Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 570 - Layne Norton Trying To Fix America's Diet and Obesity

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Layne Norton is back on the Power Project answering ALL of our diet and nutrition questions including the toughest question yet, how do we fix America's overweight problem. Dr. Layne Norton is a bodybuilding/figure/physique coach, who claimed his pro card at the age of 24, and is a professional powerlifter who set the raw squat record in 2015 IPF World Championships of 668lbs/303kg at 93kg. Layne obtained his PhD in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois in 2010. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use code "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

My phone is kind of possessed, I think. Like, I turned down the ringer and all that shit and like... Turned down for what? Is it going to be live, by the way, guys? It still does... No, we're currently rolling, too. Wait. No, I'm not joking.

Wait, this isn't going to be live? No, not live, no. Oh, okay. Wait, what are you joking about? That we are rolling now. I don't want to roll within SEMA. No, I mean... But even when we are rolling, we're recording recording we're not going to be live we're rolling cassette tape okay so we're not we're not gonna be live no not live okay i don't trust you right now for some reason

no it's like your look makes me think you're doing something mischievous is he serious or is he not i don't know all right you're right you're right all right let's do this i can't believe in seamus got tattoos bruh me neither it's getting worse i can't believe it either and there's more i have plans for already but wait there's more they really say after you get the first nearly says bruh all the time quinn oh she does yeah it's hilarious it's so funny it's a it's a whatever age kind of says it to jake all the time jake is like always i don't know just jake's nerdy you know so she'll be like bruh it's funny i can't imagine her saying bruh but i guess it's hilarious so jasmine has been saying like bruh bruh she'll double up on it that was the thing in high school bruh bruh i'm like oh

what's up i don't remember why that was the thing in high school i'm like oh what's up i don't remember why that was the thing in high school but that was super popular like be like a bruh bruh like it like it was just a thing back then but it's more of like i don't know like like if if i did something like a dad joke or whatever it's like bruh but it's like bruh bruh like it's like emphasized apparently i feel like it's also probably California. By the way, do you have a pen over there? Let's toss it through the cameras. I'll throw it if you could tell me what you ate for lunch yesterday.

Whoa! Dude, perfect! That's why I played soccer. You didn't have to move. Fucking Tom Brady. Jesus Christ. That was Tom Brady-esque. Gotta get this motherfucking scholarship.

Seamus got hands like feet, though. He couldn't quite reel it in. It was Tom Brady-esque. Gotta get this motherfucking scholarship. Seema's got hands like feet, though. He couldn't quite reel it in. It was a perfect pass. Well, my feet are actually pretty majestic. So if you say I have hands like feet, you're giving me a compliment. But I had some eat right steak. And then I also had some turkey. I didn't get to do the shrimp steak thing.

That's called a surf and turf. Oh, yeah. I didn't get to do that. Learn something every day. But I can't wait to do that because it's really freaking good. I did a surf and turf oh yeah i didn't get to do that learn something every day i can't wait to do that because it's really freaking good i did a surf and surf i did some salmon and some uh shrimp fucking delicious that's great i i is that really called a surf and surf though that no that's just called seafood okay i said surf and surf yeah yeah i i grabbed a chicken tray whatever i think we'll call them chicken meal.

I went to the break room, I heated it up and it came out a salmon. I wasn't paying attention and it was actually salmon in a previous version. A previous version of myself would have been like, ah, I don't want to eat. No. Well,

yeah, that too, but I'm just like in general, like I never ate fish of any kind, but with eat right foods, I'm dude, I'm mowing through all that salmon it's delicious you guys may not agree with this but i love throwing some soy sauce just a little bit of soy sauce on top of the salmon with some rice and it's just fucking delicious that's great yeah i did put some g hues on it and we were partying it was really really good uh if you guys want to party just like us

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after that. Again, eatrightfoods.com. Links to them down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes. We got Lee Norton the podcast show notes. We got Lee Norton on the show today. Amazing, right? Yes, it's going to be freaking awesome. One thing I was actually going to mention real quick though, I've been trying to be a little bit more responsible because someone was saying,

you don't want to warm things up in plastic. I was like, oh shit, I actually do remember. So I've actually been taking my Eat Right Foods out and putting it into a bowl and warming it up. I do the same thing. Yeah. I put it on a plate but i'm positive that the uh it's like that what's uh shoot it's like a certain number plastic right that's like that's a good one you can yeah you're fine be safe it's safe but you can never be too careful yeah why not why not be extra cautious, right? Plus, you look a little bit more, I don't know what the term is, but not elegant. Refined.

Refined, yes. I want to ask Lane today about some fasting. I want to ask him about what his thoughts are on fasting since I know a lot of his background is the guy that he learned a lot of stuff from, his professor. A lot of the information and things that he learned, and I think he even wrote some papers on, were like protein type stuff. So it would be interesting to, that is a total booby trap, by the way, Andrew. Interesting to learn what his thoughts are about whether he thinks, you know, what are his thoughts on fasting, I guess, in general. thinks but you know what just was thoughts on fasting I guess in general mm-hmm yeah no I'm curious to just like where he would see it's practical uses and where maybe he thinks that it's used him practically because I think one

thing about Lane but just you know it's pretty cool is that he's he's always against like dogma so he I think he's been more clear in his approach because I think some people used to think he hated keto and hated these diets. But more so, he's just he's been more clear in saying, no, it's just I think that it has a certain time and certain place for use. Although the way that he puts it forward is still like, man, fuck you. But it's still like he's still it's still more even. So it's going to be great. I'm really interested to see what he says about a lot of stuff.

great i'm really interested to see what he says about a lot of stuff but even in his um the app that he created uh carbon carbon diet app coach or something like that yeah um he's like everyone thinks that like i'm so against keto and against this and that he's like you can have options like there's a setting you can put in the app that i helped create that if you're on a ketogenic diet like it's there for you i'm not against any of it so yeah i think uh i think elaine norton's getting getting soft on us he's being nice yeah and the interesting thing guys is he's uh right now he's um he's pretty lean he has a good body composition he's eating like 400 grams of carbs a day um which is like that's totally possible but you know like a lot of people for a soft don't think you can eat a lot of carbs and maintain a lean physique um i've done it and i strayed away from

it just because i don't i feel better i'm not eating as many carbs to maintain the physique and rather eating fats but he's doing a like that's one thing cool that he is doing because some people don't think that you can eat carbs and be in good physical shape and he's kind of you know he's showing that you can so you go about it good physical shape. And he's kind of, you know, he's showing that you can, so you go about it both ways. I've liked, uh, you know,

learning from this show that there's, you know, kind of two main energy sources. You got fat and you got carbohydrates and that protein is kind of stagnant for most people. You keep it up approximately one gram per pound of body weight. If you're trying to lift and maintain and even possibly gain muscle. Um, but you can pick carbohydrates or fat.

You know, you can pick either one and you can kind of roll with one or the other. You can also fall somewhere in between and utilize both as energy sources. But when you do select high carbohydrate, you usually select much lower and more moderate, more modest amounts of fat. And the reverse is the same is true as well. So if you are going to consume a lot of fat, you're going to bring down your carbohydrates. It's not that eating fat and carbohydrates together will magically just all of a sudden make you gain a ton of weight. It's just that a lot of times those foods together in combination end up being just fucking delicious and it gets to be very, very easy to over consume. So just things to

think about. Some people like carbs. If you like carbs, be on a higher carb, more modest fat diet. If you like fat a lot, I personally love to eat fat. I love like a ribeye. I love, um, I like butter. I like eggs. I like avocado, bacon, all that kind of stuff. And so for me, it's much easier just to be on a little bit higher fat, higher protein diet. Grass is always greener for me. As soon as I go super high carb, low fat, like Mark will say something about having eggs and I'm like, damn, that's what I want. And then right now, you know, I'm somewhere in the middle, but I'm definitely having way more fat than I have been in the past like year. I am feeling pretty good, but both of you said that you both like prefer having a little bit more fat because you feel better. Is that because you feel fuller too?

Or like, how does that work out? Well, the, for me personally, nowadays, the foods that I really enjoy eating have quite a bit of fat. Now, don't get it wrong. It's not like I'll never eat carbs. I mentioned on certain days where I feel a little bit like it's been a minute since I've had some carbs. I'll load up on a little bit extra carbs. But I enjoy eating high fatty foods. I enjoy ribeyes. I enjoy burgers.

I enjoy fatty foods. And I can go without the carbs, right? It's just as far as my personal food enjoyment. So MCT and or the combination of the two in it. Sometimes that, you know, that was created by Dave Asprey made it popular. Sometimes that will assist somebody to make it to 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock without eating anything else other than having that cup of coffee. anything else other than having that cup of coffee. I've also noticed the same thing from when somebody switches over to being used to eating muffins and bagels and all these different kind of carbohydrate rich things that when they have two or three eggs and a couple slices of bacon or some sausage or something like that, that they often report, oh, I ate at nine o'clock. I wasn't hungry again until three o'clock, you know, those types of things.

And so I don't really know, you know, exactly what fat does, but it does. I do know that it does slow down the absorption rate of your food. And so protein is supposed to be the most satiating. I don't know how they measure these things, but that's just the information that we have for now. Protein is supposed to be the most satiating. And I believe that fat slows down the gastric emptying of your stomach, which slows down kind of how the calories are hitting your body, basically. And so it's going to digest over a longer period of time. A steak is going to take longer to digest than a bunch of egg whites or something like that because it has more fat content in it.

That makes a lot of sense. I didn't know anything about that, but I know when I make like a regular, it's funny I say regular, but when I make anabolic French toast, so like French toast using protein powder and egg whites instead of just eggs along with a couple other things, when I make it without the whole egg, eggs along with a couple other things when i make it without the whole egg um it seems like uh like i could i could probably eat like eight slices of it and be okay when i make it with whole eggs it's like wow like i don't know if i can eat any more you know like i i get i can't keep going even though i know that with the the egg white one I'm probably getting a lot more protein just because the volume of egg whites versus egg whites and the yellow part, the whole egg, it probably isn't as much protein. I'm not even sure of it right now.

But, yeah, it's harder to keep going when I'm eating more fat. That's what I've noticed. It kind of puts a limiter on myself even myself, even though I'm, I'm like, I just, you know, open the floodgates and I'm still just like, I can't do it. I'm excited to announce that our boy standing around on efforting, uh, made a book, like an actual physical book of the vertical diet. So people that are excited about, wow, is this like a door into the fucking matrix or whatever?

What is going on? Oh, wow. He just walked right through the door. It seemed like a horror movie i was just thinking like if he had a crazy if he had intro music that was perfect yeah maybe he could do it again we can just cue up some music some stone cold steve austin like glass breaking yeah i think he was taking a shit probably he poops a lot

you guys hear me? yep I do poop a lot, I heard that it's all those carbs never trust a nutrition guy that shits all day. Let me see. I just plugged in my mic. Give me one second. Yep.

Hair's looking fucking on point. Mm-hmm. Looking good, bro. He does have a good head of hair. What the fuck? That's a sign he doesn't take steroids. The beard is pretty good too we gotta give him credit there just handsome okay you don't think he's on steroids well not with that hairline

and elaine's very suspicious later you want steroids over there you know me i'm always always juicing what about HRT is that something you'll ever consider every time I've had my testosterone measured it's been like 800 to 1000 I don't think I really need it no reason to add to the stack that you're already on

by the way can you guys hear me okay yeah we can hear okay is the audio all right it's a little echoey but uh it'll work how about if i bring it there is that better that's better yeah yeah that works okay cool i may just have to hold this thing um yeah it's funny i have uh i'm do you guys know brian callan by chance absolutely yeah yeah so he's a friend of mine and he was like, yeah, I think I'm going to get on HRT this and that. And I'm like, well, go get it measured first. And it turns out he was 900 milligrams per deciliter.

So he's like, Oh, I don't need HRT. I'm like, yeah, man. So yeah, it's so funny. It's like some guys turn like 35 and like, Oh yeah, I'm going to get on HRT. And I'm'm like why don't you just call it what you what you really want to call it you want an excuse to do to do steroids you know but hey no hate you know my stance on that but it's kind of like you know if you're not going to get it actually measured you know it's not really hrt so uh i think more recently uh you've been uh getting in better shape over the last maybe year or two years or so. I think for a little while you were powerlifting,

and I think maybe you were messing around with getting into a different weight class for a bit, and then you got in better shape more recently. What has been the main change with that, and is what you're doing currently, is it fairly easy for you to maintain? Or does it feel easy? Yeah, so it was all intentional. Like it was so funny when I was heavier, I'd have people on my YouTube like, oh, doctor doesn't know how to diet. And I'm like, you realize like I'm having to stuff my face right now on purpose?

Yeah, so when I was rehabbing my back injuries i it's not difficult for me to make the 93 kilo class in us apl but i i would say that my natural like hovering weight would be more like 95 or 96 um so i just decided you know what i don't want to throw another stressor in while i'm trying to come back so in 2019 when i nationals, I just went into the 105 class. I think I weighed in at like 103 or something like that, 104. I was underweight. And then I decided to go back down for a multitude of reasons. The first one is, quite frankly, it's just easier to make a living

in the fitness industry when you have a six pack. I, it sucks to say that it is, it is absolute fact. It was much easier for me to sell things when I was lean, regardless of my academic background, all that kind of stuff, which like part of me is like, okay, well that's an advantage because, you know, um, there are people who don't have my academic background who aren't in as good a shape. So this is like a bigger advantage for me, which I already feel like I'm at a disadvantage because I don't say crazy stuff. But at the same time, like the academic purist in me is like, this is so dumb. It's so dumb. Literally nothing changed about my knowledge of nutrition.

All that happened was I lost weight. And so you asked the main difference. The main difference is I just ate less. I ate the same, mostly, I want to say mostly the same things I ate when I was So I dropped from November 2020 until July-ish. Sorry, November 2019 until July 2020. Dropped from like 230 to like right around 206, 207. And then I just kind of stayed there. And that was honestly like pretty easy. In fact, my wife, she's a foodie and she's like, it disgusts me. Like you have not complained once. I'm like, well, yeah, I don't like, it's just not that difficult for me. Um, and part of that is a few different reasons. One, you know, again, I've kind of talked about this before. The way I eat is pretty sustainable for me.

Um, you know, it just, it doesn't feel difficult. Now, if I got low enough body fat, it would start to feel difficult. Um, it doesn't, it doesn't matter when you start to get into shredded land, everything sucks. Um, but that threshold is different for everybody. For me, I start to get right around 200 pounds. That's when I really start to feel it. Do you personally have to be careful of certain food? Like, do you have to, for yourself, do you have to avoid certain foods? Have you ever been personally addicted to any

foods? Like if you were to eat like a slice of pizza, does it trigger you to want to eat a bunch more junk or are you fairly controlled with it? Yeah. So the only time that I was like that was when I first got into bodybuilding and I was trying to quote unquote be clean. I see. Or I was really limiting my food choices and trying to stick rigidly to these, you know, list of foods that were deemed clean by the, the fitness, fitness authorities. And I mean, what would end up happening is I was in college and what would I live with, you know, six other guys in an on-campus apartment.

And so what would happen is like, I do great until there was pizza in the house and then exactly like you said, I would just go nuts. Is that addiction? I don't think so. In the literature, they call it what's called a disinhibition reflex, which there is quite a bit of literature on this, which is where if you have kind of a rigid mindset with regards to dieting, it's more likely to trigger that. When you make hard food rules, and I want to be really careful here, it's fine to say things like, hey, it's probably a good idea to try to avoid processed foods as much as possible if you're trying to lose weight. It's probably a good idea to stick to

whole sources of food, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is when you make it a rule, when it's a hard rule that you can never break, what ends up happening is, and there's a lot of people who are very, you know, kind of OCD black and white rules that they like that sort of thing, or that's how their mind is wired. And so what happens?

Well, they go out and they have a single slice of pizza. And instead of going, Oh, you know, I really enjoyed that slice of pizza. Not a big deal. Let's get back after it. It's like, fuck it. Already ruined it. Might as well just go full on cheat mode. one to two ways to approach that, which is just, okay, we're going to completely eliminate that. I'm just going to take my willpower, you know, up to the max. I kind of look at it as like, okay, maybe there are a subset of people who really, you know, moderation is very difficult for them. Maybe it's easier for them just to completely eliminate. But I kind of look at the perspective as, okay, what if we could just rewire that and get you to understand that, okay, that one slice of pizza isn't going to kill you. Or it's not going to like really impede your progress that much.

It's the fact that you eat the whole thing, right? It'd kind of be like if you – I always use the budgetary comparisons. If you had a budget and you said – but part of your budget was, I am not going to the mall and shopping. Right. And then you go out to the mall and you're there and you're with some friends and you buy a stick of gum and you're like, ah, fuck it. And you end up blowing your budget because you think that going to the mall is what's impeding your ability to save money when in reality, it's not a big deal as long as you account for that expense. So for me, it was pretty easy to do. And I actually tell people that like of that, let's see, that would have been about an eight-month period, I think, eight or nine-month period.

I lost the bulk of the weight. eight month period, I think eight or nine month period, I was, I lost the bulk of the weight. I probably spent as much time or more time at maintenance or reverse dieting as I did in a deficit. So I was kind of trying out something new where I think overall, over the course of, you know, several months or years, if you have a lot of weight to lose, you should lose it relatively slowly. If you have more weight to lose, you can go faster in terms of an absolute rate of loss because you have more to lose. But regardless, I think it should be a relatively conservative rate overall. And there's quite a few studies to back that up in terms of preserving lean body mass, metabolic rate, those sorts of things. But the way I do it is I kind of – I'll do like a two or three-week pretty aggressive like 1,000-calorie deficit, and then I'll go to maintenance or I'll reverse for a comparable amount of time.

And I really found that that made it super easy for me. And the other thing that allowed me to do is kind of structured around my lifestyle, right? So I could say, okay, you know what? A great example. I started the diet in November, early November. So I did a diet break the entire week of Thanksgiving, right? Now that's, when I say diet break, I don't mean just do whatever the hell you want. That's it's eating the diet break. I would say in the scientific literature usually refers to eating at maintenance for a period of time. So whatever maintains your body weight.

So, you know, that's not necessarily a smorgasbord of food, but it does give you quite a bit more flexibility. Whereas, you know, if you were like, OK, I'm going to try and diet through Thanksgiving, you might get some of that disinhibition reflex because you get to Thanksgiving and you're trying to stick to these targets. And I mean, I probably know people who have been successful dieting. There probably are people who are successful dieting through holidays like that, but I haven't met many of them. You know what I mean? In fact, it's really interesting. like that, but I haven't met many of them. You know what I mean? In fact, it's really interesting. The research shows that the average American puts on like a half to two kilos per year of adulthood, but it's almost exclusively from the months of November to January. It's almost exclusive to that time. And so you'll hear people go, oh, well, obesity is really only in

excess of 10 to 20 calories a day. No, it's not. If you cut 10 to 20 calories out of your diet per day, I promise you absolutely nothing would happen. Nothing would happen. Your body would just adapt to that slight decrease. So it's these periods of kind of more intense overfeeding. So I did a diet break during the week of Thanksgiving. Then I had a couple more weeks where I dieted. Took two weeks because that was my birthday and then it was Christmas. So I took two weeks at maintenance. Then I did another three-week diet period.

And then there's Gasparilla. I don't know if you guys ever heard of Gasparilla. It's like our Mardi Gras here in Tampa. Everybody dresses up as a pirate and gets really drunk. So this was pre-COVID, thankfully. So we went our Mardi Gras here in Tampa. Everybody dresses up as a pirate and gets really drunk. So this was pre COVID thankfully. So we went to Mardi, so Mardi Gras or Mardi Gras, we Gasparilla week, I had a diet break. And so I just structured it out like that, right? Like if I looked at my calendar and I saw, okay, I've got this thing going up, coming up, not a big deal. I don't really have, you know, an end point of getting to this body weight other than I'd like

to get there this year. And so I just structured out the diet breaks that way. And it was honestly super easy. I have a quick question for you, Lane. There's so many questions because you talked about so many things there. But I guess the first thing that I think I want us to focus on is your process of your personal diet, maybe how someone could take this for themselves. Now, you mentioned that you like to go on aggressive sprints. So two to three weeks, aggressive deficit, uh, and then maybe a week or maybe two weeks of a small reverse or maintenance calories. Um, now for an individual who's like, let's say that they're trying to lose. Yeah, quite a bit of weight. Let's say their goal is to, uh, go like lose 50 pounds, 50 pounds. Right. Um, would that be something? How would they be able to handle that because a lot of people when they are doing a type of deficit right when they go into a diet break and sometimes on diet breaks or maintenance you see the scale go up just a little bit it bothers them because they're like oh i'm gaining weight back but it's it's not something permanent so how would you

mentally help somebody learn to handle what's about to happen on a diet break? Because sometimes even when you explain it, the scale fucks with people's heads. So when they see they made all that progress and then that number starts to creep up, they're like, oh shit, oh shit, no, it's not working, right? So how do you help people kind of finagle that? Sure, and that's a great question.

And you're absolutely right. I talked to Ethan Suplee about this actually, because, because he definitely was talking about how he struggles with that. And honestly, I think it's just an education and experience thing. So just to see it happen, kind of like exposure therapy, right? You see it happen, and then you observe that it doesn't actually ruin your progress. And then over time, you become more confident with the process, right? And then over time you become more confident with the process. Right. But what I would say is I would never try to force somebody to do diet breaks or do it the way I do it. That's it's kind of like, would you rather jog the entire marathon at a certain pace or would you rather like sprint and then rest for a little bit,

sprint and rest for a little bit. The, the data really, I mean, there's a couple of studies that suggest diet breaks might help preserve metabolic rate a little bit better and lean body mass a little bit better. However, not to get too technical, there's some – it's not that there are problems with the study. It's just limitations. This is – when people look at studies, this is one of the things they don't understand.

There's a difference between observing the limitations of a study study that doesn't make a study bad. It just means that there's limitations. So for example, in some of these studies, they've looked at the people's lean body mass kind of compared to people who were dieting straight through. And then they'll look at the lean body mass, you know, a few days after a diet break. Well, the problem with a limitation is lean body mass, water shows up as lean body mass. In fact, muscle tissue is like 70% water, lean tissue is like 70% water. And as you know, like if you go on a diet break and you know, you're, unless you're like doing a diet break and a ketogenic diet, as you add carbohydrate back in and you restore some of that muscle glycogen,

back in and you restore some of that muscle glycogen, you're going to have some water associated with that. So was it a lasting change in lean body mass or was that just kind of a short-term difference in lean body mass? I don't know the answer to that. What I would say is it definitely doesn't look like diet breaks hurt you in any way, shape, or form, and there might be a possible benefit. But I don't want people out there to think, oh, I've got to do diet breaks hurt you in any way, shape or form. And there might be a possible benefit, but I don't want to people out there to think, oh, I've got to do diet breaks. Because as you just said, for some people, it doesn't, they don't like them because especially people who have a lot of weight to lose, they might be rolling, feeling good. You know, they're, they're seeing the scale go down, that sort of thing. Now you try to force a diet break on them. Maybe they start to see the scale go up that demotivates them. Then they start to overeat

because, hey, it's a diet break, you know, those, those sorts of things. So I always try to present things to people as, hey, these are all tools in a tool belt. I mean, people think I'm anti-low carb or anti-fasting or, you know, those sorts of things. And I'm not at all. I just, my problems are with the verbiage and people's explanation of why they work. I want an accurate representation of why they work. So a great example would be like, I really like diet breaks. They make things seem easy for me. If I went out and said, well, you got to do diet breaks because it's going to make you retain 30% more lean body mass and raise your metabolic rate and all this. But that's not true. I liked it, but why do I need to justify as to why that's the best way possible? That's just my ego if that's what I'm doing.

So again, it's just a tool in a tool belt. And so I don't really coach people much anymore because I'm more focused on building scalable things. We have a team of coaches at Team BioLane, and then we also have our nutrition coaching app, Carbon Diet Coach. So I talk about this a lot in our Facebook group for Carbon Diet Coach is people will say, well, I tried a diet break and I'll get the gamut of responses. I tried a diet break, made it so easy. I actually lost weight on my diet break, you know, this and that. And then I'll get people say, you know, I saw the scale go up and it demotivated me. And so what I'll say is like, hey, listen, as long as you understand that if you're truly

eating at maintenance, it's not going to harm your progress. You know, it's just going to delay it a little bit because you are eating at maintenance, right? But if that makes it easier for you and that makes it easier for you to kind of incorporate these lifestyle events where you don't feel like you're missing out as much, hey, awesome. It's a tool in a tool belt. But the great thing about this is you get to choose, right? I always tell people this, like people kind of look at the diet research out there that basically, I mean,

and I'll talk about it. It shows that there really aren't magic diets. Most diets work about the same when you're equating calories. So people will kind of, they'll be like really resistant to that, or they'll kind of like get upset about that. And I'll say, but that's beautiful because that means you have the entire gamut to choose from. Like you can choose whatever you want. The whole, everything works, right? Within certain principles. That's really maybe the only thing that nutrition science has done

in the time that we've been studying it. It may have liberated us in a way to say, hey, look, you can eat some of these foods if you're equating for the calories and still get to a lot of your goals. But aside from that, what are some things that, in your opinion, nutrition science has really helped advanced? It kind of appears to me like we just have these kind of subset of foods that are kind

of, you know, natty, natural foods, right? We got meat and vegetables and fruit. And then there's maybe a couple other things outside of that. But it seems like when we focus in on eating those types of things, and as you mentioned earlier, maybe staying away from processed foods

doesn't mean like forever, that you're getting rid of it forever. But is there anything that we've learned that's like just uh really going to help change anything other than the fact that we should most likely stick to a lot of those foods so this is i know we're having a text conversation earlier about like um you know we want we want you to like how are we going to fix, you know, fat America? Like what, what do we need to do? And this is, you know, it's such a complicated issue. And at the problem is,

is when people hear what I say, okay, you need to eat less calories or whatnot, then you, then you expend Google. Well, there's no way it's that simple. The math, the fundamentals on a physiological level are relatively simple. However, trying to institute those in a practical manner with people is very complicated. Very complicated. I mean, at the end of the day, what do you, I'll just ask you guys, in order to acquire wealth, what do you need to do at a fundamental level? To work hard at something that can make you some decent money? Well, at a math level. To acquire wealth.

Make more than you spend. Exactly. Exactly. So why isn't everybody rich? Right? So why isn't everybody rich? Right? I think it's something like 70, I'll get the statistic wrong, but it's the majority of Americans could not write a $5,000 check if they had to. That's the math, right? Even though I think the average income, it's probably going up now because of inflation, but I think the average income is somewhere around $50,000 for a family, right?

And I think the average – like 10 years ago, the average person will have a million – the average person will have a million dollars go through their hands in their lifetime. So why don't more people acquire wealth? Well, it's not a knowledge problem. That's not the issue, right? People know they need to – I don't think anybody would argue that you have to spend less than you save. So why don't, why aren't more people able to do it? And even people who make tons of money go broke, right? Like look at athletes, people who win the lottery, 80% of people who win the lottery are broke within five or 10 years. You're right.

This is a really good point because it's at the fundamental level, no matter what you do, you can't escape that fact. Right. So that means it's a behavior problem. It's a habits problem. And food is the same way, right? It's a habits issue. You know, people don't realize that we are slaves to our habits as we start to develop these. Like, Mark, you used to be much bigger when you're in powerlifting. I'm sure you had rituals, kind of semi-rituals that had to do with food. Like if you did, and I don't know, I'm guessing, but if you were doing a squat session, you're probably like, all right, after the squat session, I'm going out and getting pizza

and burgers or whatever it is, right? Yeah. What, do you got a camera on me at all? Of course, that was the regimen. Right. There's a lot of people who are like that. Like, oh, I go out and get drinks on a Friday night. And then when I have drinks, I have this.

Or if I'm out with this person, I have this. When I go to this restaurant, I have this. Go to the movies. People. Yeah, exactly. People really underestimate how slave to their habits they truly are and so i don't know what the answer is i don't know what you're talking about as i sip my coffee so but it's it's i mean i do the same thing right I get up and the first thing I do is I pour a cup of coffee. Do I need that cup of coffee?

Well, I got two kids, so yes. Besides me. No, it's a habit, right? It's like I even feel better after I have it. Now, do I feel better from that 75 milligrams of caffeine? The research would say probably not. Or do I feel better because it's part of my habit part of my ritual that that is kind of setting up my day and in terms of like you brought up food addiction earlier there's very little

evidence for like true food addiction but there is evidence for what's called food dependence and it's it's a subtle difference between the two addiction is more of a physiological thing. Whereas dependence is more of a psychological thing. And I also want to be careful because it's very difficult to separate the two. And there probably is some crossover. So when it comes to habits and behaviors and whatnot, trying to disentangle them, you know,

it's not as easy as people think people People, oh, well, just eat less. Okay. Yes. Yes. On a mathematics level, you are correct. It's not super helpful information for most people. And the solutions that are out there that I can think of, I mean, they're not super palatable, to be honest, pun intended, you know, because, yes, you're right, Mark, like processed food. You know, people think I'm like a shill for processed food. And all I've said is, hey, on a per calorie basis, it does not appear to be more fattening than other foods. But the problem is, is people don't eat it on a per calorie basis, right? In fact, in Kevin Hall's study of ultra processed food versus minimally processed food, they gave people free access to either ultra processed foods or minimally processed foods. people on the ultra processed foods diet increase their calorie intake by 500 calories per day spontaneously. Right. So regard, yes, per calorie,

it's not more fattening, but most people, it's not like they have a soda and they go, well, that was 40 grams of carbs. So I'm going to omit the pasta out of my dinner tonight. Right. They don't do that. Right. Now, if you're a super macro nerd, like I am, you'll do that, but that's not the majority of people. So when it comes to providing, you know, you gotta, you guys ever heard of a Gaussian distribution curve? I have not. No. All right. So it's basically like, if you treat any large population with a specific treatment, you'll see about 60 to 70% of the population respond. And that's kind of the

average, right? They'll respond a certain way. And then you'll have like out to the ends of the spectrum, you'll have like two and a half percent that are outliers, right? They respond in weird ways. I look at that as like, if we're given information to 60 or 70% of the people, the suggestion to limit processed foods, focus on whole foods, focus on, you know, protein, fruits, vegetables, you know, higher fiber foods. I think those are good recommendations, but you just don't want to make those rules, right? Because when you make them rules, it can have the opposite effect. So, and they have shown that obese people, it's kind of like, it's what you would expect less,

but people who have more rigid dieting mindset were actually more likely to be overweight in studies than people who had a flexible mindset. So again, it's okay to have, just look at them like guidelines, right? Okay. This is a guideline for me, but it doesn't mean I can never have another piece of cheesecake or it doesn't mean I can never have a piece, another piece of pizza, because I think a lot of obese people out there think that that's what they have to do. And they, and they just kind of get exasperation, exasperated because the, the barrier to entry to become fit seems so high. Why even try, right? So what I try to do a lot of, you know, what I do is I try to remove some of those fears around food and yes, the messaging of minimally processed food, try to avoid processed food. I think that's fine, but you also have to be careful about how it's worded, right? And that's

why when I post things, if people read the description, which most people don't read the description, I try to provide a lot of nuance and context to what I'm saying, because I know how it can be interpreted if that's not done. Now, the problem is, okay, well, how do you, at a fundamental level, on a population level, how do we get people to eat less calories and move a little bit more? move a little bit more. Okay. Well, difficult, right? Like if you look at the tobacco industry and how we got people to start smoking less, I mean, basically it became very unfashionable to smoke, right? Like now if you're out of place, like full disclosure, I love having a good cigar, like maybe once a week or something like that, right? When I'm out, and even if I'm at a place where the outdoor allows smoking, it never fails. Now,

like I've learned, I just go sit way out in the corner, right? Because even if I'm in an area that allows smoking, somebody gets upset, right? Because it's become really uncouth to smoke and other people don't want to deal with it either. So how do you get that to happen with food? Well, a lot of it's legislation, right? A lot of it's legislation based, which for me, I mean, I don't want to get too much into my politics. I consider myself an independent, but I am not a big fan of government kind of telling businesses what they can or cannot do. So it's kind of like, well, this might work. It might help people get healthier, but it's also going to involve some government intervention that I don't really care for. So it's kind of like, where do you put that nexus? And if it helps people, if the outcome is it helps people, is it okay? Right?

So it's a difficult question. And I do think education can help. But the problem is right now, there are so many voices in this arena, so many voices in this arena. And it's so easy to dismiss. I mean, people, I mean, look at what with COVID. People, the reason that this has been so hotly debated and so difficult is because normally people are shielded from the scientific process. The scientific process is messy, requires a lot of time, a lot of data, and a lot of studies. And we know that based on the way a study is designed, based on the measurements that are taken, based on the statistics used, can change the outcomes of the study or change the conclusions of the study. I think most scientists are good people trying to do the right thing. The difficulty is we form a consensus over decades. We form these consensuses over decades. Right now, what's happening with science in the public eye is they're seeing it play out right in front of them.

And so to somebody who hasn't been involved in science, it looks like a lot of hypocrisy. It looks like a lot of, you know, just things that don anything. And then another study will come out and say, well, masks do appear to do something. And people go, I don't know who to believe, you know, this and that. And, you know, 20 years from now, when we look back, we'll go, okay, that was probably the right call and that wasn't. But we don't know what that is right now. And right now, you're kind of, I guess the analogy is we're trying to build the ship while we're sailing it, right? And so when you're in real time, you don't know what decision is the right decision. So anyway, all that to say, I think people are very distrustful of the establishment and experts right now. experts right now. And it's easy to say, well, do your research, you know, just, just, you know, do your research. Well, the average person doesn't have the wherewithal to be able to go read these studies and interpret them for themselves. And so I don't know what the answers are, man. I'm glad I'm not in charge. That's what I always say. I'm glad I'm not in charge.

Let's pretend that it's somebody's first time, you know, hearing from Lane Norton. You know, you years ago, you were on bodybuilding.com and that kind of started people's awareness of you. Let's maybe back things up just to in general, like what is your main theory and what is the main message that you're trying to get across? And within that message, could you maybe give us some definitions of like what is a macro? What is reverse dieting? Those types of things. What is my main theory? I want to take for that person who feels so intimidated by all the information they're getting, who feels like completely despondent because they just don't know who to believe, or they're so afraid to eat anything, or, you know, because they're so anxious about food,

they don't feel like it's even worth trying because apparently everything makes you fat based on, you know, all these experts. Experts. because apparently everything makes you fat based on, you know, all these experts, experts, I do this stuff for them. So I want to demystify a lot of the, what do you call it? A lot of the, demystify the mysteries around nutrition, right? To make it more accessible for everyone. So that person who says, man, I have 200 pounds to lose. Could I actually do this? I want to provide the information that says, yes, you can. You absolutely can.

And you don't have to do it this way or you don't have to do it that way or you don't have to do it this way. It can be what feels easiest for you. And I guess at the core, if we're talking about fat loss, I wrote a nearly 400-page book on this called Fat Loss Forever. And my conclusion was basically, in order to lose body fat, and especially a considerable amount of body fat, it is going to require some form of restriction, whether that is tracking your calories, whether that's restricting your carbohydrates, whether that's restricting processed foods, whether that's restricting your time,

your eating time window, whatever the, whatever restricting your dietary fat, whatever it may be, it's going to require some form of restriction. The beautiful thing is you get to pick the form of restriction that feels least restrictive for you. And in the research data, this is something we actually have quite a bit of data on. There's been two meta-analyses now on this that have shown that amongst different diets, there's really no difference in adherence. There was one meta-analysis that looked at 14 different diets, like the Mediterranean diet, low-carb diet, I think intermittent fasting was one of them, all these different kind of popular

diets, and really found that there was no difference in dietary adherence between them. So to me, what that says is it doesn't mean that it won't make a difference for you as an individual. It simply means that on a population level, what feels restrictive or feels difficult or feels easy is going to vary a lot from individual to individual. So again, find what feels least restrictive for you. And again, I'll go back to talk ahead with Ethan Suplee as somebody who lost, you know, 300 pounds. Incredible, you know, like really, really incredible story. You know, he's like, you know, I tried a bunch of different diets and they all worked. I did a liquid diet. I lost 80 pounds.

I did a low carb diet, lost, you know, 200 pounds. You know, I did these different diets. I would always, I would lose weight until I stopped doing the diet. Right. So you'll always hear people say, well, you've got to make it a lifestyle. And then they, they will like make recommendations that are completely inconducive to most people's lifestyles, right? So trying to figure out like what you value as an individual, what feels least restrictive for you, and probably trying a bunch of different things, right? And if you find something that works for you, like again, for me, I would say that I was much more pro IIFYM flexible dieting circa, you know, early to like, sorry, like right around 2010, because that's what I had used. And that's what felt easy for me. And I just felt like, oh, well, you know, I made this stupid conclusion that a lot of other people make based on what diet

worked for them. Say, well, this felt easy for me. This is going to be the solution for everybody. Well, no, it's not the solution for everybody. And there's been a lot of people who have had really good results with flexible dieting, but it doesn't seem to be necessarily better than any other methodology. And see, the problem is whether it's carnivore or low carb or fasting or whatever it is, people, especially coaches make this mistake. It's called selection bias. So I had my thoughts about flexible dieting reinforced because people who come to me who wanted coaching wanted to do flexible dieting. They were sold on it already, right? I wasn't getting people coming to me saying,

hey, Lane, I want to do an alkaline diet, right? I wasn't getting those people. So I think that people make the same mistake where people who are doing carnivore, for example, they'll get people coming to them wanting to do carnivore. And it's the same thing with reporting of results. Look at all these people getting great results. But yeah, because people who don't get great results usually don't go – they usually don't talk about it. And in a lot of these communities and flexible dieting included, if you start talking about how you didn't like it or it wasn't helpful for you, what happens? Well, you get eviscerated on whatever message board you're on, right? What is flexible dieting?

What is IFYM? So I think my opinion of flexible dieting is basically that you have calorie and macro targets and you can select the foods you want to hit those targets, right? But I would like to submit that I think flexible dieting is more about a mindset. I think you can flexible diet and do low carb. I think you can flexible diet and do intermittent fasting. I think you can flexible diet and do almost anything as long as your mindset is flexible, because this is why the messaging is so important. Misinformation always has negative outcomes and unintended consequences. It's like when government makes regulations, there's always unintended consequences and you don't know

what they're going to be until you do it. So there was a video the other day from Ben Azadi up about how, if you want to shorten your lifespan, eat every two to three hours. And I kind of broke this video down of why I don't agree with that. And he actually messaged me and he was like, well, but don't you think like, but this is helping people. Like, don't you think that like, if they just stopped eating so frequently, it would help? And I said, I mean, yeah, I think that there's some people who would definitely be helped by that messaging. The problem becomes is when you don't provide context and nuance, people will hear that

and they will say, oh my God, if I've got to do intermittent fasting, otherwise I'm going to die early. And what happens? Well, if they don't fast for 16 hours, if they hit that 12 hour mark and they have a nibble of something, they blow out because they're like, well, I already broke my fasting window. Might as well go to fuck it mode. Right? well, go to fuck it mode, right? When in reality, is it a big deal that they broke their fasting window four hours early? No, it's not a big deal. If you eat too much overall, that is the poison, the toxin, right? So when you don't provide context to these messages that you're putting out there, they're going to have unintended consequences. And what I'll say typically is, years ago, I used to be more of a, I guess I would say an idealist, which is these people who are providing misinformation are bad people. They're doing it on purpose. They're doing it to make money. I still do think quite a few of them do it to make money, but I will say, I think that most of them do believe that they're helping people and they do have good intentions.

The problem is I don't care what your intentions are. That's what I've kind of started this mantra recently that I don't care what your intentions are, right? So if your intentions, most people don't have bad intentions. Most people are like, you know, you're nobody thinks they're Hitler. You know what I mean? Nobody thinks they're the bad guy. We're all the heroes of our own story. So it's very important to pay attention to people you respect in terms of, you know, messaging. And I've had this happen where like I've put up a video or something like I actually put up a video yesterday, which the title was, there is no anti-inflammatory diet. And seeing some of the comments on it, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to have to do a follow-up video of this because I did not get

my message across very well based on some of the comments I was getting. So that's called like not just doubling down on something that you obviously did a poor job of in the messaging. And I could just say, well, my intention was good. Well, who cares if it wasn't communicated well? So I think we have to get away from worrying about intentions and look at outcomes, right? It's the same thing with laws. You'll hear lawmakers all the time say, well, we're going to do this because we need to do this. Okay. But what evidence do you have that that's actually going to lead to better outcomes? Thomas Sowell, he's an economist, but I love a lot of his stuff for just general science. He says, in order to have compassionate

policy, you must have dispassionate analysis of the data, right? So that's why in my Instagram posts, I usually start out with data over your feelings, right? And data over my feelings too, right? So anyways, sorry, I realized I went off on a tangent there, Mark. But, you know, IAFYM would be straight up, hey, here's macros, hit these macros, you'll get to your goals. Sure, if you hit those macros. But the same way people can have a rigid mindset around fasting or low carb or any diet,

I've seen people have it with I-I-F-Y-M, where if they don't get those three little numbers exactly where they should be, they go crazy, right? Yeah. So again, that is somebody who's doing flexible dieting with an inflexible mindset. So it doesn't matter if you're flexible diet. If your mindset is inflexible, you're not going to get the best results. So again, I think that looking at different diets and just saying, okay, these are guidelines. I'm going to use these guidelines as a guide, but I understand that if I stray a little bit,

it doesn't mean I can't make progress. Right. And, um, and that applies to any different diet. Awesome. And now, now I want to ask you about this because this is probably going to be a question which answer gets a lot of nuance. But I get asked a lot, what's my diet? And I utilize some flexible dieting. There are a lot of days where I utilize some low carbohydrate. There are days where I fast. There are days where I don't. with all the diets that I've done, it's kind of formed itself into something where I can switch between things without using a scale and maintain my body composition,

mainly because of what we touched upon earlier habits. Now, what I want to know, and there's going to be a lot here, but for an individual who's getting into this dieting thing, or maybe let's say they have a little bit of experience. Most people, I would say that most people in the general population don't want to have to use a food scale for the rest of their life to maintain or to diet or to whatever. And I assume that maybe when you're dieting seriously, you track, but when you get to where your body's comfortable, you, I, I think you probably have habits that allow you to maintain things without having to pull out a food scale for every single meal or every single day. So how can, what habits do you think are fairly general? I know this is going to be a rough one, but what are some good general habits that individuals can

have that can help them to maintain their body or even lose weight without having to pull out the scale to make progress. Because personally, what I've found is like, like I'll have processed foods now and then, but I won't keep them in the house because I know if I really start craving something and it's in the cabinet, I will go crazy. Right. But like I can have it sometimes. So that's one of my habits that allows me just not to, not to need a scale for anything. Right.

So what are some things that you think are, are something that people can act on that can be pretty beneficial right now? Let me ask you one question to follow up. Go for it. Did you ever have experience where you were tracking everything? Yeah. That's everything. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that really helped me where I am now because that was super benefit. I did that for years. Like I did that for three or four years and that helped me have an understanding of what's in the food I eat. Whereas now I don't do that anymore because I have an understanding. everywhere they go for the rest of their life. And I, like when I'm home, I use a food scale because it doesn't really take me that much time. It's not a big deal. Like, you know, shilling 101, but our app makes it super easy to track, right? I just scan a barcode or I type in whatever, put in the weight and it's done. It takes five seconds, right? So I'll use it just because it's like, it's there and not a big deal. But I also know if I go away for a week on vacation, I don't usually gain weight. Or if I do, it's like a pound or two of water and it comes

off very quickly, right? Well, how am I able to do that? Because I don't have a food scale. So a lot to unpack here. I want to be very clear. I don't think that people need to have a food scale to lose weight. However, it can be a very, very useful tool. And if you've never had the experience of weighing out every single thing you put in your mouth, it will shock you. It will absolutely shock you. Now it'll be a pain in the ass for about the first week or first two weeks. And I'm not saying everybody's got to do this, but I do deal with a lot of people who are like, you know, Oh, I've, I've tried every diet out there and I just can't lose weight.

And I eat, I eat 1200 calories a day. What do you eat? Well, I eat a salad and you know, then they're starting to tell me what they eat. And I'm like, how much do you think's in that salad? Oh, 200 calories. And I'm like, cause you got almonds and dressing and some bacon bits in there and there's oil. I'm like, it's probably closer to 800 if I'm being real. So the scientific evidence really bears this out that people are horrendous estimators of their calorie intake. Horrendous. tremendous, the studies show that it's anywhere from 18 to 70% is how much people overestimate their calorie intake. In fact, or sorry, underestimate their calorie intake. So lean people are on the lower end of that spectrum. Lean people tend to overestimate by like 20%.

Obese women are the worst. They tend to overestimate by like 55 to 70% based on the studies. Even dieticians underestimate by about 10%. I mean, you're talking about the, you know, this should be their wheelhouse, right? So when people say to me, oh, I'm eating 1200 calories and can't lose weight, is it outside the realm of possibilities? No.

And, you know, I used to be somebody who kind of used to believe that metabolic adaptation was so powerful that maybe that was true. Now I'm kind of like, I think you're probably eating more than you think you are, right? And I've had so many people who have – especially in our Facebook group using the app say, oh my god, I thought I was eating 1,600 calories. Facebook group using the app say, oh my God, I thought I was eating 1600 calories. Turns out I'm eating 2700 calories a day, which I mean is pretty much in line with what the research data says. So people on average, and this has taken all populations together, underestimate their calorie intake by about 50%. And people get very offended by that. They think what I'm saying is that they're liars. I don't think people are lying. I think they're just really horrible estimators of their calorie intake. The other thing is people don't realize

alcohol has calories. You can go out and have a shot of vodka. Well, it has no carbs, no fats. Yeah, but it's still got 70 calories in it. Okay, well, 70 calories, whatever. Okay, but you had eight shots, right? So that's 500 calories right there. That's the difference between losing a pound a week and not losing a pound a week. If we're talking about every day, the other thing is they don't track licks, bites, snacks. They mindlessly grab a, you know, a few bites out of a bag of chips. They don't think about it. So again, and again, I'm not saying that like for the rest of your life, every time you grab a handful of chips,

you must put it on the food scale. But what I'm saying is if you do have that experience for a couple of weeks, it will change your habits because that's what, what that, which gets monitored gets changed. So we know this on a, in science on a atomic level, just observing something will change its behavior. We know this like atomic subatomic particles change the way they behave when they're observed. It's, it's crazy. Um, so what happens when people are observed, look at reality TV, they change their behavior. So what happens if you start to observe what you're actually eating? And so I used to do this with clients, this experiment. When a new client would come to me, I'd say, I don't want you to change anything. I just want to get a realistic accounting of where you're at with your food, right?

I just want you to track for a week. That's it. Every single thing that goes in your mouth, I just want you to weigh it out and track it. You don't have to change a thing. Guess what happened almost every time? Well, I lost three pounds this week. It's like, hmm, I feel like the teacher is watching, so now you're changing your behavior, right? Right. So I do think that, again, getting back to your original question, even if you never want to use a food scale for the rest of your life, I do think that, you know, having that experience for a few weeks or a few were doing some content together and she has a background in psychology. And she said, I just like to observe people. She said, what was really interesting about you was your habits. So you got up and I was eating probably 3,500 calories a day

at this time. She's like, you would get up and have egg whites. And if we went to dinner, you would have probably the lowest fat option on the menu or lowest calorie option on the menu. You were super simple. But then when I offered you banana bread, you didn't refuse it. We went out and we had ice cream. If asked you, you want to go ice cream? I said, we said, yeah, well, that's because my habits are relatively low calorie because I know how much is in food, especially when you're eating out, you know, people, if you've ever been to a restaurant that lists the calories on their menu, you will be absolutely flabbergasted, right? Like go to the cheesecake

factory and just look at some of those dishes. You know, it's like every single dish is 2000 calories. You're like, this is a salad. How do you get 2000 calories of the salad? You know, but people don't know that people think, oh, salad, you know, two, 300 calories, it's lettuce, you know? So having that experience changed my habits. And I remember the most I ever learned about nutrition. So I'm going to date myself here. I'm almost 40 years old. I turned 40 this year, which is nuts to think about. But when I was 19, I got into bodybuilding and we didn't have my fitness pal or carbon diet coach back then, right? I had a book called the complete book of food counts. It was about this thick. And the first time I ever went grocery shopping, I didn't even

know what a high protein food was, right? I was going through this book and I'm like, Oh, I wonder if this is high protein. Nope. Okay. I wonder if this is hyper. Oh my God, that has 40 grams of fat. Okay. Nope. So I probably spent three hours in the grocery store just like, but I learned so much. I learned so much and it framed my food choices. So people, they'll see me eat ice cream or I'll talk about how I have a cookie every day or this and that. But what they don't see is my other food choices, right? Which is a lot of fruits and vegetables. I go through like a bag of apples every day. You know, a lot of lean proteins, those sorts of things. But that provides me the flexibility that when I'm dieting, okay, after I eat those, there's not a whole lot left. But when I'm not dieting or I'm at maintenance or I'm trying to gain,

now I can fill in the rest with kind of whatever I want, right? But the baseline is pretty similar, if that makes sense. And so I think where you're at now is kind of wherever, that's like the deep end of the pool of dieting, right? Like you're able to kind of, I would call that intuitively eating, right? Because people get, there's different definitions of this, but I think people use the term intuitively eating incorrectly, right? So first off, people who are like, well, I'm going to lose fat through intuitive eating. Well, first off, you're not doing it right because intuitive eating was not meant for fat loss. Intuitive eating was meant as a way for people to repair the relationship with food who had disordered eating patterns. Weight loss is not the goal. Now, if you get healthier with

your habits, weight loss may happen just passively. But if you're doing intuitive eating and you're like, well, my body wants ice cream. It really wants this ice cream. So that's intuitive. I look at what you're doing is more of, you know, what I would call intuitive eating, which is, okay, you have some cognitive restraint because you understand that certain foods are more calorically dense, but you also aren't limiting yourself. If you really want something, you can have it, but you've done a few things that are good ideas. One, you're minimizing processed food. Two, my guess is you say you do intermittent fasting sometimes.

My guess is, and I could be wrong, but you can tell me, is that if you know you have a big event on and you know you're going somewhere, there's going to be food. Maybe you do a little bit more like an intermittent fasting style where you're saving most of your calories for that event. So you can enjoy it. That sort of thing. Like you mentioned, like if I like to, if there's a restaurant I like, and I know that we're going to go out with a few friends and I want to have like a full personal size pizza, I'm just not going to eat. I might have a protein shake during the day. Then I'll eat my full pizza that I want to enjoy. You know what I mean?

And that's exactly what I do. Yeah. Right. So I would say that I do intermittent fasting. You know what I mean? And that's exactly what I do. Yeah. Right. So I would say that I do intermittent fasting. I intermittent, I intermittent fast, my carbohydrates and fats, I'll still get some protein in throughout the day. Um, but you know, again, not having hard rules, right? Like you just have some guidelines. And so I think that's a super useful tool right there. Right. You know, like if you're going to have Thanksgiving dinner and you know what's going to be a Thanksgiving dinner, well, am I going to go ahead and still have my normal breakfast and my normal lunch, my normal dinner? Well, yeah, if I want to stack up another You know, it doesn't mean you can binge your face off, but you can, you know, you can have your full serving, feel full, have some dessert,

and you're probably going to be okay. Right. But that, I think that's just part of that, just mindfulness too, right? Like not mindlessly eating. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck too, which is because foods are such a big part of their habit and their lifestyle. They just mindlessly eat. A lot of people eat because they're bored. You know, one of the other things I tell people is, so that's another thing you've done. You've created barriers, right? You're, you're not saying, okay, I'm never having processed food, but you're saying, you know what, if I'm going to have, if I'm going to have some calorie-dense food, I'm going to make myself go get it, right? Because if you've got to get dressed, go down, get in your car, or walk out, just creating that small barrier. Just try putting something upstairs.

Hell, there was a study where they took candy and they looked at taking it five feet away. So just not arm's reach. And it significantly reduced the amount of calories people took in because they just weren't mindlessly eating it because it had to be something where it's like they had to make the distinct decision. Okay. I'm going to get up out of this seat and I'm going to go get some candy. It makes a difference. So you're like, what you've talked about is doing some of the things that are very, very helpful for people. And one of the things I'll tell people, I get a lot of people, most people, if they eat mindlessly tends to be in the evening. There's probably a few reasons for

that. That's when we're kind of winding down. That's when we have more, a little more time on our hands. And that's when, you know, you've had the day to get stressed out. Most people don't binge eat at 9am in the morning after they got eight hours of sleep and life is good. And they, you know, had a super constructive morning. No, most people, you know, I think Joe Rogan even talked about it, you know, like he has a stressful day and he gets home and finds himself and, you know, halfway through a peanut butter jar. Right. So I think, you know, knowing yourself and knowing, you know, kind of normal human psychology, what I'll have some people do sometimes is I'll say, okay, if you know, like some people don't have a choice, right? Like I have kids. So like I try, I try my best to,

you know, get them to eat wholesome foods and whatnot, but I'm sorry, they're kids. And I don't want to create eating disorders for my kids telling them they can never have processed food. Right. So we try to, you know, be very careful with the verbiage we use, but we've got some processed foods in the house. That's not, that's not, I mean, we could take them out, but again, I don't want to create

weird relationships with my kids and food. I want them to understand that, okay, these aren't necessarily bad foods. It's just that, you know, these aren't going to form the core of our diet. Right. So what do we do? Well, I put those in places that it's not just arm's reach, right? Like they're up on the top of the cabinet, right? Or the ice cream is not in the freezer in the kitchen. It's in the deep freezer in the garage, right? Or some of the stuff I might put up, you know, upstairs where it's a little bit further to go, right? It doesn't make it, it's not, you know, an insurmountable barrier, but sometimes, you know, for me, for example, I might just go, now I'm just going to get another apple out of the fridge because I don't really feel like walking up

there, right? Like it could be that simple. Some people also like have a thing where they wake up and they night eat, right? So even just like locking your door, your bedroom door on the interior, it doesn't prevent you from opening. But guess what? For you to go out to the kitchen, you have to switch your mind on and say, I'm going to unlock this door. Right? So you have to kind of snap back into consciousness. You can't just go on autopilot. So just putting like small barriers in the way, you know, you can take that to the extreme. You know, they have like a food safes now that are like on timers. Is that a solution? I don't think it's a solution for most people's lifestyles unless you live alone and plan on living alone for the rest of your life. Right.

And I mean, you see this in like competitive bodybuilding. There's a reason that a lot of really successful competitive bodybuilders and bikini athletes are either single or they're with other competitors because that's the only way it's going to fit their lifestyle, right? Most of them don't have kids. It adds another layer of difficulty. But just like you said, wrapping that all back up and putting a bow on it. I think that if you've never had the experience of tracking everything you put in your mouth, I think it can be very useful. And if you can just get past the, it's like keeping a budget, right? That which gets monitored gets changed.

Guess what happens if you start tracking where all your expenses go? You go, Oh my God, I spent $2,000 eating out last month. What the, you know, guess what? You stop eating out so much because you're like, okay, well, I thought I was not spending that much money, but turns out I was. A lot of people don't keep budgets. Did you know that? So getting back to a side story, getting back to like underreporting calories, did you know the average person underreports the amount of debt they have by 150%? Damn, that's not surprising.

But that's how we are. We always see ourselves through rose colored glasses, right? Like nobody wants to admit that they spend too much on shit they don't need, right? Nobody wants to admit that they eat too much. And again, I think that's why a lot of these dieting fads pop up because it's a lot of them. The messaging is it's not your fault. It's sugar or it's carbs or it's this, or it's, or it's acidic foods or it's that, you know, something to, and that, that can feel really good for the ego. And we even have like the anti-diet crowd now, which they're like one of the most insane when they go to extremes, which is calorie deficits don't work. Dieting actually makes you worse off, you know,

this and that. People, you know, there's no evidence that obesity is bad for you. It's like, let's not live in fantasy land, okay? That can feel very helpful for the ego, but guess what that also does to people. It makes them feel helpless because if it's not your fault, if it's not your fault at all, then that means you don't have any control. And if you have no control, then you have no impetus to change.

Right? So I like what, I think I'm going to modify what Jocko Willink said, which is, I think he said, discipline, discipline is freedom. Responsibility is freedom.

So you can look at responsibility and it's a shot to your ego. Okay, most of the reason I'm here is because of my choices, but it also means that you have a big impetus to change. You mentioned fasting away from carbs and fats. Do you personally utilize any fasting and why did you mention that you don't necessarily fast away from carbs and fats. Do you personally utilize any fasting? And why did you mention that you don't necessarily fast away from protein? Yeah. Part of it is probably longstanding bias because of how I grew up. And I can admit that, which is, you know, when I was growing up, it was bodybuilding

magazines. We've got to eat protein every two hours, you know, which one of the first studies I did actually kind of, after I got the results back, I was like, I don't want to go too far into it, but basically it made me realize that, well, probably don't need to eat as frequently as I thought we did. Um, and so I switched to eating protein like every three to four hours, but there is some evidence that there is a small effect of protein distribution on lean body mass. So I do care about being as jacked as possible. I do care about being as strong as possible. Those are two things I value. Now, people, again, get this twisted and they'll say, well, that can't be right because I did intermittent fasting and look how much muscle I gained.

I'm not saying you can't gain muscle intermittent fasting. You absolutely can. Not saying you can't gain muscle on a ketogenic diet. You absolutely can. I'm not saying you can't gain muscle on a plant-based diet. You absolutely can because there's only a million freaking examples for each of people who did it, right? What I'm saying is that for me, wanting to be as jacked and as strong as I possibly can, I think that protein distribution likely does matter some, probably a small amount.

We're probably talking about like the last 5%, if that. But for me, that last 5% is important. So I eat like four, usually four or five, maybe high protein meals per day. But some of those, especially when I'm dieting, some of those are basically protein only. Right. And I'm, I'm, I'm saving up my carbohydrates for me. I'm not super hungry in the mornings and I'm usually not super hungry kind of throughout the day. I don't really start getting hungry till mid-afternoon. And part of that's probably psychology. I'm not outside of admitting that. But for me, if I save a good chunk of my carbohydrates and fats for later in the day, I tend to not feel too bad. And fat loss especially can feel relatively easy.

So what really changes for me, besides we talked about how my food choices change a little bit, my calorie intake, is when I'm in a maintenance or gaining phase, I just tend to eat more earlier in the day. Whereas if I'm in a fat loss phase, I'll still eat a good bit at the end of the day, but I don't really eat a whole lot earlier in the day. And the same thing goes for regardless of what I'm doing. If there's an event on, or if I know like, for example, that we're going to go out and I'm going to have some drinks or whatnot, alcoholic drinks are incredibly calorie dense people. And typically where you're getting the alcoholic drinks, don't do not have non-calorically dense food either. So, you know, if I'm going out to, you know, have a few drinks

or if we're going to day drinking at like a pool party or something like that, I'm going to leave myself, you know, a good chunk of calories to make sure that I'm not going to overshoot my budget. So again, I'll probably do mostly protein throughout the day until we get to the event and whatnot. So again, there's a thousand different ways to skin this cat. If you're not like me and your goal isn't to be as jacked as humanly possible and as strong as humanly possible for whatever genetic makeup you have, then makeup you have, then if you want to intermittent fast and you don't want to eat protein throughout the day,

okay, fine, don't do it. You can still get strong and muscular, but can you get the most strong and muscular you possibly can? I think probably not, but it's probably a small to modest difference. How often do you think you need the protein? Like, you know, like, uh, so you can store carbohydrates and you, and we obviously store fat. Um, it's my understanding. You don't really store protein very well. I guess you probably store some, but, uh, when does your protein kind of like run out, I guess. And to add onto that, there is a question that's continuously asked because we say we do some fasting. I hear this question on TikTok all the time. People are like, I thought you can only store 30 grams of protein. And if you eat more than 30 grams of protein in a sitting, your body's just going to not use it. There there's that, that's a real thought process.

So can you kind of just like go in on that so we can see what's going on? Yeah. So I feel like that, that myth, I have to debunk it like every few years. It just keep, it just will not die. Yeah. So let's define our terms first. So in terms of need, you know, protein need is mostly defined by what's going to prevent you from being deficient, right? So we're guys like us, we're not really concerned about need.

What we're really asking, when people ask this question, how much protein do I need? They're really asking is how much protein do I need to kind of like max out, you know, the anabolic response? Like if I'm trying to build muscle like that, right? That's usually the question they mean. And then in terms of like, when they say, how much protein can I absorb? Again, usually what they're wanting to ask is how much protein contributes to muscle building? There's the short answer that's pretty simple. The short answer that's pretty simple is if you have 20 to 50 grams of relatively high quality protein in a meal, that's probably good enough. And when we say high quality, like towards the 20 gram range, like whey protein, you don't really need a ton of whey protein because it's so high in leucine and so quickly absorbed. Getting to things like intact protein sources,

if we get on the really far end of that spectrum of intact plant proteins, you need quite a bit of them because a lot of the protein is bound up in insoluble fiber that you can't digest. So then it becomes a real concern. But if we're talking about high quality kind of animal-based protein sources and even some of the isolated plant proteins like soy and pea and some of these other ones, they're pretty high digestibility as well. So you're going to absorb almost all of it. I mean I think like even pea protein is like 89% bioavailable. So you're absorbing almost all of it because if you you didn't then every time you had more than 30 grams of protein you would have massive diarrhea which mark might tell you that hey now you know

i i that must be me because i think i broke uh the bathrooms at the first super training oh yeah the first time i visited but that's just that's actually squats so we have the wrong comparator whenever i squat i have to shit a lot um scares the shit out of you even though you're good at it i think i think it's just nerves i think it's nerves you know at nationals in 2015 i always tell people i set my pr which is my poop record which was 11 times oh jesus at nationals when i go to a powerlifting meet my first question is not like what my attempts are going to be. It's how close is the bathroom to the warm-up room, right? So anyways, so yes, you can absolutely absorb more than 30 grams per meal. You can absorb, for the most part, however much you take in for most sources,

depending on the bioavailability, right? Like if you take in 50 grams of pea protein and it's 90 bioavailable that means you're going to absorb 45 grams there is a little bit of truth there is a little bit of truth right to the 30 gram thing like it did originally come from like a study where it was breaking down like uh over how many hours or whatever it was your rate of protein absorption or something to that effect is that is that where this came from i'm not real sure where it came from i i think that so this is one of those things where the answer and what the recommendation is is probably fine but the messaging is wrong right so the message that 30 grams of protein in meals, what you should shoot for is probably relatively good in terms of maximizing muscle protein synthesis.

There's another aspect to this that I'm going to go into in a second that makes the situation more complicated. But that's probably a good recommendation. But it's not because you can't absorb anything past that. You can absorb all of it. It's just that as you increase your protein intake, you're going to increase your protein oxidation. So more of those amino acids are actually going to get converted into, they're going to get deaminated, which means they remove the nitrogen component of it. And they'll either be used for, I mean, anything in metabolism, but a lot of them are going to be used for gluconeogenesis. Some of them will go as, um, for, for anaplerotic substrates for the TCA cycle,

a lot of different things, but the body's not going to waste them. It's going to find like we, we didn't survive a million years by the body saying, Oh, 31 grams of protein. We're just going to get rid of that next gram, you know, or 50 grams of protein. Nope. We can't take that. We're just going to get rid of it. Right. But in terms of maximizing muscle protein synthesis, 30 grams for most protein sources for most people will probably do it. Now, if you're a 250 pound lean body mass, IFBB pro, you know, and you're, you're taking in, you know, a subpar protein source. Yeah. Maybe you need like 70, 80, 90 grams of that protein source, but for most people, most remember that Gaussian distribution, that's 60 to 70% for most people, that 30 gram

recommendation is probably going to be just fine, right? Now, there's the other aspect to this, which we've just been talking about protein synthesis, but your accrual of lean tissue is a balance between the rate of protein synthesis minus the rate of protein degradation. So there is evidence that the cap on reducing protein degradation might be at a higher protein threshold, but this is really, it's very difficult literature to interpret because it's very, protein degradation is extremely difficult to measure. And I think I'll lose the audience if I go into the, the isotopic labeling and how they, they actually try to measure it. But, um, suffice to say that when you eat a meal of like 30 grams of protein, probably

less than 10% of that is actually going to contribute towards actual tissue. So you'll hear people like you guys have probably heard some people say, well, you only need 10 or 50 grams of protein a day. You only need 50 grams. So all these people eating, you know, 200 are wasting their time because, you know, if you're talking about accruing 25 pounds of lean tissue over a year, which I think everybody would agree that's a ton of lean tissue. It's like it ends up being like 10 grams of protein a day that you're depositing when you consider that most lean tissue is also associated with 70% water. So then you would say, well, why not just eat 60 grams of protein a day?

Shouldn't that do it? Well, you're assuming that every single gram past that 50 gram mark will contribute to that. And that's not how it works. In order to maximize the rate of tissue deposition, it requires a disproportionately high amount of protein. So it's like you're getting diminishing returns, but you're still getting a return. It just becomes less and less as your protein goes up. So there was actually a recent meta-analysis and they did what's called a regression analysis, which basically is trying to figure out per gram of protein, how much lean tissue does that correspond to? And they basically proposed that based on all these different models that they used, that we really haven't found the cap

on lean tissue deposition with high protein diets. Now, that being said, I want to quantify this before everybody goes out and starts eating 500 grams of protein a day. Again, I'm just throwing out a hypothetical, but we might be talking about the difference between eating 250 grams of protein a day and 500 grams of protein a day might be like one gram of protein deposited in lean tissue. So was it really worth that extra 500 grams you had or the extra 250 grams you had a day, especially if, you know, like it makes you feel like crap, your training suffers because you don't feel good. Like there's a lot of stuff to consider with this. So long story that that was the long answer, But the short answer is 30 grams over four or five meals is probably for most people, a relatively reasonable amount to shoot for.

Another one of those, I guess, myths that we need to debunk. There he is. Hey, what's up, dude? Sorry. I've been quiet back here just trying to take notes and listen and learn. Sorry, not a myth that we need to bust bust a question that I have because I see this a lot also. And then I have a follow up question that's very specific. But the saying that if you have too much protein, it's going to destroy your kidneys or something weird like that. I don't know the exact wording, but I've seen it many times but this actually came up this morning because my nephew um a teenager he uh he actually is starting to get into lifting and he wants to get in better shape and so my sister asked like well what supplements can he take and then the the road went down to like getting more protein and stuff and then my wife was like well he has one kidney now he doesn't have any kidney disease or anything. He was just born with one.

So with that in mind, should he be careful with how much protein he takes in? And then on the other side, if somebody is totally fine, doesn't have any kidney disease, do they have to limit their protein because it's going to destroy their kidneys? So great question. So I want to be really careful, especially in the case of your son, just because it becomes different when we're talking about an actual specific case. So let me give the broad answer. First off, there's no evidence that high protein intakes harm healthy kidneys. None. So if you look at, and there was actually a recent meta-analysis of

this by Stu Phillips, when it comes to healthy kidneys, there's just no evidence to suggest that high protein diets are going to harm them. People have kind of misinterpreted the literature that's out there because people who have kidney disease or renal failure, they're placed on low protein diets, which by the way, um, the literature isn't super clear that low protein diets actually help that much. Um, you know, but it's, it's kind of one of those cases where doctors that, you know, they have to kind of go with that would do no harm sort of thing. And you guys have to understand also with the way scientific research is conducted, there's no IRB on earth. That's good. If you go to them and say, Hey, we want to take, uh, end stage renal failure patients and put them on high protein diets to see what happens.

Like, it's just not going to get approved. Like there's nobody that's going to approve that. approved. Like there's nobody that's going to approve that. There was actually, I'm going to butcher it, but an old colleague of mine, Peter Fitchin, he did his PhD at Illinois right across the street from where I did mine. And I believe they took people at, I want to say stage one or stage two of renal failure and had them supplement with 25 grams of whey protein isolate per day. And they found that it didn't really negatively affect them and actually help them recover a little bit better because the problem with the kidney disease as well is you're trying to also repair tissue. That's part of the issue. And if you don't have enough protein, you can't repair tissue. But if you have too much protein, I mean, again, if you have a compromised kidney system, if you have too much protein, I mean, again, if you have a compromised kidney system,

too much protein may be a problem because the kidney has to eliminate the excess urea. But that being said, excess glycemia is also a problem for kidneys. Like there's too much of anything seems to be a problem for kidneys, sodium as well. Right? So again, I think if we're talking about healthy kidneys, I'm not worried about protein intake. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just not in the case of your son who has one kidney, I'll give you the scientific answer. And then I'll give you the, I'm a dad answer. So the scientific answer is if his one kidney is completely healthy and shows no signs of being compromised at all, I mean, you can live basically like you only need about 20% of one kidney to survive.

Like again, human body's incredible with how redundant it is and how, um, how little it needs to actually work and thrive. Uh, so 20% of one kid kidney will do the trick. So if that one kidney is perfectly healthy, there's no evidence out there that a high protein diet is going to harm it. Now here comes dad lane. If it was my kid, what would I do?

is going to harm it. Now, here comes dad lane. If it was my kid, what would I do? I think if they wanted to lift, I would probably say that they could still do a relatively high protein diet, but I would probably keep it on the lower end of what's considered high. You know, like the research shows that you get almost all the benefits of high protein at like 1.6 grams per kilogram. So I might keep it there, you know, that sort of thing. And then I would just monitor, you know, I'd make sure that, you know, every six months to a year, they're getting blood work done and, and that, you know, their, their GFR, you know, the glomerular filtration rate is, is still good. And I probably would let them live life because at the end of the day, the worst thing for your kidneys is just living an overall unhealthy lifestyle.

So if they're resistance training, they're eating protein, but they're sticking to kind of a whole food diet or a healthy diet, that's going to be a lot better than them, you know, limiting their protein, but eating a bunch of crap. So again, it's, it's not a, it's not a dichotomy. There's, there's levels in between that. But I think that a lot of times we get too hung up on a lot of these, these issues where like, you'll hear people say, well, look at the, like there's people out there like Walter Longo or others who will say, well, it's protein that's making people sick, right? Because look at Americans, they eat too much protein and you can correlate protein intake with all these diseases. And it's like, yeah, where are most Americans getting the protein from? From processed meat, from foods that are very, very calorie dense. Yeah. Hamburgers and hot dogs and all these other foods that are

very calorically dense that you can't really disentangle the effects of protein compared to overall calories. So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not super concerned about high protein intake, especially if the kidneys are healthy. Yeah. He's a, uh, I mean, he's a super strong kid. if the kidneys are healthy yeah he's a uh i mean he's a super strong kid um and i think my so it was my nephew um i don't think he's ever been on a diet but he's just like a savage he just you know but i'm sorry your nephew yeah no worries um but the thing is like i don't think he's ever been on like a like followed a diet so this is only going to make him like just feel better in general but i just i did have that question because i was just like, oh, shit, I did forget about that because it's never been an issue before. But I did want to ask you if you can explain the thermic effect of food

and do we need to consider anything different when it comes to protein versus carbs and fats? Oh, great. This is a great question. And I actually had a back and forth with Paul Carter about this a few days ago. I don't know if you guys saw that post where he said that protein isn't stored as body fat. So I think this is a great discussion. So basically, first off, let's define what the thermic effect of food is. Basically, first off, let's define what the thermic effect of food is. So your body, not unlike a car's engine, you must input energy to extract energy out of your fuel. So it's not like you just eat food and all of a sudden the energy is available. You have to digest it.

You have to absorb it. You have to assimilate it. And it has to be the energy in food. And this is where people get mixed up with calories. Calories, it's just a unit of measurement. It's not, you can't look at a calorie under a microscope, right? Or it's just a unit of, it refers to the amount of energy stored in the chemical bonds of food. So the chemical bonds of food contain energy. And when you break those bonds, you are able to transfer that energy into high energy substrates. Like, I mean, the most one people recognize is ATP, which is your body's basically your energy currency.

And then that ATP is able to power reactions throughout your body and throughout yourselves. And then that ATP is able to power reactions throughout your body and throughout your cells. Okay. So it's just the transfer of the energy in those chemical bonds. And the body has developed these elaborate systems in order to capture that energy. But it's not perfect. There is a decent amount of waste. And the thermic effect of food refers to how much energy is required by your body to extract the energy out of those chemical bonds in the food. So for example, if we're talking about dietary fat, the thermic effect of food appears to be anywhere from zero to 3%, meaning, and again,

don't think of this as a hard rule, but meaning if you eat 100 calories from fat, you're probably netting like 97 to 100 calories. Carbohydrates is anywhere from 5% to 10%. So if you eat 100 calories, you're netting 90% to 95%. Protein seems to be around 20% to 30%. So you're netting around 70 to 80 calories per 100 calories. Now, again, these are all short-term studies. Maybe the body, like if you're eating a high protein diet, maybe the body gets more efficient at extracting calories out of it.

That's possible as well because these are all very short-term studies. Interestingly, alcohol has a high TEF. So all of you people out there who love drinking beer, you know, but again, you know, this idea that there's calorie negative foods, no, there's no calorie negative food, right? Like you're still, you're still netting some calories out of that. So now let's talk about what that means practically. I don't think it means a whole lot practically to be quite honest, because your TEf is such a small amount of your total daily energy expenditure and i always provide the example of like i think i did an example on my youtube channel where i said if we took the average person's protein and

we double it right like we go from 150 grams a day to like 300 grams a day, you're talking about like basically like 150 calories or 200 calories a day. I mean it's not – it's not insignificant. It is helpful. But I mean, okay, eat an apple and you've already blown through those 150 calories, right? Like so it doesn't – just because you eat a high-protein diet doesn't mean that you're like immune from putting on body fat, right? Like that's not how it just cause you eat a high protein diet doesn't mean that you're like immune from putting on body fat, right? Like that's not how it works. Sure. But if you, if, if you were to increase the percentage of protein though, that could potentially be true, right?

So again, like if we go to like 20 to 20% of calories from protein to 40% of calories from protein, we get, I mean, again, depending on the total calorie intake, but we get like 100 to 200 calories more daily energy expenditure. But you'd also be replacing the carbohydrates and fat. So do you understand what I'm saying? Like increasing not the grams that you take per day, but the percentage could have a tremendous value. So I actually include that as part of the calculation when I did it on my YouTube channel.

So the point is, yes, it does make a difference. I think more practically protein is very satiating, right? Like it's pretty hard to overeat on protein. And so that gets to my next point, which Paul, and I'm not wanting to hate on Paul. I'm going to explain why I think he's right and wrong in this, but that, you know, practically, I think he's mostly right. But he said protein is almost never stored as body fat. That from a mechanistic standpoint. So let's, let's go to a cellular level. If we label protein or label amino acids so we can track them, do I think that many of those carbon skeletons from amino acids will wind up in adipose tissue? No, I do not because it is a long way from A to Z. I mean, they've got to be deaminated. Then they've got to either go through like the TCA cycle to get converted back to a substrate. I mean, you basically got to get to the point where it's going through de novo lipogenesis and gluconeogenesis, unless it's a ketogenic substrate, which in which case it could be a little bit more of a straight shot.

But I mean, even for example, carbohydrate, the amount of carbohydrate stored in adipose tissue is small. When they overfeed people in studies, they find that less than 2% of the stored fat in adipose tissue was derived from carbohydrate. So now that doesn't mean carbs can't make you fat if you overeat them, because when you eat carbohydrate, what happens? Well, even though it's not stored as fat, your body almost exclusively stores dietary fat in adipose tissue. Even though carbs aren't stored as fat, they must be oxidized. And so your body switches from oxidizing fat to oxidizing more carbohydrate. So it spares the dietary fat

that you have eaten for storage in adipose tissue. And this has led people to say, well, this is why you should separate your carb and fat meals and just do fat at one meal and carbs. Again, you're trying to hack your body and your body is smarter than you are, right? So you always have triglyceride or sorry, you always have free fatty acids that are in your bloodstream. They're always there. They can go up or down. But even when you eat a meal, they're still around like six, seven hours later in a lot of cases. So unless you're just going to completely omit fat out of your diet, you're always going to have some to store as fat and adipose. And let's just go to the extreme example. Let's say you were eating a

carb-only diet or protein and carb-only diet. Well, guess what? Your body can ramp up its level of de novo lipogenesis in order to accommodate that. So again, if you go to the extreme case, your body even then can find a way. It's not going to not capture energy. But how does this relate to protein? Well, there's some free living studies. Bill Campbell's done one. Jose Antonio's done one where they overfeed protein. Like they go on really high protein diets and they really don't see people gain body fat. And the conclusion to those has been, well, you know, protein can't be stored as fat. And if you overeat protein, you won't gain body fat. I think that practically that's probably somewhat true because it's very hard to overeat

on protein. And let's think about what people have difficulty with in terms of underreporting. People usually overreport protein. They underreport carbohydrates and fats. Like if you've ever been somebody, like when you just get into lifting and somebody says, hey, eat a high protein diet. You're like, I eat high protein. And if you've ever been somebody like when you just get into lifting and somebody says, Hey, eat a high protein diet. You're like, I eat high protein. And then you track it and you're eating like 110 grams a day.

And you're like, Oh, nevermind. What were you underreporting? You were underreporting how many carbs and fats are eating. So I think in those studies, what's happening is because the food, again,

you're dealing with dietary recalls, which are notoriously inaccurate because protein is so satiating, people think they're eating more than they actually are. And again, I mean, you hear it from low-carb people all the time. I switched, or carnivore people are like, I'm eating way more now than I was before. You're eating more volume of food. You're not eating more calories. You're eating more volume of food. You're not eating more calories. That's the difference.

You feel more satiated. So I always default when we're talking about a topic like this to what are the most tightly controlled studies say. So there's really one really good study on this by a guy named Bray. And it's a metabolic ward study where they overfed, they had three different levels of protein. They had low, normal, and high. And what they found was that all three groups gained similar amounts of body fat, but the high protein diet gained significantly more lean body mass than the other groups. Okay. Now, why do we see that? Well, again, just like carbohydrate, if you eat excess protein, you have to do something with it, right?

Now, you're not going to really store it in adipose tissue. You can store some of it in lean tissue, but that is capped. And so what happens to the rest? Well, you have to oxidize it. And if you're oxidizing it, then you're not oxidizing as much dietary fat and that dietary fat can be stored in adipose. Now that's the, again, that's long answer. So from a practical standpoint, is it difficult to gain body fat on a high-protein diet? Kind of. Although, you know, ask a bodybuilder who's been in the off-season before. You can do it. You know, you can do it.

There's plenty of guys who are eating over 300 grams of protein today packing on some body fat. But for your average person, is it a relatively reasonable recommendation that if you're going to overfeed to increase your protein intake so that, you know, you're getting a little bit more TEF and you're more satiated, yeah. I mean, I think that that's fine. I just, again, I try to be very careful with the messaging because what you're going to have is you're going to have people who aren't going to modify their carbohydrate and fat intake, and they're just going to be shoveling down protein in the form of like protein bars and you know like these high protein treats and they're going to be saying oh i'm not going to get fat because it's high protein

yeah it's also ultra processed hyper palatable yeah you know it's definitely you have to consider that you're going to eat other things along with protein it's rare unless you're really paying attention to what you're doing that that you're going to eat, sit down and eat like 10 egg whites or tilapia or chicken breast and mainly only supply yourself with protein. Most likely you're going to have a steak or something and you're going to under-report how much fat is in there

and over-report how much protein is in there. Right. So again, it's all, for me, I just try to be super careful about the messaging. You know, so So when it comes to this stuff, like in Paul's case specifically, I actually said to him, like, listen, I don't think you said anything like crazy wrong here. to provide some context for the neurotic OCD people out there who is a large chunk of our population who will read that and their black and white switch goes, okay, protein can't make you fat. We're going to eat 500 grams of protein a day. Plus all the carbohydrates and fats I normally eat. So again, I just, I try to provide some context for those sorts of things. Staying on the protein topic and rewinding a little bit, there's two things I want to

kind of ask and mention here. So as I said, like I use fasting multiple times during the week and there are some days like today I had some coffee, but I put some protein in my coffee this morning because I'm like, ah, I feel like I need something this morning. Right. Now through the years of using fasting, I, fasting, what it's helped me with is in the past when I would feel hungry, I would feel the need to eat. So I would like respond, respond, respond. Through the years of practicing it, initially it was a little bit rigid and then

it became a little bit more loose. But nowadays when I have that feeling of hunger, I don't actually feel the need to respond and it's not necessary, right? So I can be able to control that better. Now, with that happening, what happens with me a lot is some days if I'm busy, if I'm working and we're here, I'm going to go home and I'll have one massive meal where I'll have like maybe 200, 250 grams of protein. I'll have all my fat, I'll have all my carbs in that meal, or it might be two big meals, right? Or it might be two big meals, right? And going back to what we were talking about when people are saying, hey, you know, that's not good for protein synthesis. It's much better for protein synthesis and gaining muscle to have even protein feedings, 30 to 40 grams throughout your day. But I'm curious to ask you this, because for a person that, let's say they do want to gain some muscle but they want to use some fasting for their lifestyle maybe they work all day and they don't want to be having food on them and maybe it's easier for them in their lifestyle but they have the goal of gaining muscle they have the goal of gaining strength not being a bodybuilder is there anything other than that last five percent

that you were talking about right are they missing out on much if they do develop habits that allow them to have massive protein feedings? Is that drawing back from them in terms of really making progress? You know, it's funny. If you'd asked me this question 10 years ago and I said yes, now I'd probably say I don't think so.

I mean, again, and I'll tell you where I get the 5% from. So you have to understand with nutrition, I am going to answer your question. I promise. We're going to go on a journey first because I think people need to hear this. Nutrition research is extremely messy. It's very messy. And that's not the fault of the researchers. You just have only so much you can do. People say, well, why was there only this many subjects? I'm like, money. Why was it only this long? Money. So if you want a very tightly controlled study, like say a metabolic ward study to really tease out what's going on, it's going to be a low number of people and it's going to be

a short period of time. If you want a really long study with a decent amount of people, it's going to be very uncontrolled, right? It's going to be free living. If you want a long study that has tight control, it's going to be animals. I actually have a, I'm going to have a research review that's going to be coming out here in a few months, a monthly research review. And we're putting together this guide, 50 page guide on how to read research for the average person. And one of the things we have on there is a Venn diagram showing this, right? That if you want all these things, it's going to be animal research, which is why I actually did mostly animal research for my PhD, because I was very

interested in the mechanisms. I just wanted a proof of concept, right? And the rat or the rodent, again, not perfect, but for protein metabolism specifically, a very good model for humans. metabolism specifically, a very good model for humans. And most of the things we see in rodents tends to carry over to humans. Now that doesn't necessarily apply to other systems. And it doesn't necessarily apply to other animals either. But for specifically protein metabolism, as it relates to humans, they tend to be a pretty good model, but not everything translates. But most of the things that I published for my PhD later got validated in humans, which I feel pretty good about. And even if it didn't, hey, I did the best I could with what I had. So we actually did a study where we very tightly controlled total

protein intake. So not only were the rats eating the exact same amount of protein per day between these groups, it was the exact same protein source. So there was no differences. The only difference was how we distributed it. So one group we had eat, basically, it wasn't the exact same, but it was very similar amounts of protein at three meals. And then the other group ate 15% of their protein at breakfast, 15% at lunch, and 70% at dinner. And at the end of 11 weeks, and this is again, very tightly controlled study. Like I literally, we're talking about 110 rats that we used. I weighed out every single meal for every single rat three times per day down to the hundredth of a gram.

Okay. The rats are like chicken and broccoli again. Yeah. So this, these were long days. My PhD advisor was like, I don't think we have to worry about anybody replicating this study anytime soon.

Cause it can be too much of a pain in the ass. So I don't want to just say me. I had a few other lab mates that helped as well. And so what did we find at the end? At the end of the study, and again, keep in mind that 11 weeks of a rat's life is a lot different than 11 weeks of a human's life because rats only live about two years. Okay. So we're talking about a comparable like years comparable years in a human. We saw that the rats, I think that the end measurement was their hind limbs, their calf muscles, which is what's the easiest to take out of a rat, were about 8% larger in the group that was getting the evenly distributed protein. So when I say 5% to 10%,

that's where I'm getting that number from. Now, there's a couple of human studies that have kind of supported this. And then a couple that haven't. What I will tell you is that if you are trying to tease out these differences in eight weeks in a human, even an extremely tightly controlled experiment, I don't think you're going to see it, right? Not unless you've got like 500 subjects, which is never going to happen, right? So do I think it makes a difference? Yes, a small difference. Do I think that the vast majority of people need to really worry about it that much? Not from a muscle building perspective. I do think

there's some benefits in terms of satiety from having a higher protein meal at breakfast. I do think there's some research to indicate that. But again, if this is for you, what you have found to be something very sustainable and doesn't feel difficult, well, then what I say, well, you know, you've got to go have a high protein breakfast. If I was like coaching you, absolutely not. Right. Like I would say, well, this seems to be working for you. It's sustainable for your lifestyle. I don't think anybody would argue that you haven't gotten some gains from it. So, you know, again, it's all down to like, what is the goal and having that conversation? Because we always look at things through our own lens, right? Like we always speak to the audience that is us kind of, right? So for me, my default is, okay, I'm talking to people who want to get jacked as fuck, right? And now I have

to remember, like, I just, you know, I just passed half a million followers on Instagram. Most people aren't worried about getting jacked as hell. You know what I mean? Like they want to grow a little bit of muscle, but you know, they don't want to look like Ronnie Coleman. Let's get a little more negative here on the show because you do a great job of being an asshole. Here we go. You ready? That's my wife. Jason Fung.

Oh, shit. You see his facial expression change? That was great. That was fucking awesome. What are some of the issues you have with some, like some of the information that somebody like Jason Fung puts forward, he talks a lot about fasting and some of the benefits of fasting and things like that. So again,

this is where it's intentions versus outcomes, right? If the messaging was, hey, I like intermittent fasting as a tool to restrict calories. We've seen a lot of benefits with this. People lose weight and they improve their markers of glycemia. We got no issues, right? But when you tell people, you can't possibly, calories don't matter. Um, calorie deficits don't work. Calories are a lie. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't know the exact messaging he's used previously and I don't want to slander him. Um, but these are like some of the things

I've seen. Um, you know, you, there, I mean, again, there are people who have, and I get people all the time will message me like, don't say that about, you know, Jason Fung. I followed his protocol and I've lost weight and I've gotten healthier. I have no doubt that there's a large amount of people who have, period. But I also hear from the people who it's messed them up because they felt like, oh, if I can't fast for 18 hours, it's useless. Or if I have something that makes me secrete insulin, it's going to mess up my whole diet plan. And I mean, literally we have in our group, I've heard probably from no less than 20 people who used to kind of follow, maybe not specifically Fung's protocols, but protocols that were similar and developed disordered eating

patterns um you know actually gained weight because they were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole in terms of what was sustainable for them versus trying to do what they felt like they needed to do so my my problem is not about the recommendations my problem is about the messaging that comes along with those recommendations, right? So what are the, like, I've talked about some of the stuff I like to do here, right? But you've never heard me say, you must use diet breaks to lose fat or, you know, flexible dieting stimulates your metabolic rate. So, I mean, these are some of the things that, you know, for example, one of his big messages is, well, calorie deficits cause

your metabolism to slow down. So if you use fasting and not calorie deficits, your metabolism won't slow down. That's just not true. It's just not true. So I think one of the big things people miss with fasting is you have to eat at some point because if you don't, you die, right? And so if we're going to compare two diets, one being a time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting-based diet to a normal calorie deficit, what do we need to do to make it a fair comparison? We have to equate calories on some level, right? So whether that's, like, let's even take an extreme example of like an alternate day fasting protocol, right?

If we equate calories for the week, there was actually just a recent study published on this. If you equate calories for the week, looking at alternate day fasting versus just straight caloric deficit, you don't see differences in weight loss. In fact, the alternate day, again, this is just one study, but the alternate day fasting group actually lost a little bit less body fat and lost a little bit less body fat and lost a little bit more lean body mass. But if somebody said, hey, I really like alternate day fasting. It's suitable for my lifestyle.

I'd rather just not eat if I can't have a lot of food. So on my days where I have food, I can eat a lot. Hey, no problem. Am I worried about the fact that you might lose a little bit more lean body mass than somebody else if you lose 50 pounds or a hundred pounds? No, I'm not worried about that. Right? So I have no problem with the protocols or the recommendations. It's the messaging. Right? And then again, specifically when it comes to metabolic slowing, I mean, how many studies do we need on this? I can think of five

randomized control trials right off the top of my head that have examined like an intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating style protocol and looking at people's daily BMR with calories equated and showing no difference. So to me, and again, I don't know what his intentions are, right? So I cannot speak to his intentions. I'm sure he does want to help people. I have no doubt of that. But to me, that leaves one of two choices. Either you aren't aware of the literature, and I know he's been informed of this by many people. So either you aren't aware of the literature and I know he's been informed of this by many people. So either you aren't aware of the literature and you don't want to learn because you just don't want to have your bias crushed or you do know and you don't care and you just care about the narrative.

And again, that doesn't mean he doesn't want to help people. I'm sure he does. I'm sure that he does want to help people. But again, it's about the unintended consequences of that. And the same thing with like, he wrote a book on called the cancer code. He's not an oncologist. That's not his wheelhouse. Like at all. I mean, that to me is so irresponsible. I did some of the research in our lab was on cancer

i would never and if i do please take me out back and shoot me and put me down because it's time i'll just i'll just give you guys free will all right you guys have free reign if lane writes a cancer book just take old yeller out back and put him down. All right. Cause he's gone rabid and it's time to go. All right. So, um, no, I just, that's so, to me, that's so irresponsible. And again, I'm sure the intention is fine, right? Has there been any evidence that fasting and, or ketogenic diets do anything with cancer from stuff that you've seen? fasting and or ketogenic diets do anything with cancer from stuff that you've seen? So I'll speak specifically with regards to the ketogenic diet. For some cancers,

it does appear to possibly, and again, holding my hand up, not a cancer expert. This is what I've read in some papers. And again, this is why the messaging is so important and why it's so important to talk to a professional. And I'll give a few examples of why. But yes, there are some cancers that seem to, like a ketogenic diet, can slow it down. But some of the messaging with this, it's not a cure for any cancer, but some of the messaging with this has been, oh, well, cancer cells all have dysfunctional mitochondria and they can't use ketones as fuel.

That's not true. There's research to show that there are actually some cancer lines that do better with ketones as fuel. So again, it depends on the specific cancer. And the other thing is on a practical level, a lot of people who die of cancer, they die not from the cancer itself, but a lot of them actually die from wasting, from cachexia. So if I've got somebody who we're talking about like really is in a bad place, I've had a few people who are friends of mine, or even like, I don't want to say who, because they're, they're rather private, but I have a direct family member that has multiple myeloma and had to get, um, you know, stem cell, uh, treatment, like, uh, stem cells harvested. Like they basically blast you with radiation and, uh, chemotherapy to get your counts really low. And then they infuse then they put the Sim cells back in whenever. This person is now healthy today.

Multiple myeloma has no real cure right now, but their markers are cancer-free as of now. They told me that if they had tried to do a ketogenic diet, they'd just be over the toilet the whole day throwing up. You have to think about, okay, this is what we can show in cell lines and in animals, but what can you actually do as a human? Like at the end of the day, man, the shaming that goes on when people get cancer makes me so angry. You guys know this from powerlifting and bodybuilding, but why do people not talk about injuries and powerlifting and bodybuilding?

Anybody want to know why? Because you talk about your injury, you're going to have 500 idiots telling you why you got injured and why you deserve to get injured. Because in their mind, if they don't do that, that will justify why they'll never get that injury. That is exactly what happens.

So people, as soon as somebody gets cancer, what happens? People start going, well, they do this thing, or they were doing this. They do drink a lot. They do like to smoke here and there. Hypertensive diet. Well, he did take steroids.

Because that's the, and I think that's like a protective mechanism of our own brains. We're trying to tell ourselves why it's not going to happen to us, right? Because we're not doing that thing. The fact of the matter is the universe is fucking random sometimes. And some shit just ain't fair. Like that's like, yes, there are lifestyle choices that can lead to higher incidence

of cancer, but some people just get fucking unlucky. That's all there is to it. So anyways, I saw like a tweet with somebody and they were talking about, they just finished up their chemotherapy and they were getting an ice cream cone. They're like, you know, this is, they were saying like, man, this is all I can keep down right now. And the first reply is from somebody who's a very low carb person.

I've seen this person on Twitter before and goes, you should be ashamed of yourself fueling your cancer with sugar. And it's like, who does that help? Like, how is that? How's that helping you feel better? You know? So this, we have to be very careful with the messaging because, again, do I think it would be great if somebody who has cancer could, you know, institute some of these mechanisms, like reduce their, you know, their calorie intake, their sugar intake, you know, that sort of thing? Maybe, right? But at the end of the day, if they're going to waste away, like, let's just get some calories in them. Like, yeah. So again, like that was one of the big things I did not like was that he wrote that book to me. And part of it is like, if you look at the research data of people who go out and pursue,

like, don't get the standard of care with cancer and mainstream medicine right now is under attack. It gets a lot of hate, you know, people, you know, this and that. And listen, we have somebody, another person, I know their partner had cancer and they got, they had to get really bad ready. They're like, you know what? I had to always thank the doctors for my partner because they felt so terrible. They didn't even want to thank them for basically saving their life. Like a cancer patient, when you get in chemotherapy, you're not feeling super grateful. Like you're feeling like shit.

Some people just feel like they want to die anyway because it is a horrible, horrible process. feel like they want to die anyway, because it is a horrible, horrible process. But if you look at the, there's a, there's several meta-analysis to show. First off, if people who get alternative therapies tend to forego the standard of care, meaning if they decide to do something different, they tend to not do what the doctors are recommending. Those people have a significantly, and I'm talking like a pretty decent effect size to significantly higher rate of death. Now you can always find an isolated case of somebody who goes, I went and got coffee enemas and you know,

my cancer spontaneously went into remission. Yeah. A broken clock is right twice a day. Like if you look at the overwhelming evidence, people who get the standard of care have the best outcomes in terms of survivability beyond five years. Now, if you want to get some of these alternative therapies as like an adjunct, I mean, I've even talked to oncologists that basically say, if it makes them feel better, absolutely, because placebo is powerful. And I'm not saying that as being trite. I'm saying that as placebo fucking works. really gotten into this recently in terms of how powerful placebo can be. It's like drugs, literally like drugs. So people think placebo is just, oh, I feel something and they don't actually feel something. No, placebo can actually change your physiology. I'll give you a real quick

example of this and we'll come back because I realize I'm going down the rabbit hole a little bit. There was a study, and I'm going to butcher it a little bit, but basically what they did was they were looking at a few different things, but you guys are familiar with the hormone ghrelin, right? So it's a hunger hormone. High ghrelin makes you hungry, low ghrelin, less hungry. So they actually, what they did was they took people and they looked at these genetic polymorphisms that would cause people to either be high or low secretors of ghrelin naturally and then they randomized them so they knew what their actual secretion of ghrelin was and then they randomly told them high or low so you had some people who were low secretors and told they were low secretors but you had some people who were low secretors and told they were low secretors, but you

had some people that were told they were low secretors told they were high. You had some people that were high told they were low, and there were some people that were high and told they were high. Guess what? It didn't matter what their genetics were. It matters what the researchers told them. And not just that, they actually saw their levels of ghrelin change like that's not you can't be like hey ghrelin go up like that's not how that works but the power of your mind

is so powerful and this again relating back to cancer they show that people who have faith who are of faith have higher survivability with cancer, I believe. Now, the spiritual people would say, well, that's because, you know, God is helping them. And my response to that would be, so God didn't help these, just chose not to help these other people who died of cancer? And he was cool with three-year-old, he, they were cool with three year old kids getting it and dying horrible deaths. Okay. You know, I'm not trying to mock anybody's faith, but I think that that speaks to the power of belief that if you believe something will be okay and whatever it is, you have faith in God, the universe, whatever. Maybe that makes a big difference. So all this coming back to, you know, adjunct therapies for cancer and Jason Fung, I promise we're coming for tying it all back. It's fine. Even oncologists will tell you it's

fine to pursue these adjunct therapies, especially if it gives you a greater sense of control and makes you feel like you're doing something extra and makes you feel good. Go for it. Right. But don't forego the standard of care. And my concern, and I, to be fair, I have not read his book. So he may very well say in his book, get the standard of care and then just do this stuff in addition. So if that's the case, then I still have a problem with it, but I have less of a problem with it. But if that verbiage is not in there, a lot of people will go, well, I don't want to get chemotherapy, big pharma, such and such, we'll just cut sugar and intermittent fast. And that's very dangerous messaging. So I think those are a few of my

problems with his messaging. And then also I kind of on a personal level, I've seen him try to get people fired from their jobs. So there's actually a really well-known thread by a, there's a guy named Yanni Friedhoff in Canada. And I know a few others who don't want their names revealed that Jason has contacted their like department heads. But Johnny Friedhoff has a thread you can find on Twitter. So this isn't slander. So this all relates back to back in, I think it was 2016, Dr. Fung was at an obesity conference and he basically fat shamed two obesity researchers. So he, they're two of these obesity researchers were obese themselves. Okay. And he took a picture of them and was like, well, it looks like the obesity crisis is in good hands. He was basically making fun of them being fat, which by the way, Mark, how many of the top powerlifting coaches were absolutely top powerlifters themselves?

Yeah, not all of them. That's for sure. Yeah. How many top major league baseball coaches were Hall of Fame players? Michael Jordan, was he a great coach? Right. So just like sometimes the people to solve the problem are the people who actually struggle because they have, they've been in it. So anyway, anyway, he, he, he made this tweet and Yanni Friedhoff basically ripped him a new one. Well, a couple,

a couple of months go by and Yanni gets a call from his department head and he goes in and the department head is like, I'm paraphrasing, but again, this thread's out there on Twitter. So I apologize if I butcher the story in any way. But Yanni's department head is like, I called you in here because we've had a complaint submitted from a nephrologist in Toronto and it was from Fung. but the funny part is the department chair was like, you know, I can see that this is a tempest in a teapot situation. And actually, your record is very stellar. And I think you should apply for tenure. So it actually the end of the thread is he's like, I'd like to thank Jason Fung for helping me get tenure.

me get tenure. So, but I mean, just the fact that like, you know, to go after somebody's job because they, you know, they had a disagreement with you. I mean, listen, I've called people out, you know, that sort of thing. I don't think I've ever tried to get someone canceled or something like that. Like that, you know, regardless of, you know, feelings about how somebody says something, I think that that's a bridge too far. But again, that's kind of a personal feeling. So those are all the kind of issues I have. But mostly, again, it's just with the messaging. And I'm sure that he has good intentions.

But I think especially for me, being a scientist and being a capitalist and liking to make money. So here, like straight up, I will not lie to you guys. I like making money. Yeah. Capitalist. I also like to sleep at night and I like to feel like I'm doing it in an ethical way. And the way I've always approached it is, okay, we have a mission statement. And if we stick to that mission statement and we make a boatload of money, that means we've helped a shitload of people doing it the right way. So I don't feel

bad about that. And I feel like because I make money and because I'm not a research scientist where I'm in lab and just getting a paycheck and kind of sacrificing time. By the way, all you guys who's like people out there are like, Oh, well, scientists are all bought off and paid. You know how fucking little a scientist makes compared to somebody on

Instagram selling a skinny tea or some dumb shit. Like you think the scientist is the one cashing out versus this guy selling a ridiculous supplement. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. I think as somebody who's been a research scientist, I really like, if I'm going to make some money off something, I really like want to give it the full disclosure of what things do and don't do. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to send the wrong message to people that something I'm selling is magic or somehow the way it has to be done. I guess I'm probably weren't ready for that 18 minute answer based on that one question. I love it. This reminds me of when we had

Stu McGill on. Every question would be super nuanced and then be a great long answer. But it was awesome. It was really informative. But I'm curious about this, man. Since you have the Carbon Diet app and all these people are in a group, I assume that a lot of these people, like some people like to drink alcohol. Some people probably also like to partake in different types of drugs.

The primary drug that's used by a lot of the population is marijuana and marijuana for a lot of people gives them hard cravings, AKA the munchies. So how have you helped maybe instruct some of these people how to partake in that while also not falling off their diet protocols, if there is a way. And also, do you just like, just tell people just stop?

Like, how do you help them navigate that? Um, if they're like, this helps my anxiety or this helps this or that, what have you found? Totally. So, um, full disclosure, I never used marijuana until I was 36 or 35 or 36. I think I'm such a, I'm such a, like for the first 30 years of my life, everybody would

consider me like straight edge, like really straight edge. Um, not because I thought it was better than anybody else, but just like, I'm like, I don't know, that's illegal. And I don't want to get arrested, you know, like, so, um, but I would say that I've, you know, used marijuana on and off before. And so I'll just tell a little funny story real quick. Um, so the first person I person I ever, whoever like provided it for me, it was legal in California and it was Sal from MindPump. Of course it was. And he's like, you've got to try this.

Like you've never known, but you've got to try it. I'm like, all right, but not on the podcast. I was thinking it would be a Rogan Elon Musk situation. So I tried it, you know, a small, small amount. I got a little buzz, whatever. So a few months later go by and I'm at a party and they, they made it known that there was a special brownies at this party. And so my wife, she pushes me outside my comfort zone on a regular basis.

She like pops one down right in front of me. She's like, I'm driving, you're having this. Like, okay. So I eat it and you know i wait an hour which sal told me to do i don't really feel anything she's like are you feeling i'm like not really you know where this is going so she puts another one down in front of me i get halfway i get halfway through that then i start to feel it i stop i was like too far gone it was you. Like there is like now that I understand how it works, there's like a, there's a wave and a crest. You know what I mean? And it takes time to come back down.

Boy, I described it as like falling off a cliff. Like I only had so many words before I burst into hysterical laughter. I like, I had the full gambit of all like the paranoia hit me i thought everybody was videotaping me you know and then we got home i could barely stand up and i'm like pushing down the grass in my front yard watching my wife goes she's like trying to make an instagram post i'm bugging her just like just go go for a walk and it's so funny because i can remember having i have clear thoughts but i can't really like you know and i'm like thinking this is a bad idea but okay you know so i go for a walk around my neighborhood in my neighborhood we have these big birds called sandhill cranes they're probably about this high oh my god and they have beaks

about like as long as this mic and i'm like damn there's like three of them in the road like i'm gonna walk by these birds could be crazy as shit and i get like right like probably five feet away from these three birds and all of a sudden a headline flashes in my mind man stabbed in chest by sandhill crane dies on scene i'm like oh nope nope nope so anyway i text Sal and I'm like, dude, I'm so high right now. He's like, what did you have? I'm like, I had two brownies. He's like, bro, you got to be careful. You don't know what the dosage is.

He's like, how high are you? And I'm like, I feel like I'm typing this to you in slow motion right now. And he's like, oh, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Have you gotten the munchies yet? And I'm like, no, not really. the munchies yet? And I'm like, no, not really. And that was one of the things like,

and I don't really understand that. Like, I'm not really hungry until we went to sushi. And I had my first bite of sushi and I was like, holy shit. That's the best fucking thing I've ever had in my life. And I proceeded to eat about 5,000 calories. The rest. So I got it.

I didn't get hungry. It's just food tastes so damn good when you're high. So back to your question. I just felt like that would be a fun story to tell people. I think that like one, if you're not getting like super high and you're, you're just getting a little buzz, usually at least in my experience, you can kind of keep some of your cognitive thoughts and not make super bad decisions. But if you're going to get like, as cat Williams says,

ha ha ha ha ha. Um, that was pretty good. That was really good. Yeah. I'm not talking about cool hair. Hi, I'm talking about scary.

Ha ha ha ha ha. If you're going to get that high,'m not talking about cool hair high. I'm talking about scary ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. If you're going to get that high, any recommendations I'm going to give are going to go right the fuck out the window. Like it's not going to matter. I would say that if you're just like – if you do marijuana to kind of like relax, reduce your anxiety, that sort of thing. So one, there was a systematic review and meta-analysis of marijuana usage that showed that it doesn't really negatively impact exercise performance, so long as it's not consumed, you know, within close proximity to exercise, which now I understand why. I remember asking my friend one time before I'd ever seen him, I'm like, you ever like trained

high? And he's like, bro, you would never do that. I'm like, really? He's like, I don't think it'd be that enjoyable of an experience. I'm like, okay. So now I get that. So it doesn't appear to impact performance or recovery or anything like that. Doesn't appear to enhance recovery. I know there's been some people who have claimed that it enhances recovery. If you take it too late at night, it might disrupt your sleep cycle a little bit. So what I would tell people is, you know, if you're going to do it, like at, you know, at the most people want to do it at the end of the day, like to, to kind of unwind, I would say like the sooner you can do it, do it, but like do it at a dosage that you're not like crazy high when you go to bed. And again, there's no, there's no like scientific study that spells that out.

I'm just making an educated guess. And then as far as food goes, know thyself, you know, some people have told me like, Hey, you know, when I'm high, like I, I just kind of get giggly and sleepy. I don't really, I don't really eat too much food. And other people are like, dude, I eat the whole house. So if you know that, you know, maybe you're putting a few barriers in your way of getting to food. Maybe you're also moderating like how much THC you're, you're actually using so that

you can have an amount that relaxes you, but that doesn't, you know, cause you to completely lose your inhibition. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time today. You have anything new coming coming out i know you you got the app um and you've been kicking ass with the supplements is there anything new on the supplement front or anything new business-wise oh man um yeah so the i've the app is kicking ass we've got 36 000 members just about right now um and that's with no paid marketing. Like that's all word of

mouth and just us promoting it. So it's been, and we've got people now that have lost like a hundred, like over a hundred pounds on it since it's been out for over a year, which is, man, it's so cool to like see that, you know, it's one thing it's super rewarding to like work with somebody one-on-one, but it's also really rewarding to create something scalable to where it didn't have to be you necessarily. And it's affordable, you know, at 10 bucks a month, like there aren't a whole lot of people who can't afford that. And that's really what we wanted. Like my wife and I wanted to get to was something that, Hey, this is accessible for almost everybody, right? Because not everybody, like, listen, there's always going to be a place for one-on-one coaching in terms of a human being, right? Because like a human being can actually like provide empathy and all that kind of stuff, you know, that an app can't necessarily do.

But for people who like really want a good tool that's affordable, it's a great option. And then the supplement line, Outwork Nutrition, I've been really happy with how that's gone. You know, I had an initial foray into the supplement industry with carbon supplements. And Bodybuilding.com gave me that opportunity, and I'm super grateful for that. It just didn't work out. The timing wasn't good based on where their company was, and the timing wasn't good based on where my life was. But this line has done really well, exceeded our expectations. In fact, for the first six months, we were having supply issues because we just couldn't keep up with demand because the

buying was exceeding what we were forecasting. So I mean, it's a problem to have, but it's a good problem. I remember we had a, just a funny story. We had, um, a, um, we had been sold out of pre-workout for about two weeks and we had a shipment come in and we're like, okay, well this will last us for like a week or something like that. It'll hold us over till we get our big shipment. And like, I'm texting my business partner cause I had my phone on do not disturb. Cause I was, um, I was doing something and I came to and I'm like, Oh shit. I'm like,

dude, this isn't going to last the weekend. And then about five minutes later, I'm like, it's not going to last till tomorrow. And then it was, it's not going to last an hour. We sold it out in 59 minutes,

you know? So it was pretty, pretty cool to see that. Um, and then just the people messaging us saying, Hey, I really appreciate the fact that you're no BS and that you're not, you know, saying crazy stuff to promote this, you know, like that,

you know, just, it's nice when people compliment your products, but it's even nicer when they compliment, like what, what's important to you, which is your integrity. Like I said, I want to, I want to make as much money as, as, as the next person, but I just want to do it in a way that I feel good about. And then what kind of supplements do you have? Like what, what's the variety of supplements that you have in your supplement line? I'm terrible marketer. Um, so we have a pre workout, which is our most popular and that like, honestly, I'm so proud of that. Like that we get rave reviews about that. We really do. Um, and then we have a recovery product. And our kind of motto is like, we're going to help you train harder, recover faster. Like this, this isn't going to do the

work for you, but it's going to be a nice adjunct for the work you are doing. And then we also released a caffeine free version of our pre-workout because, you know, some people are sensitive to caffeine. The nice thing about it is everything is dosed the same except it's no caffeine. So what people do is if they're a little bit sensitive, they can do half and half. They get a 150 milligram dose of caffeine and still all the other ingredients are exactly the same. So it's a really nice option for people. And then we just released our whey protein isolate as well, which has gotten a lot of really great feedback about the taste. I mean, again, as we told people, which has gotten a lot of really great feedback about the taste. I mean, again, as we told people, like, listen, we're not looking to reinvent the wheel here. This is a really tasty, high quality whey protein isolate that's very digestible and it's at a competitive price.

Right. Like there's no it's not, you know, 400 percent better, you know, for gains or whatever. And then stuff I'm excited about. Um, I mentioned that we're going to have a research review coming out. Um, we also have, you guys might've seen me talk about, uh, the workout builder on our website, which is kind of like adaptable training templates for people. So, you know, a lot of people out there have, you know, workout apps now, which is just glorified. They just upload programs onto them, which is fine. But what's cool about ours is it, it prescribes your intensity in terms of either percentage of your one rep max or, um, your RPE or RIR. It prescribes, uh, the reps and sets,

but we have grouped exercises so that you can, well, except for the main lifts, but we have grouped exercises so that you can pick what you have available based on your gym. And we even have home options for almost every program. So especially with COVID that's been super helpful for people. So it's like, it's enough structure with enough flexibility that it really helps people take the guesswork out of their workout programs. So we're completely redoing that. So that's going to come out. It's going to be like the people who are using it now are going to get such a deal because they're going to still be paying the same price. And like the research review, we're not charging extra for that. That's just a complete value add for our members.

So we're really excited about that. So every month we're going to review five studies that are relevant for nutrition and training. And there's some really good research reviews out there already. And again, we're not trying to reinvent that wheel. We're trying to be a little bit more of an entry-level research review. There's some really good research reviews that are like that I read that I'm like, oh man, the lay person, this might be a little bit much. This is going to be more like a lay person's research review to where, okay, this is what are they, what were they testing? How do they do it? What were the results?

What does it mean for you? Right. So I'm really excited about that because I talk about research a lot. So I feel like a lot of, and a lot of people ask me like, Hey, where do I go to learn more about this stuff? I feel like this would be a great resource for them. And then I'm working on something as well, a really big long-term project with a guy named Bill Campbell from USF. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with him, but he's a great

professor. He's actually built a really strong Instagram following as well. And we are building what's going to be called Physique Coaching Academy. And so we are going to basically try to build the first accredited online physique coaching course so that, you know, right now that stuff is the wild, wild West, right? So if you, if you want to become an online coach, there's really no resource to get you started. I mean, you could do like precision nutrition or you could do some of these other ones, but they're not like precision nutrition is great, but it's not really geared towards exclusively body composition. So we're trying to like for the people who want to modify their body composition and people who want to coach that online. What can I contribute from my, you know, decade and a half experience in this industry.

And then obviously Bill being a professor to help write the coursework and whatnot. So that's good. That's a monster project, but we're really excited about it. And we think that's going to help a ton of people and also provide a framework for where now, if you want to go hire a nutrition coach, you can say, okay, well, this person graduated PCA, you know, we have a little more confidence. They know what they're talking about. So that's a project I'm super excited about,

but it's probably a year off from being done, but super excited about it. And obviously like our core of coaching, we have our team BioLane coaches that like, I would say my wife and I, but mostly my wife trained to coach one-on-one people. And we serve, I think we serviced over 500 clients last year, which is really awesome. And we're going to do

way more than that this year. So, I mean, we're just trying to like at every level, like how can we help people, you know, whatever their goal is. Congratulations on everything. And something I want to point out is I've noticed a shift in your mindset. And I don't know if this is something you've been researching or looking into, but I got to commend you on that as well. Just seems like you are. I know you still go after people online, but I think it's more entertainment value and you're just, you know, occasionally just trying to get a point across. So, um, anyway, just something I noticed. So I figured I'd mention it to you. Well, again, I think most people are good people or they're trying to be good people.

Um, so again, when I talk about stuff, you know, I try not to assume intentions anymore. And as somebody who's had, you know, public kind of scandal, you know, and dealt with a lot of, you know, criticism and rightly so, you know, I consider myself somebody who's a good person trying to do the right thing. So maybe that was what life needed to throw at me in order for me to kind of check myself a little bit. You know what I mean? And my therapist was great about that. She said, you know, like, just real quick, because I think this is important. Life has a way of humbling you when you need to be humbled. You know what I mean?

And, you know, I used to be humbled. You know what I mean? And, um, you know, I used to be a lot more judgmental of people. Like I'll still call people out, but as, as you've noticed, like it's more for entertainment and I'm,

I'm not, you know, for the most part, um, I'm not making assumptions about their intentions. I think that's criticizing what they're saying. You're not criticizing them necessarily. I try to, and I can't say that I'm always perfect with that, obviously.

But yeah, I try to focus on the substance of the argument as much as I can. And honestly, I think that that helps people respect you more when you focus on the substance of the argument. But yeah, as somebody who had people make a lot of assumptions about me that weren't necessarily true, you know, I didn't like it when that happened.

And so it's like, okay, well, like, well, maybe I should check, you know, how I do things.

So where can people find you and where can people find the supplements that you mentioned? Everywhere on the interwebs, baby. No, you know, for anything like, I guess the hub is still biolane.com, you know, my website. That's where you can find our membership service. But, you know, our app is in both app stores. So the Google Play and the Apple, the Apple, the iTunes store as Carbon Diet Coach. Our supplements is just OutwardNutrition.com and on pretty much every social media on BioLane. So pretty easy to find.

And I do want to say, you know, this has been a long journey for me. Mark, you've probably been aware of me for, I think probably around 10 years now. Yeah, a little longer. And, you know, this has been a long journey for me. Mark, you've probably been aware of me for, I think, probably around 10 years now. Yeah, a little longer. And, you know, I've been in the industry for about 20 years in terms of writing content. And, you know, people, I just passed 500,000 followers on Instagram, which, you know, it's Instagram. So I'm not trying to pretend like it's a crazy, you know, achievement. a crazy, um, you know, achievement, but to me it kind of is because, you know, I, I feel like I've, I've made some mistakes, but I've never kind of given into, you know, fads or, or making crazy claims or those sorts of things to gain a following. And, um, you know, I just want to

know for the people out there who have followed me, um, I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me. And I'm trying to make the best stuff yet to come. But people ask like, how did you blow up? It's like, dude, I never blew up. It's been a slow, slow climb. But I guess what I'll leave people with is I think the most important thing with getting to your goals, whether it's, um, you know, fat loss or muscle building or, or whatever it is, business is, um, just be relentless, you know, like if you really want something, just be relentless. Um, cause that's, it's usually what it's going to take. The universe has a way of, if you really want it, the universe is going to make it fucking hard. Yeah. You certainly have been relentless. You, uh, came back from a really bad back injury and

you're lifting similar weights to what you were lifting years ago, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm dealing with a hip issue right now. I actually, so I'm coached by, currently by Zach Robinson of Data Driven Strength. And he's a student of Dr. Mike Zordos, who I've talked about a lot. And I was telling Zach the other day, I was like, listen, I'm just going to have a little bitch fest here. I don't expect you to have to pick me up or anything like that. But I'm like, you know what? On days like this, I really want to just say maybe I'm just wasting my time and I should pack it all in because it's like as soon as I've started to get some momentum

over the last five years, it's like something else will pop up. When I'm logical, I'm like, okay, well, this is just a puzzle. There's just another piece of that puzzle. I got to figure out, um, because I have been strong before I have come back before. And I believe I can do it again. I believe that my best numbers in terms of powerlifting are still in front of me. Um, but you know, on days like that, where I can't even, you know, squat one 35 without some pretty bad hip pain, it's like maybe I am wasting my time. Maybe I'll never get there. And Zach said exactly what he needed to, wise kid for 24 years old.

He said, well, maybe that's true. And this is exactly what I said to people too. Maybe that's true, but you wouldn't want your kids to quit on something they were so passionate about, right? And I was like, fuck no, I wouldn't want your kids to quit on something they were still passionate about. Right. And I was like, fuck, no, I wouldn't, you know? So for me, it's like,

you know, if I still wasn't passionate about it, I'd probably let it go, but I still am passionate about it. Still believe I can, I can do it. So, uh,

I'm not going to quit. And I would implore people out there who, you know, if you have something you're passionate about and you really want to get it, like just expect the setbacks. It's, it's part of the process. Thank you, Lane. Appreciate it. Have a great day. it's part of the process thank you lane appreciate it

have a great day thank you so much you guys too nice seeing you guys likewise thank you she is so much good yeah he crushed that shit really did it was fucking phenomenal he was going on and on and on and on but it was awesome but you need that shit back but jason fung i think was great that was a great question yeah or great uh it's great because i have a i had a whole list of people i know i figured yeah i'm sitting here like writing down a bunch of people and i'm i was kind of hoping we could get through like four or five different people same ended with mark bell yeah he uh you, I know he takes exception to, you know, he takes exception to the same thing I take exception to. I don't like when people try to speak in absolutes.

Yeah. I really, I wish and I hope that I hope that I don't do this too often, but I know that I get excited and I sometimes do. But I have been working on over the last several years of just sharing my own experience. This is what's worked for me. This is what I've noticed. Our guest yesterday, Doug, he was talking about his cholesterol and, you know, heart, heart disease and things like that. And he was sharing his experience of when he switched to a, uh, lower carb, higher fat diet, how it changed everything. Um, but at the same time, you know, I think it's important to note that like, that is his experience and he's not out there touting

that as the way when we asked him about nutrition, he was like, I'm not a nutritionist. He just passed the ball off to the guy that helps him, you know, and I, I think that that that can be really important. And I think that's what Lane is usually trying to debunk. certain diet he totally understands that there are so many different ways that people can make these things work and that there isn't something that's just like absolute or or absolutely true it's like literally he said okay so what is the diet that you can do that doesn't make you feel like you're dieting right like well what is that um so that that was really awesome also i'm i really dig all the protein conversation we had because you know that that that idea of the 30 grams of protein and it said like people really are like so stuck on that and the gluconeogenesis thing too which we didn't dive into too much but uh he did talk about it briefly but again i've mentioned this on the show several times it's my belief uh and my understanding of from

what i've heard is that it's more of a demand-driven thing than it is just your body automatically being like, hey, we got way too much protein. We're just going to turn it into carbohydrates or turn it into sugar. I think that sometimes when people hear stuff like that, they're like, oh, that's the same as me eating carbs, and I don't think it works that way. I don't think it's going to be anything that's going to be detrimental to you in terms of your aesthetics, in terms of what you're trying to do with your goals.

And again, it's more demand driven. So if you are exercising a lot and you don't have you didn't consume a lot of fat, you didn't consume a lot of carbs and you consumed a lot of protein, your body's going to say, hey, we could utilize some sugar because you've been working out really hard and it might turn that protein into sugar. That's my understanding of it. But yeah, he sifted through a lot of great stuff for us today. It was really, really awesome. That's one thing that was going through my head when we were talking about the protein needs or the protein feedings. It's like when you mentioned the mice study and how the more even protein feedings tended

to have or those mice were holding a little bit more muscle. One thing I was thinking about was like, well, when I, when, when you think about resistance training, when this is a person in the presence of like consistent resistance training over time I think the difference is even smaller. Like it may be that that person still gains a little bit more muscle, like that 5%, but it's going to be even small if this person is doing resistance training because of the need for the body or the stimulus that the body is having to put on muscle and to gain strength i think he would i think he would agree that that five percent is arguable like i don't you know like he does i don't think he's any proof uh that that's necessarily you're going to hold on to 5% more by having a protein shake in the morning.

I do understand, though, like, yeah, if we're talking about somebody fasting every day, fasting every day for 20 hours every single day, I think that's one of the major problems with a lot of this stuff is that somebody will say they'll attack a carnivore diet, and they'll talk about how it's not sustainable and it's not healthy and it's like well do you really think anyone i mean there are on occasion on occasion there's a person that only eats meat and they don't eat anything else

they don't have a slice of cheese they they don't eat a vegetable, you know, that is like, that is so, that is like just extremely, extremely rare. They don't even put like garlic on something or, you know, like, or even consume coffee. Coffee's a plant, you know, or smoke weed. That's a plant. I mean, like you're going to be ingesting plants probably somewhere in your plan. And same thing with a ketogenic diet. People will say things about keto diets or really, really low carb diets. But you got to understand is most people aren't going to be compliant with the diet 24-7, 100% of the time. So I think it kind of, there's really no reason to talk too much about, you know, if

you're, if you're fasting, like if you're, if you're taking your fasting to extremes every day, maybe potentially there could be an issue, but I think that you would notice them. I think that you would feel them. Yeah. I know a couple of people that do one meal a day and they do them pretty often, but they don't do them because they make them feel worse. They feel pretty good doing it. And so they're like, shit, I they don't do them because they make them feel worse. They feel pretty good doing it. And so they're like, shit, I'm going to continue to do this. And they are in great shape. So, you know, it's going to be dependent upon what feels good to you.

And I guess your belief system, too. You know, ultimately, when he talked about that ghrelin, that was actually really interesting. I was like, I was thinking, yeah, my ghrelin's super low yeah i just kept thinking that meanwhile i got hungry right yeah gotta get joe dispenser but um one thing i can mention yeah was uh that reminded me of how like you know patrick mckeown was saying not patrick mckeown um matthew walker was talking about how you know when he talked about how important sleep was gave people sleep anxiety and people are getting worse sleep because they're not worrying about not getting enough sleep. Like when we talk about fasting, it's like, don't be so rigid with it. Like use it as a tool.

If you don't get to 16 hours, it's not the fucking end of the world. There's nothing that's really going to be that wild. Like it's not a hard thing. It's just a habit that you can slowly get better with and use it like as a tool. That's how we use it. Take us on out of here. Andrew. Sure.

We'll now I'm worried about people worrying about their sleep because we tell people about how important sleep is. They better get it. I'm going to make, I'm going to make it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Make sure you stop by eat right foods.com.

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And Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Make sure to go to Apple Podcasts. Give us a review, guys. It helps out a lot. Thank you. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

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