Jay Feldman: 

By now you've probably heard of the Sugar Diet, but it's important to understand why it actually works and whether it's the right diet for you. That's what I'll be digging into in today's episode of the Energy Balance Podcast, a podcast where we explore health and nutrition from the bioenergetic view and teach you how to maximize your cellular energy to maximize your health.

Today's episode is the second and final part of the two part series on the Sugar Diet, and in today's episode, I'll be going over how the sugar diet, honey diet, and other similar diets actually work, and whether FGF 21 is really responsible for their benefits. I'll discuss how you can lose weight while eating sugar and without sacrificing your health.

I'll discuss the side effects of the sugar diet and how to modify the diet to prevent those side effects. I'll go over the surprising effects of the sugar diet on testosterone, digestion, and bone health. I'll also go over whether you'll lose muscle on a low protein diet like the sugar diet, and whether you shouldn't be eating carbs and fat together due to the Randall Cycle.

As always to check out the show notes. I'll link to the  studies articles and anything else that I referenced throughout today's episode. Head over to jay feldmanwellness.com/podcast. And with that, let's get started.

Alright, so in part one, we dove pretty deep into the research on FGF 21, and just to briefly refresh your memory on that or if you're skipping ahead to part two here, FGF 21 is a hormone that's increased on protein deficient diets and also on diets that are excessively high in carbohydrates.

And it's supposed to be the key to these diets. The sugar diet, the honey diet, the fruit till noon diet, the fairy princess diet are centered around trying to increase FGF 21. That's generally what's cited to be responsible for increased energy expenditure on these diets and therefore weight loss on these diets.

But in the last episode, we discussed that while FGF 21 does increase energy expenditure, which can lead to weight loss. It does so by activating our stress systems and our stress hormones, and it actually acts as a stress hormone. And this comes at a long-term cost specifically that is going to down regulate our metabolism in the long term.

Even though it'll increase in the short term, that's going to catch up with us. And in the long term we'll see a depressed metabolism that will likely lead to weight regain. So we talked about that in that last episode. We also talked about how when you activate FGF 21 from a low protein diet, there are other side effects, so to speak, including that it decreases protein synthesis and can therefore lead to long-term losses in lean mass, including muscle and bone because it's also something that, leads to bone loss over time. And then we also talked about how when you activate FGF 21 from carbohydrates, it actually requires that we're producing fat from those carbohydrates in the liver. So in order to activate FGF 21 in the liver from carbohydrates, you have to be in a state where you're converting carbohydrates into fat.

This is a process called de novo Lipogenesis, and this is why we see FGF 21 elevated in states of fatty liver disease, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as other degenerative states. So we talked about all of [00:03:00] that in the last episode. We talked through the research relating to all of that, and it's FGF 21.

To give us a larger overview and understanding of whether it's actually something we wanna be increasing and whether it's actually increasing in these diets. And basically what we came to is, yes, it is going to increase in diets like these that are very low in protein and that's probably going to be the main driver.

Secondarily, excessively high carbohydrates if they're producing fat in the liver would also be further increasing FGF 21. But as you might have gathered, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good thing. So we'll be talking a bit about that today. But we're going to start by talking through the various mechanisms through which these diets work, because it's not just all about FGF 21.

There are other factors as well relating to insulin sensitivity and various other health aspects that we'll be going over. And there's also various concerns with this diet. Again, outside of FGF 21, there are some other concerns I'll be talking through. And then I'll also talk about how you can modify the diet to prevent some of those concerning effects and what other approaches we might want to consider instead, depending on our circumstances.

So let's start by talking about how the diets actually work. And as I mentioned, FGF 21, which is essentially a stress hormone. It's a metabolic hormone produced in the liver, will be increased on these diets and that will increase energy expenditure. So that is something that will be responsible for weight loss seen here as you're going to see an increase in utilization of fuel on these diets.

An increase in energy expenditure, an increase in calories out, if you wanna think of it that way. And part of that is due to FGF 21, activating the sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress system. So there are some other reasons, or there's some other effects of these diets that can also be attributed to FGF 21 and one of those, or a few of those are the increase in energy seen on these diets and also the increase in mood and the increased desire to work out.

So those are all things that I've heard mentioned from people on these diets. They feel really energetic. They feel like they're in a good mood and they want to expend [energy. And of course these can be signs of good health. Like it's good to have a lot of energy. It's good to be, in a good mood and to want to expend energy through a workout.

Like being in that state is a good sign generally for health. But like we talked about in the last episode, it's really important to understand how we're getting to that point. As an example, if we were to take tons of caffeine we would probably feel similarly, or if we were to use very high doses of T three, the act of thyroid hormone, we might feel similarly if we were to use ephedrine, which basically activates the stress system in the same way.

We'd probably also feel that same way. But that doesn't mean these things are operating through beneficial ways. Instead they're doing it through stress. And that basically means that we are borrowing from our future. So right now we might be feeling really good, but we're basically setting us up for setting ourselves up for a crash and for the opposite effects later on.

So that's the first thing I wanna mention here, which is that the increase in FGF 21 is likely, at least partially responsible for the weight loss and at least partially responsible for some of the energy mood effects. But that doesn't make them a good thing. Of course. It's worth mentioning too that, mostly this is going to be driven by the low protein composition of these diets, whether it's just earlier in the day the honey diet and some of the other more bioenergetic based diets.

They include consuming protein in the evening. So what you would get in those states is an increase in FGF 21 earlier in the day up until you eat that protein and fat for dinner. And then after that you would have the decrease. So earlier in the day, you would be getting this increase in basically a stress hormone in FGF 21, an increase of those stress systems and an increase in energy expenditure and these other effects.

Now I did wanna mention as well that there are certain amino acids that are more responsible for inactivating FGF 21. So I know some of these diets include some amount of collagen or gelatin earlier in the day and that won't inactivate FGF 21. You'll still have high levels of FGF 21, but that also won't actually prevent the side effects from FGF 21 anyway.

So it's not particularly relevant in terms of this part of the conversation. So that would be the first reason why this diet is working, activating stress via FGF 21, increasing energy expenditure, and also improving mood and energy and things like that. As I've alluded to, there will be some side effects to that and we'll talk about those specifically, but it doesn't make it a good long-term option.

But that is one of the things responsible for the effects here. And I did wanna mention, I know in these diets it's generally mentioned that really you wanna be on a high sugar diet and not a high starch diet because sugar is more effective for increasing FGF 21. And it's true that it is, but. In the studies looking at humans on high carb diets and increasing FGF 21, they tend to include much more starch than sugar.

They tend to be on relatively lower sugar diets. And so what that tells us is that the starch is still effective at increasing FGF 21. It doesn't have to be sugar. And the other thing that means is that if you are one of the people who's feeling like you're not getting  benefits while you're consuming the starch, but you are, when you have more sugars, that probably tells us or points to other mechanisms that are at play here that are not just FGF 21.

And that's important to mention as well. That's not everything here. And we'll definitely be talking about some of those other effects here of these diets. And the next one that I do wanna mention here along those lines is that we're on something like the Sugar Diet. It's largely an elimination diet in many ways.

Obviously it would depend on what kind of diet you're coming from, but if you're cutting out all starches, that also means you're cutting out all grains. If you're just eating sugars earlier in the day. Most of those sugars, whether we're talking honey sugar itself, even candy or juices and most fruits, those tend to be very easy to digest.

And so you can be getting benefits due to basically removing foods that you weren't digesting very well prior. And also with the reduction in protein and fat, a lot of people have trouble, especially when they're in a low metabolic state with digesting protein and fat due to low stomach acid and poor bile flow and low digestive enzyme production.

So by taking those foods out, or at least reducing them significantly, you can improve a lot of things and lead to weight loss and lead to improvements in energy and mood just because you're not having undigested protein and undigested fat that are passing through the digestive system, causing a lot of irritation, inflammation, intestinal permeability, feeding bacteria creating endotoxin production.

Tons of other downstream effects. So that's another mechanism through which you might see benefits here is essentially you're eliminating things that you might not have been digesting well, or you might have just been, having a reaction to tons of people have reactions to grains, for example.

And those can drive immune related reactions that could be causing weight gain, could be causing low mood, various other issues, autoimmune conditions. And so the fact that we've reduced those could also be responsible for a number of the benefits on these diets. So wanted to mention that as well.

But another one, and we're going to dig into the research a little bit here, is looking at low fat diets. Because low fat diets in general [00:10:00] show a lot of benefits when it comes to improving insulin sensitivity, reversing insulin resistance and weight loss. Putting FGF 21 aside entirely just by going on a low fat diet, you will generally see major improvements in insulin sensitivity.

And you'll often see weight loss as well, even without protein restriction, and even without any FGF 21 activation. Now, we saw in the studies on FGF 21 activity in the last episode when we were looking at the amount of protein that we're consuming and at what level we need to decrease it at what kind of level we see a deficiency where you're going to see an increase in FGF 21.

And what they basically found is that if you're at around 15% protein in your diet, that's not going to activate FGF 21. And what we will see here in a number of these studies is that in people who are overweight, who are dealing with metabolic syndrome or who aren't, and in people who have type two diabetes, you can get incredible benefits on a low fat diet, incredible improvements in insulin sensitivity and in weight loss, even without activating FGF 21 and even without decreasing your protein.

So we'll take a look at a couple of studies here looking at that. Not too many, just a couple quick ones. There are a ton of studies here, and I'll cite all those in the show notes that, also corroborate this. But just to look at a couple of important ones here. The first one is titled Diet and Exercise and the Treatment of Type two Diabetes.

The Need for Early Emphasis. And in this study they were looking at people with type two diabetes. They put 'em on a low-fat diet for just three weeks. So this is a very short term study. And despite that, they saw really incredible improvements. And the diet was a 10% fat, 15% protein, and 75% carbohydrate diet.

So with that amount of protein, we wouldn't be seeing FGF 21 activity. What we did see was still some really incredible improvements. And what they state, again, after only three weeks was that fasting glucose level was reduced from 10 to 8.45 millimoles per liter, and 71% of the 197 subjects taking oral hypoglycemic agents and 39% of the 212 taking insulin we're able to discontinue their medication.

So they had such improvements in insulin sensitivity and reductions in glucose blood glucose, that they were able to stop the medications they were taking. This is people with type two diabetes. They're able to stop their insulin or stop other medications that they were using to help with their blood sugar regulation.

So that's very clearly shows us that just the low fat without low protein, without an increase in FGF 21 leads to a massive improvement in insulin resistance in the people with the most severe insulin resistance in people with type two diabetes. And we saw a similar effect in this study, which was looking at women who do not have type two diabetes.

And this is a study titled Changes in Body Weight, body Composition and Energy Intake in Women Fed High and low Fat Diets. So these women were given either a low fat or a high fat diet for 20 weeks, and it wasn't even that low in fat. So we can see on their high fat diet, they had 37% of their calories from fat.

And we can see 43 or 44% coming from carbs and 19% coming from protein. And we can look at the low fat diet where they had 21% of their calories coming from fat, 59% coming from carbohydrate, and 19% coming from protein. So both had the same amount of protein. There was just a trade for carbs between carbs and fat.

And it wasn't that big of a decrease in fat. We were just going to 21% of total calories, which is I think a lot more sustainable for people anyway. And they were given this diet for a longer period of time. It was for 20 weeks. And what they found was we'll look at this quote here. They state the effects of a 20% low fat diet on total body weight, lean body weight.

And Adiposity were studied in 18 premenopausal women with a body mass index of 18 to 44. Despite adjustments in energy intake to maintain weight throughout the study, subjects exhibited a 2.8% decrease in total body weight and 11.3% decrease in fat weight and a 2.2% increase in lean body weight by the end of the low fat period.

So just to pause here, because this is really worth. Noting a couple of things. For one, they had to increase the amount of calories they were consuming to try to help these women maintain weight because they were losing weight even without trying, even while trying to keep the calories the same on a 20% low fat diet.

This is not five 10%, 0% low fat. This is, or no fat. This is a 20% low fat diet. And this was also while consuming 19% of their calories from protein. So this is not a low protein diet either. And not only did they still lose weight, despite trying to prevent that, they still lost weight, nearly 3% of their body weight, they lost 11.3% of their body fat and increased lean body mass by 2.2%.

So a major improvement in body composition just by bringing the fat down to 20%, a lot less severe of a fat decrease. As we're seeing on the sugar diet and honey diet and as we'll get to later, there's actually concerns with bringing the fat too low. So I. Just going down to 20% led to these benefits while keeping the protein at 19%.

And as we'll talk about, as you might have gathered, there are concerns to lowering the protein too far as is being suggested on these diets to continue on here, they state similar changes were observed in obese BMI, greater than 30 and non-obese women, and BMI less than 30. By the end of the low fat period energy intake had increased significantly in comparison with the high fat diet, 119% of the high fat intake.

So basically they increased the amount of calories, energy that they were consuming by 20% relative to the other diet. And they were still losing weight and losing body fat. They state results could not be explained by changes in daily activity levels and suggest that macronutrient composition plays a role in energy requirements for weight maintenance.

Again, I want to point out something else here, which is that there is basically an improvement in the metabolic state, an increase in the metabolic rate by 20% without inducing the activity of FGF 21 without dropping the fat too low and without dropping the the protein too low, especially, right? The low protein being the mind, the major one that will be driving FGF 21, but we still saw a 20% increase in the metabolic rate.

Pretty notable there. And as we'll get to later on I think points more in the direction of where we might want to head with this sort of diet or how we might want to tweak it. And again, as I mentioned, there are tons of other studies showing the same thing that you can see. Pretty incredible improvements in insulin resistance, even in people with type two diabetes and in people without, as well as weight loss without dropping the protein beyond 15%.

So again, what that's pointing to is the fact that the low fat aspect itself of the diet dramatically improves insulin sensitivity and lowers body weight again without FGF 21. Now I do wanna mention here, as I've been alluding to throughout these episodes, and as we'll discuss in more detail in a little bit, while there are benefits to these diets, there are also major drawbacks.

And so I do recommend structuring the diet differently. I don't really recommend these diets exactly, and I'll be talking about this, later on. We'll go through all those details. But in the meantime, I'd recommend that you download the free Energy Balance Food Guide. The Food Guide helps you [00:17:00] determine exactly what to eat to optimally support your metabolism and help you lose weight, improve your digestion, get amazing sleep, boost your energy, and so much more.

The Energy Balance Food Guide is a one page infographic that organizes foods on a spectrum based on how effectively they support your metabolism. And it also has a separate spectrum that adjusts the scale for you. In the case that you're dealing with various digestive issues. The food guide makes it extremely easy to get started with a bioenergetic approach to optimizing your health.

So head over to jayfeldmanwellness.com/guide to download your free energy balance food guide. Alright, so let's dig into the situations where low protein diets might actually be more beneficial. Getting below that 15% and whether we need to be concerned about muscle loss on those sorts of diets.

So it's worth mentioning as a starting place here, that there are studies in individuals with type two diabetes where they go on high carb, very low fat, and very low protein studies. They see major improvements in their insulin sensitivity, and they're still shown to be in positive nitrogen balance, meaning that it doesn't seem like they're losing muscle mass in these cases.

But that doesn't mean that this will also be the case in individuals who are non-obese or who don't have type two diabetes. The other point, which I, you've been seeing already is that it doesn't mean that it's also necessary in these other cases to drop the protein too low, as we've already seen.

We can see major benefits without dropping that protein too low. But there are certain cases where lower protein diets might be warranted as we're getting at here. One of those is in the case of type two diabetes, where again, it definitely doesn't seem to be necessary, but a high protein diet definitely seems to cause issues when it comes to type two diabetes.

We'll talk about that here in a second. And also in chronic kidney disease, it's another situation where bringing the protein a bit lower has been shown to provide benefits. But aside from that, as we were talking about, it doesn't really seem to be necessary or beneficial to be dropping the protein too low and in people without these conditions, it's not shown to be consistently beneficial.

So let's start here. We're going to look at a study looking at people with type two diabetes and different protein intakes. So this is a study titled effect of high protein versus high carbohydrate intake on insulin sensitivity body weight, hemoglobin A1C, and blood pressure in patients with type two diabetes mellitus.

They state six patients with type two diabetes. Five women and one man were randomly assigned to the high protein diet, which was 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fat, and six patients, four women and two men to the high carbohydrate diet, which was a lower protein diet of 55% carbs, 15% protein, and 30% fat.

So the main thing we're doing here is we're going from 30% protein to 15%, or we're comparing, two groups, one at 30% protein, the other at 15% protein, and then the opposite with carbs. The 30% protein group had 40% of their diet coming from carbohydrates. The other group had 55% of their diet, of their total calories coming from carbohydrates.

What they found was that both the high carb and the high protein groups [00:20:00] lost weight, and the difference between the groups was not significant. In the high carbohydrate group, hemoglobin A1C decreased from 8.2% to 6.9%. Fasting plasma glucose decreased from 8.8 to 7.2 millimoles per liter, and insulin sensitivity increased from 12.8 to 17.2 micromoles per kilogram per minute.

No significant changes in these parameters occurred in the high protein group. So what they found in these people with type two diabetes was that both groups lost weight, whether it was higher protein or lower protein, but the lower protein group had major improvements in insulin sensitivity and blood sugar, A1C, whereas the high protein group didn't.

Now, again, it's worth noting the low protein group still had 15% of their calories from protein. So we're not seeing a suggestion here of necessarily needing to go below that. But what we are seeing is that a high protein diet in people who are severely insulin resistant does seem to interfere with insulin sensitivity.

Again, takeaway here, not being that we need to drop to 5% or 10% [00:21:00] protein, and even in people who have severe insulin resistance, but that being above 15% or at least up to 30%, seems to interfere with insulin sensitivity, and that is more than we need, and a lot of people, especially coming from low carb, are overeating protein.

So it's great that we're recognizing that's not necessary, especially when we're getting a lot of carbs, because carbs have that protein despairing effect where it basically reduces our need for protein because we're not needing to convert that protein to carbohydrates. But the question still remains as to whether we need to be dropping the protein all the way down to zero five or 10%.

What we're seeing here is that as long as we're getting to a moderate protein intake around 15%, in cases like this we should still see some really great improvements in terms of insulin sensitivity. Now we're going to look at a study. Basically that took the same methods. They were trying the same study, but they were looking at people without type two diabetes.

And so this is a study titled Enhanced Insulin Sensitivity in Subjects on Weight Loss Diets with Increased Protein. And so they looked at the same macronutrients here [00:22:00] as they'll state in this quote where they say adults, there was 50 adults were randomized to weight loss diets for 16 weeks with macronutrient contents of either 30% protein, 40% carbs, and 30% fat, or 15% protein, 55% carbs, and 30% fat.

So the same macros as the other group, but this is in people who don't have type two diabetes. And they state that a trend existed in protein versus carbohydrate for weight loss, where the protein group lost around 9.5% of their total body weight. The carbohydrate group lost around 7.5% of their total body weight.

And in fat mass, where the protein group lost 17.1% of their total. Percentage of fat mass, whereas the other group lost 13.3% of their total body fat. Its own response was significantly improved in the higher protein group versus the lower protein group for one hour and two hour effects that remained after controlling for weight or fat.

Mass loss paralleling insulin sensitivity or insulin response. OMA IR significantly improved in the higher protein versus the lower protein group. So what we're actually seeing [00:23:00] here is the opposite of what we saw in people with type two diabetes where the group consuming the 30% of their calories from protein actually had improved insulin sensitivity relative to the group that had 15% of their calories coming from protein.

I don't think this means that we actually need to be getting up to 30% of our calories from protein. I think that's high, but I think the important thing to note here is that it definitely seems like lower protein is more important in, and when I say lower, I just mean getting down to, let's say around 15% seems to be more important in people who are insulin resistant or especially severely insulin resistant, as opposed to people who are not.

And again, there are some mixed results here, so we'll take a look at this other study. This study is titled The Effect of a Diet Moderately High in Protein and Fiber on Insulin Sensitivity Measured Using the Dynamic Insulin Sensitivity and Secretion Test. And in this case, they were looking at overweight and obese women and there was two diets.

One was 20% protein and 30% fat, 50% carbs. The other was 30% protein, 20% fat, and 50% carbs. In this case, we did find the opposite. They state, although there were significant improvements [00:24:00] in body composition and most cardiometabolic risk factors on the high protein, high fiber diet, insulin sensitivity was reduced by 19.3%.

In comparison with the standard diet, the high protein diet being the 30% one and the standard di being the 20% one. So again, what we're actually seeing here is that 20% protein outperforms 30% protein in people who are overweight and obese, not with type two diabetes. And then we'll look at this last study here as well, where the studies titled Short-Term Elevation in Dietary Protein Intake does not worsen in insulin resistance or lipids.

And older adults with metabolic syndrome are randomized controlled trial. And in this case, they looked at a 10% protein diet versus a 20% protein diet. And that was a trade with carbs. So 10% protein, 55% carbs, and 35% fat versus 20% protein, 45% carbs, and 35% fat. And what they found was that bumping up from 10% to 20% didn't drive any negative effects.

And this was in people, this was in older subjects, older people with metabolic syndrome. And they looked for four weeks and they [00:25:00] state the findings. Suggest that a short-term elevation in protein intake with correspondingly higher branch chain amino acid contents has no detrimental impact on hepatic and peripheral insulin sensitivity or plasma lipid parameters in older adults with metabolic syndrome.

So we have a bit of a mixed bag here, right? Some studies showing that increased protein is actually a little beneficial in people without type two diabetes, some showing that lower protein is actually more beneficial and some showing no effects. What I would suggest here, at least my takeaway here, is that it seems to be more important in people with type two diabetes to get the protein to around 15% of calories.

Probably no lower due to other effects that we've talked about and that we'll continue to talk about. But that does seem to be beneficial. Whereas in people without type two diabetes, it seems to have much less of an effect, seems to be much less potent of an effect, especially compared to low fat. And as we saw in those studies, protein at, 15 to 20% seems to [00:26:00] be totally fine, especially with low fat when we're talking about improving insulin sensitivity and weight loss.

And I do wanna mention as well, and we'll talk about this later, these are not the only factors affecting weight loss. It's not just about how much fat we're eating or how much protein we're eating. There's a lot more to consider and we don't necessarily even have to lower our fat intake or adjust our protein intake.

So we'll talk about that as well. But there's one other circumstance that I want to discuss here, which is people with chronic kidney disease. And in these people it also seems that decreased protein is beneficial for improving insulin sensitivity. And this is probably at least part of the reason why people with type two diabetes see improvements here is 'cause there's a strong correlation between chronic kidney disease and type two diabetes.

This is a study titled Low protein, low Phosphorus Diet and Tissue Insulin Sensitivity in Insulin Dependent Diabetic Patients with Chronic Renal Failure. So this is an intense version of course, of kidney disease, right? We're at a point of renal failure here, but there are other studies showing we're suggesting benefits of keeping the protein pretty low in the case of just chronic [00:27:00] kidney disease.

But in this situation, we're looking at an extremely low protein diet of around 5% or even maybe less, three to 5% of total calories. May state tissue insulin sensitivity was measured by the glucose clamp technique in eight uremic insulin dependent diabetic patients before and after three months on a low protein diet providing daily 35 calories.

Per kilogram of body weight, 60% of the caloric supply being obtained from carbohydrates. And they mentioned the study was like 35 to 37% from fat and that just a little bit from the protein, an improvement in tissue insulin sensitivity was observed for each study. State of the clamp and daily insulin requirements decreased significantly from 38 to 28 units in spite of an increased carbohydrate intake.

It suggested that a low protein diet lowers the production and accumulation of uremic toxins interfering with insulin sensitivity. So we have this other factor here, which is basically showing if there's kidney dysfunction and we're consuming a lot of protein and putting that stress on the kidneys, it does produce various byproducts to greater amount that actually [00:28:00] interfere with insulin sensitivity.

So it seems if we put this whole picture together, that if there are, if we have suboptimal kidney function, which is very likely in type two diabetes, we'll probably benefit from keeping the protein lower. If that's not the case, we should be totally fine in the range of at least 15 to 20% of our total calories from protein.

And again, even in people with type two diabetes, 15% is extremely effective. 15% of calories from protein is extremely effective for insulin sensitivity. So unless we're dealing with really severe kidney issues, we shouldn't have to go any lower than that to get all of the benefits here in terms of improving and reversing its insulin resistance and losing body fat.

So there are a couple of other things I wanna mention here in terms of how these diets work and kind of their use cases. So one of the other use cases here is I guess it's two use cases. One is when we're looking for rapid weight loss, and as we talked about, FGF 21 can be a driver of this.

So if someone was looking for a weight to rapidly lose weight, [00:29:00] this is. Something that could be effective, but as I'll especially caution later, there's cost to that. That doesn't mean that this is the best way to lose weight in the long term. It doesn't mean that it's also supporting our health, and in fact, I would argue that it's going to lead us to be much more prone to regaining weight later.

But that is a case if you're looking for some sort of solution to lose weight rapidly, which I would really generally recommend against. It can work for that. The other situation is people who have extreme fitness or physique goals, if you're trying to get quote unquote shredded via shred maxing, or if you're Mark Bell trying to get to really low single digit body fat percentages, then this can be effective for those scenarios.

If we're trying to get below, let's say 8% body fat, then to get to such a level that I would say is physiologically unhealthy in most cases, the vast majority of cases, and inherently comes at a cost to our health, there has to be some pretty. Stressful interventions in order to get there. And this can be one of them.[00:30:00] 

A lot of times people want, people might try a very low calorie diet. People might try a very low carbohydrate diet. And this can be all an alternative there, right? You can do a very low fat and a very low protein diet, try to upregulate FGF 21, drive all distress and try to get to a very low body fat percentage.

I do think it's worth recognizing that very few people stay at a body fat percentage that low. It's really, I think, more of a transient goal. And it's also one that I would argue is at odds with our health, despite what we see in, fitness magazines and elsewhere. The vast majority of people who you're seeing at those very low body fat percentages are only there for a very short period of time and they're doing it at the cost of their health, not in support of their health.

So this could be a tool to use in those cases. It's just not really a use case that I tend to, come across very often or recommend that people try to orient themselves toward, because I don't think it's healthy really physically or I think mentally as well in a lot of [00:31:00] cases. Obviously there's exceptions to everything, but so that's another use case here.

And then just round it out. As I mentioned, if you're dealing with insulin resistance, reducing the fat can be really helpful here. But as we pointed out, lowering the protein too much is definitely not a requirement. And in the case of someone who has, chronic kidney disease, major kidney dysfunction, that's a case where maybe lowering the protein more is beneficial.

But again, it's not because of the FGF 21, it's because we're, we basically are in a pathological state where we can't properly process protein. And so we're just not making that any worse, right? We're not trying to put protein into a broken protein metabolizing system. So that would I think, be my general thoughts as far as how the dyes are actually working.

But that brings me to some of the concerns with the diets, and I've alluded to a number of these when it comes to FGF 21, but that's not the only concern here. There's various other ones relating to the Randall cycle, relating to hormones, relating to digestion, relating to blood sugar stability. So we'll start here.

Just going over those ones that [00:32:00] I've mentioned, especially in the last episode. When it comes to FGF 21, if you are upregulating, FGF 21, in the cases that we looked at, all the research throughout the last episode, there are side effects, bone loss, muscle loss, infertility, in the rodent models where they're seeing upregulated fg, F 21 activity during developmental periods, we see stunted growth.

So a number of concerns there. But as I mentioned, even if we're not necessarily seeing those things, because we're working through a stress system, we're upregulating stress in order to try to lose weight and basically create a deficit. We're going to have a natural byproduct, which is going to be metabolic suppression in the long term.

This is going to be something that will downregulate our metabolic state in the long term. It'll decrease the conversion of T four to T three. It'll decrease the production of the reproductive steroid hormones. And we saw infertility in those rodent models as well, supporting that and is something that will probably [00:33:00] lead us to be very prone to weight, regain much like other stress-induced diets, whether it's super low calorie dieting, maybe induced by Ozempic or some of those other GLP one agonists or whether it's due to a very low carb diet or due to just massive over exercising.

Those things work until they don't. And that's the vast majority who are of clients and people in my programs who I'm seeing are at that point where it's not working anymore. And. If you're not at that point, I think it's really important to try not to do things that will get you to that point.

If we're looking for. And if you're already at that point, you definitely don't wanna be going back on that wagon, back on that weight loss cycling where you're going to be more prone to regaining weight. And it's harder and harder to lose the weight every time. And it comes with worse and worse health side effects, essentially, the energy and hair, skin and nails and libido and poor sleep and anxiety, and all the rest that we tend to see from that chronic stress.

So that's a couple of concerns here. Another one is that when we're dramatically increasing the metabolic rate with something like FGF [00:34:00] 21 versus just creating a calorie deficit, let's say, one of the concerns here is we're running through a lot of fuel, which increases our nutrient needs, and especially if we're on more of a sugar or honey based diet as opposed to a fruit based diet.

We're going to be much more likely to get nutrient deficiencies due to the fact that we're burning through all this fuel at a very high rate. And we're not eating a particularly nutrient-dense diet, especially if we're also keeping protein outta the diet because our protein sources tend to be our most nutrient dense sources, or at least equivalent with a lot of the carb sources.

So if we're on a sugar or honey based low protein diet, we're upregulating our need for nutrients and we're probably not getting enough, we're probably seeing major gaps in our nutrients. And so that's another concern here when it comes to specifically the upregulation of f FGF 21 and these sorts of diets.

And again, as I mentioned, this is not so different from, the bodybuilders using ephedrine or high dose T three or caffeine. In order to lose body fat, you're causing a very similar state. Except at least with those things, you can [00:35:00] eat enough protein. So you can still eat more protein in those states to prevent the bone loss, the lean mass loss, the muscle loss and some of those other effects.

So I think it could even be argued that would be a better route to go despite all of the negatives that come in both states. Now, there are some other ways that this diet can cause stress? So you might be saying, yeah, if I'm not getting enough protein I'll lose lean mass possibly, but I'm getting a lot of protein with dinner 'cause I have all my protein fat with dinner and not earlier in the day, so I should be covered there.

The reality is, for one, just by Upregulating FGF 21, earlier in the day, you're going to be decreasing protein synthesis. And I wouldn't be so confident in the fact that, especially when we don't have anything substantial or any evidence to support that, an increase in protein synthesis later will outweigh that.

So that's one thing to consider. The other thing is having a dinner of just protein and fat without any carbs is inherently stressful in and of itself. And I've talked about this. We've talked about this on previous Energy Balanced podcast episodes, talking about blood sugar regulation, but [00:36:00] basically eating protein plus fat alone without the carbs, it'll drive blood sugar down because the insulinogenic effect of the protein causes low blood sugar, which then drives glucagon up to produce carbohydrate through gluconeogenesis in order to keep your blood sugar maintained.

But we know that glucagon is an anti metabolic hormone. It drives the same stress. It's a major part of the stress cascade, and it decreases the conversion of T four to T three and shifts us into more fat burning, more fat oxidation, more lipolysis, which helps us deal with the stress in the short term, but in the long term has those same anti metabolic effects.

Now, the other aspect of this that you may or may not be experiencing now, but something to be aware of is that this can also directly interfere with sleep because the glucagon itself is stress. It's a part of the stress cascade, and makes it a lot. Basically puts this into a stress state where it makes it a lot harder to relax and sleep effectively.

And again, you might be having benefits of, in terms of your sleep due to the other things I've mentioned keeping a lot of the bad foods out and maybe improving [00:37:00] insulin sensitivity. There might be a net positive there. But I would be concerned, especially over time with the protein and fat dinner interfering with sleep.

And it's something I see really often excess protein, especially later in the day before bed causing either waking up throughout the night or trouble falling asleep. So that's one to consider. But another way that we might be creating stress on this diet is from the blood sugar stability standpoint.

When we're only eating carbohydrates earlier in the day, especially really quick digesting ones like juice and sugar and candy and honey, and without protein and fat, we digest those sugars very quickly. And at the same time, when we don't have some amount of fat coming in, it means that we're basically forcing our whole bodies to run on glucose.

We'll come back to this in a moment with the Randall Cycle, but in terms of stress, what this means is that because glucose is utilized much quicker than fat and you have your whole body running on glucose, you know your muscles and organ systems and of course brain and everything, you're going to be having major [00:38:00] rushes in of carbohydrates when you're consuming like major rushes into the bloodstream and then major depletion very quickly of those carbohydrates.

'cause your whole body is using those very quickly. Whereas if you had some protein to use, you would run through that fuel a little less quickly. But because we're running through it so fast, we're going to be generally seeing a lot more ups and downs with the blood sugar. Now I'm not saying that blood sugar spikes, within a certain range, are problematic or cause insulin resistance or anything like that.

But what I'm saying is that typically this leads to a state where we have to eat very frequently. Especially if we're eating low fiber fruits as well, or low fiber carbohydrates, we tend to run through those really quickly and we tend to need to eat very consistently to try to keep our blood sugar stable.

And even then it can be a challenge to keep the blood sugar stable. And then the other piece as well is that things like fiber protein and fat slow the digestion of the carbohydrates. So not only do we have a potential situation where, and we'll get to this in a moment, but where the muscles could be using fat.

And so we're not running through the glucose [00:39:00] so much. We're not using up all that glucose that the the brain and nervous system need and some of the other important organ systems need and therefore running through it really, too quickly. But not only is there that aspect, but because when we have fat and protein and fiber as well with carbohydrates, we digest them slower and so we get a slower rise in the blood sugar, which leads to a stable and more steady blood sugar throughout the day.

So we don't have to be eating constantly every hour or something like that. But in then we can have, a more comfortable space between our meals. Now again, we're touching on the Randall cycle here, and there's a lot of concerns, and I hear this being thrown around with all these diets that you can't eat fats and carbs together because of the Randall cycle that's going to cause weight gain.

So that's the other physiological mechanism that's invoked in these diets. And this is driven from a major misunderstanding of the Randall cycle and something that I think is really driving people in the wrong direction. And so this is something that is very important to highlight. So when we actually look at what the Randall cycle is dictating and [00:40:00] what it's, how it actually functions, this is something that starts in the mitochondria and basically determines what kind of fuel the mitochondria will be using, whether it'll be fat or carbohydrates.

And if the mitochondria is using fat, it reduces the uptake in utilization of carbs. And then vice versa. If the mitochondria is using glucose or carbohydrates, it reduces the utilization and uptake of fat because you know there's a, within a cell, there's. A number of processes that were dependent on each other.

This generally would suggest that within a single cell, it's mostly going to be using either carbohydrates or fat. It's not going to be using both at the same time. What this does not mean is that your body can't be using both carbohydrates and fats at the same time. What it also does not mean is that we can't consume multiple fuels at the same time and utilize them at the same time.

It also doesn't even mean that one tissue, one organ system can't be using both carbs, fats, or other fuels at the same time. And in fact, we know that none of those things [00:41:00] are actually true. There's nothing about the Randall cycle that dictates that your muscles can't be using fat while your brain is using glucose.

There's also nothing about the ran cycle that dictates that part of your brain could be using ketones while part of it could be using glucose, or that your liver could be utilizing glucose or fructose while your kidneys, or let's say your heart is a better example, your heart's, your heart is using mostly fat.

There's nothing about the randomy that dictates those things. And there's nothing about it that dictates that if you eat both of those at the same time, you're going to confuse your body and mess up the whole system. And all of a sudden, because there's fat in the bloodstream, your brain is no longer going to be able to use glucose, or your liver is no longer going to be able to use glucose or that because there's glucose in your bloodstream, the muscles are no longer going to be able to use fat for a fuel or your heart won't be able to use fat as a fuel.

These are total mis applications of the Randall Cycle coming from a deep misunderstanding of the Randall Cycle. And it's something that I [00:42:00] see not only in the bioenergetic sphere and in, and promoting these diets, but also on the flip side, on the low carb side, where they'll say the same thing.

You have to either have fats or carbs, you can't have both. If you're having fat, it's going to interfere with carb utilization. So that's the broad overview here. And just to clarify, on the flip side, what I am saying is that. You can have both carbs and fats in a meal in different proportions, and our bodies actually do a fantastic job of utilizing both of them in the same ratios that we're getting them.

So there are studies looking at this. What they basically find is that the respiratory quotient reflects the food quotient. What that means is basically the respiratory quotient is a way that we measure how much fat and carbohydrates our bodies are using. It's never one or the other. It's always some combination of both.

But it's a sliding scale that tells us how much of each we're using. The food quotient is looking at the ratio of carbs and fats in the food that we're eating. And what they generally find is that the amount of carbs and fat that our bodies are using is directly determined and directly reflects the [00:43:00] amounts of carbs and fats that we're consuming.

So if we're consuming 80% carbs and 20% fats, our bodies are generally utilizing 80% carbs and 20% fats as their fuel. If we're eating 20% carbs and 80% fat, again, the same for the body. And if we're eating 50% carbs and 50% fats, the body is doing the same. It's utilizing 50% carbs and 50% fats. The, there are certain exceptions, but the exceptions tend to come at the extremes.

If you're eating extremely low fat diet, you're actually gonna be burning more fat than you take in because there's a number of tissues that tend to prefer fat as a fuel. And the same thing, if you're using a very low carbohydrate diet, you're going to be burning more carbs than you take in because certain tissues like to utilize carbohydrates.

And so you have, on the low carb diet, you have the conversion from protein and other substrates into carbs. And on the low fat diet you have the conversion of carbs into fat to make up that difference. But this is the important point to drive home here is that there is nothing that dictates that you can only choose one fuel or the other.

Now, I know [00:44:00] we were just going through studies showing that low fat improves insulin resistance. This is not because the body can't use both at the same time, and. There's tons and tons of examples, myself included, of people who are consuming moderate amounts of both carbs and fat, or you could even say high amounts of both carbs and fat without any issue in terms of insulin sensitivity or weight.

And this is historically I would argue what we were eating. And when we look at various diets cookbooks and things like that from, even a hundred years ago and prior to that where people were very lean, there wasn't this obesity issue. People were eating both carbs and fats.

And I'll be doing some further videos on this later on and digging into all that. But the short of it being that the problem is not consuming both of those together, part of the reason why the low fat diets work in cases like insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity, is because. In those states, we tend to have very high stress hormones.

When we have high stress hormones, our body is already shifting more toward utilizing fats, and we're also releasing a lot more fats from the fat [00:45:00] stores. So just at baseline in those states, we're already leaning more on the fat oxidation side, so we don't need very much more fat to meet our needs there.

Our needs for fat are much lower because we have a lot more being released from the fat tissue at all times and a lot more being utilized anyway. And so our needs for fat are much lower. And if we exceed those, then in a case like that, we are going to get to a point where the tissues that actually need to utilize the carbs that do much better utilizing the carbs are going to be interfered with because we're getting so much fat that it's putting us into some level of the stress state, which drives the chronic glucagon, adrenaline and cortisol and other hormonal states that we see in type two diabetes.

So if the body is in a state where it's stuck mostly utilizing fat, and I should say on top of that, the other huge component is that there's already problems with glucose metabolism in. Some resistance in type two diabetes. That's what's driving all of those things. And so when we're in a state like that, we're essentially stuck burning fat.

And so the other piece here is that when we lower those fats [00:46:00] significantly, we can force the utilization of carbohydrates by reducing this thing that interferes with carbohydrate and oxidation. It doesn't necessarily directly fix the underlying issue of what's causing the insulin resistance, but helps us circumvent it because we're stuck in this fat burning kind of state.

So the rand cycle comes into play here in terms of what's going on in the tissues or inside the cells where they are stuck burning fat 'cause they can't properly oxidize glucose. And if you take that fat away, you force them to utilize the glucose. Again, there's an aspect like that part is properly applied.

But this general idea that we can't be consuming carbs and fats in moderate amounts, equal amounts, or in any middle combination, is a total misapplication. Of the ran cycle. And in addition to that, to suggest that we have to have them at different meals is equivalently inaccurate in terms of application.

There's no need to even if you're on a low fat diet, let's say, 10 or 20%, which you, as we saw in those earlier studies, 20% is pretty effective when it comes to a low fat [00:47:00] diet. Even if you're there, that doesn't mean you have to have that 20% of your fat calories all at the same meal and separated from the carbs.

You can have those imbalanced amounts throughout the day alongside the carbs, which we'll be mentioning here in a moment is one of the recommendations I would have if you are trying a lowfat diet or if you're looking to modify some of these kind of sugar based diets. Alright, so there are a couple of other things to mention here, a couple of other concerns when it comes to these these different sugar diets.

I'll call them, sugar diet honey, diet fruit till no diet and all the rest. And that's that with an excessively low fat diet. Pretty consistently in the research we see lower reproductive hormones. We see lower testosterone and lower DHT levels as an example in men. This is of course, not something that I think most people would want when they're trying to implement these diets.

And I will say, if you're losing a lot of body fat, that is probably outweighing this decrease in testosterone. In DHT, you're probably having much lower estrogen and you probably actually see improvements here, but that's more driven by the weight loss than the diet. And the longer you continue [00:48:00] on it, the more you're going to see the opposite effect of decreased pro metabolic reproductive hormones.

And so what we'd really wanna do is decrease the weight without that pressure downward on the androgenic hormones. So just a quick one to mention here in terms of the hormonal effects of these diets, and of course, testosterone's important for maintaining the lean mass and bone mass that we're already concerned about on these sorts of diets.

Now there's another one here, which is the digestive, the potential the potential concerns when it comes to our digestive health on these diets. When we're eating a very low fat diet, one thing that we're going to see is reduced bile flow. And that makes sense because bile is one of its main jobs is digesting fat.

So if we have less fat coming in, you could say we have reduced need for bile, but that's not the only thing that bile does. Bile has a really strong antibacterial effect in the small intestine, so it helps to keep our small intestine clear of bacteria, which it should be, helps to basically prevent SIBO from developing.

And there are some other effects as well of bile. It helps to [00:49:00] clear out things from the liver that basically like toxic. Toxic inputs that we want to clear out. Things like estrogen, things like pesticides, things like heavy metals. A lot of those clear out through the bile. And so if we have reduced bile flow, we'll generally have reduced clearance of those things as well at the liver.

And then a couple other things to consider about the relationship between fat consumption and digestion is that fats and especially saturated fats, have antimicrobial effects themselves. They have antibacterial and antifungal effects, so they help to keep the intestines clear through that mechanism as well.

And they also directly help with the clearance of endotoxin from the intestines by activating a lipid raft mediated mechanism of basically causing proper absorption of endotoxin instead of it going via intestinal permeability. We have. More constructive way of absorbing it, bringing it to the liver to detoxify.

And that's something that's supported by saturated fats. Again, if we're having a very low fat diet, we're then left with some potential issues here of being more prone to sibo, more prone [00:50:00] to fungal issues as well, and being more prone to potential endotoxin issues because of basically impaired ability to clear it.

It's also worth mentioning that FGF 21 itself actually reduces bile acid production. So not only is the low fat diet going to be reducing bile flow, but the low protein diet is also going to be reducing bile flow and bile acid production. Now, one of the caveats here, and I mentioned this earlier, is that if you have problems digesting fat and or protein, bio flow issues are already probably present and often you can actually get congestion in the gallbladder or problems with bio production in the liver, bio acid production, or other aspects there that are causing inflammation and irritation There.

And if that's the case, taking out the fat, keeping the protein low and lowering bile flow will lead to relief. It will rele like lead to benefits in terms of how you feel in those situations. But long term we're not actually fixing the problem. We'll be much more prone to those other issues I'd mentioned, like increased bacterial [00:51:00] overgrowth and the reduced ability to clear harmful things through the liver's detoxification processes.

So this is still not an ideal route to go, but it can lead to those kind of short-term benefits, or it could be one of the reasons why you notice some benefits on these diets. Now the other thing to mention when it comes to the effects of these diets. On the gut is that there's another aspect that could leave us prone to overgrowths of microbes and some other issues depending on how we're structuring the diets or what kinds of sugar sources we're using.

So if we're mostly using, honey and table sugar and most juices then and some fruits as well, depends on the specifics, then we might be on a lower FODMAP diet. FODMAPs are fermentable carbohydrates and that could be really beneficial if you have some major microbiome imbalances, if you have some bacterial overgrowths or fungal overgrowths or things like that.

It's not the long-term solution. We need to make sure we clear those out and then support the growth of a healthy microbiome. But it can help in the short term. [00:52:00] However, if you're doing it more as a fruit-based diet, especially with high FODMAP fruits like apples, pears, stone fruits, which are plumbs, peaches, nectarines.

Apricots cherries. Watermelon is another high FODMAP fruit. And then those juices as well, like apple juice and pear juice and peach juice, those are all very high FODMAP foods. So if you're utilizing a diet that's getting a lot of carbohydrates from those sources, you could actually be seeing the opposite effect.

You could be seeing bloating, gas, motility issues and a lot of intestinal irritation, which can then cause endotoxin production could then cause some weight gain, could then cause brain fog and tons of other issues. So this is something to consider on the other side that could be making things worse on these diets if we're not careful about our digestive health, our gut microbiome, and the types of carbohydrates that we're consuming.

So one other thing that I forgot to mention earlier when we were talking about ways through which these diets can cause stress one of them is basically that we're consuming too few calories, we're consuming too little food, and we're creating these major energy [00:53:00] deficits. We talked about this earlier, that these can be FGF 21 driven, but even without that, if we're.

Losing, significant amounts of weight very quickly. There's likely major energy deficits, and that's something that would also contribute to the stress effects. There are some other concerns that I have on this diet that aren't necessarily physiological in nature per se, but rather have more to do with the psychology around the diet, the restriction, the complication that comes with these sorts of diets.

So the first is that there's a lot of restriction that's innate to these diets. We're talking about missing out on consuming a comfortable amount of protein and fat during the day and eating an easy, eating square easy meals throughout the day. We're also probably talking about eating tons of high carb foods all throughout the day as well in, in many cases to keep the blood sugar steady, which that's almost a form of restriction as well, or like a form of food obsession in a way, or just needing to really manipulate the diet to an extreme extent that interferes with your day-to-day lifestyle.

Obviously [00:54:00] there's a point to which. It's important for our diet and health to supersede our lifestyle. But it, I think with these sorts of diets, it can very easily become something that's gone too far in that direction and in an unhealthy way. And then the other thing we talked about as well is that then you're supposed to be having a fasting period in a number of these different diets between the middle of the day or late afternoon or middle afternoon and evening when you have your dinner where you're supposed to be extremely hungry, it's really uncomfortable.

You have to do things to distract yourself during that period of time. That's something that's pretty concerning to me as well, that's restriction, I think is honestly totally unnecessary on a healthy diet, even when we're getting weight loss. Even when we're accomplishing that goal, and again we're just falling back into these kinda willpower restriction based, eat less, exercise, more sort of approaches or adjacent approaches that I think in many ways don't end up being any more than that and still.

Come at a major cost to our mental health. At [00:55:00] least they, they can. And so that's another concern there. Then we come to dinner where we're supposed to just eat protein and fat if we're on something like the honey diet without any carbs, which I think a lot of people don't prefer. I think people prefer to eat a, a balanced meal.

So I think, there's obviously some restriction built into that. And then if we're talking about more of the sugar diet and the sugar fasting, we're talking about basically avoiding protein despite all the desires for it. And we're trying, again, on all these diets to increase FGF 21 to get to a point where we don't even want carbs anymore and we want protein, but we're still supposed to be restricting that protein.

So again, just a lot of restriction built into these diets, and we're missing out on really great foods that we don't need to be missing out on. Things like whole fat dairy, milk and cheese yogurt. Obviously there's so many caveats with these. They can be really beneficial. They can cause some negative effects if we don't digest them well, and we've talked about that ad nauseum on, on the podcast.

But obviously these are foods that can be extremely healthy to include. You have foods like chocolate most cuts of red meat, and beef that are going to be [00:56:00] not only high in protein, but also high in fat. We're missing out on the combination of starch and fat. We're missing out some cases on starch entirely.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes and sourdough bread and white rice. But then also the combination of starch and fat, which I think is one of the most enjoyable combinations. Something that most people really enjoy and have quite a strong taste for. And I don't think that's by accident, and I don't think that's the cause of weight gain, as I was mentioning earlier.

But we're missing out. We're restricting ourselves from all of these things that I think comes at a major cause mentally makes it, makes these diets really unsustainable and also makes them much worse. Alternatives to another, to other approaches that don't include that same restriction. And then it also leads to a lot of complication.

The more I've. Red accounts and watch videos of people talking about these diets. The less simple it becomes, it starts out with this really simple premise of basically the sugar diet, the honey diet fruit till, no, you just have this one general principle and the rest falls into place.

But the more content I'm seeing about it, the more [00:57:00] complications there are. People are talking about how certain fruits shouldn't be eaten because they have too much starch or too much protein, which those will suppress FGF 21 and prevent you from losing weight. They talk about doing, refeeds, especially with the sugar diet.

There's all this fasting and refeeding going on, all this kind of really complicated manipulation of your diet. I've heard some of these diets that there's all these supplements you should be taking to prevent those nutrient deficiencies. It seems really far from eating in a comfortable, sustainable way that as a byproduct of eating in a healthy way, not only do you get weight loss, but you're having enough food, you're eating like balanced amount, you're getting enough nutrients.

That's really, I think what our goal should be. Those should all be natural byproducts of our diet as opposed to something where we have to be excessively obs obsessed with making sure we're getting enough of the right nutrients in a really particular way. 'cause it's really difficult to do on this sort of diet and you have to dramatically manipulate all your macronutrients.

Again I understand the appeal for people who are looking to lose a [00:58:00] lot of weight and are wanting something that's going to lead to those quick results. But as I mentioned, especially earlier on in that last episode, there are some major costs to that sort of approach as we've talked about today. And then the other concern too, of course if we're relying on a lot of supplements or if we're not, in both cases we're much more likely to have nutrient deficiencies.

And if we're relying on the high dose supplements, much more likely to have nutrient imbalances as well. It's really easy to get excessive amounts of certain nutrients from supplements and then cause imbalances with other ones that we need. And yeah, I think there's a lot of just unnecessary complication and restriction that comes along with these diets.

But again the most important thing here and the point that I think is that I really wanted to get to throughout both of, this entire series is that we could, if we want, just modify the diet in a way to improve it, but we also don't really need to go this route to be healthy and to lose weight.

So I really don't like the diet approach, right? The idea that we're doing something that's generally unsustainable, [00:59:00] uncomfortable, a lot of restriction, a lot of complication for a short period of time to lose a lot of weight, to get to some goal when a vast majority of the time it's going to lead to weight regain.

And we explain all the mechanisms why that would happen, it's going to lead to other detrimental health effects, and then we're just going to be regaining the weight and then go back on some other diet or even the same diet to lose the weight again. I think that's really likely what we're going to see here.

But if you really want that sort of an approach and you just wanted to modify this, you wanted to have something that's really structured, you want keep the same framework, but you just wanted to modify it. What I would recommend doing, and again, these are inherently going to slow something like weight loss because you're gonna be slowing the stress, but I would be including protein throughout the day.

I wouldn't be doing, protein fast till dinner because we don't wanna be activating FGF 21. It comes with all sorts of negative effects. I would also be including some fat earlier in the day if you wanted to keep it very low. If you wanna still keep the kind of extreme sense of the diet and aim for 10% of your calories from fat, I think that's fine, but I would include that fat a little bit throughout the day.

You don't have to, but [01:00:00] it tends to be more helpful when it comes to having stable blood sugar. I will say if you're feeling fine on the blood sugar side, then you could just do, a little bit of protein and carbohydrates and then I would make sure to include carbohydrates with dinner. If dinner's gonna be your mostly protein meal, you can still keep it very low in fat if you'd like, but I would make sure to include carbohydrates there to avoid all the stress issues that are going to come with not having carbs there to avoid the likelihood of interfering with sleep over time and things like that.

And this will still, as we were looking at those studies on, on people on low fat diets even who have type two diabetes, we can still see fantastic improvements in insulin resistance and weight loss in even relatively short periods of time. It probably won't be quite as fast as you would with activating or increasing the activity of FGF 21, but I think that's definitely worth it considering the costs that are inherent there.

Now, on the flip side, I would generally recommend not trying to have such an extreme framework [01:01:00] and, leaning so heavily into that kind of structure because I think it is not going to be a sustainable, and it's not actually going to be addressing the underlying drivers of our issues. So what I would say instead, the optimal approach is not to aim for rapid weight loss and not to just go with the kind of oversimplified one size fits all diet, but instead to use an individualized approach and aim for lower and steadier approach.

Not looking for a quick fix, but rather looking for a more sustainable solution that's not going to cause the yo-yoing and it's not going to cause the physiological stress that we wanna avoid. So the first thing I recommend here is starting with the foundations, which is something that we talk about on so many of the podcast episodes.

When it comes to the dietary side, we want to have a well balanced, so to speak, bioenergetic diet. That'll cover our macronutrient needs, our micronutrient needs, our blood sugar needs, our digestive needs throughout the day. We talked about that in episodes a hundred and 101 of the Energy Balance podcast.

You can take a look at that for some more details. We also wanna make sure that we're [01:02:00] getting our digestion in order, our sleep, our stress, our movement. There's so many things to do there. We've talked about this on tons of different podcast episodes, but depending on what. Your individual issues are in these areas.

It can be challenging, it can be, it can take some time to resolve those issues, but it's absolutely worth doing so that we can improve our health and lose weight by improving our metabolic health instead of via stress, which is just going to make it worse over time and also likely make these issues worse over time.

And I will say the vast majority of the time, just getting these founda foundations properly in place will lead to the results we're looking for. It'll lead to the better energy, the weight loss, better sleep, better digestion, better mood, all of the rest. So that's always why I recommend starting with those.

Now, beyond that, if you're not seeing the improvements we would anticipate, or it's taking longer than we would think and we're not seeing clear symptoms, then we wanna make sure we're figuring out what's going on with our individual physiology. And what's preventing us from seeing those improvements [01:03:00] in again, instead of just going to the extreme diet, we wanna figure out why are we not losing weight?

Is it an endotoxin issue? Is it a pofa issue? Is it a nutrient deficiency issue? Is it a sleep issue? Is it a stress issue? And we wanna address all those possible factors. We don't wanna just force it by, eating less and exercising more, or doing some combination thereof of driving stress, whether it's also a low carb diet or an extremely low fat, low protein diet.

And what we might find is, we're dealing with insulin resistance, we have excess body fat, we might need to lower our fat intake. That could be really beneficial for us. But on the flip side, we might not need to do that. If instead we're having a major endotoxin issue, which is causing insulin resistance 'cause that's known to cause insulin resistance.

It's very tightly tied with type two diabetes and insulin resistance and obesity and cardiovascular disease and other disease processes. Fatty liver disease. So if that is really our underlying issue, we might need not need to lower our fat at all. We might be able to have our fat still at 30% of our total calories, which might be more comfortable for us diet wise.

And we just needed to fix those digestive issues. And if we [01:04:00] don't and we just try to lower the fat and those digestive issues are still there, we're going to be prone to continued issues as a result of that. And maybe weight regain is the result of that as well. So it's really important that we're addressing those underlying factors.

And again, I wouldn't generally be recommending lowering protein intake unless we have some severe kidney issues maybe alongside type two diabetes, but, or if we're overeating protein, of course that would be a scenario where we might want to lower it. But the reality here is we wanna sort out our individual needs, what's going on, what's holding us back?

What's preventing us from improving these areas? What's causing the weight to be staying on what's causing our metabolism to remain low and address those directly. I. So if you're looking for more direct help with sorting all this out if you're looking for help, getting a healthy bioenergetic diet in place, figuring out what your digestive issues are, whether it's low stomach acid, poor bile flow, slow motility, or excessively fast motility, or bacterial or fungal overgrowths.

If you're trying to determine why you're not sleeping well, if you're trying to resolve low testosterone or low thyroid, first, I would just recommends looking through all the [01:05:00] content on this channel. There's a ton of free information there, but if you'd like more direct help with clear action steps and strategies alongside personalized guidance from me, then you can head over to jay feldman wellness.com/solution where you can find all of the information for the Energy Balance Solution program.

This program includes customized health coaching and includes a video library with videos on how to restore gut health, how to regulate your blood sugar, how to lose weight without destroying your metabolism in the process, how to boost your metabolism, how to get amazing sleep, and rebalance your hormones and tons more.

It also includes resources like sample meal plan, recipes, a calorie and macro calculator that'll help you tailor those macros to your actual needs, help you determine whether you actually need to be lowering fat or where your protein intake should be. There's also a supplement guide in there and tons of other resources as well as a private community.

So head over to j felman wellness.com/solution to check out all those details. If you did enjoy today's episode in this series, please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube, and [01:06:00] if you're listening elsewhere, please leave a review and five star rating. All of those things really do a lot to help support the podcast and are very much appreciated.

As always, to check out the show notes where I'll link to the studies and articles and anything else that I referenced throughout today's episode, you can head over to jayfeldmanwellness.com/podcast. And with that, I'll see you on the next one.