The Art of Manliness - How to Lose Weight, and Keep It Off Forever

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, it's Brett. We're taking a break from new episodes for the New Year holiday. We'll be

00:00:03.660 back Monday with a brand new episode. We already have lots of episodes planned for January. Can't

00:00:07.700 wait to share those with you until then. Here's a rebroadcast of episode number 475, How to Lose

00:00:12.520 Weight and Keep It Off Forever with Dr. Lane Norton. It's one of our most popular episodes

00:00:16.360 in 2019. Lane is a professional bodybuilder, powerlifter, and also a doctor of nutritional

00:00:20.960 science. And in this episode, he shares research back advice on how to lose weight. So if that's

00:00:25.100 a goal you have for this coming year in 2021, you're going to find this episode extremely

00:00:29.240 useful. See you Monday, and thanks for listening to the show. Have a great new year.

00:00:47.400 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you're like

00:00:51.460 a lot of men listening to this podcast, you've likely made it a goal to lose some weight this

00:00:55.300 year. But if you're also like a lot of men listening to this podcast, you've made that

00:00:58.660 goal before. Maybe even have succeeded with it, but you've had to make it again because

00:01:02.180 you've gained all the weight back. My guest today argues that losing weight is actually

00:01:05.660 pretty easy. The real trick is keeping it off. His name is Lane Norton. He's a professional

00:01:09.720 bodybuilder, powerlifter, and a doctor of nutritional sciences. And today on the show, we discuss all

00:01:14.740 things fat loss. We begin our conversation discussing why losing weight is easier than keeping it off,

00:01:19.060 the mechanisms that kick into gear once we shed body fat that cause us to gain all of it

00:01:23.100 even more back, and why yo-yo dieting is so terrible for you. We then dig into whether there's

00:01:27.880 one diet that's the most effective in helping you lose fat, the tactics you need to use to

00:01:31.800 keep the weight off in the long run, and the real reason exercise plays a role in helping

00:01:35.580 you to do so, which isn't what you think it is. After the show's over, check out our show

00:01:39.380 notes at aom.is slash bio lane. All right, Lane Norton, welcome to the show.

00:01:54.240 Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

00:01:55.880 So you are a pro bodybuilder, powerlifter, but also have your PhD in nutritional sciences.

00:02:02.000 Give us a little background on that, like about not only your career as a pro bodybuilder and

00:02:06.120 powerlifter, but also when did you decide to go for the PhD in nutritional sciences?

00:02:10.800 Well, whenever I introduce myself, I always refer to myself as a meathead who likes science or a

00:02:18.000 science geek who likes lifting heavy things. So depending on my mood that day depends on which

00:02:23.500 one I swing towards. But I would say I've always had an interest in science. And when I was growing

00:02:30.420 up, I wanted to be a marine biologist. And I got picked on a lot in school. So actually like way

00:02:39.620 more than just like everybody went through, you know, getting teased or whatever that's normal.

00:02:44.220 But this was like a whole nother level, you know, in high school and middle school and elementary

00:02:49.680 school, there's like tiers of status. I would have been on that bottom rung of status. So I got pretty,

00:02:58.240 not physically, but like emotionally abused by my peers growing up. And I remembered one summer I was

00:03:04.860 like, I'm tired of doing this. I'm going to do something about it. So I started lifting weights.

00:03:10.780 And, you know, I, my, the idea was I would stop getting bullied and get more attention from girls

00:03:16.440 if I got bigger, cause I was a really skinny kid and lifting weights didn't do either of those two

00:03:20.940 things, but it did. I did fall in love with the process of lifting weights. And, you know, by the

00:03:28.320 time I was getting ready to go to college, I was really in love with bodybuilding and I was reading

00:03:32.940 like flex magazine. Like I remember I have like flex magazines in my backpack going to class. And when I was

00:03:39.780 getting bored in class, I just whip out flex magazine, start reading that. And so by the time

00:03:46.280 I was getting ready to go to college, I was kind of rethinking my idea of being marine biologist come

00:03:52.420 to find out it's very hard to get a job in that. And they pay like, which, you know, money's not

00:03:57.100 everything, but I would have liked to have made a good living, but I would also really like to have

00:04:02.220 done something I'm passionate about. I know, I knew I did not want to do what everybody else was doing.

00:04:06.920 And I came from a small, not a small town, but a modest sized town in the Midwest where

00:04:12.520 it might as well have been on an Island cause nobody left. Like you just grew up. If you went

00:04:18.860 to college, you went to university of Southern Indiana. I grew up in Evansville, Indiana. You

00:04:22.600 went to USI or you went to university of Evansville and that was it. Like if you got fancy, you went

00:04:28.020 to university of Louisville or you went to IU or Purdue or something like that, but you

00:04:33.720 didn't, you didn't leave the Midwest. That was just not something that happened that often. And I just

00:04:39.320 knew that if I didn't leave, I was going to end up like everybody else, just working a kind of, I

00:04:46.940 don't want to say average job or insult people who do that kind of thing, but just your typical nine to

00:04:51.400 five. And I didn't want that for my life. I wanted to do something different. So I decided to go to

00:04:57.320 Eckerd College and I had some really good professors who steered me down the right path. And I still

00:05:02.040 remember my general chemistry professor saying you should do biochemistry because if you still want

00:05:06.660 to do marine science in grad school, it'll be there for you. But if you decide you want to do

00:05:10.500 something different, biochemistry will really set you up for whatever you want to do in science.

00:05:15.300 And so I did that. I changed my major to biochemistry. At the same time, the summer after my first year

00:05:20.100 of college, I did my first bodybuilding show, won the teen division, won the novice division and was

00:05:24.680 completely hooked. And by the time I was a junior in college, I was really convinced that I wanted to make

00:05:31.660 a living in bodybuilding or something to do with bodybuilding. I didn't know how I was going to do

00:05:38.220 it because I didn't want to take steroids. I competed in the natural bodybuilding organization.

00:05:42.300 So I didn't want to do that. You know, no hate to anybody who does. I don't have any disrespect or

00:05:47.560 anything like that. It was more about, I just never felt called to do it. I never felt called to be Mr.

00:05:52.120 Olympia, but I love bodybuilding, but I didn't, I didn't want to take that path personally.

00:05:56.160 So I didn't know how I was going to make a living, but I got to my junior year and I'm like,

00:06:03.440 well, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I know I'm passionate about this thing.

00:06:06.980 I'm not sure how I'm going to make money from it. So how about going to more school?

00:06:11.140 I figured if I had a master's or a PhD, it'd probably help with whatever I wanted to do.

00:06:16.980 So I did exactly that. I applied to different PhD programs.

00:06:20.200 I interviewed at the university of Illinois and Penn state and Cornell. I got accepted

00:06:26.780 and I decided on Illinois because I really vibed with the advisor there, Dr. Don Lehman. And as it

00:06:37.060 turns out, that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made in my life was to go to

00:06:40.500 university of Illinois, which is a great school, really, really strong research and science-based

00:06:47.160 school. And especially for nutrition, they're, they're like top three every year. They're really

00:06:52.280 great nutrition program. And in particular, Dr. Lehman was a fantastic advisor. So he, his specialty

00:06:59.880 was protein metabolism, which doesn't take a difficult kind of stretch to see the connection

00:07:05.300 between bodybuilding and why I want to study protein. And he was always very encouraging of

00:07:09.980 that. He was never ashamed of the fact that I was a meathead, you know, he was very encouraging

00:07:14.380 of that, which I didn't get that vibe with a lot of different professors. A lot of different

00:07:18.600 professors almost seemed like they were ashamed if you were into lifting weights or bodybuilding,

00:07:22.880 but Lehman was never that way. And so I got into that during that time in grad school. I also won

00:07:28.640 my pro card and natural bodybuilding. By the time I graduated, I did my first series of pro shows,

00:07:34.000 my only series of pro shows so far, cause I kind of, I guess I'm like semi-retired now,

00:07:38.780 but won my first pro show and then placed top five and all the other ones. So pretty successful run

00:07:44.900 there. Then during that off season, before that, that, that series, I'd gotten into powerlifting

00:07:50.580 just kind of as a way to keep myself from getting bored in the off season, because if you're doing

00:07:54.000 natural bodybuilding, like you've got to take two, three year off seasons, like you just don't build

00:07:58.580 muscle that fast. That's why I see a lot of these kids out there or, or young guys who compete

00:08:03.400 every year. And you're really like, it's a really terrible idea because you're limiting your growth.

00:08:08.560 So I took a four year off season between when I won my pro card and when I, when I did my first

00:08:12.860 pro shows and it really helped me. But in that time it was, I was finding it hard to stay motivated

00:08:17.340 for training without having something to shoot for. So I decided to start doing some powerlifting meets

00:08:22.120 and it turns out I was pretty good at it. In fact, I'm probably better at that than I was at

00:08:26.460 bodybuilding. So, you know, got really into that one nationals twice, got a silver medal at worlds,

00:08:32.240 won the Arnold set up, well, what was then a squat world record in the IPF, the biggest

00:08:37.420 powerlifting organization in the world. I'm at 668 pounds and yeah, had a pretty good run there and

00:08:43.900 gone through some injuries and kind of rehabbing those right now and trying to come back and do it

00:08:48.420 all over again. And then, yeah, you had your PhD. Right. Yeah. So I finished my PhD in 2010,

00:08:54.840 you know, and during that time, like around circa 2005, I had been writing articles for

00:09:01.720 bodybuilding.com and people had sent me a lot. I get a lot of emails. I was probably getting 20,

00:09:06.760 30 emails a day with people with questions and I loved helping people. I loved it. And I, but I

00:09:12.360 realized, man, I'm spending a lot of time doing this. I'm in grad school now. I've got to get some

00:09:17.360 kind of, you know, compensation for my time. So I started doing online coaching and was one of the

00:09:24.040 first people to kind of do that. This is in 2005. This is before Instagram, you know, before,

00:09:28.720 before you could stick your ass in the camera and call yourself a coach, uh, I was doing it. 0.99

00:09:34.020 Right. So, um, got into that by the time I was graduating grad school, I was making a full-time 0.99

00:09:40.780 living from it. But I said, well, I don't see the reason to go get a normal job. Let's do this.

00:09:46.360 So I was doing online coaching full-time and yeah, I've gone through several different iterations of my

00:09:53.120 business, tried some different things. And now I still do some coaching, but it's mostly a lot of

00:09:58.360 writing and content production. So we, I have two eBooks that are out now that have been

00:10:03.120 successful beyond what I ever could have imagined and writing and writing another one and working on

00:10:08.620 some other projects. And yeah, it's been a, it's been a good run. It's been a good life.

00:10:13.760 It's awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. And I'd like to talk about one of those books you wrote,

00:10:17.480 Fat Loss Forever. But before we get into the details of that one, I'm curious when you started doing

00:10:22.160 your, you know, your biochemistry work and your PhD work, were you surprised? Like, did, I mean,

00:10:29.000 I read like muscle and fitness growing up too, and all this, and like, there's all this advice in

00:10:33.640 there and you're like, uh, is this really true? And there's like, I mean, even then there's all the

00:10:37.560 bro science and it's proliferative even more today. Like, did you immediately like start seeing

00:10:42.600 contradictions for stuff that you saw in the bodybuilding or powerlifting world? Or were

00:10:46.600 some of the things like validated that these guys were doing that had no basis in science,

00:10:51.440 but they got right just through trial and error? That's exactly why I went and did a PhD.

00:10:56.000 Cause I got tired of reading every magazine and having it say one thing and then another magazine

00:11:02.360 say another thing or the same magazine say one thing one month and another thing another month

00:11:06.720 or the same magazine saying one thing and in the same episode contradicting itself. So I was like,

00:11:14.100 well, I'm going to go get more education. That's not going to hurt me. And I'm going to figure that

00:11:17.760 out for myself. So yeah, that was, you know, the quest for, I guess there's a couple of things that

00:11:24.900 make a good scientist. One is you're always hungry to learn the quest for knowledge. And two,

00:11:32.060 you're inherently skeptical. You don't just accept things at face value. You question even the,

00:11:40.160 things that we hold to be true. And I think that's what makes a good scientist, somebody who just

00:11:45.920 won't accept something as fact without really digging into it. But also the saying, be open-minded,

00:11:52.400 but not so open-minded that your brain falls out, which I also see a lot of, you know, that's like

00:11:57.480 when you get to the, like there's skepticism and then there's whack job conspiracy theorist

00:12:03.600 nonsense that, yeah, I, which I kind of deal with on a daily basis now.

00:12:10.300 Oh, I bet. Yeah. Going to that point about, you know, being skeptical. I mean, one of the issues

00:12:14.140 that I found with like popular health writing is that they'll, they'll, they'll talk about the

00:12:18.800 studies, the research, and then they'll look at the conclusion and say, yeah, this study says X.

00:12:24.420 But then if you actually read the study, you realize, well, the sample size wasn't that big.

00:12:29.540 Yep. Um, it actually, they weren't really, you know, it wasn't conclusive, but the popular,

00:12:34.740 because, you know, these popular writers need to turn out content and get clicks. They just come

00:12:38.900 out like, well, this new study says coffee's terrible for you. But then you look at the

00:12:43.380 studies, well, it doesn't really say that. No, what it'll say is there's a component in coffee

00:12:47.960 that when they fed it to rats at a super high dose, it caused like carcinogenic effects. You know,

00:12:53.760 it wasn't actually coffee and it wasn't actually in humans. Yeah. That's,

00:12:56.640 there was a study done where they, um, the, the headline was that farts can help reduce the risk

00:13:03.680 or smelling something. Your partner's farts can help reduce the risk of breast cancer. That was, 0.85

00:13:08.660 that was the, that was the headline. No, what they did was they took short chain fatty acids,

00:13:13.840 volatile fatty acids that are some of the things that you smell when, when you fart. And they looked

00:13:19.380 at them at giving them an isolated in a high dose to rats and saw an effect on cancer. That is not

00:13:26.540 the same thing as smelling your partner's farts that you like the, the level of irresponsibility

00:13:34.920 by the media and reporting some of this stuff just to get a headline. I understand it to a certain

00:13:41.980 level because they have to, because it's so competitive. If you don't have big headlines,

00:13:46.920 I mean, it's like being on Instagram. Like I'm really proud of the fact that I've got,

00:13:51.020 you know, whatever, 240,000 followers on Instagram, because I'm not like, I'm not some dude that's

00:13:56.380 posting pictures of a shredded six pack all the time, standing in front of a Ferrari that he doesn't

00:14:00.400 own that he's leasing and, you know, with pit bulls or whatever and acting like I'm living some

00:14:06.660 lifestyle. I'm putting out educational content, you know, there's substance, but we're not a substance

00:14:11.000 based society. You know, people want that, that, that crap. So yeah, I think that the, it's, it's 0.99

00:14:19.480 difficult to parse out a lot of what's out there, but just listening to somebody and I'll tell people,

00:14:25.620 Hey, like, you know, don't take my word for it. Like, you know, I have my own biases. I try to be

00:14:30.900 honest about them and upfront about them, but everybody's biased one way or another. Like,

00:14:34.840 and that's okay. That's fine. It's the people who aren't willing to admit their biases. There's a,

00:14:39.420 there's a gal called, um, what's her name? Nina, Nina ends with a T starts with a T her last name, 0.99

00:14:46.080 but she's a, she's a low carb advocate, big time, low carb advocate. And all of her,

00:14:50.920 all of her, a lot of her criticisms of the research out there are funding based, right?

00:14:56.800 So she says, well, this study was funded by big corn or big, this or big, that you ever want to

00:15:01.800 make something sound scary. Just put big in front of it, apparently. And what she doesn't ever

00:15:06.800 disclose is the fact that she herself is funded by the meat industry, like, which is fine. That's 0.98

00:15:13.460 fine. There's nothing wrong with that. My research was funded by the dairy council and the egg nutrition

00:15:19.120 center board. That's fine. I have to disclose that, right? Like, so if she's going to criticize

00:15:25.420 all these other people, she needs to disclose what her biases are. So that's a big part of it. And,

00:15:31.360 and I think people get way too attached to ideals rather than trying to deconstruct their ego and

00:15:39.500 figure out what stuff actually says. Like, I'll tell people like, I'm not, if you're reading my

00:15:44.080 books, I'm not selling any one particular diet. I'm not, I'm selling information and I'm trying to

00:15:49.380 put it out there kind of as it is. Well, let's talk about a topic. Speaking of lots of different

00:15:56.420 competing things on Instagram is weight loss because there's so many competing ideas out there

00:16:01.320 now and it's gotten worse, I think. So you, you wrote a book, Fat Loss Forever. Yeah. It's a new

00:16:07.860 year. I think a lot of men who are listening to the show, a lot of them probably have goals to lose

00:16:11.680 some weight, but I love how you, in the book you talk about, you make this important point that

00:16:16.200 it's actually really easy to lose weight. Yeah. The problem that people have, because people do it

00:16:23.020 all the time, the problem people have is that they can't keep it off. So what's going, why,

00:16:27.180 why is it so hard to keep weight off after you lose that 10, 15 pounds? There's a multitude of

00:16:33.160 reasons. There's, there's physiological, there's sociological and there's psychological reasons.

00:16:39.200 Physiologically, if you think about what weight loss is, so we have this kind of, let's call it a

00:16:46.820 set point of body fat that your body kind of likes to stay at. It's where you've kind of settled

00:16:52.160 that during your life. And if you've been, usually it's your body defends against you getting too much

00:16:59.380 body fat. Well, the reason people get obese is they can eat past that. And we kind of, I don't

00:17:05.040 want to get way too far down the rabbit hole, but I guess there's, if you talk about losing weight,

00:17:11.860 there's very tight regulations. What will happen is you get hungrier when you start to lose weight,

00:17:16.700 you, your, your, your metabolic rate slows down all of these, uh, your, your hormones like leptin

00:17:23.600 drop your, your, you actually move less whether you believe it or not. Um, like just like little

00:17:29.760 fidgets throughout the day, but it can end up adding up to like several hundred calories less

00:17:35.180 per day that you're actually expending. So all these things start working to drive you back towards

00:17:40.920 energy balance, meaning you're, you're, you're not losing weight. Your calories in is equaling

00:17:45.940 calories out. So it's trying to drive you back towards that to protect you because you have,

00:17:52.520 if we're, if we have this kind of regulation on body weight, the set point that the body likes to

00:17:58.320 be at, that means that it's trying to keep you from getting too big or losing too much weight.

00:18:04.200 Right. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So, and, and, you know, on the other end,

00:18:09.080 if you start to overeat, you'll have your metabolic rate goes up, your hunger goes down,

00:18:13.900 all these sorts of things. So, but on each end, there's two different, we always need to think

00:18:21.480 about like, what is, what is the evolutionary reason for this? Right. Cause everything happens

00:18:27.260 for a reason. All the systems in our body came about because of a reason you're dealing with two

00:18:32.460 different threats to your survival. Because keep in mind, the goal of you, your existence,

00:18:38.300 in terms of evolution is for you to stay alive long enough to pass on your genetic material.

00:18:43.960 That's, that's it. That's the goal. Okay. Now on one end, you have starvation, right? If you don't

00:18:51.800 eat enough, you can starve. Okay. On the other end, if you get too heavy, there, there's an increased

00:18:58.960 risk of predation, right? You can't, you can't escape a predator very well. Or the other one is you may not

00:19:05.920 be agile enough to actually catch food, but that kind of would be self-limiting because you would

00:19:11.240 be, as you weren't able to eat, you would end up losing weight, becoming more agile, able to catch

00:19:16.820 food. Well, over the last several thousand years, the risk of predation is dropped to basically zero

00:19:25.660 for most of the world. You know what I mean? That just doesn't exist. Whereas the risk of starvation,

00:19:32.140 we may not think about Western society, but even up until like even a hundred years ago in the U S,

00:19:38.620 like, you know, famine was a real problem. So not so much anymore. So it's still a real problem. So

00:19:44.540 that is still hardwired into our DNA. At least this is the hypothesis that some of these researchers,

00:19:49.520 this guy that had this particular hypothesis, his name is Speakman. So your body has much more

00:19:56.380 tightly regulated controls on you losing weight than it does on you gaining weight.

00:20:02.260 So, plus we have a very obesogenic environment. Like if you're talking about now non-processed foods,

00:20:10.700 right now, I don't want people to get really excited about this because there's nothing

00:20:15.080 inherently fattening about a processed food. There's not, it's not a hundred calories of a

00:20:21.300 processed food is not more fattening than a hundred calories of an unprocessed food per se,

00:20:26.720 but processed food takes less energy to digest. So I guess you could argue that it is a little bit

00:20:33.220 different, but more than that, it's just very highly palatable. Have you ever tried to eat

00:20:37.900 like 200 calories from a plain baked potato, like plain nothing on it?

00:20:43.120 Yeah. It's hard.

00:20:43.760 It's hard. It's really hard. Have you ever tried to eat 200 calories from Snickers bar?

00:20:47.780 Easy. You just eat a Snickers bar done.

00:20:49.880 Yeah, exactly. So we, we have what's called an obesogenic environment where we have free access

00:20:57.860 to extremely hyper palatable, high calorie foods, and we don't move as much as we used to.

00:21:04.720 So we can very easily eat past that set point, but it's hard to get under the set point because

00:21:12.160 that's still a hardwired into our DNA. This is the body treats dieting like controlled starvation.

00:21:19.440 So your metabolic rate drops, your hunger goes up, these hormonal, these hormonal signals to your

00:21:26.100 brain. They really, there was an interesting study back in the 1940s. They took conscientious objectors

00:21:33.940 to World War II and basically starved them for six months and then looked at the physiological changes.

00:21:40.680 Well, just to show you how powerful dieting is on motivation to not be dieting, there was originally

00:21:47.360 15 subjects in the study. It ended with 12 because one of them cut his thumb off in order to get out of

00:21:53.280 the study. You can believe that. And then the other two literally stormed and assaulted the kitchen for 0.98

00:21:58.940 food. And of the people who completed the study, half of them went on to work in the food industry or

00:22:04.760 become professional chefs. So, um, but if you've ever dieted, like some people like they diet and

00:22:11.440 they end up watching the food, food network all the time, it becomes an all encompassing

00:22:15.140 like thing for your brain. So, but the real, the major problem is that people look at dieting and

00:22:22.680 weight loss as something with a set start and end date. They go, well, I'm, I'm doing, I want to lose 20

00:22:28.720 pounds. So what do they do? They lose the 20 pounds and then they go right back to doing the same that

00:22:34.580 they were doing before they lost the 20 pounds. Well, what do you think is going to happen when you do

00:22:39.720 that? Whatever behaviors you had to incorporate in order to lose the weight, you will need to incorporate

00:22:46.080 those same behaviors to keep the weight off. That's why I say we don't really have a knowledge problem

00:22:51.660 because any diet will work. I mean, low carb, low fat, intermittent fasting, whatever, anything that allows you

00:22:58.560 to create a calorie deficit will work. This, we shouldn't even spending time arguing about this.

00:23:04.520 It's stupid. Like maybe like higher protein diets tend to work a little bit better because they're 0.99

00:23:10.420 more satiating and you spare lean body mass and they, they have a little bit more of a energy

00:23:15.460 expenditure. That's great. But if somebody can't stick to a high protein diet or they can't see

00:23:22.440 themselves doing that for the rest of their life, then it's not going to work for them, right?

00:23:25.760 Any diet can work even like a super high carb, super low fat, low protein, as long as they're

00:23:32.380 in a calorie deficit will work for weight loss. It's been shown in many studies. And before I know

00:23:38.380 some of the listeners are probably saying, well, what about insulin sensitivity? 95 to 99% of the

00:23:45.020 health benefits of dieting are strictly due to weight loss and have nothing to do with the type of diet

00:23:51.720 you're on. That, that was done. There was two meta-analyses done on this and they looked at

00:23:56.900 equating calories and looking at different ratios of carbohydrates and fats and their effects on

00:24:03.600 blood markers of health and found that basically weight loss explained 95 to 99% of it. So if that's

00:24:11.000 the case, if it's weight loss that makes the biggest difference for health, then the best diet is probably

00:24:16.320 the one you can stick to and see yourself doing for life because I'm going to go on keto. That's

00:24:22.440 great, bro. If you're never going to eat carbs again in your life, then that can work for you.

00:24:26.580 But if you can't see yourself doing that six months or 12 months from now, you got to rethink your plan

00:24:30.660 because it's going to fail. It's, it's behaviors that make the difference. It's the same reason like

00:24:35.680 that people are broke. It's the exact same reason people are broke. How do you not be broke?

00:24:41.420 Earn more money than you spend. And there are people who make $30,000 a year who can, who can

00:24:48.220 save money. It's happened. I've done it. I've made $30,000 a year before and saved money. It's hard.

00:24:55.580 It sucks, but it can be done. There's also people who make a million dollars a year and don't save money. 0.92

00:25:02.760 Right? So is it a knowledge problem? Because hopefully everyone knows that in order to save money,

00:25:09.500 you need to make more than you spend. And we have that knowledge, that knowledge is there,

00:25:15.380 but what do people get caught up in instead of focusing on, uh, the things that actually,

00:25:21.280 um, help with wealth accrual people focus on, Oh, uh, they get into this pyramid schemes and they,

00:25:28.800 they, Oh, this one neat trick. It's the same. You see in the fitness industry for fat loss,

00:25:32.740 you know, Oh, these three neat tricks to burn belly fat. No, that's crap. Like if you want to 0.99

00:25:39.200 lose fat and you want to keep it off, it's going to be really, really hard because only 5% of people

00:25:43.640 are able to do it. That's the statistics. Right. Yeah. Like 95% of people. Yeah.

00:25:48.680 Five percent, only 5% are able to keep it off. We're going to take a quick break for your word

00:25:52.260 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So let's kind of recap what you said. There's a lot

00:25:58.680 to unpack there and I want to go some, some different directions with some of the stuff you were

00:26:01.700 talking about. So the reason why body fat is hard to lose, cause your body is basically saying

00:26:06.860 we're now in starvation mode, fat loss, we're losing body fat, but it's like, I don't want to

00:26:12.040 lose that body fat because we need that for, to keep ourselves going in case the starvation goes

00:26:18.120 even further. So it just gets harder and harder. That's your body's, you gotta always think about

00:26:23.240 your body fat, your body's, uh, adipose stores as your energy reserve. Cause that's exactly what it is.

00:26:29.400 Right. So your body's like, no, leave this alone. This is ours. You're taking that away. We're not

00:26:33.600 going to let you do that. But also besides, you know, when you stop the diet, you gain the weight

00:26:38.340 back, but also there's a tendency to gain more body fat or more weight than you were before you

00:26:42.820 started the diet. Yeah. That's a phenomenon called body fat overshooting. And it really happens a lot

00:26:47.600 in people who do what we call weight cycle or yo-yo diet. And, um, really interesting study. We

00:26:53.160 included this in the book. It was in rats. So some people will get their, their hands up in the air,

00:26:58.840 but rats actually pretty metabolically similar to a human now. And there is some human data to

00:27:05.100 support this as well. But what they did was they took them through two different diet cycles. So they

00:27:09.560 had them diet down to a, they had them kind of eat up to a certain weight and then they died them down

00:27:14.940 and they observed what rate it took for them to reach that weight to sort of diet down to that

00:27:23.080 weight. Then they had them relapse to the previous weight. They just gave them food and let them say,

00:27:28.120 Hey, go, go for it. Go crazy. Eat whatever you want. Right. They regained the weight in half the 0.95

00:27:35.080 time that it took for them to take it off. Then once they reached their, their previous high weight,

00:27:40.440 they had them diet back down again to the weight that they achieved previously. Right. They lost

00:27:47.180 weight twice as slow the second time. Right. Right. And that's what the, at the same calorie level.

00:27:53.840 Right. That's pretty nuts. Then they regained it when they let them regain it again. They regained

00:27:59.720 it three times as fast. Wow. Every time they went through one of these diet cycles, their metabolism

00:28:05.300 got slower and they got more efficient at putting on body fat. And every time you diet,

00:28:10.440 you activate your body's self-defense system. Okay. And I, again, this is one of the things I talk

00:28:15.620 about in the book, your body has a self-defense system in place to keep you from starving yourself.

00:28:21.120 And basically what it does is I, I, I kind of, this isn't in the scientific literature. This is

00:28:26.660 just kind of my description. I call it a three-pronged attack. You have a metabolic adaptation,

00:28:32.380 which when you start dieting or when you're dieting, your body slows your metabolic rate by,

00:28:37.440 by the way, slows it disproportionately more than you would predict by the amount of weight you lose.

00:28:43.160 Because if you lose weight, you have less metabolically active tissue, you know, your

00:28:47.220 metabolism is going to slow down some anyway, but you, your metabolism slows about 15 to 20%

00:28:53.120 more than you would predict from just from the weight loss. Then while you're dieting,

00:29:01.320 your body is already ramping up systems that will increase your ability to store body fat.

00:29:09.380 Okay. Why would it do that? Well, let's think about from an evolutionary perspective,

00:29:14.240 if you had gone through a long famine and then all of a sudden, boom, you find a, I mean,

00:29:18.940 let's just do the stereotype. You find a big old woolly mammoth and it's dead and you can eat it.

00:29:23.380 Right. And you can just kind of gorge yourself. Well, you couldn't really keep meat for very long

00:29:27.860 back in the day. Right. And you couldn't keep a lot of foods for very long. So they're going to

00:29:32.620 get as much out of it as they can. Well, you would not want to be wasteful with that energy.

00:29:37.140 You would want to capture as much of it as possible. You'd want to be very efficient at

00:29:41.500 storing that energy and not wasting it. So that's why the body's going to ramp up those systems that 0.84

00:29:46.780 help you store fat. Because if you're in a deficit, if you're in an energy energy, if there's a body

00:29:54.680 since it's an energy gap, it is going to make it easier for you to store fat. Because if you come

00:30:01.280 across the food stores, your body's going to want to be able to capture it. Does that make sense?

00:30:04.780 That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then the third phase is they've actually observed in

00:30:10.860 people who diet or people who diet pretty aggressively, if they then regain the weight

00:30:17.200 really, really quickly, there actually is some evidence that they may actually be able

00:30:23.120 to manufacture new fat cells. So we usually, if you, if you diet or you lose, if you lose or gain

00:30:30.980 weight, usually what happens is your fat cells just shrink or expand. Okay. But there, you can eat

00:30:39.520 past that. There is a maximum threshold for your adipocytes. It's about a hundred micrometers,

00:30:45.280 I think. And so once they get across that bigger than that, we can have what's called pre-adipocyte

00:30:50.840 differentiation. And these pre-adipocytes are like these little tiny nascent inactive potential fat

00:30:58.540 cells that are in the adipose tissue that can differentiate to fully form fat cells if your

00:31:05.580 body needs them. So that's how people can get really, like really obese because they can start

00:31:10.540 triggering this fat cell differentiation. But there seems to be, even if you don't approach that,

00:31:16.820 that maximum size, if you've been in a deficit and then you, you just kind of start massively

00:31:23.860 overeating after that, like put a lot of weight really quickly, you're, they've actually, they

00:31:29.320 actually showed in rats that they could increase their, their fat cell number by 50%, which is a real

00:31:34.000 problem because now your set point's going to change because since you have more fat cells,

00:31:38.620 the size of each individual cell is now smaller. So it would still, your theoretically, your body

00:31:45.940 would still sense a deficit, even if you'd gotten back up to your original body fat. And that's why

00:31:51.500 I think a lot of people, when they weight cycle, they end up at a higher body fat and then have

00:31:57.240 trouble losing body fat from that level of body fat, because that's now their set point because

00:32:01.760 they have more fat cells. That's my theory anyway. And yeah, it's pretty scary. Actually,

00:32:07.040 if you read my, if you read Fat Loss Forever, the chapters one and chapters three will scare the

00:32:11.760 crap out of you. No, yeah, they did. So it makes it sound like, man, losing weight is impossible,

00:32:16.320 but it's not. It's not. We'll talk about what you can do to make it sustainable. But you know,

00:32:20.660 you do, you mentioned a lot of the sort of diets that are really popular with people,

00:32:24.600 particularly online. There's the low carb diet, keto, there's now the carnivore diet that I'm

00:32:29.640 seeing a lot about. And what's between all these different diets, they all claim that there's

00:32:34.140 something special about these specific diets that allow people to lose weight, right? By not eating

00:32:39.160 carbs, you reduce the amount of insulin pumping through your system. So like, you know, insulin

00:32:43.440 can't shuttle glucose into fat cells or whatever. But I mean, it sounds like you're saying like,

00:32:48.100 no, it's not really that. It's just that these diets allow you to eat fewer calories and that's why

00:32:52.900 you lose weight. Is that what's going on? That's exactly right. So for example,

00:32:57.360 let's take the carnivore diet, for example, it's really hard to overeat on meat. Like it's really

00:33:05.080 hard to overeat. You can do it. You can do it, especially if you're eating really fatty meat.

00:33:09.440 But for the most part, meat's tough to overeat on. If you look at something like, you know,

00:33:14.740 I was talking about this the other day, everybody's got something that kind of,

00:33:17.860 I call it tripping their algorithm, right? So people like with keto, I'll hear this a lot. People say,

00:33:24.120 man, I tried everything out there and keto, I just, I wasn't hungry on it. And it's just easy

00:33:28.980 for me. Or they'll say that about intermittent fasting. For me, it was flexible dieting. You know,

00:33:33.940 like flexible dieting where I'm just, I have my protein, carbon, fat targets, and I hit those,

00:33:38.920 but I can eat whatever I want to hit those. That tripped my algorithm because that felt not

00:33:43.800 restrictive to me. I didn't mind. For some people, they hate tracking. For me, it doesn't bother me

00:33:48.200 at all. If I know I can have what I want, if I track, but all these can work. I mean, like,

00:33:52.900 for example, just a great example I was talking about was there was a professor at the University

00:33:56.440 of Kansas State named Dr. Mark Halb. I actually interviewed him a while back when I had a podcast.

00:34:01.640 And he did, as an effort to prove that calories matter and matter more than anything, he did what

00:34:08.460 was called the Twinkie diet. So he literally ate all junk food. Now he only ate 1800 calories a day,

00:34:14.740 but it was all from junk food. And, but he also took a protein shake and a fiber supplement just

00:34:21.600 to make sure he was getting all that stuff. And he lost like 30 pounds. And now what's funny is

00:34:28.500 people say, well, yeah, well, what about his health though? Actually, they, they, he kept track of all

00:34:33.180 his blood markers and every single blood marker improved like drastically. That's because when fat

00:34:40.180 cells expand, they secrete all kinds of hormones that can disrupt metabolism and decrease insulin

00:34:50.400 sensitivity. When you lose weight, fat cells shrink, they become extremely insulin sensitive and they

00:34:57.020 stop secreting or they, they reduce their secretion of these hormones. So, or, and they increase

00:35:02.660 secretion of things like adiponectin, which increases insulin sensitivity. So yeah, just losing the

00:35:09.320 weight is the biggest part of it. Now I'm not suggesting that somebody, if you talk to Mark,

00:35:14.960 he said he actually didn't really care for the diet because even though it was junk food, like

00:35:18.920 1800 calories of junk food doesn't go very far. You know, that's like seven Snickers bars.

00:35:25.880 You can over, you can eat seven Snickers bars pretty easily throughout the course of a day and not feel

00:35:30.360 that satisfied. So yeah, he didn't like it because he seems like, you know, I'd rather had a big

00:35:35.540 salad or something like that. So I could have felt, you know, fuller. So I think the point is that,

00:35:42.000 you know, anything can work. Keto can work. Intermittent fasting can work. Any diet can work.

00:35:48.560 You can, you can look at any diet and they can find testimonials of people who have lost weight.

00:35:52.800 So therefore any diet can work if it creates a caloric deficit. The question then is which diets

00:36:00.280 lend themselves to being sustainable so that people can continue them and continue to keep the weight

00:36:06.420 off. You know, for some people, keto works for them and they feel satisfied. They do not feel

00:36:11.880 like they need to go out and, and, and eat junk food or anything like that. It works for them.

00:36:17.200 It doesn't work for everybody. I know people who put on 30 pounds during keto because they overate

00:36:20.800 butter and bacon, you know? So I think if somebody, you know, I did a debate on Mark Bell's podcast with

00:36:29.220 Sean Baker, who's the biggest proponent of the carnivore diet. And, um, you know, I said,

00:36:35.400 I don't think the carnivore diet is the healthiest thing you can do. I mean, you know,

00:36:40.540 saturated fat isn't the great evil we thought it was, but it certainly doesn't have a protective

00:36:44.080 effect on heart disease like polyunsaturated fat does. And you're also like, if you're only eating

00:36:49.120 meat, you're, you're like, you're not eating fiber, which is a big problem. And actually Sean admitted

00:36:55.460 that you probably should be eating vegetables. He just doesn't. But, um, I did say, Hey,

00:37:03.440 you know, if somebody told me, if somebody was obese and they told me this is the only diet

00:37:07.800 that works for me, like everything else, I feel like I just can't stick to it. But this

00:37:11.960 meat only diet I can stick to. Chris Bell says that Mark Bell's brother, Chris Bell says that

00:37:15.680 he's lost like, I want to say like 40 pounds on the carnivore diet and his blood markers have

00:37:20.880 improved because he's lost weight. So if somebody says, Hey, this is the only thing I can do and keep

00:37:24.440 the weight off, then that's probably the best diet for you to be honest. So yeah, I think we need to

00:37:29.520 start, stop looking at like this debate over which diet is best because it's going to be for the

00:37:35.360 individual. And you said you, you've read the book. So you know that I don't advocate for any one diet.

00:37:41.320 I spend a whole chapter debunking claims from fad diets, but I don't suggest any one diet. I just

00:37:49.680 kind of say, Hey, here's different diets. People will try. I mean, you should try some,

00:37:54.760 but here's, here are the series of behaviors you're going to have to have in order to lose weight and

00:38:00.200 keep it off. And those are self-monitoring, cognitive restraint, exercise. Exercise is a huge

00:38:06.640 one. People, people who generally, people who lose weight and keep it off, they exercise. If you're

00:38:12.200 not exercising most, the vast majority of people don't keep that weight off. And also they don't snack,

00:38:17.420 like they really don't snack very much. And they usually weigh themselves daily and they form,

00:38:23.960 they do some form of cognitive restraint. For example, whether it's calorie tracking,

00:38:28.800 macro tracking, they're not eating carbs, time restricted eating. You're going to have to do

00:38:34.940 some sort of restriction. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, like there's going to be

00:38:38.660 a restriction on your lifestyle, but you can pick the restriction you want. So for me, the restriction

00:38:43.380 on my lifestyle is I have to track my intake, but I'm not restricted from any foods I want to eat

00:38:49.140 because I just, I practice flexible dieting. If you don't want to track your food intake, well,

00:38:54.600 maybe you could do something like keto and maybe that will work for you or time restricted eating,

00:38:59.340 intermittent fasting, carnivore, whatever you want to call it. For me, flexible dieting works best,

00:39:05.180 but I'm not arrogant enough to think that it's going to work best for everybody.

00:39:07.820 So I think we really need to focus on giving people choices and focus on behaviors rather than

00:39:15.660 bickering over which diet is better than another diet.

00:39:19.360 Right. We like, we like to feel righteous.

00:39:21.240 So that's, that's why people who get into nutrition now are like, they would have been

00:39:29.040 religious zealots. Right. 0.63

00:39:30.880 It's just ridiculous how entrenched people get in their beliefs. Like I have the thing about being

00:39:39.320 a scientist and like publishing literature is you have had yourself absolutely crushed your ideas,

00:39:49.200 crushed your theories, crushed so many times that if you're doing it right, you just don't get that

00:39:57.940 married to any one idea. You don't because you know that you could be wrong. Like I'd like to think

00:40:04.620 I get it right more than I get it wrong, but that's why I'm not selling any one particular diet in the

00:40:09.780 book because I can't very well say, well, Hey, the keto diet doesn't work when there's thousands of

00:40:15.180 people who are losing weight on keto. So how can I say that? Right. So I think that, that people,

00:40:22.060 they just want to feel like what they're doing is better than everybody else. And you know,

00:40:26.020 this is the vegans, keto warriors, carnivore, you know, if it works for you, fine, just don't tell

00:40:33.460 me it's magic. That's the only thing I tell people. You know, I, I actually posted a study a while back

00:40:38.700 that basically showed that low carb diets did not cause more fat loss than high carb, low fat diets

00:40:47.660 when calories and protein were equated. And I had an interesting response on Twitter. So I posted that

00:40:54.080 and somebody said, well, that's not true. I lost 50 pounds on the ketogenic diet.

00:40:58.880 So this is an example of what I say and what a zealot hears are two different things.

00:41:04.620 So I said, it was not better. What that person heard was he's insulting my religion and said,

00:41:10.680 I lost 50 pounds on this. And I said, well, I'm sure you did. It's just not magic.

00:41:15.260 Right. Yeah. We, we published an article like, uh, do carbs make you fat? And we highlighted that

00:41:18.700 research is basically it's just, it's calories. It's not the carbs, it's calories. And the same,

00:41:23.380 same response. People are like, well, I lost weight on keto. I'm saying, well, yeah,

00:41:26.380 you could lose weight on that. I'm not saying you can't just saying there's nothing special about

00:41:30.860 it except you're eating fewer calories. Well, here's another interesting. So, okay. Losing weight

00:41:35.240 to be sustainable, pick whatever thing works for you in the long run. You're going to have to exercise

00:41:39.920 some sort of a constraint. You need to exercise actually physical exercise that will increase

00:41:44.700 lean muscle mass, which also helps increase your metabolism.

00:41:48.620 Well, actually, you know what? The, the, the research on that is really underwhelming.

00:41:52.940 Okay. For, for like the, the amount of increase, cause muscle mass is actually way less metabolically

00:41:59.720 active than things like liver or intestine, like those lean muscles. So the question is,

00:42:06.520 why would we exercise? Right? Because lean body mass doesn't, the exercise itself seems to actually be

00:42:12.480 the interesting thing about your body's so good at self-regulating. So if you exercise more,

00:42:18.760 what tends to happen is your body, you just move less throughout the rest of the day,

00:42:21.980 right? Like you don't realize it, but your body just actually like you do less fidgeting and you

00:42:26.400 move less. So your body's conserving energy because it knows you're exercising, right? So you're not

00:42:31.700 getting as big of a calorie burn as you might think. Then like if actually just an example of that,

00:42:37.760 when I was prepping for my, my pro shows and bodybuilding, you can, like I have, I had a DVD out the time.

00:42:42.620 I, I, I've watched it the years later. I talk slower and I even blink slower. I'm not kidding

00:42:50.000 you. Like, and I talk way less. I'm a very talkative person. I'm a very extroverted person,

00:42:55.520 but like I was just like my whole personality changed when I dieted because my body was so

00:43:01.980 hell bent on conserving energy. So, so why exercise then? Why is it so associated with,

00:43:08.320 with keeping weight off? Cause it doesn't really add to your total daily calorie burn.

00:43:12.040 The lean muscle you add, sure. You burn a few more calories, but it's not super significant.

00:43:17.460 The biggest reason that exercise helps is one. Well, two reasons. I think the major one is that

00:43:26.860 it sensitizes you to satiety signals. Okay. They did a study in the 1950s looking at Bengali workers

00:43:34.320 and they looked at sedentary people, people with a lightly active job, a moderately active job and a

00:43:39.640 heavy labor job. And what they found was from the lightly active to heavily active jobs, people pretty

00:43:45.940 much match their, match their intake. So without even trying, they just ate more calories, right? And

00:43:51.520 they remained in calorie balance. What they found was the sedentary people actually ate more than every

00:43:57.420 other group except for the heavy labor jobs. So when you don't exercise, you have much lower

00:44:05.320 sensitivity to the satiety signals in your brain. So you're, it's easy for you to overeat. Whereas

00:44:12.280 when you exercise, you get more sensitive to those satiety signals, pretty cool stuff.

00:44:17.920 That is really interesting. That's very, very interesting.

00:44:19.960 And then the other thing is exercise increases, uh, oxidation, fat oxidation in fat cells. It increases

00:44:25.880 fat, fat metabolism turnover, which seems to have a benefit for limiting fat regain.

00:44:31.580 Gotcha. Okay. So that all makes sense. But here's another thing you talk about in the book. And I think

00:44:36.100 a lot of people have problems with is whenever they do decide to start losing weight, they'll lose weight

00:44:42.120 really fast. That's probably not a good thing to do, correct?

00:44:47.040 Well, so this is where I gotta, I gotta give the whole story. The research shows that people who lose

00:44:53.560 more weight initially tend to keep more, tend to, tend to be the ones to keep it off.

00:44:59.260 However, it has to be with the caveat that, so, so they found that people who maintain weight loss,

00:45:05.640 they usually lost a good amount of weight at the beginning. That's, I think losing a good amount

00:45:10.620 of weight at the beginning is okay because it helps you with motivation. But what you're not seeing,

00:45:15.320 that statistic's a little bit deceiving because they're not asking the 95% who failed,

00:45:19.740 right? Like how much did they lose initially? So there'd be a lot of people in that, in that sample

00:45:25.160 size of the 95% who failed to keep it off, who also lost weight really quickly at the beginning

00:45:29.880 and didn't sustain it. So I think it's okay to lose some weight quickly at the beginning,

00:45:34.620 so long as it's something that is still sustainable for you. But if you're doing something like 800 calories

00:45:41.840 a day, you know, how long can you keep that up for? Not probably not very long. Now I will say there

00:45:48.640 was a case study of a guy who did not eat for a year. Did you hear about this?

00:45:52.420 I have not heard about this.

00:45:53.580 Yeah. So he was very obese. He didn't eat for a year and he lost, I think it was like something

00:45:58.220 like 150 pounds in a year. But obviously like that, that can't keep going. And I would like to

00:46:04.220 see where he's at today because the metabolic adaptation to that would have been enormous.

00:46:09.340 But it also goes to show that that, you know, fat is your body's energy reserve. So, you know,

00:46:14.980 I think that whenever you're looking at any plan, it's okay to lose weight quickly at

00:46:20.520 the onset, as long as whatever you're doing at the onset, you can see yourself continuing

00:46:25.360 to do.

00:46:26.260 Gotcha. And then like, I mean, as you lose weight, I imagine you have to make adjustments.

00:46:31.160 Like, so if you want to lose more weight, do you have to like reduce calories more?

00:46:34.200 For example, say like you, you lose, you know, the 50 pounds, right? And then like what you've

00:46:38.420 been eating, say it's like 20, 2000 calories a day, whatever. Like, is that, is that, say

00:46:45.680 you're doing that at a point you stop losing weight. Are you going to have to drop calories

00:46:49.100 a bit more to keep, to keep the weight loss going?

00:46:52.520 Right. So your, your stalls are inevitable during weight loss. Anybody who's lost weight

00:46:56.840 for a long period of time, I'm assuming you've probably done this before where you went on

00:47:01.240 a diet and after whatever, four, six, eight, 10 weeks, you stopped losing weight, right?

00:47:06.280 Yeah. Right. So that is your body's metabolic rate slowing down to the point where eventually

00:47:12.280 it matches your intake, right? So that's the, that's your, that's the first prong of the

00:47:16.280 body's self-defense system. So what has happened is you have come back to energy balance. So this

00:47:22.920 is also why people get confused about a calorie deficit. They'll say, well, I was eating in a

00:47:26.260 calorie deficit. I didn't lose weight. Well, no, you were eating in what might be predicted

00:47:30.820 to be a calorie deficit, or maybe it was a calorie deficit for a little while, but it isn't

00:47:34.420 now. See, people get confused because they think calories in and calories out are like

00:47:38.540 two independent variables, but they aren't, they're tied together because calories in

00:47:42.900 affects calories out. So what has to happen is when you hit one of these plateaus, you

00:47:48.720 either, you need to recreate that deficit, whether it's with consuming less calories, increasing

00:47:54.700 your activity, or a little bit of both.

00:47:57.180 Gotcha. So this is going to, it's a process. And you also talk about it, you know, one, one

00:48:00.300 option too, as if you're trying to lose a lot of weight, like take breaks every now and

00:48:04.120 then just for the psychological rest. So you say you lose 20 pounds. All right, we'll

00:48:09.040 just kind of maintenance that for a month and then go at it again.

00:48:11.860 Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think the grind of long periods of dieting can just like wear

00:48:17.440 you down. So like giving yourself like saying, okay, I'm going to lose 20. Like, let's say

00:48:21.940 somebody had a hundred pounds to lose saying I'm going to lose 20. And then I'm gonna give

00:48:26.140 myself a month where I'm just eating at maintenance and just trying to maintain that weight

00:48:29.340 loss. And that can be helpful for two reasons. One, it's a mental break. And two, whenever

00:48:35.260 you go on that maintenance phase, it will help you maintain your metabolic rate a little

00:48:39.920 bit better. So there's actually research on diet breaks that shows that if you use a diet

00:48:46.080 break where you're eating at maintenance for a period of like a week or two, it can actually

00:48:50.980 prevent metabolic slowing a little bit better than if you're just straight dieting. So there's

00:48:57.140 a double effect. You get the benefit of you can maintain your metabolic rate a little

00:49:01.720 bit better and you have a mental break from the diet. So I think that's actually a really

00:49:06.620 good way to construct things for people who are trying to lose lots of weight. Or even

00:49:11.340 with my regular clients, I'll do like a lot of times I'll do two weeks dieting and then

00:49:15.680 one week break or three weeks dieting, one week break or three weeks dieting, two week

00:49:19.280 break, you know, those sorts of things or four weeks dieting, two week break. So I'll use

00:49:23.700 different iterations of that in order to kind of help keep things going.

00:49:28.120 Right. It's like a deload week with barbell training.

00:49:30.920 Yeah, kind of. Yeah, exactly.

00:49:32.540 Let's say you want to, you know, you want to get into running, but you're also trying

00:49:35.520 to lose weight. Or let's say you want to get into barbell, you know, power lifting or

00:49:38.440 whatever. It's like increasing performance in those, you know, athletic domains and losing

00:49:43.640 weight. Are those like diametrically opposed goals? Like these should go for one or the

00:49:47.140 other or can you do both at the same time?

00:49:49.160 You can do both at the same time. I think the thing to keep in mind, especially like running,

00:49:53.280 because you're, as you get lower weight, you're going to be more efficient. I think the thing

00:49:57.820 to keep in mind is that if you're, if you're doing something like power lifting or bodybuilding

00:50:04.280 or something like that, you're not going to build as much muscle and strength as you

00:50:08.860 would as if you weren't restricted. But that doesn't mean you can't get stronger. And that

00:50:13.200 doesn't mean you can't build muscle. You absolutely can. Especially if you're somebody who has a lot

00:50:17.860 of body fat, you can still build muscle when you're, when you're dieting, because you have

00:50:22.060 that, even though you're in a calorie deficit, you have so much adipose tissue that your body

00:50:28.020 can kind of use that as a cushion to spare protein for building muscle. But as you get

00:50:34.800 leaner and leaner, it'll become more and more difficult to do that. But no, I don't think

00:50:39.360 they're necessarily diametrically opposed. I just think you have to be honest that, okay,

00:50:42.520 if I'm going to diet and I want to lose weight, I'm probably not going to get as strong as I

00:50:46.680 possibly could is if I was not dieting. But keep in mind in power lifting, you might actually get

00:50:54.780 relatively stronger for your body weight because we do have body weight correctional scores, right?

00:50:59.820 So even though you may, you may not get as strong as you possibly could have, absolutely. Your

00:51:06.040 relative strength may actually be higher. Does that, does that make sense?

00:51:09.200 Yeah, that makes sense. Like that's like the Wilkes score.

00:51:11.300 Exactly. Well, I actually just recently changed it to something else, but yes, it was your Wilkes

00:51:14.680 score for about 50 years. Right. Well, Lane, this has been a great conversation. Is there

00:51:19.400 someplace people can go to learn more about your work? Yeah. Biolane.com is my website. All my

00:51:24.520 stuff's on there. You can, there's, we've got a bunch of free articles. We also have a member's

00:51:28.420 site. I think you said that you were on the site. Yeah, I'm a member of the site. Awesome. So we have

00:51:33.940 content, but I think a lot of people, they use it for the workout builder, which is basically we have

00:51:38.800 about 30 plus training templates on there for anyone from beginner to advanced.

00:51:44.680 for people who want to build muscle, get stronger. And we also have female specific routines, 1.00

00:51:51.580 although that's probably not my demographic on this podcast, but, um, and that's for, you can,

00:51:57.600 you can get access to that workout builder for a 12 99 a month. And I always say, well, you know,

00:52:02.840 that's about what you'd pay for the price of a cup of coffee, uh, at a Starbucks every week,

00:52:07.560 if you just went once a week. So I think it's a pretty good deal to get, you know, customizable

00:52:11.880 programming for that. And then if you guys want to check out my eBooks, you can go to the

00:52:16.920 biolane store.com and click on the accessories tab or the direct links to each eBook. I have the

00:52:23.560 complete contest prep guide, which is, you know, if you're interested in doing a bodybuilding show,

00:52:27.960 it'll show you everything to do from point A to point Z and that you can get that at contestprepbook.com

00:52:33.960 and then fat loss forever, which we've been kind of discussing, I mean, really a fat loss

00:52:38.920 manifesto. It's almost 400 pages and basically we'll show you everything from, from how to lose

00:52:47.860 weight, how to keep it off. What are the behaviors you're going to need? What about the diet after

00:52:52.860 the diet? I mean, we really spent a lot of time on it. We've already sold like 5,000 copies in just

00:52:57.620 a few weeks and people are raving about it. And if you want to get that, the direct link is

00:53:02.340 howtolosefatforever.com and check those out. And then I'm on social media as biolane on pretty

00:53:08.300 much every platform. Fantastic. Well, Lane Norton, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:53:12.180 Thank you, Brett. Appreciate the time, man. My guest today was Lane Norton. He's the author

00:53:16.300 of the book Fat Loss Forever. You can find it on his website, biolane.com. Also check out our website,

00:53:21.580 aom.is slash biolane, where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:53:32.340 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast and it wraps up another year of podcasts.

00:53:38.620 Putting out two podcasts week after week for 52 weeks out of the year isn't just me. It's a team

00:53:43.180 effort. So I want to take this time to thank those involved in making the Art of Manliness podcast

00:53:47.140 happen. First off, we have Kate McKay, our podcast editor. She listens to each episode over and over

00:53:51.780 again, makes cuts, makes sure things flow right. It's snappy. So thank you, Kate, for all the work you do.

00:53:56.620 Also have Jeremy Annenberg, our podcast producer. He just oversees the whole podcast process. He lines up our

00:54:01.800 guest. He makes sure guest has mics. He does sound checks with guests, you know, uploads the podcast,

00:54:06.080 makes sure everything goes out on time. It just oversees the process. So thank you, Jeremy,

00:54:09.280 for doing that. They also have Creative Audio Lab. There are sound engineers based out of Broken

00:54:13.060 Arrow, Oklahoma. We give them the podcast. They clean it up, make sure it sounds as the best that

00:54:17.400 we can. So thank you to them. And finally, thank you to all who listen to the AOM podcast. Your

00:54:22.520 support is what make this happen. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. We're looking forward

00:54:26.300 to another year, 2021 of Art of Manliness podcast. So until next time, this is Brett McKay.

00:54:31.800 Reminding you, not only listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - December 30, 2020

How to Lose Weight, and Keep It Off Forever

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript