophagy is similar in that regard.
01:17:49
And I think that a focus on pushing autophagy
01:17:54
is sort of missing the forest for the trees. Because if we were to push autophagy to its end, then we could go
01:18:01
all the way to a phenomenon called autotosis, which is runaway cell death,
01:18:07
which happens in starvation in some cases. And so I think that we need to focus on
01:18:14
other things like how do we maintain a certain body fat percentage while
01:18:20
maintaining a certain physical activity level while maintaining a certain dietary pattern.
01:18:27
I think that it's those things that are much more productive to target than seeing how far can we push autophagy
01:18:36
before potentially going into runaway cell death. Mhm. I was looking at the the benefits
01:18:42
of this thing they call autophagy and it says there the proven likely benefits are cellular cleaner. So repairs damaged
01:18:50
proteins and organels I believe improving cell efficiency. Metabolic
01:18:55
health improves insulin sensitivity neuroproction heart and muscle quality maintains mitochondria helps adapt to
01:19:03
training and oxidative stress. immune tuning and longevity. There's sort of strong animal evidence I believe
01:19:10
around the longevity component, but they the the research that I was reading talked about how it can back back
01:19:16
backfire because um tumors may use autophagy to survive. Um and some
01:19:23
treatments for established cancers aim to inhibit it. And if you overdo fasting, as you said in the study you
01:19:29
cited, you can lose muscle, which is not great, and be fatigued, etc. Um there is a bit of a trend I think with people
01:19:36
doing a lot of water fasts and stuff like that quite periodically. I think it's rising even sort of juice fasts and
01:19:41
stuff like that. What's your take on those types of fasts? I'm not a big fan Stephen. Uh I think
01:19:48
that the cycle that people go through at least in the developed world is that
01:19:54
they go through the year then November comes around and then the holidays hit.
01:20:00
They overdo it from November to through December all the way up to the end of
01:20:06
the year and they're like, "Oh boy, I have 10 to 20 pounds that I want to lose." And then they just use these sort
01:20:16
of fasts and these detoxes to crash off the bad decisions of the previous few
01:20:23
months. And then the cycle repeats annually.
01:20:28
So, I think that it's a much healthier approach for people to secure and
01:20:33
reinforce the right habits through the entirety of the year instead of um
01:20:40
jumping on the fast to get rid of the the the holiday binges. This sort of brings me to the ketogenic
01:20:46
diet. Um, my dad used the ketogenic diet and I think actually my brother as well. Um, but also a few of my friends in my
01:20:52
life used it as a way to drop their fat quite quickly to sort of recomposite
01:20:59
their body um, very very quickly. And the results of seeing someone on the ketogenic diet are quite astounding
01:21:05
because my friend the other day sent me the chart of his weighing scales at home
01:21:11
and it's the sort of gradual increase upwards and then he did the ketogenic diet where he cut out carbohydrates and sugars basically almost entirely and
01:21:18
it's just straight line down in his body his body weight. What is your perspective on the ketogenic diet? What
01:21:26
is it good for? What is it not good for? Is it good at all? It is a very effective way to lose
01:21:33
weight and fat. And that's for a few big reasons. First
01:21:39
of all, if somebody goes from their typical western dietary pattern to the
01:21:45
ketogenic diet, then they're automatically cutting out a lot of
01:21:51
highly processed, hyper palatable carb fat combo junk foods and snacks.
01:21:58
that are just energy dense, easy to over consume mindlessly.
01:22:04
That's the good thing about the ketogenic diet in addition to well, they're finally eating enough protein now. And so along with the increase in
01:22:11
protein comes an increase in satiety and a better hunger control.
01:22:16
Now, the negatives of the ketogenic diet, the big one is that the majority
01:22:22
of people who engage a ketogenic diet, they don't do it permanently. For one
01:22:28
reason or another, they're no longer on the keto diet. And this is reflected in
01:22:33
research as well. Even in uh vulnerable populations who would stand to benefit from from that level of restriction. So
01:22:40
usually what happens in research is you take you take a group two groups of
01:22:45
subjects and one is on the high carb low-fat control diet and one of them is
01:22:51
on a ketogenic diet which can be achieved by a maximum of 50 grams of carbohydrate in the day or or less then
01:22:59
you're on the keto diet. So what happens at the 12 month point in the diet and
01:23:04
sometimes at the six-month point, the keto group is now consuming about two to
01:23:09
three times more carbohydrates than the original 50 gram assignment. So they rebound.
01:23:16
They just insidiously creep up the carb intake.
01:23:21
There's something about the ketogenic diet that the majority of people who engage it just can't stick to. It's too
01:23:28
restrictive for people. they can't stick to it. But by what you're saying, they also end up rebounding
01:23:34
above where they were before. They end up rebounding like I'll give you a specific example.
01:23:42
There was one study well there was the A Toz study where um
01:23:49
the individuals on the Atkins diet ended up consuming what looked a lot like the
01:23:55
zone diet. The zone diet? Yes. The zone diet is a 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, 30% fat.
01:24:03
So it's the keto diet roughly. Um the keto diet is more like 60 to 80%
01:24:09
fat and then you know 15 to 20ish% protein and then the carbohydrates are
01:24:14
the remainder the minor percentage. So what happens is
01:24:19
like the people who started off at 50 gram of carbohydrate at the beginning of the study, the keto group at the
01:24:27
12-month point, they were they crept that carbohydrate intake up to around
01:24:32
150 gram of carbohydrate, whereas their assignment was 50 gram of carbohydrate a
01:24:40
day. This is a common theme in long-term keto studies is this up creep in
01:24:48
carbohydrate intake over time because people can't maintain the the the 50 grams of carbohydrate max required to
01:24:55
stay in ketosis. And I'm not saying that there aren't a
01:25:01
lot of people out there who are just living the keto life permanently. They're out there. Yeah.
01:25:06
But they are in the minority. I see them in the comment section whenever I talk about keto. I see people say, "Look,
01:25:12
I've been on the keto diet for 5 years, for seven years, for 10 years." Sure, there's entire there's huge
01:25:18
communities of folks who've been on keto for 5 10 years or longer. And that's
01:25:24
great. More power to these folks. But claiming that this is a universal solution ignores the reality that some
01:25:33
people, most people uh per the research, the majority can't stick to it. So
01:25:38
that's the the caveat, one of the caveats of the keto diet. The other one would be for those who can stick to the
01:25:45
keto diet for long enough. You really have to look at the quality of uh the
01:25:50
diet in order for it to be cardiovascularly healthy. If you're going to engage an let's say an 80 85%
01:25:58
fat diet for the rest of your life, there's going to be very different effects if that 80 to 85% are from land
01:26:06
animal fats versus from nuts, avocados,
01:26:11
olive oil. Very different cardiovascular effects going on there. And so, uh, that's the
01:26:18
other caveat with the keto diet. There's a Mediterranean type of keto diet that
01:26:23
is healthy and that has, you know, it it is one of these cardiovascularly
01:26:30
protective types of diets that you can engage. Whereas, if you just do like
01:26:36
beef, bacon, and butter from here on out, then uh you don't have the best cardiovascular risk trajectory.
01:26:44
What about gaining muscle on the ketogenic diet? If I'm restricting carbohydrates, is it more difficult to
01:26:50
gain muscle mass? The short answer is yes. And the nuanced
01:26:56
answer is you still can gain muscle on keto.
01:27:02
And the body is is really resilient and and quite genius at manufacturing the
01:27:09
carbohydrate um endogenously or from within the body. So your your body can
01:27:15
make carbohydrate out of lactate and fill at least partially your muscle
01:27:21
glycogen stores. And so um going on a zero carbohydrate diet doesn't
01:27:27
necessarily end up with the type of results that you you you might imagine for somebody who's
01:27:34
completely avoiding carbohydrates. And in the research comparing
01:27:40
strength gains from a high carbohydrate, low-fat diet versus a keto diet, the
01:27:46
keto folks, as long as they're equated with protein and total calories with the control diet, they've got similar
01:27:54
strength gains. It's quite a an interesting phenomenon. Muscle size gains is different story.
01:28:01
Interestingly, almost always there's some advantage to the high carb, low-fat control group
01:28:09
compared with the ketogenic diet group when it comes to both gains in lean mass as well as retention of lean mass during
01:28:17
dieting. And one of those things is more or less obvious. It's like you you
01:28:23
simply carry more muscle glycogen when you're on a high carbohydrate, low-fat
01:28:29
diet. and muscle glyco glycogen is the stored form of carbohydrate within the muscle and then a minor amount in the
01:28:36
liver and for every gram of carbohydrate that you store as glycogen there's
01:28:43
threeish grams of water stuck to it and so just sitting there you're carrying
01:28:49
more more muscle mass more fullness on a non ketogenic diet
01:28:54
what about the carnivore diet a lot of people have talked about that recently which is just a diet where you just eat meat What's your just your point of view
01:29:01
on that? Well, okay, it's a little silly and it's a little extreme, but it has some merit
01:29:08
to it. So, the carnivore diet, when you get on it, it's similar to how when
01:29:13
people go on a keto diet after they've been doing the standard western diet since forever. So, the standard western
01:29:19
diet has too much of everything. It's got too much total calories, too much refined carbohydrate. It's got too much
01:29:26
of this type of fat and too much h it's got a moderate amount of protein, but you're also eating everything under the
01:29:31
sun from burgers to fries to cakes to ice creams to cookies. Uh in addition to
01:29:38
pasta and everything else. So when you go from that excess of everything to the
01:29:46
carnivore diet, you automatically and spontaneously eat far fewer calories
01:29:52
than you used to on your standard western diet. So the carnivore diet is actually the lesser of the evils when
01:29:58
we're comparing it to the standard western diet. And you can even try to
01:30:04
optimize the carnivore diet. Like some people engage a carnivore diet that is
01:30:09
just extreme like beef and salt. Okay? So that is very appealing to people who
01:30:16
have a tendency to jump on the carnivore diet cuz it's even more extreme. And people with tendencies towards the
01:30:23
extremes, they'll a lot of them are exve
01:30:29
one one extreme side or the other. It's tough for them to be in the gray scale here. But the carnivore diet
01:30:37
is um the lesser of the evils. can be optimized, if that's even
01:30:43
possible, if people had more variety within their carnivore model, within their plant-free diet model. Like for
01:30:50
example, if some went carnivore, instead of doing beef and salt, he had a
01:30:56
rotation of fatty fish, poultry, beef,
01:31:01
eggs, dairy, and who knows, maybe he might even justify protein powder in there for a
01:31:08
dessert. Who knows? It's still animal-based. Um, do you find that vegans and vegetarians
01:31:13
struggle more to gain muscle mass? Typically, vegans and vegetarians
01:31:20
in the general population do because they're not aware of how to structure the diet and the training program to to
01:31:27
achieve that. So, what are they missing? They're just not eating enough total
01:31:32
calories and they're not eating enough protein, generally speaking. Now, there are some vegans who will drink a bunch
01:31:40
of Mountain Dew and, you know, have have um potato chips and and things like that
01:31:45
and still stay vegan. And Oreo cookies are vegan, I I believe, as well. But
01:31:50
vegans can still gain muscle on par with omnivores if they structure it right.
01:31:58
Are most people that you encounter and have worked with over the years not getting enough protein?
01:32:05
like the average person on the street. Yes. Almost everybody who has been overweight
01:32:14
or obese or just had some degree of of an issue with their body fat levels. Almost all
01:32:21
of them under consume protein. What about people that are very skinny?
01:32:28
because I've got lots of friends that um would be in the skinny fat category where they they're kind of they look
01:32:34
very very very skinny but they've got you know a little bit of a role here um and they often say to me that they
01:32:40
just can't gain weight. I've heard this a lot from from friends. I I just can't get gain weight. I've
01:32:46
heard I need to have more protein but you know I'm just not gaining any weight. Yeah, that is the in quotes hard gainer
01:32:54
phenomenon. And people will have different degrees of body fat in in that category. But these folks, what they
01:33:01
actually have an issue with is a spontaneous increase in what we call non
01:33:07
exercise activity thermogenesis. So basically, it's an increase in
01:33:13
spontaneous movement. just an increase in fidgeting, you know, tapping, moving
01:33:19
around, uh just being more hyperinetic in response to increasing their caloric
01:33:27
intake. In 24 hours, you and I expend X
01:33:32
amount of calories. Mhm. So total daily energy expenditure is composed of um various components. So
01:33:40
there is a resting energy expenditure component. M so our so-called resting metabolic rate
01:33:46
or it's also called resting energy expenditure or basil metabolic rate those are all interchangeable
01:33:53
that is the amount of calories that your body burns in a 24-hour period just to stay alive. Okay so if you are bedridden
01:34:01
the amount of calories you you burn just through your vital organs and your systems working that's your resting
01:34:08
energy expenditure. Now the other part of energy expenditure
01:34:14
is your active energy expenditure. So active energy expenditure consists of we
01:34:19
can subdivide it into your exercise activity and your non-ex exercise activity. With hard gainers it's their
01:34:27
nonex exercise activity that spontaneously goes up when they try to eat more to
01:34:34
gain weight. There's a an interesting study done in the late 1990s by Lavine
01:34:39
and colleagues where he took a group of normal weight subjects. It was mostly
01:34:44
male sample of subjects and he fed them
01:34:50
1,000 calories above and beyond their maintenance requirements and I believe this was for 10 weeks. What happened
01:34:58
during the during the study and as a result of eating 1,000 calories above
01:35:03
their maintenance needs, they ended up burning on average 336 calories through
01:35:10
an increase in nonex exercise activity. So that that is a very interesting
01:35:17
phenomenon. One of the uh subjects in that study actually ended up burning almost 700 calories as an increase in
01:35:26
their non exercise activity thermogenesis. And so what happens to this archetype,
01:35:36
this hardgain gainer person is they just start fidgeting more, they just start
01:35:41
walking faster. They just start sitting less. They start bobbing their head more. And they can even uh just
01:35:48
subconsciously train harder, train more, and their energy expenditure side just
01:35:54
ramps up spontaneously in response to an increase in calories. So,
01:35:59
so if someone is a hard gainer and they struggle to gain weight because of this sort of spontaneous energy usage,
01:36:05
what advice would you give them? To stop moving, eat more.
01:36:10
Okay, so the principle would be to eat more. Uh the practice would be eat more
01:36:18
in a way that you get those calories in easily and conveniently.
01:36:23
And so you can structure liquid meals, two in a day. They rarely need three
01:36:31
shakes to have between their meals at any point in the day where it's
01:36:36
convenient. And then you just literally add nutrition and calories that way.
01:36:43
And that so that's the solution. Just literally eat more. I think the the thing that sits underneath everything we're talking
01:36:49
about is motivation, whatever that means, which is like having the motivation to stick to
01:36:55
something, discipline, whatever you want to call it. When you look back through the last 30 years of your career, are
01:37:01
there any similarities in the thing or the catalyst moment that made somebody
01:37:08
finally stick to it? stick to the diet, stick to the exercise regime, stick to
01:37:13
the whatever. Is there are there any themes of a person going from struggling to
01:37:21
disciplined? So the first thing that comes to my mind is they finally arrive at the point
01:37:27
where their physical goals become priority number one.
01:37:33
changing the body. So, losing body fat, gaining muscle, achieving
01:37:40
your ideal body composition, that is a colossally difficult goal.
01:37:47
Whenever I work with somebody who's preparing for a contest of some sort, whether it is in the more elite line of
01:37:56
physique contest or whether they're just joining a transformation challenge, but
01:38:01
they're both very very serious and they both are putting their program at the
01:38:06
top of their priority list. So when I say top of your priority, I mean
01:38:12
you do what you need to do to stay alive and and and keep breathing as as a top priority. And right there is your
01:38:19
physical goals. Okay. So, the big problem with people who find that they
01:38:27
can't hit their goals or they can't stay consistent or they're just having a struggle losing x amount of body fat or
01:38:33
even a struggle gaining x amount of muscle is that they simply have five
01:38:38
other things that are prioritized in their day above and beyond their their
01:38:43
program. Mhm. So they have five
01:38:49
universes of excuses that can come in the way of sticking to the program. So
01:38:55
somebody has to be at the point in their lives where they're going to make it a top priority because you know there's
01:39:00
nothing metabolically different from these physique competitors and these people who join these challenges versus
01:39:06
somebody in the general population who's just struggling. The people in the physique contests will
01:39:14
always hit their goal within 1% at the end of the prep period. They'll always
01:39:19
hit their goal. And so they're not a different species. They're not a different animal. They don't have
01:39:25
special metabolisms. They just have different priorities. And so that is the
01:39:31
difference. You have to hit a point where your physical goal becomes priority one. And is there anything
01:39:38
that one can do in your opinion or that you try and do when you were a trainer back in the day to make this someone's
01:39:46
priority? You can sit somebody down and
01:39:53
review with them the what are the reasons why you're doing this? name me
01:39:58
three three three good things that you think will come out of this or three
01:40:04
drivers that you can think about and then you can just have them write that down and then they can be reminded that
01:40:12
way but fundamentally Stephen they have to arrive at that point sort of on a
01:40:19
self-initiated way you you can't really make the horse drink you know you can
01:40:26
pull them towards the freaking pond you know, they almost have to to get
01:40:31
there themselves. And and you're kind of you can facilitate it only to a certain degree. And after you ask them, okay,
01:40:38
what what are the reasons? Then you can also have them put in their face, okay, what are the barriers? So to have them
01:40:44
write down your three biggest stumbling blocks and so then you can give them two
01:40:49
sets of things to think about that will keep them on task and motivated. You're 53 years old.
01:40:55
53. 53 years old. You looked very different at 40 years old. Ah. Oh, yes, sir. I did.
01:41:04
Yeah. Whoa, buddy. Yep. Yep. Mhm. I remember that guy.
01:41:10
Woo. That's an amazing shot. I mean, you look younger now.
01:41:16
I do, actually. Thank God. Thank God. Yeah. Yeah. That that always gets me,
01:41:23
man. That that picture always gets me. Why? It was when my my first son was sevenish
01:41:31
and my younger baby was um about four.
01:41:37
And so parents with young children are very stressed out, bad habits. I used to
01:41:45
drink heavily. Yeah. I I started drinking heavily at that point. Um, and
01:41:51
I drank heavily from when I was 40 till I was about 46.
01:41:57
Were you an alcoholic at at 40 years old? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. What did that look like?
01:42:05
It was it it got really bad towards the final couple years. I'm talking a bottle
01:42:13
bottle and a half of wine a a night by
01:42:19
myself. Seven days a week. Seven days a week. And the bottle and a
01:42:24
half that's almost 1,000 calories of 1,000 calories of regret is what it was.
01:42:32
Yeah. Do you know what caused that? The various stress vectors in life, you
01:42:39
know. um being a dad, trying to be the best husband.
01:42:46
Um becoming successful uh in terms of coming into demand with projects and
01:42:53
people approaching me with business partnerships and um me thinking, geez, I I worked
01:43:02
like two decades for this for this stuff to happen. How can I turn anything down? you know, so I said, "Yes, I'll do that.
01:43:09
Yes, I'll do that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And then pretty soon your your yeses just stack up and your work pile
01:43:14
stacks up like this. All of those things, you know, they kind of converge into this mix of stress and anxiety. And
01:43:23
alcohol is a very convenient and very
01:43:29
available and very acceptable means to
01:43:36
engage in a substance that acts as an anxiety band-aid. My alcohol addiction
01:43:42
was a very real thing. Uh, and I'm really glad I I overcame it.
01:43:50
Through this period from 40 to 46, 47,
01:43:56
who were you and what is it that you you did that made you realize something
01:44:02
had to change?
01:44:08
So during that time period, I was just very reactive. to my
01:44:14
environment. I was just going with the flow. Uh I honestly was not
01:44:22
as ambitious as I should have been and and focused on my goals.
01:44:28
I was comfortable. I was comfortable. And
01:44:34
the unfortunate thing about the drink and fortunate thing too is it it hit a rock bottom point where
01:44:44
I knew that it wasn't a matter of all right I got to pull back or how am I going to moderate and this and that. It
01:44:50
was more like I just need to stop. I just need to stop
01:44:56
and I need to redirect this tendency towards routine. this tendency, this
01:45:01
sort of obsessive compulsive thing of needing to do the same thing daily, just
01:45:07
redirect it. How did you know you needed to stop? Oh, I knew that I needed to stop because my professional and personal life
01:45:15
basically imploded all all because of my my own actions. Now, for you, was it just a case of
01:45:22
right, I'm going to stop doing this or did you have to did you go somewhere? Did you get support? Did you seek some
01:45:27
counseling or anything like that? So, I have been able to just make the hardcore
01:45:33
commitment to stop and keep that commitment. And um I've been able to
01:45:38
redirect my ritualistic tendencies towards training and good nutrition. And
01:45:46
I get a lot of questions like every year I do a post on Instagram about how,
01:45:52
okay, it's year six now, not a single drink. Here's what I've learned during that time. And then uh next month
01:46:00
uh actually on the 25th of August uh that's going to be year seven. So I'm
01:46:06
going to do the same thing. And so the question I always get is so how do you
01:46:12
stay abstinate? Like what what do you do to not slip up?
01:46:17
And what I do is if I get kind of a craving or a nagging or a feeling like, "Oh my
01:46:24
god, I got to have some alcohol." Then I just sit back and I think through
01:46:29
the scenario in my mind of me drinking to my degree of satisfaction, degree of,
01:46:36
you know, s-facedness and then I kind of picture that and then
01:46:42
I picture how it might last for an hour or two and then after that hour or two I
01:46:49
may have made some really bad impressions on on one or more people.
01:46:54
Uh, after that hour or two, I may have plowed through the the hot wings at 2
01:47:00
3:00 a.m. And then after that, feel like hell the next morning. Definitely can't work out
01:47:07
that day. And then where did that get me? And so I
01:47:12
just go through that scenario in my mind. And then when I'm done going through that scenario, it takes like a
01:47:17
minute and I'm right back at uh where I need to be uh mind frame wise.
01:47:23
I think the same could also apply that sort of visualization that premortem where you kind of play out the scenario
01:47:29
and see what the consequence would be can also be applied to many of the things we're talking about today around
01:47:34
diet and workouts and stuff like that. Like playing it forward to see how you'll feel about it in the future and
01:47:40
sort of visualizing those consequences. Thank you for sharing that. I I think it's somewhat dovetailed into how what
01:47:48
what we're talking about about changing your life and motivation and discipline like how does change occur in people and
01:47:53
as you said it's when it becomes a priority and quite clearly in your life it became a priority for a number of
01:47:58
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01:50:14
How do you feel about artificial sweeteners? Are they uh is there any watchouts that we should be aware of?
01:50:20
Generally speaking, they're a nothing burger and there's a lot of scaremongering around artificial
01:50:26
sweeteners. But there is one artificial sweetener that has a kind of a crappy track record
01:50:35
for both impairing glucose control and also weight gain. And that's saccharine.
01:50:44
So saccharine is the one artificial sweetener that's kind of bombed out at
01:50:49
the bomb shelter there as far as the literature is concerned. But the good news about saccharine,
01:50:56
it's by the way, it's the little pink packet things. It's not really uh commercially
01:51:03
pervasive. So it's not that popular anyway. No, it's almost commercially extinct.
01:51:08
So, um, the other sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, stevia, or some people call it stevia, um, they're all
01:51:16
fair game. They're all in the same boat. All pretty dang innocuous. And you'd have to consume
01:51:23
impossible amounts of those things to incur negative health effects in in a lifetime, really.
01:51:28
Because some people have thought that they're potentially carcen, these sort of artificial sweeteners that
01:51:34
you find in certain diet beverages. Yeah. No, that's that's definitely a leap. That's definitely a leap based on
01:51:42
animal data and completely unrealistic doses and conditions that are irrelevant
01:51:48
to human physiology. Yeah, it's it's more dangerous stepping out and breathing in the the city air
01:51:54
basically. What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about, Alan,
01:51:59
for the people that are sat at home listening to this? A really damn good question. Okay. So,
01:52:06
if we look at the things people care about that don't freaking matter in
01:52:11
terms of diet, they fixate on weird buzzwords like they
01:52:18
fixate on not even they don't have to be weird words but like sugar for example.
01:52:24
There has been such scaremongering around sugar to the point that people
01:52:29
don't delineate between added sugars to the diet versus sugar that is intrinsic
01:52:34
or naturally occurring in foods. Things like fruit, fresh fruit and even milk has naturally occurring uh
01:52:41
sugar in it. Lactose um can be problematic for um some of the population. But look at fresh fruit.
01:52:48
I've actually heard people vilify fruit because it has sugar
01:52:55
and it's one thing to take an idea and put
01:53:01
out a a plausible claim. Okay, so yeah, it's got sugar and then you know we all
01:53:07
know that if you add a ton of sugar to the diet, you lower the quality of the diet and then you can um push your bets
01:53:14
towards negative health consequences down the line. Okay, that that's fine. That's reasonable. But
01:53:21
even though fruit has sugar, it also has a ton of other beneficial components to
01:53:28
it. And it's in this low calorie, high water, high micronutrient density
01:53:34
package that is satiating and displaces stomach space for other wise junky foods
01:53:42
that you may a lot of people would have consumed instead of that fruit. But beyond all that, for forget about
01:53:49
all the reasoning and stuff, let's look at the literature. Does fruit cause
01:53:55
negative health consequences? Does it cause things like impaired blood glucose control? Does it cause obesity? Does it
01:54:02
cause weight gain? Uh, it does the opposite of all those things. Fresh fruit actually has been shown to improve
01:54:10
glycemic control, improve body weight, improve body composition, and improve the protection against a range of
01:54:16
cardioabolic diseases and cancer. So it doesn't really matter what anybody
01:54:22
says. We just have to face face the evidence. Um there's something called
01:54:27
the glycemic index that was big in the 80s and 90s and people were it's kind of come back around again. glycemic index.
01:54:34
You got to avoid the high glycemic index foods and things like that. And there's a couple of fruits that are actually
01:54:39
have a high glycemic index. That would be pineapples and and watermelons, watermelons.
01:54:45
Yeah. High on the GI scale. But the way that glycemic index is determined is you get 50 grams of carbohydrate from a
01:54:51
given food regardless of the amount that you have to eat. 50 grams of it. And then you measure its effect on your
01:54:57
blood sugar levels for 2 hours after ingestion. I was going to say cuz watermelon's seen as keto friendly which
01:55:03
is but but watermelons have what's called a low glycemic load. So they have a very low
01:55:09
amount of carbohydrate per serving. Yeah. Per serving. Yeah. Even though the carbohydrate itself if you were to gather 50 grams of it
01:55:17
would have a a more pronounced effect on blood sugar elevations. And so they're even though fruits those
01:55:25
fruits have a high GI and certain foods have a high GI, they have a low glycemic load. And ultimately people need to stop
01:55:34
um stop and think about things like the the longest living populations on the
01:55:40
planet do not avoid fruit. The fruit is a regular part of their intake. What about the white stuff? The white
01:55:47
sort of added sugar. The is it called refined sugar? What about We can call it added sugar.
01:55:52
Mhm. What about the added sugar? Added sugar is problematic in two
01:55:57
different ways at least. So the first way is it's diluting the nutrient density of the diet. It's uh it's a
01:56:05
phenomenon called micronutrient dilution. when you have just a bunch of junk micronutrient-free calories in the diet.
01:56:12
The other way that it poses a problem is because it is usually packaged with
01:56:18
highly processed and engineered refined carbohydrate and fat combination foods.
01:56:24
So, your classic desserts, pastries, cookies, cakes, things like
01:56:29
that. And so the sugar itself, if you were to
01:56:35
if I were to just put a a jar of sugar in front of you and say, "Hey, I
01:56:40
challenge you to not just spoon that in." You'll go, "Oh, no problem." You know, it's people paint sugar out to be
01:56:47
this inherently evil thing. But the way that it gets into trouble is when it is
01:56:55
a part of these hyper palatable, highly processed, high, highly engineered dessert and snack foods. And so that is
01:57:02
the main issue with added sugar. And the various health organizations I mentioned
01:57:07
the Institute of Medicine or now the National Academy of Medicine saying, "Hey, we need to cut off our added
01:57:13
sugars at 25% of the diet." There's the World Health Organization who presents
01:57:18
the sort of the absolutely terrified version of that where they want people
01:57:24
to max out their added sugar to to 5% of the calories in the diet. But that's
01:57:30
usually not realistic and it gets a little bit extreme to the
01:57:35
point of being um pathological. So, so what would you say about 10% of total calories max wi with
01:57:43
added sugar and that would fall kind of right into this discretionary caloric
01:57:49
aotment of 10 to 20% of calories kind of from whatever you want and I would want
01:57:55
to qualify that 10 to 20% margin by saying that if you're hyper caloric
01:58:02
in other words if you're consuming more calories than you're taking in you're trying to gain weight or something like that you probably want to keep your your
01:58:09
discretionary calorie aotment to 10% or your indulgence food to 10% rather than 20%.
01:58:14
How many days a week do you go to the gym? Four to five. I'm just trying to confront this this
01:58:20
question mark in my head about if you go to the gym seven days a week, for example, is that not giving your body
01:58:26
enough time to rest? But I guess it depends what you're doing there and how hard you're working. Yeah. A great example of that is total
01:58:32
sets per week. Okay. you know, like you can cram, let's imagine for a given muscle group, you do
01:58:40
like nine nine sets a week or 10 sets a week. Uh, you could probably get those
01:58:45
in in a single session, but it's more productive to probably spread it out
01:58:51
over at least two days. How long does it take for me to start to lose muscle?
01:58:56
Oh man. Okay, that is a good question and a tough one. So muscle loss happens
01:59:02
very rapidly in bedridden individuals. So lean mass just especially critically
01:59:08
ill folks, oh man, goes really fast. Contrast that with you taking a week off
01:59:17
or even two weeks off, but it's more of like um an active rest where you're not
01:59:23
just merely sitting around. You could probably go a couple weeks
01:59:29
before you start noticing material drops in in strength and
01:59:35
fitness. Uh 3 weeks, yeah, you'll definitely I think you'll definitely
01:59:41
feel that. And do I need to work out till failure in terms of resistance training and like, you know, bicep curls, whatever,
01:59:48
in order to get gains? Do I need to be going all the way until I can't curl it anymore?
01:59:55
It depends on the goal. Um, you mentioned that your goal was to gain muscle.
02:00:00
Yeah. So, in reality, um, and and this question is surprisingly more complex
02:00:07
than you might hope it it's going to be, but okay. When people try to train to
02:00:14
failure, and this has been tested out in the research literature, they usually
02:00:21
automatically leave one to two reps in the tank, even three reps in the tank. And even trained even resistance trained
02:00:29
subjects when you tell them to train a failure or leave one rep in reserve,
02:00:35
they'll routinely leave actually two to three reps in reserve. So people
02:00:41
underestimate their their abilities to push uh they usually as almost an
02:00:46
automatic margin there that the body sort of regulates and governs and sort of automatically prevents you
02:00:53
from going. So with that said, I think that most people can train to failure
02:01:01
without worrying about whether they're violating the the golden uh guidelines seen in the literature. what it's very
02:01:08
common for um the consensus in the exercise science community, even in the hypertrophy folks to say, "Yeah, leave
02:01:15
one to two reps in reserve." I think that depends on on the exercise.
02:01:22
So, you'd be kind of a fool to be doing lateral raises to to like to think that
02:01:29
you can't do partials for lateral raises and and still get some benefit out of it. And you'd be kind of a fool to
02:01:35
think, "Yeah, I'm going to do concentration curls here. I'm gonna leave one to two reps in reserve." No,
02:01:41
that's different. On the other hand, deadlifting, benching, squatting, these
02:01:46
sort of a free weight barbell multi-jint types of movements, oh, they're they're more
02:01:53
conducive to leaving one to two reps in the tank. But for single joint isolation exercises and even machine exercises and
02:02:01
lighter loads where it's safe, take it to failure. Man, we have a closing tradition on this
02:02:07
podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is how does nature impact
02:02:15
on your life? It it it has quite a big impact.
02:02:20
Um yeah it it has an impact and and obviously the environment is important.
02:02:28
I'm wondering through the lens of what you do in terms of you know you know mindset and health and psych you know
02:02:34
these kinds of things if you think much about being outside
02:02:40
versus being inside. You know, I've even read some interesting studies around people that run outside versus on a
02:02:45
treadmill have more sort of uh have cognitive benefits
02:02:50
because the brain is stimulated more. I think that there there's a good amount
02:02:57
of literature on the psychological benefits of of just being
02:03:03
in nature or even getting getting some sun. And I think that there's
02:03:09
epidemiological like population based data showing that the marine communities
02:03:16
tend to be the longevity champs. Marine, what does that mean? Uh communities that that live by the
02:03:22
ocean are close to the ocean. And probably that all that omega-3 they're eating from the fish
02:03:28
and that factors in as well for sure. But that just the kind almost the metaphysical effect of going to the
02:03:34
beach, you know, that's got to play in it. And so so yeah, I I I think it
02:03:41
definitely has an effect and I think that there are data that we can point to that says it does.
02:03:46
Alan, where where should people go right now if they want to learn more from you? Where where is the best place to follow
02:03:52
you for more information as as you continue to investigate and educate on the science of all of the things we've
02:03:57
talked about today? My website is alanaragon.com. That's the hub of everything. And maybe
02:04:06
my most active social media platform is Instagram. So that is at the Allen
02:04:12
Aragon. And this book I have in front of me. When did you write this book?
02:04:18
I wrote that thing from Well, it includes the 30 years of
02:04:23
experience that I was talking about earlier. Mhm. So, I've just crammed the 30 years into there. But the actual writing of that
02:04:29
took from about 20 all the way to 2022.
02:04:35
Yeah. Took about two years. So, first published in 2022. And it's really like a bible. That's kind of the
02:04:41
way I describe it. And it has everything in it from what I love about it is you have all these pictures as well.
02:04:47
I'm glad you like it. Well, I mean it's like it's it's dare I say it's it's quite like a
02:04:54
like a like a nice accessible textbook. Well, there's been a couple of professors who've adopted it and made it
02:05:01
a part of their curriculum. Interesting. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah. Hunter Waldman is one of them.
02:05:07
Yeah. Thank you so much, Alan. Thank you for doing what you do. Um, people love your message because it's so demystifying in
02:05:14
a world that is increasingly mystified by lots of information from lots of different people. So, please do continue
02:05:19
to do what you're doing. And I I uh I'm rooting for you in this new season of life where you're going to get even
02:05:25
closer to patients once again and clients once again and be even more hands-on with your community. So, I highly recommend everybody goes and
02:05:30
follows you on Instagram to keep track of how they can join your community and be one of those people that you directly impact with your work. And yeah, I'm
02:05:37
gonna I'm gonna subscribe to your review so that I can stay ahead of all of the um the scientific literature as and when
02:05:43
it comes out because for me it is quite demystifying. But you you're one of the great voices in this space of um
02:05:49
simplification and understanding. So I applaud you for that. I think it's all learnable. It's all
02:05:55
teachable. But thank you so much for the opportunity to be on this show. This is huge. And uh thank you all for tuning
02:06:03
in. Thank you. We're done. [Music]
02:06:19
Oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh hey oh
