The Art of Manliness - #552： How to Optimize Your Metabolism

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you struggle

00:00:11.520 to lose weight, you may blame an inherently slow metabolism. What is your metabolism really

00:00:15.640 to blame and can you increase it in order to burn more fat? Today, we tackle these questions

00:00:19.660 and more with Dr. John Berardi, who earned a PhD in exercise physiology and nutrient

00:00:23.440 biochemistry and is a writer, athlete, coach, and professor, as well as the co-founder of

00:00:27.500 Precision Nutrition and the founder of the Changemaker Academy. John and I begin our discussion

00:00:31.520 with what metabolism is, the components that make it up, and how much each element contributes

00:00:35.560 to your body's energy expenditures and which can be controlled. We then get into whether

00:00:38.940 or not it's true that some people have an inherently slow or fast metabolism and how diet and exercise

00:00:43.460 influences your metabolism, including whether or not dieting itself can slow your metabolism

00:00:47.860 down and why you might want to consider wearing a weight vest around once you lose some body

00:00:51.900 fat. We then discuss how intermittent fasting can increase your metabolic flexibility, whether

00:00:55.920 there are certain foods that can boost your metabolic rate, and the best exercise routine

00:00:59.380 for optimizing your metabolism. We also talk about how stress and sleep affect your metabolic

00:01:03.160 health, and we end our conversation with John's best tips for maintaining optimal metabolic

00:01:07.060 health and losing weight in general. After the show's over, check out our show notes

00:01:10.120 at aom.is slash metabolism. All right, John Berardi, welcome back to the show.

00:01:27.060 Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. I always enjoy coming on. Before you and I started

00:01:32.360 doing podcasts or articles together or whatever, I was a huge fan of the site and of the podcast,

00:01:38.080 so it's really an honor to chat with you, man. Well, thanks so much. So you are a nutrition

00:01:42.540 coach. You have your PhD in exercise physiology and nutrition biochemistry. We had you on the

00:01:48.740 show a couple years ago to talk about the science of intermittent fasting. That's episode number 328

00:01:54.140 for those who want to check that out. And today, I wanted to bring you back on the show to discuss

00:01:58.500 an aspect of nutrition and health that I think people have heard the word and the concept a lot,

00:02:04.720 but I don't think they fully understand it. And that's metabolism, right? It's a word that we

00:02:08.340 throw around a lot. Hey, I got to speed up my metabolism. I can't lose weight because I have a

00:02:12.140 slow metabolism. But I would like to unpack what metabolism is so people have a really good

00:02:17.940 understanding of what's... That it's more than just about losing weight. There's other things that go

00:02:21.480 on with it. So let's talk... Let's start with the very basic. What is metabolism?

00:02:27.520 Yeah, it's great. Let's start there. Yeah. Basically, it's the sum total of all the cellular

00:02:34.380 activity that goes on in your body. So that's kind of a vague answer. But generally, this miracle of

00:02:41.480 life, us being alive is really a series of communications between different cells of our

00:02:49.720 body. And metabolism is all that activity that's going on at any point in time. And that's the

00:02:56.200 description, if you will. But when we think about measuring it, for example, there's an equation

00:03:02.440 that we can use to figure out how much activity is happening at any point in time. So we usually

00:03:09.860 call that total daily energy expenditure. So the sum total of all our metabolism, it costs energy.

00:03:17.500 Keeping a human alive costs energy. And so the components that total up to our total daily energy

00:03:25.040 expenditure, resting metabolic rate. So that's just the functions that keep us alive. That's our

00:03:31.620 activity levels. And a lot of times people think about that as exercise, but it's any movement at all.

00:03:37.940 So there's actually a component of activity called NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And this is a

00:03:46.380 kind of a fascinating one where it's kind of genetically determined. So some people tend to move around.

00:03:54.200 It's been called fidgeting before more than others when they're not purposefully exercising. So this is

00:04:01.760 actually another important component of the activity sort of part of the equation. And then the one I've

00:04:09.660 always found is really interesting that we parse out is the thermic effect of feeding. So eating itself

00:04:16.060 and the mechanical process of eating plus the chemical process of digesting that food, breaking it down

00:04:23.080 and transferring it to our cells is also another component. So that's called the thermic effect of

00:04:27.800 food. So when we think about metabolism, it's all this wonderful activity that's happening. When we go to

00:04:33.740 measure it, we can measure it as total daily energy expenditure, how much energy we burn in a day.

00:04:41.180 And then to think about what contributes to that, it's our resting metabolic rate,

00:04:47.240 just the functions that keep us alive, plus all the movement we do in a day, anything beyond laying

00:04:54.380 still, and then the thermic effect of feeding. So those three things add up to total daily energy

00:05:00.780 expenditure, which represents a measure of our metabolism. All right. So metabolism is everything

00:05:05.960 our bodies do to keep us alive, to function, to think, talk, breathe, move, et cetera, all of which

00:05:12.040 expends energy. So metabolism is everything that creates life that we tend to narrowly associate

00:05:16.800 it with weight gain and loss. And we'll try to give people a better understanding of that aspect

00:05:21.300 of metabolism today in our conversation. You mentioned several factors which contribute to

00:05:26.240 metabolism, which are resting metabolic rate, NEAT or non-intentional exercise like fidgeting,

00:05:33.360 and then there's thermogenesis, when we eat and our bodies convert food to energy, and exercise.

00:05:38.040 Is there like a pie chart of how much each energy expenditure makes up our metabolism?

00:05:43.800 Yeah, there is actually. And most people are actually fascinated by the breakdown. The most

00:05:49.520 expensive part of the daily energy expenditure that we use up comes from our resting metabolic rate.

00:05:57.140 It's not from our activity. It's from just the functions of keeping us alive. Now, if you're not

00:06:02.460 very physically active, about 75% of your total daily energy expenditure comes from just the resting

00:06:10.960 metabolic rate, keeping you alive. About 15% will come from activity and about 10% from the thermic

00:06:17.520 effective feeding. So as you can see, most of this is just keeping us alive. Now that shifts a bit.

00:06:24.460 If you are highly physically active, you may end up with 60% of your total daily energy expenditure

00:06:31.760 coming from resting metabolic rate, 30% from activity, including NEAT, and 10% from the thermic

00:06:38.040 effective feeding. So you can see the bulk of the calories we use in a day is just resting metabolic

00:06:44.440 rate, keeping us alive stuff. But you can also see that exercise can make an important difference to

00:06:52.740 that. It can shift it from 15% of your energy burn in a day to 30%. And obviously we're just talking

00:06:59.380 about percentages. So this would be a pie chart. You have to realize that when you start exercising

00:07:04.100 more, the total pie gets bigger. So the amount of energy you burn in a day is much larger. So your

00:07:11.320 resting metabolic rate may not change at all, but it goes from 75% of the pie to 60% because the pie grew,

00:07:18.160 if that makes sense.

00:07:18.860 Yeah, that makes sense. So let's talk about this idea of like, you know, a fast metabolism and slow

00:07:24.160 metabolism. I mean, people, when people hear that, the layman thinks, well, you know, if I have a fast

00:07:28.800 metabolism, my body uses a lot of energy. If I was slow and uses less, what does that mean from a

00:07:33.900 scientific point of view? What, like when you hear fast metabolism, what, what do you think?

00:07:38.660 Yeah. I mean, the, the thing is there are individual differences for sure. I mean, we've like,

00:07:46.160 you only need to look around the world and see there's some people who seem like they can eat all

00:07:49.920 they want with no regard for, you know, caloric intake and not exercise at all. And, and their body

00:07:57.580 appears skinny quote unquote, and others who really seem to watch what they eat and they do purposeful

00:08:03.180 exercise and they may have a heavier body weight or carry more body fat. So there are some factors

00:08:09.660 that affect resting metabolic rate. Cause that's what we're, that's what we're thinking about when

00:08:14.020 we think about, Hey, you know, let's say exercise was equal, you know, two people have different bodies.

00:08:20.820 Well, then their metabolisms might be different based on their resting metabolic rate. But what we

00:08:25.780 often find is that there are like subtle things that actually shift the rest of their lifestyle

00:08:31.720 that make it less about this sort of magical, you know, like a fairy waved metabolism wand over them

00:08:41.160 and made them a fast metabolism or slow metabolism. So for example, a lot of people, you know, who think

00:08:46.920 they have a very fast metabolism actually don't understand the impact of neat. They are fidgeters.

00:08:54.740 So they may burn an extra 10, 15% calories each day, just fidgeting around. So they may not quote

00:09:01.540 unquote, go to the gym. Whereas, you know, someone with low need who does go to the gym could end up

00:09:08.100 burning fewer calories in the day, even though they're like, what the heck? I go to the gym for

00:09:12.440 an hour every day. So oftentimes there isn't any magical disappearance of calories or appearance of

00:09:20.860 calories. It's this simple equation, resting metabolic rate plus activity, either purposeful

00:09:27.860 or unintentional and thermic effective feeding. So someone has a quote unquote, slow metabolism.

00:09:33.840 You just have to look at the equation and say, well, what's slow? Is it thermic effective feeding?

00:09:39.440 Probably not because that's pretty standard between people. Is it their resting metabolic rate?

00:09:44.960 Probably not. That could be plus or minus, but our resting metabolic rates largely determined by body

00:09:50.960 size. So if you're a bigger person, it'll be higher. And if you're a smaller person, it'll be

00:09:56.980 lower. And that makes total sense because if you're bigger, you have more cellular function

00:10:01.940 to account for. And then your size also influences the activity burn too. Because if you're a bigger

00:10:08.240 person, it's harder to carry that weight around when you do move. It's often why when people lose weight,

00:10:14.960 at let's say a certain caloric deficit, like they're following a quote unquote diet or eating fewer

00:10:19.980 calories, and they start to lose weight, then that weight loss plateaus. And they're like,

00:10:24.880 I don't understand. I'm still at the same deficit. I'm even exercising a bit more. Well, they've lost

00:10:31.240 weight. So it's less expensive to carry around the current weight they are. I actually have a friend,

00:10:37.840 I was just at an event recently, and a strategy he's been playing around with is putting a weight vest on

00:10:44.580 people like they'll, they live most of their waking hours with a lightweight vest on that accounts for

00:10:51.860 the weight that they've lost. So let's say they started 200 pounds, and they start exercising a

00:10:57.620 bit more and eating a bit less. And they dropped down to 190 pounds. Well, then he would put a 10

00:11:04.300 pound weight vest on them. So they're still carrying around 200 pounds. I'm not saying this is for

00:11:10.700 everyone. But what he's found there is that they don't have to keep lowering their calorie intake,

00:11:16.700 or increasing their exercise, they can continue to lose at a similar rate, without pushing the

00:11:23.960 exercise harder or eating less by accounting for that body weight, which it seems like such a simple

00:11:30.800 thing. But it makes such a huge difference. And it frustrates a lot of weight loss efforts.

00:11:36.280 Yeah, we'll talk about the role of dieting and how it can slow down or speed up metabolism.

00:11:39.880 But I think another interesting concept that you've written about in different places is this

00:11:44.240 idea about understanding how our metabolism or our body wants to be efficient. Now, when we hear

00:11:50.780 efficient, typically, we think, oh, efficiency is great, right? You want a factory to be efficient,

00:11:55.380 you we want our lives to be efficient, because it means we're getting a lot of stuff done,

00:11:59.120 nothing's going to waste. But how can an efficient metabolism cause weight gain?

00:12:04.460 Yeah, well, in the sense of metabolism, you know, like we talked about earlier,

00:12:09.740 you know, the body wants to make life less costly, right? So, you know, it, we don't often get more

00:12:19.500 efficient at like our, let's say, our resting metabolic rate, but it often comes to play with

00:12:24.920 exercise, for example. So, let's say, you're going to start getting in shape, and you don't have an

00:12:32.580 exercise routine, and you're going to run one mile. So, the first few times you do that one mile,

00:12:40.040 you'll be inefficient. Your body hasn't upregulated the enzymes that are necessary for rapid energy

00:12:47.000 production. Your technique is probably poor, you'll probably be heavier, so you'll use more energy just

00:12:53.860 carrying that extra load around. And as you do that one mile over and over and over again,

00:12:58.800 your body finds ways to make it easier, to make it less challenging. So, you may lose a little bit

00:13:04.540 of weight, your enzymatic systems will upregulate, your technique may get better, especially as you,

00:13:10.020 you know, drill technique over and over. In that case, if you continue to run that mile,

00:13:15.860 the calorie cost will be less, even though you'll be going faster. And that's because you've gotten

00:13:21.600 efficient. Now, that's good for performance, right? But it's not that great for calorie burn,

00:13:28.940 unless as you get more efficient, you increase the intensity. So, you make it just as hard for the body

00:13:36.980 as that one mile was. So, you can either go two miles, or you can go one mile markedly faster by

00:13:43.660 pushing the intensity. But, you know, efficiency in this case, as per your question, would be if I go out

00:13:50.060 and I run a seven-minute mile today, and I'm still doing that three months from now, that seven-minute

00:13:57.720 mile is going to be markedly less effective because I've gotten more efficient. So, as you say, like,

00:14:04.300 you know, efficiency, we usually think of as good. And it is good in this case, from the body's energy

00:14:10.820 use perspective. However, this is where our bodies don't share our same goals, right? If you want to lose

00:14:17.320 weight, you want it to squander energy. So, talking about this inefficiency with nutrients. So, we

00:14:22.220 basically, in order to lose weight, we have to be inefficient, which means we have to spend more

00:14:25.960 energy than we're bringing in. So, I'm trying to think of this like with body fat, for example.

00:14:32.500 Like, our body stores fat. I imagine our body's like, you're not going to touch that fat. So,

00:14:38.760 it makes it really hard. Like, our body does something once we start reducing caloric intake to say,

00:14:43.560 no, I'm not giving up this body fat. And so, it makes it, you have to like work more to get to it.

00:14:49.880 So, it's sort of putting up inefficiencies to protect. I'd rather use like dietary body fat,

00:14:56.440 I guess is what I'm saying, than your stored body fat to power itself.

00:15:00.040 Well, it actually does depend on the situation. You know, I did a pretty deep dive into literature on

00:15:06.060 this. And it seems like if given the choice, and it's hard to control for, the body would prefer to

00:15:12.880 burn what's stored on it before it burns what's coming in from a dietary perspective. It's why

00:15:22.160 intermittent fasting, for example, although it takes a little bit of time to adapt to,

00:15:28.680 it's why it ends up working fairly well. Because loads, you know, most of us have loads of meals

00:15:35.400 stored on our body that the body actually wants to eat. You know, so if you go an extended window

00:15:41.020 without eating, so 16 hours or whatever intermittent fasting protocol you're using,

00:15:47.720 the body will gladly eat that stored food up. The challenge is, and this is what you're bringing up,

00:15:55.660 is that at first, when we train the body to eat the food that's coming in, so we eat on a very regular

00:16:03.100 cadence. And the body's used to that, it'll actually become what's called sort of metabolically inflexible.

00:16:11.480 And this is the more interesting concept than fast or slow metabolism. To me, it's metabolic

00:16:17.140 flexibility. The idea that I could not eat for an entire day, let's say, and instead of getting low

00:16:24.020 blood sugar and feeling really low energy, because my body hasn't yet figured out or upregulated the

00:16:30.080 pathways to eat the food that's already on me, I'll actually do that. You know, so one of the best

00:16:37.140 ways to actually teach metabolic flexibility to the body is systematically over time doing extended

00:16:44.880 fasts. So let's say you normally only fast for 10 hours with an overnight sleep. Well, then you might

00:16:51.240 push it to 11 or 12 and then 13 or 14 and then 15 or 16, not as a life project, but as a training

00:16:58.000 program, a short-term training program for metabolic flexibility. So your body starts to learn, oh,

00:17:04.180 when I don't get external food coming in my mouth, I can just upregulate certain hormones and certain

00:17:10.520 enzymes so that I can eat the food that's already on me. So, you know, like we talked about last time

00:17:16.820 on the podcast, you know, intermittent fasting does all these things, you know, some good, some not so

00:17:22.500 good, depending on the person and the goal and the conditions. But one of the things that I think it

00:17:27.460 can do not as a lifestyle choice, but just as a training program, it can help with this metabolic

00:17:32.200 flexibility thing and teach the body, hey, if carbs are coming in, I can use those. If fats are coming 0.81

00:17:38.000 in, I can use those. If nothing's coming in, I've got loads of carbs and fats on my body already. I can

00:17:44.540 just use those. And so one of the things I often hear when people think about, let's say, skipping

00:17:49.960 breakfast is I get way too hypoglycemic and I feel terrible. And that makes sense. If you are on a

00:17:57.320 program of eating frequently, your body doesn't know how to tap into the stored food that's

00:18:02.400 already on it. So we train it and then it becomes a choice, not necessarily that I want everyone to

00:18:08.340 do that, but it becomes an option. You could skip breakfast or not. Well, let's talk about diet and

00:18:13.320 metabolism and weight loss because when someone needs to lose weight, the first thing they think

00:18:17.740 is, well, I got to reduce the amount of food I eat. And as you mentioned earlier, that will work,

00:18:22.760 you'll lose weight, but then you'll reach a point where it no longer works. So what's going

00:18:27.780 on in our body? Is it because our body is smaller, it requires less calories, so it's not burning?

00:18:34.040 You're no longer in a calorie deficit? Yeah. Well, that's it. Most people think it's that

00:18:39.440 dieting itself slows down the metabolism. So when I eat less food, I burn fewer calories.

00:18:45.780 And that's true for some people and not true for others, but even for the people it's true for,

00:18:54.120 it's probably largely irrelevant. So, I mean, there's been some studies showing that there's

00:18:59.120 folks with what's called sort of a thrifty or a spend thrift metabolisms. So the first study I saw on

00:19:07.320 this was where they took a big group of individuals and they overfed them. So they put them on a weight

00:19:14.040 gain diet. And I think it was 1000 extra calories a day. So that would accumulate calories pretty quick

00:19:22.320 and you'd gain weight pretty fast. And so what they found at the end of this sort of 12 week period of

00:19:29.720 overfeeding was that there was a group of people that gained almost no weight. And there was a group

00:19:35.560 of people that gained like 35 pounds. And so when they looked at them, you know, they had to sort of

00:19:42.600 look at, you know, matching on body size and reported caloric intake and activity levels.

00:19:49.260 They were like, it doesn't make sense why this group would gain no weight. I mean, we overfed them

00:19:54.880 a lot of calories over the course of this, this protocol. And what they concluded was that,

00:20:00.380 and then subsequent studies sort of back this up was that there was a type of metabolism that was

00:20:05.620 called spendthrift. So as these people ate more, they found ways to burn more calories in the day.

00:20:13.020 So they may have done more purposeful activity, but most of it probably came from meat, this non-intentional

00:20:20.520 activity. So fidgeting, walking around, you know, I often think about this, like you ever seen people

00:20:26.360 who take a phone call and they just pace while they're talking on the phone, right? Well, that's an

00:20:30.720 example of neat, right? They're not, they're not, I'm going to exercise now, right? But they just

00:20:35.680 walk, they walk five miles while they do an hour long phone conversation, uh, where others may be

00:20:41.120 sitting down for that whole conversation. And that matters in terms of the accumulation of energy

00:20:46.380 expenditure. So that's what these sort of spendthrift people do where the thrifty people didn't upregulate

00:20:52.700 at all. So the same thing happens in the case of weight loss. There are some people when they lower

00:20:59.600 their calorie intake, their calorie burn stays the same when adjusted for their new body weight.

00:21:06.480 There's others that when they lower their energy intake, they burn fewer calories when adjusted for

00:21:12.840 activity levels. But as you said, and as we talked about earlier, most of the effect when you're

00:21:20.200 quote unquote dieting happens from weight loss, you lose weight and you burn fewer calories just moving

00:21:28.540 around. So every step you take costs less because of the weight loss. So it has very little to do with

00:21:34.540 dieting, slowing down our metabolism. Although for some people that might be a small difference,

00:21:40.200 it's mostly the weight loss that sort of makes it more efficient to move around. And that's why that

00:21:49.320 weighted vesting becomes so interesting for some people, right? If you, if that weight loss is what

00:21:54.680 causes this enhanced difficulty with subsequent weight loss, then replacing that body weight should

00:22:00.440 help.

00:22:00.680 Well, so apart from putting on a weight vest, I mean, the other option is once you reach that

00:22:06.200 plateau is you just have to reduce calories a bit more in order to keep weight loss going.

00:22:11.300 Yeah. So either exercise a bit more or reduce calories a bit more. Yes.

00:22:14.680 But there's only so far you can go that, right? You can only drive down the amount of calories you

00:22:19.420 consume so much before like you're not eating anything.

00:22:21.740 Yeah, that's right. Or, or what happens much more frequently is that your hunger signals get so

00:22:29.180 intense that it's impossible to sustain that calorie deficit. Now there are competitive

00:22:36.020 bodybuilders, for example, who put themselves on like a 12 or 16 week diet that, and they have

00:22:42.740 tremendous discipline and they have lots of practice doing this. They've done it time and time again.

00:22:47.360 And so during that time, they will continually reduce calorie intake until, you know, maybe a

00:22:52.660 200 pound guy is eating like 1200 calories a day and exercising daily. And so they'll do it and

00:23:00.220 they'll do the exact thing that we just talked about, but it's impossible to sustain. And most of these

00:23:06.760 people will gain 30 pounds in the next two weeks after their contest is over because hunger signals go

00:23:12.720 through the roof. It's just impossible to maintain this kind of deficit over time as a real human

00:23:20.740 being living in a real world full of food options, you know? So as you say, it just, it's not reasonable

00:23:27.480 to continue to drive calorie reductions, you know, after a certain point. And people are always looking

00:23:34.400 for what that number is. It's impossible to come up with that number. The research hasn't come up with a

00:23:39.120 number. People have, again, different metabolic rates. They have different body sizes. They have

00:23:44.500 different levels of physical activity. There's no number we can say, oh, below a thousand calories is

00:23:49.700 when it gets unhealthy or dangerous or whatever. Those numbers are all made up. It just really,

00:23:55.960 I think we have to think pragmatically and say below the level of caloric deficit or below a certain level

00:24:03.500 for you personally, you just will be so hungry all the time that you're going to make up calories

00:24:09.980 somehow, you know? And I remember I wrote an article a while back about this. I went, I was at an event

00:24:16.600 in Arizona and I went out for a meal at the cheesecake factory. And I remember like looking at the menu

00:24:22.520 because they had just started to include caloric values on the menu. And I was like, wow, there's,

00:24:27.900 there's a lot of calories in this cheesecake, right? So I ordered a meal off their healthy menu.

00:24:34.120 So it had the little lettuce leaf next to it or whatever. And so it was like a light pasta with

00:24:39.340 vegetables and chicken in it. And then I had a piece of cheesecake for dessert. So this wasn't an

00:24:44.300 extravagant meal. It was a healthy offering at cheesecake factory plus a piece of cheesecake.

00:24:49.920 And then they hadn't listed the cheesecake calories. So when I went home, I looked it up online

00:24:54.980 and I realized I had eaten something like 3,800 calories in that meal. Wow. So I know. So I was

00:25:04.660 like, okay, imagine that you were wanting to lose weight and you're quote unquote eating in a energy

00:25:12.760 deficit. And so over the course of, you know, five, six days of the week. So let's say you went out for

00:25:21.100 cheesecake factory on Sunday. So the previous six days, you were in a 500 calorie a day deficit,

00:25:27.120 which should accumulate good weight loss over time. That would be 3000 calorie deficit. And then on 0.90

00:25:34.940 Sunday, you're like, you know what? I'm not going to have a cheap day. I'm just going to have one cheap

00:25:38.920 meal and I'll choose something healthy and just have that one piece of cheesecake. That one meal

00:25:44.220 obliterate your entire week of calorie deficit. It's sad and disheartening, but it actually shows

00:25:52.180 the reality of how easy it is to accumulate extra calories. Even when you've, you know, let's say

00:25:59.220 you eat three meals a day over seven days, that's 21 meals. 20 out of 21 meals were great. That one

00:26:08.900 meal obliterated the rest. That's how sensitive this system is. But I mean, there's, there's some

00:26:16.300 great ways to not obliterate it and to make thoughtful choices in a way that you can see consistent weight

00:26:24.720 loss. Well, I think understanding that as you get, as you lose weight, your body requires less calories

00:26:32.200 to, to function can explain like the, sort of the phenomenon of yo-yo dieting. You know, people

00:26:37.220 they'll, they'll say they lose 15 pounds. Like, well, I lost 15 pounds. I can go back and like,

00:26:42.980 I can eat, like I can eat good food again, but it's like, no, you can't because your body requires less

00:26:48.080 calories because it's smaller. And so if you go back to eating like how you did when you weighed 15

00:26:53.280 pounds heavier, you're going to gain 15 pounds again. That's right. And, and maybe even a little bit

00:26:58.020 extra, you know, because if you lost the weight by being pretty restrictive, then rarely do people

00:27:03.900 go back to eating normal after they've been on a calorie deficit. What they do is they go back to

00:27:09.980 eating normal plus 10 or 20%. And that if you track people's intake, that's exactly what happens. They

00:27:17.120 eat at 80% of normal for a while, they lose the 15 pounds. And then when they quote unquote,

00:27:22.700 go back to normal, there's a, there's an overcompensation. And so that's why they end up

00:27:27.860 gaining back the 15 plus a little bit of extra. Like you said, there's less metabolic cost now.

00:27:33.380 And now they're eating well over their needs, even higher than they would have been eating before.

00:27:40.140 And so this is, this is why yo-yo dieting happens. And it's why the cliche exists. You know,

00:27:45.480 this has to become some kind of set of lifestyle choices rather than a short-term weight manipulation

00:27:52.140 strategy. Right. So don't, instead of thinking diet, think of, okay, well, how am I going to eat

00:27:56.460 to, to, to get the goal is to, to maintain the weight I want to keep or whatever.

00:28:01.620 Yeah. And, and, and, you know, the, the thing I often say about this, especially to people new to

00:28:06.640 maybe trying to, you know, manipulate their body or improve their health is that often people,

00:28:12.220 they overestimate how hard it's going to be and they underestimate how long it's going to take.

00:28:18.980 So, you know, this idea of making smarter eating and exercise decisions as a lifestyle choice,

00:28:25.000 it seems in your mind when you don't know what the strategies are yet, like it's going to be really

00:28:30.720 hard, but it's actually not. There's just small interventions that you can do. It's just going

00:28:36.680 to take a long period of time and you have to be consistent with those, you know?

00:28:42.580 And you mentioned, so instead of letting that cheesecake factory meal ruin a week worth of

00:28:49.140 thing, like how can you still enjoy and have, you know, enjoy food, like say a cheesecake,

00:28:53.300 but not let it completely derail what you've, you know, whatever progress you made.

00:28:58.860 Mm-hmm. Well, I think, you know, as we start thinking about the different factors that can

00:29:05.940 contribute to, let's say sort of weight loss and improvements of health, you know, we have to look

00:29:11.800 at this combination of exercise, you know, nutrition, sleep, and stress management. These

00:29:19.460 four things all have to be accounted for or else one or more of them is going to sabotage the work

00:29:25.440 on the other. So one way to not have one piece of cheesecake, quote unquote, sabotage your diet for

00:29:31.340 the week is that you have enough exercise caloric expenditure over the course of the week that it's not

00:29:37.900 a problem. And, you know, if you do have one week that you're in calorie maintenance, let's say,

00:29:45.360 because you ate cheesecake, it's okay because the next week you'll be in a deficit. So usually I like

00:29:51.920 to really build out someone's thinking around this by looking at the specific strategies around

00:29:57.640 exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management. We can get into them when you want, but that can help

00:30:02.860 contribute to this in the long run so that a piece of cheesecake will be irrelevant.

00:30:07.160 Gotcha. Well, let's talk about exercise and its role in metabolism. So there's resting

00:30:11.560 metabolic rate, nothing really we can do to change that. There's the neat, but we can manage or have

00:30:16.840 control over our exercise. So are there types of exercise that are really good at revving up our

00:30:21.880 metabolism, causing us to expend more energy? Yeah. I mean, my favorite recommendation here is sort

00:30:29.780 of mixed modal exercise. And, you know, it's kind of a technical industry term, but it basically means

00:30:36.060 each week you should do some strength training. So some weights, whether it's with body weight or

00:30:41.640 whether it's with external loads, irrelevant, you should do some kind of interval training.

00:30:46.140 So people have called it a hit or high intensity interval training, but, you know, we don't have

00:30:51.140 to use the conventional methods of doing that. I mean, this could be sprint, go out on the road,

00:30:55.920 sprint one mailbox to the next, walk the next mailbox, sprint the next one. You can do, it could be on a

00:31:01.100 rowing machine. It could be with a kettlebell. There's all kinds of ways of doing high intensity

00:31:06.000 exercise. And then the third would be a low intensity mode for, you know, an aerobic type

00:31:11.860 of exercise. And it could be even less than what you're thinking of as aerobic right now. It could

00:31:17.540 be just going for a walk a few nights a week. So the idea would be that nearly every day you're doing

00:31:23.820 some kind of activity. That doesn't mean going to the gym. I could just be a walk outside, but,

00:31:29.600 you know, over the course of a week or two, even you will have mixed modes. So the strength training

00:31:37.680 will help with building strength, confidence, physical capacity, muscle mass, and it'll burn

00:31:44.240 some calories. The high intensity interval training will create a different set of compensations in

00:31:50.900 the body, all really, really positive, but we'll also burn some calories during the activity and will

00:31:56.560 cause, you know, a small, but not insignificant increase in energy expenditure over the next few

00:32:03.240 hours after the activity. And then your sort of low intensity sort of walks or bike rides or those

00:32:10.960 kinds of things will help accumulate again, more physical capacities. But one of the other things I

00:32:16.440 like about this is that it creates what's what we call sort of like a parasympathetic to sympathetic

00:32:22.600 balance. If all your activity is very high intensity, it engages your sympathetic nervous

00:32:29.920 system, which is kind of like your fight or flight nervous system. It produces a lot of epinephrine and

00:32:34.900 norepinephrine. And too much of that creates too much stress in the body. So that's not to say do less of

00:32:43.480 that kind of activity. It's to say balance it with parasympathetic activity, which is low intensity,

00:32:50.240 stuff that gets your heart rate going, but not super, not super hard. It doesn't cause muscle

00:32:55.260 damage. So, you know, if you're thinking about, okay, I want to get in shape or, you know, lose

00:33:01.300 weight or whatever the case may be, I'm going to start exercising. The direction you need to go is I

00:33:07.260 have to find a way to get these three things in and they have all kinds of different benefits,

00:33:11.780 but they all work together to create this effect that I'm looking for. And part of it also isn't just,

00:33:18.000 I need to burn calories. It's also these physical capacities, but also body remodeling. You know,

00:33:24.460 most people, if they lost 20 pounds, but had the same shape that they have right now would not be

00:33:30.840 happy with that transformation. So what they actually want is a body remodeling. You know,

00:33:37.180 they want some of the fat around their waist and other areas to reduce, and they want some of the lean

00:33:44.020 in let's say their shoulders or their thighs or whatever to increase. And that's a remodeling 1.00

00:33:48.820 process that can only happen with mixed modal exercise. So that's how we build it out. And again,

00:33:55.820 depending on your preferences, that mix can be different. I prefer strength training personally.

00:34:01.660 So I do more of that than the others, but I still include the others. If walking is what you prefer,

00:34:07.780 do more of that. And then just include one of each of the others in a week.

00:34:10.960 So we can work with preferences for sure.

00:34:14.540 Well, let's talk about strength training. So strength training, one thing it does,

00:34:17.540 it helps increase muscle mass. Is there anything to the idea that increased muscle mass

00:34:22.980 makes you more metabolically active or you expend more energy?

00:34:27.540 Well, there's a whole bunch of things. Like if we ask certain questions, we'll get answers to them.

00:34:35.820 Whether those answers matter or not is irrelevant, or whether those answers matter or not is

00:34:40.420 important. So this is one of those examples. So gaining muscle mass increases metabolic rate

00:34:46.740 is true, but it just increases it to such a small extent that it may not be relevant.

00:34:53.620 There's another thing that people often ask foods. Are there foods that speed up the metabolism?

00:34:58.780 Yes, there are. Protein versus carbs and fats increases metabolic total daily energy expenditure.

00:35:07.700 Chili pepper, chili pepper, spicy foods do caffeine containing foods, cacao. They all do, but they're

00:35:14.340 probably not worth talking about because the effect of exercise, proper calorie balance in a week,

00:35:23.760 sleep and stress management are so big compared to these minute things. It would be like dropping

00:35:32.700 one drop of red dye into a huge lake. Does the red dye dye the lake red? Well, it adds red to the lake,

00:35:42.800 but it doesn't dye the lake red. So increased muscle mass, chili peppers, caffeine containing foods,

00:35:51.420 do they speed up the metabolism? Yes, but at the same magnitude of one drop of red dye into a big lake.

00:35:58.580 Okay. So that's good to know because don't obsess about those little minutiae.

00:36:03.020 Just eat right. Don't overeat if you're trying to lose weight or maintain weight and make sure you

00:36:08.700 mix up your exercise so you hit all those different modalities and be consistent with it. If you do

00:36:14.100 those things, you're going to be in pretty good shape. Yeah, completely. Well, let's talk about the

00:36:18.500 role of stress that it plays in our metabolism. So what role does stress play in our metabolism?

00:36:23.640 Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting because stress has such important negative effects

00:36:30.960 on health and weight management, but it really doesn't have much impact on, let's say, total

00:36:35.860 daily energy expenditure. So it's probably not going to shift our energy expenditure too much,

00:36:42.120 but when we're under psychological or physiological stress, so it could be too much exercise, too little

00:36:48.320 food. It could be emotional stress at work or in a relationship. It increases our cortisol,

00:36:55.740 which is our stress hormone, which breaks down parts of the body. It increases our sympathetic

00:37:00.900 nervous system activation, our epinephrine release. So what we find is that people under long-term stress

00:37:08.500 have known outcomes. They gain more central weight, which is sort of where you gain fat around your

00:37:16.220 organs. And that's the most unhealthy kind of fat to have. It causes insulin resistance and increased

00:37:21.700 blood pressure. And those are the very physical changes. It also causes cravings. I mean, the

00:37:28.100 research shows over and over again, when people are under psychological stress, they end up eating more

00:37:33.180 foods that we consider foods that you should reduce. It causes problems with sleep. And then there's

00:37:39.940 the social outcomes like social withdrawal and depression, and there's immune and hormonal changes.

00:37:44.320 So one of the great books on this subject is called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. And for people who are 0.98

00:37:51.400 really interested in this, that book sort of covers it all. And it's really a fascinating trip through

00:37:56.720 the often unexpected effects of stress on all the different systems of the body. So while it's not

00:38:04.420 necessarily like a potent energy expenditure disruptor, it can disrupt metabolic health

00:38:11.880 through all the mechanisms that I just talked about.

00:38:15.600 Yeah. I've, I had this weird experience that my recent training cycle, I think it might've been

00:38:20.800 stress-related. I'd love to get your input on this. So in July, I went on vacation to Vermont. It was a

00:38:26.780 working vacation, but I did plenty of hiking out in the woods. I was swimming in cold creeks. It was

00:38:32.120 fantastic. I get back in August and I started a new cycle and it was just going great. And I had to keep

00:38:38.740 bumping up my calories because I was just super hungry at night. So every week I kept bumping them up

00:38:44.540 and going, but still hungry. And then it got to the point where I was like consuming 4,100 calories a day

00:38:50.360 and I wasn't gaining weight. I was just feeling great. Everything was awesome. And then I hit this

00:38:55.400 like, like middle of September, I hit this patch with work where things just got really stressful

00:38:59.780 and I kept to maintain my caloric intake, maintain the same activity level, but I just, it was just,

00:39:05.960 I didn't, wasn't sleeping well. I was not feeling good, stressed. And then like a week later, two weeks

00:39:10.720 later, I started noticing I was getting pudgier. My face was getting fatter. My, the, my waist was

00:39:15.840 getting bigger. And I, so I, so I had to start reducing calories to, you know, to offset. So I don't know

00:39:22.460 if it was the stress, but something, it was just a weird thing to see happen where I could like

00:39:26.640 consume a ton of calories and not gain weight. But there was reached a point where I got stressed

00:39:31.580 and then that stopped working and I had to adjust. And yeah, you know, the important thing is then,

00:39:37.780 then we unpack, like, were you gaining weight or was your body comp shifting? Right. And I mean,

00:39:43.740 there's, there's a, the explanation for this is fairly easy unless it's something uncommon,

00:39:49.460 you know, like as stress accumulates, we produce more cortisol and cortisol actually can cause water

00:39:57.400 retention. So it's one of the known effects, like an over production of cortisol is called

00:40:02.780 Cushing syndrome. And it's described by this sort of very round what people have called sort of moon

00:40:08.460 face, which is just a tremendous, like abnormal water retention. So again, sometimes it's really hard

00:40:16.420 in the course of an individual personal life to figure out what's happening. You start to feel

00:40:21.360 and look pudgy and you're like, oh, I'm gaining fat, but it could not be fat at all. It could just

00:40:25.520 be water weight. And that's usually the first thing that happens in a quick kind of situation over the

00:40:31.980 course of a week or two where you're like, oh man, I don't know what's happening, but I look terrible

00:40:36.460 and oh, I have stress and I've got a lot of training load and all that. And so, I mean, it's,

00:40:42.580 it's a great, it's also a great example of how delicate sort of the stress recovery balance is,

00:40:50.520 right? I mean, you're training awesome. You're eating a lot of calories. Life is good in that

00:40:56.120 zone. If you love training, you're probably getting stronger and, but you're only like one

00:41:02.100 hair's width away from the wheels falling off the system, you know? And, and that could be this

00:41:08.780 like psychological stress at work or just simply not even like something causing anxiety, but it

00:41:15.840 could just be extra load. So you're just, you're like, things are great, but I'm just doing more.

00:41:20.720 And then you get that sort of predictable feeling where you're like, oh, I'm not feeling as great

00:41:25.900 as I was. I am looking weird. Emotionally, things are different. And so that's why like, you know,

00:41:33.100 it's, it's one of the reasons as I've gotten older, I've undulated my training. So for the people who

00:41:37.760 are very into training, you know, this is sort of like an advanced strategy when things are going

00:41:43.660 as great as you described, when you got back from vacation, I know right around the corner,

00:41:50.560 what you described later is going to happen. So I actually undulate my training. So I, I modulate

00:41:56.860 my volume over four week periods so that during any four weeks, I only have one very, very, let's say

00:42:05.980 high intensity week one, just below that one in the middle and one very low. So even if I don't

00:42:13.200 think I need it, my training's undulating so that I'm not always that one hair it's width away from

00:42:19.380 breakdown. You know what I mean? I know what you mean, man, but I really miss those days when I

00:42:23.800 eat 4,100 calories. I was, I was, I was able to eat like two little Debbie brownies and not feel bad

00:42:29.640 about it. It was, it was wonderful, but yeah, easy come, easy go. We'll get back there again

00:42:35.580 sometime, you know? So you also mentioned sleep plays a role in our metabolism. I imagine that's

00:42:40.760 just goes to stress management, recovery, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, I mean, the simple sleep deficit

00:42:48.260 causes some interesting challenges. You know, I have a friend who's a sleep expert at UCLA and,

00:42:55.580 you know, I, I love unpacking some of this with her because it's so fascinating to see what the

00:43:00.060 research is saying in this area, but altered processing of glucose in the body, increased

00:43:05.800 stress and sympathetic nervous system activation, risk of obesity and diet. It's the same things as,

00:43:11.660 as stress. And I think they play a role in each other. Oftentimes when we have an upregulation of

00:43:17.060 stress, we have a really difficult time sleeping. And then that difficult time sleeping creates more

00:43:22.560 stress. So it becomes that kind of cycle and then vice versa. Sometimes when we're not getting

00:43:27.160 enough sleep, we get really stressed about it. And then that stress causes the problems of stress.

00:43:31.420 And then that causes more sleep deficit, but it's all wrapped up. Like when you don't have

00:43:36.640 strategies and this, the one thing I hate is, is the conclusion is then be less stressed or sleep

00:43:43.380 more. Well, those aren't strategies. Those are, you know, that's just finger wagging. So I'd love to talk

00:43:49.160 about some of the things about that, but yeah, I mean, ultimately neither of them has dramatic

00:43:54.560 effects on our total daily energy expenditure, but what they do is shift how we metabolize nutrients,

00:44:01.660 the hormonal status of our body, the immune system status of our body. We all know like stress and

00:44:08.660 sleep deprivation leads to often a lot of people getting sick more frequently. So all these things

00:44:14.840 are happening. And I mean, you can't have good workouts and you can't make good choices at the

00:44:20.900 dinner table when you're stressed and you have a sleep deficit. So, you know, I think when it comes

00:44:28.500 to weight gain, you know, this is the primary driver. It's behavioral stress and sleep deficits

00:44:35.560 lead to behavioral changes that then cause you to be out of energy balance. But then there's obviously

00:44:41.240 the hormonal stuff happening too, which I don't think is as powerful a driver of, you know,

00:44:47.360 some kind of magical internal system being broken and causing magical fat gain. It's usually hormones

00:44:53.960 then drive certain behaviors that make you eat more or burn less.

00:44:59.520 So listening to this conversation made me think of this idea of people have like, oh, I'm getting older.

00:45:04.900 My metabolism is just slowing down. That's part of life. But it sounds like it's not so much the fact

00:45:10.280 of getting older caused your metabolism to slow down. It's that as you get older, you probably

00:45:14.100 move less. You're probably eating more. You're probably more stressed because you've got all

00:45:18.940 those other commitments going on. And as long as you take care of some of that stuff, your metabolism

00:45:23.820 can be just as fine as it was when you were 30 or 20.

00:45:27.960 Yeah. I mean, and most, it's just so hard to remember, isn't it? You know, people will say,

00:45:33.240 well, you know, now that I'm in my forties, my metabolism slowed down. I'm not less active. I actually

00:45:38.420 go to the gym now and I didn't in my twenties. And so it has to be something about my metabolism,

00:45:43.980 but it's just so hard to remember. You know, I don't know if you ever watched that show Explained

00:45:49.800 on Netflix that Vox puts out, but it's excellent. They do these 20 minute episodes on various topics

00:45:57.480 and they just did one called Explain the Mind and it was on memory. And it's just so fascinating at how

00:46:04.240 bad we are remembering, you know, even Daniel Gilbert's work on happiness, you know, he basically

00:46:10.160 talks about how people are terrible at remembering how we felt about things in the past, even the

00:46:18.180 activities themselves. And we're even worse at predicting how we'll feel about things in the

00:46:22.800 future. So the idea that I'm going to come up with a story that somehow I remember what I was up to

00:46:29.400 25 years ago when I was in my early twenties. And I can compare that accurately to how I am now in my

00:46:36.820 late forties. It's folly. So as you described, I mean, the metabolism generally isn't slowing down

00:46:44.240 as we age, unless we lose body mass, lean mass, or we do less physical activity, which for a lot of

00:46:51.240 people, and again, it's not just going to the gym. It's all the activities of daily living,

00:46:56.400 you know? So if we account for those, if we maintain or build lean mass, if we find ways to

00:47:06.000 do more activity, if we take care of our sleep and stress management, then body weight and metabolic

00:47:12.080 things should not be a problem as we get older, at least, you know, as we talk about the management

00:47:17.220 of body composition and body weight. So let's talk about what are people, what are things that people

00:47:22.360 can do after listening to this episode to, I don't know, they can't control completely their

00:47:27.340 metabolism, but take more control over their metabolism. Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about

00:47:32.880 metabolism, the only thing is that we can drive is the activity piece, right? But when we talk about

00:47:39.240 sort of getting in shape, then again, it's these sort of four things we need to look at exercise,

00:47:44.580 right? So mixed modal exercise, do something daily, doesn't always have to be a workout,

00:47:49.980 right? So, and it's something with an interval sort of component to it. It's hard for a bit,

00:47:56.500 you rest for a bit, hard for a bit, rest for a bit. Sometimes when I travel, I just go to a hotel

00:48:01.120 gym, I get on the treadmill, I put it at a fast pace, I run for 30 seconds, then I jump off it for

00:48:07.000 30 seconds. And I do that like 10 times, you know, it lasts five minutes. It's really hard,

00:48:13.660 but it's only five minutes. And then, so there's your intervals. Then you do some kind of strength

00:48:18.860 training, and then you do some kind of, you know, parasympathetic recovery, go for a hike in nature,

00:48:25.380 go for a walk around the neighborhood, you know, go for a bike ride, that kind of stuff.

00:48:30.560 So that's the first component, right? People have to get this into their lives. If you want weight

00:48:34.660 management and body composition as part of your goal set, you have to do mixed modal exercise like

00:48:41.560 this. The second thing is, let's talk about sleep, right? Progressively moving toward eight hours a

00:48:46.880 night. All the research suggests that, you know, less than that is too little. And it doesn't matter

00:48:53.560 how individually special you think you are. If you're doing some kind of weird sleep protocol,

00:48:58.060 where you think you can get away with five hours a night, the research shows again and again and

00:49:02.140 again, physiologically, that close to eight hours a night is ideal. If you're a parent with young

00:49:07.800 kids, I get it. You're not going to be getting that. We have four children at home. I understand.

00:49:11.940 Okay. But I'm not saying go to eight hours tonight. I'm saying progressively move towards

00:49:17.740 every few extra minutes that you can get versus what you're getting now helps. And how do you

00:49:23.860 create that with better bedtime routines? So, you know, are you winding down? Are you getting off

00:49:29.300 electronics or are you avoiding caffeine? Are you doing, uh, avoiding the foods that can keep you

00:49:34.200 up at night? Are you doing a brain dump before you go to bed to get out all the thoughts that,

00:49:39.380 well, I got to remember this tomorrow and that tomorrow. Well, if you write it down,

00:49:42.340 you don't have to remember it. You don't have to think about it while you're laying in bed.

00:49:45.760 Are you doing breathing? Are you doing mindfulness? Are you doing meditation type stuff as you lead up

00:49:50.880 to this to clear your mind? Are you setting the temperature correctly in your room for a lot of

00:49:56.040 people simply lowering the temperature of their bed or their bedroom to mid sixties, low sixties can make

00:50:04.520 a big difference in their ability to fall and stay asleep. This last year, I bought this

00:50:09.140 device called a chili pad, but you just lay under the fitted sheet in your bed and you can control

00:50:14.180 the exact temperature of the bed. And there's two, two zones where if your partner needs to sleep at a

00:50:19.260 different temperature than you, you can. And so I sleep at like 55 degrees. That's that's so I can

00:50:25.720 actually tuck under the covers and I can go totally dark, like cover up my head with my blanket and my

00:50:31.340 sheet go totally dark. But the bed is my side of the beds kept at 55 degrees. It's amazing.

00:50:38.540 You know, there's things like CBD and other things people are doing for sleep. So these are all just

00:50:43.300 options I throw out there as you progressively move towards trying to get more hours of sleep in a

00:50:48.620 night, stress, stress management. One of the top things people can do counterbalance all your

00:50:54.240 sympathetic activity with parasympathetic. So sympathetic is high intensity exercise. It's stress

00:51:00.560 at work. It's all that kind of stuff. So what will you do to counterbalance it? You know, going for a walk

00:51:06.640 in nature, going for a walk outside, listening to music, having a bath at night, ways to wind down

00:51:15.620 and get this sort of sympathetic is usually called your fight or flight system and parasympathetic is

00:51:21.620 called your rest and digest system. So trying to activate that rest and digest system, you know,

00:51:27.580 a long time ago, you know, even before the current sort of resurgence of cannabis research and things

00:51:34.320 like that, you know, a group of athletes I was working with, strength and power athletes were

00:51:40.120 using cannabis regularly. And most of the coaches, most of their coaches would sort of judge that

00:51:46.680 behavior as sort of morally wrong. And I was just really curious why they were doing it because they

00:51:52.760 were doing it so regularly and they kept talking about how it enhanced their training. And so when

00:51:58.880 we unpacked that, Oh, I realized, Oh, this isn't, it's not that this is a magical ingredient in your

00:52:05.860 training protocol. This was just the only parasympathetic activity you were doing your

00:52:11.180 only rest and digest activity. So I was like, okay, cool. Maybe we don't need to smoke weed every night,

00:52:16.700 guys. Maybe we can do these other strategies to counterbalance our sympathetic nervous system.

00:52:21.200 And so that's our stress management part. And then on the nutrition side, I mean, the interventions

00:52:27.560 for most people are fairly straightforward. Most people starting to pay attention to this for the

00:52:32.240 first time have a bunch of what we'll call subclinical deficiencies. So they won't be getting

00:52:37.700 enough protein. They won't be getting enough omega-3 fats. They won't be getting enough water and they

00:52:43.440 won't be getting enough vitamins and minerals from their food intake. So then when we correct those,

00:52:49.320 and then we find strategies to not eat too much, usually people are able to manage their

00:52:55.680 body composition. Well, now there's so many ideas. We could do a whole nother podcast on,

00:53:00.520 you know, low carb versus moderate carb, keto and paleo and plant-based eating and all that stuff.

00:53:08.540 But I think most of them work because when you pay attention to what you're eating and you set up a

00:53:14.180 bunch of rules, those rules prevent you from eating too much. And if you have a book to sell,

00:53:21.480 that's a really short book. So you have to then talk about why plant-based does X, Y, and Z

00:53:26.780 physiologically, or why all meat does X, Y, and Z physiologically. But I think the biggest driver,

00:53:34.900 because we know people who eat, let's say keto, and we know people who eat plant-based.

00:53:39.780 And in both cases, there are people who look great, feel great, perform great on either one

00:53:45.700 of those. So we have to look at what's common between them. And what's common is that both of

00:53:50.740 them help prevent eating too much. So whatever strategy you use, I mean, we often teach people

00:53:57.140 to just get really in tune with their hunger and appetite awareness. So we do that by having them

00:54:02.500 practice for a week or two eating slowly. And it's not a life practice necessarily, although for some

00:54:08.120 people it needs to be, but it's a practice to start to get in tune with our appetite cues and then eat

00:54:14.160 until satisfied, not stuffed. So that's the next practice we do for another week or two. And we

00:54:19.000 train people on what stuffed feels like, what satisfied feels like, what's still a little hungry

00:54:24.520 feels like. And we help them get into that zone where they're paying attention. And then once their

00:54:30.080 protein, omega-3s, water, and vitamin intake is good from eating lots of fruits and vegetables,

00:54:36.580 then when they can just regulate through eating till satisfied, not stuffed. And again,

00:54:42.560 it takes a while to practice this and learn the skill, then we don't need to count a lot of things

00:54:47.500 or restrict a lot of things. So whether this is a metabolic health protocol or not, it has a lot to do

00:54:54.420 with weight management, body composition. So again, exercise, mixed modal, sleep, any extra minutes

00:55:04.460 are positive, stress, you got to find something parasympathetic to do in your life. And then

00:55:10.120 nutrition, get rid of those four basic deficiencies and find ways not to eat too much. I mean, this is

00:55:15.940 the prescription for anyone who wants to look, feel, and perform better.

00:55:21.120 Well, John, where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:55:23.480 So if you're listening and you want to check out strategies, articles for looking, feeling,

00:55:31.240 and performing better, as I just mentioned, we have over a thousand of them for free at

00:55:35.480 precisionnutrition.com. So if you're kind of looking for having all your nutrition questions answered,

00:55:42.780 we've probably answered every question you could possibly have. What do you think about dairy? What

00:55:47.440 do you think about keto? What about plant-based diets? How do I lower my blood pressure? How do I lose 20

00:55:52.600 pounds? We've written about that definitive research-based evidence-based articles. So you can come to

00:55:58.380 precisionnutrition.com. And then my newest project is actually for people who work in health and fitness

00:56:03.560 or who want to, it's called the Changemaker Academy. So it's changemakeracademy.com. And so, you know, I wrote

00:56:11.180 a new book for people working in health and fitness or who want to, to help them turn their passion for

00:56:17.180 health and fitness into a meaningful purpose and a successful career. And it's called Changemaker.

00:56:22.600 And so if people pop over to changemakeracademy.com, they can download a free sample of the book.

00:56:28.900 And so those are the two places people can come check me out.

00:56:31.440 All right. Well, John Berardi, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:56:33.520 Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate you having me. And I hope everyone who spent the time with us

00:56:37.400 learned a little bit today, not only just learning, but they have some next actions that can make a

00:56:42.380 difference in their lives.

00:56:43.620 My guest today was John Berardi. He's the owner of Precision Nutrition. Check out

00:56:47.180 precisionnutrition.com where you can find out more about the services there, as well as lots of free

00:56:50.840 content about diet and nutrition. Also check out his website, johnberardi.com, where you can learn

00:56:54.880 more about his new book, Changemaker. It's available on amazon.com. And check out our show notes at

00:56:59.300 aom.is slash metabolism. We're going to find links to resources. We're going to delve deeper into this

00:57:03.520 topic.

00:57:10.960 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

00:57:14.420 artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles we

00:57:18.300 know over the years about nutrition, exercise, got articles about how to dress better, how to be a

00:57:23.100 better husband, better father, you name it, we've got it. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes

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00:57:31.360 code manliness to get a free month trial. Once you're signed up, just download the Stitcher app

00:57:35.340 and you can start enjoying new episodes of the AOM podcast ad-free. And if you haven't done so

00:57:39.420 already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps out a lot.

00:57:43.220 And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family

00:57:46.800 member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:57:50.320 Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what

00:57:54.120 you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 16, 2019

#552： How to Optimize Your Metabolism

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