Jay Feldman: [00:00:00] Excess energy does not cause weight gain. I'll explain why that is 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. In today's episode, we'll be going over an alternative framework to calories in calories out for conceptualizing fat loss.

We'll also discuss why eating less and exercising more is not the best solution for fat loss Why excess energy does not cause fat gain and instead actually leads to fat loss. How you can get stuck in the cycle of weight gain, under eating and constant hunger, and then how to get out of that cycle as always to check out the show notes for today's episode, where you can take a look at the studies, articles, and anything else that I referenced throughout the episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.

com slash podcast. And with that, let's get started.[00:01:00]

All right. So in the last episode, we discussed many problems with calories and calories out. The many nuances that need to be considered. We really went in depth, looked at the research that was pointing out all of the kind of confounding variables when it comes to calories and calories out. We explained all the problems with the ways that most people apply it and that really the way that nearly everybody applies it is entirely irrelevant and not really an accurate depiction of what's going on physiologically.

And even though we did come to a point where we were able to basically create a version of calories in calories out that did represent what was going on physiologically. It was incredibly complex and it was not particularly helpful when it comes to conceptualizing fat loss or applying it in terms of understanding what we should do based on that information or even being able to understand whether what we're [00:02:00] doing is going to lead to fat loss or muscle loss or fat gain or any other possibilities there.

So we dug into that in quite a bit of detail. all. And in this episode, I want to provide an alternative that as we'll get to, I think is a much better representation of what's going on physiologically and is also much more helpful in terms of conceptualizing the actual things that will lead to fat gain versus fat loss and what we would want to do about it.

So that's what we'll be focusing on today. I'll basically kind of go through this, this alternative. way of conceptualizing body composition and energy balance in a, in a true sense. Whereas calories in calories out really tells us a lot about potential energy and not really much beyond that. We don't have any idea whether the food that we're eating is going to be converted to energy converted to some sort of structural tissue.

And we really don't have any way to account for that. And so instead we're going to be digging into today, what I call the energy [00:03:00] balance approach to fat loss or the energy balance. I mean, it's not an equation, it's more of a depiction of body composition or just energy balance as a whole. It's not just looking at what's going on in terms of our body composition and what's going on at the fat stores, but what's going on in a much broader sense, physiologically, that's.

Also going to affect our cognition and our reproductive hormones and our digestion and immune function and on from there. So. We're going to get into all of that. Another thing that we'll be digging into today, or at least that the, that this energy balance method that I'll be describing accounts for is the relationship with hunger, which is something that not only is not accounted for at all in calories and calories out, but actually the way that most people apply it in terms of, you know, you just need to eat less, you just need to move more and burn more calories makes that problem way worse, right?

Most of the time when we're dealing, when someone's trying to lose weight, They're chronically hungry, chronically starving, basically, which obviously does not make it very easy. And then after [00:04:00] losing weight, typically that hunger is worse and it makes it much harder to keep that weight off. And as we talked about in the last episode, physiologically, even if you eat the same amount at that point, you're going to be way more likely to be gaining body fat because of, because of the way through which the weight is lost, basically causes a major depression of, of the metabolism.

Which is also what's causing the excess hunger. And so it's not something that's very easy to sustain, nor is it something that's actually supportive of our health. And so when we actually applied the energy balance approach, not only do we have an approach that's going to help us lose body fat, but also it's going to be supporting our health in the process, as opposed to coming at the cost of our health.

And it's going to be much easier when we consider things like the relationship between energy and hunger. So we're going to dig into all of that today. Again, we're not going to be talking as much about specific strategies for fat loss. We have talked about that in prior podcast episodes. So I'll be linking to those in the show notes.

If you want to get a little bit more information on that side, but in any case, let's dive in [00:05:00] to basically what we're going to call the energy balance approach to fat loss. And so I'm going to pull up a graphic here. This is from a paper titled decreased energy levels can cause and sustain obesity. It's a great paper to go through.

And the graphics that they use. are helpful starting place for trying to understand what's, what's going on in terms of body composition and health and actually energy balance. You know, we're actually going to be talking about energy here in terms of the energy that our bodies produce in terms of ATP, as opposed to just potential energy and calories, which as we talked about in the last episode, you know, there's calories in grass, there's calories in gasoline, there's you know, calories in all sorts of different foods, but that doesn't mean that they're equal in terms of the ways that our body uses them.

So, we're actually going to be talking about, you know, today, physiological energy production and, accounting for that with, with this approach. So this this is kind of a graphical depiction, as I said, from that study, [00:06:00] and we're going to be building off of this, but essentially there's a couple of important pieces here that are worth touching on, which is one, there's a separation between food and fuel, which is important to identify because of a number of things.

For one, we have to absorb food for it to be able to become fuel. Another thing as well is that, and we'll, we'll actually be changing that. We're not going to keep it as fuel. And that's because The food that comes in is a lot more than just fuel. It's used as a structural component in all of our cells.

It's used for hormonal production to use for all sorts of things. And so it does go beyond fuel, but this is just kind of a small part of that picture. And then we, you know, another important thing that's distinguished here, that's, that's identified here is that just because we have a fuel does not mean it's going to become energy.

And so we'll be talking about that as well, because that's key here. And the other piece is that if it's not being converted effectively to energy, It's really only got one place to go. And there's a couple, but at least in this depiction, we'll get into some details, but the main place it's going to go, if it's not going to be converted to energy, or if it can't be converted to [00:07:00] energy is to body fat.

So we have a piece of that here. We're going to be building off of this graphic. And we're going to be simplifying it as well in a way that is still accurate, still accounts for all the possible variables, but it's actually meaningful in terms of how our diet, how other aspects of our lifestyle affect our body composition and affect our health.

So that's what we're going to do. We're going to go through a simplified version, and then we're going to go through a more complex version that doesn't have to get quite as complex as calories and calories out, you know, in the way we did last episode, but will still account for some of the different variables will actually be helpful in terms of conceptualizing what's going on.

Now, this is a another graphic from that same paper, and here they're kind of expanding it a little bit to incorporate the impact of energy levels on basically on hunger. And when there's a lack of energy, it then leads to signals to increase how much we eat in the brain. We're going to come back to this later, but this is going to be important, very important.

And again, it's [00:08:00] not something that can be accounted for at all through the calories in calories out approach. All right. So we're going to start with the simplified version here. So we're just taking this one part from the From that prior graphic. And then we're going to add a little bit to it. Just do a round out the edges, just to make sure that we're kind of encompassing some of the other variables here.

And the main one is just going to be that, as I was saying, that fuel can also become structure or it can be excreted. So there's basically the food has to be absorbed and then it becomes fuel. And then it has basically four different possible fates. It can either go to structure. It can be excreted, right?

It can be not digested and pass through a digestive system, or it can be absorbed and then excreted, whether it's through, you know, going back through a digestive system or going through the urine and going through the skin, but you know, there are methods for excretion like that. It can also be breathed out as well.

I can also go to structure, right? So that's, we're talking about the actual structure of our bodies, our skin, our [00:09:00] hair, our nails, our organs. Everything, all of that is structured. That has to come from somewhere and it's constantly basically degrading and regenerating. So, that's another fate, possible fate for the fuel.

And then aside from that, it can be used to produce energy, which is of course, one of the main things, really the main thing that we, that we are trying to do with the food that's coming in. And then if there's leftover, basically it will be stored as body fat, especially if, and it's not just about if there's leftover, it's really a question of how efficiently is that fuel being converted to energy?

We'll, we'll talk about that and some of the factors that are involved, but basically if we're converting that fuel effectively to energy, it's going to be a lot more efficient. And we're using a lot of it for structure. And of course we're excreting some amount of it. There's going to be very little left to be stored as body fat.

So this is the simplified version. And what we can take away here is basically that we want to do everything we can to improve. conversion from fuel to energy. And if we're doing that, there's going to be [00:10:00] much less fuel going toward body fat. So really the central piece that we're getting here, when it comes to the simplified version of the energy balance approach, it's fat loss is that if we improve our conversion from fuel to energy, That's going to help reduce the amount that's getting stored as body fat.

And that will help us lose body fat. And instead on the flip side, if we're not effectively converting that fuel to energy, if that's happening at a much lower rate, a much lower efficiency, then there's going to be a lot that's going to be stored as body fat because our bodies aren't using it as well.

So here's the simplified version. This is really what we're trying to get at, but there are other things that we want to consider. And then we can always come back to the simplified version later on, just for simplicity sake, just so it's easy to apply. But of course there are other things going on that we want to account for, like the impact on hunger, as we'll talk about the things that are affecting the conversion from fuel to energy, what that energy is actually being used for and how that can change.

So there's a lot of things to consider here that we'll break down in a bit more detail. [00:11:00] Now, before we move on to that, if you are looking to lose weight, And you're looking for practical strategies to help you do so without simply just cutting calories, exercising more, and you're looking for personal guidance from me to help you out along the way.

Or if you're looking to optimally support your metabolism, improve your digestion, get amazing sleep, rebalance your hormones, boost your energy, and so much more with clear action steps and strategies alongside personalized guidance from me, head over to jfeldmanwellness. com slash solution. And Where you can find all of the information for the Energy Balance Solution Program.

This program includes customized health coaching, a video library with videos on everything from how to restore gut health, how to regulate your blood sugar. How to boost your metabolism, how to get amazing restorative sleep and rebalance your hormones, as well as how to lose weight without destroying your metabolism, without it coming at a cost to your health also includes videos on tons of other topics, as well as resources like a sample meal plan, recipes, supplement guide, and also access to a private community.

So head over to Jay Feldman [00:12:00] wellness. com slash solution to check out all the details. So we have that same starting place of food being converted to fuel. But we want to expand fuel a little bit. Fuel really, you know, most the way most people think about it is just what's going to become energy. But as I was saying, the reality is that that food doesn't just become energy.

It can also be converted to structure, can also be excreted. And so I would change fuel to substrate. You know, it's a bit more of a scientific term. So, you know, this is we're going to get into a little bit of that with these more detailed depictions. But it's, it's a better better word for encapsulating what, what can really happen with the, with the food.

Basically when we say substrate, it's just a building block. That building block can be used for producing energy or it can be used for structure or it can be used to, you know, be stored as body fat. Now, another thing we want to just add in here for, accuracy sake is that when that substrate gets converted to ATP which [00:13:00] is what we use as energy, there's a lot of heat that gets produced.

So we're just going to throw that in there just to account for that variable. It doesn't change too much, but there's always a, you know, that efficiency is never a hundred percent, even if everything's working perfectly or mitochondria working perfectly, there's a lot of heat that gets produced. And that's a good thing.

We do want to have some heat. Now there are a couple of different fates for the substrate other than being Converted to energy or body fat. One of those, as we were saying is excretion. So after the food gets absorbed, there can be you know, excretion back, you know, basically through the liver, through the bile, back through the digestive system, there can be excretion through the kidneys, through the into the urine.

As I was saying, we can breathe substrate out. So we want to account for the fact that that substrate can just leave the body through excretion. We also want to recognize that in the process of converting of absorbing the food, a portion of it does not get absorbed and instead gets excreted through the stool.

So we're going to add an arrow there to account for that. Then the other place that substrate can go is to structure. So as we were saying, that's things like muscle, bone, [00:14:00] skin, every part of our bodies, our organs, all of those are made up of substrate from food. So that is one other place that substrate can go.

It's also worth mentioning that in the same way that we have a bidirectional relationship with the fat stores, where we can be storing substrate as body fat and also releasing fat from the fat source to be used as fuel, which could then technically be structured, could be excreted, or it can be used to produce energy.

The same thing can happen with our structure. So we can break down muscle, bone, skin, organs, and that does happen. And then we use that as substrate to then typically, you know, produce energy or even to be stored as body fat. And those are all possibilities here. Now, as far as the fate of the substrate and which way it's actually going to go.

Okay. It's hard to account for all of the possible variables there that could affect which way the substrate goes. But we'll talk about one of the main ones, which is how effectively we convert it to energy. That's really going to dictate then how much gets stored as body fat or what the other fates are.

Now, when we're talking about energy, There's a couple of places that we use energy and I [00:15:00] generally separate it into two different categories. One is our external energy demands, and this includes things like exercise or movement, psychological stress, our ambient temperature. This is all of the things that basically we add on Two are just baseline needs, right?

This is all, you know, anything that we can that, that isn't just, you know, our basic organ function and things like that. This is all the things that can change in our environment that we need to use to produce energy or that we need to have energy to to use, to basically make up for or account for these demands, to be able to move, to be able to deal with stress infections, things like that.

And we also have what I call our internal energy demands. And this is our basic kind of organ functions, things like digestion, detoxification you know, breathing or heart pumping you know, regeneration of, of tissue, all of those things require energy. And so that's going to be our internal demands.

And obviously the, these two things can, what affects each of them will change, right? So we have [00:16:00] typically more control over our external demands, right? Whether we're moving or not what kind of things we're exposed to, whereas our internal demands are. They're not fixed. They can change a lot, but we can't choose whether we're going to increase or decrease them, right?

We can choose what kind of temperature we expose ourselves to to an extent, but we can't choose whether or not we want to increase our detoxification systems or not. So these are set based on really how much energy we have available. Because if we, if we go for a run and we talked about this with the constrained model of energy expenditure in the last episode, but if we have a set amount of activity, but we have less energy.

We still need to have the energy to that activity, right? There's no getting around it. If we ran five miles, we have to put energy to that. But if there's less energy available, then we have less to go to those internal demands. Less to go to all of the You know, our internal organ functions and things like that, which is where we can start to run into issues because when we turn those things down, a it's, that's generally what we [00:17:00] call turning down our metabolic rate or our metabolism but B comes at a cost.

It means we're not detoxifying as well. Our immune function isn't working as well. Our digestion doesn't work as well. Our cognition doesn't work as well. So that's when we start to have issues. And this is really. As we'll get to really the main place that if we're limited in terms of energy, we're going to be reducing the amount going to the internal demands, which comes at a major cost.

So as I was alluding to, there is a really important distinction made with this approach, which is that the, the fuel that we have from the food or we'll call it the substrate doesn't automatically become energy, right? There is an important difference. There's a distinction between the substrate or the fuel and the energy.

And there's a lot of steps involved there. And it's, this is, I would say really the central part that kind of, I mean, I guess you could say matters more than anything else or dictates what's going to happen in the system is how well we're converting that substrate to ATP. Now there are. [00:18:00] A number of things that are involved there that will affect that.

But in general, what we're talking about here is basically our mitochondrial function, right? The mitochondria is where we're producing the vast majority of our energy, whether it's from glucose or fats or amino acids, other intermediates, and that's where we're going to produce most of our energy. And there's so many ways that that can go wrong, right?

There are tons of enzymes that can be inhibited, whether it's due to a lack of nutrients that are needed for them to function, whether it's due to oxidative stress. Our hormones have a major impact on what's going on in the mitochondria stress and stress. Hormones are going to have a major impact here as well, which we'll discuss.

So this is really the central piece. If this is working well, then we have a lot of energy available to go to our internal and external demands. There are downstream effects of that that we'll discuss. Also, it means there's a lot less substrate that will be stored as body fat because most of it is getting used to produce energy.

We'll also talk about how this turns down our hunger. So we're not going to eat extra. And we're not going to have this, all this extra substrate there to be stored as, as body fat. So, [00:19:00] this is really the central piece that, as we'll talk about in some of these next examples. If this goes wrong, this is when we're going to start to store body fat, and we're going to be excessively hungry And we're going to be decreasing our metabolic rate and basically decreasing our structure, you know, causing degeneration as well as reducing the functions of all of our internal systems, which we definitely don't want.

It's kind of like with calories in, calories out, or I think one of the things about calories in, calories out, that's really attractive is the numbers, right? People like to have some sort of numerical value where they can think about, And we talked about how it's really not true or impossible to calculate, but people like the idea of saying there's this many calories in this many calories out.

Here's the difference. I know what will happen again. A lot of issues with that, but it's nice to have some numbers to conceptualize things, and there's nothing necessarily I mean, there's a lot of limitations to calories, but there's also a benefit, which is that it allows us to try to come up with some like a similar way to quantify different [00:20:00] macronutrients, right?

They're not exactly the same. A thousand calories of protein is not the same as carbs or fats, and we talked about that, but it at least gives us a general way to to identify the amount of food that we've eaten. And try to equilibrate it because if not, you know, if we were going by weight, you know, I ate a pound and a half of protein and two pounds of carbs and half a pound of fat.

It's really hard to compare those things because we know weight and calories are very different. The potential energy coming from each of those is very different. So calories can be helpful for getting an idea of how much food we're eating, for example, or around how much energy maybe we expended during exercise.

Again, not that there's an easy way to get that number because most of the things that are tracking that are pretty far off, but calories are really the best measure we have. So there is value to them. In this case, we're just going to use a arbitrary unit. To put some numbers onto this, it could be calories if you want.

So for example, we're going to talk about consuming 20 units of food. If you wanted that to be 2000 calories, you know, every unit [00:21:00] could be a hundred calories, that's fine. You know, whatever kind of helps conceptualize it yourself. And again, there is value in knowing around how many calories you're eating, because we can compare that with.

around how many calories an average person might eat of your size. And we generally want to be eating above that because that means that our metabolic rates high and things like that. But again, there is value. I'm not trying to say there's no value to calories. And I, you know, definitely made that clear in the last episode.

There's value to, to having an idea of how much we're eating and we're not saying that that doesn't matter. So let's assume we have 20 units of food here. We're just going to go with arbitrary units. It's a little bit easier as well because you know, 20 is a little easier to play with as opposed to 2000.

So, we've got 20 units of food. Of those 20 units, 18 get absorbed and become substrate internally. Two of them get excreted. So this means that they are not digested and they pass through you know, undigested and through the stool. So, at this point we have 18 units of substrate available, let's say for the whole day.

And during the day, there's always going to be some amount of [00:22:00] release from the fat stores, even if we do nothing, even if we're at rest, there's always going to be fatty acids being released triglycerides, fatty acids being released from the fat stores that we can use for structure or to be excreted or to produce energy or to be circulated back and restored as body fat, but there's always some baseline amount we're going to assume in this day, that amount is four units.

Okay. So on the whole day, we have about 22 units of substrate to play around with. Of those 22, one gets excreted, let's say through the urine, through the skin, through the breath, all of that. And seven goes toward structure, right? This is for maintaining our bones, skin, organs, things like that. So we're now at 14 units of substrate left of those 14 units.

10 of them go to producing energy and we're going to say it's a relatively decent efficiency. In this case, we're in balance. So this is an example where we're not having any storage of body fat or loss of body fat. We're in balance in terms of our body fat stores. So of those 14 units of substrate, 10 goes [00:23:00] to producing energy.

And of those 10 units of energy. Five go to our internal demands and five go to our external demands. And then we have those four units of substrate left, which gets stored back as body fat. So in this case, everything is in balance. We're covering our demands. We're covering our structural needs. We've released some body fat, stored some body fat.

So that's even, and this is an example of what it would look like if we're in balance. And this is again, the more kind of detailed version. If we wanted to keep it in a simplified way, you know, just be the food to substrate and then substrate to energy, substrate to fat and substrate to excretion and structure.

But we're trying to encapsulate everything here. So adding a little bit of detail. Now let's say instead of being in balance, we're gaining body fat. What would that look like in terms of the, you know, general idea of what's happening and then we'll put some units to it. So we have our same, you know, backbone here, but if we're gaining body fat, there's going to be a [00:24:00] reason for that.

And. The primary reason is going to be that there's impaired energy production. Basically our mitochondrial function is not ideal. There's impairments there. It's not as efficient as it would be. Otherwise, this could be again, due to nutrient deficiencies due to hormones, due to stress, due to endotoxin, heavy metals, infections, tons of different things can affect how well we convert.

The food or the substrate into energy, but if this is impaired here, we're not going to be producing as much energy as we would with the same unit number of substrate, right? So instead of producing 10 units of ATP from the 18 or 18 that were left, or was it 14 that were left after excretion and structure instead of producing 10 out of 14, We might only produce eight out of 14.

And if we wanted to get to 10, we would need to have more substrate available because this is not working as efficient as efficiently. It takes a more substrate coming in to get the same amount of energy. So either if we have the same amount of substrate, we're going to be left with less energy, which means less to our internal [00:25:00] demands, or if we have more substrate coming in to get the same amount of energy, we're going to have extra being stored as body fat as well.

So we're going to see that happen here. So if we have the same amount of substrate and less is being converted to energy, not only are we going to have less for our internal demands, but we're also going to have more being stored as body fat. So let's put some numbers to this to make it a little bit.

Easier to follow. So we've got the same 20 units of food coming in 18, go to substrate and to get excreted just like before. And then we have the same four units coming out of the fat stores. So we've got 22 units of substrate available and we've got the same one that gets excreted seven that goes to structure.

So we're left with 14 now as substrate. Now, as we said before, instead of 10 of those units being converted to energy, now we only have eight units that get converted to energy because this efficiency has been reduced. Reduce because we're, we have impairments, we have blockages in the mitochondria. So what we have the same external demands, right?

We moved to the same amount during the day. We had this, you know, around the same temperature, same stress, things like [00:26:00] that. So we will have five units going to the energy demands, the external energy demands, but that means we have less left over. We only have three left over to go to the internal demand.

So instead of the five that we would have had, we're left with only three there. What that means is that's less energy to go to all of those internal functions, to go to digestion and detoxification breathing cell turnover, immune function, all of the things we discussed. So that's the first consequence.

Now remember also of the 14 units that of substrate that we had, only eight went to energy, which means there's an extra six available. Which then gets stored as body fat set of the fours before. So now if we look at those fat stores, four was four units were released, but six went in. So we've gained two units of body fat.

So in this depiction we have less energy, less going to the internal demands and we have more being stored as body fat. We actually have a net body fat storage. So what are the consequences here from the impaired mitochondrial function? We have less internal function, you know, basically decreased metabolism of three units instead of five.[00:27:00]

And we have the storage of body fat and those two things go hand in hand. Those two things go together, which is the opposite of what most people describe, especially when it comes to calories in calories out, or just weight loss as a whole is that if you have too much energy, then you're going to have body fat storage.

But the reality is A, that's kind of impossible in that it's not literally impossible. You can have more energy and more body fat, but if you have the same amount of food coming in and more is going to body fat, less is going to energy. Now the assumption from the calories in calories out people, the people who are generally misapplying it as they say, As soon as your energy stores get topped off, then all the extra substrate goes to fat.

But what they're not recognizing is that the, you know, they're assuming that substrate conversion to energy is just perfect. There's nothing that changes that, but the reality is everything in our environment changes that. So there's massive opportunity for things to go wrong there. And that's when we have extra substrate going to body fat.

So a couple of [00:28:00] really important points here, energy and body fat storage often go wrong. Are often inversely related, right? If energy is higher as we'll get to body fat is lower and vice versa. If energy is lower, body fat is higher, and there's a major cost to that as well. And of course, if you're in a state like this and someone just says, eat less, and then you have even less.

energy available and even lower metabolic rate, even less energy going to your internal demands are going to be in an even worse spot. And maybe you'd have one unit less of body fat, but you're going to be much more likely to continue storing it because your metabolic rate is going lower and lower.

Plus it would be even hungrier and hungrier and we'll get to the hunger in a moment here. But first let's provide the opposite situation of how we could have fat loss and what that would look like with the energy balance approach. So we've got our same backbone here, but instead of impaired mitochondrial function, instead of an impairment in the conversion of substrate to ATP, we have improved mitochondrial function.

You know, our nutrient status is great. We have low levels of [00:29:00] endotoxin hormones. You know, we've got high thyroid and high reproductive hormones, low stress hormones. So this is going really well. So we have an increase in efficiency of conversion from substrate to energy. And we actually have less substrate available then to be going to body fat.

So again, more energy, less body fat because of improved energy production, improved mitochondrial function. This will also mean increased energy available to go to our internal demands or external demands if we wanted. But the benefit really comes from the internal demands more than anything. And one thing that we won't talk about, but just kind of came up now as a, as a thought, you know, people will talk about eating less food.

And as I said, if you eat less, you're going to have less energy. You might have a little less body fat storage, but it comes at a major cost. If you increase your, your external demands by exercising more and keeping the food intake the same, it has the same consequence, right? There's still less energy available to go to those internal demands.

You're still taking it from your metabolism. You're still taking it from all of the internal functions that you need. You're still depressing your metabolism over time. [00:30:00] So whether you're doing it by eating less or by exercising more, if you're not actually fixing the mitochondrial issue that's underlying the body composition issue, You're going to have the same negative impact over time.

All right. So here we're talking about the opposite. We've improved our mitochondrial function. We're going to talk about what this looks like with units where we're, we're eating the same amount. We have the same amount coming in and of that 18 units is going to substrate two is going to excretion. We have the same amount coming from the fat stores of four units.

We're not doing anything to increase the release of substrate from the fat stores. We're not, yeah, we don't have to focus on that at all. That is not at all necessary for losing body fat because there's always a baseline amount. Of course you, it can be increased, but oftentimes in the case that we're increasing it, it's because basically we're in a deficit in terms of energy.

A real energy deficit, not a calorie deficit. And when that happens, there's actually an increase in, you know, we have to get the substrate from somewhere, either it's going to come from body fat or from structure. [00:31:00] We'll talk about that. But in the case that we're in a true energy deficit, then we would rather get it from fat than structure.

But that's only happening when there's actually an energy deficit there. So we don't want to focus on releasing fat from the fat stores. Anyway, we're left with our same 22 units of substrate, just like before one of those goes to excretion and seven goes to structure. So now we're at 14 units of substrate available, but instead of 10 of those going to energy, because we've improved our mitochondrial function, 12 of those units go to energy production.

Again, we haven't changed our external demand. So those will still be five. But our internal demands, now there's extra energy to go to those. So instead of the five units that went to the internal demands before we have seven units there, and again, the same five to the external, what that means is we now have more energy available for things like immune function, for things like digestion, for things like cognition, for things you know, anything that we want, and this acts as a signal to raise our metabolic rate to further improve our mitochondrial function and to store less body fat.

It reduces the hormones that lead to body fat storage, but also there's less substrate. [00:32:00] They're available. We only have two units now because of the 14 12 went to energy. There's only two units left to go to body fat. So now we're at a basically a fat deficit, right? We've lost body fat here, two units of body fat while having more energy and raising our metabolic rate.

So this is what we're going for. This is the way that we would want to actually lose body fat, not by forcing the increased release of body fat, not by consuming less food, because those will both come at a cost. We'll get into that in more detail, but instead by improving our conversion from food or to substrate to energy.

That's really what we want to focus on should also mention if you're consuming the same amount of food But you reduce the absorption using some sort of drug or supplement that reduces the amount of carbohydrates you absorb or something like that It's going to have the same cost, lower energy and less, you know, less going to the internal demands, lower metabolism, all of that.

So we don't want to do that either. All right, so we're going to go back to our original kind of backbone here. We're going to add in a bit more detail with hunger and some stress hormones as well. We're going to count for those things. So we have our, our [00:33:00] same kind of structure here, incorporating myocondrial function, separating substrate from energy and all of that.

But now what we want to consider is a couple of the downstream effects of the amount of energy that we have. One of those is the amount of ATP that we have is going to impact the amount of ATP and all of our different organ systems, and that includes the brain and the liver. This is really important because the brain and the liver are the main areas that determine our hunger.

Basically, if there's a lack of ATP there. We will have an increase in hunger if there's a, if there's enough ATP there, then we'll have a decrease in hunger. So those are both going to affect our hunger, which is going to affect our drive to eat more food. So again, more ATP, less hunger, less ATP, more hunger.

And it makes sense because the whole reason for hunger is our body saying it needs more or less energy. Do I have enough available? It's not dependent just on how much food comes in. It's depend and it's not dependent on whether the food that you eat has a lot of volume, has a lot of, you know, you're eating a lot of vegetables, drinking a lot of water.

Those things will help you feel physically [00:34:00] full, but they won't actually stop your hunger, and that's why most people who are doing all of that are still starving on the inside. It's why binging is such a common effect. Or result, I should say, of doing things like that of calorie restriction of trying to fill up on those other foods is we're always fighting constant restriction, constant hunger, because there's a lack of energy, a lack of energy in the brain, a lack of energy in the liver that's driving our desire to eat more food as it should.

That's the whole point of it. That's the whole point of hunger. Now, the other impact of the amount of energy we have. Is on the stress hormones. If we have enough energy, the stress hormones are low. If we don't have enough energy, the stress hormones increase because the stress hormones are basically there to make up for energy deficits, to help our bodies when they're under physiological stress, when there's not enough food available and there's not, when there's excessive demands, because we're, you know, in a stressful situation, we're running a lot or doing something excessively active beyond the food that we have available.

We have to activate those stress hormones. One of the impacts of the stress hormones is an increase in [00:35:00] hunger. So, high stress hormones will then increase the amount of food that's coming in. That's going to be negative, but at the same time, there's two other negative effects of the stress hormones. And as an example, or not an example, but just so you know, when we're talking about the stress hormones, generally we're talking about glucagon, epinephrine or adrenaline and cortisol, but especially cortisol here, glucagon and epinephrine are really short term generally used for short term uses as far as the stress hormones go, and there are the same negative effects of long term exposure to high levels of glucagon and adrenaline.

It has all the same effects as cortisol does long term. So those are absolutely going to have the same effects here. But in this case, you know, cortisol is a good example because it's pretty well known if you provide a glucocorticoid like drug, you know, prednisone, cortisone, things like that, then it'll increase hunger.

It'll also increase storage as body fat, which we'll get to in a second. But the, one of the main ways it does that is by impairing mitochondrial function, it impairs the conversion from food to energy and therefore also increases the storage [00:36:00] of food as fat. There's. These mechanisms are interdependent, but also there's independent effects that increase the amount of substrate going to body fat.

So that's a major concern with long term exposure to the stress hormones, whether it's cortisol, glucagon or epinephrine. All right. So now that we're considering the effects on hunger, the effects on the stress hormones, the effects on ATP and the brain and liver, let's look at fat gain again with the same unit.

So again, this is the case where. We have impaired mitochondrial function, blocking the conversion of substrate to energy and increasing the storage of body fat. Well, now what we have is since we have less energy, we have decreased energy in the brain and liver and increased hunger. And because we have less energy, we have increased stress hormones, which also leads to increased hunger as well as further impaired mitochondrial function, impaired conversion of food to energy and increased fat storage.

So everything that we don't want to happen is going to happen in a case where we're not converting food effectively to energy. And this is why that's where we want to put our [00:37:00] focus because not only are we gaining fat here, we have a lack of energy for our internal demands, which is a major concern.

We're starving all the time. And we're then trying to fight against that by restricting further by eating less food, by trying to exercise more, which is just causing more energy depletion is causing more of an energy deficit, which is not what we want. And again, The energy deficit here is going alongside fat storage.

We have an energy deficit and a gain in body fat at the exact same time with calories out in the way we described in the last episode. That's also possible, but it's not very clearly represented here. We're able to see that very clearly. Now we're going to add some units to this just to again, make it a little bit easier to conceptualize and see what happens also where we have impaired mitochondrial function, but this time we actually increase.

The amount of food coming in because of the hunger. So now we have 22 units of food coming in 20 going to substrate and two getting excreted. We have the same four units being released from the body fat, which there might actually be an increased release of body fat here, but we're going to leave that to the [00:38:00] side for now, not to complicate things too much.

And then, so now of our 24 units, one gets excreted, seven goes to structure. So now instead of 24, we're at 16. Now of that 16, only eight are getting converted to energy because we have impaired mitochondrial function and compounded. impacts due to the stress hormones. So things are really impaired here.

We're talking about something that's maybe happened a bit more over time. Of those eight units only three are going to the energy, the internal energy demands, as we discussed last time, five are going to an external demands. So we have a decreased metabolic rate here, but then because we ate more and we have impaired energy production.

Now we have even more going toward fat storage. This is why it's so important that we focus on improving our mitochondrial function as opposed to just the amount that we're, that we're eating. Even if we're trying to eat more to help kind of fix the situation, we want to make sure that we're doing that while also working on improving our mitochondrial function.

Because if we're eating less over time, things get worse, right? We [00:39:00] have even worse impairment of mitochondrial function, even higher increased stress hormones, even worse hunger. So in the process of getting out of that state, we do need to eat more. That's a part of it. We want to make sure that we're improving, doing everything we can to improve mitochondrial function in the meantime.

So let's say in this case, we didn't actually eat more. Let's see what would happen here. If we fought against the hunger and we eat the same amount as we would have otherwise, but we're still having the, we're still having impaired mitochondrial function. So here we would have 20 units of food coming in, 18 going into substrate.

We've got the four coming in from the fat stores, one going to excretion, one going to structure. So we're left with the same 14 that we had before. Now, now we have even more impaired energy production again, because we have increased stress hormones over time. So now we only have seven units going to energy of the 14 that we had.

And so again, we have not eaten more to try to make up for the energy deficit here. We're trying to eat less. Let's, we could, I mean, a lot of people eat less than the 20 units trying to lose body fat in this case. Let's say we even ate the same amount. And so now [00:40:00] we're left with seven units going to energy.

Out of the 14. So that leaves us with two going to the internal demands, five to the external demands. And that leaves us with seven left to be going to be stored as body fat. But there's a problem here. There was only so much that we can reduce those internal demands, right? We have to function. We have to be alive.

Everything needs to work to some extent and our bodies try to resist that. So in this case, that two units of energy is not enough. To support our internal demands. And we haven't eaten more despite all the signals for increased energy. So what has to happen is we have to pull extra substrate from elsewhere to try to satisfy those demands.

And when this is happening over time, we'll end up pulling those, that extra substrate from elsewhere. From our structure. We have to break down things like our muscle, our bone skin. We see deterioration in all of our different organ systems, partially because of the lack of energy, but partially also because they get deteriorated.

We don't have [00:41:00] the structure to be able to make up for it. Or basically there's a net deterioration because we have to start to break down those things to provide energy. So now we've pulled two units out from that structure. So we're in a deficit of structure again, not something that's normally considered when it comes to calories and calories out, but we have a breakdown of our, of our structure, and then because we have an extra two units of substrate, but we're not using it very efficiently, we get one extra unit of energy that allows us.

To produce three units for the internal demand. So now we're at least satisfied. There are minimum that we need, but now we have an extra unit of substrate because of the two units, only one was able to be used to produce energy. Cause we're not doing that efficiently. So that then leads to an extra being stored as body fat, actually basically coming from the structure, which, you know, it might not always go exactly that way.

We could have two units coming from the structure and the ones that are more likely to be stored as body fat come from the food, but, you know, we're just trying to look at it in You know, trying to, to consider how it would happen throughout the [00:42:00] entire day. So, you know, it's not like at the end of the day, we would just lose those two units.

This would all be happening over time, but this is the major, major cost of being in a state where we have impaired mitochondrial function. And then we eat less and exercise more, which so many of us are told to do. We ended up breaking down our own structure. We ended up with less internal demand. energy available.

So we decrease our metabolism. We've increased hunger and this just spirals over time, causing basically all of the issues that so many of us have dealt with from the history of different versions of restriction and low carb diets, low calorie diets where we're not sleeping. We're anxious. Not only are we gaining a lot of body fat without eating a lot of food.

Also, we don't have a lot of energy. Or, you know, movement and things like that. Cause our bodies are trying to disfavor that. So we have some energy available for the internal demands. Basically everything starts to deteriorate. All right. So in the interest of time, I didn't go through other examples with the hunger, the stress hormones, the ATP in the brain and liver when it comes to fat loss, In [00:43:00] what's basically an energy surplus, right?

We had talked about that previously where we can actually have more energy and less going to body fat. So I'm just going to briefly kind of mention that here, what that can look like. So that we can conceptualize that a little bit before going through and kind of summarizing some of the takeaways, some of the comparisons between the energy balance approach and the calories in calories out approach.

So, in the case that we are looking at this approach that includes the consideration of stress hormones, of ATP, of hunger. But we're actually in a state of fat loss. So as we discussed before, we're going to have improved mitochondrial function. It's going to lead to more energy than we would have had otherwise, and less going to body fat.

But when we have more energy, we have enough ATP in the brain and liver that actually turns off our hunger signals. So we can be losing body fat. without actually having increased hunger here, because it's not focused on eating less and exercising more and just trying to create a quote calorie deficit.

Instead, it's focused on actually improving the [00:44:00] conversion of substrate to energy so that we have enough energy available. So it turns off our hunger systems. It provides enough energy for internal demand so that we can actually increase our metabolic rate and all of our functions. And it will also lead to a loss of body fat in the process.

And in addition to, you know, the high levels of energy leading to a lack of hunger, not a lack of, but not excessive hunger, the energy also keeps our stress hormones down, which means a good mitochondrial function, less storage is body fat. This is one of the things that helps reduce the storage of substrate is body fat and again, not having extra hunger from the stress hormones.

So this is how we can end up in a state where we have an energy surplus. Basically excess energy relative to energy, like being in balance, right? We have increased energy available, less going to body fat, and we don't have increased hunger and we have an increased metabolic rate in the process, more energy available to go to all of our internal functions, which, you know, just saying an increased metabolism sounds great, but what that [00:45:00] actually translates to is feeling better in every way and having improved immune function and.

And improved health outcomes, right? This could be everything from lowering blood pressure to improving cognition and decreasing brain fog to reducing bloating and digestive issues, you know, all sorts of things that all of us have dealt with or so many people I see deal with. As a result of a lack of energy.

I mean, another huge one is sleep, right? Sleep insomnia, waking up throughout the night. These are all symptoms of a lack of energy. Basically, we have increased stress hormones that wakes us up that wake us up during the night because of the lack of energy. So some, there are so many different ways that this lack of energy.

Health. So this is a scenario where we can have again, the energy surplus improved health and reduced body fat, and that's really what we're going for. Obviously, that's much better than any of the alternatives. So let's go through some of these takeaways here of really comparing the Energy balance approach to fat loss, [00:46:00] body composition, and really health with calories and calories out there's a handful of things worth mentioning here as far as limitations, but also benefits of, you know, looking at energy balance in this way.

And while I phrased it as the energy balance approach to fat loss, we're really just talking about energy balance. People talk about calories in. And calories out is energy balance, which really it's not. There's no consideration of like, there's nothing about that. That actually dictates how much energy we have available for anything.

It's just a potential energy in out and that change of potential energy. But here we're actually talking about energy balance. Now, of course, as I mentioned before, energy balance. This does not mean that we ignore the amount of food that we're eating or our activity. Both of those are things that are accounted for in this approach with this approach, we also aren't pretending to be predictive as if we can, you know, with the calories and calories out, we can just calculate how many calories come in, calculate how many come out, and we know what the outcome will be.

We don't have that here. And that's intentional. There's no equation here. And that's because there's no point in creating an equation. That's [00:47:00] impossible to calculate. And that has an outcome that doesn't actually tell us anything, right? As we talked about in the last episode, knowing that there's a calorie surplus doesn't tell us that there's going to be body fat gain.

It doesn't tell us that there's going to be muscle gain. It just tells us there's a calorie surplus, and that can mean a lot of different things. Not to mention, it's impossible to know if you're, if you're going to create a calorie surplus, and we don't want to pretend that we can predict that as if we can know what's going to happen with our calories out, considering all of the variables that affect it, including the types of foods that we have, the number of calories that we have, right?

If we eat, as soon as we have a calculation of the calories out as if we could get that, if we eat 500 calories more, that dramatically will change the calories out or if we eat 500 calories less. So We aren't pretending that we can do that. This is a conceptual framework for understanding what's going on underneath.

And then we can use this to create strategies that actually make sense for our physiology and our health and fat loss. And those center around improving that conversion of food to energy, which isn't impacted by the types of [00:48:00] foods we eat, what's going on environmentally, our gut health, stress. Now, again, with the energy balance approach, this does not support the false assumption that all food that comes in will automatically be converted to energy with 100 percent efficiency.

We know that there are so many things that impact that. We know that with age, which basically just means with degeneration this is dramatically reduced. We know that in people who are gaining body fat, who are obese, who have type two diabetes, who have metabolic syndrome, this is dramatically impaired.

And that's because it is causing that state. So we're not supporting that false assumption here. We're also not supporting the idea that body fat gain is just spill over from excess calories or excess energy, right? That, you know, we went through this very clearly that that is not what's actually happening when there's body fat gain, we could have the same number of calories coming in.

Have more going to body fat, less going to energy, be more hungry, having, you know, major health issues as a result is not just an excess calorie issue. And in fact, when we're having, when we're in a state of excess [00:49:00] body fat gain because of impaired mitochondrial function, our bodies are asking for us to eat more.

They're starving. So to act as though the excess calories is a cause as opposed to an effect is also totally missing what's actually going on. Now we're also not supporting the assumption that simply eating less or exercising more is the solution and instead we're providing alternative solutions or at least alternative places to focus on as far as alternative solutions.

I've mentioned other podcast episodes you know, tons of other areas to look for those solutions, but we know where to focus, which is how well do we convert that food to energy and what are all the things that we can do to improve that so that we're not starving all the time. We're not feeling restricted.

We're improving our health and we're losing body fat. Now, also, this better represents that the amount of food consumed is not independent from the expenditure, you know, and in calories out, the amount of food that comes in and the expenditure are framed as if they're opposing variables, they're totally independent, right?

You have your calories in and you have your calories out, and they're not affected by one another. [00:50:00] And if you just change one, it's not going to affect the other, or vice versa. With the energy balance approach, we know that that's not the case, and we're not supporting that false narrative or assumption.

Some other takeaways here. Of course, this is more complex than eating less and exercising more. It requires considering other variables, like, Our sleep, our stress, our nutrients, our gut health what types of foods we're eating our movement, right? Which doesn't just mean how many calories we burn, but our movement.

I would say this is a good thing, but of course it does make it less attractive to someone who's just looking for a simple answer. And if you're looking for simplicity and you want to just say, eat fewer calories, eat less food, or take out all the carbs, that's fine. But I think it'll come at a major cost.

I don't think it's ideal when it comes to health. And so I think we want something that's. A bit more complex. It doesn't have to be insanely complex. It just has to account for the other variables that are going on here. So that way we're not doing something that comes at the cost of our health. We're not doing something that is just a short term that is just getting us a short term [00:51:00] outcome, just short term weight loss.

But there is a benefit to the complexity. There's a cost to simplicity, right? Just the quote, simple thing can come at a major cost to our health can maybe lead to short term weight loss, but often come at a major, major cost can take a long time to recover from and can make it to make it a lot harder to keep that weight off over time.

So. Sure. It's slightly more complex than just the simple eat less and exercise more, but a, it doesn't actually have to be complex in practice, but just in, in terms of principle, we just have to consider a bit more than that, right? We have to consider the types of foods that we're eating, how much we're sleeping or, you know, our movement, other than just exercise or stress, things like that, but this is just the, really the basics.

Of creating a good life and a good lifestyle. So while it can be more complex and that we're thinking about a bit more than the amount of food on our plate or how many calories we burn at the gym, it's, it's really [00:52:00] just about improving our health. That's, that's really what it comes down to. And it doesn't have to be complex in practice.

It can be simple in practice. Now, in addition, the energy balance approach better accounts for the many immeasurable variables without trying to quantify them. So we're not, you know, I was putting some numbers on things just so it's easier to conceptualize, but we're not trying to pretend like we can actually calculate these things on a daily basis.

There's no way we're going to know how much of the substrate that we have is being converted to structure. Or is being excreted. How much of the food coming in is getting absorbed versus being excreted? How much is actually directly being converted to energy versus being stored as body fat? How much is leaving the body fat stores?

We're not pretending like we can actually calculate those things. This is a conceptual framework that can allow us to make changes that still lead to the good outcomes. And the outcome is what we're using to determine whether we're on the right track or not. And if it's not going well, then we can make tweaks.

Or if it's not, if we're not getting the outcome we are looking for or expecting, then we try to figure out. Why that is and make adjustments based on that, as [00:53:00] opposed to something like calories in calories out, where we pretend like we can calculate all these immeasurable variables are not really measurable by in a way that any of us could measure in a real setting and then, you know, trying to pretend like we can quantify them and determine what the issue is.

And then, and really the issue always comes back to you just ate too much anyway. So. With energy balance approach, we're better accounting for that. We're also better depicting the variables that actually affect fat gain and loss as well as health, right? So we're actually having a clear depiction of the conversion from food to energy, the things that can impact that, which is what actually is going to have a larger impact or the impact on our health and on our body fat stores, whether we're gaining or losing body fat, so we're actually accounting for that in this approach.

In addition, we're not supporting the assumption that excess energy and fat gain or a lack of energy and fat loss go together. So as we discussed, typically, it's actually the opposite where a lack of energy and fat gain go [00:54:00] together and excess energy or a surplus of energy and fat loss go together, right?

We're not supporting this assumption that those are actually opposing. Since they're not, we also are not supporting the assumption that fat loss requires an increase in fat release. And all of the examples we went through, there's the same amount of fat release, and we had totally different outcomes. Of course, things will.

release, but that's not where we need to put our focus. We don't need to do things to increase fat release, like decreasing carbon take, increasing exercise doing cold plunges, fasting. All of those things will increase that release simply because we're creating an energy deficit that. It causes us to pull substrate from somewhere.

And typically we prefer to pull it from our fat stores before our structure. So it will increase fat release, but typically we just have more fat storage on the other end, or if not, we end up with an energy deficit and major costs to our health. And in addition, we're not supporting the assumption that we can't change our calories out outside of exercise, right?

We're not pretending as though the only thing [00:55:00] affecting how much energy we produce and use is just our exercise. There's a lot more that goes into it than that. We're not pretending otherwise. And then lastly, we're accounting for the relationship between hunger and energy, something that is not accounted for at all when it comes to calories and calories out.

But with the energy balance approach, we are able to account for, right? We are actually able to realize the relationship between how much energy we're producing or how effectively we're producing it from the substrate. And the impact on our hunger via the stress hormones, via the amount of ATP in the liver and brain.

And again, this is why we want to be doing the things that increase our energy availability. So we can decrease our hunger or at least not have excessive hunger and we can lose body fat at the same time versus the contrary of just trying to have less energy available. While losing body fat, which ends up increasing our hunger, making the restriction that much more difficult, which of course is adaptive.

It's a good thing that our bodies do that because that restriction comes at a major cost and our [00:56:00] bodies don't want to do that. There's a major cost to our health when we do that. So of course, they're going to be hungry to try to make up for that energy deficit so that there's not such a major degenerative effect as a result.

So that's, you know, that's, that's really where I want to leave it. As far as the energy balance approach. I hope that this made it a little bit more clear. We did talk about this in an episode about the physiology of fat loss without a calorie deficit, but hopefully going through it step by step like this and having the visual depictions of graphics and all of that and getting into it in more detail, made it more clear as to how that can actually happen.

Now, if you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening elsewhere, please leave a review or five star rating on iTunes. All these things really do a lot to help support the podcast and are very much appreciated. As always, to check out the show notes for today's episode, where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that I referenced, you can head over to jfeldmanwellness.

com [00:57:00] slash podcast. And as we've discussed today, What you eat matters a lot. It's going to have a major impact on how well we're converting food to energy. And it's going to impact our health as well as our body composition, as well as our body fat. And if we want to lose body fat, what we're eating matters a ton, not just how much of course.

Now, when it comes to eating the right foods for weight loss, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. And that's why I created the energy balance food guide. The energy balance food guide helps you 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 or gut symptoms, which has a major impact on the efficiency of energy production and therefore on body fat gain or loss as well.

The food guide makes it extremely easy to get started with a bioenergetic approach to optimizing your [00:58:00] health. So head over to jfeldmanwellness. com slash guide to download your free energy balance food guide. And with that, I'll see you on the next episode.