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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello everyone, so first of all new update in the app allows you to track fiber, sugar, carbs and fats. The importance of this is some people for medical purposes will need to have carbs and sugar tracked, Some people want to track their fiber because of course health benefits to consuming fiber, the fiber target is the recommended range which is 14 grams per thousand calories. So whatever your target is, you work it that way and it's given it to you. And the reason why this is important and timely, I got an email as well saying, hey Scott, love the app, just watching Netflix, think about gut health and how important it is and la la la la, really want to be able to track all macros for this and so forth and in terms of weight loss. When it comes to the gut health, there's literally trillions of bacteria in the body, humans have got a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, They kind of have a say in how things work inside the body and there's trillions of them, and a lot of things impact your gut microbiota as it's called.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of talk about this now. There's Obviously, as things have more awareness, there's always going to be more people trying to jump on it and sell you something you don't necessarily need. And they use it as like, this is the problem with everything. It comes down to the gut microbiome, that's it, everything else, this is the important thing, calories don't matter, blah blah all this nonsense comes out about it. What people don't realise is we can both say yes calories matter, yes macros matter and also the gut matters.
Speaker 1:But to what extent does the gut matter to being obese or overweight? So I was rereading because I remember reading this many years ago by a guy who's got a master's in clinical research management, a degree in pharmacy, pharmacology and did a post about the gut and was saying about, let me read it out to you, this is in 2018, Can the gut microbiota of individuals lead them to be obese or lean? When researchers collected gut microbiota from obese and lean patients, they realized gut microbiota of obese people was significantly less diverse than the gut microbiota of lean people. Furthermore, the ratio of certain bacteria is high in the gut of obese people compared to lean people, the bad bacteria. This is a chicken or egg kind of question.
Speaker 1:Does the gut microbiota affect the obesity or does obesity affect the gut microbiota? Unfortunately, human studies to answer this question are lacking. 2018, let me fast forward you to 2023 at the end of the year and we do have evidence now. So here's what the conclusion is from the research since then. The collective evidence indicates the changes in body composition through diet and or exercise are the primary dictator of beneficial changes in the gut microbiota.
Speaker 1:By extension, excessive gain in body fat is the driver of adverse changes in microbiota profile and not the other way around. Reductions in body weight and body fat are associated with improved gut microbiota, but this is often accompanied by improvements in dietary pattern, especially when it involves increased intake of fiber. Supplementations with probiotics and prebiotics has yielded modest to non significant reductions in body weight and body fat. As a final note, weight loss on its own does not always result in improvements in gut microbiota. A systematic review by Sigmund Freudo et al reported that bariatric surgery and restrictive diets have the potential to promote reduced microbiota abundance and promote adverse gut microbiome changes.
Speaker 1:Let us sit in for a second. In 2018 there was data that said in obese people and overweight people they had a larger percentage of this bad bacteria than lean individuals and maybe they were saying, well maybe, maybe it's not calories, maybe it's not energy balance, it's actually gut. Now in 2023 we know, we've figured this out. Becoming overweight and obese is the main primary driver of changes to your gut microbiome. So yes, of course when you look at people who obese, yes we see this in people who are obese and we don't see them in people who are leaner, it's not to say they must have this bacteria that causes overeating and obesity.
Speaker 1:That's what people were trending towards and maybe people are still trending towards that but that's not actually what the data says. That's not what the data says. So very, very important that we understand this, and this is again why I think it comes back to fundamentals. When we get the fundamentals right and we get down to a body fat percentage or body weight that we are in this healthy zone for our size, our height and stuff, okay. Let's take a few things off.
Speaker 1:Let's say that we're walking enough each day. Again, the benefits of walking, countless studies show walking more day, around 7,000 plus is where all cause mortality and cardiovascular risk goes down a lot. People basically die, you live longer if you walk more, seen in many studies, and there's obviously knock on effects of people that walk more tend to be healthier, whatever. So we've got walking, we've got steps in, We've got energy restriction which means we're not consuming too much energy so we're not always loading up our fat cells, making them bigger and bigger and bigger and giving our body more stress to carry more fat cells around, carry more weight around. There's inflammation markers, things go up and everything like that when people are overweight or obese, so we need energy restriction to ensure we're not storing too much excess energy away.
Speaker 1:It's not ideal for us. Protein, again, it many times, helps you with satiety, helps you with maintaining muscle, can help with strength. So protein is a building blocks, amino acids. We need protein. We've got all those things.
Speaker 1:Then we've got fiber. So fiber can improve our gut microbiome. And we know that about 14 grams per thousand calories is where we need to be with fiber, but if you're a bit low on it, time to maybe work a bit towards it, it's another one. And we know doing weights once or twice a week for most people is enough. If we all did those, and that's a bit more than the core I talk about, your steps, calories, protein, you did all of that, and it's not a lot to do if you think about it, steps, calories, protein, fiber, bring into the mix and then bring in one or two strength workouts a week.
Speaker 1:If everyone on the planet did that for a year, the health of the planet would improve so much. And then we get to a stage where majority of people or most people wouldn't need to take extra steps. Would be in a good place for their health. Things would have fallen into place. I'm not saying every single person because there'll be things that other people will need specific things, specific caps on.
Speaker 1:There might be nutrient deficiencies. Again, you've got people with diabetes. We've other things that need more specialized help and more things need to be tweaked. But for most people, and you're lucky if you're in the most because if you can cover those things, job done. Again, you can read into the complexity of human body which is crazily complex.
Speaker 1:We don't fully understand everything. We probably never will. It is crazy down there. And I think the good news is we can all understand that if we just do the fundamentals long enough we're going to get the majority of the benefits and we don't actually need to worry about most things. And maybe you will need to worry about most things, but you'll know at the time.
Speaker 1:We know that weight loss improves the gut microbiome, we know that if we can get down to a healthier body fat percentage it's going to help as well. And there's a lot of knock on effects from that, right? You can have more energy, can feel better by yourself, blah blah blah. And I want to finish off, just wanted to cover that because I'm not saying gut's not important, I'm just saying most of you who are listening want to lose weight and maybe overweight or obese and you need to get down to a healthier body weight and I'm saying maybe hold off the complicated stuff, hold off doing more things you need to until you've done the fundamentals and it's taking you down to your healthier body weight. And then maybe go and get blood tests if you want, go and get further testing, go and see where you're at.
Speaker 1:Then you might determine, okay, maybe my fiber intake's low and it's having this knock on effect. Some people's fiber intake is high, some people can't eat a lot of fiber due to health conditions. So again, this has come down to there's a personalized element to it, but let's do it maybe once we've mastered the fundamentals. Last thing to talk about, and this is a quote and it really struck me when I first heard it and it made me realize that we're always chasing. So this is the quote: The image that you have created about yourself is non existent.
Speaker 1:Image you have created about you self is non existent so we create these images whether they're good or bad or we create an image we want to try and get to is often what we do. We create an image of ourselves, we see ourselves in a certain image in the future where we're fifty pounds lighter, we're going to the gym, we've got abs, we're working out, everything's good, work is going well, blah blah blah. So we create this image, it doesn't actually exist but we've created it and it's on the opposite side of where you are right now. Are you with me? Because it's on the opposite side of where you're at right now there's a struggle between where you are now and to the image you want to be.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? But because this image is actually non existent, the image will always elude you because even if you did get theoretically close to this image you created yourself, there's further images that you want. And these images are put in your brain sometimes by yourself, sometimes by comparison, social media, things like that. So you're always in a struggle between you, the truth of the actual fact of who you are right now, and the false image you've created. And that really is a fight that never ends.
Speaker 1:It's really stressful, it's annoying, you always feel like you're not good enough because you're always trying to achieve an image that doesn't actually exist. So what really is the answer here? Well the answer is actually very clear. The answer is that we don't start from an image, we don't start from creating an image of ourselves where we need to get to who we need to be. We start with who we are today, what we actually are as a matter of fact right now.
Speaker 1:And what we are as a matter of fact right now, we are greedy human beings, we're not very satisfied all time ago, we compare ourselves a lot, we waste a lot of time on social media, we want all the results without the work sometimes, we're lazy, all of these things, all of those things are part of all of us listening here. Nobody eludes any of that, it's the human condition. But if we start from where we are, which is the fact that this is me, I am here, and can really understand myself, I can actually start to work from there. And that's all every day is. It's to understand.
Speaker 1:Yesterday, probably gonna be a bit greedy and want more food than I than I need to. Probably today, I'm gonna feel a bit lazy and not will not wanna do something. Probably today, I'm not gonna feel satisfied with everything I've done. Not today because perfectionism is is a disease in the brain. I'm probably gonna feel that way because of social media.
Speaker 1:But if you understand why and you understand things, do you understand? You actually start behaving from those facts. So I don't go each day thinking, why do I want to lay down for half an hour and do nothing? Why am I so lazy? Oh my god.
Speaker 1:Who I want to be, because I've seen on social media, is this person that gets up at five a. M. Why can't I get up at five a. M? Why can't I do my run and workout at five a.
Speaker 1:M, get back? And if I've got kids do the breakfast, send them off to school, start my side hustle, go to work, do another thing. Why can't I do that? Why am I not being there? Why other people do it?
Speaker 1:Why can't I do it? What is wrong with me? That's really the disastrous path most people go down because this illusionary image you're trying to chase never exists and you try and get it. It's much better to actually be neutral about things and be like, Yeah, I'm feeling a bit lazy right now. I don't want to do anything for half an hour.
Speaker 1:Then don't do anything for half an hour if you can. I mean, people's jobs, maybe you get on your feet all the time and you can't have those breaks, some people do. Maybe you sit there thinking and you're neutral about it, you're like, just had my lunch, but I wanna keep eating that chocolate cookie over there. There's no point trying to fight the fact, oh my god, I shouldn't shouldn't want to eat that cookie. You're a human being.
Speaker 1:Of course you're gonna want to eat that cookie. But instead of fighting it, you're either no point positively fighting it or negatively fighting it, you're just very neutral on these things, you're just observing. And you're not observing to compare to a fake image of yourself who had a different view of that, do you know what I mean? You're not saying, Oh, if I was this person I would sit here and go, I don't want a cookie, I'm super fit and healthy, why would I want a cookie, I'm not an idiot, oh sugar bro, you're such an idiot bro. No man, because that's the start of the fight, you're just neutral.
Speaker 1:And when you're neutral there's really no push and pull, there's no fight and you don't feel like you're losing control in the moment, you don't really have to use any willpower either because you're just very neutral about observing how you are. I don't know if this makes any sense to you but just to realise this that whilst we're all unique in a sense, like you lead certain different lives, different family members are, we're also extremely similar in human nature And we all experience very similar realities in terms of human nature. Otherwise, we wouldn't know how if I say I'm sad, do you understand what I mean? We've all got these emotions and stuff like that. So when you see people online say I never eat sugar, I never do this, I walk this, just say you don't because I'm you and you're me and nobody is like a robot.
Speaker 1:They might be like the 0.1 who will live a lifestyle that way. For most people who have to handle work, family commitments, other things, and they're not like one thing, no one's perfect. Okay, so when you read these things online and you think you should be like these people, just remember they have the same problems, same hiccups, the same thing as you and that's the fact. But it doesn't matter, you just want to learn about yourself first. So learn about yourself, be neutral about what you see, be curious about it, and then you can maybe act from a different position.
Speaker 1:So you're acting from a position of neutrality as opposed to a position of I'm not this image I've created, therefore I'm a loser and I hate myself. Because that leads you down an emotional spiral and then, hey, guess what, you're eating Ben and Jerry's times two tonight. You're having a Doritos Chili Heat with bag tonight with an Oreo icing sandwich afterwards, maybe some Haribo and then you think, oh what have I done, what have done, what have I done?' You may be the reason we self sabotage is because we realise time to time we're never going to be the self image we've created and we think bugger the self image. Wanna go and destroy it, and maybe maybe it's a revolt against it. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear what you think. But anyway, new update in the app. Crack on with your day. Put a smile on your face, and I'll see you back tomorrow.