Jay
Welcome to episode 10 of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman and joining me today is my good friend, Mike Fave. This is going to be part one of a three part series on healthy weight loss. And today we're going to be focusing on the idea that we should be eating less and exercising more in order to lose weight. And really why this is probably the worst advice out there as far as healthy weight loss goes. And we'll be talking about the fact that you don't need to be restricting, you don't need to be constantly hungry in order to lose weight in a healthy way. We'll also be talking about why health and weight loss are not actually synonymous and you can lose weight without actually improving your health. And we'll also be talking about some of the problems with the calories in calories out model as far as weight loss goes. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast, where I'll be linking to any of the articles or studies or anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode.

And as we'll talk about a little bit today and definitely a lot more throughout this series on healthy weight loss, the culprit or the reason why you might be struggling to lose weight in a healthy way really comes down to energy. And if we have enough cellular energy, if our energy producing systems are working optimally, and if we're not wasting energy, then healthy weight loss comes as a by-product. So to check out a free mini course where I'll walk you through the main things you'll want to focus on.

To support energy production and the things you'll want to avoid that inhibit energy production, you can head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy where you can sign up for that free mini course. And with that, let's get started. All right, so before we talk about what the mainstream views of weight loss are, why they aren't really effective, why they aren't really accurate, I first just want to talk about whether basically just the goal of weight loss, which is probably the most ubiquitous goal among everybody. know, so much of the world around us is built towards losing weight. least in the US. Yeah, yeah, at least in the US and I'm sure a lot of other Western type countries. You know, like all of the different food that you find in grocery stores all over the packaging is talking about how many calories are in there, how much fat is in there. Obviously there are gyms and you know, all sorts of different fitness centers everywhere that are all talking about weight loss. It's all over commercials. It's talked about in TV shows and movies and all over the media. You know, when we when we're looking at magazine covers or, you know, any posters or anything, you know, it's not uncommon to see people with their shirts off who are, you know, very lean and oftentimes pretty muscular as well. It's just one of, you know, something that we regard very highly. And there's a lot of danger that comes with that.

Basically just having this goal of wanting to lose weight because weight loss and health are definitely not always synonymous. But I would also say that if you are improving your health, oftentimes weight loss comes with, and I would say that that's a much better approach is to be focusing on health and have weight loss as kind of that added side effect as opposed to focusing on weight loss. Because as we'll talk about when you focus on weight loss, it often ends up coming at the cost of your health.

And that's especially true when you're looking for like a short term result when you're, you know, all of these different diets and programs and weight loss bars and supplements that say that you'll lose 10 pounds in a month or less. And, know, have all these huge promises, which just leads to all this yo-yo dieting that I think almost everybody who has the goal of weight loss goes through. You know, most people, if you look at like a graph of their weight throughout their lives starting in, you know, in adulthood, it's just a perfect like sine wave.

Except it keeps kind of climbing up because, you know, they gain a bunch of weight, then go on some extreme diet to lose a bunch of weight and then gain weight above what they had, you where they were at at their highest point. And it just keeps climbing up. it's it's definitely not a fun way to live your life and also not very effective as far as reaching that goal of weight loss or health. Yeah, I mean, I think the overall question is why are you gaining weight in the first place? And if you can answer that question appropriately then we can, you can adjust what you're doing from there. But if you don't have that question answered, then when you just go willy nilly about losing weight, you sort of start to adopt really extreme and questionable measures. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, before even talking about what causes weight gain in the first place and what we should be doing to, you know, like what's wrong with those models of, of what we're told causes weight gain.

Jay
We also have such a distorted view of what healthy looks like, where oftentimes we are using these pictures that were changed. And the view of what healthy has, has changed over each decade, depending on what marketing and what media basically put out. And also the view of healthy varies by different countries and different regions of the world. So I mean, I know in... at least in my experience in a lot of South American culture, having a little bit of extra weight or guess Latin culture is seen as actually a beneficial thing. And some of my friends or some of the people that I know who are on the thinner side within that culture, they want their surrounding environment or communities, want them to gain weight, want them to put on some weight, want them to be a little thicker. Even in my culture, in my family, In the older generations, my grandma wants me to be heavier, thinks that I'm too skinny or whatever's going on. So I think there's an adjustment over time of what ideal is supposed to look like. And I think that's important to keep that in context where you're getting your ideas of what you should look like, how you should look, what you should do to get there, and things such as that. Because they have adjusted over time and not necessarily based on ideal science or whatever they want you to believe that this is the new cutting edge thing that we've just figured out and you have to do things this way. I it's all marketing. I would say the majority of it is marketing. I wouldn't say that it's this new scientific technique that it's the best way to go. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our culture is such a huge influence. If you look through a lot of the, you know, the previous centuries, you know, at certain points being as big as possible was, you know, looked at as like prestigious and having enough money to eat a lot of food. And, you know, that was what people like aimed for. And so, yeah, it's important to recognize how much our current culture influences our desires as far as how we want to change our bodies. And it's definitely not, as you're saying, it's not synonymous with health. It's based on these cultural views that come from all sorts of different areas.

Jay
It's important to recognize in our modern culture that leanness and like extreme leanness is typically looked at as, or is for the most part looked at as kind of ideal. And we use these images that we see in the media through, you know, whether it's in movies or magazines or, you know, pictures online, Instagram, whatever it is, we see these images of, of people with very, very low percentages of body fat. And we assume that that's healthy, but first it's important to point out that most people don't even the people who are looking like that at those times, they don't look like that all the time. know, especially in the fitness communities, especially those people in the fitness magazines and things like that, when they go to shows or, or they're getting ready to be on a magazine cover, they have tapered down to that. They have been in a cut. They have calories. They've, they've worked out extra hard. And then for the shoot, they may have manipulated water and electrolytes and things like that. And there's a ton of supplements and drugs as well, typically.

Especially for magazine shoots, because to go into a magazine shoot, you don't need to get drug tested. To go on stage for different bodybuilding or competitive competitions, yeah, you probably will be drug tested depending on what federation or what sort of organization you're participating with. When you're in a magazine, that doesn't really matter what you're using. You're not going to get tested for it. The magazine just wants you to have that particular look. And the same thing goes for all the different social media sites, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, all these different things. You're not getting tested to put out your image on those different platforms. And if you're making money from those platforms, and it's not to say that there aren't people who are not doing things like that, and there aren't people who do have predispositions to be very lean and muscular, it's just saying that the vast majority of what you see out there especially in untested and non-competitive environments where somebody is making money off the image, why would you not use different drugs or supplements or compounds to create a state that is, the point is to create a state that is unobtainable, unbelievable, that catches your eye. If it was just somebody who had worked out decently, had a little bit of abs, had a decent amount of size, it wouldn't catch your attention.

Jay
But if you have somebody's completely shredded up, veins all over the place, larger than life, that's the point. It's a sale. So getting to that place, you know, it creates this idea in our minds of this is what, this is the goal. This is what, this is optimal. This is what we should be shooting for. And because we see it so often and there's sort of like a confirmation bias of that, but in reality, it's a sale. And on a lot of these platforms and things like that, it's a sale and it goes.

This goes beyond body, and right now we're talking about body image, but even lifestyle design and things like that. You see like highlight reels of all these different things. You don't see the interperiods where these people just come off their cut and binge ate because they starve themselves for an extended period of time, or they have complications from their drug use and things like that. So there's a lot that goes into it. And then the other thing is in a lot of those situations where you have people that are very lean or have these ridiculous proportions, the amount of time and effort that they have to spend in their lifestyle to do those things, that is their focus. It is literally that. They're in the gym every single day. It is a job. It is for a lot of these people who look this particular way, it is a job. And there are compromises and sacrifices that come along with that. there's a lot more decisions that come into play when you wanna get to that level.

Sacrificing health may be one of those decisions that people make, especially considering at least in some of the dangerous drugs that are used in the fitness circles. So I mean, take that into consideration. Yeah. And whether they know it or not, whether they're consciously making that decision, it is almost always coming at the cost of Almost. And there are more, I think, female models, especially on Instagram and sometimes on YouTube too, that are starting to point this out more and they're showing how much a different angle for a pose makes a difference or for a picture and they're showing. And editing and all that. Yeah. And they're showing what they really look like versus what their touched up photos look like. And that's really helpful, I think. And a lot of them are also talking about how when they looked what people considered their best and definitely their leanest, that was also when they were the least healthy and often had
a ton of health issues for women. Amenorrhea is really common. Lack of libido and lack of energy, extreme fatigue, swelling and bloating and all sorts of things. And the same would go for a lot of men as well when they're very lean. I all sorts of different symptoms that come with putting your body through that type of stress. yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the main point here is that those, we shouldn't really be using those as models for what we want to achieve. Yeah. The other thing that I think is important to say here is this just because there's a skewed image on leanness and muscularity and things like that doesn't mean that the converse of if you are very overweight or you are obese or something like that, then that's also healthy because there's definitely a range of sort of Goldilocks range of weights that or not even weights, but just body compositions that would be considered, you know, more optimal. And it's not that, and a lot of people think that it tends to be the fat per se on the body that is the problem. It's more so what is inducing the fat to be put on the body that is the issue. there's, it's on either extreme ends of the scale, there's issues involved with that.

When you have somebody who's very overweight or obese or holding a lot of weight on the midsection, that is indicative of poor hormonal profile and possible inflammatory status causing that. When somebody is very, very lean and very, very muscular, barring a very small minority of people who may be able to maintain that naturally, you may have different drugs being involved in very in-depth dangerous protocols or unhealthy protocols being put in place to maintain that or to keep that going forward. So there's definitely like a range or an area on the scale of where people have like optimal health. know, it's not having veins all over your stomach, but at the same time, it's also not having a huge gut. So something to keep in mind. There's definitive health issues that come with having an excessive amount of weight, but there's also definitive health issues with going on the other end of the scale. think it's important to point that out. There's definitely a range to shoot, not to shoot for per se. No, range that's optimal. Of the hormonal profile. Yeah, yeah. And just to clarify also, we are not shaming anybody for their weight or body fat or anything like that. we do, acceptance and shame is such a touchy topic right now. We absolutely, like encourage people to accept who they are and all facets. I think that having but think that acceptance has to have an objective point of view. If you have an excessive amount of weight going on, you're heading towards obesity, it's important to look at and say, what is the underlying physiologic process? It's not you're a bad person or you're this or you're that. It's what's going on physiologically and are there health ramifications from that? And I'm not going to speak for both of us, but as far as I'm concerned personally, with these types of situations, to me, it's not about the look.

It's what are the ramifications down the road? What are the ramifications to your health now? What happens to your different functionings from inducing that type of weight gain? Because it's not just the weight that's the issue. It's what's causing the weight in the first place. I just want to point out the point that being on either ends of the spectrum can be problematic from a health perspective, from a physical logic perspective, from an objective perspective.

Talking in a scientific realm, not talking in an emotional realm or a social realm on acceptance or anything like that. Yeah, and I know how you feel about this emotionally as well, so I'm just going to speak for you a little bit and you can always correct me because obviously we didn't intend to talk about the emotional side of this, but it's a huge part of it that a lot of people are experiencing and it's already been brought up. So neither of us are, when we talk about accepting, we are all for acceptance in that there is no judgment associated with your weight or body fat there we don't we don't feel like there should be any shame or guilt associated with that We don't blame you for the weight that you have or the body amount of body fat that you have We don't think that any of those things are helpful but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to do something about it if it's if it's caused by some sort of something that's also in inhibiting our health because health is important Is that like a pretty good way to sum it up? Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I agree. And I think that a lot of people with I think some of the body acceptance stuff and I I think it comes out of a place where a lot of people try to lose weight or they try to get themselves to a healthy point and they find that they're having a hard time. so there's and so like I think it goes into this element of genetic dogma where it's like I'm just genetically fat or I'm just genetically overweight or I just like my body is just supposed to be like this.

So comes to a point where, and it's not for everybody, some people may, I can't speak for everybody, but I think, at least in my experience, it comes from this point where I can't do anything about it, so I'm gonna accept it because I have to accept it. This is just how I am. And I think when you have this genetic basis underlying some of these thought processes, it inactivates people from realizing that maybe there's more to the situation, maybe there actually is something going on physiologically and it can be adjusted without ridiculous amounts of willpower in regards to having to measure out how many grains of rice you're gonna eat and the number of rice cakes in your calories on MyFitnessPal. I think a lot of people when they see the fitness models who get into this ridiculous shape and they watch them on YouTube or whatever it is, and they see their days of eating and they're tracking everything on my fitness palette, I think that turns off a lot of people and they're just like, that's ridiculous, I'm not gonna sit there and starve myself and look forward to eating fiber ice cream and stuff like that. I wanna enjoy my life. think there's also perspective from that. And I think that when you start to understand why you are gaining weight and what the underlying physiologic perspective is and causes of the weight gain are, then you can sort of you eventually start to realize, and at least I think for us it was that it's not a genetic, you know, it's not necessarily a genetic problem. It's not just how you are. I some people may be more likely to put on weight, put on weight, yes. But at the same time, it's not just like, you're not just meant to be fat. No one's just meant to be fat or meant to be obese or anything like that. And there are things that you can do, but it really, and it just really comes down to figuring out like, what is the underlying cause?

And what we'll get to in a second, I think, is that the general paradigms around what is causing this weight gain is not, they're not reality. You know, it becomes, they're very skewed. And so it creates a lot of issues around the whole topic. think that that's the, I think the underlying issue with almost all of it is what the mainstream paradigms are putting out there in terms of eat less, exercise more calories in calories out.

Needing to have all this willpower, I don't think that's the reality of situation. I think that creates a lot of these tangential offshoots of how to handle any type of weight situation, which is a huge issue, at least in America. in all over the Western countries. Yeah, exactly. both of us think that the calories in, calories out, the eat less, exercise more, all those ideas are some of the most damaging, if not the most damaging things that exist, like thought processes that exist right now. And we both have a lot of personal experience with that. And we'll talk about why we think that and our experiences with it. So before we get there, just real quick, I want to close the whole acceptance, body acceptance, body shaming thing, because I think it's important to clarify. So we definitely have disagreements with both the body acceptance movement and of course the antibody acceptance.

Acceptance movement or the body shaming or whatever. And that has more to do with, with not actually the body acceptance versus shaming because we, neither of us think that having that sort of guilt is in any way beneficial or that we think that that should be there, especially because as we're going to talk about the, the mainstream view is so wrong that it's expected for, for us to be it's no surprise at all for people, for most people to be overweight based on our, the food industry and what food is available based on what we're told is healthy. is an expectation. So there's definitely no blame, no judgment for that. That being said, there, we both believe that, yeah, in, while we do think that is, we should be accepting it without that blame and judgment. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to do anything about it. And when we say do something about it, we don't mean starve yourself. We don't mean use willpower.

We mean in many ways the opposite of those, is just what is going to come down to is giving your body what it needs so that you can eat enough that you aren't hungry, that you feel good, that you have energy. You don't have constant cravings. You aren't hungry even when you're full kind of thing, which we've both experienced a lot. But but rather you're you're feeling satisfied. You have a lot of energy. And then as your health improves, the weight comes second because we move our bodies out of the stress state where they're instead of converting food to fat, they begin to convert it to energy and we store less as fat. And that's really what it comes down to, which I think now is a good time to transition to that unless you wanted to make any clarifications on what I just said. I have seen a lot of the body shaming people come out and just like, and I think I want to point this out because I think it's pretty funny actually.

A lot of people online or in different areas, they have the whole body shaming thing. It's like you're fat because you don't have self control or you're fat because you're lazy or this things. And it's sort of funny to me because most people that I've met or that I've worked with that were overweight were actually under eating. Yeah. yeah, it wasn't that they were overeating at all. And I've had people who are very like morbidly obese living on like 1200 calories a day.

It's not an overeating problem. It's not necessarily a willpower problem. It's a lack of knowledge issue and on both fronts because it's not that you just overeat and you get fat. mean, and that's not even shown in studies where you overeat and you can cause obesity. There's a combination of factors that occur to induce obesity and it's not just overeating. There's other factors that have to happen there. So the underlying mainstream views of what causes weight gain and how to take weight off. And then the genetic paradigm that they keep putting out for people or the deterministic paradigm where it's like whatever you are is what you are and there's nothing you can do about it because genes. I think overall if I had to point a root at what the root of the issue was, it would be that. And then I would say that I wholly disagree with that. I think the mindset of you are what you are because of genes is just ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd. It's learned helplessness. Yeah. And exactly it's learned helplessness. And I don't think that it's I don't think there's any like evidence to support it. I don't think there's any really strong evidence to support anything along those lines. So I guess the distinction I'm trying to make that's important is that you don't fall into an area of learned helplessness with the situation that if you have if you are overweight

And I think there needs to be a degree of awareness in the situation where if you either you are aware that you are accepting that and if there's possible consequences, you're accepting those or you're you're aware that you have a weight situation and there's an underlying issue and you want to do something about it. And then the people who are shaming people for being overweight, I just think they need to read up a little bit more on metabolism and things like that. I mean, it goes beyond that. mean, because so in talking about acceptance, acceptance doesn't only mean acknowledging the consequences. It also means relieving yourself of the guilt or shame associated with your situation. And the same would go for pride. So for somebody who is shaming others, obviously feel, most likely it is coming from this prideful feeling in that you are better than everyone else because you've had more willpower and you lost weight or you stayed lean or whatever the situation is. And that's, if not, I mean, just as bad, if not worse.

And they, you know, the same, think the same solution there comes from acceptance of yourself and then acceptance of others and in their shortcomings. And there's obviously a reason why, why you would have to, why somebody would attach such pride to something like that. But that's obviously getting way out of the scope of what we're talking about. One other thing I want to mention real quick was just, I don't think a lack of knowledge is the only, you had mentioned a lack of knowledge being kind of one of the main reasons. And it is the main reason for sure, but As we've talked about, there are so many aspects of our environment and of our modern society that have pushed people in this direction. And it's not just on the knowledge front, it's also time and money and, you know, our, like our education system and, who has time to move throughout the day when so many people have to work at least one job full time, which is already a huge investment of time. Like how much more time do you have to, to work out and then also learn enough to eat well when it's opposite of what we're taught and things like that. And so it's just,

All I want to point out there is that it's a much... It has multiple factors going into it. Yeah, exactly. We got our attention here though, so... Yeah, we did. So obviously we've been beating around the bush of this idea of calories in, calories out, this mainstream view that the cause of weight... So basically this mainstream view, as you were saying, there's this one idea that everything is genetics and there's nothing you can do to change what your current health situation is, which is part of it, but...

For whatever reason, weight loss is actually oftentimes separate from that, where there is a portion of it where, especially with the very overweight people, they'll say, it's just purely genetics. There's nothing they can do, especially because as we were talking about, a lot of those people are not eating very much food at all. And it's not like they're just lying on their intake forms. eating a lot and weight gain or obesity are not necessarily very well correlated.

Because of how depressed your metabolism is at that point. That's really what causes the weight gain as we'll get to. I think the genetic paradigm even still exists for the overweight people though, because when it comes into the situation, it's like you have this predisposition that to gain weights, you have to try even harder. I think I see that a lot. It's like, well, and I've seen that online a lot where people are just like, well, if you're having a problem gaining weight, you just need to do better.

Yeah, but that's that's kind of the opposite of genetic determinism where genetic determinism is there's nothing you can do, which is the case for almost every health condition. That's kind of like the mainstream. Like, we all know what causes this. It's just genetic predisposition. So you just have to take a drug. I feel like this is one area where the mainstream view is actually almost the opposite of other views of health, where in so many other views, they say, like they say that there's nothing that you can do about this other than use some sort of medication or drug. You can't use willpower. You can't just eat these things. Like there's nothing you can do. You just have to deal with it and use our medication or surgery or whatever. And I feel like this is the one area where that's not the case. And they actually say, this is all your fault. Like this is like if you are overweight, it's cause you are too weak willed and you're a glutton and you're lazy. So you need to go move. You need to go exercise and go slave away at the gym and you need to eat less.

Like, why are you like this? Just eat less and exercise more. To a degree, we've seen that when working out at the gym. I've seen that when I worked at the gym. The idea that if you're really overweight or you have a certain amount of weight to lose, then you need to be in the gym six days a week and cut this many calories as if it's like a cut and dry formula that you can just use to solve the problem. It's like...

It's not the case, especially when you start talking to clients and they're already telling you that they're already eating under like thousand calories under what a basal metabolic rate formula would say. It's like you have somebody come in and they want to lose X number of pounds, but they're only eating 1200 calories or 1400 calories a day. And then the model is telling them that they need to cut by like 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week.

Okay, so they're going to eat under thousand calories a day and they're going to exercise? What are you insane? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, and it's funny because, you know, what I was taught in my exercise physiology courses was that that 500 calories had to come either from exercising or from eating less. So if you're only eating 1400 calories, then at that point you just need to exercise more because you shouldn't eat less than that. So you just want to get you just want to deduct that 500 calories from your exercise because you're already eating so little.

And burning 500 calories through exercise is really difficult. Yeah, especially if you're already like, yeah. If you were going to sit down and try and figure out how many calories you were burning just from a workout, like I doubt it's 500 directly 500 unless you really killed yourself. I mean, it's not going in the gym and doing an arm day. Right. Right. So you would have to do a ton, a ton of exercise to really to hit that very uncomfortable amount. Yeah. Especially when you're not eating.

Jay
Yeah, especially, exactly. it's just, I don't know, the model just breaks down, especially when you get directly into the field of like, of what you're doing or what you're going forward with people. Yeah, yeah, there was this quote I heard somewhere recently, somebody who was very, you know, something on some interviews getting millions of views, someone who was very well known, I don't remember who it was, but they were saying that...

You know, we are now in this period where we have diseases of excess rather than diseases of deficiency. We're in the past in human history, everything was due to deficiency. And now we're just we have excess. We're just eating too much. And that's our problem. Yeah, time to get a pair at the same view over and over and then people are still gaining weight in the country, like at a drastic level. You know, it just doesn't make any sense like.

The thing is, there's studies that's showing that people adhere to the guidelines put out by the government and things like that. It's not like they're not trying. I don't think it's for a lack of trying. No, it's not at all. mean, people who are, again, talking about our society and how important it is to be thin, people who are overweight, for the most part, are always trying to lose weight. Even people who are not overweight are always trying to lose weight. Yeah.

And spend their whole lives doing it. And that's why you have these yo-yo diets where, you know, you go on this really, like this really hard diet, you use a ton of willpower, you lose your weight, and then everything in your body is telling you that you need to eat more. You need to eat some carbs, whatever it is. And then you end up binging or going off the diet, normally binging, and then you gain most of that weight back. And so to just kind of like create an overview of this mainstream view, It's this calories in minus calories out equals body fat gain or body fat loss, depending on which one's more. And because of that, the goal is to bring down the calories in by eating less and bring up the calories more by exercising more. along, this is all kind of built on this idea that we have to be fighting against what our body naturally desires. So when you're hungry for food that, you know, we should be resisting that hunger and that temptation to eat foods that we want to eat, we have to use willpower.

Jay
which is why if you don't do it, you're just weak-willed or lazy, you know, if you don't feel like going to the gym as opposed to it being the fact that your body actually doesn't want you to because it's already starving, which is essentially what's happening in obesity, but we'll get there. And so because of that, most of the recommendations for health come out of this view where we're supposed to avoid anything that's calorie dense. We want to be eating a lot of salads. We want to be filling up on water and a lot of protein because protein is really filling.

And fiber ice creams and fiber bars and... Yeah, and lots of vegetables, especially raw vegetables, avoiding fats or avoiding carbs or both a lot of times. Just eat protein. Right, protein and Protein is the only safe macronutrient. Yeah, protein and vegetables. And then along with that is that...

We want to be exercising a ton in the gym three days a week, five days a week, whatever it is. And all of the, so that's kind of like this, this mainstream view and what the recommendations are that come out of it, which are just the general recommendations for health. There's, was just kind of, you know, there's such bleed over between the two because so many goals, so many people's goals when it comes to health is just weight loss. And this is part of why we were also talking about how important it is to shift towards the goal being health.

Because then it allows you to make the changes necessary that will actually lead to health and healthy weight loss. I think something that's important to point out here too is I think a lot of people focus on the weight loss aspect because it's directly apparent. You know, that's what you see in the mirror. But underlying the weight loss aspect, you don't see the things like fatty liver or any type of arterial or vascular disease or any type of endocrine dysfunction like a thyroid issue or a hypogonadism which means lower low sex hormones leading to like an infertility or anything like a PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, any of these things like yes you can be overweight and that's what you directly see in the mirror but the important aspect that I think is to really look at is what is actually going on inside because what...

Jay
The overweight is a symptom. It's like the gaining of excess weight is a symptom of other things going on. It doesn't just come alone. For a while they were calling it metabolic X syndrome. Then it was metabolic syndrome or whatever it is. There's a whole bunch of factors that go along with this. You have diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease. There's like a series of inflammatory diseases that go along with carrying a lot of excess weight.

There's autoimmune diseases as well. So it's really important to look at what's going on or to consider what's going on under the hood besides what you just see in the mirror and to start thinking, if I'm putting on weight like that, if I had this big gut, what's really going on? Because there's more to it than just having the weight. And yes, taking the weight off is important, especially if that's your goal. And to a certain extent as well, I want to add that caveat because it's not just about getting lean. But the real question besides that is are you fixing the underlying problems as well? And I think what we'll get to here is that fixing the underlying problems can solve the weight issue itself. So fixing the hormonal profile and stopping doing the things that are inducing this metabolic syndrome or whatever you want to call it will also fix the weight problem. They aren't separate.

And the idea is to fix your health and have the weight be a byproduct of that rather than have the end being to lose the weight. Because it's not just the idea of calories in, calories out. It's a distraction, a smoke screen from that. There's an actual health problem going on besides the fact that you're just eating too much, which for most people's cases is not what's actually happening.

And this ties in with the whole metabolic view that we've been putting into place because when you're gaining weight like that, yes, it is a metabolic problem. There's an energy issue at hand. Either energy is being directly stored or the production of energy from fuel sources is being inhibited or there's a down regulation on the system.

Jay
way more than just I have extra weight. It's much bigger than just I have extra weight. And I think it's really important to get out of this smoke screen of calories in calories out and eat less exercise more and start to look at, what's actually going on? What's causing, what's really causing this weight gain? I think that's, that's what that's where people, where I would want people to start thinking about rather than just, need to lose weight because I don't like how I look in the mirror. That is definitely important, but there's way more under the hood than that.

Yeah. And I think most people who are in that situation do recognize that they just look at weight loss as a means to getting healthy. They say they want to get healthy and they, but what they're trying to do is lose weight. And the assumption is that those things go hand in hand when often they, they don't. we can both say that because we've also seen a lot of people with the same autoimmune issues with all sorts of other issues, whether it's fatigue or low libido or migraines.

or PCOS as you mentioned, those things happen a lot of times in lean people as well. And I've probably seen more lean people with those issues than very overweight people. And you had mentioned a couple of times about hormonal profiles and getting to a hormonal state that's improved and that our hormones are kind of one of the differences here. And it's true that they are and those hormones represent our energy state.

One thing that's talked about a lot as far as calories and calories out go, is this idea of energy balance. They consider those things as the same thing because calories are equated with energy and this is one of the biggest issues with the calories out equation. Calories do not equal energy as far as our bodies are concerned, as far as physiological energy goes. calories in this case, it's a measure of heat energy.

And when we're talking about calories from foods, it's the equivalent amount of heat that gets produced if you were to combust the food, if you were to burn the food. And our bodies don't do that. One, some certain amount of water by one degree Celsius, I think it's like one milliliter of water by one degree Celsius. Something like that. Yeah. And so you're saying that's what a calorie is. so that's like... Exactly. Which is some, it's very abstracted, you know? It's not like our bodies sit there and burn food to...

Jay
Increased temperature. Right, right. are ton of facts. actually really burn it. Yeah, yeah, that's not, yeah, we don't just have a furnace and when you just take the food and shovel it into this furnace and measure the heat energy that comes out, our bodies don't run on energy like that. So in reality, calories have, are related to, but in real, like have very little to do with energy balance. There, there are measures of potential energy, but there's a ton of factors that go into whether that the potential energy in those calories actually is used as energy in the body.

And so in talking about some of those, so just to clarify also when we talk about energy balance, we're talking about the actual energy. So you can consider that in terms of ACP. It does go beyond that. But the point being that we're talking about the actual physiological energy that our bodies are using as far as energy balance goes. And producing food. It's not the idea of the calories, it's if that food can be converted into the energy and then the subsequent energy that is created from the conversion. It's not just this random number of calories, which doesn't really tell you anything. I you might want a thousand calories of watermelon or I want a thousand calories of alcohol. Like, is it going to be the same thing? No, definitely not. 100 % not the same thing. Yeah. They have drastic differences in our bodies physiologically. They do not result in the same amount of energy produced. And there's a bunch of different factors there. one of those, which were one of the first factors is digestion and absorption. So of course the amount that you take in is not necessarily, you know, we may or may not digest it well and absorb it well, which would determine how many calories are calories, how much potential energy is potentially even absorbed into our bodies. So that's one factor. aren't going to go through all of them, but just to kind of name a few, that would be one. There's a lot of other studies showing that differences in macronutrients, whether you're having a lot of carbs or a lot of fat or a lot of protein affect the
calories in calories out equation where people will see different amounts of weight gain or loss, body fat gain or loss, depending on the different macronutrient ratios. The same goes for even the types of foods that those macronutrients are coming from. So for like a certain type of protein, for example, there's studies showing a comparison between wheat protein and whey protein, where just changing the type of protein affected how much body fat was stored versus how much muscle was created.

Jay
And there's a ton of other factors as well that affect these. So you had mentioned hormones obviously being a major factor here that determine how much energy we're producing from the food that we create and sleep would be. And that energy is directed to. I think that's really important as well. Because like say for example, if you have an elevation of cortisol or you have an elevation of androgens or progesterones or thyroid hormone, when you have the androgens are going to be anabolic. So the food that you're going to take in if you're in a very androgenic environment will be shunted more towards developing the body, whereas cortisol in and of itself, which is more catabolic, and you know, it's not necessarily for, if you're in a high cortisol state, you may not really be having a lot of energy at your disposal. is largely what the cortisol is showing, or it's an inflammatory state. You may be directing the energy that you are taking in towards developing belly fat.

It's very directly, I mean, if anyone looks up anything like Cushing syndrome, you can see the different profiles. So if you want to see the different effects of the different hormones, and the hormones are measures of the state, they're indicative of what state is as well. But if you take somebody, you want to see what androgens do, look at a bodybuilder to some extent, see somebody who's injecting large amounts of androgens. Or if you want to see the effects of what cortisol does,

Take a look at somebody who is using dexamethasone or prednisone, which are synthetic corticosteroids, or somebody who has Cushing's syndrome, which is an excess cortisol. You can see an increase in belly fat, central adiposity, so a lot of visceral fat, which is what the belly fat is, insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, so an increase of triglycerides and cholesterol.

Dark circles under the eyes, fat disposition in different specific areas of the body, and then like a wasting away of the skin and stuff like that, and a decrease in muscle tissue. Whereas if you have an androgenic profile, you see an increase in musculature, and you see a slimming of the waist, or a very slimming of the waist, and an anabolic effect on bones and things like that. So they're almost opposite of each other to some extent on the metabolic spectrum.

Jay
So I think it's a really important, mean, things like that will show you where the differences are. Those things aren't purely calories and calories out. There's way more to it than just that. And I think the hormones have more of a play in what's going on and the effects of the different foods and stuff have more of a play in what's going on than abstracted concepts like calories and protein and carbs and fats. There's much more to them than just that. They're almost like...

They're almost like distractors from what really goes on with food in the body. they are helpful for research. They're helpful to break things down, to study things in actual research studies. when you're breaking things into specific variables and then trying to single out those variables, yeah, you want to break it into protein, you want to break it into this. But then you'll see that, as you said, different proteins have different effects.

So it really starts to come down to the foods themselves. And I think that that's where it becomes more important. you start to, the more you get involved in that, more you start to see that the calories in, calories out is, it's not even, I don't even think it's really that helpful, besides saying, just getting an idea of quantities of food. It's such an abstracted concept. It doesn't even make any sense. Like somebody to sit there and still promote this whole idea of calories in and calories out as the be all to end all means a very, like a lack of looking into the effects of different foods and the effects of hormonal profile and things like that. Like it's so abstracted that it's not even reality. Like you cannot measure food in calories. Like I'm sure gasoline has a caloric value. It does, yeah. So like that I don't think that, know, like what would you do if you drank a bunch of gasoline? You wouldn't be burning it. You wouldn't get fat either. No, you wouldn't get fat.

So it's its abstraction, it's distraction besides looking at quantities of food. And I think that it just, the paradigm, like when you really break it down and look at it, it just doesn't make any sense. And I think that this underlying paradigm is what's causing a lot of issues for lot of people and distracting them from really looking at what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. And I've written an article that dives pretty extensively into some of the details here as far as the research goes and as far as all these different points of evidence that go against this calories in calories out idea. So I'll link to that because I don't want to spend too much more time digging into all the details. But the main points being that there are all these different things that affect that they determine. Okay, so calories are a helpful indicator of how much you're eating, but there are a lot of different things that determine basically the there's a lot of differences between the calories you take in and the calories that actually reach ourselves and where they reach and everything like that. There's also a lot of different factors that affect the calories out if you want to think of it that way, basically how much energy we're producing or expending. And so that includes the types of foods, as you mentioned, different macronutrients includes hormones, are affected by everything from sleep to sunlight to also the amount of calories that come in. So that's one of the biggest factors here is that our bodies adapt to what's coming in. So we are not simple machines where

We, you know, kind of just have this, we don't run on a certain equation. don't have like this mechanical process where, you know, we just take whatever's coming in like a conveyor belt and it becomes whatever, you know, it's supposed to become based on the certain equations in place. Instead it's, it's adaptive. You know, we adapt to the amount of food that we take in and the types of foods that we take in, which all affect how much energy we produce, how much food we store as fat and what we do, how much energy we expend, also just as far as activity goes. So there's this one idea called metabolic adaptation, which just shows that when we eat more, our bodies use more energy, and when we eat less, our bodies use less energy. And then there's also behavioral compensation, which is that when we eat more, we're more likely to expend that energy voluntarily, and when we eat less, we're less likely to expend that energy voluntarily. So that means that if you eat more, You might be fidgeting more, you might be more likely to walk around, you might be more likely to move and exercise. Whereas if you eat less, the opposite is the case. So all of these different factors are affected by how much we're eating and really, which all just flies in the face of calories in calories out. the models and the formulas are only symbols and they aren't the reality. the reality is the body itself.

Jay
You can create all these formulas and symbolic equations to determine what actually is going on and they're helpful to some extent, but they still are symbols. They don't cover the full picture of what's going on. They only cover a very minute portion. So I think it's really important to understand that these things... Because I think in our culture and in the mainstream media and what we're taught in school and stuff like that, it's almost as if the symbols are reality and if they're not, they're really not the reality. There's much more to the situation than just some random equation that someone calculated out, you know, doesn't exactly describe what's going on perfectly. There's a lot of other things going hand in hand with that. Right. The map is not the territory, as you like to say. Exactly. Yeah. And there's one of the, again, we kind of touched on how calories don't equal energy.

But one of the other main assumptions of the calories in calories out equation is that any excess calories that are taken in beyond what we expend is then just shunted towards body fat, which is not the case at all. There's nothing like there are so many factors that determine what happens with excess potential energy. Yes, it can be stored as fat. It can also be used to produce muscle or to rebuild tissue all throughout the body, whether it's bone or brain tissue or liver or whatever it is.

There's nothing that, I mean, there are so many factors that dictate what happens there. It's definitely not just reserved to all become body fat. Yeah. Well, think, I think it's when you say that it reminds me that I think a lot of people think that the, when food goes in, it either, it's either burned or it's either turned to fat. Yeah. And like there's so much more that goes on in the body than just burning it for energy and turning it to fat.

Like the food that you go in is precursors to steroid hormones, to rebuilding of cells and tissues, to the formation of mucus linings and things like that. Like it's not purely about burning the calories or not. Like yes, the food is turned into energy for cells to use, but it's also functions tons of structural components. So to sit there and think that everything that you put in it either burned or it's turned to fat is absolutely insane. You know, there's so much more to the picture than that. And then

Jay
And it's even insane in the sense of when it's turned to fat it's like these calories are just shoved into this fat cell and It just sits there and it's just storage. It's like there's a way more that goes on than just that like that the I guess there's a it's like the it's a it's a picture paints a picture in your mind where the food is and a lot of people like to use the car as the as The example we are not machines in that sense

People like to look at things in this mechanical terms because I think it's what's applicable in everyday life. Like you see how your car works. You put the gas in and your car burns the gas. And if it doesn't, it just sits in the tank. That's not how we work. That's not how the body works. It doesn't just have create an excess tank or burn it. There's so many other functions for food that it's crazy. even just to look at the model that way, the model seems insane.

The more you look into this type of stuff, the more we talk about these things. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because it's even acknowledged that protein is typically not oxidized. It's often used to create structure, right? Used to rebuild muscle and everything like that. Yet everybody includes protein calories in the calories and calories out. You know, it just yeah, there's a lot of absurdity there. And maybe we should just move on at this point. Yeah.

Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. That was part one of a three part series on healthy weight loss. Make sure to tune in to part two where we'll be talking about how energy deficiencies are really the culprits for weight gain and how if we correct energy balance, we can actually achieve healthy weight loss without symptoms like fatigue or low libido or disrupting our sleep or having constant hunger and restriction. So make sure to tune in to part two.

And if you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a review or like, or a comment wherever you're listening. It really makes a huge difference. And to check out the show notes for today's episode, where you can find the links to any of the studies or articles that we talked about, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast. And if you are struggling to lose weight in a healthy way, and you want to learn about how you can optimize your cellular energy systems so that you can lose weight without any of those low energy symptoms, head over to JFeldmanWalness.com/energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance where I'll walk you through the things that you'll want to do to optimize your cellular energy production and the things you'll want to avoid that will block our cellular energy production and how this will allow you to achieve healthy weight loss. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode and I will see you in part two.