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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.
Donna Laughlin, Jesus.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're telling me I have go back
Speaker 1:to that book and see the wall. How are doing here, mate? How are doing?
Speaker 3:I'm alright. So you? Can you hear me?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm on a different monitor, I haven't got clear whether I'm looking at you or this or anyway. I'm okay, are you Scott?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not bad, not bad. Look, we've got the try back, Doctor Paul's back with his new hair, new beard.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, he's changed, changed man.
Speaker 1:You look at the vibe you've been like.
Speaker 2:The beard's the same pretty much. The hair's just down.
Speaker 1:Well, you've grown your hair out. I like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I had the man bun thing, didn't I? Yeah. I just grew out from the sides.
Speaker 1:You're going for the Viking look.
Speaker 2:So I go for the nineteen eighties pro wrestler look.
Speaker 1:Nice. That's the goal. What's what's going on now? Where where you where you where do you know? You've been in London to do a test this off.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I've just finished up there. So that's been testing people today. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think they want a little consultation rooms.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Nice. Nice. Well Can me you
Speaker 2:alright? I just want conscious. It's quite a bit echoey in here. That's all.
Speaker 1:No. It's all good. I can hear you. No problem. Just gonna check it from the call there.
Speaker 1:Record in. For most people listening back on replay who have never had a q and a with doctor p, he's been with us for many years since the start, since there's a lot of people getting heads around Turtle and Pirate. He was part of the original Turtle team. He's been with us a long time. And we used to do these lives every single week.
Speaker 1:So imagine how lucky those members were. Back in the you guys, you know, you got back in the day. You got lives every day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. And live
Speaker 3:But nobody was doing anything, Scott. No.
Speaker 1:But even after COVID, we still managed to maintain a level of it. And then it's just like, man, no business ever is I don't think no one's done that sprint of lives ever. No way. No. So we
Speaker 3:You spoiled us, you say. You spoiled us. You
Speaker 1:were, guys. You didn't appreciate that. Yeah? So
Speaker 3:not true.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Appreciate that. Yeah. We're back. But Paul, let us know what you've been up to.
Speaker 1:So let us know a bit about yourself and, yeah, introduce a bit.
Speaker 2:So I'm Paul, as I've been introduced already. As Scott said, I've known Scott since about February. We met in Cardiff around about then. So when Scott obviously started the whole what was lives like Louise then went into Turtle, we had conversations, Scott knew me from Cardiff, being a content writer, being pretty switched on about nutrition and things like that. And yeah, I can't remember exactly how the conversation came about, but we ended up working together on kind of like various projects.
Speaker 2:We've done some corporate stuff together. He's put me in contact. So I do some corporate speaking gigs, some nutrition education type stuff. But alongside all of the, I guess, weight management, fat loss kind of nutrition stuff that I've done. Parallel to that, I live an alternative existence as a, basically an athletic performance consultant strategist.
Speaker 2:So I coach a lot of pro athletes. And so around about COVID time, I had a bricks and mortar business up in Leeds. So anyone who was around during the total COVID escapades would have seen me deliver and coaching live sessions from my business up there, my bricks and mortar business up there. Since then, I have sold that on because I was spending more and more time in London, working with more and more people in London because that's where the money gets stuck to. And so sold there and I've got a athletic performance clinic now in London, which our primary focus is kind of like performance testing performance physiology.
Speaker 2:So if anyone's any interested in that, if you want to check out what we do, the business is athlete lab. If you just type in like performance test in London, we'll come back number one on the old goggle on Google. So, yeah, so I spend most of my time now being a business owner, occasionally talking about nutrition, sorry, quite often doing nutrition from a athletic performance perspective, but still work with a number of clients in terms of weight management, weight control type stuff. But unfortunately, don't have the time to do as much coaching as I'd used to just because, you know, as Scott will attest to being a business owner, half your time isn't doing what you actually wanna do and enjoy doing. Half of it's dealing with tax people and VAT and all that kind of fun stuff, which takes your soul.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I've got a couple of people who work for me. My main guy's a guy called Luke. He's a really good nutritionist, physiologist, and weirdly a stand up comedian as well. Does that for his part time for a bit of fun? And so he does my day to day stuff here.
Speaker 2:So it's actually quite nice to have the opportunity to kinda jump back in and refresh my memory about certain things as well. And to have a bit of a rant about some of the stuff that it's probably, you know, there's a lot that's changed in this sort of weight loss industry in the last two or three years in particular with GLP ones and all of that kind of stuff coming into the mix. But ultimately, there are still the same issues. There's still the same preying on people's insecurities. There's still the same preying on people's lack of knowledge.
Speaker 2:There's still the quick, what do you call it? The quick fix, the quick sell, all of that kind of fun stuff, which again is, you know, GLP-1s are great for a quick fix. But what we're starting to see now is some of the issues with that, where regardless of whether someone is using a pharmacological intervention for fat loss, we still need to be working on lifestyle behaviors, lifestyle habits, understanding food, understanding food psychology in order to maintain weight. And once that weight's lost, because weight regain after cessation, stopping GLP-1s is pretty much the same as most other dietary strategies, with the exception of it can actually leave people in a worse place because of the aggressiveness of the diet, which means they're losing muscle mass, they're losing lean mass potentially. And therefore you're not only in a worse place because you're regaining the weight, you're regaining the weight with lower amounts of lean mass potential bone mineral density, nutrition insufficiencies as well.
Speaker 2:So me and Scott have had some kind of conversations in and around that. So again, I'm not gonna sit here and say people who aren't in situations where it's appropriate shouldn't use them, and particularly with people who've really struggled with their eating regulation over a long period of time, but they aren't a, what would you call it? Like a panacea of nutritional solutions. You know, there's still things that we need to work on and there's still a lot of value in working on those things. Sorry, behaviors and nutrition approaches and trying to eat healthier, even if your amounts are regulated.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that has been kind of positive for, I guess, apart from the obvious benefits of helping people lose weight, blood glucose regulation, etcetera, etcetera, is that I think people are now understanding that it is about fat loss is about calorie regulation, right? Because people are eating pretty much what they want. Most people are eating what they want on these kinds of diets and still losing weight, assuming they tolerate the drugs quite well because there's obviously some significant side effects for some people, nausea and various other issues. So yeah, I think that although in my ideal world and probably Scott's, it would be great to have some drug come along that helps fix people's appetite and behavior and they lose weight. And they also preserve muscle at the same time.
Speaker 2:And it also helps them with all of the kind of allows enables the capacity to then free up some mental capacity when they're not thinking about food, to be thinking about the quality of the diet, the quality of the nutrition. It still doesn't take away those things that are really gonna underpin people's propensity for weight gain, which are lack of nutritional education, which is what we're here for, emotional eating, you know, whether that's stress eating or whatever it is that is driving people to eat. And then the third and most important thing really, which was I think why a lot of people had more success during times of COVID, as someone mentioned before, and certain people had more success. Yes, people had more time to do things, but I think that real I think the underlying thing that I think a lot of people missed was there was a yearning for connection and community built around that. I never spoke to my friends more during COVID than I would have done normally, even though I live in different cities because you do quizzes and you do stuff like that, right?
Speaker 2:And I think when people went back to the normal world, what they forgot and the positive lessons from that was the idea of when people are trying to lose weight, doing it on your own is difficult enough. It's difficult. But if you've got people around you who understand your journey, as long as they're trying to build you up and not drag you down, those kind of like three pillars of the education, the education and the community support combined with the third pillar of sort of having the ability to take control of nutrition for yourself, and the education that kind of those two are sort of intertwined, but not the same thing, meant that a lot of people made more progress. And I always say to people like, whatever dietary approaches you followed previously, people do a diet and it fails. And therefore they'll just like, shelve that one under F for failure in the diet column, where actually whatever dietary approaches you've used, whether it's, you know, in the past you've tried macro tracking and it's been successful in some periods and not in others, whether you've tried low carb, high fat, sorry, yeah, lower carb, high fat, or higher fat, low carb, sorry, higher carb, low fat, or you've tried intermittent fasting.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I always say to people is whether you understand the mechanisms by which those diets were, hint, hint, no, no, no, no, it's all caloric restriction, and there's no secret source to that. That if you could analyse all of those things and say like, okay, well, what were the benefits of those diets? And what were the negatives of those diets? If you were to put that into some kind of a hit list of outcomes where it would benefit to you, you might find eventually a strategy that kind of works for you. So I always say that all dietary approaches are kind of like a toolbox, but it's like, you you don't use a screwdriver to take a wheel nut off a car, right?
Speaker 2:And use a spanner. So they're all different tools. It's just applying them at the right time. And one of the reasons that like, you know, me and Scott have always talked about flexible dieting and stuff is because it enables the most amount of, it's the most evidence based in the sense that it's not blaming something for something else, but that doesn't mean that like all the dietary patterns can't be effective. It's just understanding why they're effective so that, for example, if someone prefers a level of carb diet, they like higher fatty foods, or they like more protein, therefore they're not then every time they have a biscuit or a cookie, they're freaking out because of the negative association with that.
Speaker 2:Like I know loads of people have had really good success with intermittent fasting, but then they've got to go to, I don't know, a dinner with their friends and it's outside their eating window or like, you know, a breakfast with their family. And all of a sudden they freak out because they failed on their diet. And it's like, no, if you understand the underlying principles of fat loss, then you you know which dietary approaches can be used in different situations. So, like, for example, if you're traveling abroad and you might not be able to track every day accurately, then using an intermittent fasting type approach, a restricted eating window type approach might be more beneficial to you. You know, that sort of approach is what we look at.
Speaker 2:But the reason that I would, if you're looking at a hierarchy of dietary approaches, all of them are underpinned by behavior modification and behavior change, right? But it's easier to have behavior modification and behavior change if your diet is something that is adhereable to and is set up the right amount of calories for you. So you're not overly hungry and allows you food flexibility, which is why in terms of that kind of hierarchy of dietary approaches, I would always put kind of like flexible macro counting at the top for three reasons. One is because of what I've just described there. It allows flexibility.
Speaker 2:It's not rigid. Two, and most importantly, which people forget, they get obsessed about counting every calorie to the gram and freaking out whether they can or can't because they're eating out or whatever. Well, the second reason is that through the process of tracking, if you take an active role in that process rather than just like scan and dump as it were, scan, done, hit my calories, if you use that as an educational resource, it really helps you understand, well, actually, do I know what a portion of food looks like as a serving of rice looks like? Or what life, serving of life. There you go.
Speaker 2:It's a logo for a t shirt right there. What a serving of rice looks like or a serving of peanut butter is the classic one people talk about. So you can use it as a kind of educational resource to give you more freedom when you can't weigh and measure everything to the nearest kind of gram. And the third thing as well is when you then assess your food diary at the end of a week, for example, like if you're looking at over your weekly averages for your macros or whatever it might be, if let's say, you know, you're not losing weight, like, you know, it's been a few weeks and your weight's the same. You look in the mirror, clothes are still fitting the same.
Speaker 2:You can look through that diary and okay. You might not accurate. You might be a bit scratching your head about, okay, how accurate have I been or haven't I been and where can I kind of make adjustments based on that? Because maybe you feel a little bit lost. Maybe you're not sure how many calories a day that you're eating, but what it can also be used for is assessing like long term dietary patterns, right?
Speaker 2:So for example, I am a big fan of eating out. I love eating out. It's great. I love, you know, trying new restaurants and new foods. But I also know that even with my experience of doing this professionally and working with pro athletes who, you know, are in weight class sports and we've got to be very strict on their food and reaching weight limits and, you know, this can cost them tens of thousands of pounds, even hundreds of thousands of pounds for some the athletes I work with if they don't make weight.
Speaker 2:I even I, with that experience, and that's like my livelihood on one side of it, still has a question if someone sends me like, you know, a meal over where they've eaten out. I'm still not entirely confident. Okay, well, is that exactly what I think it is? Now the question is, does that matter in the context of the overall diet? And the answer to that is, well, yes, that really depends on whether you're being successful or not, right?
Speaker 2:So if you're eating out two or three times a week, and you're sort of estimating your calorie intakes, and you're putting it into PowerPal or whatever app it is, it's coming up with good estimates, well, over time, you can also look at that as an opportunity to look for kind of eating patterns and say, actually, I'm not losing weight. I'm eating out four or five times a week, or I'm ordering takeout three, four times a week. Is there any way that I can change your behavior there to get a little bit more control back over my eating? And that's what, you know, loss is the hardest thing for most people. It's exercising control over their nutrition.
Speaker 2:And so simplistic rules, dieting, cutting carbs, cutting fats, know, vilifying certain foods for whatever reason appeals to a lot of people because it takes the thought process out of it. And that's a really great short term solution. But the issue is in the long term, they're not sustainable. So there has to be this learning effect of understanding that even collecting the data, even if you're struggling with food regulation, even if you're struggling to lose weight and you're feeling frustrated, all of that is kind of like it's building up your experience and your knowledge to be able to say this works, this doesn't work. Okay, this is where I'm strong, this is where I'm weak.
Speaker 2:A lot of people would use that to defeat themselves and feel bad about themselves, to feel bad about themselves. Whereas what we should try and view it as is an opportunity to learn, right? And I think that's the difficult thing is, you know, everybody wants results, especially I can't for one, like the TikTok generation now. It's like people's attention span for like six seconds and they're gone, right? And then, so yeah, I think that from my perspective, the take home messages that I've had for working with the people who know me from back in the day or recently is that the people who are most successful take those things on board and view the whole nutrition thing as a process of not just fat loss, but of like education, of building support structures of self awareness and being able to one, call themselves on their own BS, their own justifications for certain things, or two, recognizing those voices in them, those drivers to eat and really questioning them and getting the right kind of support for that.
Speaker 2:Neither myself or Scott or any app, although some might claim to be, are gonna be like trained psychologists, but I've had clients I've worked with where it's like, actually, you probably need to go to your psychologist around your food behaviors and eating and stress, or maybe it's a stress driver. And that would then help with the other stuff rather than it being like just about the food in the sort of classical sense. But, yeah, I'm still trying to fight the good fight in that regard. And what you do see increasing amounts of nutrition nonsense now with particularly certain nation states on this planet and their heads of health care and some of the messages that they put out, and it's like, oh, Jesus. You think you're getting somewhere in the battle.
Speaker 2:I know all of a sudden yeah.
Speaker 1:Gonna lose always. I think what you mentioned there about the difference between athletes as well and, like, us normal people, you know, they have to care about more details than we do. And often a lot of content out there is about optimization. And, like, you know, I'm your athletes might you know, they need to be tuned in for a weekend. And we've learned from bodybuilding that we followed the bodybuilding industry Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Which was extreme. Then we followed the extreme nature of their nutrition protocols. And then we got the sports people of the kind of people who are doing ultra marathons and now Ironman stuff, as you know. And I think we tend to think that's what we have to do. It's nuts.
Speaker 1:Like there's no way. But I want to ask you a question on your experience. So when you when you work with profits and then we go around people. So, Donna, you've been next. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We've your questions lined up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Please have questions lined up, guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Claire. And Charlotte, because you guys are on the video, we'll we'll you can ask questions and go back and forth. But I go on, Paul. So I'm actually doing a competition on Sunday, which I really don't wanna do. I've been in a holiday for like ten days and I'm not in a good place physically.
Speaker 1:So I definitely can't panic and do what we all do is try and improve my cardio in three days or do loads of workouts. Is the recommendation in our sense just good sleep and just prepare versus trying to squeeze things in? And what can you realistically do? This might help other people. What can you realistically do in three days to get a good day of performance in general?
Speaker 1:Feel your feel your best then. Okay.
Speaker 2:So I think like I think one of the the misconceptions is you're right that athletes have to pay attention or in theory should pay attention to the minutiae, the really small details, the optimal stuff. The reality is, is most of the athletes I work with, they're people too. They've got young kids. They're trying to balance. Yes, they're professional full time athletes, but they're trying to balance their training stress with their managers, their promotion companies.
Speaker 2:They've got to do this. They've got to do that. They've got to do the other. They've traveled a lot potentially, which is, I mean, obviously, if you're a business owner, you're still in like, or an executive who's in a high performing role, you've still got those stresses. So I think on one hand, it's easy to say there's a difference and there is because the margins for error are smaller, but the strategy is still the same.
Speaker 2:I think what the difference is in those environments is because their nutrition is their livelihood a 100%, right? You would like to think they'd be more focused and create strategies to do it. So whether they use like meal prep companies or they do meal prep themselves or you know, like I've had athletes when they're travelling, they'll go to restaurants and take pictures of menus and be like, right, what should I eat off this type levels of, you know, obsessiveness or kinda make weight going to restaurants where I will speak to the chef to make sure that, like, everything's weighed and measured in the kitchen. Like, you know, we've done that sort of stuff. But the key principles stay the same.
Speaker 2:It's like all of that stuff is the 1% extra to get optimal performance, but the fundamentals they adhere to are still the same. So my advice is always like good quality sleep. Treat basically, treat yourself like a toddler is the best that I could give. Right? Have a bit of play.
Speaker 2:Relax. Do some relaxing. Distress yourself. Get a good night's sleep and give yourself a nap if you need one if you're tired and grumpy. Right?
Speaker 2:Eat regular balanced meals like you would do for a kid. You don't let a kid just like graze on chocolate all day long because it wants to. Treat yourself like a toddler. So balanced healthy meals, lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of healthy protein sources and healthy fats, salmon, fish if you like it, or, you know, like lean chicken, stuff like that. And then, you know, like a good amount of, like, fibrous and what's the word I'm after?
Speaker 2:Like fibrous carbohydrates and starches for energy, right? So like I've got like five key nutrition principles that I give to my athletes as a poster that's on the wall in the gyms that I work out of, which is one is hydration. Make sure you're drinking enough water through the day. Don't forget to drink. Not forcing it too much.
Speaker 2:Two is at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Eat the rainbow. And people made fun of me when I first said that, and they were making comments about what my favorite flavored skittle was, and I was really confused. It took me a second to get onto it. So eat five different colors of fruits and vegetables a day.
Speaker 2:You know? Protein with every meal was one of them. At least two servings of healthy fats a day. So if that's cooking with olive oil or, but again, careful of amounts or some nuts and seeds, but again, careful of amounts because of calories. And the fourth was making sure that you have some carbohydrates in and around exercise, you know, like a portion of pasta or a portion of rice.
Speaker 2:That's not so much one for sort of what I would say is weight loss clients, not to avoid the carbohydrates, that's not what I'm saying, but the timing of nutrition around their training becomes a bit more important. But again, one of the things I would say applies to most people is, you remember the old like slim fast diets, which were like a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then like a proper dinner? The reason that people failed on those, or maybe fast intake diets is, or people who are busy, they don't eat all day because they're distracted from their hunger cravings, because they're busy with work, stress, kids, whatever it is. Right? And all of a sudden they get to the evening and you get this like cascade effect there.
Speaker 2:Once the, you know, to use the Pringles analogy, once you pop, you can't stop for the day. And all of a sudden people go, well, I haven't eaten much in a day. And then they eat 1,500, 2,000 calories in the space of like an hour and a half of an evening because they haven't been feeding themselves periodically through the day. They haven't been regulating their hunger. So consistent meals with a small amount of carbohydrates in will regulate blood sugar.
Speaker 2:Now, again, that seems like a lot to take on, but if you can focus on those kind of five principles, most people, after a period of time, will regulate their hunger, they'll regulate their appetite, they'll have more energy, they'll have lower food related stress and anxiety, because you're not thinking about what you're eating all the time. You know, if you make those kinds of conscious decisions and you'll be adequately hydrated, so your cognitive function's gonna be better. And people, if they can eat like that, like three to four times a day, they will lose weight, right? And they'll feel better and they'll feel healthier. However, when most people struggle is the fact that, like you've said, it's the, well, what is the correct portion size, right?
Speaker 2:What is that appropriate to that individual? And also the fact that it's quite difficult if you're not, what's the word I'm after? If you're not tuned into that way of thinking, old habits gravitate back really easily. So if you've missed skip breakfast, for example, and again, I'm not saying you should or shouldn't eat breakfast, but if you skip breakfast, you're meant to get lunch, but something comes up at work. So you don't get to your desk till too late.
Speaker 2:So you run to the shop and you go into M and S and it's like, right, what's the last thing you see before get to like the queues at M and S? It's like the big bags of cookies and you're like, my blood sugar is low, your body wants sugar and fat, it needs some energy. So you have that and you have like four cookies and all of a sudden, you know? So it's about having a proactive approach to your nutrition before your physiology and habits take over. Because a lot of it is, you know, your physiology and your habits, the psychology and the physiology for the low blood sugar, the cravings, the desire, and the psychology.
Speaker 2:They're all the same thing. You know, like it's all intertwined. It's not the same thing. It's all intertwined. So we have partners treat them in isolation.
Speaker 2:So like in that situation there, I always just think like, what does my body need to nourish it? Outside of weight loss stuff, what does my body need to nourish it? Right now, it needs, you know, fuel in the engine, a good amount of carbohydrates, it needs protein for recovery. It needs vitamins and minerals. So that's where my five a day of fruit, that's five a day, five servings of different colored fruits and vegetables a day.
Speaker 2:And it needs water, you know? And again, I'm not talking like sipping on 10 liters of water a day. You know, some people with these like massive gallon jugs and they sit in an air conditioned office all day not sweating. And yeah like Donna says there like you know I've got loads of different strategies that I come up with that only when I talk to people they kind of come out. Like I've got like what I call a food first aid kit.
Speaker 2:So like today I'm not going to finish work till 09:00. I've been working all day. I've managed to get in a couple of decent meals, but I know when I get home I've got in the freezer loads of the three hundred-four 100 calorie high protein, two servings of vegetables a day microwave meals, right? So when I get home, yeah, they're not the greatest tasting thing in the world. But I know on the way home now, I haven't got a jump off at the station at Wimbledon and it's like, oh, there's a Greg's right there, right?
Speaker 2:You know, am I realistically gonna, I don't know if anyone's tried the new chicken sausage rolls from Greggs. Don't waste your time. They're the worst things in the world. There's a northerner and a pastry connoisseur, a pastry meat connoisseur. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The vegan ones are alright. Sausage rolls are okay. The chicken sausage rolls are terrible. Don't try them. So, sorry segue, but the point is from that, it's like if you work from that as a foundation, the other bits, the eating out once or twice a week, the little snacks here and there aren't gonna be such an issue because they're not the diet as a whole.
Speaker 2:Know, if you fill yourself up on good quality nutrition, it makes life just like a little bit easier to regulate regulate nutrition. So you're right, Scott. There are differences. But you can't have optimal performance without optimal health. So the first thing I always try and get my athletes to do is eat better because you'd be surprised at how poor their diet quality is.
Speaker 2:Because a lot them aren't that educated you know? They're just athletes. Say it's a little say it's a little bit was a winner, but then say it's got changed to was was I don't know where it went to because say it's in Leeds. It's called Hamsons. Same logo, but different company.
Speaker 2:Say it's sausage rolls with the best sausage rolls, but I don't know why they went bust. Greg's just dominated them, I'm afraid. But, yeah, I'm getting a craving for stocky rolls now. I wonder why that might be.
Speaker 1:No. Good answer. Good answer. Clay, you got your hand up, but thank you.
Speaker 2:Is it You
Speaker 4:know, I was just gonna I don't know if you can hear me okay. Got football on in the background. In relation to the, you know, you're not gonna finish work till nine and then you're gonna have dinner on the way way home. Is it a myth that eating later in the day, like, will affect your fat loss? Or is it just like total macros, calories across the day?
Speaker 4:Or is it the likelihood that if you're eating later in the day, you might end up being so hungry that you reach for things? Because you hear that, don't you? Like don't have your dinner so late and you won't sleep because your tummy's full and yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 3:you can, like, blast that one.
Speaker 2:Yep. I'll answer that question in short and then in full. So the answer is it is absolute nonsense. The time of day that you eat doesn't affect fat loss. With the exception of what we've just said there, like if you're not eating all day, so you get hungry, then of course the time of day you do eat does affect fat loss, right?
Speaker 2:Our brain gets programming to eat in at certain times. If we skip a meal, we tend to get those drivers to eat. But from a purely energy balance perspective, forgetting the, you know, low blood sugar physiology, oh god, I'm not eating all day, therefore I'm gonna crave higher calorie, less nutrient dense foods, then no, there's no difference. And the reason for that is quite simple. So like, and it's also why portion sizes don't matter.
Speaker 2:It's calorie control. It's like if I don't eat all day, right? So let's say, let's go to an extreme, because extreme proof points, right? If I don't eat all day, and so during the day to maintain my blood sugar, what needs to happen is that my liver is pumping out glucose, glycogen to maintain my blood sugar levels, so I don't have a hypo. That's getting depleted, so I'm probably gonna need some carb later on to restock that.
Speaker 2:Also all day, because my body needs energy, and when I'm just sat talking to you like this, the main source of energy my body is using is stored body fat. Right? So all day, if you imagine this is neutral, this is weight gain, this is weight loss. So all day, my body fat level is getting lower and lower and lower. Right?
Speaker 2:Because I'm in a calorie deficit all day. And then what happens is I have a big meal of food and therefore that deficit, I then go to an energy, and making sure I'm on camera there, it's all weird. So then when I have that meal in the short term, I mean, I'm no longer in a deficit because my body is digesting, absorbing, has energy available because it needs to be stored. So I'll go into a storage phase, but as long as the release phases over the course of the day, on overcome by the storage phases, then you will lose weight, right? So it doesn't matter what time of day you eat.
Speaker 2:So if you take three smaller meals, it's like, I have a small meal for breakfast and I go into a storage phase, but then I'm into a big release phase, because I don't go into a storage phase for long because energy from that nutrition is either used in my blood sugar or stored in my liver or stored as body fat. I eat fat, so we go into a slight storage phase. But in the next phase between meals, I go into a release phase. So as long as those release phases, which is your energetic demand over a period of time, is greater than the storage phase over the course of the day. It doesn't matter whether you have one meal, six meals, 10 meals from a energy storage perspective.
Speaker 2:It's all, it's like taking money in and out of your bank account, right? So it's like you put enough money in, you'll store more, kind of do the way around actually, because we wanna store more money, We wanna lose that. So yeah, it doesn't really matter. So like eating later in the day though, can actually be a benefit for some people. For example, I tend to, because I'm quite busy and I know that during the day, I'm pretty good at regulating my food intake.
Speaker 2:My last meal is my biggest meal of the day. It always has been when I'm losing weight. Why? Because if I've been hungry all day and I've been distracted, my last meal of the day, it will be calorie controlled, it will be high quality food, it's not me eating junk, but it's usually something like a big pot of Greek yogurt with some granola and a load of fruit. Right?
Speaker 2:And it's a bowl like that. And it's probably like four fifty, 500 calories. In terms of, when I say biggest, they're assuming highest calorie, biggest volume meal of the day. And I have that before bed because if I felt hungry, I know it's gonna fill me up. And I love going to bed on a full stomach because it just allows me to sleep.
Speaker 2:Going to bed hungry is like the worst thing in the world for me personally. Some people can tolerate it and it's just fine. I also know if I don't do that, I'll wake up at 03:00 in the morning when my girlfriend's cat wants to annoy me because it wants to go out or it just wants cuddles or whatever, because it's a little nuisance and I'll wake up and I'll wake up hungry and I'll just be like, Oh, I can't get back to sleep. So I know from my personal experience that I would rather have a little bit less food in the day, still feeding myself, still a few carbs, etcetera, etcetera, so that I can have a slightly bigger meal before bed. Now it might be for other people, they wake up or they're just like hungry of a morning people, maybe they've got a busy morning, they're rushing around.
Speaker 2:So they'll have like a bigger breakfast to stay in fruit till maybe one, 02:00 in the afternoon to avoid that hunger hole. When if you've to have a late lunch, And then they might have lighter meals later in the day because once they're off their feet and they're left rushed, then they don't need it. So this is not to over complicate things, but in some senses, people get scared when I talk like this, because it's like, oh my God, there's too many options. Like, what do I do and all this sort of stuff? But on the other side of it, what you should try and view it through a lens of, oh, look at all these things I can try and manipulate in my diet.
Speaker 2:So if one thing doesn't work, let's try something else. So I haven't failed enough times yet to rule out everything. Right? And so a lot of people view diet in that way. It's like, well, try it and see.
Speaker 2:You know, it took me, takes me a period of time. Like when I sold my business in Leeds and I moved to London, my working hours have shifted measurably. My commute time has changed. Like trying to fit stuff in for me is like, it's taken me a few months to readapt to like my new working hours, new working conditions, the gym I'm training at, commuting in and out of work, dealing with all that stuff. Where's my food supplies here?
Speaker 2:Like when I was in Leeds, I knew like on the way into work, there was a Morrison's, I knew they did like two healthy meals for five pounds. I could get that on the way with my yogurt. I had my own microwave and kitchen at work there, I don't hear so much. So like now it's like, oh, I've gotta recalibrate my brain to coming up with those systems. But if you understand principles over processes, so the principle is fat loss.
Speaker 2:The principle is mostly whole nutrient dense foods. If you understand that principle sorry, principle is calorie deficit. And calorie deficit, you know, lots of high quality nutrient dense foods, everything else is a process that you can adjust and amend to your existence. So that's why I get really frustrated. But, you know, when you see online, it's like, oh, eating this pattern that this athlete does or this fitness influencer does.
Speaker 2:And it's like, we should look at those things and maybe take some inspirational ideas from them, but we shouldn't get this hot on if they don't work for us. You know? Shift work is a classic example of that. Right? It's like, well, are we supposed to eat at the same time today as someone else?
Speaker 2:So that's the really long winded answer to your question, trying to take something out of it in terms of principles. But yes, the time of day you don't you eat does not matter for fat loss, unless it's probably not eating for so long that you end up in a hunger hole as I call it. And that's where I really struggled to get through. So it was like, I knew this evening, I've had clients in from four till literally just before this. And so, like, about 03:00, even though I didn't really wanna eat, I made myself eat a decent portion of, like, chicken and rice, proper bro food going back to the bodybuilding stuff Scott was talking about earlier on.
Speaker 2:I had that, and I felt a little bit overly full. But actually, now I'm starting to feel hungry again, but I know by the time I get home at close to 10:00 tonight, I'm not gonna get home and just be like, right, where's the ice cream at? You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, we've gotta be a bit adaptable. So when we talk about flexible diets in a macro tracking, it's not just flexibility in terms of your carbs, fats, proteins, and stuff. It's flexibility. It allows you flexibility to like play with those over the course of the day, you know? So try and view it through that lens as a constant learning thing and learn the principles rather than focusing too much on the process.
Speaker 2:Try a process, does work, change the process. Principles stay the same.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That makes makes sense. And the other question I had was around if you're getting toward the end of the day and you're short on your protein, you're not actually that hungry, are you best to just not have anything, like, not use up the remainder of your calorie allowance? Is that the right word? For that day and and your protein or to have something to make sure that you've hit the protein for that day.
Speaker 2:Does that make Yeah. No. It's a really good question. And one I'm gonna or I'm gonna give you a an unusually caveated answer for me. There's very usually a definitive answer.
Speaker 2:So, like, let's say, Claire, what's your protein target for the day, roughly?
Speaker 4:I think it's about a 120, a
Speaker 2:Yeah. 100 and Let's say a 130 grams of protein a day. Right? So let's say you get to the end of the day and you've eaten a 100 grams of protein. Right?
Speaker 2:And you're really full, you don't wanna eat anything, you don't, you're ready for bed. Is that extra 30 grams of protein gonna make a whole world of difference? It's probably on what I would say is a borderline of should you consume some protein. But if you were above that, I wouldn't get too stressed about it. Particularly if you've exercised that day, because again, if we're talking about muscle preservation, obviously, if your hunger is under control, the protein isn't controlling the hunger because you don't need it for that because you're already full and you're done with your eating.
Speaker 2:The reason we will consume the extra protein would be for muscle preservation. But as long as we're doing some kind of exercise, chances are that you will have covered the basis for that day. And as long as you're not chronically under eating your protein, I wouldn't worry too much, okay? Now, if you've said that same question, but you'd eaten 50 grams of protein for the day, right? I would probably then say, you need to think about protein in the context of muscle preservation and general health, and actually having your recommended daily allowance with protein, plus a little bit extra to preserve muscle mass.
Speaker 2:So I would say it really depends on the nature of how under you're eating. And then obviously within those two ends of the spectrum, there's like a fat gray area, which would be like, oh, is 30 grams that much difference for you? Probably not on one day, but if you were consistently doing it, then I would say try and find the way to then fix that problem. So again, we need to stop People do this and it's a bit of As a side point, a sidebar, people focus on like one day and what they do in one day, and then like fixate about whether they're under or over or slightly early in that variation. Look for consistent patterns over the course of say, like a few days or a week or two.
Speaker 2:If you're chronically under eating protein then, and you know it's because you're getting enough and you can't be your full at the end of the day, then you're probably gonna wanna just add a little bit more to your meals in the day rather than trying to fit in an extra meal. Right? Because it just becomes
Speaker 4:Yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Then then
Speaker 1:you
Speaker 2:can have a shake or whatever it is, but, you know, I wouldn't say overly worry about it for, like, one day, but, like for anyone out there who's really struggling with their protein targets, again, go back to the principles I talked about before. Start with the basics of, is there protein in this meal? Right? You know? And not protein like the three grams you'll get in like a portion of rice or oats or whatever.
Speaker 2:Mean, like, is there an actual protein source in that meal and just try and make protein the source of every meal? And you'd be surprised how easy it is to get up to that like 90 or a 100 gram mark fairly comfortably. It's then when you start to go above that, like you've just expressed there where it can be for people who want protein focused can be a bit more difficult. But again, you know, yeah, you can fix that with a reasonable approach, but if it's one day every three or four that you're noticing that, then I wouldn't stress too much about it. Caveat with doing exercise and things like that as well.
Speaker 4:Cool. Thank you.
Speaker 1:No problem.
Speaker 2:Does anyone else would anyone else like to ask a question or should I just go on another tirade about random dietary things? Were like, what was it? Do you know what we should do, Scott? You know what we've never done which would be good for like YouTube? Because I was seeing my list today.
Speaker 2:I just watch the endless amount of YouTube in the background now. You know you do those tier lists where it's like a to d a to like f of like the best of dietary approaches. We should do a tier list like that one day.
Speaker 1:Most top. Benz was just showing in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Ned. I don't know what I'd have to think about it. I'd like to do some prep on that first because because obviously like there's always nuance to everything, right?
Speaker 2:Like there's always a downside to every approach. For example, flexible dieting, the one that always get used to get thrown at us, which has actually been spelled dispelled as mostly a myth because, you know, it's all you're obsessive about your nutrition and you're tracking it and triggering disorders. And it's like, yes, but people who have propensity for eating disorders are triggered, will be triggered, are likely to be triggered by any dietary approach or something in the future. It's just that like, it's a vehicle to do that. It's not the dietary approach itself.
Speaker 2:That's the problem. So yeah, like, I understand why people think about being obsessive, but one of the things we've always tried to preach is like you don't have to be accurate to the ground. You don't have to be perfect every day. Like I would just say into Claire like you know you'll have days where you'll over it. You'll have days where you're laundry.
Speaker 2:You'll have days where you can't be perfect. It's just looking at things as an average over time and trying to take the emotion out of it and trying to treat your tracking in a different way than people treat like stepping on the scales, for example, where they view that one number in isolation without the context of like six months worth of data, you know. So I think the problem with dieting is how people feel about dieting rather than the actual diet themselves. But don't get me wrong, there are some terrible dietary approaches out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What I find as well is, and then maybe this is a question to Dawn as well, is as we get going them out on Dawn's questions if she got any. But I got one question for Dawn and everyone. Over the years, we've told people flexible protein, average over time, the way if you weighed yourself today and you went up two kilos, it's definitely not fat gain as water. Right?
Speaker 1:But still, always in the back of their minds, they always think maybe it's fat and they genuinely feel down about it. So no matter how much how many times you slam that message, you seem to still cause some pain. And I wonder, Donna, do you still feel that? Do you still or or you thought, you know what? I can get a response.
Speaker 1:I got no worries anymore. We've broken the simulation. Yeah. Am I
Speaker 3:doing? Yeah. Definitely.
Speaker 1:Get outside the matrix. Pardon? Yes. You've gone outside the matrix.
Speaker 2:You can
Speaker 1:go on the scales. No pain. Yeah. It's amazing. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Mastered it over many years, but that exact thing, I was on holiday, you know, the heat wave, I was down in Cornwall, absolutely amazing week. And if this had been the octagon, I'd have been like, oh, it's only the second week and I'm gonna be off program and I can't track and and I was just really chilled. I thought I'm not gonna even do what Scott says, take a picture of my I've just had a lovely week. I didn't binge but I ate quite a bit and I Waited a few days and then I think it was Tuesday morning. I got on the scales and it was a lot higher than when I'd left but I knew what that was.
Speaker 3:I knew it was just going to be the water weight and it was funny because my friend who was also away with us with her family she had a similar experience and I actually just sent her all the information. I just used good old copilot and sent because she says, what do you mean waterway and sent her the explanation? But she had had that immediate reaction of saying, how the fuck can I put on half a stone? We only had a few extra croissants and a couple more bottles of wine. And I said to her, you haven't, you cannot physically, you would be having to consume thousands and thousands of extra calories.
Speaker 3:But that was her knee jerk reaction. Whereas I said to her, honestly, I'll show you and I did it on mine and I said, we'll give it a week and I'm not going to do anything special. I'm just going to get back into my better habits, normal eating, training three times a week. And it's gone back and I probably given everything that I did and everything I ate and everything I drank that week, I reckon I probably put probably a pound on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which for the week I had, as Scott would say, happy days. Yeah. It was worth it. But it's one pound. But if you looked at my numbers, it jumped up, I think seven or eight pounds.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good. And I think, like, one of the one of the challenges is that so if you wanna talk about, like, you know, entering the matrix sorry, exiting or being leaving the matrix of Scott Poyer. So, like, there's different levels to that. Right?
Speaker 2:So when people are trying to learn these, it's almost kind of like, what would you call it? Like exposure therapy where you have to get a lot of people, you have to get them to weigh themselves regularly to understand, to break that cycle with the scales. You have to expose yourself to the stressor to deal with the stressor. What's really interesting though is that once people have got that, we know from long term maintenance that people who weigh themselves regularly are more likely to sustain weight loss in the longer term simply because of the fact that depending on the dietary approach they've used, they don't trust themselves enough necessarily to regulate their weight effectively because they haven't learned maybe all of the skills that they need to learn. Again, over time they might learn this, but over let's say one diet cycle you've picked up some of the skills but not all of the skills.
Speaker 2:So what regular weighing does, not even daily, like say you've lost all the weight you wanna lose, but weighing weekly or every few weeks, will give people an indicator whether, well, actually, I need to just have a focal point again? Do I need to rethink about, have I started to over consume again? What habits have kind of crept back in? And that's like the kind of that's the sort of transitional phase between like short term fat loss where you kind of need to do the weigh in every day and kind of understand the data and look at long term trends to a kind of more maintenance phase, which is like, I need to just keep an eye on weight and and look in the mirror and how my clothes are fitting and just have an honest appraisal of that less frequently to like the final boss which has taken me about fifteen years to get to which is just like I I now know whether I'm eating because I know my activity and I know my body and obviously as I do it as a profession. So it's a bit of a cheat code, right?
Speaker 2:But it's like I now know if I'm actively losing weight or not losing weight or gaining fat. One because of visual appearances and I'm honest enough to see it. And again that takes a lot of training because people tend to focus on the worst body part body parts and feel and this is body parts then. Body parts and feel worse about themselves. But actually, with time, like, I know that, like, what I should be eating in the ballpark if I'm trying to lose weight, right?
Speaker 2:And having the confidence where I don't, if I'm trying to go through a fat loss phase, so let's say I, you know, I do a lot of sports strength training, I'm trying to build some muscles, so I eat a few more calories, Maybe I reduce my endurance a little bit. So, I gained a few pounds of body fat and one of my athletes does. If I gain a few pounds of body fat, it's like, I know behaviorally, right? Yeah, maybe that bag of squashes I'm eating every day on the way back from the train station because they're delightful little buggers is probably something if I just stop eating the squashies, my weight's going to stabilize and it's going to drop. And so you'll get to a point where a lot of people will just intuitively know if they're honest with themselves through their tracking and their education, right?
Speaker 2:What has habit has changed that's made me gain this weight that I can visibly see or just just sort of feel it on yourself sometimes, right? And actually it works the other way where it's like, I can go into a fat loss phase now. I'm not special. I've just spent a lot of time on this. I can go into a fat loss phase now entirely confident that I'm losing body fat.
Speaker 2:Even if you can't see those daily visible changes, they kind of compound over time. Because I know I'm doing the right things and I trust I trust the the science. And someone said it before, like, one of the things that I always used to be a a a like like a bit of a preacher of and it's a it's a sort of ethos that Scott has always said as well as like be your own scientist. Like collect your own data. View yourself as kind of an experiment in that regard and try not to like draw conclusions too soon without enough data points.
Speaker 2:Right? You You know, know, if anyone is from a scientific background here, you don't just do like one experiment one time and then be like, right, that's the conclusion. This doesn't work or it does work. You know, you have to collect the more samples we collect, the more accurate a hypothesis we can or more accurately we can answer answer a hype answer a hype oh my god. Answer a hypothesis.
Speaker 2:That was a I've run out of water. My throat's getting dry. I'm really good
Speaker 3:scientist in you, Paul.
Speaker 2:It is. I'm really
Speaker 3:I would add.
Speaker 2:Sorry. What?
Speaker 3:Not not I would add. Not that I'm, you know, skilled or knowledgeable. But the other thing that I think, like, we need to do, which I think I have done in the main. All the answers are within what you've pretty much said. The answers are all here, but I just feel like we've just got so much exposure to so many different things, particularly through social media.
Speaker 3:And you've got this expert and that expert and another expert. They're all coming from different angles. Actually, there's just probably those five basic principles and I just feel like we're always looking for, oh, what's the magic one? Or is it collagen? Is it this?
Speaker 3:Could that make a difference? I used to focus on things that would have made such a minuscule difference. I remember, no I won't admit it actually, it was quite embarrassing. You know the Alc Octagon days, I was measuring so precisely and I would like, instead of kind of, I feel a bit hungry, so I'd just have some chewing gum and think, I'm all right, chewing gum. I'd get through packs of chewing gum.
Speaker 3:I'd hear say to me, Oh, there's calories in chewing gum. I'm like, No, I'm not swallowing it. But there was like extra calories. And I remember fixating on that actually such a tiny, tiny thing. And I think once I left those kind of smaller things alone and focused on sleep, that's been a big thing, getting good quality sleep.
Speaker 3:Hydration, that's another big thing. And then just also having just some strategies because it's not always gonna be perfect and there's gonna be days where you just can't do the measure and you can't make good choices. So almost have some backup things so that on those days, it happened to me last week and my mother-in-law was in hospital and we hadn't eaten and we've got back late and you know just so easy to just go to McDonald's. Was like no there's got to be you know but I've got things at home that I could just have really quickly. Like you just said it might not be perfect but it's something that you know is going to fill you up.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, that would be, yeah, the other thing I would add to that.
Speaker 2:Just because I'm gonna get kicked out of this building soon. Someone just asked a really good question. It was sort of gonna be the point of what I was gonna get into, but the conversation segue because it always does with me. Goddamn my ADHD brain. It's great for talking nonsense for an hour, not so great for staying on point.
Speaker 2:So one of the things there is that how would you detect so much stuff out there, right? Really, really simple, like three things to look for, right? One is they try and blame all of the problems that you have, fat loss on one thing. So if they start talking about, oh, it's just your hormones. If they try and blame one macronutrient, if they try and blame, it's just your meal timing.
Speaker 2:If they try and say, do this one type of exercise, right? You know, even though we followed flexible diet and we talked about tracking, none of us here of, like, of me and Scott or I in particular today haven't said, oh, this is, you know, none of the other approaches work. Right? We try and understand why they work. So that's the first thing is when people try and sell you something that is gonna is like blaming something, there's a very clear bad guy.
Speaker 2:Right? The second thing that it is is that and the reason for that is because what they're trying to do is they're trying to shift personal responsibility away from you and needing to focus on your own education and working on yourself and your habits habits and your stress onto something else. It's easier to do that. That's why it appeals to us as humans. Right?
Speaker 2:It's easy to go, oh, it's not me. It's not my relationship with food. It's not you know, I'm not suggesting these aren't all valid concerns and they're not difficult to deal with. But by blaming something else, it translocates that need to take control for yourself away from you. It's actually disempowering, not empowering.
Speaker 2:People just don't realize it. So that's the first thing. Second thing is timeframes. Do this and it and not all of these things come in conjunction. Do this and you lose this amount in this amount of time.
Speaker 2:And the third thing is really, and it's really difficult with things like diarrhea of the CEO and all that kind of nonsense is when you get people on there who are like the glucose goddess. From what I've just said before, it should really just highlight a point where it's like, right, they're blaming glucose for all of this stuff or when people start blaming carbs. Well, this comes down to, like, an understanding that the more social media followers somebody probably has, the less they probably know about nutrition for that reason. Like, you know, I have I've got a mediocre, yeah, number of collagen post about collagen. Right?
Speaker 2:And again, you know, there's certain supplements that may or may not be beneficial with all that kind of stuff, and that's a slightly different thing. But when they're trying to say that, like, collagen then causes fat loss and it does this and it does that and it does the other. When people try and say, like, one thing will solve all of your problems, that's usually a big indicator. But the third thing is, like, if you see someone and there are exceptions to this, but like generally speaking, if you see someone who's on like diary of a CEO or something of that ilk, right, then try to treat that with a pinch of salt. You know?
Speaker 2:And again, what I would say about what's fostering very well, typically anyway, is that, like, the people who've got involved in this project, the people who aren't gonna aren't in the business of, like, selling you something. Like, and me personally, I'm here because I wanna help people. Right? You guys, as lovely as you are and as small a fee as Scott will give me for today. Like, you guys don't pay my bills.
Speaker 2:I've got nothing invested in this. I don't want you as clients. I don't want you to sign up for my fat loss program. I don't want you to buy my supplements. I don't want to come into performance lab.
Speaker 2:I mean, you want to buy someone's a present, we do gift vouchers, hard sell. But like, the point I'm trying to make is that, you know, everyone has gotta make, you know, people have to make money, but all the right advice you need out there is is basically free. So if it's like anyone who's a coach or trying to do rapid stuff like that. Try and just put it through a filter, you know, of like, what what is it that these, what is it for them for me to absorb this content, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I guess
Speaker 3:I would say you don't even need to go looking for it. You just gotta listen to Doctor Scott.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I to be honest with you, in of like health influences and stuff now, I just I just don't interact with it anymore. I get so angry at it because I've I've thought about it for long. I've felt the battles for so long, and it felt like we were winning for a while. I get so because of the TikTok thing and fifteen second content, and I just get so disheartened with it.
Speaker 2:And to be honest with you, there's better science communicators out there who can do this, guys like, you know, like Layne Norton who can come across as a bit of a douche, but he talks about this stuff a bit more objectively.
Speaker 3:Have you seen that one today from the guy who we heard from? Was it Doctor. Ritchie? He was calling somebody out on their collagen post who had themselves as an expert and he's just called her out on it and just basically put all the science behind it and it's just really interesting. He was saying it's probably less the collagen, more the fact that she's having more protein.
Speaker 2:Was that, was that Richie Kirwin? Richie Kirwin?
Speaker 3:The guy we've had on here. Yeah. It was really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. If it's who I think is, yeah, he's very good. And so like, yeah, it's hard to say, cause I could just be bashing you, but as well, one of the things I would go away and encourage people to think about is like when people say the word expert, what does an expert actually mean? To me, it comes down to three things.
Speaker 2:One, they've got to have a genuine credential or understanding of the actual science, not for everybody. Right? So for example, there's like doctor Fong who's an idiot. That education has to be within the specific area of interest. The second thing is they need to probably be like invited speakers to conferences on such things as of weight loss and diabetes, etcetera, etcetera, or at least be well regarded by people in that space.
Speaker 2:And the third thing is that they should probably also have experience of actually helping people, like meaningfully from a coaching where they can show sustainable long term results and have people vouch for them. Not I lost seven pounds in two weeks. I mean, I lost 30 pounds in twelve months, and it stayed off for, like, years, you know? Like, you know, it's those three things. It's like, what they know, their experience, and how they're held within regard within the specific community.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Rather than You
Speaker 1:know what's interesting to me is that, Donna, like you said, I'm probably saying that you can just kind of tune out of all this stuff, follow the basics. Like like Lyle McDonald who Paul knows as well. This guy's been in the industry for, like, since the nineties. Everyone hates him because he used to just call people out for their nonsense. He didn't care.
Speaker 1:And there he was always talking about this group of kind of nutrition influencers who will promote themselves because it gives them speaking gigs or makes them money, but they still won't tell each other they're not quite saying the truth in some of their things. And he was saying he doesn't care about that. He doesn't care about making friends. He just calls them out. And he always says in his group, like, just go and watch memes and follow the basics, which is, you know, obviously fair enough.
Speaker 1:But recently, and this is probably a good one, is that one of the number one researchers in protein, or at least, like, volume wise, is a guy called doctor Stu Phillips. But weirdly, recently, he's been coming out like against protein, and he's coming out against protein in the sense he says there's no need to eat more than 1.6 pounds per kilo period. Nobody else needs to eat any more than that ever. And all of the other researchers and I was saying, well, mate, I know we all, like, well respected here, but I think you're taking this kind of, like, anti approach to be getting getting attention on social media, which is getting a lot of attention on it. And a lot of people are saying, you can't just say that's an absolute amount because of the research you've actually done shows there are benefits to going more than that.
Speaker 1:So, again, even with the world's best experts, there's still humans who want attention and want to, you know, get some kind of angle. And that's kind of like like that's why I like Lyle MacDonald and Paul is like, they just pull out and go fuck that. Not playing that game. I'm just saying it how it is. And if you don't like it
Speaker 2:Have you have you ever heard of the Nobel disease before I've gotta go? You know, everyone heard of Nobel disease? So there's this real propensity for people who've won a Nobel Prize in a specific field to just go off the reservation and start talking nonsense in other areas. It's really interesting some of the stuff you come up with. Like, these people who are, like, well respected, like physicists, scientists, you know, from biologists and stuff.
Speaker 2:They come up with these amazing theories, win a Nobel Prize, and then they just go off the reservation mentally, which just goes to show that, like, all human beings past a certain point, if you're getting up hype enough experience, you can become almost, like, get, like, a god complex with it. So that's something that, like, yeah, be really cautious cautious with as well is, like, I talk about things in a sort of passionate way, but I would always hope that there's almost, like, a little bit of certain things that, like, a hesitation around or I'll try and caveat things or nuance things. So, like, for example, with Scott saying with the Stuart Phillips things, it's not like, oh, here's the threshold. It's like, well, are there potential areas where there might be benefits or more? Like, even wound healing stuff like that, then yes.
Speaker 2:So, again, you know, there's always context to stuff. But, yeah, I saw that the other day because a few people have called him out on it. So, yeah, even within the expertise field, it can be a bit of a minefield. So what you what I would always suggest is trying to do is sort of, like, get enough of those people in a ballpark of experts where you can actually follow the discourse and disagreement around them as well. So if there is disagreement, like, how civil is that disagreement and what makes, you know, what makes kind of logical sense within the framework that we've just described there of, like, are they trying to do a quick sell?
Speaker 2:Do you think they're just being too absolutist? Being an absolutist is a kinda key one for me. Like, this is the answer type thing. Right, folks. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2:I need to rush off because I've just been kicked out of my building. I'm gonna try not to get run over on Oxford Street. But, yeah, hopefully I'll hopefully, I'll be back back to speak to you guys soon. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Happy days. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it, man.
Speaker 2:Alright, guys. Appreciate you. Wish I had more time. Sorry.
Speaker 1:No worries. No worries.
Speaker 2:Bye. Bye bye bye. Bye.
Speaker 1:Look, guys. Doctor b's back. Back in good form. Back as always. You know?
Speaker 3:God. Exhausted.
Speaker 1:Boom with the information. But, yeah, no. You the your questions are, like, I mean, how do you know who's telling the truth in all eyes? Such a good question. And when I when I've had chats with Nick Wareham from Cambridge, he's probably, like, in terms of ranking, the highest ranking scientist we've ever had on you.
Speaker 1:And he's probably the most highly respect like, when I spoke to Richie Kewan, who works with Hercules, he was like holy shit, you work with Nick Wareham, like, can I speak to him? So, that's the type of level he's at. And if you guys remember the chat with Nick Wareham, he was very like realistic with his advice. He wasn't saying crazy things. He was kind of like, guys, like, you know, there's no magic things, you know.
Speaker 1:He wasn't trying to claim some crazy science and that and when I speak to him a lot, he always says what the research says is real life is often worse in results. So, for example, the research says when you put people into a lab and basically track everything that they eat after twelve weeks. They wanted to find out if like a deficit with higher fat or a deficit with higher carb would cause more fat gain or less fat gain, right? Basically, lower fat diet with the same calories and protein was just a bit better than carbs after twelve weeks. And this was like every single day tracked, and they didn't live, they were in a metabolic ward.
Speaker 1:He was like, do you honestly think that's gonna make a difference in real life? You think that like 3% difference makes a difference in our lives, me, all of us who has a different day all the time? Like of course not. So if someone runs away with our research, all lower fats better than lower carbs, so everyone should go lower fat. It's like a stupid outcome or a stupid view of the science.
Speaker 1:Do you know I mean? Very, think about it.
Speaker 3:And also, think the thing I've learned over the years is spend your time elsewhere on things that are gonna actually get you results. So I used to, you know, follow a lot of these people and try and look for that magic formula or magic answer because I think everyone's searching for something that just sounds a little bit, I don't know, sexier, but it just comes down to a lot of basics. And I think when I changed my shift to trying to look for whatever this answer was and actually just went to the basics, I got much better results and just didn't sweat all the small stuff, just look at the bigger stuff and not made a big difference. Like I have set meals that I know if I'm wanting to kind of just get a bit more back on track, I'll just start tracking again. And it's really boring, but I'll just probably have the same sort of meals on repeat because I just get decision fatigue.
Speaker 3:When I try and create something different, that's when I'm going go over on calories. So, yeah, just like getting back to basics really.
Speaker 1:100%. Like, and also like, why do we want to spend our hours worrying about all of these people saying loads of different things when just follow the basics and you don't have to worry about any of it. No. Really. You know, there is a part of it where it's more complicated, know.
Speaker 1:There's when we there's a group, for example, there's groups like people with ADHD, people who have struggled with obesity long long time ago.
Speaker 3:Scott, was diagnosed last night. I didn't realise, I thought all these things, no not genuinely, but there was a chat going on last night I just thought that was just my weird behaviours and then other people were typing things. Was going I thought I was the only person who did that. So I'm convinced now that I'm ADHD.
Speaker 1:But imagine now we removed these labels, right? There's no label ADHD. We're just a bit frantic. The world we live in
Speaker 3:You were diagnosed as well, did you realise?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I have realised, yeah. I mean my friends say I'm autistic and I'm like mate, shut up. Like you know, like it think like these people think that hyper focus or like you know, you get into your things is like, oh, you got it's like so much labels now. But I think
Speaker 3:it's Yes. The problem with
Speaker 4:labels though, isn't it? Is that you think you've met one, you know them all? And there's a lot of nuances within those spectrums, isn't it? That you have to be aware of. It can be helpful to know yourself better, but then for people to assume, oh, I I met someone with ADHD once, and they were like this, so that you must be like that too.
Speaker 4:That's I think where it gets a bit tricky. I'm looking forward to Ryan's talk. I hope that's being be be rescheduled.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. A 100%. Like, I spoke to Ryan a lot about the ADHD stuff, you know, and like, he's in a very, like, popular market right now, know, like it's like Oh yeah. And you know, what you can essentially, everyone could pass an ADHD test based on just the world we live in. It is very crazy, like TikTok videos, Instagram.
Speaker 1:Our brains are crazy. Emails, new AIs coming out. Like, our minds are completely like, everything is so kind of scattered. But, yeah, like, it's important that if you do have like some traits of it, not to box yourself in as well. Like, oh, no, I must struggle with x y zed because I know I've got one of them.
Speaker 1:I think like we are probably a mix of a lot of different things. And I think it's gonna get so hard to diagnose if it gets more strict. As Same with PCOS, right? That's now been changed to PMOS. Because they were saying PCOS is you need cysts on your ovaries.
Speaker 1:But actually most people didn't have cysts on your ovaries, and now it's PMOS. We're in the early days, you know. I have two children with ASD and they chalk and cheese. Now, also like our traditional view of ADHD is someone super loud, crazy, like just all of the shop loud, but not the quiet people. You know, that's like another thing people think ADHD is like my my friend, like, Kieran Lee, Azerbaijan will tell you he is crazy, like, but definitely got ADHD, but can't focus on anything.
Speaker 1:I think
Speaker 3:You actually said you've got two children then, Scott. I didn't realize you were reading that. I was like, what's happened in the last seven years?
Speaker 1:No. No. I'm so so
Speaker 2:lucky. Sorry.
Speaker 3:I didn't realize it. I'm just seeing it. It's the chat.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's the chat. Yeah. Everyone is the chat.
Speaker 3:Me and the kids
Speaker 1:are quiet. Yeah, sorry. So I have to say, reading the comment out, Charlotte says, me and my kids are all autistic, not a label, professional diagnosis. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Speaker 1:Like, I think that in terms of these diagnosis, it's important that we treat them seriously, because I think a lot of people will go around saying they're a bit autistic or whatever, and I don't know, I feel like when you're truly autistic and you have that diagnosis, it's a serious thing. Does that make sense? A lot of people throw in these words all around the internet and it's definitely crazy.
Speaker 4:I actually think it's a bit like probably like ten years ago when everyone said, oh that's my, you know, I like my pen straight on my desk, that's my OCD. Think it's gone from that OCD being the thing that everybody can be like, oh I am a bit like that. And now it's ADHD, is, is the thing that people like, oh well I forget things so I must be ADHD. And actually that is quite harmful for those with diagnoses who have fought really hard to get them in the first place. And same for the OCD people, it was never about having their pens lined up.
Speaker 4:Was like compulsions and you know, all sorts of you know.
Speaker 1:Well, also look what happens, Look what happens to services. Now, like, the ADHD services are all maxed out. And what about the people with, like, debilitating ADHD? They they get their life will change if they get the medication. And then some people are won't change at all.
Speaker 1:Maybe a tiny bit. And I think remember with the glucose monitors, people started non diabetics started taking them because Zoe told them to. And then the actual diabetics didn't have the companies were running out of the tech so they couldn't get them. So then, like, they were running out. And I'm sure with, like, the support people really need, this is it should be reserved really to those most in need first of all.
Speaker 1:But and it's the same with the GLP ones. Like, luckily, there's a really good podcast called Business Wars, and it talks about Ozempic versus, you know, the other companies. And like, in The US, they basically ran out of the compound. So then they have to have these pharmacies create a variant of semaglutide, and then these they were legally allowed to sell it, but everyone was trying to buy on the black market and taking all the ingredients away from the actual people who needed it. So all of this demand was actually not coming from the people that really needed it.
Speaker 1:It was coming from people who wanted to lose 10 pounds
Speaker 3:That was similar to the hormone replacement therapy, kind of around the time of Divina's kind of documentary, and there was a massive surge, and again, so much demand and then people who genuinely needed it, there wasn't the prescriptions there because it just created this kind of everybody thinking, I need it, I need HRT. So it's really kind of careless and irresponsible of influencers or wherever it might come from because it does create a lot of, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's how we are like humans, just fucking just like once the humans get together in a crowd and go forth, like literally mindless, we're just rageous. You know, on terms
Speaker 3:of Toilet rolls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, toilet rolls. All sorts of stuff we do is like crazy. But in terms of comments and influences, you know, there was a post that Louise did about GLP-one. Some people were not happy about it, and I think she was not right to say what she said. And then they think it comes from her experience, which very is complete opposite, you know.
Speaker 1:But many conversations with Louise in the past where she says, well, I wouldn't like this in terms of like website or app feature or whatever. But Louise, the normal people are not you. So you are not the target audience. So we can't go off your views and things because it's completely different. But a lot of influencers or a lot of people have got this view of GLP-1s as bad.
Speaker 1:And, like, people want it to be bad because they don't like the fact that there's something now that can help people, and it's not as hard as it was back in the day. Same with software engineers, people who'd code in, right? They have been learning to code all of their life, right? And now AIs come and can do code 100 times quicker than them and better, and you have to accept it or you're buggered. And they've been my friend has been fighting against this saying, he'll never be good as me.
Speaker 1:I hate it. And now he's lost his job. It's way better than him, and he didn't accept reality, you know? And there's always gonna be people, like, against new tech as well. What things are worth tracking and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I don't know if you guys you guys read the book on the Pareto Principle yet? Have we done that for Book Club?
Speaker 3:Where is Book Club?
Speaker 1:Why did
Speaker 3:you not bring it back? I love Book That's where I learned some of my best things were learned. Yay. You know about habits, atomic habits.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The best things I've learned around this sort of stuff came from that book. That was so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah I know, we It's will still a do it club.
Speaker 3:I just want a social, you can tell.
Speaker 1:Yeah you just want to have a chat Don, that's all you want to do. We miss a chat about books. Books will just give us a lot of talking points.
Speaker 3:But also it might give somebody else a bit of information and it might be helpful because if somebody had said some things to me seven years ago, you know what mean? It's took me a long time Jesus, I'm 50, you know, it's took me many many years and I wish somebody had given me some of that kind of advice kind of twenty years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 3:Think I my nan eating cottage cheese like
Speaker 4:it
Speaker 3:was going out of fashion, that was probably thirty years ago and I just thought, oh how grim. What did she know then that we now know about cottage cheese? I mean now it's like you can't go anywhere without somebody doing a cottage cheese recipe. She was like the original influencer.
Speaker 1:Damn right, damn right. Clay mentioned in there the social in Cardiff. I'm thinking of doing some my friends owns a gym in Cardiff, a lot of space. Maybe doing, like, a workshop on basics strength. So like you're saying, shower to track, we can do basic strengths.
Speaker 1:Really, let's go through things safely. Have a fun day. Turtles versus pirates, maybe, you know, some stuff like that. And I don't know what else. Maybe if you'll get a few people to do some talks.
Speaker 1:Maybe nothing to just like probably depends on the weather. See what we can do there, but we make it a full day. But we'll have full access to the area. It's really cool. Menopause and Agisty by Helen Wall.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That one, Claire. Yeah. That book. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We will do we will do it. Let's do that book next, and then there's a book about the Pareto that I wanna for you guys to
Speaker 3:Don't set one, Scott. The the one?
Speaker 1:The Pareto principle. The story of the Pareto principle is, like, I came across this principle a long time ago, and then I went to this like business mastermind, whatever you call them, like probably ten years ago, and there was this mathematician guy who was the owner of the business. He's very successful, and he was the first guy to crack Google AdWords back in the day. So like when you see ads on Google, there's like five words and in the description. And he figured out, and he said his story is that he was walking in the park working on a maths problem, and some girl came up to him and said like, oh you're working on a maths problem and you should keep working on it because it's gonna be huge.
Speaker 1:And then he said a year later he had his breakthrough, Pareto principle breakthrough where he realized something mathematical was Pareto. And what it means is like 20% of the 20% of actions deliver 80% of the results. Now, the book talks about how this applies to everything. So I'm just gonna give you a few examples. And when you when you realize this, every action you do, you wanna make sure it's one of the actions that actually delivers that big punch, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So, you can track your you can take collagen. It's gonna give you 1%. If you track your calories, that's gonna give you 50% because it's fucking huge. Here's a few examples. So, it's basically a power law.
Speaker 1:Something small equals something big. 5% of patients account for 50% of all healthcare spending in The US. 1% of the population commits the majority of violent crime. A famous Swedish study found 1% of people accounted for 63% of violent convictions. 80% of traffic flows through around 20% of the roads.
Speaker 1:Roughly 20% of the words in a language account for 80% of everyday usage. Spotify, top 1% of artists capture around 90% of streams. In beer, 20% of drinkers consume over 80% of the alcohol. Your phone, you likely use 20% of your apps 80% of the time. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah,
Speaker 3:big time. Big time. Think there's a similar thing in Atomic Habits, wasn't there? Similar. Is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. 20% of wardrobe and 80% of the time. Yeah. This applies everywhere in your life. Like, so it works in maths.
Speaker 1:It worked in Google AdWords. It works in what I've just mentioned there. I even figured out that 20% of parrot photos and 80% of parrot photos is around 20% of the parrot breeds. It's not always like exact, you know, but it's like a power law. And so if if 1% of people are doing the serious crime, violent crime, 63 of the time, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:My friend was a firefighter, and he said he had the same people calling out to firefighters all the time. So it probably ain't the same with firefighters. GPs will tell you they see the same people every week over and over and over. So what does this actually mean for our life? Well, Parrot Pal was founded on that principle of cutting everything out and focusing on just what matters, which is calories, protein steps, and really training, you know.
Speaker 1:You can literally forget everything else. So Charlotte, to your point, that is 95% of the work, and it's probably 1% of the actual actions you could take. If you think about everything you could do for your health, that is a tiny four things. Sleep, yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't think you can underestimate sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, know. It's like people are saying like people always look for performance enhancement. They're like, I want to work better tomorrow. I want to be at my peak tomorrow. It's like, yeah, sleep is the best performance enhancer you'd ever have.
Speaker 1:So like, one more hour. There's loads of stuff like that. And I think once it clicks, it will click. And I have to come across this principle many times for it to click. Just seeing the time for going, taking my tickets, think.
Speaker 1:No worries, no worries. So we do Book Club, we'll come back. Okay. For the chat. I will see you
Speaker 3:all So you're going to reintroduce Book Club, yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. After this challenge is done, there's a lot of, like, behind the scenes business y things we're doing that we need to straighten out, get done, and then we will move forward in a more unified way.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, what happens is Parroturk, like, it's a combined company, and then we're taking on investment, and we're going to be able to hire more people. We're going to be able to bring Louise and Ryan back into the fold in their capacities of helping with certain things. And then we'll be able to bring in more experts on a more frequent basis, and then we'll have a, like, roadmap of things to do. So once that's all done, we'll be doing normal stuff, like more ang more community stuff. Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Good stuff. Yeah. But, yeah. Fantastic.
Speaker 1:For joining in, guys.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 1:Anyways, have a good night. Yeah. Gay sleeping.
Speaker 3:Bye.