Jay Feldman 0:00
Welcome to episode 20 of the energy balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. For those of you who don't know, Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition and researching together for the past six years or so, and now we're working together through this podcast to help people recover their health, to get their health back, get their energy back, and we do that through a bioenergetic view of health. And if you're new to the podcast, I would highly recommend going back and checking out the first eight to 10 episodes or so where we really dive into what that bioenergetic view is and a lot of the primary principles that are really important for governing our health. So as far as today's episode, we are going to be talking about going all in and intuitive eating, which are basically ways of eating that have come about in response to the diet culture and the chronic dieting and extreme hunger that so many people are experiencing throughout the health and fitness industries. And basically all in and intuitive eating are meant to be an antidote to all of the various symptoms that people experience from chronic dieting, which, again, this includes extreme hunger, it also includes hormonal issues and a lack of energy and poor sleep and poor gut health, and all sorts of other symptoms that people experience from chronic dieting or yo yo dieting. And so we'll be talking on today's episode about these approaches, the intuitive eating and going all in, and whether they work, what the drawbacks are to these approaches, and how we can apply similar principles to these approaches and achieve the same benefits without some of these drawbacks. We'll also be talking about how you can turn off excessive or extreme hunger, or even our regular hunger signals by understanding how our hunger signals work. And we'll also be talking about how we can determine how much food we should be eating for optimal health and for weight loss. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll be linking to any of these studies or articles or anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you are dealing with any of those symptoms as a result of chronic dieting or yo yo dieting, or anything else that you've done to try to improve your health, if you are experiencing a lot of cravings and hunger, if you're experiencing hormonal imbalances, whether that's a lack of libido or infertility or amenorrhea for women, or if you're experiencing fatigue, lack of energy, if you're not sleeping well, whether that's not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep, or maybe you have gut issues, you've got a lot of bloating or constipation. If you are experiencing any of those things, then I would highly recommend you head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I'll walk you through the main things that you want to do to support energy production and the things that you want to avoid that inhibit that process. And I'll also explain why this is so fundamental for improving our health, and how a lack of energy underlies virtually all these symptoms that people experience all the time. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and I did want to mention, also, before we get started, that due to some technical difficulties, Mike was without his microphone for today's episode, so I'm sorry about the lower audio quality than usual, but bear with us, please. And I also wanted to say that, considering that this is episode 20 or really it's episode 21 because we had an episode zero, I just wanted to say, I just wanted to say a huge thank you, and just express how grateful I am for all of the support for the podcast. It's really been so overwhelming, all of the reviews and likes and comments and all of the feedback I've been getting from people who have been implementing principles and recommendations that we've given throughout this, throughout this podcast, and how much they've benefited from the things that we've been talking about, and how much has really changed the way they see their health. And yeah, it's just so it's really so great to hear all those things. So again, I just want to say thank you guys so much for all the support. And with that, let's get started.

Let's start by defining all in and intuitive eating, where, basically Intuitive Eating is the idea that we are that somebody is shedding the restrictions on what they're eating, and rather than eating based on a certain calorie amount that they've that is pre decided. Or, you know. A certain amount of carbohydrates or fat or protein, they are instead eating based on their own hunger signals to allow them to determine how much they should eat and also what they should eat, as far as kind of hunger and cravings go. And more recently, there's been this idea of going all in, which is basically like a step towards intuitive eating, or an entryway into it, where, especially for someone who has been on extreme in extreme diets, going through extreme dieting, they it's basically a period of not having any restriction at all, where you just eat whatever you want, however much you want, whenever you want, with the goal of getting to a point where your hunger signals are restored. You kind of find that, find what, what supposedly is a natural set point, and you are able to intuitively eat without problem. And the main person who has popularized this idea of of all in is Stephanie buttermore, and she's kind of documented her journey, but that over the past year, where she went from a bikini model and competitor to to basically 42 pounds, right, right? Yeah. So she was incredibly lean, very popular YouTuber, and she had a lot of symptoms from all her extreme dieting. She was cold all the time. She dealt with the extreme hunger. She was basically always starving. She meant she had some hormonal issues. She was she had amenorrhea for a period of time, meaning she didn't have her menstrual cycle, her period. And she mentioned a few other symptoms as well, just energy and and fatigue, a lack of energy and having fatigue. And those things are really common for somebody who is dieting in a really restrictive way. So is brain fog and having trouble sleeping insomnia, those are all pretty common, and so she was experiencing things like that. Decided to go all in to to fix these things, and then documented her journey. And just a very broad recap, is that she she ate a ton of food throughout it, especially in the beginning, she was eating a ton over time, her hunger signal. Her hunger did decrease, her appetite decreased, and she ate less and less. So she started out at about 5000 calories a day, ended up around 2800, calories a day. She gained a lot of weight in the process, over 40 pounds, as as you had said, Mike, and she actually ended up about 13 pounds down from at least, after a year, she's 13 pounds down from her highest weight. So, and that was all natural. She hasn't been restricting at all. It's just kind of through this intuitive type of eating. And yeah, so she documented her journey. Experienced various things along the way that we'll, we'll kind of touch on, but that's kind of the introduction to all in and intuitive eating, and why we're talking about it. And basically we think that, or I'll start with me like, I think that there are a lot of benefits to intuitive eating and to all in that, especially when compared to the extreme, restrictive dieting that's out there and the cutting and bulking cycles in the fitness industry. But for most people, just the yo yo dieting, or just constant dieting. And so I do think that this is a step in in the right direction, for sure, but also that there are some problems within it, some areas that are not considered or acknowledged, and some ways that it can be improved, which is essentially the way that we would suggest somebody eats.

Mike 8:22
I would, I mean, I think that there's a so there's a lot of different ideas floating around right now, and all the nutrition communities about what is, you know, what is the best way to for health or to lose weight or to bulk up? And then you already mentioned you have cutting and bulking with bodybuilding and compete and physique competitions. And then you have the general mainstream approach, which is portion control. And then you have extensions of portion control, which and caloric and caloric intake and caloric excesses and things like that, which goes into intermittent fasting and fasting in general. And then after that you go into, you go into more approaches that look at, okay, well, what types of foods are you eating? And then from there you have things like the Mediterranean diet all the way to paleo diet, eating, eating, and you have macronutrient breakdowns and things like that. So there's a lot of different camps or theories on the best way to eat or the best way to get a certain effect. Um, and I think in our camp, or the camp at least, that I would say is makes the most sense, would be something along the lines of, you know, eating to what your satiety cues are, so eating as much you're hungry for and fulfilling your cravings for salt and sugar and fat and things like that, but choosing which specific foods you think are going to be the most beneficial based on physiology and research and things like that. So there's a there's an all in component in or not an all in, but there's an intuitive component to what we talk. Out or what I specifically recommend. But I do think that you can't, I don't think that all in per se is a good idea. I think that there needs to be a degree of restriction, especially considering our modern environment and what foods are available and things like that. So and we can when you look at, when you go through some, some of Stephanie's journey and things like that, um, when she first started, she did Whole Foods, and she said that she was very bloated, she couldn't eat that much and things like that. And really depends on She's saying she's eating a lot of beans and oats and heavy starches and things like that. And, um, yeah, that will eat a lot of that. You probably will get bloated, um, and then eventually she moved more towards junk food. And when she moved in towards her junk food phase, she gained a lot of water weight. She was very bloated. She was having swelling. She was having probably hormonal dysregulation. When she talks about all her breakdowns and emotional things that occurred, I'm sure the journey in itself was an emotional and the negative comments and things like that. But I also wouldn't put it passed to have emotional issues from hormonal stuff going on with eating whatever you want. So overall, I think that the idea of intuitive eating makes a lot of sense, and I think that it's beneficial, but I don't think that all in is a good idea. I don't think that it really makes any sense the all in aspect. And then from there, I think that it's really important to choose what foods you're eating and have restriction about what foods you're eating, um, and I think that those, those would be the my point of view or caveat from her situation. And I think a lot of her issues could have been individually avoided by choosing specific foods instead of going and eating burgers and fries and pizza and and donuts and whatever else. Yeah, this, I don't think that those foods give normal satiety cues, and I don't think that they I think that they can induce cravings more so than help cravings. And I think it's important to rather than just eat everything that you can eat all together to figure out what foods work for you and what foods are doing well by you. Instead of just, oh, the kitchen sink approaches, I'm just gonna eat every single thing.

Jay Feldman 12:10
So, yeah, so there's, like, a few things I want to break down there. So first off, when you say restriction, we don't necessarily mean restricting how you're eating, and we'll talk through this, but, but there's actually a lot of value to eating as much as you want to eat within certain guidelines, and part of that has to do with eating certain foods and not others. So it's more of a restriction of the types of foods than the amounts, although there's circumstances where you might want to restrict the amount as well, and we'll talk about that too. But it's not based on this idea that the only way to lose weight is just to eat less. We actually both think that eating a lot more is is really helpful and can result in weight loss if it's done properly. It's not a calories in, calories out approach, exactly right? But by the same token, yeah, there's the type of foods matter, and so we'll talk about that. The The other thing that I want to point out before we talk about some of the like, why it works and because it does work to an extent, right? She gained a lot of weight and then started losing some of it entirely, without restriction. And there's something to be said for that, and there's reasons for that, so I want to touch on that. But the the I guess, let's start there.

Her initial goals were to she had extreme hunger, she had cold extremities, and I think she was just always cold, and she was having hormonal issues, and so she wanted to resolve those three things. I think the main one that she had said she was focusing on was the hunger side, okay? Just feeling always very, very restricted, starving, essentially.

Mike 13:44
So she solved, according to her, she solved the hunger issue. But we don't know about the other two, right?

Jay Feldman 13:52
And there's, there's something to be said for that. And what I was kind of going to get at is, is that because of our diet culture, our relationship many people's relationship with food is so skewed that there are certain instances where I think all in might be the best approach for somebody who cannot deal with anything in the middle between extreme restriction and no restriction at all, if they can't just change certain types of foods that they're eating and slowly increase them and slowly bring in the right types of foods and make small adjustments, step by step, which is kind of what we'll what we would suggest with certain guidelines. If they can't do that because of how of like the psychological component in the relationship with food, then there might be a place for something like all in for that person. But of course, in talking about the psychological component, it wasn't easy for Stephanie, and the reason for that is because she gained a lot of weight, and also there's a hormonal component too, probably that that you had mentioned, you had alluded to. So it's not like it's necessarily psychologically easier to go all in, either, but it might be easier to take the first step. So those are important things to consider, but the. The general idea there is sound like there is sound physiology underlying the idea of when you're restrictive dieting and you're eating very little, it does suppress your metabolism. And when we're in that state of a suppressed metabolism, basically our body is trying to conserve as much energy as possible so that it can survive. So if you consider an event where we don't have food available, if we want to survive until there is food available, we have to conserve as much energy as possible. And so that's basically what happens within our bodies, where we down regulate all of our higher level functions, our higher level brain functions, our immune function, our reproductive function, our digestive functions, and we just our bodies just focus on basically survival. And that does happen when we eat very little and when we eat a lot more. The opposite will happen too. Like those things will start to come back in many ways.

Mike 15:50
But what are some specific symptoms before you continue of what would be down regulated functions? Because you talk about, like, higher order functions, you down regulate. But what symptoms could you expect? Like, for example, with Stephanie?

Jay Feldman 16:04
Yeah. So she talked about being cold all the time. Which body temperatures is a big component here? So that would be one. She also talked about hormonal issues, so our reproduction is not of utmost importance to our individual survival at a period of time. So that's something that gets down regulated, which means infertility. Potentially, it can mean amenorrhea, which she had experienced for a period of time on her extreme dieting. It can also period, right? Yeah, a lack of libido is another component there. As far as the reproductive side goes, that that plays a role, and then those reproductive hormones also play roles in other aspects of our health, our mental function, and our energy, and even digestion, immune function. So body mass, like in as far as muscle mass goes, so there's a there's definitely some important things to consider on the reproductive side, as far as the brain side goes, brain fog is something that people experience, which is basically just kind of like a cloudiness in your thinking and inability to think critically about things, or to think for a long period of time or to really focus on something. It can also include becoming really irritable, and some people like losing a sense of humor. Speaking of all this, it also, there's a study talking about, there's a very well reference or very famous study called the Minnesota starvation experiment, where they basically put men. We've talked about this in the past, so I'll just skim over it. But they basically put men on a, essentially a semi starvation diet, going from 3300 calories to 1800 calories. And they experience all of these things and..

Mike 17:37
Which many fitness competitors go lower than, and and like, drop body fat to lower percentages and things like that as well. So like, way below starvation level diets, right?

Jay Feldman 17:48
And these men were between 150 and 160 pounds, relatively lean, so they were not large guys who were on this huge, 3300 calorie day diet that was just normal for for them, and which also just goes to show how much dieting culture and the terrible food supply that we have has contributed to lowered metabolisms and eating so much less when we consider that that what was it 7080 years ago, people were, you know, somebody who was between 150 and 160 pounds, was eating 3300 calories a day and maintaining their weight as a very lean guy.

Mike 18:24
And now the recommendations 2000 calories and or 2500 Yeah, or we routine. I routinely see people at much higher weights than 160 pounds, eating less than 2000 calories, right? So, and people making remarks about people being fat because of gluttony and things like that, when, in reality, a lot of obese people that I know are eating significantly under amount calories required for their their maintenance of their body weight, yet still gaining weight, right? And I think that, I think that with that example, it's important, and with Stephanie's example, it's important to talk about that from the from the idea of or what the research term is, the set point, the metabolic set point. And so what this is essentially what you were just talking about, but as and but specifically when you lower your when you're dieting down, or your your decrease your calories, to lose weight, your body down regulates its metabolism. You have all the effects that you just talked about, but then it also gets to a point where you can now maintain your body weight at less calories, and calories being just a standard, arbitrary unit to determine food quantity. So you have so with Stephanie, she can get down to 1000 calories, and she's maintaining her body weight on that because she's dieted down and her metabolism has slowed to reach those requirements. Now her side effects from there, where she didn't have her period, the cold hand, the cold feet, sound like thyroid issues. To me, like very general thyroid issues. And then, you know, whatever other symptoms, the extreme hunger that was going on. So in this case, the base. Think the way to fix that is basically a reverse diet, which is essentially what she did, was a reverse diet. And a reverse diet is essentially adding in calories that you can increase your metabolic rate on a on a regular basis, get it back up to a higher set point, per se. And her choice of doing this was all in now, what is the other option that you can do? If you have that, that down low, you could, you can gradually increase your calories, right, to slam 5000 calories from 2000 calories.

Jay Feldman 20:32
Well, right. So, but, but before we get there, I just want, because I want to recap this whole relationship between how much we eat and metabolism, because it kind of underlies why we don't want to just jump into eating 5000 calories a day from 1000 so when we are in this low metabolic state and we have our reproductive function depressed, you mentioned thyroid function, which is the kind of governor of a metabolism that is one of the first things to down regulate when we don't have enough food available. And then you also below that, like other things that are governed by those, those higher level hormones we mentioned, brain function, immune function is another one. So people get sick very often or potentially, and then it also affects a lot of other symptoms, like sleep and insomnia and skin issues can come up, brittle hair, skin and nails is a common one, just, just a very general degradation of health happens when we don't have enough food, which is not surprising. I mean, of course, in starvation, people's health degrades. It's it makes sense, but we just don't think about it in those terms when we're talking about diets. So that definitely that is something that has been shown to happen when we don't eat enough. And it's not just a matter of how much food we're taking in, but whether we're actually converting that food to energy. And that's that's such an important component. I think the biggest component that's missed when it comes to this all in idea, which is that all calories are just equal. So if you were eating too little, the only way to bring your metabolism back up is just to eat more. And in reality, it's, it's more nuanced than that. There's, there are a lot of factors that affect whether we actually convert the food that we're taking into energy, and that's the that energy is actually the determinant of where our metabolism is going to be, because we can eat 3000 calories of food, or we can eat 1000 calories of food and end up with the same amount of energy depending on what we're eating and what's going on internally. And that situation is not very likely, normally what's going to happen, which is what happened with Stephanie, is that if you eat way more, you're going to end up with more energy. But it's kind of like having a really inefficient engine. So when you had that inefficient engine, and you took in a little bit of fuel that was able to convert that fuel to energy if you want, if you want more energy, you just have to dump in a ton of fuel, and you end up with a ton of waste. And in this point, waste that isn't converted to energy. And in this case, that suppose the waste, which isn't exactly what happens, but that waste is then just stored as body fat. So Stephanie was taking in this huge amount of fuel, of this five, 5000 calories at first, and converting more energy, converting more of it to energy than she was prior. So she ended up with more energy than before, which is why her hunger started to go down. But it also came at the cost of putting on a ton of body fat. And so that's kind of what we're going to get at, is that if we improve the efficiency of converting the food to energy, and part of that is is changing the types of foods, part of it is how quickly we increase the foods that will allow us to get to that same point of not feeling restricted, being able to eat intuitively, but without the other symptoms that have come along with her journey or with many other people's journey, including a ton of weight gain.

Mike 23:35
Weight gain, bloating, emotional dysregulation, hormonal dysregulation, leading to, possibly leading to things that, like she mentioned as a vein ablation procedure, menstrual irregularities, where she talked about her she had to get her copper IUD removed because it was getting very painful. I don't know, maybe the copyright when it was put in and when the symptoms developed, it wasn't very clear. But just at her age, having extreme swelling at your ankles is a energy is like a severe energy dysregulation. Usually you see swelling at the ankles and older people with heart disease or any type or liver disease or any type of damages process. So the other thing I want to talk about here, in relationship to just increasing your calories to 5000 is that when you go from 1000 to 5000 if you're at 1000 your digestive processes aren't going to be able to handle a massive increase in calories like that. Most likely, maybe some people will. You know, I'm not going to say for everyone, but for some most likely not, especially if you're going to depending on what food you're eating. So a lot of food will go straight to the to the undigested, to the colon, especially if you're eating massive amounts. And then you can basically get, you can get a lot of bacterial overgrowth and things like that in the colon, maybe in a small intestine, the pens. And what happens in your own situation, depending on the foods and the quantity of food, and then that can cause weight gain, and that can cause a bloating, and that can cause metabolic dysregulation and things like that. So I think it's important to, number one, choose specifically which foods you're going to eat, and rather than jump all in to maybe gradually taper up the amount of calories you're eating on a slow basis, so you can adapt to eating that number of calories again. And then another thing that I think is important, and I think that as much as because, as far as I understood her, she wanted to get rid of her massive hunger, but she also wanted to get out of the restrictive mindset of eating. Yeah, and the thing is, is I'm not. There's a degree to which a restrictive mindset of eating is pathologic. I'm I 100% on board with that. But at some extent, not having a restrictive eating to mind to not having a restrictive mindset eating may also be pathologic. I think there needs to be a degree of restriction. I think that's that's important. And I think that moving and it really depends on where you're coming from. You know, if you're coming from Super restrictive, I don't know if going all in is a good idea. It really is going to have to depend on the person. But coming more towards the middle ground where it's like, I'm going to eat until I'm hungry, I'm going to eat the certain foods that I know I that are good for me, that are okay for me, that that I feel well with, that I don't get these issues with, especially if you're at that very down regulated metabolic spot where you're existing on 1000 calories a day, because all your all your functions are down regulated. You're going to have bloating, you're going to have digestive issues, you're going to so it's important to get over that hump, and to some extent, but going out and just saying, I'm going to go all in and I'm going to eat Krispy Kreme donuts, and like when these people do 10,000 calorie or 5000 calorie day challenges, I'm going to go to Domino's and get a pizza and whatever. I don't think that that's healthy, and I don't think that there's any benefit to doing that. I don't think that that helps your metabolism in any way. I think, if anything, that hinders your metabolism and causes problem, more problems in the long run than in the short run. So I think a healthy balance is necessary. I think being too restrictive obviously has its detriments, but I also think not being restrictive enough also has its detriments, and there has to be a degree of especially because with what foods are available now, you know it come from our digestive abilities and from our from our background, metabolic abilities and things that we can handle down, eating a bunch of vegetable oils, not a good idea, especially cooked at high temperatures, right? Whereas eating copious amounts of candy with silicon dioxide and dyes and things like that, or going to a restaurant and eating, I don't know, soy burgers or things like that. None of those things are on the menu, and none of those things jive with our physiology. So I think it's really important to choose your foods appropriately. And for somebody who's coming from that fragile state, I think it's even more important to choose your foods appropriately, because I think digestion at that point is going to be impaired, and I think that that's something that we noticed when we when we came out of our own restrictive eating phases of intermittent fasting and keto diets and lowering calories and things like that, to get lean when we came out, we had that extreme hunger for a period of time, and we Were eating upwards of six, 7000 calories a day, and having issues, digestive issues, and things like that, doing stuff like that. And it was only you know, through going through that process that you figure out that well, maybe certain foods aren't jiving with you and and you do, you do need carbs, you need fat, you're gonna need proteins, but which ones are gonna work for you?

Jay Feldman 28:40
Yeah. And there, I mean, there are principles there. It's not, it's not just all individual and so we'll talk through

Mike 28:45
That based on the principles that we've talked about and all the other podcasts and things like that, right? But I just, I really want to hammer home the point that it's that the idea of all in I think, is, is not, not necessarily good thing. And I think Intuitive Eating is a good thing. But I think, I really think that you have to watch what you're eating with the all in approach. I don't think that going all in on Krispy Kreme is a good idea.

Jay Feldman 29:07
I would argue that it's still the all in intuitive eating, like, which are kind of the same all in is just kind of like a transition towards it. It seems. I would say that that's still better than the yo yo dieting for your whole life when, like, especially metabolically. I mean, normally, the people who end up dieting for their whole lives end up with more, like, way more overweight. They never reach that point where their appetite just starts to go down, and they end up in in that kind of happy medium place they also are surviving with much less energy the whole time. So even though they might be leaner, potentially, they're going to end up with much less energy. And I think that that is a greater cost than excess body fat.

Mike 29:48
And by the worried about the body fat, per se, I'm more worried about metabolic issues. Some of those things.

Jay Feldman 29:55
the body fat, as you were saying, is not the concern. The concern is what's leading to it. As you said. And so if...

Mike 30:00
You're overeating PUFA and and a bunch of fibers and things like that, I think that that may be worse than not eating enough carbs or whatever in the long run for some people, right?

Jay Feldman 30:11
But the the issue is, is, again, I would say it all comes down to energy. And so the issue is, when people are gaining weight, what that means is a decent amount of the food that they're taking in is being converted towards stored as body fat, being stored as body fat, which means that it's not being converted to energy. So typically, that is a sign that metabolism is lower, energy production is lower, but not necessarily. It could still be a sign of an increase, for example, in the case of somebody who is going towards alternative or intuitive eating are all in where they are noticing that, yes, they're gaining body fat, but they're also ending up with more energy than prior because, because some amount of some increase in the amount of food that they're shaking in is being converted to energy. So yeah, and there's no, of course, there's no, like, clear cut research here, or anything like that.

Mike 31:01
I think that there's an answer for which one's worse than the other, sure, and I think most research would point towards caloric restriction being better than caloric success, especially in diets comparing the standard American diet, which is probably what most people are eating, to if you're going to go on an Atkins diet, or you're going to go on a Mediterranean diet with portion control, or if you're going to do the caloric restriction longevity diets and things like that, they would say that it's better by all these that I'm saying it's kind of like the caloric restriction is not good. And I'm I don't think that being chronically caloric restricted is a helpful way to live. If it does improve, the number of years that you live, okay, fine, but you don't feel good. So like, what do you want at least, at least in my experience with that, but on the other end, a lot of people eating a lot of food in the standard American diet, I don't think is good either. And I don't I think it's hard to say which one's worse. You're either eating as much as you want to, as you're eating as much food as you want in general, or whatever food you want in general, and you're putting on a lot of weight, and you're getting metabolic syndrome, which is what people tend to have happen, or you're chronically restricting, and you don't feel good at all, but you don't have metabolic syndrome, because you couldn't even develop metabolic syndrome from that perspective. Yeah, but most people, I think both are on the opposite ends of the spectrum and just aren't good.

Jay Feldman 32:17
Yeah, yes. I mean, there, there are. There's also a lot of issues about the caloric restriction research. I've got articles.

Mike 32:25
There isn't but I'm saying, if people were going to make an argument against what, people could make an argument against that the caloric restriction, chronic dieting is worse, is worse than the caloric expects. And then they're going to point to lowered lipids on caloric restriction and and and better cholesterol profiles and the longevity and monkeys and rats and things like but let's see. What I'm saying is I don't think one is worse than the other. I think they both have their problems. And I think that the point here is that we're not saying to caloric restrict, and we're not saying to go all in and eat whatever you want all the time in terms of standard American diet, fair, Krispy, Kreme, McDonald's, quick check sandwiches, public sandwiches, whatever it is, it's sort of, we're going to find a happy medium of you need to eat as much as you want in terms of protein, carbs, fats and specific types of foods. But the point is, is that it needs to be within specific principles of diet and types of foods. It doesn't. You don't need to do that. That's what just either what the recommendation is. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 33:26
I agree. Neither of them are ideal. The I think it's important to point out that the two things, or three things, I guess one is that, again, a lot of the cleric restriction research, like I know people would point to it, there's a lot of flaws with it that I to the that I don't think is all that relevant. I would I think it's also important to consider that intuitive eating doesn't mean necessarily caloric excess. The idea is that there's a temporary period of caloric excess, especially with something like all in where you're kind of the deal with all in is you're kind of speeding that process up, and you're getting to a point where you're not in that same quote, caloric excess, and your appetite is more normalized, and you're eating a typical amount, so you're not in that extremely excessive eating phase, which is what they're normally comparing caloric restriction to, and saying this is so much worse than caloric restriction studies. Yeah, right, exactly. So, so I think that's important to consider. The other thing as well is that I don't think most people eating a standard American diet, which you had mentioned, like, obviously are not healthy. Most of them are also still dieting, just eating bad foods, like, most of them are still living through a restriction mindset and are still trying to diet again, not all, not typically, not the ones who are naturally lean, but most people who are on the standard American diet are not all that lean, and even if they're only a little bit overweight, there's still that restriction mindset there where they're maybe skipping breakfast and eating some pizza for lunch, but they're still intentionally trying to skip breakfast because they ate too much the night before, or they're they still kind of want to lose weight, but they also don't want to have to not eat pizza. So I still think. The restriction is so ubiquitous throughout our culture that it's it's hard to make a comparison, that we know the standard American diet is bad. So because of that, we know that restriction is and and that we know that those people are obviously eating as much as they want. So we know that restriction is better. And again, there's no clear cut answer here between, is it better to restrict, or is it better to, to quote, unquote, overall?

Mike 35:24
I don't think you can say one is worse than that, right? That's what I'm saying.

Jay Feldman 35:26
Is there's definitely no clear cut answer, because so much of it is individualized between someone, somebody's individual experience intuitive eating and what, where that takes them, versus any individual experience with restrictive eating, which there's so much variation between different calorically restrictive diets and liVES.

Mike 35:42
I also think for standard American and restrictive is probably one of the worst places to be with both you're restricting calories and the calories that you're eating are crap. I think that that's a very bad combination to be entertaining the my ish. So my issue with the all in versus so I have an issue more with all in versus intuitive eating. So intuitive eating, for me and is the sense that you're going to have as you're eating to satiety and you're following your hunger cues. If you want something salty, you have something salty. If you want craving something sweet, you have something sweet. If you're hungry, you eat something that makes sense to me. If you're craving some Croat, something like like a steak or something, unique to steak. I think that that's great. I think that people should be following that. I think if you get home from work at night and you only have x number of calories left, and you ate your your salad for dinner, and you you really want something sweet, okay, go eat as much fruit as you're hungry for, I think that that's fine. But all in is different for me, because it's I'm gonna eat. I'm gonna follow my hunger cues, eat whatever I want. So do I think getting home from work and saying, oh, you know, I really want this Domino's Pizza, and then eating a whole Domino's Pizza is a good idea? No, I don't think that that's a good idea. And I don't think that that's metabolically helpful. And I really think that a lot of the problems that she developed was because of that. And then the other thing is, people say, Well, she did the first month of Whole Foods, and she still developed issues. But I mean, if you look at some of the Whole Foods, she mentioned, it was beans and oats and and..

Jay Feldman 37:08
It was only 75% Whole Foods, she said, so there's still, it still wasn't like all Whole Foods.

Mike 37:13
Thats true. But then the whole foods she was eating were like very heavy, dense, starchy carbohydrates from grains and beans and nuts and things like that. And I I think that, yeah, that if you eat a lot of that stuff, you are going to blow yourself up. But I don't think that that was because she was eating whole foods. I think it was because of the types of whole foods that she was eating. Now, do I think she'd be blow all bloated and whatnot if she was eating a bunch of specific fruits and drinking different juices and things like that, and eating a decent, a nice steak with a decent amount of fat and things like that. No, I don't think she would have gone blood at all. And I think she could have easily increased her calories 5000 with that and not had an issue, and not developed swelling and and needed vein ablations and things like that. So I think that there's the nuance in there. I don't think that my point is, is, I think if you do the intuitive eating the right way, and you reverse diet in the sense of your increase in calories, instead of dropping them down the right way, and you do it and the right way, from my definition, would be to increase slowly over time at a some sort of arbitrary standard rate, 200 calories a week, whatever you determine Fix for you, or whatever. The specific research on reverse dieting discusses that they found work. Whatever protocol you can find that that works for..

Jay Feldman 38:28
We'll give we'll give recommendations at the end, yeah. Okay, yeah.

Mike 38:31
And then from there, just, you know, work within the specific context of foods. And for us, we've talked about what foods we think, from our principles work the best. So do it? So yes, that's really my biggest gripe with what she did. That's my that's why I think she had so many issues, and that's what I think is partly dangerous for people seeing this, um, especially because a lot of people are coming from that place. A lot of I would assume that most of the people watching her video are women who have struggled with weight problems, who have had some sort of eating disorder in the past, who have been competitors, who have dealt with any of these number of issues, who are amenorrheic or this or that, and I'm saying, Oh, if I eat whatever I want up to my appetite and hunger, then I'm going to solve my problem, and eventually my weight will come back down. I think that is a very dangerous perspective, if it's taken that way, I think that that is a very dangerous perspective.

Jay Feldman 39:26
Or at the very at the very least, it's just not the best way to go about it.

Mike 39:30
Yeah, well, and the thing is, is because there's people who, there's people on the internet who on forums who have discussed trying this approach and saying, I gained a bunch of weight, and it just hasn't come off yet. I'm gaining weight. I'm gaining weight and gain and even in the ray peak community, there's this idea that if I eat enough sugar and drink enough milk, I'm going to gain weight to start, because I'm in my healing phase, and then it's going to go away. And then they balloon up to x number of pounds and reach obesity, and then they're like, oh, it's not going away now and now, oh, so. Principles must be wrong. And it's like, I don't think that. I really don't think that that's that's how it works. I don't think you just eat as much sugar and as much orange juice and milk is what you what you want. You're going to go through healing phase and the weight is going to come back off. But I also think it's important to point out that Stephanie's context here she was a physique competitor who basically starved herself into the shape that she was in, and then maintained starvation mode, leanness for a woman for extended number of years. So she was in essentially starvation mode for an extended number of years. When you look at essential amounts of body fat that you're supposed to have as a woman, she was probably way at the low end, especially if you see her early pictures, she looked very, very lean, very, almost borderline on starvation, to some, to some of the pictures, at least in my opinion. And that's not a knock against her personally. It's just she was very lean. She was at an extremely lean stage. She had died down to a ridiculous level. And so her context is different than somebody who just says, Hey, who has amenorrhea because they're working out too hard on the gym. And I don't think going all in is going to just solve that problem magically, and you need to go and part of the thing that they talk about is, well, you have to do this for a year, you have to do this for three years. You have to do this for four years. I don't think that for a lot of people that's going to be good. Oh, you eat as much as you want for four years, and then eventually, whatever you want, however much you want, for four years, and then eventually you're gonna your weights gonna stabilize, your periods can come back, because thyroid function is gonna be perfect, right? That's, that's a reliable statement. And I think that when you look and when you look at certain cultures, like with some of Weston, a Price's work, where they went from their traditional diets of Whole Foods to industrialized diets, they developed health issues. I think that that's important to look at as well. And I think that part and parcel of what we're trying to say here, and a good example of why it's important what you eat. As much as you have you have intuitive cues. You follow some cues, but it's important what you eat, and then the next point to that, and then then you got it is that when you're eating the right types of foods, and you're eating enough of them, you don't get that extreme hunger, you don't get those extreme cravings for sugar or extreme cravings for salt. And I think you that the goal is to get to the point where you don't have these extreme cravings, and so you need to figure out, within a certain range of principles, what that worksheet for us we've we've laid this out before in previous podcasts.

Jay Feldman 42:32
Yeah. And no, I definitely agree. There's one clarification I want to make, and then I want to, well, I want to talk about the physiology of hunger and the weight side of things and why it matters what we eat, at least briefly, with an overview. So the first was just about the intuitive eating idea versus all in. And you were kind of just saying that you feel like Intuitive Eating isn't, is a good idea, but all in isn't, because with all in, you're eating as much as you want, and I think that within, again, this is all you want. It's whatever you want, whatever you want. But that's so part of this is semantic. But within intuitive eating, it seems like it is basically the same thing that you're just eating whatever you want based on your hunger and cravings, however much you want. It's just not as intentional as all in is, I guess, where it's like a specific period where you're planning and gaining weight all those things, it seems like it's it's kind of more more broad or general or vague, but I think what we would both say is that within what we're going to talk about, because it has to do with how our hunger signals work and everything is that while we don't think intuitive eating or all in are the answer, we do think that it is important to eat intuitively, and not only, not only important, but but in line with our physiology and more or less ideal, again, considering certain principles of what we have available in our food supply and things like that. So as far as the physiology side goes, I think it's first important to talk about like, what drives hunger, because that's such a huge component of the all in and intuitive eating. And as you were saying earlier, people who are overweight or even who are eating a lot are not just gluttonous. It's not just that they're lazy, because the idea there is that regardless of what happens, we're always going to have hunger signals. They're always going to be there. And so the only solution is to either restrict or be fat, and it becomes odd either willpower versus laziness, and that's not the case. Instead, there are, there are actual specific things that drive our hunger signals and that turn them off, and the most important one is energy. So if we have enough energy in and this is specifically in our liver and our brain, those are kind of the two certain parts of our brain, the hippocampus. These are like the two sensors of the energy we have available. And if we have enough energy in those places, it allows for our hunger signals to turn off. And if we don't, then even if certain parts of our body are trying to turn off, hunger signals, that often won't happen, and we'll stay hungry, even if we're full, even if we're gaining. Lot of weight, and it's important to mention that they are supposed to happen, because if we don't have enough energy, it means that something's wrong in our environment, and we need to make sure we're storing body fat so we can survive. So the that's such a huge component that's missed within intuitive eating, and the all in idea is this, this idea of of energy and separating energy from calories, because when it just comes down to calories, then it doesn't matter what you're eating. All that matters is how much you eat. And eventually you'll be a little less hungry, and you're going to be at your quote, unquote natural set point, which is just much heavier than where you are. And in reality, that doesn't need to be the case, because if we're eating the right foods and doing the right things that help to improve the efficiency of energy production, if we're really good at converting the food that we take in to energy, then our hunger signals turn off when we have enough energy, when we're when we're satisfied. As far as nutrients and substrate are concerned physiologically and we don't overeat, so that that's kind of why we say that it is helpful to eat intuitively when we're doing the things that allow us to convert food to energy properly. If there are, there are a lot of factors that block that process. So you mentioned polyunsaturated fats, or PUFA, which are found in vegetable oils and nuts and seeds and fatty fish like salmon, which, of course, we're told is healthy, those fats are really good at blocking energy production, as an example. So if we're eating, even if we're eating quote unquote enough food, that efficiency is going to be reduced if we're eating a lot of polyunsaturated fats. So our hunger signals aren't going to stop, because we're not going to be getting enough energy from the food. And then we're going to quote, unquote, overeat and then gain body fat. So in addition to polyunsaturated fats, or other examples as well, which, as you said, this is what we talk about throughout the throughout the entire podcast, is these things that block our ability to produce energy and the things that support it and what we can do do about it. So another really important one is gut toxins. And you talked about digestion and how when our metabolism is low, when we're not eating enough food, our digestion is down regulated, we don't produce the same amount of digestive enzymes and bile, and our intestines don't move through move food through them same way. And so we end up with a lot of bacterial overgrowths or fungal overgrowths that produce all these toxins that then we'll also directly block our ability to produce energy from food. So when we have all of these factors blocking our convert the conversion from fuel to energy, what we end up with is taking in a lot of food because we're always hungry, and converting a lot of that food to fat and much less of it to energy than than we could be. And so as we're going to talk about now, the solution is to adjust our diet and these inputs so that we are converting food to energy properly, and then at that point, we can increase slowly the amount of food that we're eating to get to a point where we aren't constantly hungry and hungry anymore, with, ideally, much less body fat gained, and also resolving all of these Other symptoms, which, as you've kind of alluded to, it's questionable whether Stephanie did resolve a lot of those symptoms.

Mike 48:06
So especially because she went on birth control, which knocked out her ability to determine half of whether or not she solved those symptoms or not, right? And we don't know anything about her thyroid hormones, because I don't think that she tested those but I remember correctly.

Jay Feldman 48:21
Well, she did test cholesterol, and her cholesterol didn't increase, which is an indicator of thyroid function. It can be, it doesn't mean indirectly, yeah, yeah. And also, considering the amount that she ate, it's probably assumptive that her thyroid is still her thyroid activity is probably still increased compared to where it was before. But that doesn't mean that it's still ideal, so optimal, yeah. And then you did get rid of her hunger so.

I think, coldness, too. And, yeah, but yeah, so, so. And the important part to consider, again, from the physiology side, as far as why we want to increase the food that we're taking in slowly, it's because, when we're in a starvation state, there are all these signals circling our bodies telling them that we need to be storing food as fat. Don't produce energy from food stored as fat. So we talked about the polyunsaturated fats doing that. We talked about toxins from the gut, like endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide doing that. But another one is our stress hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, glucagon and and all of those, the more that they circulate. And there's others too, like estrogen, serotonin, circulate chronically, right the chronically, yeah, as they're chronically elevated, those also block energy production. So that's the main reason why, even if we're eating perfect diet, let's say we still don't want to go from 1000 calories to 5000 calories, because it takes time to lower those chronically high stress hormones, which block that conversion from food to energy and would lead to storing it as fat and fat, and it takes time to upregulate the hormones that help to increase the efficiency of converting food to fat. So thyroid hormones are ones that we mentioned, and then reproductive hormones, so the androgens for men and then and as well as like pregnant alone and then for women, mostly progesterone and and again, the the other steroids, pregnant alone and. Is another main one. So it takes time to upregulate the things that govern our metabolism, and it takes time to down regulate the things that slow it down. And so because of that, if we just jump into 5000 calories a day, we haven't given our metabolism time to catch up. We haven't given our hormonal state or our hormones time to catch up, or our digestion, or digestion, that's another huge component, yeah, which is dependent in many ways, on metabolism, on thyroid hormones and on, on those quote, unquote, reproductive hormones, which are really just very general hormones. So basically, I would say that this is why it's important, the speed with which we increase, how much we're eating or, or, yeah, like, how much you don't have to get to 5000 in one day. Really, you don't even have to ever get to 5000 depending on your circumstances, three, four.

Mike 50:48
But whatever it is that you need to get to over the course of a few months, and it's, I don't think that's going to make or break the situation in terms of you getting better. I think it may actually aid the process, right, but not slamming that food right away. And we, I'm pretty sure, just from our own personal experience, slamming food right away wasn't necessarily the ideal way to solve the problem. We did develop issues from doing that. Also the types of foods we were eating was an issue, but still right. And then the other thing I want to talk about is, so we are talking about intuitive eating,

Jay Feldman 51:22
Or eating intuitively

Mike 51:24
or eating intuitively...

Jay Feldman 51:25
Yeah, it's just semantics. That's why I'm like Intuitive Eating is like almost the same as all in so I don't know.

Mike 51:31
I think it's I just think it's important, though, for people to realize that it's kind of hard to parse out what your actual craving for something is sometimes. So when you get that chocolate chip cookie from Subway, the reason you're craving that chocolate chip cookie from Subway is probably because you want something that has a decent amount of carbohydrates and fats and some salt and things like that, which are all general cravings that we're going to have because the fat, salt and sugar basically tone down some of the stress hormones that have direct physiologic benefits. Now, the cookie itself is created to have all of those components with flavor additives and enhancers, and then a whole bunch of other products in them that that when eaten, said, tells your body, okay, these cravings are met based on taste, but then it causes a bunch of digestive issues, and then it can be fermented by bacteria. Some of the products are irritating to the intestine, and then that essentially will lower the energy process, energy metabolism, and cause issues down the line, especially with the cookies baked with canola oil and whatever else. And the same thing goes for pizza and other junk foods and chips and whatever other crap that we have concocted now, and a lot of those things, people say, I'm craving chips, I'm craving pizza, I'm craving this, the hyper palate. The foods are constructed now to be hyper palatable, and they're meant to meet all those craving factors. There's meant to meet the carbohydrate, the fat and the salt component, which are the main things that we have cravings for, and so they're constructed that way, but they have a lot of additives, and they lack a lot of specific things like vitamins, minerals and polyphenols and things like that that aid in our digestive processes, inhibit bacterial or growth, and things all along those lines. So it's really important to say, Oh, and this is why I think part of the all in approach is questionable. Oh, I'm craving, I'm craving all these donuts. Like, are you actually craving donuts? Are you craving a dense source of carbs and fat with some with some salt and things like that? And that's why it's like, well, I was craving this, so it must be good for me. It's like, no, not really. I don't think that Pete the most Domino's Pizza and your store bought cookies and all the ice cream with all the gums and additives and things like that is ever going to be good for you or help you get to a healthy state? I don't think the industrial foods are ever going to be good that. And that's part of my problem. That's that's an extension of the problem I have with the all in approach, and why? I think that it's more of a question of you have the the craving for this, having some salt or having some fat or having some carbs, and to source those from different foods and industrial foods, is what I would say.

Jay Feldman 54:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely agree. And so let's, let's talk through some of the more specific recommendations as far as how quick to increase calories, what types of foods people should be tending towards, and which ones to avoid. And of course, we'll reference a lot of the previous episodes, because we talk through all of that all the time. I would, I would as add as a caveat, also that our cravings are like we do have specific cravings for carbs and fats and salt and various nutrients and things based on our needs. Our bodies are capable of eating intuitively. That's how they're designed. But as you're saying, they weren't necessarily designed to deal with pizza and donuts, and the reason for that is not just because they're processed or because they taste good and they have carbs and fats and salt together. The problem is that they have components in them, namely polyunsaturated fats and. And as you know, some other additives and things real food additives.

Mike 55:04
And pure granulated sugar without minerals or vitamins or things like that, and added extra iron, whatever it is.

Jay Feldman 55:10
yeah, and other things that disrupt digestion, as you said, so they introduce factors that in that impede our ability to digest them or convert them to energy, which is the problem. It's not the problem is not that we created them per se, or that we put them together in this special way and that makes it bad. It's just that there are certain components there that will end up disrupting our hunger signals, and because they aren't leading to the right energy production that our bodies were expecting when they were telling you that they needed some carbs or some fat. So so as far as that goes, as far as the, I guess, let's start with the kind of what foods to eat. It is helpful. Like, of course, I don't even want to say, like, the stick to Whole Foods, because it's, it's, Besides...

Mike 55:53
There's a wide variety of Whole Foods, and it's not whole foods that solve the issue, per se. Yeah, exactly big types of

Jay Feldman 56:01
Whole Foods, right? So the I would say some of the main things to consider are avoiding the polyunsaturated fats, which are really good at blocking our ability to produce energy. Again, those are found in vegetable oils, nuts and seeds, and which vegetable oils are in all sorts of processed foods, like packaged things and mayo and all sorts of like sauces and things, and also, again, fatty fish and fish oil, which we've done an episode on polyunsaturated fats and PUFA and why they're a problem. But avoiding those is definitely pretty helpful, avoiding things that are really hard to digest. So this does include some whole foods, like whole grains and beans and legumes. And again, we've talked about this in other episodes. I'll refer to those, but avoiding those foods because they will lead to toxin production from the gut, like endotoxin or or various other toxins that will they themselves, will irritate, right and will disrupt our ability to produce energy and lead to body fat and and there's a lot of there's research suggesting that endotoxemia, which is just high higher levels of endotoxin, is implicated in obesity, so among other issues for sure, so eating, avoiding hard to digest foods, whole foods, like whole grains and beans and legumes and lots of raw vegetables, especially with a lot of fibers and raw starches, those are all going to most likely lead to various gut issues, especially if your gut is not already healthy and you're not already able to digest foods well. So those would be two of the most important things. Some other really important things are making sure you're getting enough carbohydrates, which are really good for keeping stress hormones down and increasing thyroid hormone and reproductive hormones getting enough saturated and monounsaturated fats are also helpful for both of those things. As far as sources for carbohydrates, just real quick, like whole fruits and fruit juice, dried fruits, frozen fruits, are all really great options. And then root vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, other starchy vegetables, like squashes, those are all good options, too. And again, rice, yeah, white rice, as opposed to like brown rice, which is the brown rice is much harder to digest, more likely to lead to gut issues, some other important Oh, and then like protein sources, again, high nutrient dense protein sources and good fat sources. So fat ones, like coconut oil, butter, beef tallow and fats from dairy. And then on the protein side, high nutrient density seafood, and that's low in the polyunsaturated fats and good quality ruminant animal meat staying sticking to like leaner chicken and pork, because the fattier chicken and pork is high in polyunsat. In polyunsaturated fats.

Mike 58:43
Make sure it's pasture raised stuff.

Jay Feldman 58:45
Ideally you can Yeah, and dairy if you tolerate it, right? Dairy, if you tolerate it. I would say that that's like broadest overview of of the types of foods that are helpful for supporting energy production and the ones to avoid that, inhibit it. The other thing that I would talk about as far as again and again, as a general rule, experimentation is really helpful, starting slow, testing out different foods, and that's another reason why we want to make sure we're increasing slowly, as opposed to jumping in all at once. We're going all in and the and again, I would highly recommend checking out those other podcasts where we talk about those things. The other thing I would say, as far as going slow goes, is, as far as you know, it is helpful to increase calories, like increase the amount of food that you're eating, especially if you've been in any sort of deficit for extended periods of times. If you're dieting or restricting, or you come from a history of yo yo dieting or low carb diets, then all of those things in the long term are going to come at the same cost as as as any sort of starvation type diet, and that includes all sorts of hormonal dysregulation and all those symptoms we mentioned earlier. And so it is helpful to increase the amount that we're eating, I would say a good rule of thumb, maybe you could say, like 100 To 200 calories every week or two, maybe like 5% to 10% of your calories every every couple weeks. Again, there's no steadfast rule there. The whole idea would be just to start small and see how it affects you. Sometimes you might end up with increased hunger at first because you have a lowering of stress hormones. But again, slow and steady is going to allow for the easiest like it's it makes it easiest to correct what's what you've done wrong, if you if you're finding that you're starting to come up with various symptoms, and it also gives your metabolism the most time to adapt and to regulate and and to increase the prometabolic hormones and decrease the stress hormones. And as far as weight gain goes, I will say that there some amount of weight gain may occur, especially from water weight or just having more food weight, because food itself weighs more. So those are things to consider, especially in the beginning, and especially if you are going faster than the one to 200 calories, which we did. And there's something to be said for sometimes faster is better, but there's just more room for error. So just want to be careful. So some amount of weight gain from water and food weight is normal, but as far as body fat gain, again, a small amount is maybe Okay, especially if it's not being packed down

Mike 1:01:14
extremely lean. If you're at like, 4567, 8% body fat, and you go up to 10% 12% okay, whatever. But gaining an entire, an entire 20% or ridiculous amount of excess body fat, I don't think is a good idea in the long run. I don't know how the specifics of how much Stephanie gained, so this is not in reference to Stephanie, but the point is that if you're gaining a large amount of body fat rapidly, I don't think that that, then something's going on. It shouldn't you need some water weight. You should fill out a little bit. You should be able to put on some, some muscles, some body fat, things like that, a decent amount, you know, within a healthy range. But if you're hitting, like, 40% body fat, 30% body fat and things like that, then it's really time to consider, you know, what's going on?

Jay Feldman 1:02:00
Yeah. And again, some amount of that weight gain is okay and normal, and can just take a period of adjustment. And might be necessary, yeah, necessary, right? But if it's excessive, then that is a suggestion that there's that, that the process of converting food to energy, energy production process is being inhibited in some way, in an excessive way, and that that's an issue or something that should likely be addressed. So, yeah, yeah. All right. So before we wrap up this episode, we were kind of jumping around a bit, and we ended up being a little bit short on time towards the end there. So I wanted to go ahead and summarize our thoughts, our overall thoughts on, on going all in and intuitive eating. And then also, I wanted to talk a little bit about how much we should be eating and how we can determine that. So as far as all in and intuitive eating are concerned, we do think that these that these practices, work. As far as raising our metabolism, they do do the opposite of what chronic dieting does, which reduces our metabolism. They do lead to this increase in metabolism, but they miss a really huge component in doing so. So within these paradigms of all in and intuitive eating, the thought process is really that the amount of food that we eat is what determines our metabolic rate, and that we've been dieting for so long, we've been eating so little for so long, so as long as we're eating more, that's going to lead to an increase in our metabolism, and eventually our appetite will decrease, and we'll lose some weight and find that kind of happy medium place. But in that thought process, the idea that the types of food matter is really not even acknowledged. It's kind of thrown out the window. And so that's where we see the biggest issue, where, in reality, the type of food makes the types of foods that we're eating make a huge difference on raising or lowering our metabolism, and when we're eating a large amount of foods that we don't use well, either we don't digest them well, or they don't have the nutrients that we need to actually process them properly and convert them to energy, then it leads to a lot of unnecessary weight gain and can lead to a lot of other symptoms. So because of that, we do think that eating intuitively is helpful, but as long as we're doing that within these certain food groups, which we did kind of lay out towards the end of the episode, but so as long as we're eating within those certain food groups, we can eat intuitively, and we can say we can try to tune into our cravings and notice that if we do have a craving for carbohydrates, then we eat some form of carbohydrates. But instead of that being French fries, it might be fruit. And again, that doesn't mean we should never be eating french fries, but just understanding the fact that while we while our cravings might be for something like carbohydrates, just because there are carbohydrates in french fries doesn't mean that we can use them properly. And instead, in. The case of French fries, because of all the polyunsaturated fats in there, it's actually going to slow our metabolism down a little bit and lead to more weight gain. So So we do think that intuitive eating makes a lot of sense, just as long as we're considering the types of foods as well. And then the other component is this idea of going all in versus going in slowly, and as far as all in goes again, this doesn't really give our metabolism enough time to catch up. So if we are eating the right types of foods, then this would lead to much less weight gain and much fewer other symptoms. But if we're just eating anything and everything and going all in, we're much more likely to have all of these extra issues that aren't necessary, whereas we could slowly increase the amount of food that we're eating and make sure that we're eating the right types of foods that support us metabolically, and then we don't need to have that same unnecessary weight gain and those other symptoms. So that's kind of the general that's kind of our general thoughts on going all in and intuitive eating where, again, the better approach would be to go slowly and to make sure that we're eating the foods that support us metabolically. And if you do want to know more about which foods those are, which foods are ideal for us to eat for our metabolism, I would definitely recommend checking out earlier episodes of the podcast, and then you can also head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and sign up for a free energy balance mini course where I'll walk you through some of those ideal foods as far as metabolism goes, and then also different things, as far as lifestyle and stress are concerned, that will help to raise our metabolism and make sure that we are producing as much energy as possible and you and not wasting energy, which will allow us to find freedom from all of those symptoms that people experience from chronic dieting, the weight gain, the lack of energy, the inability to inability to sleep, the gut issues, whether that's bloating or constipation, the we can find freedom from all of those different symptoms when we're doing the things that support us on that bioenergetic level. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and then the last thing I wanted to mention was talking about how much we should be eating. So we talked throughout this episode about how where our cravings and hunger come from, and how our hunger is dictated by the buyer energy availability, again, in certain areas, specifically in our liver and then also in hippocampus in our brain. And because of that, what that means is that if we are producing energy efficiently, then the main thing that we can use to determine how much to eat is our hunger. So instead of creating some sort of arbitrary guideline as far as how much food we should be eating, we can actually tune into our hunger and eat as much as we are hungry for until we're satisfied again, as long as we're eating the types of foods that will allow us to effectively produce energy and will create the most efficient metabolism, the inefficient energy production process. So the main determinant as far as how much we want to be eating should be our hunger. But beyond that, there are some other guidelines that might be helpful. Of course, many of the the common guidelines out there, as far as calories go, the general 2000 calorie day diet, or maybe 2500 that's recommended for people who are more active, is is pretty arbitrary, and it's probably helpful if we just throw those calorie guidelines out the window and kind of forget about them, and instead, again, work on, typically increasing the amount of food that we're eating, but ideally not having a very minimal amount of weight gain, if, if any, because we are making sure that we're eating the right types of foods so. So, one other thing that we didn't really have a chance to talk about throughout this episode was the different macronutrients, carbs, fats and proteins, as far as the different percentages there, or how much of each of them we should be getting. And I'll link to an episode where we talked through exactly that a previous podcast episode. I'll link to that episode in the show notes, as well as a few episodes talking about weight loss, and more specifically, why we don't want to be eating less and exercising more to lose weight, and how this does lead to all those chronic dieting issues. It does lead to weight loss, but at at a huge cost, and that cost is our metabolism and that cost is our health. So I'll link to those episodes in the show notes, so you can take a look at those. And with that, let's wrap up this episode. If you did enjoy it, please leave a review or a like or comment wherever you're listening. It really does a lot to help support the show. And if you could also leave a five star rating on iTunes, I would really appreciate it to check out those show notes you can head over. Head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast, and again, if you are struggling with any of those symptoms that I had mentioned earlier, from chronic dieting or yo yo dieting or low carb diets or whatever it is, whether that is fatigue or brain fog or inability to sleep, or your gut is not functioning well, or you just know that you could be feeling better, or maybe you're dealing with some more significant chronic health conditions, maybe autoimmune conditions or diabetes or heart disease. I would definitely recommend you head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and sign up for that free energy balance mini course where I'll walk you through the main things you want to do as far as nutrition and lifestyle are concerned in order to optimize your energy producing pathways and make sure that your body has the energy that it needs to function properly. And I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode, and I will see you in the next one.