What a family? Welcome to episode. 253
of the genius live.
What up everybody? We back. Welcome to another
episode of the show. I'm your host. Max Lou, Guevara filmmaker health and science journalist in New York Times bestselling author. I've dedicated my life to unraveling the science behind our choices, including what we eat and how we live affect our cognitive and physical performance, how we feel, and our health span and risk for disease. This podcast is all about how to live in that optimal state which I call living like a genius guys, on today's episode of the show. I welcome a
Paragon in the fitness industry. Dr. Lane Norton, Lane is a nutritional scientist. He is a proponent of flexible dieting, a long time, bodybuilder a strength, athlete physique, coach co-owner of by Elaine and co-author, with his wife of the complete reverse dieting guide. Man has a lot of information to deliver. And on this episode of show, we really get into it. We cover the best diet to gain muscle for longevity. We're going to talk about why overweight individuals
Has shouldn't worry about fine-tuning their diets right off the bat. But instead should first focus on habits that make the biggest impact the big levers as laying refers to them. Apropos of that, we're going to talk about the six, biggest levers to pull for longevity as Lane sees. It we're going to talk about why carbs don't necessarily make you fat, despite insulins opposing role on fat oxidation, how to set up a fat loss diet for maximum sustainability. And then finally, at the end, we're going to play a little game of hot takes with Lane, if any of you guys.
Is following on social media, you'll know that he loves to deliver those hot takes and he's got strong opinions about a variety of topics. And so I wanted to really get his thoughts on some of the more controversial ones including artificial sweeteners and more. So there's a lot of information here as I mentioned, it's pretty dense, Lane is a scientist and he really takes the time to go into the specific nuances of the recommendations that he makes. So listen.
Leslie and get ready to take notes. I'm excited to welcome a new sponsor to the genius life family and that is dry Farm wines. I'm not telling anybody listening to this that they need to drink if they don't already but I occasionally enjoy a glass of wine and when I choose wine you better be sure that I am choosing wines. That I know are going to be the least toxic to body the vast majority of wine sold in the USA contain high levels of sugar and alcohol. And
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Leave this review for the show on the app. A Fly Girl, wrote knowledge is power and gave us five stars. She wrote Max. I just discovered your work and feel as though I've opened a treasure chest. Thanks for sharing your knowledge curiosity and experiences with us. Well, hey, fly girl. It's my pleasure. I love what I do and I'm super grateful that I get to do this every day. Super thrilled that I have listeners like, you coming back to the show week after week. So thank you for listening. Thank you.
Sharing and spreading the word about what we're doing here. And of course, thank you for leaving that review for the show, which helps us rise up the podcast ranks. So please keep doing it. All you got to do is leave a rating and if you feel extra leave a review but the rating itself alone help. So thank you. It's a freeway to support and and I read them all so you guys rock. And now, without further Ado, here is my conversation going deep into all things nutrition for muscle growth.
Both for longevity with nutrition science. PhD. Lane Norton, here we go.
Yeah, I know we've had a little bit of back and forth before so I think could be interesting to have some different perspectives on some of these topics.
Yeah. Yeah. Although the intent was not in any way shape, or form to have a debate. I just wanted to come, you know, have you on pick your brain, share your knowledge with my audience because, you know, I'm all about, providing the best available information and perspectives to my peeps. And
And I really respect what you do so Giroux. Yeah, I was like, this is a natural fit, but I guess let's start high level because I know your time is valuable. So is the time of my listeners, what is the best diet in your estimation, to build muscle for maximum Health and
Longevity? Mmm, best diet to build muscle. I think there's
Looking at this from a high level, there's a few things that are kind of fundamental pillars of muscle building nutrition. So the first thing, that's the obvious one that everyone will know, probably know is adequate protein. So we know whether it's building muscle or maintaining lean mass while, you know, in a caloric deficit, what really tends to make or is the biggest lever to pull is protein? So,
If we look at studies where they do low to moderate protein, like what 8 1 Point 2 grams per kilogram versus people who resistance training, they're getting like one point six, two, two point two grams per kilogram, you know, you do get significantly better lean mass accrual with that higher end of protein. Now, the I was trying to keep it in context for people, this isn't going to be the difference between, you know, going from like 150 pounds to 200 pounds versus
And 80 pounds. Like the differences are relatively small resistance training in a properly structured resistance training. Program is still the biggest lever by far to pull. And the only reason I touch on that is some people get so focused on the wrong things, or the little nuances that they forget the big stuff which is, hey, if you're not in the gym, training hard consistently for a long period of time. You're not going to build that much muscle because I always tell people if you think fat,
Takes patience muscle, building takes infinitely, more patients because at least with fat loss like week to week, you can start seeing differences but with muscle only, when you're talking about months and then once you get to like an intermediate or Advanced lb talk about years but with regards nutrition proteins, the biggest lever we have then I would say caloric Surplus. Some people will argue with me on this because there are some studies demonstrating that you can build muscle and lose fat while in a calorie deficit.
Or even it maintenance. So some people have made the argument. Why would you ever go into a surplus? If you just build muscle, when you're at maintenance or calorie deficit losing fat and there was a recent meta-analysis and meta-regression that came out that showed. So let me just go back and meta-regression is where they kind of Project based on data. We have what could be if we went further on either end of the spectrum. And so what they showed is that, yes, you can build muscle and lose fat but you will
Purdue either thing to the best of your ability. If you're trying to do both at the same time, interesting. And it does make sense from a mechanistic perspective. Like if we look at what, you know, being in a calorie deficit, you activate a empty kinase. That's an inhibitor of mtor. You know, it inhibits Downstream effects as well. So, it would make sense that you would have some sort of interference effect, and just from a hate using these examples where you started that much data. So, I will use a little bit of anecdote. I tell people.
People, when I started lifting weights, I was 140 pounds at about the same body found on that. Now, now, I'm over 200 pounds. Do you think I could have just like maintenance my way there, you know? Like yeah. Because I really doubt it, right? Like you have to, you have to accrue tissue. And if you think about from a geological perspective, if you are low in energy,
Your body is less likely to spare that protein for lean mass accrual because it's sensing an energy deficit. So it's more likely to oxidize that protein or convert it to energy struts substrate because of the end of the day. If we're weighing two things, the first being okay, survival and starvation versus building lean mass. I mean there's just not the impetus to build a whole lot of lean mass if you're, you know, if you're restricted. Now again, there are times when
That can happen and I'll use three basic examples. Not the only times it can happen, but these are the three common ones and that's if you're overweight or obese, you can build muscle in a calorie deficit because you have so much of an energy Surplus. That's endogenous. It's not the same thing as a lean person going into a deficit. If you're a beginner to lifting weights, the mass effect of just resistance training is going to be so powerful that you can experience a recomposition fact, which is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul because you're
Using this stressor on the muscle that it has to respond to.
So it has to get that energy from somewhere. If you're at maintenance or a calorie deficit sores that energy going to come from, it's going to come out opposed to spare protein for lean tissue and then the last one is performance enhancing drugs. We taught obviously change things and then the fourth won't be any combination of those three. So now, the one other those are the two big things. So, protein calorie Surplus. The one other thing I will say is there are some studies now looking at not necessarily low carb. Let's
Up like very low carb, ketogenic diets. I think there's three studies now, where they showed that in a calorie Surplus where they match protein and match calories, you don't quite accrue the same amount of lean tissue on a ketogenic diet. As you do on kind of with a sufficient amount of carbohydrate called a specific amount of carbohydrate. Now that's not to say. People say that people will hear Lane says, you can't build muscle on the ketogenic diet. That's not true. You absolutely can. And they do
Studies, they show they did build muscle. It just wasn't as much as people who are having some carbohydrate. And my guess is that's probably due to the inhibitory effects of insulin on protein degradation. So a lot of people think about insulin is like an anabolic molecule, but in terms of skeletal muscle, and we did this in our lab, we've given carbohydrate. It does not increase muscle protein synthesis, so these it doesn't initiate it, there's some evidence, it may
Long, the effect of protein. So maybe potentiate the duration of protein synthesis but it does not on its own. It does not initiate and that myth of insulin being anabolic kind of comes around from, we know that people who have type 1 diabetes tend to have less muscle mass because they're they don't they don't produce insulin we know if bodybuilders take like huge doses of insulin it is in fact out of all
Alec and so people have kind of taken those two points and just drawn a straight line and the reality is it's not like that. Yes if you get insulin back to like a sufficient level, you'll get increased lean mass but then in the physiological range of kind of flat lights and then like if it's possible that if you get like a really high dose, it gets gets out of that. And honestly testosterone is actually kind of the same way. Now, people will say well if you're at the very low end of normal range and very high in Norwich yeah I get it.
For the most part like 15-20 percent differences in testosterone in the physiological range, don't make a difference in lean mass. It might make a difference in how you feel or sex drive would be, do those sorts of things but not lean mass. So, while insulin is an anabolic in the physiological range, it does appear to be anti catabolic. So there was a study done, probably early 2000s where they gave carbohydrate alone, protein alone
An approaching plus carbohydrate and they used a methodology called AV balance. And so, this is kind of getting into what I did, my PhD with, I never use this technique in particular, but it's one of the ways that you can measure protein metabolism. So basically what they're doing is they're using a labeled amino acid Tracer so they can see in their sampling, the arterial blood and the venous blood coming out of the mussel bed and into a mussel bed. And so they're looking at okay, how much of that label is going in and then how much
Is going out. And so the less of the label going out relative to what's going in that says, okay, there's a net anabolic effect. Does that make sense? So, what this study showed was, when they added carbohydrate to that mix, they saw a decrease in muscle protein breakdown and an increase in the net deposition of amino acids into muscle tissue. So now you have the extreme people who will take this and say well this is why you need 100 grams.
Of dextrose post-workout. And what I will say is that amount of carbohydrate you need to get that as probably relatively modest, it doesn't require a huge insulin Spike or anything like that. But getting back to those kind of, I guess there's about three pillars. I would look at which is biggest one, is protein, next is calorie Surplus and then sufficient carbohydrate for building muscle
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In the morning when I'm fasted. I also like to sip on them during my workout. They taste great. They have a bunch of different flavors and again, providing a potent hit of leucine, which helps to promote muscle protein synthesis. So check them out. Get key on.com, genius, life and enjoy. I'm slightly confused with the calorie Surplus thing so we're saying to be in a calorie Surplus for longevity.
So, okay, so for longevity or just overall health
span because we've always we've heard you know the way.
Wellness Community from especially some, you know, longevity scientists who shall remain unnamed that calorie deficits are the best way, at least in a lab to extend the lifespan of an of an
animal. So, absolutely great question. And this is where I think there's a lot of these conversations that aren't honing in on the Nuance of this question. So,
If?
It's I understand why it's a confusing topic for a lot of you because it's like, well, then you're done about building muscle being the calorie Surplus, but like people say being a calorie deficit. So what do I do? Well, first off, one of the things you have to realize is a lot of This research is in rodents. Hmm. And I'd listen. All my research was in rodent so I'm in no way dogging, animal research. But there are some important distinctions between rodents in humans and when it comes to this, one of the biggest ones is one that definition of calorie restriction in rodents, which I'll get to
Minute and to the way humans grow during the Life Span versus rodents. So rodents actually never stop growing almost their entire life. So humans you actually tend to get to you, you grow through teenage years and then have been to your 20s. And then he kind of kept out for the most part, right? Unless you're doing resistance training or whatever, or purposely overfeeding and then you start to come back down eventually.
So rodents tend to just keep growing. Now the growth rate slows down but they don't really ever stop growing unless they just become a really old for rodents. And the other thing is, when they look at a calorie restriction. So a lot of times, if you look in the papers, they call it calorie restriction. Not a calorie deficit, there's an important distinction. And the reason they do that is because in many of these studies, the Restriction is okay. We're going to look at how much
These animals are eating ad libitum, which basically means whatever they want however much they want. And we're going to restrict that by 20 or 30 percent. I think, 20% is for 30% is one of the numbers they use. So we did that in the study because one we wanted to make sure that the animals are going to eat. We're actually, we're asking a protein question, this study.
But we restricted them by 20 percent. And these were like, young adult, Sprague dawley rats, they never stop growing. Even by restricting their restricting, their ad libitum intake by 20%. So it was still actually a surplus. They just wasn't as big of a surplus, right? The other thing I would say is there are some studies in monkeys and our don't know if it's monkeys are just primates will just say products. Well, I think they used a calorie restriction level of 30%. Now the other.
I want to point out as well. Primates are close to us and we do see extensions in life span for calorie Surplus with a calorie deficit.
Here's the interesting thing. It's not a calorie deficit forever, right? Because if it was, it would just die. Like they would actually starve to death. Right? So what you're actually seeing in these studies, this is my opinion. What you're actually seeing is not in the cellular effects of the calorie deficit. You're seeing the effects of just not over feet of just maintaining a healthy body weight. Because most animals when left to their own devices ad libitum feet will Over Feet. Mmm, think about the
Of how humans live and how animals live, what are the biggest differences in how we live? Now, is we're very sedentary, we don't have to go out and Hunt our food, get it, or whatever.
Animals if you just put them in a cage and they have access to food, I mean hey well I mean do they regulate their appetite a little bit better but it's still not food like they're used to getting you write like this is not how they see through the nature like every time I rats are like Helton food. This is supposed to be kind of palatable okay so I think we have to be careful. We interpret these results and the other thing is there's never really exercised as part of this equation. And again, I'm going to go out on a limb here, a little bit.
And what I tell people there is a very big difference between somebody who is in a controlled Surplus while resistance training or doing exercise. In order to accrue lean mass, then there is somebody who's just sitting on the couch, munching down, potato chips. I think that is a really big contextual difference and
Unfortunately we just don't have the sophistication and research to pick that out. Now this is you know people who could make a separate argument, you know as well you're you know you're overfeeding you're activating in Tour, all this kind of stuff here is one of the things I'll say I love mechanisms of a biochemist. My undergrad was in Biochemistry. I can nerd out with the best of them, but the longer I've been in this field.
And looked at the research in nutrition.
I kind of go.
Mechanisms are cool to look at. We have to understand that one mechanism and isolated mechanism is just one aspect of things. You got to think about metabolism, is kind of like a symptom, right? You got all these separate things that are playing, but they all connect together, right? Well, if I make the tube, I do something different. You may not really hear it that much and the in the absolute like, overall context, what you're really looking at,
Look at outcomes, right? So we look at like human randomized, control, trials, and listen. One of the problems that human randomized, control trials is you can't do it. Tightly controlled trial for years, right? Like you just it's very difficult to do, right? But when we look at this stuff it's like so many times. We've had these mechanisms, where we go. Oh this is going to be the thing and then we do a human control trial where we think we're going to see differences that we just don't. And that's because that one mechanism is just part of what sums up to the overall outcome.
And one of the things you have to understand is the human body is really resilient to like just just think about this for example, to get to the point where you actually have like metabolic syndrome and diabetes for the most part. There are some people who are like normal weight and lean who develop type 2 diabetes but that's a that's pretty rare. You have to get to a point of pretty darn bad Health. Before things start before you actually start having effects from that like Downstream effects, same daily,
It survived on half of one kidney so just think about how redundant our body's systems are and how brew a bus they are. So we're talking about the whole body outcome, we just have to keep in mind that like okay, yeah and tore this, but what does that mean in the context of the overall equation? Right? And I think that a lot of that is being lost on the longevity Community. Hmm, and again, if you look at
Longevity after age 65. So if we look at studies after age 65, it is very striking Peter at T. It talks about our podcast. It is extremely striking how closely your lean mass is tied to your longevity after age, 65? Hmm. Now, of course, that's after age, 65. That's a different context than the whole life, but I think one of the things I tell people with nutrition and training, we have to stop thinking about stuff as
There's a solution there may be better options depending on your specific goals or like disease or what you're trying to do but there's no real solutions. There's only trade-offs, right? So and Peter again, I want to keep invoking his name, but he talked about like, you know, he was doing intermittent fasting but he felt like he had lost some lean mass over the years. It's like, okay, maybe intermittent fasting is this lever? You can pull that gives you some benefits.
But okay, well, here's possibly the downside, right? And so I would just caution people as too.
We just don't have the sophistication. The scientific studies yet to say conclusively, this prolonged longevity. This does it in the context of my calories and what now, I will say, I tend to have, like, five or six things. I tell people like, for longevity than a big leaders. So, the first one is forgive my friend. We don't eat like an asshole, right? That's the first one exercise regularly. Bigger is free limit, alcohol, drugs all that kind of stuff.
Obviously, you know don't smoke or really you know limit it like listen to somebody who enjoys a cigar and wants a while. Ah, I get it but you know, don't be chain-smoking everyday. That's a big deal. Yours
are cigar guy am I?
Yeah, I mean, I'll have like one or two a month, something like that. But again, it's funny because people reach out to me like, oh, how could you do that? Because your business is not like, Hey listen like you know. Yeah. Okay. Maybe it's the difference between me living to 80 and 80.
And a half or 80 and 81. But I'm also looking at quality of life in terms of experience, right? Like, those sorts of things I'm not saying like people should go out and do that. It's not, you know, I would never close it here and claim, you know, having a cigar is healthy for you. It's not right? But it's, I am aware of that trade-off. Yeah, I'm cognizant of that trade-off, right? Informed consent. Yeah, don't don't smoke limit your stress and try to sleep motion. Hmm, I wasn't like those
Big leverage, you know, and then and then I'm like, okay, if we get those in place then let's worry about some of this other stuff.
Yeah, so basically get in the best shape possible for your, for your jeans, like, right? Like, get to your get to your physical reach your physical potential, your Fitness
potential. I do think it can go too far. So again, these are kind of like Association studies. So I'm really hesitant to put a lot of weight on them, but we do see, like if
You look at running, and like some of these diseases, it's kind of a U-shaped curve, right? And exercise tends to be like that. Like, if you get to, like the point of over-exercising there appears now, there appears to be
You know, declining benefits now is that because exercise has some negative effect on disease and Longevity? I kind of doubt it. I think maybe there's some confounding variables there. People over exercise our who exercise a lot probably tend to be more stressed. OCD obsessive like all that kind of stuff, but at the same time like if you look at Elite athletes, yeah, they metabolically, they're healthy.
But is that the best thing for the help to push their body? That kind of extreme. It's hard to know because we're not going to get you. No scientific studies on lead athlete. So what I would say is like,
You don't have to have a six-pack or you know even like a lot of visible muscle to be metabolically healthy. And what's really cool is it doesn't actually take a huge dose of exercise or even calorie a calorie deficit to get a huge benefit, like it, if you look at research studies and if you get people who like the most of here at. So if we look at people who are the most of here in the research studies in a calorie,
Opposite. They start to see resolution in their blood markers after like, a few weeks, I get it. It's really one of these things where it's like, just stop overloading the system, right? Like that. That's a huge deal. Now muscle could help with that because I hate these kind of analogies but I use the analogy anyway. Muscles like a metabolic sink. It's very greedy. So if you have more muscle tissue, your way, with a heck of a lot more and you do see this with a lot of like weird about drugs.
Free athletes.
You see people who have higher levels of body fat, but they've also have higher levels of muscle. They tend to not have the same - metabolic Health outcomes. Now, they're not as metabolically, healthy as people who are also lean with that much muscle, but they're way better off than people with the same amount of fat Mass who don't have that much muscle, if that makes sense.
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Lobster meat free. So epic. I'm a customer already. So I can't take advantage of this offer but you should check it out. And enjoy one thing that I want to gain further that I've wanted to gain further Clarity on and we kind of you were talking about the resilience of the human body and how are there are all these like built-in redundancies and back channels and and whatnot. Um, we know that with regard to Fat Loss calories matter, right. But that
In sort of has this effect when it's elevated of acting like a one-way valve on your fat cells, right? It prevents lipolysis and all this stuff. So how then can we continue to lose fat? When insulin is elevated, right? Like you're a bodybuilder. You've gotten shredded integrating? Copious carbohydrates into your diet. So without getting, too into the weeds, like, how does this work? So how is the body able to achieve
Both things like have a high state of insulin. We have disallows fat oxidation, right? But then also to still be able to burn that fat when in a calorie
deficit. So there's a couple
Couple pieces to this, the first one being as you get. So it's kind of like a there's multiple things in play. As you get leaner, you become more insulin sensitive. The same amount of carbohydrate doesn't make the same amount of insulin. Clear. So that's one thing.
So like that, dose of insulin is is lower, right? Get right bolus of
carbohydrate, yeah. The other thing is that people don't talk about is if you're obese.
Your insulin response, you more insulin resistant, we have higher amounts of fat, you're more insulin resistant but nobody thinks about that in the context that adipose. So you're still more insulin resistant in adipose as well. So the negative effects of insulin on lipolysis actually aren't as pronounced when you're when you're overweight or obese. Hmm, it's very interesting. So to answer your question, a little more directly
The first thing is, people think about insulin is kind of like this leaving. That's an on and off switch, right? So if we turn on insulin, we secrete insulin. That means we're shutting down all fat burning and we're ramping up languages.
So metabolism doesn't really work that way. It's more. Like so if you think about a light switch where you walk in and lights either on or off metabolism would be like dimmer switches. Okay, so you are always burning fat and storing fat at the same time those two processes occur simultaneously. Now it's the relative rates of each that will determine how much body fat you gain or lose over a period of time. So the first thing is to think about in the context of meals, right? So
Take your emails per and this is gonna be a much longer answer than you were probably anticipating but I think it's important to really hash out. This new ones. Yeah, looks like three meals a day. Okay, so you eat meal, your insulin goes up but then during those fasting periods is going to come back down and you were going to. Yes, during feeding depending on the total amount of calories you're taking in until about a carbohydrate. You're going to have it that fat oxidation going to store more. But then during those fasting periods, you're going to burn more. And it's really about
Well, how much, how many, what's the overall energy balance in terms of the net summation of what's going to happen? Now, let's take an extreme version that let's take one meal a day, a 10 bills because some people say, well, if you're always eating, you know, well, if we equate calories between those two sure you're getting more insulin responses from 10 meals in a day, but they're also really, really small. So those insulin responses are really really small versus one huge meal where you're getting a really huge insulin response, you know, the
Area under the curve. There may be a little bit of difference, but again, when it comes to actual loss of body fat, they've done those studies. We just don't see a difference. But when it so to your question, how can somebody lose fat, still eating a decent amount of carbohydrate? So if we're going to take two comparative diets, right? Let's say once low-carb, high-fat, the other ones, low-fat high-carb, let's assume equal calories and protein between them, and that's very important distinction. Because if
Proteins, not equated. It's not a reasonable comparison. And you did see in some of the early low-carb research that some of these low-carb diets were superior. But when you looked into the research, you saw the protein was increased by about 50%. So once we had enough started with a equate, a protein, we don't actually see differences in losses of body fat. So, again, to your question, how is this possible? Because insulin inhibits fat oxidation increases like genesis
So, when you increase, when you have a high carbohydrate environment environment, you increase insulin, yes, you are reducing the rate of fat oxidation. However, your overall fat balance and loss of body fat is not just fat oxidation, that's just one side. Equations, also, fat storage. Well, carbohydrate really isn't stored as body fat so they've done metabolic Tracer studies and where they looked at, okay? Of the fact they get stored in a post during
Had a, how much originated this carbohydrate? How much originated as fat? I would say dietary fat but it's a little more complex than that because you can have like endogenous fat production out of the liver and that's and they found that over 98% of the fat that got stored in adipose tissue, twas from fat, hmm. Less than 2% was from carbohydrate.
So what that says is, if you're eating a high carb diet, yes, you're going to have much lower rates of fat oxidation, but you're also not going to be storing much fat. If you have high fat intake, low carb intake,
you're going to be burning a lot of fat. You're also going to be storing. A lot of fact, the the energy balance or the, you know, calorie Surplus or deficit, it's going to be what determines, what is the net effect, right? So now some people will take an extreme version that will, what about just doing? Low carb and low-fat. Well, that's just called low-calorie because it's hard to eat a protein, only diet, right like yeah, you burn a lot of fat, but then it's not going to be gratefully, Mass retention, or quite honestly sustainability.
Just eating protein past your life, once probably nothing right for you. And two, she's not a sustainable lifestyle. Now other people will say, well, what about okay? Let's take the extreme ends of these arguments. What if we just did all carbohydrate right since it can't be, it's not really stored as fat. Well, one of the things I would say is you're forgetting about the endogenous production of fat out of the liver. So your body will tend to hold your circulating levels of lipids which
Each, there's a certain amount of those and if you're just eating carbohydrate, it will wrap up the manova lipogenesis a little bit.
You're still going to have enough fat available in order to store it in adipose because now if you're doing, like let's say just something crazy like 600 grams of carbs a day and 5 grams of fat, your body is not going to hardly oxidized any fat, it's only oxidizing carbohydrate and now any exhaustion is fat and any indiginous fat is much more likely to wind up and out of those. So, people kind of trying to come up with these methods to, like, hack their way around energy balance and it just doesn't really work when
You understand metabolism and full context. Now is the conversion of carbohydrate to fat as easy as fat too fat. No. But again, what I would tell people, it's like, alright, let's say you do a carb, only dot carbon protein, only dot. How sustainable is that pure lifestyle? Like what what are you going to eat for that? I mean, you're going to eat like chicken breast apples. You know what I mean? Like, you're gonna eat egg whites and bananas. Like, that's not a sustainable lifestyle either. So
I always kind of come back to all right. Yeah. If you want to make these extreme arguments, maybe we can get some weird stuff going on but like good luck doing that for us to your life.
Yeah. Is it but doesn't deliver create fat out of carbs? After the liver has been replete with? Yeah, the song Engine.
You definitely can have some de novo lipogenesis but again, it's one of those things where it's a relatively small contribution to the overall production of fat. Now if you get fat intake,
Lower back pain, carbon takes high enough. You probably would see a decent ramping up at the noble epigenesis but at least in the context of relatively mixed diets. We just don't see it. Make a huge contribution to the actual levels of stored body fat.
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Get which we've talked about on the podcast before, 1.6 grams per kilogram of ideal weight.
And really just modulate the carbs and fat.
Yes he have to think about carbs and fat is to the way you just discussed. That is kind of how we set up people in our app. Our nutritional coaching app as well as our nutrition coaching like one-on-one with our coaches. If we called the bile a method, the first thing would be okay. What is your goal for fat loss and over what period of time, okay?
That means it's about this much per week. All right. What kind of calorie deficit do we need? In order to Target that understanding that, we can never, truly know exactly what kind of calorie deficit. People are it, right? Like, you're like I'm gonna 673 calorie deficit but, you know, we're looking for a rough estimate, right?
Then okay, once we've set that calorie deficit, if we know what the person's maintenance calories are what they maintain their body weight on and ideally we have tracking data from those people and we get a good idea of what they maintained on. If not, we just take our best guess and then we adjust based on how they respond which is I think reasonable
So once we've got the calorie about set, now the next lever is protein, right? And a sufficient of protein, like just talked about some of that boils down to, hey, you know, I've had clients where I have them on, like, two point five grams of protein per kilogram, body weight. They call man, I'm happy. I'm really having a hard time. Keep my protein under 2.5 grams, we kill because they come from that bodybuilding background. The more protein the better, you know? And then I've got people like 1.6 and they call man, how can you get down this much?
18, right? So it's really interesting to see the differences in approaches, but I kind of let people like within that range, okay? What do you prefer? You know, what, what's, you know, what feels more sustainable for you as a lifestyle and then whatever's left over calorie-wise, we can lock to carbohydrates and fats and I do give people some leeway like, okay, what, what kind of food preferences do you have? Like, are you somebody who, you know, likes more grains? You like more fruits, are you like more than six or you like more fat?
like, you know, more Savory Foods that sort of thing because at the end of the day,
There can be some subtle differences in like okay, if we exchanged out saturated fat for pufa or monounsaturated fat, or if we, you know, do less sugar more fibrous Foods, absolutely, all that stuff can make a difference. I think, honestly like having more dietary fiber, it's a great thing for satiety and honestly for longevity lot of other benefits. In fact, if I had a seventh thing on longevity and be eat enough fiber, I'm with you on that. Yeah. But
The last majority of the benefits from diets, at least in the context of people going through obese, to getting the metabolic healthy is from the weight loss. Because excess adipose tissue is inflammatory. It secretes all kinds of different kinds that negatively interfere with all kinds of feedback signaling and what you find is, like, in a
adipose overfilled State, let's say
the excess blood glucose, the excess blood lipids, the excess inflammatory markers, all that stuff, just gets in and starts gumming up the works everywhere and disrupting all. This signaling pretty much inside the cell and outside the cell.
So, if we can just get people to start, honestly don't even have to lose that much fat if we get them. So where there's just not that many blood lipids and blood glucose in the bloodstream through again a calorie deficit, just not overloading the system. You start to see pretty quick resolution of some of these blood markers things like hba1c and inflammatory markers. Take a little bit longer although I'm transferring markers. You can still see differences in, you know, month or two. But yeah, so I
so I look at it from the perspective of, okay,
What can this a person here to over a long period of time, right, and that's a higher carb approach. Hey, no worries, if it's a higher fat approach? No worries. People think. Look at me as somebody who's very anti low carb. And what I tell people is I'm not anti low-carbon all because I mean if you look at our app, we have to low carb settings, we have a reduced reduced carb and a ketogenic setting. Our apple pie was anti low-carb, we wouldn't have those right, but
I think some of the stigmatism and Dogma around low carbohydrate is actually had some negative effects Downstream that I've seen mostly in terms of like, eating disorders in people. It's a really interesting like experiment in human psychology. It's kind of like the one they call the purple, elephant, your heard of that comparison. So I tell you right now for the love of God, don't think about purple else. What's the first thing you do purple? Hell oven? Right? Right. So if I tell somebody, hey, you can have anything you want.
To the love of God don't have. Come on now. For some people that works I'm not trying to dismiss that but it's important to understand why it works. If they think it's because oh if I have a card, I release insulin and that means it just makes me fat. The problem is, there's no moderator there, right? So Ethan simply don't know if you're familiar with him, you don't
even know. It was on his podcast. He's a, he's a great great dude.
Great dude. And he said he was like, you know, I didn't have a governor because I was so scared.
Of carbohydrate that if my will grow, it wasn't like I just had, you know, a few chips or something like that. It was like an onslaught of food because I'm in my mind, I had already screwed up. I might as well just have as much as I want in that moment and the reality is like no you know, just having a couple of chips that's not going to derail your efforts. That's not it's not a huge deal, but if you eat the entire bag or two bags, if you guys. Yeah, that's a, that's a big deal, right? So,
I think just having that context and help, that's why I'm so
I guess pedantic about understanding why things work because I don't want people to make these weird associations in their mind because at the end of the day, when people say, well, you should do Mo car or you should do plant-based. So you should do this and they give all these. I'm like, but we know that's not the only way to do things. Like I have to do is look around, all right, like if you just look around and you see, hey, that person lost, 200 pounds in a plant-based high carb black. And he looked around somebody else who lost 200 pounds of a little car guy, like somebody else lost 200 pounds.
Passing somebody else lost 20 pounds flexible dieting. So what I tell people is if you want to lose that and I realize I'm putting out very long answers here. We like, you know, if you want to lose fat it is going to require some form of restriction.
But you should pick the form of restriction. That feels the least restrictive for you. And then understand about, oh, won't be the experience of everyone. Because if we look at people like to talk about,
So this kind of this road of leaving people down to where they understand, you know, the calories matter and one of those is like, okay, here's all these studies showing that we equate calories and protein, the breakdown of carbs and fats, don't seem to have. All right, people, finally accept that thinking, well, you know, my diet, whatever it be, low carb, intermittent fasting plant-based. It's just easier to stick to let me look at the information on dietary here. It's and it's actually not they're all equally terrible like in terms of long-term adherence on a
Relational, right for the, on the average. But that doesn't mean that it's not perhaps the right diet for you, or for your mom or whoever. So just understand that, your perspective on what's easy, won't be the same for anybody else. I have a I have experienced this myself, so I used to kind of eat clean right? When I first got into bodybuilding, this is Circa, 2000, because I read all the muscle magazines. It was like oatmeal potato, maybe
Maybe fruit. Chicken breast salmon, you know, like there was like I don't know. 10 foods you can eat basically, right? And what I found was, yeah, I do great, I eat those foods and then if I got exposed to something outside of that, I couldn't have my foods that I would usually, I would just go crazy and Benji, you know, and I kind of got to a place where I'm like, man, this feel like this isn't the right way to approach things, maybe it's not the slice of pizza, that's killing me. It's the
Actively eat a slice of pizza, I just end up eating the whole freaking thing. So I started kind of flexible dieting just out of the like, trial and error of okay. Well, you know, I'm just going to hit my macros and and see like, what happens and it fell easy for me. Now contest prep getting to a very lean body fat. I'm not gonna sit here and say, that's easy, that sucks, no matter how hard how you slice it. But if iÃve gone several times for like fifteen percent down to like 7 percent on calipers and it was easy, even a couple of years ago.
So, I went down to Lake Placid powerlifting from 231 to 2005, and I lost about 30 pounds and my wife's remark, was I'm disgusted by how easy that was for you. You didn't even complain. So, for me, flexible dieting felt easy. And so, when I got into coaching, I was like, oh, this is the answer for everybody. I'll just tell him to hit macros and they'll be good. And it's like, oh, no dum-dum. Not everybody's like you, you know? So now I'm much more of a, okay? I'm not a low-carb. I'm not flexible dieting, I'm not intimate. I'm okay.
What is this individuals psychology for them mean, it's going to feel easiest for them and then let's do that.
I love that because I mean, there are many possible roads up the mountain and you've gotta I'm totally on board with this that you've got to find what works for you. And I also loved kind of what you alluded to earlier. When you were talking about how, for the overweight individual that losing weight getting to a normal healthy body weight is going to be the single
Best needle mover with regard to their health. It's like somebody who smokes, right? Like there's a lot of things that somebody who is a cigarette smoker could do that might you know, offer a modicum of benefit to their health, right? But the single biggest needle mover is going to be to stop smoking. Right? Right. So for somebody who is very overweight, it sounds like the best thing that they could do for their health regardless of like, you know, conventional versus organic seed oils bubble. All, you know, all of the sort of like, you know, this
Mauler sort of conversations that we have the higher higher hanging fruit, that often gets discussed in the wellness industry. The number one thing that they could do is is get back to a healthy weight and ultimately what's going to determine their success is finding the diet that's going to be the most sustainable for
them.
Absolutely, I think you'll even simply had a quote that I really love. He goes, if the buildings on fire don't sit in the building and try to figure out. Hmm. Wonder what started this fire wide. Like get out of the building. That's on fire first and then try to figure out what started the fire, right? Like didn't figure out why the building was on fire, but I think
And, you know, with diets what this is, the only place I see this. I think a lot of people get paralysis by analysis and I love to use Financial examples, right? So it's like, people have like terrible spending habits, they're not willing to budget, you know. But then the like wring their hands over will try and Dustin this crypto or should I invest in this ends? Like dude, it's not going to matter because you have such terrible habits that it's not you like short of basically winning the lottery.
You which oh by the way I think it's something like 80% or 70% of lottery winners within five to ten years are broke because you haven't changed your habits. You haven't you haven't actually pushed the big levers and it's the same thing with nutrition people like well, low-carb, high card, do just don't eat so much, you know, like a butt. But I think one of the problems with that and this is around a broader contextual argument as I think right now.
There's kind of a culture war and this goes down to literally almost anything between two sides to extreme size. One is everything is 100% personal accountability and your fault and your responsibilities. And then there is nothing, is your responsibility. Nothing is your fault. But then also, that means that you're a victim and nothing is nothing is modifiable, right? And so, I think what the evidence suggests is, no, no, no, no.
Both these things have some truth to them. So I know Will Smith isn't the most popular person right now. Another quote that I really liked which is he said I need to talk to you more about relationships and whatnot but he said you know, no matter who hurt you or how they hurt you, the responsibility isn't on them to repair the damage. The responsibility is on you. And so I actually get did a podcast a while back where I was talking about us, our survey, they did of obese women and
Found I think 60% had some form of like sexual assault or like severe sexual trauma in there in their lifetime and it's like whoa, like okay that. So that suggests is it a conscious Choice? Okay, any choice. Sure. Conscious probably not. You know, like I always thinks comparison I give and forgive the comparison but I'm like if everything is a conscious decision. Okay, well, I go to the bathroom night.
Zip. My fly out. Is that like a cut? Like I am slipping my fly up know that is like a reflex reaction because it just something I do every time, right? Well, if you've had traumatic experiences, that program you to cope with that a certain way.
Sure, it's a choice but conscious I would necessarily go that far. And so I think one of the problems that people have and one of the reasons I tug my calorie deficit calorie Surplus. Can be triggering for some folks is it's like you're saying that it's my fault and that I'm a sloth. I'm a glutton or anything like that. No you don't honestly to become overweight or obese. With today's hyper palatable food environment. You don't have to be slothful all to do that. Like
Just eat. Like, if you eat, like, a normal amount of ultra-processed foods because they're so calorie-dense, you'll probably put on weight, you know. So yes. We all come from different places. We know that obese people get a greater reward from food compared to like lean people. So, yes, there are things that work against you in that context.
However, there is personal responsibility to change those habits, right? So, here's the information right now, you can hear all this person's, call me and sloth, but what they're actually saying is for your giving energy expenditure right now the amount you're eating is not conducive to weight loss or you're gaining weight. That's not saying you're a sloth. That's not putting any ethical judgment on things but unfortunately
actually, with a lot of people here,
Is just that that your slothful and unfortunately they shut down and don't work here. So again I think the take-home I would say from this is
We do need to come from a place a little more empathy when it comes to people who are struggling with this. However, we do have to make it apparent that there is personal responsibility here. It may not be your fault that you got to this place but it is your responsibility to take the steps to change it. Now that, you know, better or now that you have this information and then it then it becomes a personal responsibility thing. But that is a really, that's a really hard
Discussion to have these days unfortunately
yes, especially with, you know, the sort of as a whole can of worms. But the health at any size movement and the
switch switch, which by the way, when it started like 10 years ago had really good intentions. If you read the original and like the intentions were okay, let's stop focusing. So much on just the weight loss because that's super triggering for some people. And some people get really hung up on the scale upset.
Yet. Instead let's focus on building some healthy habits and focus on the process rather than the outcome. So let's be process-oriented, which I think is great, but guess what happens? If you build healthy habits, you're going to start losing weight, right? So I think being process-oriented is great but unfortunately that message has been turned around and twisted into you know me eating junk food is honoring my bottom.
If you're again, this is super important context. If you're coming from an eating disorder background, we're like anorexia or binge eating or bulimia. Absolutely. Having some junk food could be honoring your body. That absolutely could be like that. That actually may be a healthy victory for you, but in the context of somebody who, you know, has been overeating, that sort of thing saying, no to that same junk food or saying, you know what? I'm just I don't need to have this whole
I'm going to have a single, you know, how to do another. Whatever that might be a victory for choosing an apple over it. Don't it might be a victory. But unfortunately, like what gets attention on social media is these really big broad statements. That really don't do any justice for anybody which is always why. I, like, I tell people I'm always at my caption limit almost always because I'm like, all right. Big head, look big headline. Let's grab them. And then here's all the education and Nuance, you know, trying to put
at together because I just think that that's so incredibly important when we're having these conversations
it is hard. I mean, I think, I think there's also a degree of personal accountability that people need to have and realize and recognize that not every message is for you. I know that can be hard when you're struggling with, you know, disorder. But I mean for example, I know my audience in my audio I don't I'm not speaking to an audience that has had you know, disordered eating issues with disorder.
It's not my that's not my intent, at least, you know? I mean, they're obviously could be but, you know, I want one of the areas where I get I think frustrated with the fitness Community as I see it because I don't really, I'm not part, I don't consider myself part of any Community. I'm not like, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't consider myself in the carnivore Camp, even though I like to Advocate advocate for the consumption of animal products. I'm not really, I don't come from a fitness background. I mean, I'm not an athlete. I was never a bodybuilder, powerlifter.
Or anything like that. I come at it, you know? Just with trying to help people avert age related, chronic disease that was my sort of initial impetus to step two. Step forward my frustration. I think sometimes comes from the fact that it at least what I observe and I could be wrong in this, is that many of the fitness Community tend to make it all about calories. Like it's the If It Fits your Macros mentality and I think
You know where I think. Sometimes I butt heads with people is that I think that koala food quality is something that we need to be talking about as well, that both matter really at the end of the day.
Yeah. So I think that
I'm much more in the middle on this than people think. Again, I kind of look at it as like, all right. If it's a pyramid. What's the most important stuff? Sorry. I'm listen, Chris word. I'm trying to clean my final. Clean my mouth a little bit. What's the most important stuff? Then what's the next most important stuff? The next next, next one, some of those things crossover, it's not a purely straight pyramid,
But I definitely have seen.
I think a lot of this just goes to be unconstructive debate that happens via text on the internet yeah which is okay calories are the most important thing energy balance the most important thing for our you're saying the food quality doesn't matter you saying that we could just have Skittles and protein shakes and then you know lard and that would be healthy and it's like no that's not really what I'm saying. I'm just saying that this is the most important lever to pull. I'm not saying that fiber doesn't matter all the other.
But I think it's so easy.
I call this the Tim Tebow effects. This is from like 10 years ago and I promise I'm going somewhere with this, but my hypothesis was, you could not be even Tim, Tebow is an adult. You could not be in the middle about Tim Tebow. Because if you kind of feel like them, which I did, I'm like, the guy seems like a nice guy. You know, he seems to work hard like he's trying to go after this thing even though I people say you can't do it. I kind of identified with that cool. So did I see this? Can't people over here. That just seem to hate this guy for what seems like know.
Reason to me and also like what do you mean Tim Tebow sucks. Well, how many playoff games is your quarterback? What, you know, so it's like it's so polarizing. It's like magnets, you know, pushing each other apart. But then if you like another sighting, like, you know, you know, whatever, he seems. Alright, but he eats little preachy for me, you know, that sort of thing and he's you know I don't think he's really that great at football. Players are mechanics are pretty terrible. Look at the completion percentage and then you have this, all the people being like Tim Tebow for MVP you know well then you kind of come back the other way like
We talked about this dude is not that good and so it's kind of polarization effect. So when it comes to, like If It Fits your Macros, there were people who were like, oh, well, look, look how shredded I can get eating all this junk and it's like, okay. Can you sure is that a great idea for most people probably not, oh, by the way, most people who like got shredded had really like high levels of energy expenditure anyway. So they could eat like decent amount of junk food and still feel satiated for the average person.
The best job like that's just not going to work. And so then that kind of polarized things, but this happens in every sorry, my cats come on, bro.
Wait, I didn't know you were a cat
guy. Well, I was until I met my wife. This, this cat in particular is actually awesome. He's the best kind of ever been around.
Dude, I mean, I have a cat to solidarity
novel, level 5, clear, right here. So, yeah, like, we have this in every Community though, it's like,
The low carb Community, you know, instead of saying oh you know this is a reasonable way to restrict your calories. It's insulin prevent you from losing fat and you can be the calorie deficit not lose pounds. And we talked about same thing with with the carnivore Community saying like, hey, fibers bad for you. You know, actually plants are toxic and they're trying to poison you. It's like, man, like this isn't like sure. I'm. Hey, listen. My research was sponsored by the national Cattlemen's beef Association, National Dairy Council and the egg nutrition.
Dinner, I'm cool with animal products but I'm also not cool with like being so extreme that we have to demonize everything else and there's no place for anything else and I think that's where these conversations just gets. So unproductive is human beings and I don't know how to fix this, but I think it's just human problem. We just get so tribal and go to the extreme and so many things and it just ends up in us talking past each other.
We're seeing this now in our in the United States with just how divided the nation is getting with different things. I don't even watch the news anymore cuz I can't because I'm just like oh
yeah I agree. It's a it is a it is a big problem, it's a very frustrating. I thought it could be fun to just throw out like to just get like Lane Norton's hot takes on a few topics boy. Yeah. Like there's some of the more controversial ones and maybe
Will, you know, like disagree on something but see I feel like our disagreements are more like philosophical as opposed to like I'm totally on board with everything that you've said and I and you know there are areas where maybe I have a perspective but it's like I don't really have a dog in that fight. I haven't planted a flag or made, you know or at least. I hope that I haven't made weird claims that have that have raised red flags. But yeah, just to sort of get your take on, on some on some hotly debated topics. Well, kinda
In the nutrition sphere so artificial sweeteners. The I know you're super passionate about artificial sweeteners, drinking a diet soda right there. Full disclosure, I personally avoid artificial sweeteners. I will reach for Stevia and monk fruit on stuff. But but I do think it's important to dispel the fear that some people have surrounding them. What's your
take? So the first thing I would say is I would I'm not like Pro artificial sweeteners necessarily, right? So part of this
Just become because people come at me with so much anti again, the polarization thing. It's like, okay, well, you're going to make all these claims. Well, here's all these studies, you know, you know, I would say we have about like, over a half a millennia, half century of research. Now on artificial sweeteners and really, the only time, we can tie them to any kind of diseases, cross-sectional data. And when we give Road and super high doses of
Oh, sweetness. So, the, you know, some people say, well, I'd rather do Stevia monk fruit. The thing that would actually say is, there's probably actually more safety. Now, I'm not saying Steve, your monthly and back for you, I'm not at all, but there's probably actually more safety data on things like sucralose and aspartame than there is on those particular products. Now again, I think all of them are fine. There is
so if we look at the human outcome data,
First off, one of the concerns floods, well, they that sweet taste is going to cause insulin release and that's going to keep you from burning fat. We have so many studies now that show that they don't cause insulin release, there's there's one human study.
Where I got to be careful because I don't want to, I don't want to plant my flag too strong. But basically, they basically said that when you added artist would you added sucralose to carbohydrate that it decreased insulin, sensitivity and increase the insulin response, right? So they had a sucralose, only group, sucralose, post, carbohydrate, and carbohydrate only, and the carbohydrate amounts were matched. So, on the surface, it's like, okay. Well then when you dig deeper the carbohydrate only group,
With sucrose, the carbohydrate. Plus sucralose group was maltodextrine. Well, maltodextrine has a heart for higher glycemic response than sucrose, like, even if you match them for
Cal, this is glucose, right? I mean maltodextrin and suitcases glucose and fructose,
it's actually even greater glycemic response than glucose because it's getting kind of technical. But when you have, like, really highly branched carbohydrate because of the branches and the
The way your body digests, it the more branches, there are the more quickly it can be absorbed. So actually a highly branched Polymers of glucose are have a greater effect on by see Nia than just straight up glucose. So like if you look at the GI Index, right? So that's a measure of Life by simic response but glucose is 100 well maltodextrine is 110 to 170 or something like that. So it's a far greater
Months. So, it was like, if you look at the differences in responses, in this study, it's actually just because multiple dextran was used as the comparator group. So in humans, we just don't see that with the in normal Doses. And the other thing to keep in mind with artificial sweeteners is it's not like, okay. So like a can of Coke, for example, has you know what, 40 grams of high fructose corn syrup? You're not getting 40 grams of aspartame.
You're getting like a pertains 200 times sweeter, so I can do the math in my head, but you're getting like, literally, you know, I think like 100 to 200 milligrams. It's a small amount. And so if you just like, think about the most like robust glycemic response, you could get from 100 to 200 milligrams of a highly branched carbohydrate. It still wouldn't even like notice, you still won't have a blip on your insulin response, right? And in the case of sucralose, sucralose is
Times sweeter. So it's like a very minor amount of sucralose to there. And there have been people that sick said, okay, well we know it negatively affects the gut microbiota. So again I would argue that if you dig into the studies, there have been thus far. There have been four, human studies, three of show. Nothing one was for 10 weeks and did show something. And I can't remember the actual, the genus and species name of bacteria, that it did affect. But so they
heard a bunch of different kinds of bacteria. And they really only saw a difference in one. So, for the most part, it didn't affect the gut microbiome. The bacteria did affect interestingly. When I went and looked it up, it increase the incidence of this particular bacteria that bacteria is actually associated with better like lower inflammation. It's higher and people who are leading, it's lower in. People who are obese, it slower and type 2 diabetes. So it's kind of like, all right so maybe it does. But how are you?
I
was saying it's a negative effect based on this data because I would argue, that's not right? And again, getting back to kind of like big leaders, right? So if we look at there was a recent meta-analysis system, water system called Network meta-analysis, where they looked at weight loss and hba1c and smother help markets cardiometabolic markers health.
And one thing that we can say, for sure artificial sweeteners, don't make you gain weight. And based on the research, you actually eat a little bit of weight loss.
So they basically compared okay let's replace sugar. Sweetened beverages with either water or artificially sweetened Beverages. And let's also compare those two against each other. Artificial sweeteners. Not only led to significant weight loss compared to sugar-sweetened beverages also compared to water. Now that's that's not saying that artificially sweetened beverages in fact fireworks because they're not, what's likely happening is people are
they replace that sugar-sweetened beverage with water. They're likely seeking out that sweet taste somewhere else. And so if art like some people have said, hey if I drink a Diet Coke I just feel like I want more sweet and it actually makes. Hey, okay cool. Then don't don't use that. That's not a tool that you should use. But so many people say, oh like I mean every time I post about this, I'll get somebody my closer. I lost 70 pounds, it all I did was cut out sodas and replace them with our kerslake sweetened Beverages. And so people will say, well, what's the harm in telling people
One. Well again this is like unintended consequences, right? So if I tell somebody, hey you can't have this tool because it's actually worse for you than regular soda and they go. Okay, well I'm, you know, I can't get rid of this, I can't lose weight, whatever, whereas it's like, no dude. Like let's just say, artificially sweetened beverages were a little bit bad for you compared to water. It's still better than being 70 pounds overweight, okay? So again it's like
Big leaver, small lever. And again, I would argue that, you know, based on the preponderance of evidence, I don't think there's much to worry about with artificial sweeteners. But if somebody says, hey, you know, I'm just going to play it safe and I'm going to use something else. Cool, no worries are. I'm just going to drink water. Cool. No worries. But let's not demonize these things because they are useful tools for a lot of people who have lost a significant amount of weight and I think that's super important when people kind of go.
What's the harm in telling people to drink water? Well, there actually may be harm if we don't frame it in the proper
context,
Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I drink water. I drink if I'm gonna do a soda, you know, they have like these like stevia-sweetened sodas, I don't know. Do you think it's unreasonable for people to be skeptical. Cautious around synthetic like food
additives. So I think just having a background in Biochemistry
Kind of got me out of like worried about natural versus not actually because you you start to learn that. Like, all right, everything's a chemical. So when people start going well, these these chemicals, it's like alright. Well, I mean there are some chemicals out there, there are synthetic that save a crapload people's lives, you know, Fair like right now I think we talked about natural, the context that we should use more of when it comes to food.
Food is let's focus on minimally processed foods not because the processing induces some kind of, you know, horrible effect on the food that makes you get sick because the processing just makes that stuff super tasty and easy to overeat on. Whereas, if we focus on minimally processed foods, people just eat less right now. Could there be some other ancillary benefits? Sure, I'm not precluding the notion that there could be some kind of Downstream effects, but
You look at like the hazard ratios for people to consume processed food, versus non processed food and Hazard ratio is basically, like, what is the relative risk of this?
It's actually it tends to be right and light or less than people just being obese, right? So to me, and again, I'm kind of linking two things that aren't necessarily directly being compared. So I got to be careful with this. Go to me that kind of suggests that hey, the - Downstream effects, the stuff appear to be that people overeat on them by a lot, right? So I think the messaging is fine. Say let's focus on Millie processed more natural food but I think we're
it can be a problem is if people start incorporating fear into anything synthetic,
And then people kind of have this, you know, weird Association in their head. And again, they get in mixed up and they start worrying about the wrong levers. And then they do things like, well, you know, I'm going to end up, you know, putting butter in my coffee because I'm not going to use Diet Coke or something like that. It's like, all right, it's probably not the lever to pull, you know. So I think it's more about. I think healthy skepticism is great. I think that's super important.
And so it is a very fine line between skepticism and denial, right? That's a fine line. It's also, you know, one of my favorite phrases is, you know, being open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brain falls out
like that.
So I mean, I've had this so many times where somebody will say well such-and-such side and all these studies. Now I'm like oh yeah let me go read those studies and I'll go read the studies and it's like so many times it doesn't even have any has very little to do with
Well, what's being directly claimed? Or, I mean, I had so many times where I've gone into studying, like I actually said the opposite thing if you read it, you know. So but unfortunately like the average person just isn't equipped to go in and do that sort of thing. So I mean I've I've done like long kind of analysis, you know, different nutrition. People have appeared on like podcast. I could Joe Rogan podcast that sort of thing. I mean to go through a three-hour. I had 13. Our podcast, I went through.
I ended up having two hundred eighty three citations. It took me about 100 hours to listen, right? And cite the entire thing. Meanwhile, the podcast itself is three hours so it's because I was going through every single claim and looking up the citations that were made and say, okay well this is one of the actually said who, so unfortunately what it takes to present this information. It takes a hugely disproportionate amount of time to go back and undo that.
Yeah, no. And I give you tons of credit for
Doing that because I mean so somebody's got to do it. You're the one who stood up and and and took on that role and it's something that like, you know, and again I've done it on a few patients to do
so. And again I I tell people like I don't have a dog in this fight, right? Like I was already geared up to go debate James Wilkes on the game changers and I was writing to Nate pathology do on the Carnival tonight. You know, like I'm I'm kind of in the middle here which means everybody its up hate me unfortunately. But that's how
You see, I think
that you and I actually have a lot more in common than you might initially think when you just get a cursory experience of the of a kind of content that you and I put
out. Yeah. I think all all own, you know my role in this where I'll get somebody who sends me a post? It says, what do you think of this? And I don't know, read the full context of it. I just kind of like reactively attack because that's become my mode because I'm so sick of this stuff. And to be fair, that's not the right way to approach things either, which is why we
Like you talked about doing a podcast. I'm like, you know, what anybody who's willing to reach across the aisle and say, let's have a conversation. I'm 100% down for that because I think that's so important because that's when this stuff actually people from, you know, different camps go oh oh, I didn't understand like him so much actual agreement here, right? Where that there was all this crossover and so I think that's really
important. Yeah, I don't consider myself
I'm not in. I feel like I'm sitting in the aisle is where I like to situate myself. Okay,
we got the one hot. Take that right?
Okay, I
think. Yeah, as long as you've got time. Yeah, I believe so. Real for me, but I believe I have time. I don't have anything till the next.
Like 30
minutes. Okay, so we won't take up too much more of your time but I do want to roll through some other one so fructose fructose gets talked about a lot. Yeah it's it's I don't even know all the claims that are made against it but but yeah fructose from high fructose corn syrup and how potentially know and using air quotes dangerous that is to what it does to the liver and so on and so forth. So what's your, what's your hot? Take on that.
So I'll give you my heart, take it, but I'll give it an explanation. I think fructose is really not something to worry about too much. Now do I think like drinking a bunch of sodas? A good idea? No but that's because it's just very energy dense and people it is not say dating at all. Like there is no there's almost no satiety effect from sort of people just add that on top of The Regular Guy. It is literally the first lever. I
Well, when I do with somebody who's overweight or obese, it's like hey, could we train out soda for water or Diet? So
right as all sugar-sweetened beverages, right? I mean soda coffee.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of people again. I'm not gonna throw a big fit, right? Like it's like me having a cigar right, but if somebody's doing that regularly it's like okay, well this is a big lever we can pull that you're probably not even gonna feel it.
Not bad. In fact, most people drink a Coke or whatever. She's got a habit, right? Well, let's just get you adjusted to the taste of the diet coke. Instead take a few weeks, but your taste buds are just like. Now if I have a regular poker like pool, you know, so a lot of people worry about it. Okay? To Noble epigenesis in the liver. Look at these studies. And rag showing that like they become more obese when they feed fructose. So when I got to grad, school will story when I get to grad school.
Cool. I was of the opinion. High fructose corn syrup was fattening independent calories. So there's Circa 2004 2005 and I was sitting at a mixer for the nutritional Sciences division University of Illinois where I was, and the guy who did a lot of these studies in rodents, I was all, I was listening to him, have a conversation with the other professor and the other Professor was saying what's really interesting that high fructose corn syrup seems seems to be you know, so fattening and the other part.
Transfer. You've done, the research said, well, I it's mostly just the calories and the other guy was like, what about the? He's like, well, you have to understand like, we're just, we're finding this interesting. We're just looking to prove a mechanism. We were feeding these rats, seventy percent of, their total calories from Pure for dos. Well, that's not even possible. Even if you, all you did was drink soda, because soda is only about 60 percent per dose.
So, of all you drink my soda, you still wouldn't get your level of fructose. It's given to these rats and he studies. So what do we see in the human outcome? Being well, when you don't equate for callaghan's in The Meta analyses? You see very clearly clearly sugar-sweetened beverages lead to weight gain. Absolutely. Then if you look at fructose, high fructose, corn syrup sucrose any fructose containing sugar. If you equate calories and exchange it for non fructose carbohydrate 0.
Friends and weight loss for on any cardio, metabolic health markets and that's been shown in several studies. There is one study, literally one study that did not have a control group in kids, where I think it was either they fed them more fructose, or they cut out fructose, and they saw their, but they didn't lose weight. But the way it didn't change and they saw their models of intramuscular lipids, or sorry. Intrahepatic lipids. Decrease and so,
what I'll say is,
You can almost always find one study that shows what you want. Uh-huh. With regards to anything. So the example I give is you look at meta-analysis is like back from the 70s, I think adenocarcinomas and smoking. There's like a bunch of studies on one side showing that it increases the risk of adenocarcinoma, pretty substantially. And then there's two studies over here that children actually decreased the risk.
So what am I going to color? Am I going to go with those two studies where my going to go with all the ones over here showing it? You know, it increases the risk, right? So the point is, they can be very careful about cherry picking which is why when I go to look for research on the topic that maybe I'm not well-versed on the first. I'm going to go do is try and look at the meta-analyses and then look at how those meta analyses were conducted because meta-analyses are kind of the gold standard, but you can have crappy meta-analyses to if you have crappy increasing inclusion, exclusion criteria.
But yeah, so I even if so when they look at humans, they look at the readings amounts of fructose. They just don't see these negative effects if calories or control, that's a big. If because again, people who drink soda or sugar-sweetened beverages, they don't they don't have the conversation of. Well, you know, I had 40 grams of sugar from this pokes not means I'm going to skip the pasta tonight but that's not the conversation that happens, right? They they just drinking that on top of a regular high, so
It's important to understand like real world applied, and like, if we're talking about a mechanism what that mechanism actually show. So in humans, do I think fructose is a problem in turn outside of the calories that contains? No, I don't do. I think it's a problem part of a problem. Sure. Because it's tasty easy to over-consume in the context of sugar-sweetened Beverages and then some like foods that contain high fructose corn
When Cyril, but we got to be really careful how you talk about this stuff because you got people who are avoiding, like apples and bananas and fruits and stuff because the worry about fructose. And it's like, yeah, but let's look at the human outcome data. Look at me,
but boy, can so take a, you know, obviously, high fructose corn syrup is a little bit different because it's, you know, most people don't realize that it's actually about 50% fructose, 50% glucose. So, you know, maybe higher a little bit higher and
fruitcakes, by 45 or 60 40, yeah?
But,
Take a take a sweetener for example, like, you know, agave syrup which is often marketed as being diabetic friendly. It's got a bit of a health Halo, you find, you know, products and health food stores sweetened with agave syrup. And if I recall correctly, agave syrup, is something like 90% fructose or something crazy like is there
is actual
that's natural. But is there, is there a unique harm that could potentially come from using that? Sweetener compared to something that's a little bit more balanced or even sucrose for.
I really doubt it just because again if we if we look at so there was actually a randomized control trial in humans where they fed 150 grams of pure first dose per day for eight weeks. He will say, okay what's only eight weeks? Eight weeks is enough time to see differences in intrahepatic lipids and like inflammation all these no cardio metabolic Health markers. So, what was interesting was the fructose was like
Fructose. As far as the sugar goes, is actually kind of filling which is weird, but pure fructose, it's actually much more filling than glucose as moving. Seems so these people actually didn't end up overeating calories. They actually cut down. They were told to, but they cut down their calories elsewhere because they maintain their weight and they didn't really see any negative health health effects. So there's no increase in information. There's no increase in body fat. There was no increase in liver fat,
Now, again I want to be careful because it's just one study, it's just eight weeks when it's like, really, if fructose was that bad. I mean, that is a massive dose of fructose. Absolutely massive. That's 600 calories a day from just fructose now, consider, they're probably getting some and throughout their diet anyway, called another, 50 grams. Maybe, you know, that's nearly 800 calories. They fructose. I mean, that's like a feel 30 to 40 percent of some people's daily caloric intake and they still didn't really see.
Didn't affect. So again, I want to stop short of saying those has no role to play in the Obesity epidemic we're dealing with. I think it does have a role to play in. So far as it is part of a component of foods that makes it hyper palatable and easy to over-consume. But I think a lot of this conversation balls back too.
Why don't people, why is the idea, of calories, or energy? So objectionable so many people and I think that it's because there's like an inherent part. Like the personal responsibility is imply. Does that make sense? Whereas if it's like no, it's not your fault. It's actually that this, you know, this component of the diet is is making you fat independent of the calories. That is like you've almost got a scapegoat to blame for what's going on.
And so the other aspect of this is like the food addiction. That's a very popular thing that people are sugar addicted. There was one study, that's really kind of the Cornerstone study looking at food, addiction and food addiction is really the wrong word. It's food dependence is the actual appropriate term. And if you look at the foods that score really high on the food, dependent scale, its goods that are high in sugar high in fat and hydropower Ultra process.
My like when people people talk about sugary foods and they talk about cakes and cookies and donuts and stuff, it's like yeah, but they those food tent almost just as many calories from fat as they being sugar like so could we make the same argument that fat is addictive? You know. It's so what you find is like the food dependence, really boils down to the individual food. And then if we look at like minimally processed foods or like single Singlish macro nutrient Foods, actually the food
That tend to score higher or higher fat foods like, cheeses and nuts and whatnot, those two to be easier to over-consume like just purely sugary Foods. Again, sugar is part of this conversation. It's not innocuous in terms of the role it plays. But it's a much larger conversation about how that plays into the overall role in human health, if that makes sense.
Yeah, totally makes sense. I mean, I think that
Part of the, like, what gets lost when people hear this, the message that calories are really all that matter. Is that for people who are, you know, nutritionally ignorant, right? They're not aware of how food can affect Behavior. They just try to reduce the portion of the crap that they're already eating.
And now I've never been overweight. So, I've never struggled with this personally, but I would imagine that that's essentially setting themselves up for failure, right there, taking the obesogenic food that they're that they're already eating and they're trying to eat less of it. It's like the eat less move, more advice, that, that seems to fail time and time again, right? I feel like, it's the behavioral aspect of food that is, that is under discussed. When the conversation becomes to Cal,
Dominant. Does that make
sense? Yeah, I think it's also a case of people talking past each other, right? So I think a lot of times what happens is people don't. I have, I very rarely see, people say calories, the only thing that happens, but I hear a lot of its calories the most important thing. Now, there's what I say or what other people say and then what other people here, right? Because we all have, what comes out of your mouth, goes through the filter of from your brain to your mouth, right? Then it passes through the filter of your brain.
And your experience in the context of you know your go down like childhood know, I can stop right. And so a lot of times what happens is like we just did a talking past each other, right? Like so the that's why I like, for example, the ketogenic thing I was very careful to say. I'm not saying you can't gain muscle on the ketogenic diet. I'm just saying, you can't, it appears, you can't get as much as if it's non ketogenic diet. So, same thing here, I'm not saying that things other than calories don't matter, right? I'm just saying that calories are the biggest
And I really feel like I try to really in my posts point out. Hey, I'm not saying this doesn't work or whatever. I'm just saying, let's be honest about why it works or what's the most important things? Because I feel like those are really important conversations. And as far as like in general
I think it depends on what caused the person to become obese like the whole the whole soup, right? Like the whole we call the hole in not ingredient list the whole recipe right. Led to somebody being obese, I think in general you're probably mostly right? Which is okay let's getting you making some different food choices.
but there are some people where it's like,
if you just get them eating smaller portions or they realize, hey, oh, I can still have these Foods. I like, I just moderate my portion size, okay. That seems easier than just try to totally omit these foods, but it's very contextual and it depends on the individual. And like, I wish there was like some kind of, like, you know, biomarkers or anthropometrics or, you know, quiz that I can put people through to know. Hey, this person is going to respond back to this, but this trip, this,
Now, I mean it's a lot of it's just trial and error, especially when it comes to a client or client bases.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. All right. Last hot take Lane, Norton on breakfast. I stumbled upon a video of you. You made in 2017 the breakfast that you eat every single day 1 2, egg whites bacon. Trying to remember oh and fat-free cheese. Huh. Is that still your breakfast every day?
No, no.
As much anymore part of. That is actually around by again, I don't want to demonize any individual nutrients, but part of that is more about me changing. My, my thoughts on saturated fat, mayor's factors associated with that. I used to be, I wouldn't say kind of an LDL denial list. I just was kind of in the camp of, okay, I think it's the HDL to LDL ratio that matters more than anything. And then looking at the mendelian randomization Trials come out.
And I don't know where you stand in this camp, but I became pretty convinced that LDL independently as a risk factor, for heart disease and possibly even cancer. So just for people listening, what are mendelian, randomization trials? So, it's difficult to do a law, it's difficult to do an entire lifespan randomized, control trials, we're talking about, right? So mendelian randomization is kind of the next best thing because you've got people who naturally secrete higher and lower levels.
That LDL based on their genetic phenotype. Well, we can take those people on track them throughout the lifespan and see what the incidence of heart disease and cancer. Is
it sort of a Majors like randomized control trial, right? Because they're blinded to their genes, is that sort of how it
works, correct. And also, since they're, you know, random since it's randomized, you know, people can tell when people in this group they might have done x y z. Well, it'd be very unlikely because they're rare. If you understand how
Innovation Works, it's unlikely. Like randomizing is the entire reason the entire reason we randomize is so that we can be relatively convinced that if we see an effect it's from the one treatment, the one variable we're trying to control. So you pretty much see a linear effect of LDL concentrations on heart disease and even longevity in these trials. And the other thing is the truly interesting. Is if you look at drugs that raise HDL,
They don't decrease the rate of heart attacks. You look at drugs that lower LDL people argue this, but for the most part, you look at, if you if the trial is long enough, the people get the drugs early about it. Lowers the risk of heart disease. So and then, if you look at inflammation, so there's a really great table from the Framingham study, the kind of one of the original, you know, heart health studies because it goes so well inflammation. Well, if you look at
Kind of like different metrics of. Okay. Let's look at high inflammation and low inflation and high LDL, and lower LDL at each of those places. If you have low inflammation, yes, you have lower risk of heart disease, but you're still higher risk. If you have high LDL versus low LDL with low inflation. Who, by the way, the same thing applies that high inflation and the same thing applies with LDL or sorry HDL. So kind of everything, we control a different
marker and we vary the LDL, we see a risk factor. So going back to my breakfast, I stopped having bacon every day. I still have bacon, you know, usually, I haven't like one or two days a week, part of that is also I used to train in the afternoon, so I would a lot and again, I'm not making any claims about carb timing. Absolutely. None, this is probably completely a placebo effects for me. Okay, and I can admit that, but I grew up in the early 2000. You know, I got into bodybuilding in the early 2000s where it was like you need to have
Lot of carbs before and after you train that's kind of like bias. It's always done it and so that's what I do. So if I'm trams training in the afternoon I would usually have, you know very low carb breakfast and I would say more of my cards for later in the day and now that I trained morning, I have more carbs before I go train in the morning and then afterwards and I have less throughout the rest of the day. So yeah, I've kind of changed a little bit for a couple of different reasons.
But yeah, that's where I'm at now.
Super, super interesting. Yeah, I'm not pro saturated fat like in the Pro fatty meat Camp either. I think I think my take you know just in a really succinct way to put it like I you know I'm not
Auntie saturated fat because I think when you cut out, saturated fat, containing foods, you're incurring risk to your to your nutrient status and I think that like red meat is a is a and we can even say lean red meat is a health food sure but when it comes to things like butter coconut oil and the especially because they have zero, I mean essentially zero nutrient density, maybe maybe butter has a little bit going for it with the vitamin A but that it just doesn't make sense to
to needlessly. Push your LDL up, you know for for no
reason and I think the broader context to think what's the like? Let's not get so focused on nutrient like individual nutrients. Let's look at the context of the overall diet. What's the overall diet? Quoting? Like, right?
I agree,
100% like that's why you can look at
You know, plant-based, there's a good way to do Plantation is a really crappy way to do plant-based, right? So, you can do plant-based where it's like, hey, you're eating like high fibrous foods and, you know, like minimally processed all that kind of stuff, and that's great.
There's also the way where it's like, well having vegan mac and cheese and, you know, like vegan chicken wings and all this kind of stuff, which I thought was hilarious and the game changers because they talking about like all these benefits of plant-based food. So I'm like and then you're saying that, like this stuff, tastes just as good as your normal junk food. So you anyway, and then there's a lot like a right way and a wrong way to mow car like yeah, low-carb with like fattier cuts of meat, you know, in moderation. And then like nuts or
You know, like some of these like, you know, higher quality sources of fat, salmon and whatnot.
But like just dumping butter in your coffee. That's not the or the my favorite is when like you've got like Ito ice cream and like, you know, how keys? And it's like, yeah, you guys are kind of missing the point of this, right? Like hyper palatable food is cos hyperbolic food, have no matter how you slice it, right? Yeah. And a lot of these keto friendly ice creams and treats and stuff actually have more calories than the original thing. So yeah, I think there's like just like there's a right way and a wrong way to flexible dying this right way or wrong. Way to do some of these other day.
Now, they've got to look much more broadly at the context of the overall diet because we look at diet, patterns, that's what tends to make the biggest effect, right? Let's take red meat, for example, I think one of the, to me, one of the cornerstones. Not he's out there, some Maximum 2020. So very consistently. We see red meat associated with cancer incidents and heart disease, and all those sorts of things. So so one of the things I kind of been saying for a long time is like, okay, yeah, but people need more red meat also,
So we must fiber. They have all these other confounding variables that you must fruits and vegetables. So what they did was they said let's like have four different levels of red meat in the diet. And then let's look at four different levels of fruit and vegetables in the value, right? And so,
What they saw at with low levels of red meat with low levels of fruit and vegetable, sorry and kind of normal levels. Yeah, there was a, there was a risk reduction, with no red meat, but the highest level of fruits and vegetables are even the two highest levels of fruits and vegetables. High red meat versus low red meat. No difference in cancer risk, none. And so to me that kind of says, it's not the meat, that's the problem. It's probably
Really more, the fact that when you eat high levels of something, typically you're replacing something else. So you got to be careful about what you replace it with, right? So if you're eating high amounts of red meat, make sure you're still eating high amounts of fruits and vegetables. Like to me that's kind of the take-home from that, right? So again we get so focused on individual nutrients, individual foods and what I'll tell people is like it's the overall Symphony, it's the symphony that
You're not the to, right? It's the symphony, it's the, it's the overall dipole, right? You can have some things in your diet artist, high quality that sort of thing, but if the overall quality is good, that's what matters.
That's what matters love that. Well, that's a, that's a great place to cap it at least for for this round. This is super fun, super grateful that you've taken the time to jump on and and connect with me like this. I've got one last. Yeah, no, of course.
Happy to, you know, have you back if you want, if you're promoting yeah, promoting promoting anything one last question for you. But before we get to that, we're can listeners. Find me on social media and how can they support? I know you gotta, you got a lot going on?
Yeah, so people ask me like, I'll meet people like out and socially. If you are, what do you do? I'm like, this is hard to describe everything in the fitness industry. So, first off, I'm by Elaine on pretty much every social media out there.
Um, and then my website is by Elaine.com, that's kind of our Hub, but we do it all. So we have a nutrition coaching team. So we have a team of like really highly qualified individuals who work with variety of different people for 10-12, choosing coaching called team by Elaine. They're excellent. You can find out through our website. So if you need that, like high level of personal attention and whatnot, great, amazing team of people, we hand-picked these coaches are awesome. Then, you know, if you feel like you just need a little bit of support,
Art, our nutrition coaching app carbon diet, coach has been a huge hit. We're well over 40,000 users on their. And our I think our app store rating is like, 4.8 stars and 90 we surveyed, we did a survey of our users and 91% said they would recommend the app to a friend, so, great product. If you can't afford one on one coaching me to basically get nutrition coaching for 10 bucks a month. It does, you know, it's a food people.
Initially, it was like a food tracker, but you realize that you check in with it each week in and adjust your Macros and nutrition recommendations based on how you're progressing towards your individual goal, and it's not just a weight loss app. We've got muscle gain settings, reverse diet maintenance. So there's a lot of different options you have with it and it gives you that Weekly accountability and feedback. A lot of people need, then we've got our subscription website, build the bile a.com subscription service. We have a lot of free content there but we also have our research review reps. So we just
Started this every month. So we just talked about earlier like hey it's really hard for the average person to go through and read these studies that are standing. So with reps basically we go through five studies every month that are popular in nutrition and fitness and we break them down in a way that about your jargon that's palatable and easy for like the average person to understand. And then we give you practical take homes based on what that research study says and we talked about the
Research results in the broader context of all the data that's available. I will even say, Okay, based on the data, we actually don't agree with the researchers conclusions, or we do agree with. So it's a super useful thing to people. We also have our workout Builder, which is on the website where you can get customizable training templates that basically, take the guesswork out, like how many sets reps, what? Intensity but we give you the flexibility to change out exercises based on your preference and what you have available those are all
Our website, we have our subject line outward nutrition. We have our educational books at the by Elaine store, and then I have nutrition courses. They're also available basically, the ones called the science of nutrition. Other one is Advanced Nutrition for fat loss and basically those are like 10 to 20. Our courses learn at your own pace on any device and I just picked out what we just kind of did hear a little bit like one of the big levers that we need to pull, if you want to
modify body composition, damn go.
Cole's man, you got you got a lot gone. So cool.
A lot of makes for a lot of meetings. I'll tell you that.
I'm sure. I'm sure. While you're putting out, you're putting out good stuff. And and yeah and I totally respect the work that you do. I mean, you came after me once or twice but it's okay, it's okay, I get it, I get it. And you know, people criticize me every day and all I'm trying to do is to learn as much as I possibly can and put out the best content that I'm able to.
Well, like I said, I anybody who reaches across the aisle with genuine about it, I'm happy to sit down and have a conversation
sweet likewise likewise as long as you're not annoying, is
my take
the last question that gets asked everybody on the show's bit more philosophical. What does it mean to you to live a genius life? What is living a genius life mean to
you?
I think.
Being able to pursue the things you want to pursue that have meaning to you. That's probably a lot more philosophical than you might be used to. But, you know, this regardless of your religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs. There's only one guaranteed trip in the universe, right? So I really think like trying to live as mindfully life as you can and the moments where you need to you know, quote unquote.
Unplug, try to minimize those, not that it's not okay to unplug it. Everybody needs that kind of recharge and Mindless time.
But I'm in your day-to-day life, try to be mindful, you know, I got to a place in my life where like this was dominating my life and I had my head in this thing, you know, 24/7 and you know fortunately my wife and a few close friends were kind of like hey man, you know, like we understand that you like what you do and you're into your work but like we're out to dinner, we're hanging out. Like it's to connect with humans. It's not to be like, have your Hangar phone and I'll be honest.
I'll still like relapse from time to time but I think for me it's pursuing the things I want to pursue and doing that with people who mean a lot to me, I think that's the big thing.
I love that man. That that resonated with me head and that head in the phone thing. I mean, I think I'm getting better at it over time but it's definitely a
Yeah, it's definitely a it's a hyper palatable experience, you know, using sugar using using our phones. I mean that's how these apps are designed.
Especially when you get to, you know, where you've got hundreds of thousands of followers, you can just go on and you get immediate validation, you know, and all that kind of stuff like hey people will be like oh you care, people think I'm like well I'm a human, you know, like I guess a little bit, you know, but I think just, you know, have a more firm boundaries with
That men like, you know, you realize I was talking some about this last night, one of my my business mentors, very close personal friend of mine and we were talking about like what success meant to us. And this is a guy who like he was the top salesman in the history of 110 billion dollar company. This guy is a beast and he's retired at age 49 well and
We're talking about Steve Jobs and I'm like, you know, a lot of people would consider Steve Jobs extremely successful. Then you read about the end of his life and his family didn't really want to have anything to do, you know? And it's like to me that would be like, I don't want to like I want to make money, don't get me wrong. Like I like money as much as the next person, right? You get lot more flexibility and cool experiences awesome. But I don't, I don't want to, you know, be worth a billion dollars at the expense of my kids like
Now pick up the phone and call me when you're old, you know what I mean? Like to me, that would be an absolute failure. So I think going after the things you want to go after in the context of, like, doing that with your tribe, whether it's your family, your friends, the people who are important to you, I think that to me is living a genius watch
Love that. Beautiful truer words have never been spoken? Well, you're the man, thanks again. And I look forward to putting this up on line, connecting with you, you know, further social media, social media and Beyond hopefully and to all you guys out there and podcast line. Thank you for your time and attention. Share this episode, the show, friends, and loved ones, text me to, let me know what you thought about this episode, 31 0 to 999 401 and I'll catch you on the next.
So peace, everybody.
