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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.
Will be supplemental in nature through vegan protein sources, fortified whey protein isolates that have got 20 different various vitamins and minerals. And you've got top quality whey protein, top quality soy protein. And because you're getting those nutrients in a short amount of time in the space of three hundred-four 100 calories, right? And then you focus the majority of your other calories the whole food, the fresh food aisles, fruits and veggies that are perhaps nutrient, not as nutrient dense and very filling and satiating, then yeah, if you spark up a nice combination of the two, then it's very possible to obtain all of your essential nutrients that will be not optimal, but it will be your body will be able to synthesize the hormones and the relevant ratios that you need in order to sustain healthy living and to the point where you feel like things are sustainable and your body's not compensating so hard where it's pushing back at the calorie deficit almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right. Makes sense, that makes sense. Well, I think we cover it later on in the chat as well. So we've gone live now. Doctor.
Speaker 2:Ids, isn't it? It is Ids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Doctor. Ids.
Speaker 2:So give us a quick overview Doctor. Ids for our community here whilst they're checking in. Hello everyone, good evening.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hi. I don't know who's in. I don't haven't. I've never streamed on Facebook before or been invited to a Facebook team before.
Speaker 1:This is nice and thank you for having me. So yeah, I'm Doctor. Ids. Just call me Idi or Ids is fine. I'm a UK qualified doctor from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, if anyone knows who that is, right on the East Coast.
Speaker 1:And basically alongside medicine, you know, UEA have a very, what I call, integrated holistic style of medical school course where it's not just lectures and then you do hospital. Like from the first week of the first year, lectures, we were thrown in hospital, we were thrown into GP practices, we were thrown into live dissection where you're cutting up dead bodies, like real humans. And we had group work as well. So what I felt like that did for us was allowed us to appreciate early on that there's more to health lifestyle than simply being in the hospital or being, you know, studying textbooks, for example. So what that made, what that kind of conjured up in my head was over a few years, I felt a passion for preventative or lifestyle medicine alongside traditional medicine in hospital where someone comes in and they're already very ill.
Speaker 1:So alongside medicine, I took time out in between my fourth and fifth years and I did an extra master's degree in research specifically on how to critique research, how to analyze research. And that was with a focus on nutritional research in particular. So I actually conducted quite an in-depth research study on the link between diet and depression, for example. How different nutrients can impact our mental health. That's, it's not a particularly established scientific field at the moment, but in the past fifteen, twenty years, we've been seeing the importance of not just medication and social interaction and physical activity, but now we're seeing the impact that nutrients have on our mental health.
Speaker 1:So that gives you an idea as to kind of my medical school study and how I went into lifestyle nutritional medicine. Then afterwards when I graduated, I came back to the West Midlands area and now I'm doing lots of additional things like content creating, you know, I'm writing something and I'm doing a different course. Yeah, so lots of exciting things coming up.
Speaker 2:Now your videos are great. If anyone here hasn't seen an ad on TikTok and Instagram, they're just quick research like videos and you back everything up with research, and because you know how to read research, it's actually quite a rare skill, because everyone is cites research now, we've gone from a stage in fitness where people did anecdotal evidence as the main thing, and then it was, but this research does this, but they take a sentence out of a research study or an extract, and now there needs to be the next stage where someone like you comes in and says, actually, you've just completely taken our research the wrong way. But talking about research, what's the most surprising thing you've noticed looking at different research? Because there's loads of what people would say low quality research and then high quality research. So what's the actual difference, what we need to look out for you?
Speaker 1:Right, yes, interesting one. I mean, nutrition science, fitness science, they're very, very different. They have different bodies of evidence, right? And I think it's important to establish because typically when someone thinks of low quality evidence, they think of animal studies, case control studies, observational research, where all you're doing is you're taking a group of people and you're observing them over a period of time, right? And you're looking for association.
Speaker 1:So if one group of people have higher amounts of saturated fat, and then what happens to their risk of heart disease over time, right? People think that that is of a lower epidemiological quality than something like a randomized controlled trial where you've got people and you give them one exercise to do and other people a different exercise. And then you look at all of their blood markers, their muscle gain, their hypertrophy outcomes. That's called a controlled study, right? And typically people think, oh, where is the randomized controlled trial that shows this and this?
Speaker 1:We can't say cause and effect. But typically that argument comes from people that don't really understand research too well because it shows the lack of nuance when you're looking at total bodies of evidence. In nutrition science, it's very, very tough to do long term large scale randomized controlled trials. And the reason for that is because if we want to assess the effects of, let's say, sugar on someone's health, yeah, if my research question is, I want to see what table sugar does to someone's risk of heart disease, right? We then can't take 20 people, lock them in a lab, feed them sugar every day for twenty years and then see what happens to their heart later on.
Speaker 1:You just ethically can't do that. That's just not possible. So what you can do is you can take people that already eat lots of sugar every day. You can observe them. You don't have to tell them to change their lifestyle.
Speaker 1:You can observe them and then see what happens out of their own will over time. And you can account for different variables like their physical activity, like their saturated fat intake, like their sleep quality, like their social status, their income, their BMI, their gender, etc. So in nutrition science specifically, observational research actually holds more weight. And if you do an observational study in nutrition science, it can actually be of a higher quality than lots of randomized controlled trials, right? Whereas in the fitness industry, luckily there's not much that goes against ethics and there's not, you know, telling someone to do a lat pull down for four weeks is not exactly groundbreaking.
Speaker 1:Like it's not going to raise hairs on the ethical panel's head. So fitness research and nutrition research, they're two very different things. And I think when people look at the level of evidence, we need to be more granular and less black and white when it comes to studies. Just because the study is not randomized controlled trial does not mean it's a bad study. And if you think that, then you lack the nuance behind it basically.
Speaker 1:So that's a very key point, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like Amy is in our group, she does research and stuff like that. She's, I think she helps Amy, do you help students peer reviewed studies? Here's the thing, I've heard in the nutrition or the fitness circle, there's a group, you've cited him before Brad Scornfield and all others, there's a lot of people who would say that some peer reviewed studies are biased and stuff like that, how would we know that? So there's some journals that are claimed to be worse than other journals. For someone who just wants to research nutrition on their own, is it even possible to find out what's good unless you're in the industry, you know?
Speaker 1:Okay, so research bias, You're asking about research bias.
Speaker 2:Well yeah, and if the peers are reviewing with a bias for that person who's actually submitting the research themselves. It is a critique at the moment in the field, some of the people are saying. I'm not sure how you would even know.
Speaker 1:The thing is, when you want to assess the validity of a study, there are many factors, right? And I think one of them is going to be the journal that is published in is a very valid thing to look at. We have something called an impact factor or, you know, how much engagement that a study has, how often it's cited, you know, the level of prestige that the journal has. And if you look at their peer review process, lots of journals differ by their peer review process. And I think generally speaking, the higher the impact factor of a journal, the more refutable, the harder it is to get into that journal and the higher quality of the peer reviewing process that occurs.
Speaker 1:So that's a very easy one for people to look at. It's not black and white, there are things that go into it. The next thing I would say is when talking about research bias, if you're looking, for example, at the funding of a research study, or, you know, the authors that might have ties to different organizations or whatever. I think that it's a very convenient narrative to have, especially when someone wants to dispute the research findings, right? So let's say that you believe that you can lose weight without a calorie deficit.
Speaker 1:You will look at the research that shows you need a calorie deficit and say, Oh, no, the research is biased, right? I'm to say that narrative because it fits my view. Issue with that is, is that you're assuming that the only type of bias within research is from funding or is from authorship or publication bias. When actually, if you're holding that to a set standard, then you need to acknowledge that there are many other types of bias as well. There are governmental biases.
Speaker 1:There are political agendas by which a certain paper might help someone's political views, right? There are lots of types of bias that people never discuss. So if you're applying the same standards to industry funding or authorship research biases, then you're missing out on the fact that there is a whole host of other types of bias that you're not even talking about. So there's a bit of cognitive dissonance and there's no logical thought process there. Essentially, when someone brings up bias or industry funding, it's often because they're trying to suit their own confirmation bias and they're trying to disregard any evidence against their view.
Speaker 1:And they're trying to just look at the handful of studies that fits their view. Right? Yeah. I think
Speaker 2:unless
Speaker 1:you are highly educated in research critique, bringing up different types of biases across a broad subject is just not going to hold weight because there are logical flaws within that thought process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. That's why it's interesting your balance and this isn't very interesting coming into the industry really, because there's not been someone doing that, but let's start then. So let's start from ground zero base level, we know nothing that's built up on the truth of fact loss with women. So the first is, we know it's but let's talk as if we don't know. The first step is we know there's a research to say we need a calorie deficit to lose weight, right?
Speaker 2:So let's look into that, that's the fundamental that most people believe, right? Some people don't, but what research have you seen us into is 100% solid hardcore, like what do we know?
Speaker 1:Okay, the thing is the first point to probably establish and to define what exactly we're talking about is a calorie deficit is simply the energy balance law that is in place, which governs weight loss, no matter what strategy you're talking about. So when people say, there are studies that prove you need a calorie deficit, you can't prove a fundamental physical law of-
Speaker 2:It's law of the universe. Yeah. Like everything.
Speaker 1:It's a law of the universe. So when someone loses weight, it is because they aren't intaking as much energy as they are expending. So just like when a comet is traveling down towards the earth, yeah, every single second the comet is losing fragments of its mass. You're losing fragments because the comet has energy. So when the comet has kinetic energy and it's flying towards the earth, you're losing particles, fragments, it's causing heat, And over time, the comet becomes smaller and smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1:It's possible for that comet to have energy and to gain mass. You can't gain mass from anywhere. You are the mass unless someone literally went and put a stone on top of the comet. You can't gain So mass, the calorie deficit is the fundamental law. Anyone that argues against a calorie deficit does not understand what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're saying calories in calories out is not the only answer. Then they're not understanding that hormones are part of the equation. They're not understanding that carbohydrates are part of the equation, that, you know, poor sleep is part of the equation. So every single thing that we choose to do in our life and choose to eat and the effect that it has on our hormones, that will impact what happens to our calories in and that will impact what happens to our calories out.
Speaker 1:So if someone says I'm in a calorie deficit and I'm not losing weight, by definition you are not in a calorie deficit. This is a key point I want for the audience. People often confuse calorie restriction with a calorie deficit. Just because you are reducing the amount of calories you're eating, that does not mean by definition you are in a calorie deficit. I have many hundreds of comments and they say, you know, I was in a calorie deficit for two years and I never lost any weight.
Speaker 1:No, what you did was you reduced your calorie intake. So you thought you were in a calorie deficit, but your compensatory mechanisms may have been altered where your activity was reduced or perhaps you weren't getting enough essential nutrients or it might have impacted your sleep in a way, which meant that the amount of calories you expended was not exceeding the amount of calories you were eating. So even if you did reduce your calories in, your calories out might have reduced a little bit to then match it again. So people confuse calorie restriction and calorie deficit. Just because you are reducing the amount you eat does not mean you are getting a calorie deficit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. We've got the ground. That's the ground 100 Now, the next level we can look at maybe is hormones, and you mentioned earlier the research is very hard to do the controlled trials and probably even harder for women, different cycles, different starting points, I'd imagine it's probably not impossible, but maybe one of the reasons why there's not as many studies. What you've looked at hormones, so let's create a picture. So there's a woman, she's in a calorie deficit, right?
Speaker 2:She's been in calorie deficit six weeks, she's saying she's not losing weight, so say no, she may be on a calorie deficit. What's the hormonal profile we need to look at? Could someone have really low oestrogen on high progesterone or all these things, how much of an impact do they actually have on this person's energy balance or where their maintenance is?
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. So let's talk about one of the fundamental key stages in a woman's life, and that's the menopause, right? And the reason why we're going to talk about this is because this greatly describes the hormonal differences and whether that affects anything or not. So typical association. We see this in plenty of observational country large studies where during the menopausal or perimenopausal phase, it's very typical for a woman to gain five-six pounds within that one to two year period.
Speaker 1:And there is a shift in the distribution of fat tissue within women as well. So what we typically see is we see a shift from subcutaneous fat to an increase to visceral fat tissue. And this influenced by lots of different things. So you've got, you know, a decrease in the levels of oestrogen, and we know that oestrogen plays an anabolic role with skeletal muscle, and it also impacts hormonal influences.
Speaker 2:Is it protective as well? Is it like a protective thing in terms of, remember we spoke to Lyles in the higher estrogen is more like a protective layer or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it does, it's basically, it does promote, it has several anabolic characteristics. It has the characteristic of even preserving muscle mass, preserving fat tissue. So you're right in the sense that it does have protective effects. But what is actually happening is when you have the decrease in oestrogen, as a consequence, typically we see around a 30 to 40% increase in visceral fat tissue, which is the deep gut fat, the deep stomach fat.
Speaker 2:That's big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's big, it's big. And there are several mechanisms for this. So when you have the symptoms that arise from the menopause, not only do you have the hormonal changes, you also have the psychological influence as well. So, you know, people have less motivation. They might have disruptive appetite signaling.
Speaker 1:There's evidence showing that, you know, women post menopause have decreased leptin sensitivity, decreased insulin sensitivity, and that's largely to do with the visceral adipose tissue. So even though you may not be gaining or losing weight, you'll be shifting the proportion of different fat storages which can then influence what's going on later on. Now this really useful study in 2020 by Lombardo actually tested, I think almost 100 women, tested what happens when you put two groups of women, one menopausal, who were diagnosed as being menopausal, and the other group as being younger, age 45, who still had the normal cycles, right? And what they found was that when you put both groups onto a Mediterranean style diet for several weeks, they induced the calorie deficit, they reduced their calories to similar amounts and they did minimal aerobic training. It wasn't to do with resistance training or anything.
Speaker 1:They just purely looked at diet. What happened was that both groups lost similar amounts of weight as long as your adherence to that diet was high enough. So both groups, no matter the age, no matter the menopausal, premenopausal, whatever, even though there are hormonal influences, if you adhere to that dietary program, then both groups lost around five-six pounds, I think, in the space of a few months. And there was no differences between body composition, blood pressure, but they did find that the menopausal group lost, had a greater reduction in LDL cholesterol. So the more harmful-
Speaker 2:And this Mediterranean was diet in both groups.
Speaker 1:This was a Mediterranean style diet.
Speaker 2:Style diet in both, okay.
Speaker 1:And it individualized. But I think the key point here is that even though you've got these major changes in hormonal profiles, if you adhere to that dietary intervention, be rest assured that you will lose the same amount of weight and it won't become harder. The reason why it does become harder is not because of the hormonal changes, it's because of the psychological, the symptomatic and just feeling like crap, basically. So that should encourage women that are going through a change and people that say, oh, when I'm 50, I'm just going to be fat anyway because of my hormones. No, you are not acknowledging that you have a greater role on your weight management than you think.
Speaker 1:Don't put it down to hormones because the controlled evidence is there. We show that as long as you adhere to what it is that you're trying to achieve, you will have the same outcomes. And, you know, I think I don't want to invalidate anyone's difficulties or struggles because there are reasons why it's more difficult and hormones would make it more difficult. And that's because we might have an increase in appetite. We might have, you know, we have the menopausal flush where you become sweaty, feverish, you feel hot and bothered, exercise becomes more difficult, you might become more groggy, you might become more lacking in patience, lacking in motivation.
Speaker 1:And those are perfectly valid reasons and reasons why it's more difficult. But it's not scientific to say that my metabolism has reduced so much that, you know, I don't produce any estrogen, therefore I can't grow any muscle. You can't say that because the evidence doesn't support that. At the same time, there are difficulties, but we should know that medical interventions and research shows that as long as you do adhere to the best of your ability, you will have improvements.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wonder what your opinion is on the fact that they had a Mediterranean diet probably with good olive oil and good fats, and we speak about, maybe we can touch on fats influence on hormones, what happened if they had a diet that wasn't rich in good fats. You think there would have been a change in anything? 100%,
Speaker 1:100%. Because if you just look at the physiology of what's going on inside the gut in terms of the fat deposition and what influences that and what influences inflammation and, you know, blood lipids. You know, weight loss in itself does improve health, number one. So independent of calories, the moment you lose weight, regardless of how you lose the weight, even if you're the only thing you're eating is donuts, right? Even if you lose weight, you will have an improvement in health.
Speaker 1:And that's because you're losing the excess adipose tissue, you're decreasing circulating inflammatory markers that affect your insulin sensitivity, your blood lipid profile, the amount of fat around the liver you have. There's lots of these mechanisms, but independent of weight loss or not, the style and the type of food and diet you are following, that does also impact our sensitivity to hormones, the production of blood cholesterol, the breakdown of by products that are going in through our diets, the circulating inflammatory markers, and these are all independent risk factors for heart disease, type two diabetes, fatty liver disease, hypertension, lots of these different conditions. And all of these conditions have valid reasons for why weight loss becomes harder. So weight loss and your dietary pattern, they're different things and they impact our weight loss and our health to differing amounts. But the Mediterranean diet would have had an additional positive effect on top of the five, six pounds that they lost.
Speaker 1:And I probably hypothesize that the inclusion of the healthier fats, the nuts, the legumes, the reduction in sugar sweetened beverages, I would probably hypothesize that that also had a pivotal role in the deposition of visceral fats and also the circulating inflammatory markers and also the leptin signalling and the insulin signalling, I think that would have had an independent effect, even if they never lost any weight, think they would have had improved health outcomes as well.
Speaker 2:So when you talk about leptin, and I'm maybe going to explain this, so you're saying that when they did eat that they would have had a better, more accurate response to fullness or like would they would have felt fuller when
Speaker 1:they Yes, found their those. Leptin signalling is very complex and leptin is typically produced and released by the actual fat depots and the actual fat stores. So when you have a resistance and you have excess adipose tissue, especially within the gut, what happens is your body doesn't respond well to the signals that leptin is trying to tell you. So for example, take two people that are seventy kilograms, right? One person has 50% more visceral fat than the next person, but they weigh the same weight and they have the same total body fat.
Speaker 1:It's just the one person has more visceral fat. The person that has more visceral fat, if you give them the same meal, they won't feel as full from that meal. So when you look at the science behind weight loss, how you respond to that meal is also very important.
Speaker 2:Very important, yeah.
Speaker 1:That will dictate what happens the evening, the next day, what happens to your sleep, What happens to your hormonal balances? So leptin signaling, appetite signaling is a very crucial point. And we can mitigate some of the risks by focusing on food quality rather than just total calories. So that's a key.
Speaker 2:And in terms of food quality, would you be sticking to the good fats in that sense? Is there anything else you've seen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's loads. I mean, there's loads. The distribution of the different fats we have does play a very pivotal role because, you know, saturated fats have been shown to basically clog up the insulin cell signaling pathways. So when imagine you've got a fat cell and you're trying to stuff loads of glucose within that cell, right? You've got insulin action on that cell.
Speaker 1:Then what happens is when you have lots of saturated fats coming into the bloodstream, those free fatty acids can interfere with that cell signaling pathway between glucose and sugar storage and cell storage. So when you're trying to push more and more glucose in the cell, that saturated fat comes in and it blocks that pathway. So what happens is you get a backlog of free fatty acids coming back into the bloodstream and when that happens you then get insulin resistance. Then when you get insulin resistance that can then affect what happens to your appetite cues later on. So there's a cascade of events that occurs when you focus, when your diet is predominantly saturated and trans unsaturated fats versus mono and polyunsaturated fats.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, there's lots of mechanisms by which Omega-six and Omega-3s can also influence appetite cues and the way in which we store fat as well. So yes, it is very complex.
Speaker 2:It's complex, right? And I think you've spoken about this before about the fact that whilst it's all complex, we still need to bring it into the realm of actionable practical advice, right? So if someone asks the question like, what does that translate to? So there's someone, many women on our programme menopause, they're now looking right, so I've heard fats, I've heard saturated fats, I've heard polyunsaturated fats, like what's actually the takeaway from this would you say for these The
Speaker 1:takeaway would be to perhaps be conscious of how how much fried food servings we are having. Not just because of the actual thing that is being fried, but because when you heat various oils for a prolonged period of time at a high enough temperature, we can actually change some of those fats to being trans unsaturated fats. Even if you take a vegetable oil that's high in omega-6s and low in saturated fats, actually the way in which you prepare that food does have a influential role into the biochemical structure of those fats, right? We know now it's well established that trans unsaturated fats are the most harmful to our health in terms of heart disease, atherosclerosis risk, insulin resistance. So even though you may be using a good fat, prolonged heating for prolonged periods of time, like we see in deep frying, that has a harmful effect.
Speaker 1:So I think be cautious of this amount of servings of fried food we're having. That's number one. Number two would be, don't be stingy on your salads when it comes to including lots of healthy extra virgin olive oil, even some vegetable oils. People love to demonize vegetable oils, but actually the overwhelming amounts of evidence shows it's beneficial for our health overall. It's the style of method of processing that becomes the issue which we've already talked about.
Speaker 1:So there are some good tips there, but I'd also say focusing on a couple servings of fatty fish in the week and not so much fatty red meats, right? Even though you want high portion servings of protein, high quality amino acids, lots of the essential amino acids, you can get the same things from fatty fish, but also with the added bonus of being extra filling, being extra high in those omega-3s, those omega-6s, monounsaturated fatty acids, which will then also influence what happens to our blood glucose response, our insulin response, our appetite signaling later on. So those are some very key ways. And also in a salad, don't be scared to throw in some, you know, some seeds, some nuts, some cashews, some peanuts, some macadamia nuts, whatever. Give it a bit of extra bulk.
Speaker 1:People are often scared because nuts are calorific or a tablespoon of olive oil, just a waste of calories. No, it's not a waste of calories because what you're missing are the indirect consequences of consuming those healthy fats later on. They do a good job at regulating lots of the things we've talked about later on. So even though you're having a higher calorific meal here, subconsciously and physiologically, will be benefiting you later on and towards the evening, and then also the next day as well, because of all the hormonal and the different changes that we've talked about. So those are some.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fascinating. The cooking's fascinating, and I think just thinking back to the Italians, I've been on a trip through Italy, like olive oil and everything, and it's like everything heat. It just makes sense. They've probably known the benefit without really knowing the science over the hundreds of years, thousands of years, so that's interesting. And there's a question come up here now which is good to touch upon because with our work community and our app, we give people their macros and deficit, but we allow people to change their ratio of carbs and fats to maintain the deficit.
Speaker 2:Whatever you prefer, higher fat diet, lower fat, we let them do that as long as calories are fixed and protein is up to certain amount. But for people now listening to this going right, I feel you need to eat more fats, and we say you need to eat a decent amount of fats. What's the grams or percentage of calories, which is gonna be a difficult question because if you're in a deficit the percentage would be smaller. How many grams of fat, have you seen any research on how many actual grams of fat that women would need to optimise these things without going over? Because now some of my goal, well, would just add fat to absolutely everything, and like you said, there is that stigma of fats high in calories, but someone listening here might have two other calories a day, 80 grams of fat on top of everything else, and we'll overdo it because that's what everyone does.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, as you've already alluded to, it's a very complicated question because it depends on exactly what your diving protocol is, how heavy you are to begin with. It also depends on how restrictive you're trying to be. What's the rate of your weight loss. So generally speaking, yeah, it's not a good idea to do a super low fat diet for any prolonged period of time, even if you are very, very overweight. Just not a good idea because dietary fats play crucial roles in micronutrient absorption, in hormone synthesis, hormone release, hormone functioning, in cell signaling pathways, in the production of healthy cells, the rejuvenation of healthy cells, the health of our liver, our kidneys, our heart tissue, the nerves and the nerve, what's it called, the neurotransmitter impulses between our brain, skeletal muscle, central nervous system, fats play such a crucial role in all of that.
Speaker 1:So I can't give a figure of grams, but what I can say is if you're thinking about doing a super low fat diet, I would advise against that. Whereas with carbohydrates, you don't need to be as stringent or as concerned with going super low calorie with carbohydrates because the only real, I wouldn't say the only benefit, but probably the main benefit with having or, you know, ensuring carbohydrates are in your diet is that it aids satisfaction, it aids adherence, and it allows you to consume foods that you love consuming. Don't think that there are lots of natural forms of carbohydrates that have lots of other nice nutrients, But those nutrients don't necessarily have to be gotten from those foods. They can be gotten elsewhere. Just might make it a little bit harder.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm not saying that the keto diet is very good. What I'm saying is you need to be more careful with how you restrict fats than you do with how you restrict carbohydrates. Because the body can indeed function on minimal carbohydrates. It just physically can't function on no fats. You cannot function on no fats.
Speaker 1:You know, the body will just take a massive toll. Your hormones will go to absolute rubbish. Your sleep will go to rubbish. Your mental health will go to rubbish. Your brain capacity, cognition will go to rubbish.
Speaker 1:And then alongside your food choices, your preferences, all of that stuff. So I think, you know, always maintaining a decent amount of fats within your diet, but you try to not make them liquid fats. Don't always make them liquid fats. Try to consume actual food because I know now if I got a jar of peanut butter that is like this size, right? It's like half of this bottle.
Speaker 1:If I got a jar of peanut butter, a jar of peanut butter is like 2,500 calories. Yeah. I could eat that quite easily. Like if you gave me some bread, I can lather it on and eat the whole jar pretty much. That my entire day's worth of calories for a seventy five kilogram man that does a bit of exercise.
Speaker 1:Obviously that's not going to keep me satisfied for the whole day. So when it comes to nuts, spreads, oils, butters, we should be mindful that yes, we do need the fats. But if you want to maintain satisfaction, try to stick to the actual solid food versions of fats. So your nuts, your seeds, your healthy fatty fish, you know, your fish, and also a little bit in meat and a little bit in other grains and things as well. And if you want a nice spread, then have a nice spread as well.
Speaker 1:But I think being mindful as to where we get our healthy fats from is also quite important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great advice. I think we're all used to, again, seeing it makes a point too, like when we go for the Greek yogurts, we go for the 0% fat Greek yogurts to maximize our carbon. Maybe we should go for the 5% fat Greek yogurts, and just have that in. So that's important. So everybody make sure to check your fat intake, maybe share in the group afterwards, we can have a look.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we've got two more questions because I know your time is here, I think we start with email saying, what does AIDS think about influencers who promote intermittent fasting? I think you did a pause on this, but yeah. Intermittent fasting, is there actually benefits to it?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, okay, let's just clear this up now. There is no doubt at all intermittent fasting is a very beneficial way for someone that is overweight that wants to improve their health. There's no that you cannot argue that. The issue I have with people promoting intermittent fasting is they promote it whether it's alternate day, 16A, twenty four, five:two, whatever method you're going for. I have an issue with people that say that intermittent fasting is superior to other forms of energy restriction.
Speaker 1:We have literally, we have dozens of control studies, meta analyses, literature reviews of lots of independently funded different demographics, different populations, countries, ethnicities, genes, whatever. There is an abundance of evidence showing that when calories are matched, intermittent fasting versus any other method does not increase the amount of weight that you lose. Okay, now there is a higher level to this, which I don't talk about too often because it's a little bit complicated. I'll touch on it briefly. There's a higher level to this that intermittent fasting where your eating window is in the earlier part of the day, that does have additional benefits over and beyond how many calories you're consuming.
Speaker 1:So there was a very, very, you should look at this study as well. Elizabeth Sutton et al, 2018. This was a very good and controlled intervention where they had two groups of people. One group had the total amount of calories within a six hour timeframe from 9AM to 3PM. And the second group who were having the same amount of calories, they consumed their calories from 9AM to 9PM.
Speaker 1:So a twelve hour window. What they found was without any changes in weight, the group that consumed the calories in the earlier part of the day had improved insulin sensitivity, oxidative stress, I think markers in blood pressure as well, right? So that shows that the amount of calories they were consuming wasn't the factor that improved their health. It was the fact that their eating window was earlier in the day and that better aligns with our circadian rhythm or circadian biology. So if we tie this into intermittent fasting, you could argue, you could argue that intermittent fasting does have superior benefits to any other form when your eating window is earlier and you stop eating or reduce your calories earlier in the day.
Speaker 1:Because our body is very efficient at metabolizing nutrients when we are awake, our sleep wake cycle, our insulin is much more effective, our blood glucose homeostasis is much more effective, Our lipids are much more effective in the day. So you could argue that there are additional benefits when you avoid eating late at night. Right. But when it comes to weight loss outcomes, total calories will always be the bread and butter. But it is also a good idea to focus your calories earlier rather than later.
Speaker 1:And not just because of the metabolic differences, but also because when you have a large breakfast, you're going to feel more energized and more motivated to get up and walk. Your meat, your non exercise activity might be increased compared to someone that has all of their calories at 10PM. Right? Yeah. So imagine you've, you know, you're hungover on a Sunday or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't drink myself, but I know many people do. You know, you're hungover on a Sunday. You're lying in bed for fourteen hours. You've not eaten anything. And the first thing that you've eaten was 10PM.
Speaker 1:You order a big Domino's pizza, right? In that twelve hours of you being awake or whatever it is, you've not got up and gone for a walk. You've not got up and done chores around the house. You haven't been to the gym. You haven't done anything productive.
Speaker 1:So even though you're consuming the same amount of calories, because you're consuming them later, that might have indirect negative effects on your weight loss as well. So when people say the timing of your calories does not matter, that's not true. The timing of your calories does matter. It just might not be because of direct consequences. It might be because of indirect consequences.
Speaker 2:It makes sense. So if we were to practically look at this, would you say that maybe a good solution is for people to say, if you've got a lot of weight to lose, is first of all, get into a deficit no matter what, maybe if you have to eat in the evening, after you've got kids, you come home from a stressful day, you've got no calories left, you might struggle. And then after you've achieved a bit of weight loss and you're in the groove, maybe then start looking at moving the calories to the morning as opposed to the evening. Maybe that's quite a good strategy for people to I go
Speaker 1:do this with all my patients and clients anyway, front loading calories is always a good idea. It doesn't matter whatever your goal is, whether it's building muscle, whether it's weight loss, whether it's reducing your blood pressure, whether it's complex medical conditions like fatty liver disease or insulin resistance. Shifting the proportion of your calories from later to earlier in the day is always a good idea. There is no circumstance where it's not beneficial for sleep, even for sleep quality, even for lots of other things as well.
Speaker 2:That's interesting because I don't know if you've seen a study I'll share with you about what happens if we don't get enough sleep on our eating calories, and they looked out of sleep. People who didn't have enough sleep, they didn't consume more calories in breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They consumed more calories on post dinner snacks. That's when all the extra calories came from, and then that would impact sleep again and make it worse. So then it's a self fulfilling prophecy in a sense.
Speaker 2:Get out of that loop.
Speaker 1:Late night eating is a very nuanced topic and it has lots of different direct and indirect effects. But late night eating will affect your sleep anyway, even if you don't notice it because your blood and your body's efforts are going to digesting food, you're less likely to be rejuvenated in the N3, N4 stages of sleep. So that's one thing. The second thing is because of the front loading calories and it being more beneficial for movement, meat and for eat as well. So that's the second thing.
Speaker 1:There's also differences in how we metabolize nutrients in the night, you know, poorer glucose tolerance, poorer blood lipid tolerance, and lots of different things there as well. But also there's evidence that the food reward centers in the brain are more sensitive to late night circadian eating. So if you're not satisfying your cravings earlier in the day, they're going to hit you with more vengeance later on.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:why this late night snacking and craving is a massive, it's a big thing, right? You can easily suppress it by allowing yourself to have that chocolate at 2PM. Why do you have to have it at midnight? Just have it earlier. And that way your brain can, you know, your natural habitual dietary habits, they can then be suppressed for later on and you've got a better chance of doing better later on in the day.
Speaker 1:So there's lots of there's going on there, very interesting.
Speaker 2:No, this is very interesting, yeah, because, you know, it's often people just stick to calories and hit protein and stuff, don't really look at this stuff, this level of stuff. Think testing it out would be interesting. I'm definitely going to try it. I thought this started at eight. Will I be able to watch a recording?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you will. Yeah, a lot of people are resonating, a lot of people are No, the Emma Jackson Rare Eat Breakfast might be time to give it a go and see the changes. There's been a question here, it's about sugar. Know you've covered sugar with depression, which is interesting, I think maybe that's another talk we could do with a lot more time because it's probably in-depth, but sugar, women, hormones, what's the verdict for you on this regard? I mean, it's a very vague question, but say someone with a moderate sugar intake versus a high sugar intake, what is the difference?
Speaker 2:What's happening?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, we to try and be specific with that topic because there's so many avenues that I can go down. If we're talking about
Speaker 2:Let's talk about fat loss first maybe, let's talk fat loss first.
Speaker 1:Fine.
Speaker 2:Fine.
Speaker 1:So, well, sugar and fat loss. Okay. First of all, let me just clear the misconception that sugar is not inherently addictive. Okay. People think it is addictive.
Speaker 1:If it was addictive, psychologically and physiologically speaking, we would see people rushing for table sugar and just downing spoonfuls
Speaker 2:of Yeah, I would say the shop, a cane sugar.
Speaker 1:You don't any shop you go to, you will find table sugar will never be sold out. It will always be there. The issue is, is that I'm not saying that sugary foods are not addictive. What I'm saying is the sucrose itself is not addictive. What is very interesting are the links between Have you heard of the golden ratio of food?
Speaker 1:It's interesting a psychological theory about food, right? And about food marketers and food manufacturers have really nailed this one in the head. What they've done is they figured out the specific proportion of sugars, fats and salts within a food product, right? Which overemphasizes and stimulates certain food reward centers in the brain, which really make it hard for you to feel satisfied. So I know myself, if I'm really hungry, right?
Speaker 1:And I get a box of six Krispy Kreme donuts. I could easily finish those six donuts. Like give me fifteen minutes and I will finish them. But guess what? That's like 3,000 calories.
Speaker 1:How the hell have I just eaten 3,000 calories in fifteen minutes? Yeah, you try and do that with chicken breasts. Will not succeed. So what's happening is that there seems to be a specific ratio of sugars to fats to salt, which actually overemphasizes certain food reward centers in the brain, which gets us to feel less satisfied with the food we are eating. So even though sugar is not addictive, what might be slightly addictive and we might crave more are the hyper palatable savory fatty foods and the hyper palatable sweet fatty foods.
Speaker 1:So I think the key point here is sugars to fats and fats to salts. They're the two main things. Because if you look at actually food addiction studies, they actually found that just sweet foods were not the problem. No one had a real problem with reducing their hard candies and their lollies and their sweets. Things that are pure sugar.
Speaker 1:They have a problem with the savory fatty foods and the sweet fatty foods. They're the two biggest components. So when it comes to fat loss, we don't need to worry about sugar too much. What we need to worry about are the hyper palatable savory foods like pizza, like savory donuts, like you know lovely kind of junk food, fried food, fatty foods, you know fish and chips that's got a nice bit of salt, a nice bit of fried fat on there. These are all combination of foods that just do wonders for our brain.
Speaker 1:Okay, so don't worry about sugar, worry about the fatty savory and the fatty sweet foods, number one. Number two, sugar sweetened drinks, there's no real benefit for them unless you are an ultra marathon runner and you're running six hours a day and you need to hydrate yourself afterwards. Unless you are in that category, we don't need sugar sweetened beverages. So we don't need our full sugar Coke. We don't need our full sugar Leukosade.
Speaker 1:If you like the taste, artificially sweetened beverages are great. They're absolutely There was actually a meta analysis of 17 control studies I cited recently that was published this year. I advise everyone to look at it. That actually tested what happens when you replace people that constantly consume sugary drinks and you switched it with artificial sugar drinks and water. What happened between the two groups?
Speaker 1:The people that went from sugar to water improved their health. Yes, they did. But the people that went from sugar to artificial sugar improved their health more. The reason why that happened is because when you go cold turkey from sugar to no sugar, your brain is going to crave out somewhere else. So these people were likely indulging in more sweet foods in more things to compensate the taste that they were getting from drinks like this.
Speaker 1:Right. So not only did the artificially sweetened group have no calorie drinks, their body allowed them to sense the taste of something sweet, which helped suppress their urges later on, which meant that the health improvements in their insulin, their glucose, their blood lipids and their body weight were actually better than those that went from sugar to water. So if you're the type of person that loves sugary drinks, I recommend cutting it out. I would recommend finding alternatives like low calorie squash. I live off low calorie squash.
Speaker 1:I don't even consume water anymore, right? Because I know if I didn't drink this, I would not be drinking much. So this is a reminder and a nice taste for me to get my hydration in. And that's why I've had to talk about it so much because people demonize sweeteners all the time.
Speaker 2:All the time.
Speaker 1:There's no solid evidence that they cause any established harm in humans. That's it.
Speaker 2:No, that's important point. And I think this is a great point to finish with us because Sarah saying, there's so many things to consider, it can be quite overwhelming for people on the starting of their journey. So if we were to create you're another doctor to all these people, we start off with you said there's a clear benefit to losing 10% of your body weight if you're overweight, no matter how you do it, okay? So that's the first step, let's get some weight loss going, calorie deficit. After that, you say that optimising, would you say that having an increase in protein is then the next step, or would you say it's seeing, is it making sure that the fats are there, is it making sure that the calories are in the morning versus evening, what's the next progression I in your
Speaker 1:would say, you know something that would actually encompass all of those things you're talking about is reducing the amount of calories from ultra processed foods. So obviously we briefly discussed that there are some ultra processed foods that are highly beneficial, like protein powders, like high protein bars or cookies or protein shakes, whatever. That's fine. But that's not what we're talking about. I think after you initially lose a bit of weight, prioritizing calories from minimally processed foods that resemble the actual food itself pretty much, That would actually tackle the increase in healthy fat issue, that would tackle the increase in high quality protein issue, that would increase the vitamins and minerals issue as well.
Speaker 1:So just that one practical habit will tackle all of the points you just made. You would increase your high quality protein, you would increase your healthy fats, your seeds, nuts, legumes, you would increase your micronutrient intake, would better your mental health, your exercise performance, your fat synthesis, your hormone synthesis. So if there's one practical thing to start, I would say decreasing the amount of calories from ultra processed foods which are highly refined. I'm talking your donuts, your crisps, your biscuits, your cakes, your desserts, your fried foods, deli meats, your ready meats, your sausages, your pepperoni, all that kind of stuff. Obviously have them is fine.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is control studies show that even just making that one change can reduce your calorie intake subconsciously by five hundred-six 100 calories. Not only that, there's evidence that even if you have a highly processed food and an unprocessed food with the same protein, fats and carbs in both foods, the highly processed food has a lower thermic effect than the unprocessed So the funny thing is people think, oh, thermic effect is just about protein. No, actually the structure of the food you're having the food within actually affects how many calories your body uses to digest that food as well. So the thermic effect is reduced, our ad libutum or our spontaneous calorie intake will also be reduced, our micronutrient intake will be increased, our protein will be increased, our healthy fats will be increased And then we can supplement some ultra processed foods with things like whey protein powders, protein cookies, protein bars, high fiber, fiber one bars. Fiber one bars are very good.
Speaker 1:They contain eight, nine grams of fiber, which we don't eat enough fiber anyway. That strategy, I think, will be probably the most successful and beneficial strategy for anyone wanting to start or anyone wanting to refine their dietary choices, because just that one strategy has a net positive impact on all the things we've talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. That's really good practical as well. It can be overwhelming, All this stuff, like you probably know so much information in your head about all this stuff, but if you actually said it all, would
Speaker 1:That's be able to why start the one minute videos are, I like a lot. And this kind of longer format, I do enjoy going into detail, but at the same time, the average person is not It's going to be hard to comprehend really. That's why I think tying it back to these practical steps is always a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Love it. Well, I hope you had a good time. Think Jorge, we bring you back for maybe the sugar and depression link you've seen and stuff I like know, like, you know, these things that we can go into more depth and then, yeah, happy days, but stay on for a second. I'll come to the group.
Speaker 2:Guys, thank you so much for joining. I'll see you all tomorrow. Okay.