The most important weight loss concept

What is One Day At A Time - Daily Wisdom?

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.

Speaker 1: 00:00

Hello everyone, welcome back to one day at a time. Please take it seriously because it helps so much. From now to bedtime, that's all you got to do and think about in the sense of actions. There's more to think about in the future like plans, all I know. But from now till bedtime, take it seriously, it really helps.

Speaker 1: 00:20

LeanShield is nearly done and it's going to help you guys improve the quality of your weight loss by making sure you're losing majority fat and not lean tissue, which lean tissue contains muscle. So lean body mass contains mainly muscle, organ tissue, connective tissue, glycogen and water. So glycogen and water in there is a bit annoying because you know, if you drink more water and you, you know, you eat less carbs and it's less glycogen and so on, they can impact your lean body mass. Right? But what really matters is, like, muscle and organ tissue.

Speaker 1: 00:52

Like, muscle tissue mostly. So to try and explain why we're focusing on this and how we're gonna make it simple, like always, PowerPal's always about simplicity. It's about one day at a time doing the basics, doing what math does. So when you go on a diet, and just to cover this, you all probably know this now, you go into something that's called a calorie deficit. And a calorie deficit, the word calorie, is just a unit of measurement for energy, so energy deficit.

Speaker 1: 01:21

Think of it as a financial budget, you have an energy budget. And the energy you burn every day, that's like energy burned, energy coming in. So when you eat less, you create an energy gap. There's not enough energy coming in, we need that energy. And your body's smart, to fill the gap it goes to your savings account, goes to the energy bank and says 'hey buddy, you know that fat cell you got there with energy?

Speaker 1: 01:47

I need a withdrawal.' It goes and withdraws energy from the fat bank. Basically that's how your fat bank gets less and less. This is what happens, fat loss happens. But what most people don't talk about, maybe someone not spoke about too much in the podcast either, I don't want to over complicate stuff, but there's also a second budget, a second hidden budget, in fact, and it's the protein budget. So every day, your body is a construction site.

Speaker 1: 02:14

Think of it this way. It's constantly breaking down and rebuilding everything from your hair to your skin, and most importantly, to your muscles. And the building materials for this construction site or project are proteins and amino acids. When you're in a calorie deficit or energy deficit, your body's stressed. It's not getting what it needs.

Speaker 1: 02:35

Holy shit. Go to the bank right now. Get me energy. Stressful state. Everything is not working.

Speaker 1: 02:42

You haven't got enough workers. Things are breaking down. It starts looking for easy. So when this is happening, this catabolic state we call it, your body starts looking for easy access building materials. Now remember, these building materials do not exist in the fat bank.

Speaker 1: 02:58

The fat bank unfortunately does not have these materials for us. And the biggest, most convenient bank that it takes from to get these building materials is our muscles. Muscles have got an abundant of amino acids, proteins. So it'll start going to the muscle bank and saying, we need some of that. Pulls the gun out.

Speaker 1: 03:17

Give us that now. Muscle bank goes, woah. This is important stuff, brother. I don't wanna be giving this too much. I'm like, listen.

Speaker 1: 03:24

We are breaking down here. Everything's breaking down. Give us the proteins. Basically, that's what happens. It creates a protein gap.

Speaker 1: 03:33

So your body starts stealing from your muscle bank to meet its daily repair needs. That's what happens in muscle loss. And the shocking fact is up to forty percent, nearly roughly 30 to 40% of weight loss during very low calorie diets and are seen in GLP one drug trials because of the very low calorie diets and low protein is lean body mass. And of lean body mass, it ranges. Sometimes it's 50%.

Speaker 1: 03:58

Sometimes I've seen 80%, 70%. The majority of the lean body mass after you the water and glycogen is gone is muscle. So we don't wanna lose muscle. Losing muscle is the enemy. It's a disaster.

Speaker 1: 04:11

And the muscle is your engine for metabolism. You've heard this. It burns. It's metabolically active twenty four seven. But it's your function.

Speaker 1: 04:18

It's how you move. It's how you feel, how strong you are. And it links to your brain activity. Moving your body around. Use it or lose it is a thing.

Speaker 1: 04:28

You lose muscle rapidly when you're in a hospital bed. I can't remember the exact number, 6% a week or 6% a day, something crazy, you can lose muscle mass. Right? So we don't wanna do this. So if our energy gap is filled by our fat mass, and if we've got plenty of fat mass, we're fine, so we create an energy deficit, the body goes and gets energy from the fat bank, no problem.

Speaker 1: 04:51

But the body needs to get the protein in, so it doesn't have to go to the protein bank. So that's the main thing. So we've got two things to think about. And that's why we think about if we can give the body enough protein, even in an energy deficit. Even though it's taking energy from the fat bank, it doesn't need to take energy from the protein bank.

Speaker 1: 05:09

They're separate. If you can give the body enough proteins through your diet day to day, it doesn't have to be in a deficit on protein. You can be in a deficit on fat and energy, but you don't have to be in a deficit on protein. So by consuming enough protein, even in deficits, you're able to tell the body, Don't worry, don't go into the muscles, we're giving you what you need, even though other systems are going to the fat bank, we're different, we're different boys, we're special, We're special caliber. So you need to make sure you're giving the the body the building materials so it doesn't steal from the muscles.

Speaker 1: 05:47

Right? And there's various amounts of protein per day. There is, like, 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight, but it does vary depending on the size of your calorie deficit. So this is where LeanShield comes in. Right?

Speaker 1: 06:01

LeanShield is an important part because we're gonna measure the size of your calorie deficit, and we know tracking isn't perfect so it's a range, so some of you might be a maintenance one week. So maybe for one week you look at your deficit and your target is 2,000 calories a day and on average you've been eating 1,900 and you might think I failed. But the good news is it'll say look your deficit's small so your protein requirements are less, you're in a less of a panic, kind of in a panic, like catabolic state, and therefore there's a lesser chance that you're going to lose lean body mass at a small deficit, especially if your protein is higher as well. So there's a big benefit to being close to maintenance sometimes because it gives your body the chance to halt on any muscle loss you're having and reduce the impact that the deficit would have. Then as your deficit goes bigger, say now your deficit goes to what the app would suggest, say 20%, it says here's the range of protein you've got to ideally consume now for this deficit.

Speaker 1: 07:00

But some of you might say, and a lot of you do this by the way, and I've been trying to think of the solution for this, A lot of you say, Scott, calorie tag's too high in the app. It's way too high for me. 2,200 calories a day, way too high. I'm going to eat 1,500 a day. And I can't stop that.

Speaker 1: 07:15

And I say, Hey, I don't suggest you do this. Here's a podcast to listen to. Say, don't care, 1,500. But now LeanShield's going to show, okay, if you go 1,500, your deficit is 37%. So unless your protein requirements rise to this bucket and you do some training, here's the kind of bucket you're going be in for lean shield.

Speaker 1: 07:39

Your lean shield protection score is low. And what does that mean for you? Well, here's what that means: X, 30% of your weight loss is likely going to be lean body mass. Mass. Do you want to go ahead with that?

Speaker 1: 07:50

Or are you comfortable with that? And you say, No, I'm not comfortable. Or you might say, I don't care. Really then, we really need to talk, because you do not want to lose muscle mass. You do not want to lose muscle mass.

Speaker 1: 08:03

I'm going do a podcast on the exact downsides of all the research on muscle loss and stuff, but it's a big problem. The NHS have got it in their ten year plan. They are worried about it in the next ten years because of the devastating health impact it's going to have by accelerating muscle loss with extreme weight loss programs. So you come to the point where it's it's up to you, it's up to you to dial it in. If you want to go on a bigger deficit, okay, I'm just going to show you the dials you need to turn up, protein ideally training, if you don't turn those dials up here's what to expect.

Speaker 1: 08:36

It becomes empowering for you guys. I've tried to advocate moderate calorie deficits because the research shows it's not aggressive on the catabolic state as much as bigger, your protein requirements are moderate, it's not too high for you guys to hit that, sorry. Some of you are struggling but I'm going change the model soon to be based on grams per kilo of lean body mass, so we're going to try and figure out your body fat percentage in the app by comparing you to a photo of a verified DEXA scan so you can try and get an idea. So your protein requirements will be more in line with your lean body mass, which is what it should be. But we do know, obviously, we go for total weight because it's quite difficult to measure body fat percentage and gives another stressor to do.

Speaker 1: 09:18

But maybe we just say everyone on average 20% body fat and then you lower that target, but don't wanna confuse you with that. So it starts becoming up to you, and that's exciting because if your LeanShield score is high, that means the quality of your weight loss is mainly fat, and you can achieve a high LeanShield score with larger deficits as long as your protein intake is in the zone it needs to be, which will be personalized to you and your training is in check. Because think of resistance training as this master switch. You can have the building blocks, you can have a catabolic state or even a state of less catabolic state, so lumbar pressure, but by doing resistance training, you're basically putting signs up on this construction site we're speaking about saying, Do not demolish. Do not touch this.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Leave it alone. It is vital. That's what you're saying. Resistance training can, in some studies, even in deficits and stuff, can reduce or prevent 100% of muscle loss. So that's what you can get if you add some resistance training in.

Speaker 1: 10:34

I'm not saying worry about doing it all now. Most of you are doing some form of training, but it's something to look forward to, to add in. Once you add this in, once a week, decent amount of intensity, which is going to help you with exactly what to do, you're going say, wow, I'm doing all the necessary minimum stuff I need for maximum results. Now I know where I'm going. I know that the quality of my weight loss is amazing.

Speaker 1: 11:02

I'm protecting my lean body mass, my LeanShield score's high, my LeanShield score's being maintained. I know exactly what I need to do. The LeanShield score's gonna tell me, hey, if you don't train in the next forty eight hours, your lean shield score is going drop. Here's a workout to do in the next forty eight hours at home to ensure your lean shield remains higher. Because we need to keep doing a seven day rolling average.

Speaker 1: 11:23

We need to keep the signal going. That's kind of where we're going be going at. We're going to be nudging you and being like, hey, your protein intake for the last two days has dropped 25% so unless you bring it back up today your average is going to drop below the threshold and your lean chew score will drop by X amount of points and this could mean that. So make sure today, that's motivational. What do I have to do today?

Speaker 1: 11:45

Eat a protein bar, have a protein shake on top of what you usually do, that's going to be enough for you. These small tweaks like the philosophy from the start is what's needed but it needs to be based on the research which all of this is based on a huge amount of research over decades on this topic, to turn it into a few dials, personalised to your experience, personalised to you. Look, if you're a beginner, you get something called newbie gains. Once you're intermediate advanced and you've been training for years, unfortunately, your protein requirements are a bit higher because you've got more lean body mass, and a larger deficit means you've got a higher protein than a beginner. The beginner gets the newbie gains.

Speaker 1: 12:22

So in Mishua, anyone who starts training, new to training, without any experience, or less than twelve months of experience, you have this rapid potential to gain lean body mass and lose muscle at the same time, lose fat at the same time, called the holy grail, called body recomposition, which is what everyone actually wants anyway. I want to lose fat, gain muscle and maintain that's what we all want. But to get to that stage as a newbie is much easier than someone who's been training for years. So if you want to get recomposition as an advanced or intermediate person, you're going need to make sure your training is on check, you're going to need to make sure your protein's higher, and you need make sure the deficit's not too big. Huge study's done in this.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Eric Helmuth, 2014, protein requirements for natural bodybuilders. He basically said to natural bodybuilders, hey, boys, if you wanna go fast on your fat loss and you wanna go into big deficits, you better be looking at nearly doubling your protein intake versus if you go slow. That's what you're trying to do. So yeah, if you want to prepare for a competition in twelve weeks, you're gonna have to double your protein intake and be way more strict on everything. But if you do it slower over thirty weeks, you can have less demands.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Your protein intake doesn't need to be as high. Your deficit's not as big. And maybe that's the route to take. So even for conscious prep stuff is saying, hey. Stop rushing stuff.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Fast aggression doesn't work mainly. It doesn't really work for most people. Most of us normal mortals here, but it can be possible as long as your protein is high in line with what's needed, which is too high for most of you to get to, to be honest with you. It's gonna be a range that's a bit out of your range every day. So that's why I've always advocated for the moderation side because it's more realistic for us.

Speaker 1: 14:06

But you can try if you want. Maybe you are someone who would prefer to do that and say, I I don't mind going faster, and I don't mind getting my protein much higher, and I don't mind putting the training in. But I say to you, I promise you, please do that. And now we're gonna be able to tell you the warning signs if you do that without the protective behaviors. Does all of this make sense?

Speaker 1: 14:27

Does it all make sense? It's gonna make sense in the app soon because it's gonna be super easy to see this. Again, it's been something I've been working on with, the team speaking to, Nick Wehrm of the University of Cambridge, trying to get getting him to oversee the algorithm, to oversee the research, to look at everything, to look at the score, to make sure the score is a proxy for muscle protection. It's not a measure of muscle. So, like, that's very we're very clear on this.

Speaker 1: 14:56

We are just becoming into the middle ground to make things easy. That's kind of our philosophy anyway. We're gonna build it into the app. We're gonna prove it with DEXA scans to see if a higher lean shoe score equals more muscle maintenance over twelve weeks. So anyone in the Cambridge area who wants to travel into Cambridge three or four times over a twelve week period, we will cover the costs to get free DEXA scan, which is a lot guys, thousands of pounds if you wanted to do it yourself.

Speaker 1: 15:26

And yeah, we just want to get people in to do it. It doesn't work, LeanShield doesn't work, say, hey, a lot of these people are on higher LeanShield scores versus the control group, and it hasn't really helped them because the other group is already just focusing on eating a bit more protein and that's enough. And we say, hey, okay, just telling people to eat a bit more protein is enough to get the majority of the benefits and LeanShield isn't the scoring system doesn't help. But I think it's gonna work in a sense because the dials help if people are ignoring the targets we give. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 16:03

It's not just about, like, yeah, increase your protein. It's more like a lot of you are going, the target's too high, like, I'll do my own thing. It's kinda like giving you people who use the app doing your own thing a bit of a measurement against your own thing, giving you the empowerment to take action against it because I know a lot of you want to go less than our targets and stuff like that, but I want to make sure it's safe, that's my thing, I don't want you to be using it. I could put all of you on super low calories, rapid weight loss, low carb, and you would lose a rapid amount of weight. You post in the group, I've lost 12 pounds in two weeks.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Screenshot, put in the stories of my goal of PowerPal, pounds 12 of weight loss in two weeks. Fool people in the thing and it's fat, more people join, happy days. That's not me. That's not what we do here. I was speaking to a VC the other day, because we're looking to take investment on to be able to build more of these tools, get more support, get more experts involved, get more data scientists, just keep making the app better and better.

Speaker 1: 16:56

It's a slower process, we're not rushing in because we need the right people to be on board, and that's important to me. But she's saying, looking at the statistics of the app, looking at the feature usage, looking at this and this. And I would say the purpose of the app isn't to force people to use all the features. The purpose of the app isn't to have more people do more usage in the app, therefore that's best. The purpose of the app is beyond that.

Speaker 1: 17:23

It's are you managing to change your mindset so you can actually go down the path of slower weight loss, fat loss, maintaining muscle, and have a clearer mind, less stress? You can't measure that in terms of app usage. You listen to the podcast, it helps. Some of you are in the WhatsApp groups, it helps. But it's near impossible to measure what we're actually trying to do through usage of the app.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Maybe more tracking of food is good, probably, but we're not trying to say you have to track every day all the time for the full year because most of you will be on annual subscriptions. Maybe you do twelve weeks, you drop off for a month because you're on holiday, whatever you come back. Forcing continuous constant usage and using patterns in the app to bring her not what we're trying to do. We want to help you. We understand human behavior is not perfect.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Using an app every single day. Using every single day would be amazing for your awareness, but we don't require you to do it. And it's not something that should be optimised because you start going down the path of doing stuff that makes people use app stuff that you don't need to use. We've got to be careful on the gamification. We want you to be motivated with tasks and the walls and stuff, for sure.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Got to be done the right way. And this is anti what a lot of these apps are looking for in terms of what they call stickiness. And I'm happy with the results. All of you in the WhatsApp group posting stories this morning has been amazing. I love reading them.

Speaker 1: 18:48

I think when I look at some of the comments made, some of the results you guys have had is phenomenal. Have a look here. Still early days for me, for the first time in my life this process doesn't feel overwhelming or intimidating and I'm not afraid of the data like I used to be. How would you quantify that in the app? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 19:11

That's amazing. Amazing. That's what I want to hear. That's unbelievable, and I hope that's a lifelong switch. Because once you get the moment or the insight moment, it tends to stick around.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Like the insight you have, finally figuring out how to ride a bicycle. I I get it now. Now you can ride a bike. I finally know how to snowplow in ski, and I can't ski. I couldn't do it for ages.

Speaker 1: 19:33

And then I realized I just needed to understand the concept of the snowplow so I could be confident slowing down. Once I understood that, I was still terrible, but I felt like I had more control. I get it now, so I get how it works. It's the same thing. Once it clicks, it clicks.

Speaker 1: 19:48

That's what we say. Loads of amazing results, guys. I've not lost a huge amount of weight, about three kilograms since May. It's a lot of fat like. But my whole life have put on lost, put on lost.

Speaker 1: 20:01

Now I'm eating I'm either losing or maintaining, and I've never missed a day of tracking since day one. Not always good, but all data. Love the app. Success story even if only a small win. Small wins are the wins.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Imagine three kilograms since May, which is what, six months ago. That's six kilos a year. Over three years, that's 18 kilograms if you stick at that rate, and you've done it in a way that you're not yo yo dieting. That's unbelievable. Guys, most of you have been dieting for decades.

Speaker 1: 20:29

More is a few years to get it right, to get it slow, get it done. Anyway, this podcast has gone over the time usual. I don't know. Twenty minutes. Sorry about that.

Speaker 1: 20:38

But have a good day. Focus on now until bedtime. And, yeah, see you all again tomorrow.