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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. Good morning, everybody. So I've got a slight blocked nose, so apologies if I do sound a bit like a robot on you. But I wanna cover two interesting studies or study overviews today. One is about carbohydrate, which is important.
Speaker 1:Get many questions about this. Is eating carbs good or bad? And also, if you eat more of your calories earlier in the day, does that actually help with weight loss? Okay. So I'll start with that one, which is interesting because the research mainly says that consuming a greater proportion of your energy intake earlier in the day rather than the evening actually promotes, more weight loss, as it kind of aligns with the circadian rhythm of humans.
Speaker 1:Okay. So that's what is being seen. So this meta analysis or systematic review, sorry, looked at all the studies and looked at, okay, what's the actual truth here? The results are interesting. So this is what it says from the study.
Speaker 1:Following the critical appraisal, a random effects meta analysis found that in the context of an energy reduced diet, distributing energy intake, so calories, with a focus on earlier intake resulted in a significantly greater weight loss. So 1.23 k three kg, and improvements in fasting glucose and LDL cholesterol were also seen. So the research does actually say if you can eat your calories or you got your eat them earlier in the day, so this could mean, you know, have your breakfast, and then there is that kind of, like, don't eat after six because they thought that store is fat, but really what we're doing is limiting our overtime window here. This is not the same as intermittent fasting, by the way. Intermittent fasting is like you have an eight hour window and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:But what this does show is potentially it's worth testing out. Now the research conclusion does go on to say, obviously, there's a variance here. Some people prefer to save their calories more for the evening, and some people prefer to have a breakfast and a good lunch. And then for the rest of the day, it's less. Right?
Speaker 1:So this is definitely dependent on you, and you have to see yourself as a scientist. You can't just look at these things and go, okay. Well, our research now says I must eat all my calories earlier in the day even though I don't prefer it. Okay? So you try it out.
Speaker 1:If you don't eat breakfast at the moment, try out having a decent breakfast. And what I mean by a decent breakfast is high protein and with a good ratio of carbs and fats. So, like, that's kind of what we would look as a complete meal. So, yeah, give that a go. Now the second thing I wanna talk about is the the research on carbohydrates and obesity and stuff.
Speaker 1:I think I've covered this loads of times in the podcast. And I like to try and make it as simple as possible to understand because some of the research can be complicated. And this is what's leading to a complication in this stuff is like it's easy for people on TikTok and social media to be like you know sugar is really bad, carbs are all bad, eat less carbs, you have a drop in water weight and then you lose weight and everyone's on about this and the insulin and stuff like that. And even people who are in the professional field tend to to fall into camps. They tend to fall into the anti carb camp or anti fat, and they like to base their kind of personality and their, what's the word, branding around this, which is part of the problem.
Speaker 1:So the reason why carbs are controversial when it comes to weight loss is that essentially everyone labels a carb as a carb. Now a calorie technically is a calorie. It's a unit of measurement. Right? So a calorie is a unit of measurement.
Speaker 1:A 100 calories of fruit versus a 100 calories of meat. Of course, they got different macronutrients in them, so they will be different, but the energy from them is the same. But the body will likely use the carb source, the carb energy better than it does use protein for energy because it very rarely breaks down protein into glucose. That's like a last last resort. Right?
Speaker 1:So you do have this kind of confusion here about well, if a calorie is not a calorie if a calorie is a calorie, is a carb a carb? It's not true. So different carbs obviously have different micronutrient qualities. They are different lengths in the terms of their chains. So when we talk about sugars, we talk about short chains chains of, glucose, which means that it goes into the bloodstream quicker, is utilized quicker.
Speaker 1:Then you've got long chains say you know oats or oatmeal, they're longer chain so they take longer to break down so it's slower digesting than the sugars. Now you might say, surely the sugar's bad, but it depends on the context. This is the problem. People are like sugar's bad because it's short term and spikes your blood glucose, energy goes up and it comes back down. Well, in the context of maybe just day to day living, you may wanna go for long chain carbohydrates or complex carbs, but before a workout, before playing a sports game, you definitely want to shawl chains.
Speaker 1:That's why people who before rugby matches, football, they will eat sweets, they will eat sugary sweets, they will eat, cereal, they will have kind of those quick source of carbohydrates and in that context is perfect. Know, you wouldn't want to eat like a full on complex meal there just before you do a workout or before you do a match because it's gonna take a while to digest. It's gonna be heavy in the digestive system, and it's gonna take too long to get get you the energy you want. Right? So that's why we need to be careful when we start saying carbs are bad because obviously they're not.
Speaker 1:Carbs are not bad. There's different sources of carbs are preferable for different scenarios. When it comes to weight loss, obviously, there's research that shows if you consume more fruit, like if you consume apples, you actually eat less calories in your next meal, because of the fiber content in the fruit. If you if you eat oatmeal, it's shown in studies as well to help with weight loss because it's quite filling. So you got these, like, foods that are clearly beneficial for us to eat because they're high in fiber, high in micronutrients, carbohydrates are needed in the diet.
Speaker 1:Well, technically, you don't need carbs to live because you can go into ketosis, and this is another confusing point. Well, if we don't need carbs, why should we eat them? Well, the body actually prefers carbs as its primary fuel source. So it only goes into ketosis, the keto diet as people follow, when it's a last resort thing. So you think, the body's got this, like, last resort mechanism when it doesn't get its preferred energy source.
Speaker 1:Why would I do that to my body if I don't need to be in ketosis? There's some like, I think it's epilepsy, people going to keto diet where it originally came from. It's like, I need to put myself in in the group where I only can eat like 5% of the foods available to me to go into ketosis, which is really, really hard to stay into and all this stuff. Right? And people blame carbs for the obesity epidemic.
Speaker 1:Right? But since the nineteen nineties, carb intake has actually gone down. So if carbs were to blame for weight gain, the more carbs were eaten, the more weight we're gaining. But actually more calories are now coming from like fats and and stuff like that. So it's not really one thing that's a problem.
Speaker 1:It's not carbs that is the problem. The problem is we're over consuming energy and really the foods that are easy to consume and we can eat a lot of them very quickly. They're actually foods that are 50% carbs, 50% fat, and high in salt or sodium. So well, bang on fifty fifty obviously, but our range. So that's like chocolate, okay, like pastries.
Speaker 1:They're high in fat, they're high in carbs, they're high in salt, and it's like we can consume so much of those in a short period of time that you can eat a lot of calories quickly. Right? So the insulin thing as well, you know, people like if well, I've seen so many people say this in TikTok, even like, you know, registered, I think they're like nutritionists or potentially physicians and they're saying, well, once you eat carbs, fat loss stops. And it's like, yeah, but your body is always changing between fat storage and fat burning. Okay?
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, if you've burned more fat because you're in a deficit of energy, gonna lose fat. So for example, how to think of this is this way. I turn the switch on and off for fat burning and fat loss 50 times a day, 25 times a day, whatever it is. I just need to make sure that I need to be burning more of my stored energy to basically for my body's needs than that comes in. Because if there's more energy coming in and we're not in a deficit, so say your maintenance is 2,000 calories and you got 2,500 calories coming in, then obviously you're gonna have to store those calories into the fat fat store, some, you know, some percent should go to your fat stores.
Speaker 1:But throughout the day you would have been burning fat and and it would have been stopping fat as well. So that that would still happen even when you're in a surplus. The reason we lose fat is not because we eat carbs and it stops fat burning intermittently throughout the day. The reason we lose fat is because the body over the course of a twenty four hour period or like obviously longer than that, but let's make it easy over the course of the day, hasn't been given enough energy to reach its requirements for the day. So it has to go to the storage to pick out some energy and go, alright, we need this because we need a function.
Speaker 1:We got these functions we need to do. Therefore, let's bring out that energy because that's what we need. It's not coming in. But you would have you could do that even if you ate fruit and ate carbs 25 times that day, small amounts. You could yes.
Speaker 1:You would stop fat loss in that moment for a bit because you got a carb source coming in, but that doesn't matter net net, am I in an energy deficit or not? So if you're in an energy deficit and you eat only carbohydrate, so you're always eating carbs, you're still gonna lose fat. That doesn't override, you know, that's that response doesn't override net loss. You know? I think this is a confusing point people go around and like, if I'm, for example, if I'm not eating all day, no carbs all day, my body's in fat burning mode, so it's using fat energy because I'm not feeding it.
Speaker 1:And then I have a giant carb meal, like say 300 grams of carbs, right, it's obviously gonna stop the fat burning for a bit because it's got the energy coming in. But if that energy coming in still doesn't cover the requirements it needs that day, it would still net lose fat that day. So no matter if you bring it in one massive lump sum or you bring it in 25 times a day or six times a day or three times a day, if our total amount of energy coming in still doesn't exceed what you need, you're gonna you're gonna lose you're gonna lose fat. You're gonna lose energy. Think of losing fat as losing energy.
Speaker 1:I have lost energy today because I didn't give my body enough energy for it to be supplied properly. You know? Think of it as, you know, as as the body is very complicated, but you can really simplify this down for what our needs are. It's like if we don't have enough food coming in or we don't have enough ammunition coming in, we don't have enough, you know, some fuel tanks have got reserved fuel tanks. If the fuel is not coming in, it has to go to the reserve fuel tanks.
Speaker 1:If the ammunition's coming in, not coming in, then we have to use up stuff here, but it's not enough. You're gonna lose all your stored ammunition. It has to be used. Right? No matter if it comes in one go or multi multiple times over the day.
Speaker 1:Use whatever analogy suits you with this. I think it's important to think about it that way. Because otherwise, you're gonna be bogged down in this battle that people are going through that obesity is due to insulin and all the stuff. And again, it links to obviously that you've got insulin resistance and for people who get overweight, there's correlations that people who are overweight will have insulin resistance. They'll eat more carbohydrates.
Speaker 1:They'll also eat more fats. They'll be eating more food in general, and they we want one thing to blame. We're always like this as humans. We want one thing to blame all the time. It's gotta be that thing.
Speaker 1:Let's let's give that. That's the scapegoat, and that's the problem. And then you realize it's not the problem. Then you do that, and it's like, I'm still not losing weight. You know?
Speaker 1:What's going on? What's happening? Because the the the basics haven't been a buyer to. And I want you to think about, you know, starting today with the basics in mind because the basics are everything. Right?
Speaker 1:You can go and read these studies. You can go and look into them yourselves. You can look at what other people are saying about the studies, and you'll notice some people take this from it, some people take that from it. So it's really, really hard out there to fail or what is right and what is true. And what I'm gonna give you is the breakdowns of all the studies say, but also the simplified version of it for everyday living because most of us listening here aren't Olympic athletes.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's one of you. Who knows? Probably not. But we're not gonna be Olympic athletes. We're not gonna be world class athletes.
Speaker 1:We're not gonna live that that lifestyle. Most of us listening just want a calm mind, a healthy body, which means most of us need to lose some weight. That's the truth. You know, you can we we of course, body positivity, body neutrality, sorry, is important. Right?
Speaker 1:All of these things are important. But at the end of the day, if you're carrying more weight around with you than you need, it's gonna give you problems. So we wanna come down to a zone which we're comfortable with. Right? And that doesn't mean, you know, size zero, size six, stick thin, not training and just being thin, thin, thin, aesthetically.
Speaker 1:No. What we're saying is, like, can we start a journey where if I understand the need to lose weight, I'm gonna do it slowly for one, because that's the that's the path that works. Two, I'm gonna simplify the journey as much as possible because complexity causes me stress, and it's not good, and the stress response on every day is not gonna help me. Three, can I take away end targets? Can I not say I wanna lose 40 pounds therefore I need to do this?
Speaker 1:Can I just say I'm gonna aim for a modest one pound a week or a few pounds a month? Most of you will be done after a year, you've been trying to lose weight for ten years maybe. So it goes to show, right, the quick weight loss doesn't work. And can you then start saying to yourself, okay, as my journey goes on, I'll I'll start enjoying the process of it as opposed to only being happy once I reach an end result. So every day you get a chance to live the lifestyle you truly wanna live.
Speaker 1:So some people will say I'm not a healthy person, but if you do one day getting your steps in, eating well, you know, getting your protein in, you're definitely gonna get some fruits and veggies in. You're drinking water. Right? And you're you're not sitting down all day, you're trying to get up more. You know, that's that's exactly what a healthy person, what we would see is doing.
Speaker 1:And if you do it for one day, you can do it for two days, three days. The the magic is to think of it as one day at a time because if you don't think that way, it's overwhelming. Okay. So with that in mind, with that in mind, like, yes, some studies are saying you can lose more weight if you eat more of your calories earlier in the day. It's up to you to try that out if you want, and somebody's saying calves are bad, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Just focus on your energy intake, hit your protein, get your steps, everything else falls in place. You don't have to be you don't have to join that wall. You don't have to join the battle over there. You don't have to go and pick a side and start fighting this and that. Just focus on the basics, and I promise you, you live a much more chilled life because social media will suck you into these camps, and then you start fighting other people online about it, and it's not good.
Speaker 1:So I hope you have a good day. I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. It's one of the reasons cabs in my mind aren't that important unless you wanna be performance based. Just hit your calorie target, hit your protein target, hit your step target, and I'll see you back here for another episode tomorrow.