The Art of Manliness - #401： Everything You Need to Know About Diet & Fat Loss

00:00:00.000 Hello, Brett here. Before we get to today's show, I've got a quick favor to ask of you.

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00:00:30.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. When it comes to

00:00:47.220 fitness and nutrition, the nutrition part can cause a lot of confusion. There's so much information out

00:00:51.480 there about which is the best diet to follow and often that advice is contradictory. My guest today

00:00:55.620 is here to clear up some of that confusion. His name is Robert Santana. He's a registered dietitian

00:00:59.580 a PhD candidate in nutrition and exercise science, a starting strength coach, and the

00:01:03.660 nutrition coach at Starting Strength Online Coaching. Today on the show, we discuss all

00:01:07.140 things diet and nutrition. We begin with a big picture overview of the three main macronutrients

00:01:11.920 our body uses to function and the science of their effect on the body. Robert walks us through

00:01:16.300 how our body partition nutrients as we consume them and explains exactly how we get fat and how

00:01:21.880 we store body fat. In the process, Robert debunks a lot of popular ideas people have about nutrition

00:01:26.460 these days like eating carbs makes you fat and eating fat is an easy way to lose body fat. In fact,

00:01:32.140 he argues if you're trying to gain muscle mass and wanting to lose some body fat in the process,

00:01:36.240 you might need to be eating more carbs than you are now. He then walks us through the science of fat

00:01:40.340 loss and gives practical examples of what a diet needs to look like if you want to lose weight while

00:01:44.300 also maintaining muscle. We also talk about how to gain weight that's more muscle than fat and we end our

00:01:49.300 conversation discussing my experience in cutting weight, what I eat from day to day, and why trying to get

00:01:54.140 six-pack abs isn't necessarily a healthy goal. A lot of information here. Check out our show notes

00:01:59.240 at aom.is slash Santana, where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:02:04.360 topic. And Robert joins me now via clearcast.io. Robert Santana, welcome to the show.

00:02:18.360 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:02:19.760 So, uh, you are a starting strength coach, but you're also a registered dietitian and you're also

00:02:25.820 my, my personal nutrition coach. And we'll talk, maybe we can talk about some of the stuff you've

00:02:29.780 been doing with me, but before we get into that, let's talk about your background. Obviously a barbell

00:02:35.560 coach, nutrition. I'm curious, what came first? Was it the barbell training or the diet part, or did

00:02:42.400 both kind of start at the same time? I'd have to say probably the lifting because that dates back to

00:02:48.100 when I was a kid. Diet stuff came later, but I tend to, I don't know, I tend to grasp, I tended to

00:02:54.680 grasp the diet stuff a little bit easier. I think it took me longer to really get a handle on the

00:02:59.820 training. And then now, I mean, you've continued, besides being a registered dietitian, you've

00:03:03.000 continued your education. You're getting your PhD, correct? In nutrition science?

00:03:06.520 That is correct. The, um, degree is actually kind of interesting. It's interdisciplinary, so it's in

00:03:11.240 exercise and nutritional sciences. So I've been spending time in both areas. I've taken some

00:03:17.120 nutrition classes. I've taken some exercise classes. I've helped with a nutrition study. I'm

00:03:21.520 currently running an exercise study. So I got my head in all of it right now.

00:03:25.500 Is there something you've been focusing on in particular?

00:03:28.380 My dissertation project is focusing on the effects of weightlifting, essentially, on arterial

00:03:35.240 stiffness. So basically how lifting affects your arteries for, you know, the layman's version of that.

00:03:41.300 Yeah. Okay. Well, let's get into like nutrition. Cause I think like my experience, I think this is

00:03:47.120 the same for a lot of people. I mean, you said nutrition came easy to you, but I think for a lot

00:03:51.460 of people, like nutrition is like the hardest or most confusing part of, of health because there's

00:03:58.120 so much information out there and it's constantly changing, right? And we'll talk about this. Like,

00:04:03.120 you know, one time it's like, Hey, carbs are great. You got a carbo load. Like, no, no,

00:04:06.520 carbs are evil. You need to do paleo or Atkins or something. It's always changing. Let's talk big

00:04:12.580 picture first. And then we'll let that guide the rest of the discussion. When it comes to nutrition

00:04:16.760 and performance, you're primarily focusing on, you know, the big macro nutrients, which is protein,

00:04:24.100 carbs, and fat. Let's walk through what, what does each one of these macro nutrients do for us

00:04:30.160 physiologically and in terms of performance? Sure. Of course. So protein is the one most

00:04:36.360 lifters are familiar with. And that's because you think about protein, you think about muscle. So

00:04:40.820 muscles are comprised of proteins, but when you're trying to build muscle, you have to break them

00:04:46.700 down so that they can build up larger. And the way that happens is you start adding more muscle

00:04:50.720 proteins and that's going to require additional protein than somebody who's basically sedentary.

00:04:56.460 So when you want to think of protein, you want to think of recovery. You want to think of

00:04:59.780 basically building body proteins. So to take that a step further is we're not just talking about

00:05:05.380 muscle. We're talking about hair, skin, nails, all that is driven by your protein intake. So you'll

00:05:11.380 find with like elderly individuals, for instance, if they're not eating enough protein, they tend to,

00:05:16.260 their skin gets brittle, their hair gets brittle. They also get weaker for reasons that most of my

00:05:21.980 clientele would understand. And simply by giving them more protein, you'll tend to see that their

00:05:26.260 hair will grow a little bit fuller, their nails will grow a little bit thicker, their skin will improve,

00:05:30.220 et cetera. So proteins build things. That's how you want to think of protein. When it comes to carbs,

00:05:36.380 that's your energy source. And this is where things get kind of funny with the information.

00:05:42.440 Typically we store about a good chunk of carbs as stored glucose. So you want to think of when you

00:05:49.460 eat carbs, I'm going to store some of that in your muscles and in your liver. And that's called glycogen.

00:05:54.060 Glycogen is your stored form of glucose. Now to take that a step further, all carbs get converted

00:06:00.420 into glucose. That's what they do. They get converted into glucose. And then a lot of that gets stored.

00:06:05.600 So the average person who's 70 kilograms is going to have about 425 grams of glucose is stored as

00:06:14.020 muscle glycogen. About roughly 75 grams is stored as liver glycogen. So that's pretty much

00:06:20.200 the fate of carbs in terms of energy storage. Now also you got to put that in the context of

00:06:26.860 activity, right? So carbs have a relation, a linear relationship with the intensity of an activity.

00:06:32.940 So the more intense an activity is basically the harder you're moving, the harder you're pushing,

00:06:36.840 the faster you're running, the heavier you're lifting to a certain extent. And I'll go back to that.

00:06:41.380 You're going to be using more carbs. So if you're going for a light jog, it's probably an even mix.

00:06:45.380 And then as that pace gets faster and faster, you're going to rely more on carbohydrates. So you want to think

00:06:49.900 the harder the activity is that you're doing, the more carbohydrates you're typically going to need.

00:06:56.220 In a lifting context, you have your three energy systems. You have your ATP, phosphocreatine,

00:07:02.340 and that's basically the system that's responsible for fast, rapid, explosive activities. So maybe your

00:07:07.740 first rep on a set of five, you're primarily using ATP and phosphocreatine. And then if you're doing a

00:07:13.660 set of eight, 10, 12, you're going to start tapping into that muscle glycogen. And then once you start

00:07:18.700 getting over 20 reps, or you start doing aerobic exercise, now you're in oxidative metabolism. So

00:07:23.380 you're going to be using a good mix of fat and carbs. But at least in the beginning, it starts

00:07:28.860 with ATP, phosphocreatine, then transitions over into glucose in the form of glycogen. You need

00:07:35.440 carbohydrates essentially to perform in any sport. It's not just lifting. If you're a runner,

00:07:39.940 you're going to need carbohydrates. If you're a cyclist, you're going to need them. If you're a

00:07:44.340 weightlifter, if you're a football player, and it's because the activity is more intense than

00:07:48.160 resting. Now, that doesn't mean that when you're resting, you're burning 100% fat. And I'll go to

00:07:53.180 fat next. But basically, when you're resting and you're on a mixed diet, you're going to get an

00:07:57.480 even mix of both. You're going to be burning fat and carbs. In general, as activity becomes more

00:08:02.680 intense, you rely more on carbs. That leaves me with fat. So what is fat used for? Well, it's used for

00:08:08.200 a lot of things. So we have these things in our bodies called membranes. And those membranes are

00:08:12.700 found in all of our cells. And the integrity of those membranes rely on fat. Fat forms a lot of

00:08:17.840 those membranes. Number two, we have certain vitamins that require fat for absorption. So

00:08:23.660 you have your vitamin A, your vitamin D, your vitamin E, and your vitamin K. Those are your fat

00:08:28.320 soluble vitamins. You have to consume fat in order to absorb those. So that's number two. And then number

00:08:36.400 three, this is fat's primary storage. And the most popular among most people is you store it as energy.

00:08:42.120 Fat's your energy depot. It's the most easily converted into stored body fat, which is basically

00:08:47.960 stored triglyceride, if you want to use a scientific term. Some of your audience probably knows what

00:08:52.580 that means. Some don't. But basically, fat stores as fat primarily. And then it's also used for other

00:08:58.880 physiological processes. Okay. So that's a good overarching view of what these macronutrients

00:09:04.680 do. So let's get into the details of this. Let's talk about carbs, right? So you said that

00:09:09.580 we use carbs to do intense exercise, high-intensity running, weightlifting, et cetera. Let's say like

00:09:17.600 when you consume carbs, like how does our body figure out like when to partition carbs to stored

00:09:24.700 glycogen or when to use those carbs you consumed immediately for energy use? Does that make sense?

00:09:31.960 Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Good question. You're typically not like if let's say you're eating and you're

00:09:36.300 working out, you're probably not going to use what you're eating. You're probably going to tap into

00:09:39.000 your stored glycogen first because it's easier to get to. When you eat carbs, you have to digest

00:09:43.420 them, absorb them, et cetera. So typically when you start exercising, you're going to start tapping

00:09:48.500 into muscle glycogen first. But how soon do carbs that we consume become accessible?

00:09:55.240 Do we know that even? Because you hear all this thing about carb timing. Well, I'm going to eat a

00:10:00.680 fast digesting carb an hour before working out. Is there anything to that or not?

00:10:07.320 Oh, I see where you're going with that. Yeah. So there's this thing called the glycemic index and

00:10:12.700 it basically is a classification system for how your body responds to carbs in terms of

00:10:21.720 changing blood glucose levels, whether typically going up. When you eat carbs,

00:10:26.800 your blood sugar goes up. And depending on where those carbs are coming from,

00:10:32.920 that's going to influence that response. And then what they've done is they've,

00:10:38.020 I don't know how many decades ago, they basically studied the effects of different foods on blood

00:10:43.480 glucose levels and came up with these values for the glycemic index. Now, the limitation of the

00:10:49.000 glycemic index is that we're rarely just eating carbs. I mean, I guess it depends on the person.

00:10:54.660 Some people might eat a whole bag of Skittles, but assuming that you're eating a mixed meal,

00:11:00.000 that glycemic index kind of goes out the window because if that meal has things like protein,

00:11:03.940 fat, or fiber, that's going to affect your blood glucose response, which leads me to your question

00:11:09.800 about, okay, do you want a fast acting carb or slow acting carb? Yeah, sure. So if you eat something

00:11:13.840 like Skittles, that would be considered a fast acting carb because that's basically sucrose,

00:11:18.880 which is table sugar, and that's half glucose, half fructose, then fructose being fruit sugar.

00:11:24.560 And you're typically going to absorb that fast. Multodextrins also absorb pretty rapidly.

00:11:28.740 And then pure glucose, if you get like something like a dextrose supplement, that's going to be

00:11:32.120 pretty much, there's no conversion, it has to go through it, just go straight to glucose. It's

00:11:35.640 already glucose. So you can use that right away. But typically, the best time to take those in

00:11:43.120 is either after a workout, during a workout, if it's a very long workout, and not necessarily

00:11:48.680 because it's going to like, you know, dramatically increase your performance, but you don't want to

00:11:53.040 bottom out your blood sugars either. And that also depends on how you ate throughout the rest of the

00:11:56.480 day. So these guys sitting in the gym, chewing on, you know, fruit snacks, that may not be necessary,

00:12:01.780 depending on what the situation is. But the idea there is that, you know, if you need carbs rapidly for

00:12:07.260 something like, okay, I just had an intense bout of exercise, I broke down a bunch of muscle glycogen,

00:12:11.400 and I need to replenish that right away, you know, or I went for a five hour run, you know,

00:12:15.800 because I'm training for a marathon. Yeah, you want to take in something like a dextrose supplement,

00:12:20.680 or maybe a Gatorade, which has various fast acting carbs in them to basically replenish that muscle

00:12:27.160 glycogen. Or if you're on a diet, for instance, you know, you're operating probably on partially or

00:12:33.080 fully depending on what your diet is, depleted glycogen stores. So you're going to need glucose during

00:12:38.740 your workout because you're basically running on empty anyways. And you also don't want to

00:12:43.360 have your blood sugar drop because that's going to kill your energy for that reason.

00:12:46.980 All right. So bottom line is, for the most part, when you exercise, the carbs you're using are the

00:12:52.500 carbs that have been stored as glycogen in your muscles, for the most part.

00:12:55.840 Typically, yeah. Typically, that's good.

00:12:57.540 Well, let's talk about fat, because you've probably seen this as a dietician in the past. Man,

00:13:03.180 it's been going on for 20 years. First, there's the Atkins diet and saying carbs are bad. They make

00:13:08.760 you fat, eat more fat, and you'll lose weight or lose body fat. Then it turned into the paleo diet,

00:13:15.580 which pretty much said the same thing. And now we're seeing a new version, the carnivore diet,

00:13:20.460 where people just eat meat and that's it. And so it's high protein, high fat. I mean,

00:13:24.880 is there any truth to this idea that the more dietary fat you eat, that you'll burn,

00:13:31.520 your body will become better at burning fat, so you'll burn stored body fat more efficiently?

00:13:37.260 The short version of that answer is yes and no. And I'll explain why. So yes,

00:13:42.380 you become more efficient at burning fat. Now, why that happens, I'll explain it. So

00:13:46.940 each macronutrient oxidizes or burns differently than the other macronutrients. So you have fat,

00:13:55.340 carbohydrate, protein, alcohol is technically a macro, depending on who you ask. But

00:14:01.020 typically fat is easily converted to fat. It doesn't have to go through any alternate pathways

00:14:05.640 to become stored body fat. Now, when you start overfeeding these macronutrients, your body

00:14:10.420 responds to that in different ways. So they've done studies on individuals that are following a

00:14:16.780 mixed diet, you know, so carb, fat, protein's pretty even, nothing's extremely high or extremely

00:14:21.620 low, you know, just a mixed diet. And they've basically overfed them carbs and overfed them fat

00:14:27.560 and looked at the responses. The classic study I like to cite is Tracy Horton's study. I believe

00:14:32.520 it was, I want to say it was done in the 90s, maybe early 2000s. I don't have the exact date,

00:14:39.580 but they basically found that when you overfeed carbs to somebody on a mixed diet, they tend to

00:14:45.040 burn more carbs. They see an increase in carbohydrate oxidation, which means you're burning more carbs

00:14:49.300 because you're eating more carbs. So to put that simply, the more carbs you eat, the more carbs you

00:14:53.980 burn, they stimulate their own oxidation. It's just simply eating more of them makes you burn

00:14:57.940 more of them. But then something else happens. As you eat more carbs, you start burning less fat

00:15:03.280 because you have to burn off those carbs. So what they also looked at was a proportion of those

00:15:07.960 calories is stored as fat. So basically what happens is you, all the fat that you're eating

00:15:11.640 gets stored as fat because you're burning off the carbs. So, you know, we'll go back to that later

00:15:15.820 in terms of, you know, practical considerations there. But when you look at what happens when you

00:15:20.400 overfeed fat to somebody on a mixed diet, it's a very different response. Absolutely nothing

00:15:25.660 happens. And why does absolutely nothing happen? Well, because you start storing that fat.

00:15:31.260 See what I mean? Fat does not stimulate its own oxidation. It just gets stored because that's

00:15:38.620 the preferential fate of dietary fat. So now your questions in regards to, well, you become a better

00:15:45.680 fat burner if you're on a low fat diet or a low carb diet. So just think about what we just talked

00:15:51.320 about. If you eat more carbs, you burn more carbs. So what if you restrict carbs down close to zero?

00:15:55.600 You know, nobody's going to actually eat zero, but let's say you're eating 20 carbs a day.

00:15:59.000 The opposite happens. You burn, you become less efficient at burning carbs because you're not

00:16:02.560 eating them, right? And carbs stimulate their own oxidation. So your ability to burn carbs

00:16:07.140 decreases. What ends up happening is you become a better fat burner. Your fat oxidation goes up and now

00:16:12.260 you're eating a bunch of fat to compensate the calories you need. What happens there is you

00:16:17.460 become more efficient at burning dietary fat. So this is what people forget. Physical activity and

00:16:24.580 exercise and even lifting, you know, the way we lift for a couple hours a day, you know, a few times a

00:16:29.660 week, you know, assuming that you're not a professional athlete who's, you know, putting in an eight hour day

00:16:35.240 of physical activity and you're just, you know, you're a recreational person that lifts one to three hours a day,

00:16:39.420 depending on how into the activity they are. You're typically not really burning that many

00:16:45.640 calories performing physical activity, you know? So like these people that are on the treadmills,

00:16:50.380 you know, trying to sweat and run for an hour at like, you know, get their heart rate racing.

00:16:54.160 I mean, you're talking about what, 400 calories extra a day. You know, I mean, that's another,

00:16:57.880 you know, meal depending on the person and what they like to eat, but we're not talking about,

00:17:02.680 Hey, we're doubling your caloric expenditure by running for an hour, or, you know, we're just

00:17:07.620 roasting away fat by doing the linear progression. You know, that's not what's happening. You know,

00:17:12.200 physical activity probably accounts for, or exercise, I should say accounts for, you know,

00:17:17.280 roughly 15% of what you expend as energy. So that means you have another 85% there that goes to

00:17:24.500 basically you just being alive, you know? So I said, what about 15% for exercise, maybe 20, if you're,

00:17:30.460 you know, an enthusiast and really going at it. And then about 10 to 15% goes to digesting and

00:17:36.340 absorbing food. So just eating burns calories. It's called a diet induced thermogenesis. So as

00:17:41.960 you eat food, you end up burning calories and the digestion and absorption of those nutrients. So

00:17:47.260 right there, you're about 30 to 35%. So that means about 65% of your energy expenditure

00:17:53.380 is just you being there, being alive, breathing, living.

00:17:57.940 Well, okay. There's a lot to unpack there. So I want to point out there, what you just said there is

00:18:01.700 if you eat lower carb, you become less efficient at oxidizing carbs. And if you eat higher fat and

00:18:09.240 you're to make up those calories, you're not consuming from carbs, you become more efficient

00:18:12.820 at burning dietary fat. So you don't become more efficient at stored fat. So the fat that's around,

00:18:18.320 like that causes love handles and everyone's trying to get rid of, right? That's, that doesn't

00:18:21.540 become more efficient.

00:18:22.600 No, that is determined primarily by your resting metabolic rate.

00:18:27.080 So, but, but I mean, you see like these amazing, like before and after pictures of people like,

00:18:33.300 oh, this is me before paleo. And before I was eating carbs, here's me after I went to a low carb,

00:18:39.340 high fat diet, and I lost a lot of bad body fat. It's like, what's going on there? If it's not that

00:18:44.540 they became more efficient at burning stored fat, why did, how did, why did they lose the body fat?

00:18:50.860 So the last thing I said was, it depends on your resting metabolic rate. What I mean by that is

00:18:55.860 you need to expend a certain number of calories over what you're burning, right? So the classic

00:19:04.280 rule is 3,500 calories. You subtract 500 calories a day for seven days. That's, you know, 3,500

00:19:09.820 calories. It's one pound of fat. You lose a pound of fat a week. Actually, that's not a hundred percent

00:19:13.160 accurate because there's variability there in terms of how much of a calorie restriction is necessary

00:19:18.200 to lose a pound of fat that varies between individuals. But let's just go with that rule for

00:19:22.900 the sake of explaining this. So if you're resting metabolic rate, let's say you burn 1,500 calories a

00:19:29.760 day. Let's not even talk about resting. Let's talk about everything you do, exercise, living,

00:19:33.440 eating, et cetera. You're burning 1,500 calories a day. And let's say you need to subtract 500 to lose

00:19:38.360 a pound. You need to subtract 1,000 to lose two pounds. You need to subtract. So basically you're

00:19:42.820 eating zero calories to lose three pounds a week. Nobody's going to do that. So there's a math problem

00:19:48.700 there if you think about it, right? You have to subtract a certain number of calories. And unless

00:19:52.020 you're burning 6,000 calories at rest, most humans aren't going to lose more than a pound or two a

00:19:57.700 week just because of the math there. So let's tie it back to your question about what's going on here

00:20:03.200 when they're eating keto or they're doing low carb and they're losing fat. Well, that's because fat

00:20:07.440 loss, the loss of stored body fat is driven by being in a negative energy balance. That means the

00:20:13.520 calories you take in are less than the calories you put out. And that doesn't matter if it's

00:20:18.240 low carb or low fat or low protein or high protein. If you're expending X amount of calories

00:20:23.760 and you're eating less than that, you're going to lose body fat regardless of how you break down

00:20:30.660 those nutrients. Now, there's one caveat there. If you're trying to spew your weight loss towards

00:20:36.980 body fat and away from muscle mass, that's where you have to keep the protein high and lift obviously.

00:20:42.900 Right, right. So what you're saying there is that your body only dips into those fat stores,

00:20:47.580 right? And we're talking like love handles, the thing that makes you doughy only when there's a

00:20:51.960 caloric deficit. That's at that point when it will start burning that or, and you start losing body

00:20:57.420 fat. That's a hundred percent correct. Okay. And so, I mean, I guess that's why the paleo diet

00:21:02.020 works. It's not that, you know, there's something magical about fat eating fat. It's just that when

00:21:07.020 you eat paleo, you probably tend to consume less calories because, you know, you're eating a lot of

00:21:13.100 protein and fat, which are filling. And so you're not hungry all the time. And so you just eat fewer

00:21:18.220 calories. Pretty much. Yeah. When you're on a high protein, high fat diet, you tend to, those two,

00:21:24.080 those two macronutrients are more satiating than carbs. So if you eat a lot of fat, a lot of protein,

00:21:28.400 you tend to be fuller. It's hard to overeat calories for a lot of people. Now there's some

00:21:32.640 people with very slow metabolic rates that don't lose on those diets either. Nobody ever talks about

00:21:36.020 them. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, so what, what causes that slow metabolic rate? Is it genetic

00:21:41.180 or is it environmental? Do we know? For the most part it's genetic, but also if you've,

00:21:47.640 and this doesn't apply to everyone, everything is genetic to some extent, to a large extent,

00:21:51.540 actually, you know? And, uh, if you gain and lose weight a bunch of times, your metabolic rate tends to

00:21:59.640 adapt to that by lowering. So if you are an obese person and you just starve yourself and lose 50 pounds

00:22:05.120 and regain the 50 pounds, your metabolic rate may be slower than it was before you initially lost

00:22:10.040 the 50 pounds, even though you weigh the same weight cycling plays into it. But primarily let's assume

00:22:14.520 that that's not a factor. It's driven by genetics. Some people are going to burn 5,000 calories at

00:22:19.000 rest. Some people are going to burn 1200 calories at rest. And that's just the name of the game.

00:22:23.540 Pick better parents. Right. Right. Well, what happens when we actually, let's talk about what happens

00:22:28.280 when you burn fat? Because I, as you said, I think a lot of people, they get on the treadmill and they

00:22:32.880 think I'm sweating out the fat or I'm breathing. Like what happens to the fat cell that make,

00:22:38.300 do they disappear? Do they shrink? What happens there? Well, that's a good question. So the fat

00:22:42.940 cell is 87% triglyceride and that's what you're using as energy. So 87% of that fat cells, triglyceride,

00:22:49.720 the other 13% is your shell cellular machinery. And you can't burn that off. That's part of your body,

00:22:54.420 you know, that gets, you know, dies and gets replaced. So, you know, there's been confusion about

00:22:58.320 that on the starting strength boards. You know, these guys are citing studies and not really

00:23:02.380 interpreting the data correctly, but every cell in your body turns over. That means it dies and

00:23:07.160 gets replaced with a new one. But fat cells aren't, they're not an exception to that rule.

00:23:11.240 You're turning them over, but you're not going to lose more fat cells than you're replacing. It's

00:23:15.580 typically a one-to-one ratio. So when you're losing body fat, those fat cells are getting emptied

00:23:20.520 essentially, but they're not actually losing the fat cells. The strength con, you mentioned this kind of

00:23:26.020 how about this interesting study. I think you actually talked about this at starting strength

00:23:29.020 coach association meeting about body fat and how like generally, so there's a one-to-one ratio,

00:23:36.580 right? So a fat cell turns over, you know, it dies or whatever, and then it's replaced by a new fat

00:23:41.600 cell. You sort of say that some people actually create more fat cells than they need or that,

00:23:50.100 and that, you know, so even if they like make those fat cells shrink, right, by tapping into those

00:23:54.960 stored fat storage, like they're not going to get much skinnier because they've, they've got more

00:24:00.780 fat cells than they had when they were, you know, born or when they were a kid. The total number of

00:24:05.120 fat cells a human has is determined primarily by genetics. And then, you know, there's data suggesting

00:24:10.260 that, you know, environmental stuff can influence that as well. So typically when you're born, you're

00:24:17.100 probably adding most of your fat cells in that first year of life, you're proliferating them at a very

00:24:21.640 rapid rate. And that continues all the way to about 20 years of age, you're adding new fat cells and

00:24:27.780 they're expanding to some extent. After about age 20, early adulthood, it's believed that that stopped

00:24:33.260 happening and any increase in fat mass is due to an increase in fat cell size, not fat cell number. There's

00:24:40.020 some data out there suggesting that some people might be able to add more fat cells and expand them at the

00:24:45.740 same time. So this is probably like your 600 pound person, you know, how does that happen? So there might be

00:24:50.720 some genetic things going on there that may be causing that person to add fat cells as an adult, but we don't

00:24:56.760 know that for sure. Generally, for most people that are not your 600 pound person, you're typically getting an

00:25:02.700 increase in fat cell size. So to put that in a context, when you're trying to lose weight, they did a, this was a

00:25:09.940 hot topic in the late 60s, early to mid 70s, they did a lot of studies on fat cells, and they were doing adipose

00:25:15.940 tissue biopsies where they, you know, took a piece of fat out of the person and, you know, determined

00:25:20.300 their fat cell size, fat cell number and saw how they responded to different things, primarily diets.

00:25:24.800 So they were, there was one in particular that comes to mind where they got a group of women.

00:25:28.960 And I mean, this wasn't the best research design. So I'm not saying that, you know,

00:25:32.720 oh, this is fact, but they had a group of women back in the 70s, they told them, all right, lose as much

00:25:38.300 weight as you can on any diet you want, and then come back to us when you can't lose anymore. So they

00:25:43.700 basically had everybody diet to a plateau. And then they took a sample of their fat cell before

00:25:48.800 and after. And what they found was that there was a trend towards a measure of about point micrograms

00:25:56.900 in weight, and nobody got below that. So there's, you know, the theory is that there's a certain size

00:26:03.680 at which the fat cell cannot get any smaller, that when it empties out, it's roughly about 0.4

00:26:08.000 micrograms. Now, again, you know, this is not a fact based on this study, but, you know, it gives

00:26:13.680 us some idea of what tends to happen for at least, you know, a group of people. So maybe some person

00:26:18.080 might be able to get lower than that. Well, so what? The point is that there was no indication that

00:26:22.100 fat cell number decreased in these individuals.

00:26:25.660 Okay. So I guess the big takeaway from this then is when you're exercising, you're not burning fat,

00:26:32.700 probably. You have to mean a caloric deficit to lose body fat. And there might be a certain point,

00:26:39.420 like there's a fat cell can only shrink so small and that's about as low as it can get. And then

00:26:43.860 some people like the 600 pound person, they're actually, they've probably had an increase in

00:26:48.780 number of fat cells and an increase in the size of those fat cells. And it's probably gonna be really

00:26:54.120 hard for them to lose body fat. Most likely. Yes. Okay. Well, let's talk about, I mean, the other

00:27:00.460 thing we've had people on the podcast discussing, you know, endurance athletes, particularly talking

00:27:03.880 about the, the wonders of, you know, low carb, high fat diets. And they, they talk about ketones

00:27:09.000 and like how they're like this, like, like clean source of energy that, you know, allows you to run

00:27:13.620 forever and, you know, you think clear or whatever. So like for those who are familiar, what are ketones

00:27:19.120 and how does that power the body and just day-to-day living or even say strenuous exercise?

00:27:25.320 Well, sure. So ketones. So when you're on a mixed diet, you're primarily operating on carbs. The

00:27:31.000 brain's preferred fuel are carbs because fat's a big, large molecule. It can't get up there. Your

00:27:35.560 brain can't effectively use it. When you restrict carbohydrates and now you're relying on fat as an

00:27:43.440 energy source, because you can't use fat, your body starts releasing these substances called ketones.

00:27:49.440 And that's what you start using for energies. And basically it's, um, the best way to explain

00:27:55.060 these is ketones are a collection of fuels that your liver uses and your liver manufactures it.

00:28:00.900 So your liver makes these ketone bodies and your brain is able to use that for energy when you're

00:28:05.880 deprived of glucose. So let's say you're on a low carb diet and you're at like 20 grams a day.

00:28:11.160 Your brain's like, Hey, I need more glucose. And you know, by the way, your brain typically needs

00:28:16.780 around 130 grams of carbohydrates a day to function effectively. So when you're on a low carb diet,

00:28:22.820 your liver basically starts making these ketones from stored fatty acids. It's like an emergency

00:28:27.600 backup fuel to keep your brain functioning well. That's what happens. You're eating all these fats

00:28:32.400 and then you're not getting carbs to your brain to function. So then your liver's like, Hey, let's

00:28:36.900 take some of these fatty acids and make these little things called ketones so that our brain can continue

00:28:41.420 to work. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's basically there for brain function. It doesn't do anything for

00:28:45.560 like aerobic function. Like I've heard that like ketones are great for aerobic activities. Is that,

00:28:50.600 I guess that's not the case. No. So, you know, there's a, an old paper on keto adaptation and

00:28:57.220 endurance exercise performance and everybody loves to cite it. And what they found was that, you know,

00:29:03.420 some of these cyclists or runners, I can't remember offhand. It's been a while since I read the paper,

00:29:08.940 but they were looking at endurance athletes that were on ketogenic diets and they wanted,

00:29:12.020 they were making this case that, Hey, maybe they just need to be in ketosis longer so they can keto

00:29:17.660 adapt. And once they're keto adapted, you know, then they can operate on a low carb diet and use

00:29:23.660 fat as an energy source and it should be fine. But when you look closely at the data, what they

00:29:29.220 typically don't say is that, Hey, the guys who were the most keto adapted also had the poorest

00:29:34.540 performance. So no, you typically can't use that for immediate energy.

00:29:39.100 So we talked about fat. Let's talk about carbs. So, you know, carbs have been getting to get bad

00:29:44.580 rap. They're evil. They make you fat. They cause inflammation, et cetera, et cetera.

00:29:51.320 Are carbs that evil? Are they, are they, have they got, do they deserve the bad rap they've gotten?

00:29:56.820 Uh, no, in short, no. First of all, what foods are high in carbs? You know, your grains are high in

00:30:02.400 carbs. You're a, well, typically keto people eat vegetables. So I'm not going to include that in the

00:30:07.460 list, but vegetables are very nutrient dense. They have a lot of micronutrients in there.

00:30:11.300 Your fruits have a lot of good micronutrients and also the, you know, high in fiber. So the whole

00:30:16.320 grain, so are things like beans, right? And fiber is good for lowering cholesterol levels.

00:30:20.900 There's a lot of benefit to fiber and increases gastric motility. So it's good for your intestinal

00:30:24.740 health and proves your good gut bacteria. So you get all that from carbs. You don't get that from

00:30:30.100 eating meat and, you know, protein primarily. So you get a lot of that from carbs.

00:30:33.520 And depending on your carb sources, some of them enhance absorption of certain nutrients

00:30:38.620 better than others, you know? Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So yeah,

00:30:40.800 carbs help with vitamin, just like fat, fat helps with vitamin absorption. We need that for vitamin D,

00:30:44.740 vitamin A carbs can help with vitamin absorption for these other vitamins. Yep. Yep. Yep. Do,

00:30:49.980 do carbs cause inflammation? Cause that's the one thing people say, I, as soon as I eliminated carbs,

00:30:54.240 like my skin cleared up, I've gotten rid of, you know, whatever digestive issues I've had,

00:31:00.500 what's going on there when people say that, or is there anything to that?

00:31:03.460 I think we really got to think about what type of carbs are these people talking about? What,

00:31:08.160 what does an average American who's on a quote unquote high carb diet or a poor diet eat, right?

00:31:15.160 Let's give some examples, donuts, hamburgers, French fries, fast food, right? I feel like a lot of people

00:31:22.100 have this one dimensional view that, Oh, I just cut the carbs out and I feel better, but hold on a

00:31:27.520 second. Let's look at these foods I just listed. French fries are carb, right? But they're also fat

00:31:31.300 because they're deep fried potato chips. You know, I think people would classify that as a carb, but

00:31:36.420 those are also high in fat donuts. You know, you think about how sweet they are because of the sugar.

00:31:41.680 Well, donuts are high in fat too. They're deep fried. So they're usually cutting out both carbs and

00:31:47.440 saturated and trans fat from their diet is what's happening. And they're eating an overall,

00:31:52.720 they're overall eating overall fewer calories. So I don't know, you know, this is one of the

00:31:59.100 problems that nutrition research is I don't know exactly what people are eating. Nobody does. You know,

00:32:02.780 a lot of our science is based off what people say they eat. And I was recently at a conference,

00:32:07.620 I think it was a year ago, a little over a year ago. And this biostatistician gave a presentation on

00:32:13.980 this. And he was talking about how we've been following data for the last 30 years on what people say

00:32:20.320 they eat and making recommendations off of it. And, you know, he finished off his talk by saying,

00:32:24.860 this is an example of when something is not better than nothing. And until we have a better way of

00:32:30.220 measuring it, we probably shouldn't even report on this. So his name was David Allison, by the way,

00:32:35.480 great researcher. It was, it was great because it put it into context, right? So you're saying all

00:32:39.920 these things that people say, but are they really eating bananas and oranges and apples and whole grains

00:32:45.860 and beans all day? Probably not. Right. Right. So, okay. We talk about, so carbs, they're not,

00:32:50.500 they're not evil. We need them for performance. But what happens to an individual who's doing

00:32:55.180 strength training or even endurance training and they go low carb, how will that affect performance?

00:33:01.160 Well, here's what happens when, let's say you're an endurance athlete and you're what's called in

00:33:05.080 steady state exercise for most of your activity until the very end, when you have to do an all out sprint,

00:33:09.860 you're a marathon runner. So your workouts are going to be several, you know, could be several hours

00:33:14.900 long depending on where you're at in your training and you might do this every day. Well, the thing

00:33:19.380 people fail to realize is when you're in steady state exercise, you're not burning a hundred percent

00:33:25.880 of your calories from fat. Steady state is not laying down on a couch. You know, you're running

00:33:30.880 at a decent pace that you can sustain for, you know, several hours and you're burning both fat and

00:33:36.480 carbohydrates. And if you keep doing that long enough, eventually you deplete your glycogen stores

00:33:40.760 and you can't effectively run. Your blood glucose levels drop, your energy levels drop.

00:33:46.320 And if you're actually racing, you're not going to do very well at the last leg of the race when

00:33:51.100 you need to sprint. And for weightlifters, I guess you just, you, you, you get weak basically.

00:33:57.040 That's the end result, but it's just kind of a similar concept. So lifting is a little bit

00:34:01.060 tricky. So what you want to think about is none of these energy systems are 100% working by

00:34:05.780 themselves at any point in time. The other, all three of them are working together. So just to review

00:34:09.500 back to earlier, you have your ATP phosphocreatine for explosive activities. Then you go into what's

00:34:14.520 called glycolysis, where you're using primarily glucose, and then you go into oxidative metabolism

00:34:19.100 where you're using a little more fat, but at no point are you just using one. They're all always

00:34:22.980 operating. Just depending on what your activity is, you're you might use one more than the other.

00:34:27.900 So in the weight room, for instance, yeah, you're doing, let's say you're doing a set of five,

00:34:33.000 right? Let's say you're doing five sets of five to put this into better context. So you have to

00:34:36.660 unrack the bar, you got to walk out, you do your first rep, second rep gets slower, third rep gets

00:34:41.440 slower. By the time it's all said and done, it might take 10 to 15 seconds, maybe 20, depending

00:34:45.820 on how heavy it was. So by the end of it, you start tapping into glycolysis. And now you're

00:34:50.120 breaking down muscle glycogen in that single set of five. And then you're going to follow it up in a

00:34:55.100 few minutes, right? So you still have to replenish ATP phosphocreatine. So you can use that again in the

00:34:59.580 next set. And if you're not resting long enough, you're not going to be able to do that, which is why

00:35:03.620 it's going to be harder. And by the end of it, you've done 25 reps with this, at this high intensity,

00:35:08.560 the sets tend to take longer and longer. So you, instead of continuously breaking down glycogen,

00:35:13.520 like you would in like an endurance activity, it's more incremental because you're breaking up these

00:35:17.640 sets and essentially they're like intervals, you know? So by the end of a heavy squat workout,

00:35:21.920 you do five fives and you do five fives on the bench. And then, you know, you pull your deadlift set

00:35:26.460 of five, maybe do some backoffs. You have broken down a good chunk of glycogen. I mean,

00:35:30.700 you're not going to be glycogen depleted unless you're in a low carb on a low carb diet. So that

00:35:36.820 puts it all in the context to answer your question. If you're on a low carb diet,

00:35:40.220 you now don't have enough fuel to sustain all those sets. So what I've typically seen when people

00:35:46.580 aren't eating enough, the first set goes fine. And then things start to go to hell after like set

00:35:50.400 two or three. Yeah. Just the same thing. It just happens a little bit differently. And since you're not

00:35:54.700 breaking, you're not using as much during a lifting session as you would during an aerobic session,

00:35:58.820 it just kind of builds up over time. And after a couple of workouts, let's say, you know,

00:36:03.760 you just started low carb on Monday, you might get away with Monday's workout because you still have

00:36:07.280 some glucose stores in there. Maybe Tuesday, you're going to break down some more by workout three.

00:36:12.160 You're not, you're just, like you said, you're going to feel like crap because you can't power

00:36:15.880 through it, you know? And then you're in a negative energy balance too. So you're not producing as much ATP

00:36:20.720 either because of overall calories. So that's, okay. You mentioned APTP. I want to go there. So how does our body

00:36:26.700 create more ATP? Is that where creatine comes into play?

00:36:30.600 Creatine and ATP are two separate things. So ATP is your body's energy source. I mean,

00:36:34.520 everything you eat, like carbs, fat, protein, all of that's converted into ATP. And it happens at

00:36:39.680 different rates and you get different amounts depending on the macro. So you'll get a lot of

00:36:43.120 ATP from a gram of fat. Obviously it's nine calories per gram, but you can't readily access it because it

00:36:49.440 takes longer to, you know, break down, digest and absorb a fat versus a carb. It's more readily available.

00:36:54.880 So beginning when you laid out sort of how our body partitions macronutrients as we consume them,

00:37:02.080 you made the point that as you consume more carbs, you burn more carbs, right? Your body

00:37:06.860 becomes more efficient. Is that why, like when you eat a lot of carbs, like you start feeling hungrier,

00:37:12.000 like more? Like I've noticed that when I eat higher carb, like, man, I'm like,

00:37:15.100 I'm hungry again. And I just ate like an hour ago. Is that what's going on? It's like my body has

00:37:19.900 gotten really good at burning those carbs. So like, it's like, Hey, give me some more carbs.

00:37:23.060 That's part of the reason. So each macronutrient has a thermic effect, which means that they,

00:37:30.360 the digestion and absorption of fat, carb and protein is different. So protein is the highest

00:37:34.980 thermic effect of food, which is another benefit to a high protein diet. That's not muscle related.

00:37:38.660 If you eat a diet higher in protein, hypothetically, you're going to burn more calories than if you eat

00:37:42.980 a diet lower in protein, how much, not really a huge amount, but it just takes more energy to break

00:37:48.140 down and absorb and digest protein. Carb would be second. And then fat would be last because fat

00:37:53.000 just gets stored very easily. Your body likes efficiency. Let's just put it that way. You know,

00:37:57.480 let's say that, uh, you're on a low fat diet, right? And you're eating a bunch of carbs.

00:38:02.840 You know, you're feeling hungry all the time. Well, let's also not forget that carbs have half the

00:38:07.460 calories of fat. So you have to eat twice the amount of food in terms of volume, food, weight to,

00:38:13.440 uh, get that number of calories. So to give you an example, there's a 2001 study by a scientist

00:38:20.120 named David Jenkins. And they were looking at the effects of very high fiber diets on

00:38:23.980 cholesterol level. So it wasn't a weight loss study or anything, but what was cool about this

00:38:28.260 study was, I mean, they fed the people, they had them stay there overnight. And, uh, actually,

00:38:32.740 I'm not sure if they stayed overnight or if they just prepared the food and they picked it up, but

00:38:35.540 they provided these people with the food. The interesting, interesting thing about it was they

00:38:40.580 reported the grams, the weight and grams of each item that they gave the person on the menu.

00:38:45.500 And they had two groups. One group ate a hundred percent of their carbs from starch and one group,

00:38:49.800 800% of their carbs from fruits and vegetables. The group that ate a hundred percent of their carbs

00:38:55.160 from fruits and vegetables, they were on a 2,700 calorie diet. I believe 60% of it was carbohydrate.

00:39:00.620 Roughly 20% of it was fat. And then about 15 to 20% protein, just ballpark figures. And it was

00:39:07.600 2,700 calorie diet. So now let's think about this. 65% of that 2,700 calories is going to come

00:39:13.460 from carbohydrates. And those carbohydrates have to be a hundred percent from fruits and vegetables

00:39:20.040 because that was the, um, that was the treatment condition. So if you do the math on that,

00:39:25.100 that's 405 carbs, only fruits and vegetables. So try to picture what that looks like.

00:39:30.580 Yeah. It's not, it looks like a big giant salad bowl.

00:39:32.420 Yeah. So they actually, when you total up the weight of all the food items on that menu,

00:39:37.480 it was 11 pounds of food. And needless to say, their bowel movements did change.

00:39:43.700 If we eat more carbs, become more efficient at burning them. Like at what point is like,

00:39:48.980 like too many carbs too much. And then your body starts storing that as fat.

00:39:53.560 So the term for that is de novo lipogenesis. And that, that basically means when you're converting

00:40:00.100 a, uh, macronutrient, that's not fat into stored body fat, and it's a metabolically inefficient

00:40:06.200 process, which means that your body doesn't like to do it. And you have to overfeed carbs while

00:40:11.660 keeping fat low to theoretically pull this off. So let's say that you're on a 20 gram of fat diet,

00:40:18.860 right? And you're trying to get fat from eating carbs because this would be the best way to do it,

00:40:23.300 right? If you're not getting enough fat in, you can't store it. So let's try to think about what

00:40:27.840 that looks like. 20 grams of fat and 500 carbs. So that's 2000 calories from carbs, right? And

00:40:33.440 you're probably getting protein in there too. I mean, I don't think it's going to be tough to

00:40:38.160 accomplish, but to better answer that question, they've done, they've published papers on this and

00:40:43.320 it's the estimated number, I believe is 125 to 175% of the calories you need, your total daily calories

00:40:50.840 to achieve that. So, and then you also have to, you got to factor in fat too, because you're going to

00:40:56.040 store the fat first. So let's say that you're, let's say you burn 2000 calories. That means you

00:41:01.500 have to eat 2000 calories in carb, right? So that's about 500 calories or 500 carbohydrates that you

00:41:09.380 have to eat. And then you're also going to store the fat first, right? So let's say you drop your fat

00:41:16.340 to 20. So you store those first 20 grams and then you have to eat basically pounds upon pounds of food

00:41:22.720 to accomplish what you're talking about. And I think in the study where they were able to induce

00:41:27.460 it, I think it took that many carbs. So let's say like five to 600 carbs. And I don't remember

00:41:31.780 what the fat intake was. And it was like a fraction of a fraction of a pound of fat came from the

00:41:38.540 carbohydrates based on what they were using to measure it. Okay. So one thing I want to point out

00:41:42.820 with what you just said about fat gain, when you consume, you only gain fat whenever, I guess,

00:41:50.900 make sure I'm getting this right. You only gain fat when you eat a caloric surplus and it's that

00:41:55.960 fat that you've eaten will be or consumed will be converted into stored body fat first. Is that

00:42:03.200 how it works? Yeah. So pretty much first and foremost, you have to be eating over maintenance

00:42:10.420 for this to happen. You have to be in a caloric surplus to induce fat gain. So assuming that you're

00:42:15.620 eating more energy than you're expending, the first thing that's going to happen is whatever fat

00:42:20.480 calories you're taking in, that's going to go to your stored fat first before you do any type of

00:42:25.000 de novo lipogenesis. And again, you have to eat a lot of carbs or a lot of protein theoretically to

00:42:32.560 induce that. But let's just assume you're a typical American on a high fat, high carb diet. You're

00:42:37.260 eating, you know, three, 400 carbs a day and 200 grams of fat. You're going to store the fat first

00:42:42.600 and that's going to accumulate over time. Right. So like the takeaway there then is like

00:42:46.080 people get fat, not because of carbs probably. It's probably they're eating, they're eating like

00:42:51.960 fatty carbs or they're eating, like you said, hamburgers, pizza, ding-dongs, whatever. Like

00:42:57.300 it's like carbs that are like, I think you've said this phrase, they're fortified with fat.

00:43:02.360 Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. I say that our American diet is very much fortified with fat. The easiest way

00:43:09.120 to essentially get fat, if you, if your goal was to, you know, gain body fat would be on a high carb,

00:43:16.220 high fat diet, because what do we know now you're going to burn off the carbs. You're going to store

00:43:19.580 the fat. So if you're eating a high carb, high fat diet, you're on the fast track to, you know,

00:43:25.320 gaining a bunch of body fat. That's why Oreos are so lovely for that. You know,

00:43:29.240 what about protein? Does protein ever get converted to fat or is that same thing with carbs? Like it's just,

00:43:33.800 it's inefficient. So your body doesn't like to do it.

00:43:35.940 Your body likes efficiency, but protein, good luck trying to eat that much. I mean,

00:43:40.960 you'll be full before you're even a quarter of the way there.

00:43:44.300 Right. And another thing I've, I mean, it's, I think it's so fascinating about the body is like,

00:43:48.300 again, it likes efficiency and you know, it requires like certain, like it requires glucose or

00:43:54.380 glycogen to, you know, to think and do these other functions. One of the things I've read in like

00:43:59.960 sort of the high fat, low carb blogosphere books is that one problem some folks run,

00:44:05.940 into is they're eating a high fat, high protein diet, low carb that like, I guess the, like the

00:44:12.400 body can like convert protein into glycogen in some weird way. And so you end up like getting out of

00:44:17.760 ketosis because you ate too much protein. Sure. So what you're talking about there is another fancy

00:44:23.780 scientific term called gluconeogenesis. And that's basically where you're, you're converting

00:44:29.520 non-carbohydrate macronutrients into glucose. It could happen with fat too. Although that's

00:44:34.880 even hard, it's very hard to do, but it's when you're eating, let's say you're on a low carb diet,

00:44:39.900 that's high and fat, high in protein, and you're eating a ton of protein and you're not utilizing

00:44:42.920 it. Protein can be converted into glucose a lot easier than fat via this process. Your body's again,

00:44:48.980 your body likes efficiency. You know what I mean? So you're yes, that could happen. You can definitely

00:44:53.920 start converting protein into glucose if your body needs it. That's why I noticed some of these

00:44:58.540 keto people, they'll restrict protein too, and just try to get as much of a fat as possible.

00:45:03.540 Right. And then that's not good for gains. You need, you need protein to build muscle, man.

00:45:07.660 Absolutely. Right. So, okay. I mean, we've talked a lot and, and I mean,

00:45:12.040 I'm this guys to show like why there's so much confusion about nutrition. Cause like it's a relatively,

00:45:17.520 it's a complex process going on. We're not just a process, processes going on all at the same time.

00:45:22.920 So let's, let's recap some of this, some of this theoretical stuff and then we can get in sort of

00:45:27.360 the practical stuff. So I guess big takeaways that I got, we need protein, carbs, and fat for

00:45:33.160 functioning. Carbs are good. We need carbs for high intensity exercise thinking, like our brain

00:45:38.900 requires it. The more carbs we eat, we get more efficient at carbs. Fat, like when we consume fat,

00:45:45.660 like we don't get, if we consume a lot of fat, we get better at burning that dietary fat,

00:45:51.200 that fat we consume, not stored fat. As long as carbs are low, as long as carbs are low.

00:45:56.320 As long as carbs are low. And the other takeaway is, I mean, if you want to lose weight,

00:46:01.680 you have to be in a caloric deficit. That means you have to eat fewer calories than you are

00:46:05.840 burning. Absolutely. Yep. That's correct. Okay. This is, this is good. This is, this is useful.

00:46:11.820 So let's talk about, okay, how do we knowing this and taking this and applying it to, to different,

00:46:18.740 you know, health goals that people might have. So sort of broadly speaking, when you program

00:46:24.220 nutrition for a client, what's your approach? Do you, is it like counting calories, macros?

00:46:31.040 Is it some sort of like, you know, zone body diet? Like what do you, what's your, what's your big

00:46:36.380 picture approach? Generally, this is going to depend on the person. So I like macros. I like

00:46:43.060 meal plan and it depends on who I'm working with. So if you have a guy and this comes back to just

00:46:48.620 being practical and individualizing your care. So if you have an individual who is on a pretty

00:46:54.500 regimented schedule every single day, it doesn't have much variation there. A meal plan tends to work

00:46:59.320 good, you know? And if you have somebody who is traveling all the time or works all day, one day,

00:47:05.960 and then, you know, has time spread out the next day, I like macros better, like total macros. But

00:47:12.260 above all, basically the overarching theme is I like to figure out their macros first. And the way I do

00:47:21.620 that is I have everybody tracked, whether I'm going to put them on a meal plan or not. After that week is

00:47:26.660 over, I'll look at what they're normally eating because I want to get some idea of their usual

00:47:31.440 intake. Obviously what people write down isn't necessarily what's going on, but it's something,

00:47:35.800 you know, and this, we're not doing a research paper here. We're working with humans. So in this

00:47:39.200 case, it is better than nothing because I need something to work with them on. And based on what

00:47:44.460 they give me, then I'll reconfigure things. Typically you'll, with an average person, you're

00:47:47.720 going to see high fat, high carb, low protein, and then you got to reconfigure those macros. Now,

00:47:51.700 if I'm putting them on a meal plan, I'm going to give them a schedule and be like, okay,

00:47:54.120 I eat this much carb, fat, and protein for this meal, and then eat every three to five

00:47:58.120 hours, depending on what their schedule is. If you can eat it this time, a little bit

00:48:00.760 to this time. And that'll be what I do for that person. For the other person who doesn't

00:48:05.920 want all that structure and likes to, you know, fly by the seat of their pants, I'll

00:48:09.240 say, okay, you need to get this total amount of carb, this total amount of fat, this total

00:48:13.280 amount of protein, this total amount of fiber throughout the whole day. Don't really care how

00:48:16.720 you break it up. Just try not to do it all in one meal, one or two meals, try to get at least

00:48:20.040 three meals, you know? And that's pretty much how I start somebody. I guess the real thing

00:48:25.200 I'm trying to communicate here is there's no 100% accurate way to figure out where somebody

00:48:28.560 is at baseline. You know, you just have to get some rough estimate based on either what

00:48:32.920 they're giving you or some validated equation and then work from there. So that's where having

00:48:37.740 a coach is really helpful because it's really how it becomes individualized. You know, I can

00:48:42.000 give you something that, you know, a cookie cutter template that I just hand over to you and

00:48:47.360 you run off with. And, you know, if you're experienced with dieting, you're going to

00:48:49.880 probably do great with it, you know, because you've been through it enough times to know

00:48:52.580 your body. But if you're taking a raw novice dieter, for lack of a good word, and you give

00:48:58.780 them something that's cookie cutter, they're probably going to mess it up and not do what's

00:49:03.400 written on there and have a bunch of problems. And that's where the coaching becomes very helpful

00:49:07.760 because you get to know how the person's body responds and kind of build around that.

00:49:12.580 So it sounds like one of the approaches you mentioned, like with the macro, it's like if it fits

00:49:16.180 your macros, I think that's what you've been having me do. You just said, here's these macros.

00:49:20.100 You haven't really given me a meal plan and just hit these macros, track them with, I use

00:49:25.920 my fitness pal. And then I report to you sort of like how I did that week.

00:49:30.000 Yeah, sure. I do that for a lot of people. And that's typically my default because it's

00:49:33.400 more laid back for some people. But what I'm finding is, you know, a lot of people, there's

00:49:37.020 other people out there like structure too. I'd say it's probably half and half, but I usually

00:49:40.300 start with macros because it's all based on macros. So I always start with total macros

00:49:44.300 because it's simple. It's easier to wrap your mind around, you know, and then as the

00:49:47.760 person goes on, if they're cool with that, you stick with it. If they're not, you say,

00:49:51.400 okay, here's a little more structure. But ultimately both approaches depend on macros and total

00:49:56.260 calories, you know?

00:49:57.480 So let's talk about fitness goals or, you know, nutrition goals. So I think the same, I've

00:50:02.100 heard this kind of thrown around, like 80% of weight loss is diet and 20% is exercise.

00:50:08.860 So diet's a big key. So like losing body fat is a big goal for a lot of people. Let's say,

00:50:14.460 let's start with someone who's like, you know, who's really overweight, right? We're talking

00:50:17.960 above, what, above 20%, 20, what's like, what do we consider like obese in terms of body fat?

00:50:24.980 I'd say once you start getting over 30% body fat, you're probably in pretty bad shape because,

00:50:30.060 yeah.

00:50:30.460 Let's say, okay, let's say you're over 30% body fat. Like what's your sort of broad, again,

00:50:34.220 again, it's going to be personalized individual for each person, but like broadly speaking,

00:50:37.300 like what's your recommendation on calories and macronutrients?

00:50:41.300 So if you have a 250 pound guy who's always been 250 pounds and tends to be, you know,

00:50:45.960 we would call a non-responder to, you know, weight loss. Typically most of those guys,

00:50:51.080 let's say he's lifting weights, he's strong, you know, he's done the program for a couple of years,

00:50:54.840 you know, got a squat up, got his deadlift up, wants to lose weight. Typically I'd start somebody

00:50:59.160 like that. Let's get the fat at a hundred for the high end to start because most people come in here

00:51:05.260 eating like, you know, over a hundred grams of fat a day. So putting them on like 60 or 70 in the

00:51:10.660 beginning is going to freak them out, you know? So when I get these guys that are used to eating a

00:51:15.480 lot of fat, I'll say, okay, let's go to a hundred on fat. And then, uh, I'll typically put their carbs

00:51:20.280 somewhere around 250 and protein around 200, 225. And for various reasons, not because they need that

00:51:27.060 much protein to build muscle. That's not why I'm doing that. So, you know, just to be clear,

00:51:31.540 you don't need that much protein to build muscle mass, but protein has other functions. So it helps

00:51:36.420 keep you full. And during a diet that's important. So I tend to go higher in the protein for that.

00:51:41.560 Um, two, it also helps with a glycemic response. So it helps you get stable blood glucose and insulin

00:51:46.300 levels. Okay. And like, and what, like how much weight should they be shooting for a week losing?

00:51:51.260 Is it like one to two pounds? Yeah, typically one to two pounds. I mean, if they lose more and

00:51:55.640 they're still able to train, I don't say, Oh my God, let's eat more food. But if they lose more and

00:51:59.440 they're getting gasped in their first week, then I say, okay, hold on, we need a little bit more.

00:52:04.100 Right. Okay. So it's going to be, so yeah, you're going to also, because this is assuming that the

00:52:07.700 person you're working with is also training with weights. And so you're also, not only are you taking

00:52:12.220 into account, okay, we want, we want to lose weight, lose body fat. We also want to make sure

00:52:15.880 your performance stays, you know, good as well. Yeah. And that's where it gets, that's where the,

00:52:22.580 you know, the term, I love this term, well-balanced diet. That's where that becomes more important

00:52:27.300 when you're dealing with an athlete or somebody who is doing some sort of intense activity that

00:52:32.360 they care about, that they want to preserve their function in. So the extreme diets don't tend to

00:52:38.180 work on that, on that front. So you have to keep the carbs high, reasonably high so that you can

00:52:43.580 still train and you have to keep the protein at a certain level. And then that's where, you know,

00:52:48.680 the only one you have left is fat. And that's why we tend to gravitate towards low fat diets for

00:52:52.720 lifters because it's not really contributing much to performance if anything. So that's where

00:52:58.820 we start to cut first. And, uh, I don't know if you've, you've done both, I'm assuming low carb and

00:53:03.960 low fat, right? Right. But low carb, you're going to feel symptoms of weakness a lot faster than low

00:53:09.660 fat. Right. No. Yeah. I experienced that. I think before I started working with you, I did, you know,

00:53:15.560 when I first started trying, I did high fat, low carb. So I thought I was going to lose some weight.

00:53:20.180 And like, I just, what ended up happening was I got really weak and I got fatter and I didn't feel

00:53:26.140 good. And I told Matt, I was like, I need to not do this. I went to like a higher carb, lower fat

00:53:32.460 and started feeling great. Lift started going up and I started losing weight, which was, I thought,

00:53:38.200 really counterintuitive based on all the information I had been consuming for the past five years about

00:53:42.960 how nutrition works and whatever. And I imagine as someone's losing weight, like I'm talking about

00:53:50.160 250 pound guy, that as he loses weight, you also need to keep reducing calories to keep the weight

00:53:57.040 drive, weight loss going. Sure. Yeah, of course. So I think you experienced that, you know, this past

00:54:02.980 week, eventually you get to a point where you can't lose more. And depending on how much weight you have

00:54:07.600 to lose and who you are, you know, you might start getting weaker, feeling like crap, et cetera.

00:54:12.160 But the only way to continue driving additional weight loss is to cut back. And, um, I take a

00:54:18.980 different approach. The approach I like to take is let's say you got a guy who's 300 pounds and he

00:54:24.580 loses the first 30 or 40 pounds, no problem. And then he's like, Oh crap, my, I'm missing my bench

00:54:29.580 press, feeling hungry all the time. I'm having dreams about food and you're getting all these

00:54:34.300 psychological symptoms that kind of, you know, start arising. That's when I say, Whoa, hold on,

00:54:38.720 buddy. Let's put the brakes on, you know, we're going to up your calories, get you into a maintenance

00:54:43.240 phase and, uh, just have you train for a while and not worry about fat loss. And from there,

00:54:49.080 we'll do that. And then, you know, after it depends on the person I like three months,

00:54:53.180 I find that some clients, they want to just go right back to it. So we'll do a month, but

00:54:57.680 in a perfect world, I like three to six months. Cause it gives you enough time away from dieting

00:55:01.600 allows you to eat, you know, live a reasonably normal life for a while before you go right back to it.

00:55:06.960 And so let's say, you know, our 300 pound guys, two 60 now, and then six months later,

00:55:11.700 he's been training, got his strength back up a little bit. Now we're going to take them from

00:55:15.140 two 60 down to two 20. And then at two 30, he starts saying, Oh, I'm hungry again. And this

00:55:20.240 is happening. So I stopped at two 30 instead. I said, okay, we're not gonna go to two 20 below two

00:55:23.340 30 and we'll stop again. And then maybe a few months down the line, try it a third time. And

00:55:28.360 this approach seems to work in terms of, you know, keeping the performance together during a period of fat

00:55:34.500 loss. No, that's really interesting. Cause like, I think, yeah, I think when most people think fat

00:55:38.100 loss, they think they're just going to do it in one fell swoop. Like I'm going to, I'm going to

00:55:41.860 transfer, like, you know, the headlines you see on the magazines that when you check out at the

00:55:45.560 grocery store, lose 30 pounds of body fat in two months. Like it sounds like that you're, you're,

00:55:52.400 you don't do that. Cause I could probably just destroy you psychologically. And also, you know,

00:55:56.180 it can hurt your training as well. Yeah. If you start losing it rapidly, first of all,

00:56:00.060 it's going to mess with your, it's going to mess with your head. You're going to have psychological

00:56:03.040 problems that arise from that too. It's going to mess up your training and three, you're more likely

00:56:07.640 to gain the weight back because you went on a severe, crazy restriction that you couldn't sustain.

00:56:11.620 You know, I imagine as you get lower in body fat, right? Let's say you're a guy, you're like in the

00:56:17.600 18% body fat range, right? So you're, you're looking pretty jacked, but you're not shredded yet.

00:56:23.480 Right. And say like, that's your goal. You want six pack abs. Does it get really hard to like lose

00:56:29.460 or I guess we're not losing, we're shrinking those fat cells. Does it become harder as you

00:56:34.040 get lower in body fat? Yeah. Yeah. The leaner you get, the harder your body fights back. And it's

00:56:38.940 a survival mechanism there. And I'm always telling people this, I'm like,

00:56:41.800 after a certain point, your body's going to fight back. And why does that happen? Because

00:56:46.740 historically, you know, we have mechanisms in place to protect us for during times of famine.

00:56:53.160 And one of those mechanisms is you store a bunch of body fat so that if there's no food available,

00:56:58.140 you have some energy to use, right? Once you get to a certain point of fat loss and you're trying

00:57:03.860 to get, you know, jacked and tan, your body's like, well, hold on a second. That's my savings

00:57:07.740 account. And you're trying to empty it out completely. I don't want to do that. And then

00:57:11.460 you start getting, you know, an upregulation of hunger hormones. So now you're hungry all the time.

00:57:15.480 You're getting cravings. Your brain stops functioning correctly. Lose your sex drive. It's basically

00:57:20.360 your body's way of saying, I'm not getting rid of this. You're not cleaning my bank account out.

00:57:24.180 Yeah. I mean, we can talk about my experience working with you. So I started working with you

00:57:30.020 about, what, two months ago? Yeah. About? Yeah. Two months ago. So before that time,

00:57:34.260 I'd been kind of, Matt kind of gave me, Matt, my barbell coach, starting strength coach,

00:57:38.420 kind of gave me general recommendations. I started working with you after I did the last meet

00:57:43.200 in March in Wichita Falls. And before that time, I was eating like 350 grams of carbs,

00:57:49.960 220 grams of protein and 70 grams of fat, 80 or 90 grams of fat. So I was, it was about 3,500 to 3,600

00:58:00.080 calories. And I was doing that right for the meat. Cause I was just like focusing on getting big and

00:58:05.280 strong, right? I wanted to perform well. I weighed out at the meat at 219. So I just got under that cut

00:58:11.700 off on the weight. And I told Matt, it's like, you know what? I'm, I was, and I got fat. I think

00:58:17.640 my, my, my waist was up. I can't remember my initial measurement. I think it was like 37 inches

00:58:23.320 when I reported to you the first time. Yeah. That sounds right. 36. Yeah. And I said, yeah,

00:58:28.800 I want to take a break from this and maybe, you know, trim down a bit. And so you gave me the

00:58:35.320 recommendation. We went down to 2,500 calories about. So we were at 250 carbs, 250 protein.

00:58:43.580 You increase the protein to help with that satiation. And we went 60 grams fat. Things were like, I mean,

00:58:49.500 I was telling you, man, this is awesome. Like I was doing great, feeling great for the first,

00:58:53.780 I would say like, I would say six weeks performance really didn't suffer too much in,

00:59:00.080 during training. But like this week, I think like I hit a wall. I remember I sent you an email. I was

00:59:06.180 like, dude, I'm hungry all the time. And I got to the point it was like, it was distracting. Like

00:59:12.400 during my work, I couldn't get work done. Cause I was just like, I'm hungry. I got to eat something.

00:59:15.700 And I would go to bed hungry and I hated it. And I was like, but, but I mean, I made progress.

00:59:22.780 Like I went from 37 inch waist, I think yesterday measured at 33 and three fourths inch waist.

00:59:30.600 And I went from two 19 weighing out at two nine. Well, I mean, here's the thing when you weigh out

00:59:34.680 for, for people who don't know, when you do a strength or a weightlifting competition,

00:59:39.060 like all day, you're just consuming carbs and water, you know, cause you're, again,

00:59:43.920 you want that just that, that, cause it's a, it's, it's a really taxing day. You're lifting all day

00:59:48.060 doing these really heavy single lifts. So you need that glucose to keep your power. So you don't bottom

00:59:53.380 out. So yeah, you store a lot of water and glycogen. The next day I weigh 225 pounds and then just

00:59:59.880 going back to my normal diet, I went back to two 19. Cause I shed it all. I shed all that water.

01:00:06.080 Right. Yeah. But yeah, it's went from two 19 to two Oh eight, which is pretty like in two months,

01:00:11.060 eight pounds and lost about four inches on my waist. But like, and I was like, man,

01:00:16.340 maybe I can go for like six pack. And then like this week I was like, no, it's not worth it.

01:00:22.740 And I asked, he's like, is this going to be like, is this, is this going to get harder? And if so,

01:00:27.260 like, I don't know if it's worth it. Right. Yeah. So that's the thing, you know, like I was talking

01:00:34.080 to somebody this morning, a client of mine that was visiting in town. I went to breakfast with her.

01:00:37.840 We're talking about that. And I'm like, at a certain point, fat loss becomes like a sport

01:00:41.960 and there are risks associated with it. You know, you have the risk of injury when you're under the

01:00:46.920 bar, you know, musculoskeletal injury. When you're dieting really hard, you have the risk of anxiety,

01:00:53.220 depression, uh, low energy, decreased libido. Like these are all risks of continuing down that path.

01:00:59.840 And it's, I like to relate it to sport, you know, because it comes to a certain point where, okay,

01:01:04.620 your dieting is no longer about health. Now you have some sort of a competitive goal there,

01:01:09.580 whether you're actually competing in bodybuilding or not is irrelevant. Like there are people that

01:01:14.020 chase, you know, a 600 pound deadlift that never go on the platform. You know, that's still

01:01:17.640 a competitive endeavor, you know? So I tell people, I'm like, if you're trying to get jacked and tan,

01:01:23.600 that is a bucket list slash competitive endeavor. And it's no longer about health at that point. So

01:01:28.840 what you have to understand is, yes, you're going to feel hungry. You're going to be dreaming about food.

01:01:33.620 Your sex drive might go down. You know, you might lose energy. You might not be able to train.

01:01:37.740 You might lose weight off the bar. Like all these negative things could start happening.

01:01:42.340 And for some people, there's long-term consequences to that if they do that too much. And then for

01:01:45.840 others, it's fine. You know, again, genetics, but yeah. So then the question becomes, is it really

01:01:50.940 worth it? Why are you, you know, if you really want to see your abs and that's an important goal to you,

01:01:55.360 then yeah, push through it, but these things are going to happen. So like I went through that

01:01:58.860 like a few years ago, two years now. Wow. I wanted to get down pretty low because I had been

01:02:04.700 so heavy for a while and wasn't serving me. I wasn't lifting more. I was the amount of weight

01:02:11.320 gain that I had put on didn't, you know, the weight on the bar didn't justify it. So I wanted

01:02:17.160 to take myself down and I wanted to take myself way down. So I got myself down to like 11.8% body fat.

01:02:21.980 This still, this is not bodybuilder levels. That's like bodybuilders are 5% ish, you know,

01:02:26.520 if you're not DEXA. And, uh, even at that point I was like hungry all the time, dizzy. I'd go to the gym,

01:02:32.640 I'd do my squats and I'd see spots afterwards. And, you know, that's, again, that was at that point,

01:02:37.460 it wasn't about health. You know, I stopped being about health. Once I got under 15% body fat,

01:02:43.640 you know, it's, or even, you know, I would even argue 20, you know, at that point it was about,

01:02:47.880 I want to get really lean because I've always wanted to do it. And I want to see if it's possible.

01:02:52.120 And, you know, for me, it fortunately was for some people that may not be something that's possible

01:02:56.640 without possibly surgery, you know, but, uh, yeah, at that point I knew it wasn't about health.

01:03:02.080 And even the lifting I was doing was not about health. You know, it was, you know, I'm not a

01:03:06.260 very impressive lifter, but the amount that I lift is not necessary for me to be functional and

01:03:10.620 healthy. And I do that competitively in terms of, I compete myself on it. I want these PRs. I want

01:03:15.800 these numbers. So the same thing goes for leanness, you know, at a certain point, your leanness no

01:03:20.940 longer becomes about health. And, you know, you are putting your safety on the line to some extent.

01:03:26.200 Right. So you have to decide if it's worth it. I decided it's not worth it. Right. I was like,

01:03:29.100 I'd rather, I want to get that 600 pound deadlift and I'm okay. Like I'm healthy. I look good right

01:03:35.680 now and I'm happy. I just don't, I'm just not shredded, but I'm okay with that. Right. Yeah.

01:03:42.200 Yeah. No, so we've been, we've been talking, uh, losing weight. So I guess the thing is there,

01:03:47.240 I like the big takeaway from there is that you, if you're, if your goal is to lose weight and maintain

01:03:52.640 performance, whether it's you're an endurance athlete or a strength athlete to do it in stages,

01:03:57.820 like don't try to do it all at, in one fell swoop, do it for two months, take a break for three

01:04:03.500 months, then go at it again. Let's talk, let's talk about gaining weight. There's some, cause

01:04:08.760 there's some guys who are listening to this. They're like the, uh, stereotypical, you know,

01:04:13.460 Charles Atlas ad like this, you know, 90 pound weakling or whatever, like they get sand kicked

01:04:18.300 and like, they want to get, they want to put on some mass and be bigger. But I've, you know,

01:04:22.580 I've got friends who are like, like no matter how much they eat, like I don't gain weight.

01:04:26.180 So what's going on with those guys and what do they need to do to gain weight?

01:04:32.020 I guess I'll talk about what I did and, uh, how I apply this to other people. So like I said,

01:04:37.020 a couple of years ago, you know, I got myself down to like 11% body fat. I worked with Nick

01:04:41.520 Shaw of Renaissance periodization. He helped me with that. And then afterwards I just kept

01:04:45.460 training one on my own, been kind of just doing my own thing with diet. And I kind of took that

01:04:50.100 knowledge to kind of explain what I just did. Then later on I was like, okay, I need to get

01:04:53.580 stronger. My programming is all over the place. And then I hired Reynolds and, uh, he started

01:04:59.300 doing my strength coaching and I just did my own thing with diet. And that's also when I sat

01:05:03.800 in, um, in an obesity class here at ASU, which I recommend to anybody in the state of Arizona that,

01:05:11.300 you know, has access to ASU and can take a graduate level elective. There's this obesity and

01:05:17.180 health class taught by Glenn Gaser. He's an obesity expert. And that's where I learned a lot

01:05:22.900 of this stuff about nutrient oxidation. So as I'm sitting in that class, taking all this information

01:05:26.980 in, I was like, okay, wait a minute. I'm like, I need to gain muscle mass and I want to skew that

01:05:32.920 weight gain towards muscular body weight and away from fat weight. So if any more carbs cause you to

01:05:39.020 burn more carbs and store less fat, then what if I just pull the fat back, ramp the carbs up and

01:05:44.780 just keep training, what would happen? So I tried that. I tried a very low fat diet initially.

01:05:50.880 Reynolds thought I was insane. Cause I was doing, I got all the way down to 15, just to experiment.

01:05:54.580 Didn't last very long, but I think the lowest I saw on my tracker was 15. And then I ramped my carbs

01:05:59.840 up to 400 and seriously, it was like, I took speed. The next time I lifted my squat just got

01:06:04.260 dramatically easier. It was like, it was awesome, you know? So I kept doing that. And, um,

01:06:09.520 over time, this has been what I've been with Matt for 16 months over time. I've gained about 13,

01:06:17.840 12, 12, 13 pounds. And, uh, my deadlift went from 440 to 500. My squat went from 370 to 420.

01:06:29.780 I don't care what rip says. It was still, that's my, that's what I based my percentages off of.

01:06:33.480 Yeah. 370 to 420. And my, um, my bench went from, I think, 269 to 291. And my press is back at

01:06:43.080 205. Although I had 211, I kind of, I start to faint when I'm pressing. I can't figure out how to

01:06:48.800 control that, but I faint halfway up and I can't seem to lock anything out over 205 without passing

01:06:53.320 out. So right now it's 205. Now to, to, you know, be clear on that, I had lifted two, I pressed 210 at

01:07:01.280 205 before I benched 290 at 205 before, but these squat and deadlifts, these are big PRs. Like I

01:07:07.040 never hit that when I was fat. These happened when I was lean. And anyways, so my whole, my whole thing

01:07:12.520 about it was, I'm like, okay, it takes muscle. It takes a long time to gain. You don't gain it in

01:07:17.200 a week or two weeks or even a month. I mean, yeah, in a month, probably you start building some muscle

01:07:21.100 and I've been trained because I've been lifting weights for almost one, like 19 years, I think it started

01:07:27.880 in 1999 and I've been squatting and deadlifting. I've been squatting for about 16 years and I've

01:07:35.020 been deadlifting for about five. I mean, I've always done the lifts that I've trained consistently

01:07:39.440 are the squat on the bench and the pull-up. I mean, you know, I've been doing that consistently

01:07:42.480 since I started lifting weights. I added the deadlift in the press about five years, no, eight years ago

01:07:46.540 now. Wow. And, uh, so I bring all that up because I'm a trained lifter. I'm not a novice, you know? So

01:07:52.260 the more trained you become, the less muscle you're going to gain over time. Eventually you stop gaining

01:07:56.820 muscle mass, right? And the way I looked at it was, I'm just going to train, focus on pushing my weight

01:08:02.020 up my, on the bar. You know, I'm not going to worry about my body weight. I'm going to let my body

01:08:05.740 weight do what it does. I'm going to eat enough so that I'm getting through these workouts and setting

01:08:11.220 new PRs. And the reason I say that is because what drives muscle gain? So like, I always get these

01:08:15.780 questions from guys saying, Oh, uh, I want a mask. Can you give me a diet to mass? And I'm like,

01:08:22.920 yeah, but what's your training looking like? You know, I don't like giving, I don't like giving

01:08:26.860 people mass diets and I'm not coaching because if you're not stimulating the muscle correctly,

01:08:32.540 you're not going to gain muscle. No, you know, it's like saying, okay, I'm going to give you a

01:08:36.840 diet. You're going to follow it and gain muscle mass without lifting weights. I mean, the diet

01:08:40.340 supplements, the training, the training is the stimulus. So when I'm talking to guys about gaining

01:08:45.460 weight, the first thing I say is either work with me or work with a strength coach. That's competent

01:08:49.720 because the stimulus for building muscle is the strength training. You have to get stronger at it

01:08:56.100 over time. So that gets into a whole nother, you know, ball of wax when you're talking about

01:08:59.920 programming. But my, uh, whole approach with it is if you're performing more over time, let's say

01:09:07.100 you're lifting more weight six months from now, you know, for a set of 10, a set of five, it really

01:09:12.580 doesn't matter. I mean, the, the research says it, us as coaches have seen it. If you train eights

01:09:17.920 and get stronger at eights, you're going to get bigger muscles. If you train fives and get

01:09:21.000 stronger at fives, you're going to get bigger muscles. If you do even twelves, you'll get

01:09:24.100 bigger muscles. As long as you're improving within that rep ring. The bottom line is the

01:09:28.400 training stimulates the growth. Then you have to eat to facilitate that. So you got to figure,

01:09:32.860 okay, if you're getting 15 pounds in a month and you're a trained lifter, like myself, I'd say

01:09:38.080 probably 95% of that's going to be fat. So you, it's going to be slower. The more advanced

01:09:42.540 you become, the slower the weight gain is going to be. And the less body weight you're going

01:09:46.260 to gain as a trained lifter versus a novice, you know, that guy gains 10 pounds in a month.

01:09:52.840 Maybe half of that's muscle, you know, maybe, maybe he gains five pounds of muscle in his

01:09:55.660 first month, or I should say lean mass is more like it because a novice, they're going to

01:10:00.260 increase blood volume. They're going to increase glycogen stores. That's going to increase their

01:10:03.960 lean weight. And they'll probably start building muscle around week six. And then that'll continue

01:10:08.260 over time. So in like a three to six month period, a novice might gain five to 10 pounds of

01:10:11.880 muscle, depending on how well that person responds to strength training to just tie it all together.

01:10:16.920 The bottom line is your training must facilitate growth in order for the diet to be meaningfully

01:10:23.180 effective. And I think a lot of times these guys who say they have a hard time gaining weight

01:10:27.180 and they say they eat a lot, they probably don't actually eat a lot because they're not tracking.

01:10:31.380 They just think they do, but they, they really don't.

01:10:33.880 With the guys that say they eat a lot, again, you're dealing with self-reported dietary intake,

01:10:37.900 you know, when something is not better than nothing. In this case, what I found, my cousin

01:10:42.540 was one of these guys. I eat so much and I can't gain weight. He was like six foot, 150 pounds.

01:10:47.580 And I got him up to 217. So that's an interesting thing happened there. You know,

01:10:53.860 like we said, eventually you can't lose weight. There was a point where your body will stop

01:10:56.740 gaining weight. And for him, it was 217. No matter how much he ate, he couldn't gain any more weight.

01:11:01.620 And this guy was committed, man. But in the beginning, when I gave him recommendations on

01:11:07.580 food, he got, he gained like 20 pounds, I think, you know, 25 pounds. He was like 180, maybe 185.

01:11:14.100 And then he just started bitching that, Oh, it's too much food. I can't eat like this. Ah,

01:11:18.500 then we stopped talking for a couple of months. He came back around and he's like, all right,

01:11:21.580 I want to try and do this right. You know? So I was like, okay. So it took this guy 555 or 575 carbs,

01:11:31.960 175 grams of fat. And I think 250 grams of protein for him to get his weight up to 218.

01:11:40.460 And I mean, the guy did great. How many calories is that? That's like 4,000.

01:11:44.740 I think he was like between four and five. It was a creeping towards 5,000 calories a day.

01:11:48.580 And what that, wow. Yeah. And, uh, what that looked like was like, for instance, he's like,

01:11:54.720 yeah, when I lift, he's like, I put a cup of sugar in my protein shake, you know, cause he needs all

01:11:59.620 these carbs. I mean, a cup of sugar in his protein shake. And then he was eating like a loaf of bread,

01:12:05.400 a pound of beef, a quart of milk, and a bunch of, um, what's going to call it those breakfast potatoes.

01:12:11.580 And that was a meal for him. And he was just miserable eating all that food. But, um, you know,

01:12:18.660 he got all the lifts he wanted. He pulled 405 for five, squatted 315 for five, bench 220, pressed 150.

01:12:25.560 And, you know, he lost some of that when he ended up losing the weight, but he kept most of it. He's

01:12:30.640 one of those guys. Now he looks like he plays basketball or looks like a swimmer. But then when

01:12:35.600 he starts loading the bar up, people stare at him because it doesn't look like somebody that can,

01:12:38.860 you know, squat close to 400 pounds, you know? So yeah, there's some, uh, some nice takeaways

01:12:42.620 there. Uh, some other brass tack things that I've learned from you that I think people might find

01:12:47.360 useful. So when we talk about carbs, you don't just want to eat like fast burning carbs, like,

01:12:52.120 you know, like bread and grain, like you want to eat carbs with have fiber and you, for you, for me,

01:12:57.780 you have me set at 40 grams of fiber a day, which when I first saw that, I was like, that's hard

01:13:04.460 because like, like most food doesn't have a lot of fiber in it, right? You look at the,

01:13:09.180 the, the breakdown of the bag is like three grams of fiber, two grams of fiber, but you pointed me

01:13:15.320 in the direction of these like mission tortillas, the carb balance tortillas. And I think the one

01:13:20.760 I'm having right now, like it has like 14 or 13 grams of carb or fiber in it. So it's like right

01:13:25.500 there. I almost got like quarter of my fiber done just with my breakfast burrito in the morning.

01:13:29.040 So thank you for letting me know about that. So other good high fiber sources of raspberries

01:13:35.540 have become my jam. Like I eat raspberry, like, like a couple of raspberries a day. It's fantastic.

01:13:40.360 Pinto beans, another one, like just with those three things, I get my 40 grams of fiber in

01:13:45.440 and I'm good. And then, you know, for mostly I eat, you know, breakfast, it's like eggs,

01:13:51.360 egg whites in an egg. So I get my fat, my protein. I got the, the mission tortilla going on in there.

01:13:56.760 Then I usually train. And then after that, after I train, I'll have whey protein shake.

01:14:03.020 And then I, I, this is, I don't know what, let me get yours take on this. This is kind of how I

01:14:06.640 get my carbs and my whey protein. I, I buy oat flour and rice flour. And I just put a scoop in

01:14:13.940 there with my whey protein. Cause I just, I didn't, I don't, I'm, I'm lazy. I just want to drink my,

01:14:18.220 my food when I'm suppling, you know, for my after meal. So I just do like a, like a quarter cup

01:14:23.280 of brown rice flour, which is about 30 grams of carbs after I train. And then lunch, it's usually

01:14:30.340 like something like chicken and sweet potatoes. And then, then I have like another like snack

01:14:35.520 between lunch and dinner. And that's like whey protein and oat flour shake. And then dinner's

01:14:42.140 like whatever the, the missus makes. And then I just adjust based on whatever the macro recommendations

01:14:47.760 you've given me. Well, the other thing, the other thing about, you know, if it fits your macros

01:14:51.280 is the flexibility. Cause like, you know, if I know I'm going to go out to like, so like last week

01:14:56.480 I went out to Texas roadhouse for dinner with some friends. I was like, man, that's going to be a big

01:15:01.580 giant calorie bomb. I kind of just didn't really eat during the day and just saved everything for

01:15:09.700 that big meal. And I was fine. I didn't like gain a ton of weight. I mean, I, I did gain a lot of

01:15:14.620 weight. Cause like there's a lot of sodiums. You have a lot of, I guess you retain a lot of water,

01:15:19.180 but like it didn't do a lot of damage to my, my, my diet. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much how it

01:15:25.180 goes, you know, it's just water weight. And if your calories are where they need to be, then you're

01:15:29.440 not going to, you know, get a bunch of fat from that. Well, did you have something else you want

01:15:33.240 to say? Were you going to hit on something else about if it fits your macros or any other brass

01:15:37.200 tax device? Yeah. Yeah. So I, if it fits your macros, what I like about that is, and the way I do it

01:15:44.160 as you just said, 40 grams of fiber, if you're eating 40 grams of fiber, it is not the, if it

01:15:48.760 fits your macros, you see on Instagram where people are eating a bunch of pizza and crap and

01:15:52.040 saying, Oh, it fits my macros. It's not what we're doing here. So I just want to, I hate that. Yeah.

01:15:55.880 That I think that like does such a big disservice to people because you see all these like super fit

01:15:59.820 people, like eating donuts, like donuts, like they're like jacked and like regular people see like,

01:16:04.880 Oh, I can eat donuts and look like that too. It's like, well, probably not. Yeah, exactly. And

01:16:11.200 that's, that's the problem with it. You know, it's kind of misleading. And then you also don't know

01:16:14.520 what these people are really doing. You know, they're putting one picture up saying that they're

01:16:17.980 doing this and it's like, are they really doing this? You know? So it kind of creates a false

01:16:22.980 image of what that is. The purpose to, if it fits your macros is to allow flexibility and not demonize

01:16:27.580 food so that, you know, okay, you're eating a healthy diet most of the time, but you want to go eat

01:16:31.520 crap. It's okay. You know, it's not going to kill your gains. Just, you know, play it smart, balance it out.

01:16:35.920 Kind of like you would, you know, your money. I always, you know, use the analogy that, you know,

01:16:40.820 your food is like a checking account. You know, you have so much you can spend. And once you go

01:16:44.060 over, you know, you're going to be in a bad place. So that's kind of how we'll look at it with that.

01:16:48.100 The other pet peeve that I've been having lately that I meant to bring up earlier is just this idea

01:16:54.680 that the way that weight loss has been prescribed to people is similar to that, that you would prescribe

01:17:00.180 to a bodybuilder. You know, the expectation is that, Hey, you're supposed to lose for three months,

01:17:05.160 every single week. And that's a successful diet. And it's like, well, no, that's what a competitor

01:17:08.800 does. The average person who has kids, a job, you know, all these other responsibility travels,

01:17:15.440 has a lot of friends that come over as a social life. That person may not lose every week. It may

01:17:19.820 take six, nine months, maybe a year because of interruptions in the routine. You know, I, you know,

01:17:26.660 one of the things I find myself talking about a lot lately, and it's really important as I tell people,

01:17:30.860 yeah, it's kind of like the, you know, starting strength linear progression, you know,

01:17:33.960 in an ideal situation, you have an 18 year old kid who plays video games all day, lives with mom

01:17:38.660 and has unlimited access to food. Yeah. He might LP for three months straight, add weight to the bar

01:17:43.380 every time, not get hurt and have a successful linear progression. But for most of us, and Rip

01:17:47.980 writes it in the book, you know, you'll have a few good months then, you know, life will get in the

01:17:52.240 way, stress, injuries, death in the family, and you'll have to reset, start over. And by the end of it,

01:17:57.300 it's been nine, 10 months, you know, because of all these things. Well, the same applies to diet.

01:18:02.120 You know, you're going to have people that come over and want to eat out and you're not going to

01:18:05.860 lose weight that week, you know, because you have low calorie needs and the food that you're eating

01:18:10.940 out has almost your entire day's worth in a plate, but you want to eat that and that's okay.

01:18:15.520 You're just not going to lose that week. Next week will be better. You know, maybe that'll happen

01:18:19.440 for three weeks in a row before you get more rhythm for another three weeks. So as long as the overall

01:18:24.380 trend is down, just like, you know, when you're lifting, the overall trend is up for the weight

01:18:29.020 on the bar, you're in good shape. But I think that we shouldn't be telling people that they're

01:18:34.600 a successful weight loss looks like that of a competitor. Yeah. I think that, and I guess that

01:18:39.740 it's an important part of your job as a dietitian, not only like a scientist, right, where you're

01:18:43.580 prescribing, you know, macronutrients based on, you know, science, right? The theory that we talked

01:18:49.040 about at the beginning, but like, you're also a psychologist in a lot of ways, right? Because you have to help

01:18:52.620 them manage expectations and then help them realize it's okay if you didn't lose your pound

01:18:58.640 this week, we'll get it again next week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I think that's

01:19:04.300 good advice for everybody. I know when I started working with you, that was the first thing you

01:19:07.360 told me is like, Hey, but you know, I know you want to like look jacked, but I don't let you know

01:19:11.360 that it's not going to be linear. It's sort of, it's going to be, it's going to go fluctuate up and

01:19:15.540 down and you have to be okay with that. And like, that was actually really helpful because it prevented

01:19:20.560 me from getting frustrated early on and just being like, okay, it's okay. As long as the trend is

01:19:25.160 down, I'm good. Yeah. Well, Hey, Robert, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to

01:19:29.740 learn more about your work? I'm imagine you've got some stuff up on starting strength.com.

01:19:33.400 I am all over the place. So I am at starting strength.com. I moderate the nutrition forum.

01:19:37.580 So you can find information about me there. I run nutrition at starting strength online coaching.

01:19:43.060 So you can find me there. I have my own website, weights and plates.com. You can find me there

01:19:47.980 everywhere, not anywhere. Hopefully, hopefully you get some scientific journals out soon.

01:19:52.100 Right. Right. Well, Hey, Robert, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

01:19:54.840 It's been a pleasure. Yep. Thank you, sir. My guest today was Robert Santana. He's the nutrition

01:19:58.520 coach at starting strength online coaching. You also find more from each about his work at

01:20:01.940 starting strength.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash Santana. We find links to

01:20:06.860 resources. We're going to delve deeper into this topic.

01:20:17.980 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

01:20:25.120 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. And if you enjoy

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01:20:40.440 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

01:20:44.200 manly.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#401： Everything You Need to Know About Diet & Fat Loss

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