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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's topic, super interesting one and one people often get confused. A lot of
Speaker 2:topic online, especially now against carbs, against insulin spikes and all this stuff, and people think that this is the cause of fat gain and obesity, right? We know from countless studies it's not true, it's down to over consumption of energy, right? But there was one very interesting metabolic ward study, even though it was very short, and as other studies show longer term, maybe the results kind of even out, they wanted to do low fat versus low carb. And a metabolic ward, basically, very hard to do because you have subjects going into a facility for like seven to fourteen days and they track everything, every meal, every calorie that's eaten, energy expenditure, everything is fully tracked. So you can't do these large scale because obviously it would be impossible and very, very costly, but it showed that I would have figured out, they were like, you know what, let's figure out then if it is, If eating more carbs is the cause of fat gain, we find out.
Speaker 2:So they had the group do low fat first. So protein remained the same, calories remained the same, but they did low fat first. So very low fat diet, like 8% of their calories was from fat. And then they switched after that to low carb. So if it's true that low carb will have fat loss and high carb doesn't, so low fat means higher carb, right?
Speaker 2:Because the protein is equated. So if we're talking about low fat, we're basically saying high carb. So what happened? Well, the low carb group actually did lose more total weight. But here's the kicker, they didn't lose more total fat.
Speaker 2:So all the time we talk about weight loss, we don't care about weight loss, we care about fat loss. And why people always fascinate over pounds dropping when it's just water and glycogen, you need to shake yourself and get out of your head because it's just water weight. The glycogen is going to come back just as quickly as it dropped off. We're after fat loss. So in this study, it showed that actually low fat was superior to low carb for fat loss.
Speaker 2:The limitations are it's a very short study of like nine days. There's other research looking at similar ones. Metabolic Wall shows that, you know, after a few weeks, you kind of get the same fat loss results if protein and calories are the same, like practically the same, like, you know, percentage wise may differ, but like all the 20 different, but like practically in the longer ones, it's like 0.5 pounds over six weeks or over eight weeks. So, it really comes down to preference in that stage because the benefit If it was, say, after eight weeks, you lose four kilos more fat, then obviously we'd be like, Wow, we're low faster weight. But because it's quite small after a longer period of time, it's more about how long you can stick to something.
Speaker 2:Because if you try and be rigid with something, it's very hard to be low fat, 8% of your calories for a long period of time. It's very hard because a lot of foods we eat got fats in them and carbs and mix. It's very difficult to stick to one or the other because most people fail trying to do low carb, most people fail to do low fat. So from that, it proved to us that if it was insulin that was the trigger for fat gain and the obesity model based on insulin was the reason, then low carb would have absolutely annihilated low fat. And in other studies, would have shown there's loads of studies on this, there's loads of studies on this spanning decades.
Speaker 2:So we know it's not true. So when it comes to it and you see people online talking about, you know, you should lower your blood glucose spikes and this and that for fat loss, it's a lie, right? It's not based on actual evidence, it's pretty much going against the industry evidence on this, which is fascinating because everyone says they're science based and they look at these huge randomized controlled trials and like as in meta analysis of them and then metabolic ward studies, which really is the gold standard because you are literally controlling every variable. They still come to the conclusion and it's because they're they've got a booksell in the low carb zone or whatever it is and their entire livelihood depends on that one thing. And that's why it's easier to sell something like that than to say, actually, fat loss comes down to energy balance first.
Speaker 2:If you have the same protein, it doesn't really matter long term, whether it's you're eating more carbs or fat. How we actually live as humans is we don't live by a precise macronutrient split every day. I'm not eating exactly 30% of my calories from carbs every day, maybe 35%, maybe another day it's 45%, maybe another day 65%. One day you might be 70% of your calories from fat, another day might be 15%. Why?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe you've eaten out and you've gone for a meal that's higher in fat and calories. Maybe another day you fancied someone else. This is how we work. We don't work well with rigid every coach I speak to speaking to coaches now about integrating PowerPlan in German and stuff they say these plans people ask for, they don't stick to them. It's too rigid.
Speaker 2:It's not how we work. It's not how our brains work. We like to be flexible. And if you understand the flexibility is the answer, not rigid meal patterns, meal plans, then you can say, okay, well, some days I'll be low carb, some days I'll be high carb, but make sure your protein is similar. Because if your protein is too low many, many days in a row, we're gonna have a high risk of losing the muscle mass of the body.
Speaker 2:So that's really it when it comes to this. I just wanna do a short podcast on there, like if you're really covering all the studies, it's fine. But in practical sense, guys, hit your calorie target and your protein target, and then the rest of the foods you can whatever you want. You can have some days high, some days low. That's really it.
Speaker 2:And if you think about it, we're not living in a science experiment like a metabolic ward. So even if after ten weeks of a metabolic ward study, it said you lose two kilos more fat, low fat and low carb, I still would think great, but is it practical that someone can be there? Potentially, potentially. But we know from basically us normal people that we will have eaten out foods, cakes, chocolates, all that stuff, and we can't be abiding by rigid fixed ratios of macronutrient splits, pretty much. Right?
Speaker 2:So that's it for today. Take that on board, hit your protein, hit your calories, get steps in, and ideally train once or twice a week, pad, and that's it. And you are done. You are there on the path, and you lose fat, maintain or gain muscle, which is the holy grail called body recomposition, and things will be going very well for you. That's it, guys.
Speaker 2:See you tomorrow.