Theresa (00:00.198)

All right. Welcome to the bio energetic view. I'm your host, Teresa Piela joined as always by Jay Feldman and Mike Fave. And I'm very excited about the clips today. I think they're some of our best and we're to be talking more about the sugar diet. That's been taking up a lot of space online, especially Cole Robinson's interesting approach and some more nuance around insulin sensitivity while on the sugar diet. So

Let's get started with some of these clips from around the internet. And brace yourself, everyone. What's that?

Jay

Well, I just wanted to throw a couple of disclaimers out here. First one, Brennan, who hasn't seen Cole's clips before, they're a little intense, very different from, from, you know, what you might be used to on this channel. So just be ready. He yells a lot and it's something that I think he can kind of like he it's, it's kind of a character he plays it's, but yeah, so just be aware of that. And, and then also separately, like just a bit of an introduction here. So Cole was really the one who introduced the idea of the sugar diet.

Prior to that, there was the honey diet, there was the fruit till noon diet and some of these other variations, but he really popularized the sugar diet and got Mark Bell on board. But then he recently had a bit of a flip in his perspective where he's no longer advocating for the sugar diet so much. He's more so advocating for just a general low fat diet and he's changed his tune in terms of what he views as the optimal approach for losing weight. So that's what we'll be talking about with these clips. And the first ones are showing his new

The first ones we're looking at his new approach and then we'll look back at what he was saying before about the sugar diet.

Theresa (01:41.098)

and definitely take a deep breath if you're feeling rushed or a little bit dysregulated, just to embrace yourself. So here we go.

Cole Robinson

Hey!

Why do you lose weight like crazy? In 90s low fat diet you fat peg, it's simple. You just got the fat on your diet. I don't give a s*** what you eat. And if you're a meat head, if you're a meat head, you can run the fat through the floor and still have the protein wrapped up. It doesn't have to be high carb, moderate carb. I don't give a s*** about the protein and the carbs.

That's gonna be preference. What's gonna happen as you transition from a disgusting fat body into a lean body? If the protein's low, you're gonna have less muscle. If the protein's higher, you're gonna have more muscle.

Theresa

Alright Mike, when you first started consuming his videos, what was your reaction?

Mike

I think the first time I saw his videos, was like, this, is ridiculous. And then I had to watch them more and more because of the sugar diet trend. people are, you know, people are reaching out to me saying, what do you think about the sugar diet stuff? And, and, my co-host, my podcast, Ethan was telling me, you, do you have to cover the sugar diet stuff? You have to cover this honey diet stuff for months, but I didn't take it seriously at first. I didn't think that it was really going to pop off. I thought it was going to be another trend.

Especially because this is so just the way it's presented the way that Cole's going about it. Like it just didn't seem that serious to me. Then I started, you know, I realized early on he was playing a character. And so I get the character piece, but then people started really popping off with the sugar diet. A lot of people really started getting interested in the sugar diet. It started to blow out more than I thought it would, especially because when the Cole went on Mark Bell, it exploded.

Now with Cole, initially, on his podcast with Mark Bell, he seems pretty sincere overall about wanting to try to help people lose weight. And he mentions that he's playing a character in his videos. And I do think there's components of his videos that are attractive to people because he makes it simple. It's just, if you do this, you will get that. It's that simple. If you don't, if you just cut the protein, cut the fat out of your diet, you'll lose weight rapidly.

And I think people tried it and they started to lose weight pretty rapidly. We don't know what type of weight that was. We'll talk about that. And then I think that's what really launched the sugar diet to people. Like, okay, I'm seeing weight loss. It's so as simple. just eat as much sugar as I want. I don't eat protein and I don't eat fat. then this transition here though, this makes me question some things because I initially say, okay, I know this guy, he's playing a character.

I know this guy, like he doesn't get into the research, the mechanisms. He doesn't really seem to want to understand how things work. just, people lose weight when they do this thing. That's the only thing he's focused on, but it's weird that he transitioned into this, into this space from where he was before. Cause where he, like it's a, it's a turnaround. It's a rebranding with like, and then a recanting of things that he previously said as if he never said them before. this type of this set up here, this change here.

makes me a little bit uncomfortable as far as motivations, which I don't know what they are, but it's just the switch is like, well, I never said don't go low protein. I said just, you know, keep the fat down, which is not true. And it's verifiably untrue because you can see, we'll see, you can see that in the subsequent clips and you can see that Mark Bell's podcast and you can see that in his old content. And even the video I did covering this, one of the initial clips that I show in the video was him saying,

trace protein from fruits for a hundred days, which is not very high protein intake to any capacity, which, it's, you could kind of say, well, maybe it's a small shift here, but it's not a small shift. It's a big shift. And you could, you know, he could say, instead of saying, I never said that, or I never said low protein, he could just make it. Well, you know, you probably want to have some protein with this thigh because there's some concerns. The other thing is he was trashing the idea that you lose muscle with the setup. And then now it's saying, well, if you

go low, if you go low protein, you lose muscle. And if you're high protein, you maintain your muscle. So that's also a big flip. And so again, there's a couple of things here. Did people run the diet under his watch and then they had some problems and he shifted it or was it needing a rebrand because a bunch of people got into the sphere, got too big and he didn't have control over it. The image, the sugar diet wasn't his image anymore. It was somebody else's image and he wanted to have his own.

Speaker 1 (06:41.698)

platform perspective, which is now the 1990s low fat diet. So for me, that's, that's what I see with this. I think it's, I don't think it's fair to the people who followed him to try to gaslight the audience. Especially when he initially came out and said like, look, cut the fat out, cut the protein out, just do the high sugar, do it for a hundred days, lose as much weight as possible. and if it was because people got injured.

doing something like that or had some problems, then I think it's better to come out and, hey, like, some people ran some issues, I'd recommend you do this instead. For me, I think that would be the better way to go about this than this weird kind of rebrand. the yelling in the camera and fat peg and the character, like, I think it's just a character. That I first saw is like, this is ridiculous, but I get it. It's like that coach you see in the movie who, like, makes you go to the gym and do your workouts and eat your diet and stuff like this.

Yeah, that tough love approach with, mean, maybe a simple, something simple people can follow, but maybe with some risks. Jay, what are some concerns with this approach? I mean, what he was making popular before, but especially now with this new idea that he's been sharing.

Jay

Well, I think, I think Mike touched on the crux of the concern, which isn't actually about the diets themselves. Um, because prior to this, uh, assuming a lot of people know, but maybe they don't. mean, Cole was advocating for a lot of fasting without any carbs. He was advocating for a low carb diet and through a similar vein. And as Mike said, the general focus, and I don't know what, I haven't watched that much of Cole's content. haven't, I didn't watch him on, you know, Mark Bell's podcast. So don't know how much he gets into the underlying physiology, but

A lot of the people talking about the sugar diet and from what I've seen from coal, it's really been focused on weight loss. And there's an inherent problem there because there's a lot of different ways that people can lose weight. And some of them lead to lasting sustainable weight loss and better health. And many of them lead to an unsustainable weight loss that's going to lead somebody to be prone to regaining weight and also dealing with health issues in the process. And that's why it is worth

Speaker 2 (08:55.754)

understanding what's going on physiologically in the process. Just looking at the scale, just looking at shifts and body composition doesn't tell us that something is going to be good or bad in the longterm. And the problem, this is something I see in the comments too. It's like, why are you trashing something that's working for weight loss? Why are you, and obviously for one, we're not trashing it. We've, think both Mike and I have had very nuanced, takes on it, describing both positives and negatives with it.

And why we would want to be concerned about it. And the reason is because it's the problem when somebody is, is trying to lose weight and they're struggling, the movement of the scale shouldn't be the central focus. And when it is, that's when you end up with approaches that work in the short term. And you might see the scale going down maybe quickly, whether it's from fasting, whether it's from very low carb dieting, whether it's from extreme amounts of exercise, whether it's from a drug, which we'll be talking about, you know, some of the GLP one agonists later that can lead to a lot of weight loss. Just because you're seeing downward movement on the scale.

And seeing improvements in markers too, because that happens when you lose weight, doesn't mean this is actually something improving your health. doesn't mean that you're going to be likely to sustain that, that weight loss in the longterm. And so it doesn't mean that it's a good approach. And I think that's really the crux of the problem. And I think that also is responsible for the kind of flip flops we've been seeing with coal and other people as well. Going from low carb to fasting to, you know,

bringing carbs in or having some sort of other extreme approach and sharing it with such conviction and not actually acknowledging what led them to take on these approaches that they no longer agree with in the first place. It's okay to change your mind. Like we want to have an open mind. It's okay if, you know, whatever view we had at one point or the diet approach we had evolves over time, that's fine. But we want to make sure that we're not making the same mistakes over and over again in that process. We're actually learning and evolving and not just jumping from one extreme to another because

We found out that a lot of people maybe had some weight loss on low carb, but they had some other negative effects. Some people didn't have weight loss and there was weight, weight regain. And so now we're just jumping to something else that we also see weight loss from. And we're just assuming that this is now going to be a good option and sharing that with thousands of people and getting them on board. And I think there's, that that's something that both Mike and I have been kind of cautioning against. So I think on the big picture side, that's the concern. And I think it's worth talking a little bit here too, about the specifics of the sugar diet versus

Speaker 2 (11:17.25)

the 1990s low fat diet and having protein, having fat, how much is ideal, whether you should be cranking the protein up for muscle maintenance and all of that. Like I do think it's worth getting into that, but I think it's important to have the broad picture in mind first. If you're dealing with low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, low energy and fatigue, joint pain, weight gain, digestive symptoms like bloating or issues with motility, brain fog, poor sleep or insomnia, hormonal imbalances.

or various low energy chronic health conditions like autoimmune conditions, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and on from there, then head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy, where you can sign up for the free energy balance mini course. In this mini course, I'll walk you through the best diet, exercise, and lifestyle strategies to resolve these low energy symptoms and chronic health issues. These strategies are all centered around how you can maximize your cellular energy to resolve these issues. So again, the sign up for that free energy balance mini course,

head over to Jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy. I also realized that it probably would have made more sense for especially the uninitiated to maybe start with the earlier clips of Cole talking about what the sugar diet was and then maybe the later ones showing how he's changed his tune. So maybe we could jump to those and then we'll go back and show. And then we'll go back and show the last clip of him saying the sugar diet is dead. I was saying it was just all you needed to do was drop the fat the whole time anyway. So yeah, let's, let's see.

what Cole was saying several months ago about the sugar diet. we'll come back to this last clip and just keep in mind what he's saying in these earlier clips about how protein and muscle mass are correlated, right? More protein equals more muscle mass. It's a very different tune from what he was sharing earlier on.

Let's jump into the.

Speaker 4 (12:59.79)

ones.

You start the sugar diet with a sugar fast! A sugar fast! Pure sugar! Knock the protein and the fat right out! as many days as you can, you fat p-

Alright, that tells us exactly how to do it.

We're talking SUUCH ROSE! Cut the story, you idiots! Do you want to-

Theresa (13:27.502)

I want to pause there and even just touch on the nuance of cutting starch out and focusing on simple sugars or like he was talking about, like, soda, gummy bears. Mike, can you comment on that?

Yeah, I think so there's a couple of things here that's actually interesting. I think some people don't do as well with starches, but most of the diets are actually centered around starches. You know, your typical Western diets. It's centered around grains, it's centered around tubers and stuff like this to some extent. So I think a lot of people or a portion of people will actually feel better eliminating starches in general. And I think they will also feel better or they'll lose weight, particularly water weight and potentially stool weight.

When you cut out starch, a lot of people will find that if you go pure sugars, you start to lose some weight in and of itself. the problem here is those sources. When you're looking at Sour Patch Kids or jelly beans or table sugar, there's no micronutrient density. The high concentrations of sugars delivered to the intestine at one time, especially with the absence of fat and bile acid signaling, can drive microbial overgrowth in the small intestine, create digestive issues and also adjust

the bowel motility and on top of that it can create quite a bit of problems with the teeth because it basically the free sugars in these sources they will be able to sit inside the mouth the bacteria will ferment them and produce acids locally on the teeth that can degrade the enamel and it also shuts down an important axis called the hypothalamic parotid axis or hypothalamic pituitary parotid axis. This axis controls the flow of the fluid through your teeth.

not around your teeth, but through your teeth. Your teeth are actually a series of hollow tubule structures and the dentin is the inner portion of the tooth has a fluid flow that moves through the teeth to help remineralize the enamel and maintain the maintain your oral health altogether. When you have sugar, the axis, the hypothalamic pituitary and then parotid gland, there's an axis there that stimulates that fluid flow. The sugar shuts that off, the very rapidly digesting sugars. Do you have a...

Speaker 1 (15:32.992)

multifactorial assault on your teeth where you basically don't have the minerals and vitamins and minerals present. You shut off the fluid flow and you up regulate the growth of bacteria in the mouth that produce those acids locally informed biofilms on the teeth like shreptococcus mutans, gingivalis, porphyrmonus, etc. And that will create oral issues. You have the oral issues, you have the microbiome issues, you have the micronutrient issue from running

These were very high amounts of refined carbohydrate sources. And on top of that, the low protein and the low fat are problems in and of themselves. And the upregulation of FGF21 because of the high sugar, low protein intake together is also a problem in and of itself that I think because somebody like Cole just does the diet to see the weight go down on the scale, doesn't understand how it works and then can't understand what the potential ramifications are.

for the individual who was running that diet. He only has his N equals one experience and whoever he talks to on the phone, whatever they tell him in that short period of time. This is why, and I actually, I got eviscerated in the comment section for a video I made talking about four key problems which discussed some of these components because people are just doing the sugar diet and I put this out as a warning to people who are starting to not say it's a terrible thing and like, you know, be a killjoy or anything like this, but to let people know what the concerns were.

because I've run a diet semi-similar to this when I was first coming into bioenergetics and I ran into a lot of problems. And before you embark on any experiment, any dietary adjustment or anything like this, you want to know the pros versus the cons. You want to know what's the potential long-term ramification. And when you listen to somebody like Cole, you're not going to get that. He doesn't know. He has no idea. And even with somebody like Mark, Mark didn't even mention, he's still figuring it out.

He's still trying to understand what's going on. the value of research, the value of animal models, you get people in the comments section, you know, we don't want it. Like what's the point of rat studies? We don't want these nerds going into the research in response to J and I making content on this. And it's like, you want us to go into the research. You want us to do that. The reason why you want us to do that. It's not to rain on the parade. It's not to be the killjoys at the party. It's to be able to say, Hey guys,

Here's how this thing is working and here's the potential outcomes that can happen to you as you continue down this path. And here's how you troubleshoot those outcomes. It's like you're investing in a stock. You're investing in a, in a portfolio. You're going to buy a house. You want to know what neighborhood you're in. You want to know how good the schools are. You want to know what's your proximity to the grocery store. Do you need a car? Can you take the bus? Like you kind of want to figure these things out before you purchase that property. It does the property filled with mold. It doesn't have problems with the foundation.

Whatever the thing is, it's the same thing with a diet. So you want somebody to come in who has some degree of understanding or can put a degree of understanding together to give you a pro versus con analysis so that you can determine like, does this thing make sense? When I lose weight on this diet, am I losing body fat or am I losing muscle tissue? Am I dropping water weight? Am I going to create issues with my teeth? Am I going to create micronutrient problems? Am I going to put pressure on my liver? All of these types of things are extremely important. And this is, know, with

We call stuff like, people see weight go down on the scale as Jay was just mentioning, but they, the question is what type of weight is going down? How is that working and how is that working and what's going to happen in the long run? Will that weight be able to be maintained long-term when you finished running the sugar fast or the sugar diet? So I think this stuff is really important. The high sugar stuff here is promoting just do sugar, just sucrose.

For me, especially that he talks about in the Sony's clips, a hundred day timeframe. I personally think it's a terrible idea. I think people will see weight loss, but I think it's a terrible idea. There's other iterations of the sugar diet that are not as bad, but this initial iteration, yeah, people see weight loss, but the way it's working and what's going on at multiple levels, this is like investing in a pump and dump, like cryptocurrency coin that has no value. And then somebody pulling the rug out of you on the back end, you losing all your money.

Because it's a short term solution with a lot of ramifications that will only play out after you're on it for period of time. that's the... For this one I was like... This one I said in the videos I'm not 100 day sugar fasting stuff. Not on board with at all. The other stuff we could talk about that a little bit but this stuff definitely not.

Theresa (20:12.814)

I'm glad you mentioned the potential dangers relating to tooth health and just the microbiome shifting and maybe getting some unintended overgrowth. Jay, would that still be a risk with like a high sugar fruit based diet with a bunch of fiber and maybe getting the protective polyphenols or got modulating polyphenols? Would that be a way to maybe make this safer if someone still feels like they want to try this but

Want to avoid some of the downfalls?

Yeah, for sure. Going with fruit, there's a number of reasons why we're much less likely to see those kinds of issues. For one, as you said, the polyphenols, which have antimicrobial effects, ton of benefits for the oral microbiome and the intestinal microbiome. And also we get the micronutrients with those fruits as well. So we're much less likely to drive the nutrient deficiencies that we would see with more refined sucrose and candy based diets, which I think most people are aware that they're

would have to be a limit to how long you can be eating a candy diet. And I don't know whether Cole warned about that or not, or if he made any acknowledgement that we might need to, to, be careful from the micronutrient side. I think most of us would consider that pretty obvious that, candy is not a good source of micronutrients. It is a good source of the nutrient of, of carbohydrates. but yeah, fruit is going to be much better in that regard because of the polyphenols and yeah, the intestines, you do get a lot of benefits from the fiber as well.

state of the intestinal microbiome has a large impact on the oral microbiome too. So definitely from the dental health side and the gut side, there's benefits of fruit over sugar-based sources. But another thing to consider too, when going on the very low-fat diets is there's less blood sugar stability. Especially, so if you're doing the earlier iteration, which is not only low-fat, but also low protein, you're going to be absorbing the sugar much quicker.

Mike (22:12.93)

And especially if it's also not coming with fiber as well. But that's because the protein and the fat helped to slow the absorption a little bit. And you're also going to have a much bigger increase in blood sugar and a, because basically you're going to only be providing glucose for all of the tissues to run on, you're going to run through that carbohydrate a lot faster. So, whereas if you have fat alongside the sugar, some

areas of your body can utilize the fat, like the muscles can utilize the fat while other areas are utilizing the glucose. So you have stability in blood sugar and stability in fuel availability, but we won't run through glucose a lot faster. And so if you're eating just a carbohydrate based diet, no fat, you tend to need to eat a lot more frequently. And so when we come back to oral health, eating really high sugary foods, even if it's from fruit juice or dried fruit really frequently, if we're eating that every hour, every two hours, that's also not going to be as ideal.

for our oral health and our teeth, even if we're not getting that from like candy, you know, there's still going to be some concerns there where we want to have enough time for our saliva to interact with our teeth and remineralize it. And it's beneficial for the microbiome and the mouth as well. And we've done a couple of energy balance podcast episodes talking about dental health on a high carbohydrate diet. So I would recommend taking a look at those for more detail, but yeah, the short of it is yes, fruit would certainly be better than candy as a, as a sugar source when it comes to the

or health, also consuming fat and protein alongside the carbohydrates so that you're having a little bit more spacing between meals is also helpful there. And yeah, and this is also another difference, right? So, as he was talking about, and I guess we'll, hear it in the last clip of the 1990s, low fat diet, the new approach, no longer is there any mention of sugar versus starch, right? So initially we're talking about this major difference, or this, this major point of the sugar diet, which is no starches eat only sugar.

And now we're opening that up a little bit, which I think is interesting. And maybe I'll leave it for us to talk about at the end. Once we hear everything that, that Cole has to say. But as Mike was saying, there are benefits to, especially just the average person decreasing starch. lot of that starch is coming from refined grains. you know, maybe lagoons and beans and foods that tend to be much harder to digest could certainly cause a lot of gut issues. And so I think a lot of people have relief from those gut issues shifting toward.

Jay (24:37.134)

mostly sugars. And it's interesting that he's not just changing the macro side where he's allowing protein now, but he's also opening up the carb side, which I think could also be a problem. And, is I think one of the concerns with the low fat 1990s diet is that, well, and this was a concern with the sugar diet too, is we're not considering any of the underlying physiology. And I'm not even talking like getting into the details of the research, which we can, and we can talk, we'll talk about FGF 21. And, know, I did a really extensive podcast episode about that going through all the research.

But even just the fundamentals of like, of gut health and the gut microbiome and blood sugar stability. mean, those are things that we want to be considering in that there's no aspect of these diets that's touching on that at all. And because of that, there's always going to be problems. And this is also the problem with the general one size fits all approach where, you know, we've talked about it with the three of us. Some of us do better or, you know, Teresa, you do better with almost all starch. Mike, you do better with almost all sugar. And I'm somewhere in the middle. And if you take something like the sugar diet and you're just saying you should only eat sugar for

You, Teresa, I know that would probably not go too well. that's why it's so important to understand the basics of physiology, not even talking about the details, but just the basic things that we can recognize for ourselves so that we can identify, okay, maybe part of the reason I was doing better with low protein on the sugar diet was because I had low stomach acid. So now if I transition to this 1990s low fat diet, but I do a ton of protein, I'm going to start to have issues again. The issue isn't necessarily the protein.

It's our ability to digest it, break it down and utilize it. So that's where I think there's always going to be pitfalls with any sort of approach like this, which is also also worth mentioning.

Let's watch the last couple clips and dive back in.

Cole Robinson (26:21.186)

This is how you start the sugar diet. With a sugar fast as long as you can to beat your sugar phobia and muscle loss phobia. You fat pig. I'm personally only eating meat twice a week right now. Can't I'm lean as hell? Twice a week? I've already showed you guys in the past that I've done three day a week eating routines with four fasting days and kept muscle on. Can't you can easily eat meat twice a week and be jacked?

Okay, and then closing it out with this.

Well, is just to add the context. So here's the new, the most recent video where he's now saying sugar diets, dead. So we've got a direct contrast between what he was saying before and the new approach.

Thank you.

So, just to drop into his latest take...

The sugar diet is dead. It has become a low fat diet, which it was from the beginning. From the beginning. The sugar diet, as I was promoting it at the start, was lane mate. Fruit, vegetable, starch, cut the fat right out. Which is the only thing that mattered. Cut the fat right out.

The other two macros are preference, it doesn't matter!

Theresa (27:48.896)

Okay. Woo! You know, it kind of almost reminds me a little bit of the medical medium approach. I don't know. Mike, did you ever hear about that or try it during your healing journey? Okay.

Mike

People have mentioned it, but I've never really watched the medical medium stuff.

Same idea, although I guess, yeah, very less focused on starch. So maybe there's a difference there, but as low fat as possible, fruits and vegetables galore as much as you want. But to kind of bring things full circle, I know we jumped around and how we've shared these clips, but even just this idea of approaching diet, someone's diet this way. And, you know, the idea that protein is a preference.

even the types of carbohydrates. That's a preference. Can you comment on that, Mike?

I mean it's just basically it went from no like basically a zero protein or extremely low protein low fat diet to I always said that protein was fine, lean protein and I always said that starch was fine which that wasn't the case. So this is just like this is a this is not correct. This is false. You can prove it. We just did with the different clips.

Speaker 1 (29:10.37)

And you can watch it on his podcast with Mark Bell. If he ever takes his clips down, you'll see it. So he's changing his tune now. Again, I don't know the reason why he decided to change the tune. I don't know the motivations. We can speculate, right? Maybe it's the trend changed. Other people hopped on the sugar diet bandwagon. He wants his own brand. I don't know. Or maybe people were doing it and running into problems and now he's shifting his tune for that reason. Those are two speculatory components, but fundamentally like this is a

Complete turnaround. To be fair though, I think this is a much better approach and iteration than what we were seeing before with just eat sugar for a hundred days. Don't have protein. Don't have fat. Cut that out. I think it's a much more reasonable approach to have the protein. I think that's important for protecting lean mass, which before he's saying that you have to get rid of your lean mass loss phobia. In the previous video now he's saying, no, you need protein to protect your lean mass.

Which again, these are things that I said in my videos. These are things that Jay was saying in his videos. Because again, we've run these diets. We work with clients, not just do phone calls with them for free, which I think is what we're donations, whatever, which is I think what Cole does, but actually follow their trajectory over time, see their labs, see their body compounds, not just what happens on the scale, but I see people's DEXA scans. I see people's bioelectrical impotence scans. I can see how things are changing over time. And I'm also reading the research on a consistent basis.

And you could see that going very low protein in a weight loss diet, not really a great idea in terms of maintaining lean mass. Going high sugar in the form of candy essentially and sucrose and sodas, not really a great idea. Like this stuff is very well known. There's a lot of problems with it. Even if people lose weight, people will lose weight if they do that. It's basically, again, it's something that I mentioned and got eviscerated for, but people are going into deficits with this.

And this is.

Speaker 1 (31:09.272)

There's no way to eat enough calories without really trying without eating it or eating enough food in general when you are doing a sugar diet or a sugar fast and you're just doing soda. Part of the reason is because you have an increase in metabolism. We could talk about the mechanisms there, how it's increased, but you have an increase in metabolism. And when you cut out protein and fat, it's very difficult to eat enough food in general because the FGF 21 signaling, which gets upregulated in the state also lowers your drive to eat sweet foods.

So yeah, people will lose weight. Not all of it's going to be fat. Some it's going to be water weight and a portion of it is probably going to be lean tissue. And so this turnaround I think is a good turnaround. But again, like there's still problems with bringing your fat too low. So even if you guys were talking before you and Jay, if you do like just fruits and juices instead, that's still better for the microbiome than if you were to just do candy and sodas and granulated sugar. But...

You want to have bile acid released into the intestine. It's actually extremely important. That requires fat. The fat will stimulate cholecystokine in the intestine, which causes gallbladder contraction release of bile acids. You need that to clear out the small intestine of bacteria. The bile acids directly degrade endotoxins. And on top of that, it's how the liver is able to detoxify itself because the liver puts everything it detoxifies into the bile, shoots it onto the intestine and the fiber binds it up and you pass it through your stool.

Do you wanna have that reaction? Or you wanna have that interaction go on? If your fat intake is too low, you will run into problems with digestion. You can run into problems with liver detoxification. And also what people will find and will get into this when we see some of the things later on here, some of the Q &A stuff later on, that depending on how lean you already are, it could trash your hormones. You'll have zero satiety between meals.

Your blood sugar will be all over the map. You'll feel those those crashes. Maybe you'll have insomnia at night. Maybe you'll have anxiety. These types of things like each macronutrient is important for a variety of different reasons. So it's not either have carbs or have fats, which basically the sugar diet is the answer or the opposition, the other side of the coin of the carnivore diet. We want to get to a place where we understand that each macronutrient has its place.

Speaker 1 (33:27.374)

And it's important for a variety of reasons. And we want to hone in on as individuals. How much of that macronutrient do we need for our specific context and our specific health goals? Right. That's the most important question. And so this, the Kohl's ideas, I think reach people because he tries to make it as simple as possible. And he tries to just focus on the outcomes that people are going to get. And I understand, I hear that. I know it speaks to people. like, you see it enough times, this guy's screaming the camera and he's telling you.

If you cut the fat, you're going to lose weight. If you cut the fat, you're going to lose weight. People are like, look, I'm just looking for something simple and easy. And I think that speaks to people quite a bit. And I think that's why I don't blame people for getting on board with this because you have all these gurus and people and even, even for myself, I'm talking about research and people like, dude, like you're even my dad is like, you're on another planet. I don't understand anything you just said. Just tell me what I need to do. And Cole is that guy who comes in and just tells you what you need to do. Cut that fat right out.

And then they do that and it's like, okay, I'm seeing some weight loss with it. But the problem is with this approach, when you simplify something down so much, you, doesn't tell you about some of the important pieces that you need to know. And this is, you know, there's a pro and a con to that. Although I do think this approach again, this is better than what he was promoting before. Much better, probably much closer to the things that we talk about on a consistent basis.

and definitely better than the long-term fasting high keto snake diet stuff that Cole was doing previously. Which again, the guy is flip-flop diets like massively. First was you don't eat and then you do keto and then it was all sugar for a hundred days and now it's lean meats, starches, sugars and you keep the fat low and it's like he's just getting closer and closer to a more balanced approach.

that's sustainable and that has a lot less downsides. And I wonder why he's moving that direction. Cause as you go through these different diets, you run into problems. And if you don't understand the mechanisms or what you're doing, then you're not going to know you have those problems until you get to them. And then you're probably going to want to switch gears. Like, okay, well, this actually is not really a good thing. We see the same thing with Peter Atiyah doing his fasting stuff, even though he's doing intermittent fasting or these three day fasting regimens, I think once a quarter, 10 years down the line is like, well, you know,

Speaker 1 (35:52.002)

My lean mass ain't looking so hot guys. And it's like, yeah, that's what happens when you do the fasting stuff. And that's why when we talk about fasting, like, okay, you can see these changes, but there's this ramifications that you need to know about. And that's the value of looking in the research, putting things in context and try and understand what exactly is going on, how they're working and what your risk versus your reward are. There's one other point I want to touch on just really quick. One of the things that I've gotten a comments a lot is well,

Isn't it better to just lose the weight so that I'm not fat or obese and then I'm having health concerns from that down the line? And yes, I think it's really important that if you are holding quite a bit of body fat that you lose that body fat because the body fat will leak free fatty acids into the system all the time. It'll signal those inflammatory mediators and it'll mess up your hormonal profile by converting your androgens into estrogens. There's a lot of problems with the body fat. The thing is you want to lose the body fat.

Specifically, you don't want to lose your lean muscle tissue because if you lose your lean muscle tissue when you come out the back end You're gonna regain the body fat and you're gonna have a much lower lean mass And then you're gonna have a way harder time down the road trying to lose that weight and your metabolism is gonna be smashed So it needs to be done the right way that by the time you lose that body fat Not only have you lost the body fat. You're in a better health state altogether. Your metabolic markers look good. Your hormonal markers look good

your body composition is solid with increased muscle mass and the fat tissues off. So losing weight, whether it's keto, carnivore, intermittent fasting, sugar diet, that will improve a lot of things because you're taking off that excess body fat which poses metabolic load. But you want to do it in a way that you're not harming yourself in the process and creating problems down the line. That's the biggest thing. You don't want to rob Peter now to pay Paul and then in the future you have no retirement. Like that type of stuff is, it's not a good trade off in the broader picture of things.

Let's talk a little bit more about maybe how to safely increase the metabolic rate, lose the fat without getting into this stickier territory where you might actually be doing metabolic damage. Jay, talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (38:03.202)

Well, there's, some things I want to come back to because, then, and then, and then we'll, get into that. Cause I agree. It's, it's an important factor here, especially when we're talking about the people who are looking for that and they're looking, you know, and they're, they're seeing, okay, like Cole made that simple. He gave us an answer there. And now maybe they are questioning whether they want to keep going on for that ride, considering how it continues to change and considering that, maybe it's not the full picture. So I do think it's important to circle back to that. but I wanted to.

touch on a couple of other things that I think is, are, happening here. So for one, when somebody is taking the extremely simple approach where it's, this, like the first iteration being cut everything else out except for sugar sources, and then eat a little bit of lean meat, you know, in, dinner or just on some days, like that was the kind of approach. And I did want to highlight that the earlier approach was not never eat lean meat, although

There also wasn't a clear first earlier approach because as Mike said, there was times where he was suggesting hundred day sugar fasts. But the reason I'm saying this is because if you commented that, that people say, well, he was saying to eat meat sometimes. And it's like, yes, but also he was sometimes saying not to eat meat for over three months. So which, which exact moment in time of Cole's version of the zyde are we discussing or Mark's, you know, Mark Bell's or anyone else's and what we're trying, like we can't talk about every single one in the same sentence.

They're all different. They call, obviously said different things throughout the months. like there, there's an inherent limitation here that we can only, we can't talk about every single possible iteration of the diet fasts, whatever in the same sentence. just keep that in mind and consider the principles that we're talking about that would apply whether you're doing the sugar fast five days a week or seven days a week for three months, you know, but in any case, when it comes to the, to the weight loss side, what

Mike, what you mentioned here with losing lean mass is very important, right? If we are in the process of losing weight, also depriving ourselves of protein, then we're definitely going to be increasing the risk of losing lean mass. If we're having a lot of carbs that lowers that risk a little bit, right? We're going to be much better terms of our lean mass if we're doing a sugar fast versus a just regular fast, right? If we're doing a regular fast, no protein, no carbs, no anything, we're going to see much more loss of lean mass. So it is better than that.

Speaker 2 (40:22.114)

But if you had some protein, it's going to be even better than having just the carbs. So we have a spectrum here and obviously this is better than nothing is better than what Peter Atiyah was doing for his three day fasts, but it is still worse than including protein during your weight loss. So that's one thing I wanted to clarify. But then the other thing too is it's not just about whether you're losing lean mass or not when you're losing the weight, because the way that you lose the body fat is important as well. Cause this is just another iteration of the semi-glutide drugs or HDG diets or

really high calorie restricted diets or really highly restrictive diets in other ways like super low carb where there's going to be a lot of body fat loss with all of those and some amount of lean mass especially depending on whether someone's exercising and how much protein they're eating. But the way you lose the body fat matters as well and if you're doing it with really severe restriction you are going to be down regulating your metabolic rate even though you're up regulating it short term with stress via FGF 21 and other mechanisms that's going to be even worse actually in the long run.

and lower your metabolic rate further in the long run by decreasing thyroid hormone conversion, decreasing the production of the reproductive hormones, which happens through other mechanisms too, as Mike was talking about, like too low of fat will be a factor there. And so even if you're someone who's saying, I'm not noticing muscle mass loss when I'm losing fat with this approach, or I'm doing some sort of scans and it's showing about losing lean mass, that still doesn't mean that we are losing the body fat in a healthy way that will lead us to not be prone to regaining it. So I just wanted to add that.

in there as just another factor for people to consider. Because I do think, and we'll be talking about this later, there are a lot of people who are having great benefits with the diets, at least in the short term, they're seeing the scale to go down. Maybe they're not losing muscle mass, but A, it doesn't mean a lot of other people are not having benefits. There's a lot of people who are having negative effects with these. And we want to look long-term and identify whether people are seeing weight regain. And also if there is muscle mass loss, and that's where the research comes in again, you know, I think we've kind of...

mentioned that a few times here and Mike, expanded on it that you want us, you want somebody to be looking at what's going on under the hood here, as opposed to just saying, well, I'm getting from A to B faster because if in the meantime, you're going to burn out your engine, that it's not worth it. know? So those are just some points I wanted to mention. There's something else that Cole mentioned in these videos, the more recent one, like talking about the 1990s low fat approach that I think was also worth touching on. think because in Cole's case, we're not

Speaker 2 (42:43.628)

looking at anything beneath macros or I mean, especially now it's literally just low fat. Forget everything else. Just low fat. He even said, I don't care. It doesn't have to be high carb. can be moderate carb. So if you're eating under 10 grams a day of fat, which he's been recommending, let's call that 0 % and you're eating moderate carb, let's say 40%, then that means you're eating 60 % of your calories from protein, which is not a good idea. Like that's a very, very, what's that Mike?

That's terrible idea.

Yeah.

Gabriel Lyons likes that idea though.

I'm sure maybe 10, 10 name in as well. Yeah. Which, you know, we've, we've had episodes talking about to those approaches in the past, but yeah, I think as she's expanding and becoming less restrictive, people are going to be running into even more issues. And I think we're going to be more likely to see a change sooner and more rules added to this 1990s low fat diet. Cause the sugar diet lasted a while, several months, from his perspective. And because it was so restrictive, there's a lot less problems for people to run into with the foods they're having.

Speaker 2 (43:44.642)

But obviously people were still running into problems and that's why there was a shift presumably. but I think there's going to be a lot more problems with less restriction here because there's no lip service given. There's no attention given to anything outside of the macros. And so people are going to run into a lot more problems, whether it's because they're incorporating the quote wrong type of carbohydrates, or there are actually going to be problems with the high protein to carb ratio, which we know increases cortisol and lowers testosterone. mean, there there's a lot of

there's a lot more potential problems to be had as we expand this and get quote unquote less restrictive. And so I think we're going to see a lot more rules added and maybe another shift away from just 1990s low fat and maybe it will become something else. um, but again, that's, you know, as we're saying, that's the problem with such an oversimplified approach that of course is attractive to people. And we get that as you were touching on Mike, like people will mention to us, I like, I can't follow what you're discussing and that's fine. And we have other

videos, other content where we do simplify it. You don't have to dig into the research based ones, but also we understand that this is not going to be as simple as what Cole talks about. And what we're trying to kind of advocate for here is that that's not such a bad thing. And taking a little bit of effort to understand a level deeper than what Cole's discussing, I think is really valuable. think we all think is really valuable so that you don't run into the problems that we're talking about here. And some of the problems that people have been mentioning.

from having on the sugar diet that we'll be talking about as well. So those are a couple of important points I wanted to make. know none of them were answering your questions, Theresa.

That is great. It took it in a great direction. Mike, do you have anything to add to that?

Speaker 1 (45:22.594)

I just want to mention just a few pieces there in addition to what you said, Jay. I think if people, even if they have carbohydrate, there's a couple pieces there. there's this idea that, this kind of goes with the bioenergetics stuff where it's, if you have enough carbohydrate, you don't need to run gluconeogenesis, which is a production of carbohydrate from your protein tissues, right? And protein tissues, so your amino acids and also glycerol backbones and lactate and stuff like this.

but a large portion that comes from your amino acids, if you're not taking protein in the diet, it's gonna, or if you're not taking any carbs from the diet, it's gonna come from protein. If your protein isn't high enough, you're gonna pull it from your muscle tissue. Now, so people are like, well, if I have carbs, I'm not gonna have this catabolic effect, because I don't need to run gluconeogenesis so much, because I have the carbohydrate. But the first piece is you still need protein for other things in your body, including tissue maintenance.

and also the production of enzymes, neurotransmitters, and a variety of different metabolic processes. So it doesn't mean just that you have carbohydrate now, but your protein is super low, that you won't have this impact on lean mass. And we see with the FGF21 research that there is negative impacts on bone and there's negative impacts on muscle tissue. So we see that from it and it's due to the protein in part due to the protein restriction, completely even if you don't necessarily lose the protein tissue, let's say early on, it does shut down.

the anabolic processes for rebuilding and growing the protein-based tissues like the muscle tissue, the bones and things like this. That's a huge, that's a problem in and of itself. The next thing that I wanted to point out here is that if people do the sugar diet, because one thing that you mentioned Jay and I agree with you is that the sugar fasting is better than just not eating altogether. But I do think that if people do sugar fasting with Sour Patch Kids and Jelly Beans and granulated sugar, even though they're taking in that carbohydrate, which

well can help minimize some of the stress response. I think they are creating other problems that are worth noting and that's the dysbiosis in the intestine and those rapidly digesting sugar sources can shift the lipid profile, particularly in NMR lipid profile in quite a bad way that may put a little bit of pressure on your vasculature. So I think and on top of that, you have, depending on your background and what you have going on, you could bump up your triglycerides

Speaker 1 (47:45.836)

very high and that could put people on the pancreatitis and irritate the pancreas. plus you may, depending on the person, they may have issues at their liver. So even though you're not having the lean mass loss that you would have if you were fasting or you're more protected because you have the carbohydrate stress a little bit lower, I still think you create other new problems because of some of the sugar forms. So if you're going to do the sugar fasting stuff, you need to use fruits, whole fruits, 100 % fruit juice, some of these components.

during that sugar fast. can't, and this is essentially just a juice fast. This is people have been doing for long time is juice fast. You can't be using the Sour Patch Kids and stuff like this. Not to mention the industrial additives and irritants that are present in those. Because I think, and I'm not saying this because I agree with you Jay on the general perspective, but I wanted to expand on it because people will say, well then I'll just get a sugar fast like three times a week.

And then that's not as bad. then, you know, now I'm in a circumstance where I'm still losing the weight, but I sold a protein the other days, but then they're still using those sources. And I think that's a terrible idea for the, those components, those, those areas that I just mentioned. And then with the, the, protein with the high protein intake with cold, that's 60 % protein. Now you're going to run into a style. If somebody does run 60 % proteins, they're moderate fat or they're moderate carb and they're less than 10 grams of fat. You're going to, that just runs into some of the problems we talk about with carnivore.

where now you have a circumstance where you have high ammonia production and then you're now at the 60 % protein, depending on what your caloric intake is. Again, people aren't actually calculating, they're just running the diets, but that could be a circumstance where you really put pressure on the kidney and the livers at that dosage, as well as your bone mass through calcium and phosphorus ratios and the acid loading components like this. So think these elements are again, like when I'm looking at the full picture, is saying like,

Here's a picture of a house. just here's the house. You just have this pictures, make it look like this. The reason you have a blueprint when you make a house is that you can understand how much wood do I need? How much nails do I need? What's the size of these things? You want to actually kind of know some of these specifics that you don't run into these, these problems. And I think, you know, that doesn't have to go to level 10 depth where I'm going to go read a bunch of papers on FGF 21 and understand what's going on in the cellular mechanisms. I mean, that's

Speaker 1 (50:08.376)

Partly what JNI's job is to do is to try to make sense of this stuff. But you do need to know if you want to optimize your health, you're going to have to know some specifics around your energy intake and your macronutrient breakdown and the food sources and components like this. There's no other way around it because it's telling you how much of these important building blocks that you need. It's telling you how to make that diet, how to build out house appropriately so you don't just like throw some stuff up, get into it and the floor falls out while you're sleeping.

And they're like, well, I didn't know I had to put support beams under the, under the board because all I had is this picture of a log cabin. So you want to make sure that you know what you're doing to some extent. It doesn't have to go to level 10, but if you're still at level zero with the, with understanding where you just, just cut the fat right out. It doesn't really, like it's simple, but it doesn't exactly tell you what you need to do. And I think it will, as you're talking about Jay, it will create much more confusion.

I appreciate the insights from carpenter Mike over there. And, but even for us who are not carpenters, we can recognize the value of having a blueprint for a house. Right. So I think that's, that's what you're trying to get at here. So even for people who are not going to be digging into that research and are not going to be building a house, from, know, the nails and different sized wood and all of the rest that, that you shared with us, the, we can recognize that we at least want to have a little bit more than the picture of the log cabin, right? We,

We recognize that there's at least some things that we should be understanding here. And we at least want to at least have some inkling that, all right, there's a support team there that sounds like we should have that. You know, that's probably a good thing. Yeah. Just, just a fun analogy, but definitely, definitely an important one. And there's a couple of things you mentioned I wanted to touch on. on one hand, another concern with the high protein diet that we've discussed a lot in the past, if someone is going to do a, you know, 50 % or more protein diet is the effects on the gut and on the intestines.

percent.

Speaker 2 (52:01.106)

and seeing much more, a much greater likelihood of undigested protein reaching bacteria, then fermenting it and creating all sorts of really harmful byproducts in the process. But I think another thing that's, that you touched on Mike was, was talking about the effects of FGF21 in the research. And I think something that has not been highlighted in the people who are talking about this as like this universally good thing, and you're not going to be losing lean mass is that they're missing that.

This is a hormone that's driven by a protein deficiency. Like you have to have a deficiency of amino acids to trigger the pathway that up regulates FGF 21 from when it's coming from a low protein diet. When you're getting it from excess carbs, that's the de novo lipogenesis pathways and things like that, which is separate. But that's important to note because what it essentially is, is a protein mass conservation mechanism. It's basically saying we don't have enough materials here. Let's try to not lose lean mass as much as we can.

But that is an adaptive process that you can't sustain. And that's kind of what you were getting at, Mike. There is a certain level of amino acids that are required. That's what creates the deficiency that actually drives the pathway that increases after you have 21. And when those aren't there, there is a point where sure, maybe early on, you aren't going to be as prone to losing muscle or losing bone. And these are things that you would see a little bit more long-term, but also a chronic protein deficiency will be causing that. And if you're creating a protein deficiency three out of seven days of the week,

that will lead to a chronic protein deficiency. won't be as dramatic or as quick as if you were not eating any protein for seven days a week, but it's it's still activating those same pathways. You're still just only having four days a week of maintenance of lean mass. The other days you're trying to just get by. And so there is an inherent cost there. I think the other interesting piece here with Kohl's flip to now including as much protein as you, as you want is you're not going to get

the increase in FGF 21. So you're not going to get this massive stress response, which I think is actually better from the long-term as we were saying, I think this is better, but I also think it means people are not going to see the massively upregulated metabolic rate to the same extent. And they're not going to see as much weight loss to the same extent, because I do think a lot of it was being driven by the stress of the low protein diet and the increase in FGF 21. You'll still get some amount of it from the super low fat, which will also help with insulin sensitivity at a cost, you know, that we were talking about with blood sugar and digestion and hormones, but

Speaker 2 (54:25.142)

I don't think you're actually going to see the really rapid effects that people were seeing on the sugar diet. That was part of what led it led to it catching on so much. So I'm curious to see how much of a pivot, how many pivots we see from this point on. think there might be a lot more as I was touching on earlier, because people are going to run into more issues and they're not going to be seeing quite as much of a result, especially quickly.

I it's not gonna catch on.

Well, yeah, I wonder what the next iteration will be like when when people and we'll get to the comments shortly, but when people are starting to really share their negative, terrible experiences and be open to hearing and learning about other possibilities, what do you Mike, what do you think? What do you think Cole's next flip will be?

To be honest, I don't think that Cole's going to have a really prominent next flip because I think the people picked up with the sugar diet. It became so exciting because Mark Bell pushed it because Mark Bell saw rapid weight loss and some people saw rapid weight loss with it. And the 1990s low fat diet, like I think people will lose weight, but I don't think it's going to be the, the same extent that you saw with the sugar diet.

And so don't think it's not. don't think it's going to gain so much traction. I think the sugar tie gained traction because it was easy and because it worked because not because it like necessarily worked that people are losing tons of fat, but people saw the scale drop fast. And so when people see that scale drop fast, you get that that it's like when you go keto and you lose, you you lose that first five, 10 pounds really quick. And there's a lot of that's water weight that you're dropping from depleting glycogen.

Speaker 1 (56:03.086)

It's like, yeah, like people stay on the diet then because now they believe that it works because they have actual empirical evidence. I think that was the same thing with the sugar diet. The 1990s low fat diet, because the rate of weight loss is probably going to be slower and it's going to be uncomfortable to run the diet with the fat that low. I think people are going to wind up not really sticking to that diet quite as much because it's not, it's like the idea with the sugar diet that you see, again, you see this in the comment sections. Well, I'm just going to do the short term so I can blow off all this weight.

And then, then I'm to go back to normal eating. So it's like, it's the same mentality. I'm going to do carnivore for a month just so can lose all the weight. And then I'm to go back to normal eating and because it's only a month, it's not that bad. Like it's not going to really have as much ramifications. And I don't think you're going to see that with the 1990s low fat diet. So I think that my guess would be that Cole's like set up kind of, he will make some flips and flip flops with different things. I think he's going to do that. He's going to keep adjusting and evolving.

And to be fair, like, I think it's fine to evolve your perspective. It's only, you only become a flip-flopper when you deny that you ever said any of the other things that you said before, instead of bringing justification and reason for why you made the switch so that the people have been following you can understand what the transition was. And it's the, you do that, when you explain your transition, you're not seen as a flip-flopper. People are like, well, okay, you got it wrong. And so like maybe some, like,

People will question your credibility or your thought process initially, but they start to see that you're being honest with them about why you're changing your perspective. And so saying, well, I never said that I didn't do that. It's like, yeah, bro, you're a flip-flopper. You just completely flipped your perspective from things that you like verifiably said. So think that's why he's getting that rep. That's for me, why I see that reputation at least. And I just don't think it's going to, going to continue. He's not going to get the same traction because you're not going to see the same results with this diet. Now, the one thing that I think may be beneficial is that.

The sugar diet took a whole bunch of people who are doing keto and carnivore and they were like, wait, I didn't get diabetic and fat and fatty liver and whatever and I was slamming soda. Then they're going to, that's going to be like, okay, well I know this soda stuff's not good. Like I think a lot of people inherently understand some of this and they're going to start to transition over and say, well, and you see this with Mark Bell, right? Okay, I'm using mostly fruit now. I'm doing a lot of fruit juice.

Speaker 4 (58:05.41)

I

Speaker 1 (58:25.55)

I'm not adding a bunch of refined sugars. And I think people are going to settle on a more balanced diet. And I think, you know, hopefully it creates some interest in bioenergetics. So we start to get out of this, this like extreme dieting setup to start understanding like what's more of a holistic perspective for health. Where you're managing the hormonal, the hormonal component, what's going on in the microbiome, as well as managing your body composition and as well as looking for long-term health goals and

keeping stress low and optimizing mitochondrial function and maximizing cellular energy production and stuff like this. I think this sheds some light on that perspective, which I think ultimately is helpful in general. cause I think there is a portion of people who are starting to be starting to come out of this, just only ancestral perspective to starting to understand, like there's this metabolic component to things and Hey, maybe carbohydrates aren't that bad. You know,

I think that's where things are going to head to because I even have clients. like, they're kind of laughing because they were doing carnivore and then they were trying the sugar diet. And now we're working together and they're like, so Mike, you're telling me that I can have a balanced diet and I can have some carbs and I can have some dark chocolate and some avocados and mac nuts. And I'm not going to gain weight. It's like, yeah, he's like, who would have thought, you know, balanced diet, who would have thought that the balanced diet would have worked?

I think people get wrapped up in the sensationalism of these different diets and looking for those quick fixes, those fast wins. So I think it brought some people out of this like carnivore low carb holding place. And I think it'll be beneficial for portion of people. And I people are going to start to shift to this because the other thing that you see when you work with people is when they leave keto and carnivore, even if they go bioenergetics,

and say they don't have things set up right, they still have fat high, still have carbs high, and they gain some weight. And when you say like, well, you're to go back to carnivore and they're like, nah, I'm not going back to carnivore. I don't want to go back. I want to keep carbs in. I'm done with that stuff. I don't want to go ever go back to that. Same thing with keto. So once people get out of it, they don't want to go back and then they want to figure out ways to get things under control. And the sugar diet was like this rapid expansion of that. And now I think when they see like, okay, that's probably not a good idea.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45.292)

it's gonna come back more towards a center to balance approach and people are gonna start to wonder like, okay, how do I set up this reasonable, this balanced diet to minimize these downsides that I got doing this diet and that diet and that diet there? And I think ultimately that may be actually a good thing for a lot of people. So I'm hoping things trend in that direction. I don't think coal's gonna keep the same steam just because people aren't gonna be like, I lost 14 pounds in seven days with this new diet. And then they're getting the low fat stuff like.

there like it does beat up on your system and you do it for a while you will see with some of the comments like you could really feel that low fat under a certain percentage like and to the point that's like I just can't keep doing this. It's the same thing when you go on super calorie deficits there's like mentally it beats up on you and you're like I just can't I just can't keep going with this I'm craving food and then that's when people shift because again these approaches aren't necessarily sustainable they're they're quick fix type approaches.

Well, I want, I wanted to happen to mention a couple of things, that I think are important to, to highlight that, first thing I know we're talking a lot about Cole's approach here and talking about our disagreements and why we differ. None of this is personal toward Cole. I just want to be clear about that. Like we don't have any personal vendetta or beef with him. And, and as you were saying, like, I do think that this has opened up a lot of people to the idea that carbohydrates are, it's not just the idea of like, maybe carbs aren't so bad, but

It was so extreme in, teaching people firsthand that carbs don't directly cause fat gain and insulin resistance, which is so different from the narrative. And it's also forced people like other, you know, people in the health sphere, the low carb sphere, especially to acknowledge it. And they have to say like, yes, these people are losing weight on the sugar diet, but it's bad for all these other reasons. There's glycation and whatever else that, you know, you can't actually measure, but it's happening. I promise. You know, so there's.

Even though their A1Cs are going down and their weight's going down, like, trust me, it's, it's bad, but they have to, like, people are having to acknowledge that you can lose body fat and improve insulin sensitivity and see decreases in blood sugar and A1C while eating a ton of carbs and sugar. And I think that that's a massive benefit and leading to this big shift. And yeah. And as you were saying, Mike, it's like, despite the comments of some people who are, maybe they're just, they tend to really like Cole's presentation. really into.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06.318)

the sugar diet as it is like the it's a little bit dogmatic, a little bit cult like, and they, we, they come out in our comments and they're trashing us because we said anything potentially negative about it. But despite that, I've seen a lot of people like joining the programs, joining coaching, like, uh, you know, that I'm working with who are really open to it. And, and this has really shifted their perspective and has really allowed them to become open to other perspectives that include carbohydrates and, and becoming more open to the bioenergetics view, which I think is.

is yeah, exciting. mean, it's, it's really, really fantastic. And the other thing I wanted to mention just to, give Cole the benefit of the doubt here, not even that, but just kind of give him his fair shake because a lot of people have been trashing him saying he's completely changed his mind and he's not acknowledging it. And they're saying that he's denying it in this video. But if you actually listen to what he says, there is some nuance where he's saying, he's not saying that he never said to decrease protein or he never said.

to only eat sugar. What he really says is the most important part from the sugar diet was low fat. And I was always suggesting low fat. Now I'm saying it doesn't matter about the protein or it doesn't matter about the sugar versus starch. Like if you hear how he phrases it, it's not in a dishonest way. It's not actually denying what he said earlier, but at the same time, I think part of the issue and part of why people are reading into it that way is because he's not coming out and fully acknowledging what's changing and why it's changed.

and what the problems were that he was seeing. Like you were touching on this mic. It's like the more you can be forthright about that allows people to recognize a why what you said initially wasn't helpful or like what about it wasn't helpful, which is valuable information, but also it allows people to see that you're being like honest and open about it as opposed to seeing a lot more skepticism when there's really not much, like you're not spending much time explaining what, changed and why. So, yeah, just, I think there's like,

He's kind of in the middle there, but I think people would be a lot more open to what he was saying if he was a little bit more upfront about it. But again, as we're saying in either case, we're really not getting deeper than change your macros in some way and do it to a real extreme. And so I don't think it's going to be the best long-term approach.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20.93)

He is saying the protein piece though, that he never said to not lower protein. And that's in, in, his clips in general. And one of these clips, he even says it here that he never talked about lowering the protein.

This clip

Speaker 2 (01:05:35.362)

Did play it? Because I don't think he does. Like it's like sneaky the way he words it, but.

the sugar diet is dead one? Okay.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48.59)

The sugar diet is dead! It has become!

Speaker 1 (01:06:08.206)

See, that's not... The thing is that's not true.

So, he was talking about the sugar, so this is where he gets into his stupid thing, but the sugar diet versus sugar fasting, right? Because the sugar fasting was without the lean meat, but initially he was saying like have lean meat with dinner. That was the sugar diet.

basically sugar all day and then like a normal dinner, whatever someone conceptualizes that as.

But then you watch the other you watch the other clip and he says 100 days sugar fasting cut out the protein cut out the fat only have sugar

So that's the sugar fast. He's saying like start the sugar diet with the sugar fast and then you do a sugar diet which has to lead me for dinner.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51.256)

Yeah, once you did 100 days of sugar fasting.

I- no, I- I agree.

Then he's talking about like, maybe you do it twice a week. It's like for me, that's still a bit disingenuous and the honey diet, Teresa's the one where you eat sugar all day long and just have the, that's more, that's came out of the bioenergetics fears through anabolic. But coal, I mean, I don't know where he got, got his stuff. This also isn't that new because you have the, like the Kempner diet, which is like, you know, decades old diet. have that 80, 10, 10 vegans.

who some of them are fruitarians, some of them are like McDougall starch based. So like there's a lot of iterations of this really low fat, really low protein, really high carb stuff. Which this is an iteration of it. It's just Cole popularized it with junk food essentially. At least it was popularized that way. There is videos where he talks about, you know, do it with this, do it with that. But also his messages was not really potently clear because in one video

He says, I had my neighbor just drink a whole bunch of pop and she got her blood glucose under control. And in another video he's talking, he mentions the doing the fruits and, juices and another video he talks about I ate sugar. then, so it's like a, it's not, this is part of the problem is that there's not a precision in the message. And it, it's, it's befuddled. And then like, the thing is, you can't come on here and say, I always, I always said that it was lean meat, starches, vegetables, and fruits.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23.68)

Especially because the this diet is only two months old three months old and you said do it a hundred days first with just sugar So like nobody even got to that point before you flipped your message anyway So to even like try it for me at least to even try to like make a spin on it It's like yeah, like it was always low fat hundred percent agreed but the starch and protein piece is Definitely a flip and the idea is moderate carbs is definitely a flip from the initial message which

You can say like I said, well, some days you do this. have like I do lean meat twice a week and it's like, okay, what about the other five days? You're not doing any, you're not doing any proteins at all. You're just doing sugars. You're just, and especially the sugars are like these refined ones. So for me, when I see it, like I see like part of it is like, just say like, yeah, like I don't think that doing that, that not having the protein is a good idea. Here's why. And instead the best option, I think now after what working with

Hundreds of people go through the sugar diet thing. Like I think the best option is actually that you do low fat, but you keep the protein and you keep the carbs present. And here's why. So that for me, that that's for me is like, would be like, you know what? I respect Cole. Like I, know, man, I respect you coming out with that type of stuff and letting us know what your perspective is and then run from there. Even if you're going to get hate, even if you're going to get hate, it's just how it goes. When you, when you.

come out really strong with this message and maybe don't know all the information about it and how it works and why it works and what's going to go on, you could be wrong. Like you run that risk. And then when you are wrong, you just like from a, from a, like a respect point to your audience, you have to let them know, especially if this is about their health. So that's that for me, that's my, for me, that's my stance. Like I'd love to give them the benefit of the doubt. And for the low fat stuff, he was a hundred percent right on, but for the, the

the protein stuff, like, it's pretty questionable in my mind that he was saying the same things all along. This for me is like he flipped and he didn't explain why he flipped to his audience. And I can see why the people who hardcore sugar dieted and saw this were like, were like a little bit upset about it. I can see that. And you know, if he still comes out and says, well, you know what, look, like, here's like, just stop the screaming for one video, comes out, just lets people know, like, here's, this is...

Speaker 1 (01:10:50.35)

This is why I switched. This is what happened. This is my perspective. This is what changed. Even then I'd be like, respect man. Awesome. Like that's great. I really respect you for coming out. I know there's a lot of social media pressure for that. It's like, this is awesome. So you he could still do that to this day and be like, I'm not trying to flip. not trying. I'm here. I want you guys to know what the deal is. And then he can go back into character and low fat 1990s diet all he wants. Like that's completely fine. So for me, that would be my expectation.

Maybe my barometer is different, that is where I'd be like, okay, this guy, there's like an integrity piece there and he's maintaining that. And I would be cool with that. And I would respect him for that.

Well, maybe he's listening and he'll make an apology video.

It doesn't even have to be an apology. It just has to be like, here's why I changed and here's what, you know, go from there. You don't have to come out and like, I'm sorry. It's just like, here's what happened.

Totally. I, and I had a hundred percent agree with all that. And I think the best way to prevent people from accusing him of not only a flip flop flopping, like, saying things that are directly contradicting what he said earlier is to be more upfront and clear about it. And I think that would have been better. And I'm not saying that like, I a hundred percent agree with all that. All I'm saying is that in the clip, what he's actually saying, I don't think is directly in conflict with what he said earlier. It's just intentionally. I want to say misleading, but like leaving parts out. So like he.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16.448)

Is saying that the sugar diet from the start included lean meat, but he is not saying that a lot of times she was including or he was suggesting for people to do a sugar fast for three months, which did not include lean meat. That's an important detail here that is being left out. but I just, I just think it's important to touch on the nuance here. And the reason for it is because there are times where, you know, you and I, Mike will talk about the benefits of sugar for insulin resistance. And people then say, well, so you're saying that we should all be eating white sugar, right?

And it's like, no, that's not what we were saying. Most of the time we like in the episode, you people will look at a clip and say that, but we almost always clarify in an episode, like what we are talking about when we say sugar, but people take our views out of context or they don't actually listen to the words that we're saying. They just kind of get the gist and they come, they jump to some conclusion. So I just think we owe it to, to Cole to like listen to the actual words that he's saying, where he's saying that the sugar diet always included these things, but he is in, it seems like intentionally leaving out.

the other really important things and that is, you know, some version of dishonest. so I agree like it would be way better and all this could be avoided if he was far more upfront and open about it. but yeah, I can't stand the number of times that people almost seemingly intentionally hear every other word that we say, and then jump to some conclusion and write long paragraphs in the comments about how wrong we are when it's not even what we said. So

See, I love it. It's one of the most entertaining comments to read.

Of course.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45.336)

They fairly are. They are the funnest ones to read. when somebody's really going in.

Beep.

It's just when it's about you, it's probably a little different. Is that when I get the long ones and it's like written about me? But yeah, obviously it hits different than if you're reading it on somebody else's videos like, look at this guy.

Right. Right. But it's like, I don't want to waste time telling you like writing out what I just said in this video, like just listen to the video. I'm not going to, I don't have time to clarifying to these people, all of the things that they are seemingly intentionally misunderstanding or just not listening to, know, cause I hear, they heard two sentences and then jump to some conclusion. Um, and it's happened a lot with the sugar diet thing on both sides. think Mike, you probably had it a lot with that initial video where people just assumed you were, you're like a low carb carnivore guy.

because you were talking about potential pitfalls with the sugar diet. And on the flip side, I see it on both sides where some people are like, awesome. love to see all this research in favor of the sugar diet. And it's like, well, there is, that's not exactly what I was saying here. I'm not saying like, this is the best idea. And then you have the flip side of people saying, Hey, this is working. Why are you telling people to not eat carbs? I thought carbs were good. It's like, I'm not saying that either. So anyway, I mean, that's just the nature of social media and YouTube and the world.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58.222)

I had a bunch of like carnivores and keto people coming to my defense on that video against like the pro sugar people in the, it was like a huge flip. Cause it's like, like the sugar diet audience is new too, right? It's not your core bio-energetic audience. So they haven't seen all the work that we've done together separately, all this type of stuff. So they're coming on and they're like, this guy's just crapping on sugar and carbohydrates. Like he just doesn't want us to lose weight or do this diet. It's like guys.

I've been here for 10 years, been doing the high sugar thing for a really long time, talking about the pros, the cons, what you can experience, all this type of stuff. I've seen it work with other people. I've seen it not work with other people. And it's like, no, you just want us to say carnivore, man. And it's like, the last thing I want you to do, like just go back like four videos. There's videos on why there's, you don't want to be a carnivore. Like check those out, come back, watch it again in different light, you know.

But it's hard because you can't put your full message in every single video because it's like, it's going to be like hours long. So I know people are going to watch the first like a 10 minute video, 20 minute video, something like this. So you got to like try to condense it and put it in that window and then you can't put the full picture and it's going to be too long. And then it's like you have this body of work, but then people aren't going to watch all the videos. So it's difficult with social media. And I think the podcasts are helpful because it allows you to get

more the nuance out in conversation. Whereas the on the, with the videos, like you have a singular message that you have and it's, you have to get that out, but it's like, there's nothing is in isolation. like, even if you talk about Randall cycle ages, whatever the thing is, like, and you're just talking about that one piece, like you also have to understand a lot, like the Randall cycle plays into age formation. So, and metabolic dysfunction plays in with the Randall cycles. Like if you make three separate videos, but you only watch one.

You're like only seeing like one perspective, like one pixel of the overarching picture, which you can't throw the whole picture in a video. It's very difficult. At least for me, it's very difficult. It has just become excessively long. So I think that's part of the problem. And I get why people, the other thing is people will watch it. I'll see him in the con section. Somebody will watch a video, they'll ask a question and it's something I address in the video, but they only stop that like the six minute mark or the five minute mark.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20.706)

and they didn't get to the back end which explains what I said in that piece like in a little bit more depth as you follow the train of thought. You run into that and it's like it's just how social media goes or like even in shorts are the worst form actually. You do a short, you do a reel, you got a minute, three minutes to really get something out there and people are like well you didn't talk about this and you didn't talk about that. It's like guys I got 60 seconds. It's 60 seconds that's all I have like I don't know how you want me to explain like.

the entire Bible in 60 seconds, like it's just not going to happen. So I got to just get in, get out with one point and then like, you're going to have to point to the larger video or whatever. So social media, think the mediums is what changes this stuff for people. and people's attention spans for how long they actually want to follow through with the content. I think a lot of people, even when I watch a YouTube video, I do it too. I'll watch the video. get the gist. I'll scroll through it. unless I really have to research it for something, I'll just scroll through, especially if I'm like kind of pleasure watching something.

and it's not for a project. And then I don't get all the nuance points, but I'm not there to get all the nuance points. I have a specific question in mind that I wanna know and I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna watch that video. I'm gonna find that thing and I'm gonna go on from there. And especially in the longer videos, right? There's some videos I watch, really helpful, amazing content, but it's 45 minutes long and I got 20 minutes. So it's like two times speed and some of it's getting cut out and maybe I'm gonna miss a couple points. This is kinda how it goes.

So my big question is, you think anyone's still listening to us right now?

Well, let us know in the comments, of course. I do think also there's a bit of a skew in the comments toward people who are more likely to do that, right? Because when I talk to other people who listen to the podcast, talk to clients, talk to members in the programs and everything, I mean, they, think are appreciating the nuance. They're not, they're not just listening to one isolated bit. I do think it's really the minority. It's just, as everyone says, it's, it's a loud minority. Um, so we experienced it a lot, but I do think a lot of people are probably still listening now. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17.55)

We'll find out. But, and I do think a lot of people appreciate the, that there is more than like, lot of people understand that you can't put, you know, a hundred hours worth of content into, into 10 minutes. It's literally impossible. I think most people understand that. And then you just have the small faction who are, I don't know, they have different goals and intentions and, and maybe they're, they're quicker to trigger and comment on YouTube videos. And that's more of what they're here for.

Okay, so let's finish up here and come back for part two. Mike, where can people find you?

They can find me at my YouTube channel, MikeFave, and also can find me on my website, MikeFave.com.

Jay, what about you?

yeah, head over to my website, tons of free articles, guides, information there. That's jfeldmanwallness.com. And then of course, on my YouTube channel here, J Feldman Wellness. And, just to mention real quick, we'll, you know, a little bit of a teaser for the next episode, we're going to be getting into some things that we didn't have a chance to get to here. a number of different comments that we've had on the different sugar diet content that we've posted talking about, negative effects people have had, and then also some interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27.586)

An interesting conversation between Jay Campbell, Hunter Williams and Mark Bell talking about using metformin and berberine and some other substances while on a sugar diet. So we'll be getting into that in part two, but Teresa, I free to close this out here and share where people can find you.

Yeah, you can find me at livingrootswellness.com, also on Instagram or the Tapping with Tea app and website. And yeah, thanks everyone for listening. We will see you in part two.