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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.
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It's Friday obviously week two coming to an end and it was, a week of stoicism and I'm not gonna give you more stoicisms today, think you've had enough of it, and you should apply it is all I'm gonna say. Today's podcast are very, very interesting study, and I can't wait to share it. It is titled, can you match your macros to your genes? Okay?
Speaker 1:So imagine this scenario, two people have a similar approach to the nutrition, basically same macro say, same deficit, one has a better response than expected and another one has a worse response. In a sense, one person lost more weight than expected, their blood work improves, fewer cravings. The other person has less fat loss, they're always hungry, cravings are big time. Right. She like, what's going on here?
Speaker 1:They're on the same macros, the same deficit, the same thing. How is one person reacting so differently to the other? Right? So this new study, wanted to find out. So the background is the well designed weight loss study comparing higher and lower carb diets have been done over the years, and it's, you know, always a coin flip.
Speaker 1:If both diets essentially have the same calories, in a as opposed to what their targets are. So the calories are equated, protein is equivalent, the average weight loss is about the same no matter if it's a high carb or a low carb or a high fat or a low fat. As long as calories and protein are equated in these, diets or these studies, weight loss were the same. There was not much difference. Right?
Speaker 1:However, researchers identified at least 10 different genetic variation that could make someone potentially a fat responder, so their bodies do better with a diet that's higher than fat, or a carb responder, someone who reacts better to a higher carb diet. So theoretically a fat responder should lose more weight with a higher fat and a carb responder should lose more with higher carbs. Okay? Why? Don't know.
Speaker 1:Could be a lot of things they're looking at like hormones, appetite, metabolism, blah blah blah blah blah. If that's true, they say, then fat responders should also lose less weight with higher carbs while carb responders should have less success with higher fat. Right? So if they're working against what they think they are, they should have worse results. Okay?
Speaker 1:So how the study worked was this. After testing to determine the genotype, 122 participants completed the twelve week program, including eighty five eighty five fat responders and 37 carb responders. A good chunk of the initial volunteers, 39%, were excluded because they fell into both or none. So they weren't good enough in terms of variation. Get out.
Speaker 1:Anyway, half the participants were randomly assigned to eat a high fat diet, 40% fat, 45 carbs, 15% protein. This is not ketogenic diet. And half were assigned to eat higher carbs, so 65% of their calories came from carbs, 20% fat, 15% protein. Okay? So carb responders eating higher carbs and fat responders eating higher fat were labeled genotype concordant.
Speaker 1:So a, this is this is matching up. Fat responders who ate higher carbs were labeled genotype discordant. Okay? So what did the study find? What do you think?
Speaker 1:Have a think about it. Do you think that the fat responders with a higher fat lost more weight, or do you think the the carb responders eating higher carb lost more weight, with an aligned macro approach based on their genetics? The big finding was this. There was no difference in weight loss for those eating a diet aligned with a genotype compared to those meals who they were misaligned. Participants who ate a genotype concordant diet lost an average of 5.3 kgs compared to average weight loss of 4.8 kgs of the discordant diets.
Speaker 1:The average participant lost just over 5% of their initial body weight in twelve weeks. Among fat responders those who got higher fat diets lost 5.5 and those who got higher carbs lost 5.3 kgs. Weight loss was similar for carbs group as well, not statistically significant differences. Changes in blood pressure, insulin response, and appetite were unrelated to whether participants ate a diet matched the genotype or one that didn't. One interesting tidbit though, carb responders when eating a higher fat diet that didn't match the genotype had fewer cravings for carbs especially starches.
Speaker 1:So I'll read that again, carb responders when eating higher fat had fewer cravings for carbs. Okay? So what does this mean for us? It means that this whole precision nutrition movement of being, you know, do a diet for your blood type, do a diet for your genome, do a diet for this, do a diet for that, do the zooeythra, all this stuff that they could this huge new precision nutrition movement or they call it personalized nutrition. They are gonna take you down the road, well, this would be better for you for fat loss.
Speaker 1:But it's not. It just flat out isn't. The research is absolutely clear now. This study's come out studies on higher fat, lower fat, all this stuff. It doesn't matter that much whether you've got if you're more fat aligned or carb aligned.
Speaker 1:As long as your calories and protein are the same, weight loss is gonna be the same. And even if you do start aligning it, there's not any difference anyway. Right? So your gene is just one factor. If you've read Rob's policy's work, you know this is like a gene isn't exactly gonna determine anything.
Speaker 1:It's like a gene can it's like a dial is on and off, because it's more intense or less intense depending on the environment as well. But, obviously, tailor stuff to your needs. You know more than a researcher knows about what you like to eat, if things make you bloat, foods you like, foods you don't like. All this type of stuff is something you already know. So you don't need someone else to tell you to for precision nutrition.
Speaker 1:If I say to you now, okay. Well, eat fish and and broccoli and all this stuff, and it's like lighter in the stomach, and you go, well, Scott, I hate fish. I go, oh, I sound don't eat fish. Simple as that. It's not really needing to be any more complicated where you're like, well, I should eat fish.
Speaker 1:Oh, Scott said, this is, lighter in the stomach. It's better for me. You don't like it, though. So what are you doing? So this is good news for us because it means there's not much beyond hitting your protein and calories you have to worry about.
Speaker 1:And I've been saying this for ages, like what the hell are we doing wasting our life trying to track 100 different data points all the time, wearing whoops, wearing these analysis is interesting in this data, whatever. But, like, what are we doing overloading ourselves, tracking loads and loads of data for when if our concern is weight loss and weight management and being generally healthy, calorie intake aka energy intake, am I is my protein high enough because it's very, very important, am I strength training a few times a week and doing some cardio or steps, you know, fruit and veggies, obviously, get your fibrin, you know, you can add that in. There's not much more you need to add to it, so why are you doing it? Because you think that there's a secret magic thing beyond it, and it's not. And these studies are gonna keep coming out, and you can either listen to them or you can go and keep listening to the gurus in TikTok who are telling you about your blood type diet, this diet, and that diet, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:And none of them are true. So I'm gonna leave you with that for for this weekend. Just basically don't worry about, having perfect alignment with your genes and nutrition. Just focus on the basics we've known for a very long time, and it's shocking that that's what works, but it is. So focus on the things that matter, ignore everything else, and spend that mental energy you would have spent thinking about these other things that don't matter on something more meaningful like reading stoicism or whatever you would do.
Speaker 1:But have a good weekend. I'll see you back for week three on Monday.