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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, welcome back to the podcast. Very exciting episode today. So yesterday I was in Cambridge for the first time which is a beautiful city full of one of the brilliant minds in the world in England and for you American listeners and not Cambridge and Boston I believe that is and it was a jam packed day speaking to a lot of people in health and global health and population health and stuff like that about Parapal and how they see it as a tool, a companion that's gonna help global weight management. So early start in the morning, but what was really interesting is in the afternoon two of the global experts in population health obesity and energy expenditure loved what PowerPow was doing. Was impressed by the numbers, how many people were helping, and went to the chat.
Speaker 1:So we sat down with them and spoke for hours, okay. And the main things that came up and I've been reinforcing here for you guys, and it's just to really reinforce the message of Parapal is speaking facts, is we spoke about the philosophy, the research behind what Parapal is doing and how we're simplifying the technology and they agreed with all of the major points. The leading expert in energy expenditure was saying and the lead researcher in like population health and obesity were saying and they've said this to the government and stuff that workouts do not help much with fat loss. We have said this time and time again guys and it's even worked. The nail is in the coffin.
Speaker 1:The lead researcher, one of the leading experts in the world on energy expenditure even said, if you burn 2,000 calories a day, okay, so that's 14,000 a week, You add in a couple of workouts, two or three workouts, or even four workouts to that week, you would assume that that week you would burn more than 2,000 calories a day. Maybe on the workout you burn 2,400 calories those days, so net weekly calorie energy expenditure is higher. Right? That's what people assume. What actually happens?
Speaker 1:There is no gain. You still net burn 2,000 calories a day on average over the week because on the workout days you might burn a bit more, but on the other the days you don't work out you you you burn less. The energy is compensated. The body down regulates stuff. You've you've worked it out, is tired, it needs recovery, it slows down.
Speaker 1:Okay, so like I've mentioned in previous studies and there's more and more research coming out on this now, doing workouts for fat loss is foolish. It's like giving you an extra apple a day if that in terms of calories allowance. It's not something you should focus on. I have the same message all the time. Scott, why can't I eat back the calories I've burned through exercise?
Speaker 1:Because you didn't net burn those calories over the week. What you're doing is two things wrong. You're assuming the calorie tracker is accurate, which is not up to 91% inaccurate overestimated estimation. So if you if it says you burn 500 calories, you've probably burned 250 calories from the exercise. Now you're gonna eat 500 calories, but that two fifty actually burned from 250 calories you've burned from the exercise isn't net burned throughout the week.
Speaker 1:So then you're eating 500 calories for workout that you haven't burned more in as a net burn over the week. Does that make sense? So as you can see, if you go down this path which is the path that the original tracking apps put in by mistake they still haven't corrected them, it is so frustrating that new apps have come out and the old apps by default have calories burned through exercise, you eat it back. They don't understand this fundamental truth. But this is what the leading experts have been working on and it's in their face.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, but you know what the government don't like it. People don't like it when you say exercise doesn't help with fat loss. It's uncomfortable. It's always what the guidance has been saying. Okay.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to exercise for health benefits and other stuff, amazing. Do exercise for that. That's important, but don't do exercise expecting you're gonna burn more fat, you can eat back calories. Please, please, please. Just speaking to them and having this kind of confirmation just makes it even more important to get a message back to you guys.
Speaker 1:We spoke about other things as well. The importance of looking at fat loss on our weight loss I've spoke about this a lot. One of the problems we have in the weight management industry is that we're after fat loss without losing muscle mass, but there's no easy and cheap way to track our muscle mass and body fat percentage. So that's why we use the weighing scale as a proxy for that. So if you're hitting your protein target, your calorie deficit isn't severe, and we've got your weight data, we can assume once the water weight is dropped off that most of that weight is going to be fat because you're kind of hitting the big things.
Speaker 1:You put it in protein, you're not too severe, and obviously if you do resistance training once or twice a week, that's gonna be even better and you might even gain muscle. But a matter of fact is that we still don't have the visibility on accurate readings of is your muscle mass going up and down and is the weight you're losing mostly fat or not. So we have to trust that you're hitting those numbers and we know that the studies that do hit those numbers, fat mass is lost mainly and muscle mass is sustained. So there's a big talk now about the GLP one drugs. They cause people to eat super low calories because appetite is low and as a result the protein intake was even lower.
Speaker 1:So some people are eating like twenty thirty grams of protein a day and that's causing severe muscle loss. So in the studies on the GLP one drugs, okay, they're losing 10 kilos of fat but they're also losing alongside about three kilos of fat. Sorry, muscle. You don't want to lose. You know, you should never trade 10 kilos of fat and then lose three kilos of muscle at the same time.
Speaker 1:And this is some another point they were in they were saying. Would you accept if I if I said to you now, do wanna lose 10 kilograms? And you go, yeah, I wanna lose 10 kilograms. I said, okay, five kilos of that is fat and five kilos is muscle. Would you accept the deal?
Speaker 1:Now, if you know the importance of healthy metabolic health and muscle retention, would say absolutely not. Would I ever lose muscle mass for five kilos of fat loss? Because muscle is much harder to build, muscle keeps us healthy, muscle keeps your body moving functioning, even cognition. Long term health. If you maintain muscle mass, far more likely to be healthy into your older years.
Speaker 1:Okay? So you don't accept that deal. You don't even wanna accept losing two kilograms of muscle for 10 kilograms. You don't wanna lose any Maybe one kilogram for nine kilogram even then. Even then.
Speaker 1:Okay. So he was saying this is the point. We need to lose fat not weight. Stop worrying about weight loss. It's great you could lose weight, but where is it coming from?
Speaker 1:And again, this is a proper course. We use daily weigh ins with a weekly average, looked over long periods of time. We look at your protein intake. We look at your calorie intake. We look at your step count.
Speaker 1:We can determine really from our clever algorithms in the background whether you're losing really mainly fat or muscle. You know? So we need importantly to lose that. So, again, the importance of forks and protein, moderate calorie deficit, not too much, any steps in, all this stuff's gonna help a lot with muscle retention. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's one of the most important parts. When it comes to tracking body fat percentage or muscle, there is technology. Cambridge Uni, they they built a tool, a year ago that is starting to replicate the DEXA scan through your phone. DEXA scan costs about a thousand dollars per person to do it, so it's really, really expensive and obviously not possible for everyone to do. But luckily I think in another year or two we'll probably have the technology to estimate your body fat percentage close enough clinically that it means something.
Speaker 1:The weighing scales you buy that tell you your body fat percentage through a signal going up, they're unreliable because of different hydration status, salt, what you've eaten, stuff like that. Obviously, if you were in a lab and you could control all the variables like you have exactly two liters of water and all the diet was taken care of, it might be useful. But because of reality, we're eating differently socially, the sun is out, you might go for a bottle of wine or whatever, It's not really it doesn't play out like that because it's different every day. It's highly variable. So that's another thing to think about.
Speaker 1:So when that tool comes out of course the app will be the first thing to have in and hopefully we're going to be working on some clinical trials with the uni. Early talks, nothing confirmed of course and just nice to chat to leading experts on how we can help and how we can bring in some of this data and see what's going to work and stuff. Exciting day all around in terms of speaking and just chatting about research. And we spoke as well about the Japanese walking method, you know, three minutes normal walk in with three minutes at a pushed pace where you lose your breath a bit. Really good tool for you guys if you're not going to the gym and you want to increase the intensity of your walks and get a bit more benefit in terms of muscle retention, ligaments and stuff, very good strategy.
Speaker 1:Three minutes normal, three minutes pushed pace. You do that for fifteen minutes, three times a day, happy days. And another thing he mentioned, the leading expert in energy expenditure, he said the amount of walking, the amount of steps you have to do per day for the big drop in all cause mortality, cardiovascular risk, diabetes risk is not much. He says if you're doing two to three ks steps a day and you start doing five k steps a day, you have done a huge impact on your health. If you can get up to seven k steps a day, which is a sweet point and which is why I mentioned seven to 10 k, that's a sweet point range to get to.
Speaker 1:He said if you get a seven k, which is about forty five minutes of walking day roughly. Okay. So you split that fifteen minutes in the morning, 15 in the afternoon, fifteen after work or in the evening, it's happy days. If you do that, you make a huge improvement in your health. And he talks about the power law.
Speaker 1:He talks about like going from two to seven brings you more benefits than going from seven to 15. Okay. There's a there's a disproportional effect of doing the fundamental benefits at the start. This works again in our approach to nutrition. If you do the calorie deficit, protein targeting steps, that is the majority of the work you need to do to improve your weight loss and to well, specifically fat loss, improve your health and get somewhere you're proud of as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, you do those three things. The rest is noise. It's the same as steps. Get to 7,000 if you want to do more great, but it's it's noise It was your health, you know. You go to the gym.
Speaker 1:Okay? You do one set with decent amount of weight to challenge in, and you move on to another set, another exercises. You do one set per body part. If you do two or three sets, that's just additional noise. You get in 60 to 80% of the benefit of the three sets in the first in the first set.
Speaker 1:This principle applies to everything. Everything. So it's the same with protein as well, that's why the target you're given is to the point where the anymore is diminishing returns. There is research on higher protein intakes than you guys have been given in the app, but they are diminishing returns. Maybe for an elite athlete it's worth pushing to those numbers, but for me and you, the everyday person, we don't need to push to those numbers.
Speaker 1:Okay? We're getting the majority of the results from there. Anything else is just noise. So cut the noise out, focus on the minimal thing we got to do, which isn't to say we're lazy, isn't to say that's bad, is to say what's the minimal thing I have to do to get my health in good order so I can enjoy my life to the maximum, be a good example to my kids, simple foundational stuff. This is repeatable across the nation.
Speaker 1:Less work to 7,000 steps a day. Less work to eat in a good amount of calories, not too severe, but a good amount to sustain our days, give us energy, but also subtle fat loss over time. Let's make sure our protein intake is there so we're not losing muscle mass. But to ensure muscle mass isn't lost, you're gonna have stimulate the muscles. Walking can stimulate the muscles, legs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But really when you got upper body stuff you want to maybe add in one workout a week, one set per body part. We can all do this. This is fifteen to twenty minutes a day of a week on doing some strength workouts. You might wanna do two lower body upper body, split it up. But that's all we gotta do.
Speaker 1:This is amazing. This is if the nation did this, we'd all be in a far better place. Okay? So that's the update. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was just good to kind of get that confirmation as well. And we're on the right track in the philosophies, guys, so just to be sure you are following something that is backed by global experts, is something they're really impressed with, is something they wish was probably explored across the nation, it would help the entire nation. So you guys go and spread the message of the fundamentals, the power laws. Don't overcomplicate stuff. Ignore the noise, and you will get to the place you want to get to.
Speaker 1:And I finished the day in Cambridge doing a talk to the MBA students. Loads of amazing students there. There was two other amazing speakers as well. Was one guy, his business called PETA, so for anyone listening, parents got Parkinson's or someone you know has got Parkinson's, it's a device to keep them keep them walking. So when they freeze, the device kicks in and it keeps them walking.
Speaker 1:Super, super interesting, amazing story, so check that out. And the other guy, Michael, super successful entrepreneur, data, AI, all his stuff, so exciting stuff to come in the AI world, that's for sure. And yeah, overall amazing day. Cambridge is a fascinating place. Went to a pub where the the two guys that discovered DNA kind of celebrated that fact, and then you go in this pub and they were they were sitting there many many many years ago, and then you got the RAF meeting point, you go to the back, and the RAF guys in World War two would write their team names and names at the top of the ceiling and walls, and you can still see it today in case they didn't come back.
Speaker 1:You know? What fascinating history. What an incredible place. But yeah. So back to what you should do today.
Speaker 1:Listen. It's the fundamentals, guys. If you're not hitting seven seven seven thousand steps a day, make that your target today. Even if you've never hit it or you hit more, just 7,000 hit it today. Protein, calories, crack on with your day, enjoy the rest of your time, ignore the noise, use up energy you would have wasted on thinking about all this problematic stuff with dieting, use it for other stuff.
Speaker 1:Your social life, parenting, if you're not a parent you work, working on your personal development, doing whatever. Use that energy you would have wasted on the noise, on something more practical and I hope you have a good day. Speak to you soon.