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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 One Day at a Time podcast. Yeah, I'm still in Rio De Janeiro. I don't know if I'm leaving, I don't know if have to obviously, but I think I'm stuck. I haven't left. So before I get into the topic today, I kind of want to talk to you about stress management because the last few weeks we've had many app problems and they stem from obviously, you know, the basis of it is the app to be super simple, realising, okay, need to add the option of tracking sugar and carbs for people, which makes sense, you know, for diabetics and stuff.
Speaker 1:And then that brings us on problems you don't foresee, and they knock on, and knock on, knock on, and there's so many users, and it just makes problem worse and the servers get overloaded, blah blah. You basically get 10 problems from one problem that you couldn't predict and you've got to break it down and get through it one day at a time. You have to do that. You can't think, Oh my god, there's 10 problems, we are doomed. So to manage stress really for me came down to let's break it down into chunks.
Speaker 1:What can we get done by today? Push an update. What can we get done by tomorrow? Push an update. And it helped manage it a lot.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of pressure to fix things fast and of course had to move fast, but it really did help when you break down problems into what can I do from today till bedtime as opposed to look at this mountain problem we have, we've got to get it all done today or it's game over? No, no, let's look at what the main problem is, what's infected most, can we do this fix and then can we do this fix and can we do this fix. It's the same philosophy in work, in your problems, in your health fitness, it's just the same thing. Once you break things down, you just take it from today till bedtime, that's all you can do. That's the best you can do.
Speaker 1:I mean you can stay awake for twenty four hours but your performance will go down, you'll miss something, spare it to just smash it, get it done, update the next day, look at it again, bam, bam, bam. And you won't believe of a help good sleep has on your mindset. So you could be up late trying to fix things until 12AM, and then you start feeling irritated and stuff, and then you have a sleep, and you wake up the next day, have a cup of coffee, and you think, wow, look at the difference I feel right now. The difference is crazy. So just wanna put that out there.
Speaker 1:If you have problems, if you have things going on, it's important not to let stress take over the brain, make you do, silly decisions, or just make you feel on edge all day. You just have to break it down, focus from now to bedtime, and, you know, keep a cool head. That's super important, keeping a cool head. Anyway, onto today's topic. I had a very pleasant email discussion with Ali.
Speaker 1:We'll mention surname Ali. Thanks for conversation, it was about carbs and keto, and I think this is a very important topic. People tend to read about keto because it's all over the internet sometimes, it comes in waves, then it changes to paleo, whatever the topic of the day is. But the keto diet, some people know a bit about it. Some people know it's low carb and people think it helps with fat loss and it's superior for fat loss to other diets.
Speaker 1:That's the first mistake people make. It's not superior to fat loss versus other diets. So that's the first thing, but we'll get into that. But the importance of it is this. There's a lot of phrases on the Internet that people misinterpret.
Speaker 1:So one of the phrases is you don't need carbs to survive. So carbs are not essential for survival, so why should you eat carbs? We spoke about this on the email, so there's two views about this. If carbs are not essential for us to survive, why eat carbs? The second part of this is carbs may not be essential to eat but the Baldi will find a way to get glucose, so carbs glucose, let's say they're interchangeable.
Speaker 1:So your body doesn't get glucose, so 75% of your brain's energies run on glucose, your body has ways of turning fat into glucose and things like that, So there's like an emergency system in place that if the body doesn't get glucose from food or energy from from you're eating carbs, it will have to find a way to get it. Okay? So you can either see that as the body doesn't actually need carbs or you can see it as actually the body does need carbs or glucose so it has an emergency system if we don't provide it. So there's two ways you can look at it. Now the more important view is not really is it essential for survival because survival is like the base.
Speaker 1:We don't want to just survive in this world, we want to be thriving in this world. So are carbs essential for thriving when it comes to performance, when it comes to feeling good about yourself, when it comes to food choices and I think the answer is yes. Carbs are one of these important parts where it means it opens up a world of food to you that keto doesn't. So in a sense of thriving with choice, you've got way more choice. You've got way more choice, so you're not worried about staying under 50 grams of carbs a day because if you eat carbs when you're in ketosis it knocks you out of ketosis.
Speaker 1:So you can get into keto, it might take you three to four to five days, you've eaten low, low carb, high fat, there's not many foods you can eat on ketosis, you're very limited, like 95% of foods are kind of out and then one day you're like, oh my god, I would love some carbs and you eat some fruit and you have something else and then you're out of ketosis. So that's not a way to thrive, to be worried about the switch on and on and on. Now, when speaking to Ali, he actually prefers being in ketosis for long periods of time and he has no problem staying in ketosis. Now, maybe Ali thrives on ketosis versus eating carbs, that might be the case. But in general, for most people, and the research is clear on this when it looks at adherence to carbs, moderate carb diets or keto keto diets, adherence to keto diets are terrible.
Speaker 1:Okay? Very, very terrible. It is very difficult to maintain ketosis. Now, if ketosis did have a super, super impact on fat loss and it was like 10 x better fat loss than maybe eating carbs, there might be an option where you say, Do know what? Maybe it's worth going through the first two to three weeks of feeling really terrible to get that benefit, but we don't see that benefit in fat loss.
Speaker 1:So I sent some snippets to Ali over email from some research studies on ketosis and it's from a book by Alan Aragon, one of the top researchers and fat loss experts experts in the world and he's been doing this since the 1990s. Ali does mention a good point that you can probably find research to back anything you say, but the thing with the research studies here is that you're looking at both sides, you're looking at the type of research, like randomized controlled trials versus observational data and stuff like that. We're looking at high quality research and what that actually says. And luckily for us, we've got enough research here to make obvious choices. So when it comes to eating carbs, it's not needed for survival because we've got the mechanism to find glucose, but it's for thriving in terms of food choices for sure.
Speaker 1:Sports performance for sure, carbs become super, super important especially the timings of them and recovery and muscle retention, everything like carbs can help in that as well. So when we're talking about thriving, we're thinking about that. We're thinking about our food choices, our lifestyle, our performance. And yes, most people don't need to be carb loading or eating carbs during workouts because your workouts aren't long enough, but if you start working out for sixty to eighty minutes plus, you're going to deplete your carbs in statinputers, glycogen stores, and you're going to want to consume carbs at about 50. This varies person to person to optimize your performance.
Speaker 1:So if any of you are into running, into marathons, into long distance running, this is the type of stuff you're going have to look at. But anyway, let me just share some snippets of studies just to go over this topic because it's important, so we're not confused by the statement online, carbs are not essential for survival, but that we don't want to be baseline focusing on survival. That's not what we want to do with our lives. So the first thing. In several recent studies ketogenic diet and conditions in resistance trainees, so people who lift weights or do body weight and stuff, caused either lean mass reduction, so muscle reduction other parts of lean mass, or compromised gains in lean mass, so less gains in muscle.
Speaker 1:Furthermore, a recent massive review by Ashtory Larky and colleagues examined the ketogenic diet literature spanning from 1921 to the present day. Among their conclusions was that in resistance trained individuals lean mass loss tends to be greater with ketogenic diets versus higher carb lower fat control diets. A 13 study systematic review and meta analysis led by the same authors reinforces the finding that restricting carbohydrates to ketogenic levels, which is 10% of total energy or less than 50 grams of carbs per day, is counterproductive to the goal of maximizing rates of muscle growth or retention. Ketogenic diets are not a deal breaker for muscle growth but the collective evidence shows that they can antagonize or at least sub optimize the process. Contrary to popular law, there truly is no magic threshold of carbohydrate intake below which fat loss is optimized.
Speaker 1:That's an important thing. There is no magic threshold of how low your carb goes where fat loss is optimized or improved nor is there a magic threshold above which fat loss is inhibited. Ketogenic dieting less than 10% of calories from carbs or maximum 50 grams of carbs per day remains a popular approach to weight fat loss due to rapid initial weight drops largely due to decreased glycogen, which is mostly water. The keto diet has legions of diehard followers, some successful with it, others yo yoing their way through perpetual dieting frustration. The best we can say about keto is that it's a viable option, but one that is not universally sustainable.
Speaker 1:It's reasonable to speculate that safe minimum carbohydrate intake for maximizing strength gains is the low end of the muscle gain range which is three kilogram of grams body weight a day. In support of this point, a recent study by Vargas, Molina and colleagues involving lean resistance trained women showed a failure to increase bench press strength on the keto diet, whilst the non keto controlled diet caused insignificant gains. So for the time being, it's safe to consider undercarbing is a risk for sub optimizing maximal strength development, especially in programs with a high volume of sats, In high stakes competition, utilizing every legal advantage, including optimal carbohydrate intake, important. A low end daily carb intake that won't compromise this goal remains a gray area in our knowledge, but individuals are welcome to take their chances. The ISSN carbohydrate requirements are as follows: general fitness with no particular performance goals, three grams to five grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
Speaker 1:I would interject that in the absence of performance goals, setting a minimum intake of carbs is unnecessary which is true and this is what Ali is mentioning as well. Moderate amounts of intense training, two or three hours a day you'd want to get above five to eight grams per kilogram and this is probably not applicable to most of you guys. So when it comes to an overview there, when it comes to what's important to us there is bench press strength or getting strength from our workouts and maintaining strength and muscle is one of the most important things we're going to do for our health as we age. So we want to make sure that the tools are there, that we're not making harder for the body to maintain muscle mass whilst we lose fat because we're at risk of losing muscle when we are in a fat loss phase. Carbohydrate intake, or if you're on ketosis, you're risking losing more muscle.
Speaker 1:You also risk, oh well, it's shown that your strength is not gonna go up or probably won't go up and you're gonna feel much worse by yourself. So these are important things. There's more about keto adaption, so there's another thing where people say, well, if our body has loads of energy stored in fat, so in terms of energy stored in your body, terms of carbs, you've got about 700 grams of carbs overall roughly and 700 grams of carbs is about, 2,800 calories stored in the muscles ready to use. Now if you talk about your fat cells and say you're two hundred pounds and you're 30% body fat, you've got 60 pounds of fat and if you do 60 times nine, sixty sorry, pounds and there's one 60 pounds. And in one pound of fat is 3,500 calories, 200,000 calories of fat energy stored.
Speaker 1:So the theory is this, if there's 200,000 calories, a lot of energy stored in fat, if you can change your body to adapt to use that fat, obviously, we'd lose more fat and we'd be we'd be more efficient because if you use that energy, it's a higher energy than the carbs. Okay? Now in super in day to day living, your body's not really gonna use your glycogen stores in your muscle. They will be there for when it's needed, so it's not like they deplete just by you walking around. How can I explain this simply so it doesn't start confusing people?
Speaker 1:When you do weight lifting or working out and stuff like that, your body can tap into glucose, can tap into glycogen, can use that energy rapidly. When that energy is gone and your body needs to convert fat into the energy, into ATP and all this stuff, that process is like four to eight times slower than getting just carbs that are readily there. So that's why when people who train sixty minutes plus, instead of them saying, well just let the body rely on our fat stores, the turnover of getting that energy ready for the body to use is too slow so it's much easier and quicker to consume carbs because it can get utilized much quicker. Does that make sense? So whilst in theory you can tap into this energy, if you adapt for energy it'll be better, it just doesn't convert quick enough to be utilized.
Speaker 1:That's why it's not something that increases performance and keto adaption in the research has shown not to improve performance, actually hinders performance. So it says keto adaption can decrease exercise performance at a wide range of intensities, not just high intensity, so it's just not optimal. They've tried it and it's not optimal. It's a good theory on paper, but it didn't work out. And I think it's important to realise that even if you're not going to be thinking of long distance running and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Keto adaption doesn't mean better performance because it taps into more energy and it also doesn't mean you're going to actually burn more fat. And this is the last point I want to make and I think it's a crucial one and again it's sometimes confusing because it's the bottom. Have a go at it, should we? Are you ready? Let's go.
Speaker 1:So fat loss, burning fat using burning fat net. So like at the end of the day, have I lost actual fat or have I gained fat? Losing total fat is different than your body using fat for energy. So yes, when you go low carb, your body uses fat as energy and if you do like a zone two cardio, your body is using fat as energy, it's fat oxidizer because you're in the aerobic zone. When you're in anaerobic it's using carbs for energy, so fat is not used for energy, now it's carbs.
Speaker 1:So when people say, okay well if you go keto your body has no carbs coming in so it uses fat as energy. Makes sense. So the body is now using fat as energy. Now the thing is you are eating a lot of fat as well, so the energy coming in, the fat coming in is used as energy. Right?
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean that you've burned more fat that day because what you've just done is, okay, your body is back and forth burning fat, burning carbs, burning carbs day to day. If you're on like a varied diet, that's what your body's doing. I'm using fat now, I'm using carbs now, I'm using fat now, I'm using carbs now. Okay? That's what it's doing.
Speaker 1:What you're on keto is you're saying, just use fat, but actually we're gonna go from eating 30 grams of fat a day to a 150 grams of fat a day. So you're giving your body a lot of energy through fat. So it doesn't matter really if it's using if it's carb, fat, carb, fat, or it's just fat, fat, fat, fat, just carb, carb, carb, carb, carb, what matters is at the end of the day did your body need to find extra energy, So did you not provide it enough energy whether it's through fat or through carbs? Does that make sense? And if you didn't provide it enough energy through fat or carbs, what does it do?
Speaker 1:Well, it has to use stored energy. So it has to find that energy, the stored energy. So it uses that stored energy and it doesn't replace that stored energy because there's nothing to replace it with. The energy hasn't come in. You're in a deficit.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? So you can go ketosis, you can go into keto, say your maintenance is 2,000 calories, you go into keto and you're eating 2,000 calories of mainly protein and fat. You are giving the body the energy needs to replace the fat that's used because you're giving it the maintenance calories and it's not gonna use more fat to store because you're eating it, you're giving it back. So yes, it's burned more fat through the day for energy but it hasn't burned more of your fat stores. You haven't ended the day by the body chipping into the fat stores and actually not replacing it.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? And you can say for carbs too I can have 2,000 calories of carbs. You in a deficit? No. You're going to maintain.
Speaker 1:So instead of thinking oh my god I'm burning more fat on keto so I'll burn more fat, just think of it, am I eating less energy than my body needs? Because my body's going to use fat and carbs for energy. I consuming maintenance energy or am I consuming deficit energy? If I'm consuming deficit energy it doesn't matter if my body's back and forth fat cap, fat cap, fat cap or fat, fat, fat, fat, still the same predicament, did I have a deficit or not? No, okay well I didn't lose any total fat then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've burned all the fat in the world. I've got a fire and I've put all the logs on and the logs are the fat and I just keep it going. In and in and in. But I haven't net burned that fat. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:I hope it does and I hope I clear that up. So don't get confused online. If you want to try keto, give it a go, but don't try it because you think it's gonna help you with fat loss. It doesn't. The initial weight loss is water and it's really hard to stick to.
Speaker 1:If you genuinely prefer, like Ali does, being in ketosis and it's better for you and you feel better, you can handle it easy, you don't feel like you need the carbs and stuff, well great, try it out. But don't be fooled that it's better, don't be fooled by the terminology used, online about it like you don't need carbs, la la la, and keto burns more fat. I've just explained how that doesn't actually work out in real for your fat loss. And that's it guys. I hope that is an informative podcast for you on the keto diet and how it all works.
Speaker 1:Thanks Ali for the chat over email. And guys have a good day, get walking, get your steps going, happy days and remember one day at a time from now to bedtime. That's what matters, that's the focus. Now to bedtime, now to bedtime, now to bedtime. I don't care if you had a perfect day yesterday, if you had the worst day, today's a new leaf and you actually get going, you can move on your task today and that's the important thing.
Speaker 1:So get off your ass, get walking and I'll see you back here tomorrow.